Wednesday 27 February 2013

Games Wednesday: New Games

So as promised here is another Games Wednesday again!!  So I'm starting to get through some of my backlog of games (I've finished Far Cry 3/Diablo 3 and almost finished Dishonored) so I'm looking forward to starting some new games now.

Path of Exile



So I'm a big fan of hack 'n' slash RPGs having played all 3 Diablo games, Torchlight, Titan Quest, Too Human (does this count??) and more.  Path of Exile is a free-to-play game that is in the same vein as Diablo 2 and is regarded by many as what Diablo 3 should have been (personally I don't understand Diablo 3's criticism but then again I've only just finished it on normal difficulty).  I've only played around 30-40 mins of the game so far and it was an interesting experience.  While the combat was largely familiar the game has integrated several features that so far feel very different.  The first thing to mention is the ridiculous passive skill tree which from what I can tell will require several playthroughs of trial and error to get to grips with the enormity of it.

The Passive Skill Tree
The other things that make this feel strange is the lack of gold (you use scrolls and other items to barter/trade), having skills bound to socketable items and sockets buffing different attributes.  With all these new ideas I look forward to delving much deeper into this game.

Further reading:

http://www.pathofexile.com/
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/02/27/path-of-exile-hack-and-slash-for-free
http://www.joystiq.com/2013/01/10/path-of-exile-finds-new-friends-in-open-beta-beginning-jan-23/

BioShock Infinite


 


So I'm a little giddy about the release of BioShock Infinite.  I'm a huge fan of the series having spent many hours playing the first two games and from what I've seen of the latest iteration then it is going to be even better than those set in the underwater city of Rapture.  This game is set on the floating city of Columbia (the polar opposite of Rapture) and the aim of the game is to rescue a woman called Emily from the two opposing groups (who seem to come from either side of the political spectrum).  If like me you can't wait to play this game then you might like my Let's Play of the very first BioShock on my YouTube channel (Playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNFyoNgGhybYxwT7ddZMcSw5GSIDGliXm)

Further reading:

http://www.bioshockinfinite.com/?RET=&ag=true
http://uk.gamespot.com/bioshock-infinite/
http://uk.ign.com/games/bioshock-infinite/pc-14258733

Thanks for reading everyone and I will be back for Science Friday this week!!

Monday 25 February 2013

Geek Monday: I'm Back

So I've not written on my Blog for a couple of weeks now and this is due to me being busy at work and being ill.  But now my workload and health is evening out again I feel that I now have the time to devote to writing to my Blog.

Samsung Galaxy S4





So Samsung have just announced a date for revealing of the S4:  March 14th.  I was hoping that  the S4 wouldn't be announced till later in the year because I'm now into the second year of my contract and I'm starting to think about my upgrade in January 2014.  My hopes were pinned on the S4 being released around September to October this year so that when I upgrade I would be able to pick it up with it still be relatively new but with the prices of contracts significantly reduced.  With this early reveal date I'm now worried that the release will be in April/May which will then mean that the phone will already be getting close to a year old.  Bloody hell Samsung!!

Further reading:

http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/02/samsung-confirms-march-14th-event-for-galaxy-s-iv/
http://www.kitguru.net/mobile/carl/samsung-confirm-galaxy-s4-launching-march-14/

Nvidia Geforce Titan




Nvidia have gone and released the most bonkers graphics card currently available.  The Titan GPU is inspired by those used in supercomputers but based on the current 600 series Kepler architecture.  This card offers performance that is significantly more than a GTX 680 but only slightly less than a GTX690.  This is attractive over the dual GPU GTX 690 because some games suffer from multi-GPU incompatibility so having a single GPU that can offer close to this performance is ideal.  The only problem with this card is the monster price tag that goes with it!!  This card is retailing at over £800 which is more than a single GTX 690 or 2 x GTX 670/680s.  Two GTX 670s (the GPU in my own rig) wouldn't cost you any more than £600 (reference style cards anyway) which would give you a superior performance to the titan with £200 to spare.  From what I've seen Nvidia are great for releasing SLI profiles for new games so if you don't play the latest releases at launch then a multi-GPU set-up would be no problem.  Still at least Nvidia can now safely beat AMD again with the fastest single GPU!!

Further reading:

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/51985-nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan/
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2013/02/21/nvidia-geforce-gtx-titan-6gb-review/1
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_Titan/

Thanks for reading everyone and I will be back for Gaming Wednesday and Science Friday this weed!! 

Friday 8 February 2013

Science Friday: I'm Back!!



So I haven't written on my Blog since last week!  I've been wanting to but just don't seem to have found the motivation to do so.  But back to the topic at hand:  Science.  I've not really had much success so far writing the science part of my blog.  It's frustrating that it's so easy to find information on completely mundane things but for one of my main passions I can't seem to build enthusiasm.  I thought that today I would fail again until I saw a great page posted on Twitter.  

http://www.pbh2.com/science-nature/awesome-chemistry-gifs/

This is a collection of Chemistry GIFs that really demonstrate how cool some chemical reactions can be.  GIFs like these are the reason that I find Chemistry so fascinating (I do have my undergraduate degree in Chemistry after all) and its amazing to see some of the amazing things that can be done.

Now I'll come to my own gripes in science.  So for my PhD I'm expected to perform experiments but the problem with this is that half the time all the equipment in the department is broken!  It's so frustrating when you think that you might finally be getting somewhere and suddenly you are set back a week or more while you are waiting for equipment to be repaired.  Another annoyance I've found is the uncooperative nature of some academic staff.  It would be nice when you ask politely for permission that you could borrow something that they'd at least have the courtesy to at least be receptive and not hostile.


Well that's my little blog post over for this time.  I will hopefully be back for Geek Monday next week.  Thanks for reading everybody!