Crysis - the best first shooter PC Game so far

I was looking for a new thrill to occupy my time, I hardly go out these days with the price of things going up and the hectic traffic jams everywhere in town.

What's best done at home? first it was movies... then it got tiring, so I turned to PC Games. I turned to Google for the best rated PC games to date, and there it was... Crysis... the most intense, intelligent, realistic and fully functional virtual world.

Crysis is a first shooter game that was launched in November 2007. I got a copy of it just 3 days after the launch. Details of the game is available on wikipedia, here.

I have not been entertained much since my experience with the famous Final Fantasy Series (I managed to play FF VII, FF VIII and FF IX), but Crysis... it changed my gaming experience totally.

Will not be going into detailed account of the game, Wiki is there and Google can assist you further... I am just posting this to share a REALLY worthwhile game to invest your time in... you will not be dissappointed.

The game requires some high end setting for your PC, please do read the back of the box (unless you are getting it from a Low Yat equivalent source which never spell the requirements correctly :-P).

I completed the game in less than two weeks with hard devotion and disciplne.... hope you'll enjoy it as much as I do.

Suit up your nano suit... the aliens are here...

Here's a view of the game :

Digital Video Broadcast over Handheld (DVB-H) anyone?

There is a new provider in town, its called U Mobile. The company is licensed for 3G services and will be offering services with the 018 prefix "very soon" but unconfirmed at this date.

U Mobile will be offering a new mobile service to the market, its the digital TV broadcast that is accessible via your mobile. Globally, there are only a few operators that had started this service offering and Europe is doing some trials to finalize the vendor for their service roll-out.

I had the opportunity to take DVB-H for a test drive. First and foremost, to have this service, you need devices that are DVB-H compatible... its a hardware requirement, not software driven. For the test, I have been given a Nokia device, the N77. I will take some session out to do some write up on the device later, but for now,... lets focus on the service.

U Mobile has an approximate 6 channels on trial at the moment. It offers the free-to-air television channels available at the moment like TV3, 8TV and NTV7. In addition, it has two own channels, Channel News Asia and a MTV like channel, Trace.

The service is easy to set up, just plug in the SIM card into the phone and hit the dedicated button on the phone for your DVB-H to load the channels and choose your viewing. The video image is sharp and with very good resolution.

With the phone with me, I mounted a phone holder and drove around enjoying the news feed as well as the music channel while being stuck in the daily traffic congestion. Surprisingly, the coverage within town area is rather extensive. I have driven from town center, all the way to Gombak without any service interruption.. impressive.

Here is a snapshot of my phone set-up.



And an added note... the service is not affected by rain.

I have also noticed that there are some threads in popular forums such as lowyat.net that discusses this topic at length. I am so looking forward to see the development on this.

Huawei's HSDPA USB Modem E220

There has been a lot of buzz on the new sleek looking oval shaped USB modem promoted by Celcom and Maxis. Both had the modem re-branded according to the operator. The modem is actually by Huawei, China based telecommunication vendor.

I managed to get a sampler from Huawei to test over the weekends.

The packaging is as shown below :



The package includes :

a) the modem
b) USB cable
c) a quick guide



Starting off, I added the SIM card and connected the USB to my notebook USB port. The device was easily detected and in addition to the modem, it also has an in-built memory on device that houses the software and necessary drivers. Installation was swift and without any issues.

For the re-branded version, the device is preconfigured for the needed access point and other details, as this is off the shelf... it took me less than three minutes to have it configured.. breezy...

Once connected, the modem will glow in different colors according to the connection type. I got green for HSDPA.



After about 20 minutes of usage, the modem tend to get hot. And at about 45 mins (along with some heavy internet usage), the device got cut-off and I have to re-connect to the service.

This is the snapshot of the User Interface Application for the modem :



To conclude;

Pros :

a) very easy to install and use. The software and drivers are in the device itself, so no tendency of losing the installation disc that is so commonly occuring to the myriad of devices one would have
b) Its compatible to EDGE, 3G, HSDPA
c) convenient to carry around

Cons :

a) Price
b) it heats up
c) Regardless of what capacity of bandwith it is capable of, the limitation is the USB capability. Version 1.1 will limit it to just 2 Mbps. Its not like an LAN cable or RJ-45

I may consider purchase of this, but not my prime choice. It does look good aesthetically, but functionally... there are some drawbacks.