TechRadar: Gaming reviews

Review: PS Vita

Leon Hurley — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:48:00 GMT

Overview

Sony's latest attempt to lift a slice of the handheld pie so ably scoffed by Nintendo is the PS Vita: a chunky black slab of portable PlayStation. So here we have our full-blown PlayStation Vita review.

It's a substantial revamp of the company's handheld legacy that started with the PSP and has evolved, until now, through five largely identical models since its 2004 debut.

Each step saw minor revisions - three of which, the PSP-1000, 2000 and 3000, were basically size revising updates - and attempts to chase a rapidly changing market.

The PSP Go added a sliding-case design further shrinking the device, and ditched Sony's original proprietary UMD disk format in favor of download only software.

Even now the original device is lives on with the latest PSP, the E1000, undergoing a budget focused strip down with a cheaper build and removing all but the most basic features to squeeze the last out of it as a piece of (almost) throw away fun.

In many ways, despite the new name, the PS Vita is another revision of the PSP legacy but one with plenty of much needed evolution. The same basic form returns and it's still a dedicated games machine. If you want a PlayStation Phone then you'll need the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, an Android based device that can play Android games and PS1 titles.

The PlayStation Vita does have wireless options, with one of the models sporting a 3G connection but it's for updates and online gaming rather than communication.

The lesser model uses WiFi for the same functionality, and at a cheaper price: the 3G PS Vita will set you back £279 while the WiFi one will cost £229 when the console is released on February the 22nd. Shop around though as there are plenty of deals and trade ins to be had.

The PSP sold well but suffered from a lack of star software and focus. There were no essential games, and it's multimedia abilities, by SCEE's own president and CEO Jim Ryan's admission, "confused consumers".

This time the PS Vita is aimed squarely at gaming. The multimedia functionality is still there (and with a 5-inch OLED screen it has the potential to rival most smart phones and even dedicated media players) but the marketing and message is clear: this is a games machine.

It's even got a certified killer app with Uncharted: Golden Abyss proving that this is a full fat gaming experience, capable of providing PS3 quality fun on the go.

The real revolution however comes through the control options. First up there are dual analogue sticks that let you play exactly the same games, and in exactly the same way, as you would on your PS3 or Xbox 360. Something that now seems essential for gaming on whatever platform and demonstrated clearly by the persistence of dual stick controls on iOS games, and the slightly embarrassing admission/compromise of the Circle Pad for 3DS.

Then there are the extras: the twin front and back touchscreens, the motion control (using a three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer sensors) a microphone and dual cameras. There are uses for all of them with high profile touchy, wavy and visual gameplay mechanics across the launch line up.

Initial impressions are that this is what PSP wanted to be: a real portable PlayStation. Neither a phone nor a tablet but a fully formed, uncompressed gaming console you can throw in your bag.

Features

There's no denying that there's some impressive grunt inside the PS Vita's black plastic case.

The combination of the Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and PowerVR Series5XT SGXMP+ quad core graphics chip mean that this is running near PS3 quality games, helped along by the 512 MB RAM and a separate 128 MB of VRAM.

A game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a clear system seller largely because it looks ostensibly like the original game on PS3.

There is no sense of any lowering of aesthetic standards that you might get on 3DS or iPhone. Visually this is competing on a PS3/Xbox 360 level with the same advanced rendering capabilities and dynamic lighting. Although frame rates can dip when a lots happening it's still and impressive leap forwards for handheld gaming.

The standout feature is its 960 × 540 qHD resolution OLED screen. At 5-inches it's a bright and sharp joy to watch, despite its being a touch down the resolution and pixel density ladder from an iPhone 4S' 640×960 screen which rocks 326ppi over the Vita's 220ppi.

It's also a capacitive touchscreen which is used in games and navigation, while there's a second touch pad on the rear of the machine, used almost exclusively for gaming inputs.

The other control mechanisms are an arrangement of buttons and sticks familiar to anyone who's ever picked up a PS3 Dualshock (there's no haptic feedback, mind). The triangle, square, cross and circle buttons sit on the right of the machine, the D-pad on the left. There's also a home button to navigate between open apps, and separate start and selection buttons.

You've also got three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, meaning you can control your games simply by moving the device in your hand.

This enables you to aim simply by moving the device around - great for games like Uncharted though if you're sitting down you might need a swivel chair!

On the top of the machine are the triggers, a power and volume control as well as two ports. One for game cards, the other is an accessory port. The Vita SD storage card slots in at bottom and a standard sized sim used by the 3G model pops in the left hand side.

One odd form factor is that the machine is slightly too wide for easy typing. The on-screen keyboard is a good size and responsive but the width of the machine means that in a natural holding position your thumbs can't reach the middle. As a result you either have to use a slightly stretched grip or resort to single digit stabbing.

As well as capable stereo speakers there's a headphone jack and microphone for use both in game and with applications like Party, a cross game chat system that lets you communicate with others on your PSN friends list.

There are also front and rear cameras. They're both 640x480, 0.3MP VGA level devices so while classy photography isn't really an option they're serviceable enough for communication and use in games. The AR Reality Fighters uses them to put your face on a characters and to project that character in to the real world, for example.

One criminal drawback is the lack of internal memory. You'll have to fork out for Sony's proprietary Vita memory cards, essentially a tweaked SD card. Games come on their own cartridge-style cards with storage space for saves and update so if you're only gaming it's less of a concern. However, if you want to take music, picture or videos with you you'll have to pay extra for the Vita specific cards. There are a range of sizes planned from 2-16GB.

Connection-wise both models come with standard Bluetooth and WiFi connections while the 3G model also includes, well a 3G connection.

In the EU that's provided by Vodaphone, and the £279 price tag includes a free 4GB memory card, a PAYG SIM card which when topped up with £5 will get you a free downloadable game - WipEout 2048 - and 250 MB of data lasting up to 30 days with full Vodafone 3G connectivity.

The PlayStation Vita 3G will also be available at other high street and online retailers with the option to top up £5 and get the WipEout 2048 game free of charge.

Gaming

As previously mentioned gaming on the Vita looks incredible. After all the talk of CPUs and GPUs, the key thing is that games look every bit as good as their larger console counterparts.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss really does look as good as any launch PS3 game and better, even, than a handful of more recent console games. Visually it blows the iPad/Phone and Nintendo 3DS out of the water.

Because these are more akin to full size console games there are also equivalent full size loading times. You can get back into any game you've left running in the background almost instantly but firing up something like Uncharted from scratch can take a couple minutes.

Battery life

Gaming also takes it out of the machine's battery, though it's actually not too bad considering the processors and screen. Play something constantly with a sensible screen brightness and you'll get about four and half to five hours out of it. So, okay for short trips but best to keep the charger in your bag, a habit i-devices have ingrained into most of us by now anyway.

Loading and battery concerns aside the quality of the entertainment on offer is strong.

Wipeout 2048's futuristic racing looks beautiful with sharp, detailed environments blasting past as you compete. It's also one of the games to utilise cross play, letting you play against PS3 opponents on certain Wipeout tracks.

Then there's something like Escape Plan. It has a dark children's cartoon feel as you guide little claymation flavoured characters past a series of slicing, electrocuting death traps. What stops it becoming a simple 2.5D platform puzzler is its lovely, characterful animation and touch controls that have you jabbing and swiping at the screen. You can even 'pinch' the little heroes using the front and rear pad together to make them run.

Nearly all the games on offer make intelligent use of the varied controls options. Uncharted uses motion controlled sniping and gesture-based QTE's in combat. It's also got by far the best use of touch controls to show off your new toy. When Nate's climbing rock faces you can 'draw' over the available handholds and ledges. He'll then scramble across the path.

Trying to hit an entire route in one sweep actually becomes a satisfying meta-game in it's own right. There's also the ability to scale ropes by stroking your fingers in a climbing motion on the rear touchpad; something that always makes an onlooker smile.

Then there are the games built around the new controls. Little Deviants is a series of party games - variants on Whac-a-mole games, ball rolling challenges, motions controlled shooters and more - that has you stabbing at the screen and waving the entire machine around you.

Similarly Frobisher Says is a Bishi Bashi Special style assortment of madness as you race through challenges that last seconds - counting the number of cats that appear on screen for a fraction of a second, say. It's numerous instructions are yelled out by a manic Kevin Eldon creating a genuinely funny if short lived experience.

There are also more traditional offerings. Games like Unit 13 is a fairly traditional third person military shooter, and as such has little use for the extra control methods. Instead it makes logical use of them by letting you tap on screen to select options and change weapons.

There's a good number of titles as well. At launch 25 games will be available with another ten in the 'launch window', basically the week or two after the Vita goes on sale on February 22nd.

It's a wide range as well with everything from more 'hardcore offerings like Unit 13, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Ninja Gaiden, though to more casual offerings like Plants vs Zombies and Motorstorm RC. Sports fans get things like FIFA, Hot Shots Golf and F1. Plus there are kid friendly titles like Ben Ten and Lego Harry Potter.

The PS Vita also carries a full-blown PSP emulator so you'll be able to fire up almost any PSP titles without a problem.

In Japan, Sony operates a UMD Passport scheme, allowing Vita gamers to download digital copies of any PSP title they already own without any extra fee. However, it is unclear whether this service will be available in the UK. If it's not, it would mean that PSP titles would need to be re-purchased - but we'll bring you an update on this as soon as we know more.

Functionality

The PS Vita is a simple device to use. You swipe up and down through pages of apps and games that appear as little floating Smartie like buttons. Anything you have open, Apps, games and media, stack up on a series of pages you can scroll through left to right, or shut down by 'tearing' the page off.

It's an intuitive and tactile system with buttons wobbling and the screen stretching and warping gently as you interact with it. It's easy to see why Sony chose to forgo the PlayStation XMB they'd previously rolled out across various TVs, cameras and other areas of their electronics division.

In terms of apps on the console there are currently things like Near, a location-based service much like Nintendo's Street Pass system. It collects information from the area, people and games around you. Party is the previously mentioned chat system and there's also a Group Messaging app.

The Vita specific PlayStation Store isn't yet up so there's no way yet of knowing what the full range of additional applications will be in Europe. Things like Facebook, Flickr, Skype, Twitter and foursquare are on the way, though, through Social Essentials - Vita's take on social networking.

While the media side of things have been played down, the PS Vita does do it all. Whatever you want to use can be transferred to and from the machine directly on the PS3. Through PC you can easily use Sony's propitiatory Content Manager Assistant which lets you set folders for images, music and video as well as back up your device. Or you can just use the device like a portable harddrive.

The apps that let you view or use your media are all easy to use, although browsing could be better - when you've got a lot of content it's a slow old slog to scroll though it all and the scroll bar is more for decoration than any practical use.

These are the currently supported media formats. The Vita focuses on the more commonly used ones but it's worth bearing in mind that PS3 added extra formats to it's original line up though post release firmware updates

Music: MP3 MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3, MPEG-4 AAC, WAVE (Linear PCM)

Video: MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC), H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Hi/Main/Baseline Profile (AAC)

Photo: JPEG (Exif 2.2.1), TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG

One area that does need serious attention is the almost unusable browser. There's currently no support for Flash or HTML5 with the machine only getting friendly with the bare minimum of Javascript and cookies. There are serious and basic functionality issues eitherway, however.

There's no ability to re-orientate the screen, leaving you with a letterbox view that only loads what is visible. Attempts to scroll through sites simply reveals a blank screen as you wait for the Vita to catch up.

There's also a remote play feature, which allows you to use the Vita to take control of your PS3. In theory this means you can play PS3 games on the PS Vita over a network. Some titles work already though many don't, and Sony is keeping its cards close to its chest about how functional the Remote Play feature will be moving forward.

Verdict

This is fitting of the original PSP2 tag that it earned early on in its life.

It improves on the PSP in almost every way, adding the dual sticks that developers can't do without, as well as the touchscreens and motion controls of other gaming systems. Still, it does feel like a reaction, rather than an innovation.

There's nothing new or revolutionary, simply another means to play games and watch movies.

We liked:

As a portable console this is about as good as it gets. This really is a portable PlayStation and lets you ditch Temple Run in favor of full sized, big budget games.

Both the graphical capabilities and the screen make for a luxury mobile experience while the controls combine the best of traditional and more creative inputs, enhancing but never detracting from the gameplay.

The price, too, is fair. Other high-end mobile devices cost far more, and while £230 isn't exactly pocket money, it's still a heavily subsidised console.

We disliked:

The web browser really is awful. Blank sections of screen, juddery loading and lacking features, it might as well not be there for all the use you'll get out of it.

The size of the machine also makes it a little unwieldy to use the way it's meant to be held: if your thumbs fall naturally on the sticks then reaching the middle of the screen is uncomfortable and vice versa.

Verdict:

Before you decide to 'go Vita' you need to be sure about what hole you're hoping to fill. If it's mainly games on the go then knock yourself out. It mixes the best of everything out there with games that are PS3/Xbox quality right down to Angry Birds level bits of fluff.

The controls, both traditional sticks and the motion and touch stuff, are all great.

It's also a capable media player with the various social apps also looking promising. But this is really a games machine and should be viewed for purchase as such. It won't worry more versatile i-Things, tablets or media players anytime soon but if you want fun first, and a few other features second then it's worth investigating.

Review: Microsoft Xbox 360

Mike Jackson — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 11:10:00 GMT

Overview

The Xbox 360 has changed since its launch in 2005.

That much is transparently clear from the updated version that debuted in 2010.

The Xbox 360 S is smaller, sleeker and quieter than the previous model and designed to banish the infamous 'Red Ring of Death' hardware failure that forced Microsoft to extend its warranty on the system.

Likewise the arrival of Kinect, which has gone on to sell over 10 million units, has transformed the machine from solely the preserve of hardcore gamers to a casual gamer friendly environment.

While some of the novelty of Kinect may have worn off, if anything the games are improving – finding new ways to take advantage of what is still fascinating technology.

But Microsoft is and always has been a software company first and foremost and, fittingly, that's where the Xbox 360 has changed the most. The NXE update of 2008 binned the old 'blades' system for an interface that was more welcoming to multimedia content and 2011 has seen another major update to the console's operating system. One so substantial, we've felt it necessary to update this review to reflect what a different machine it is.

Whether it's the old model or the new one, the Xbox 360 has now comprehensively changed from a machine primarily about playing games, with a modest selection of online content attached, to a fully featured entertainment and media hub.

The majority of forms of digital entertainment are catered for, there are extensive social networking features available and a new TV tab aims to replace traditional digital boxes with IPTV and catch up services.

The new dashboard, based around the Metro design language that also features in Windows 8 and Windows Phone 7, is a far busier interface, but it's reflective of the huge amounts of content now available within the walled garden of Xbox Live.

Getting to it all has always been the challenge and Microsoft has made admirable steps towards making that a straightforward process.

Features

You'd think that the most significant change for the new widely touted 'Xbox 360 Slim' would be its size, but surprisingly, it's not.

At 270mm in height, it's sufficiently shorter than the 310mm tall old 360. But it's only a measly half-a-centimeter slimmer (and fatter than the PS3 Slim) and, would you believe, it's actually slightly deeper than the old 360, too.

Just to make it easier at a glance, here are its dimensions beside the older model, and the PS3 slim just for some extra comparison:

Console: Height/Width/Depth/weight

Xbox 360 250GB: 270mm x 75mm x 264mm, 2.9kg
Xbox 360 Elite: 310mm x 80mm x 260mm, 3.5kg
PS3 Slim: 290mm × 65mm ×290mm, 3.5kg

As you can see, its profile is not much 'slim' but more 'light'. It's the lightest of the current-gen consoles by a fair amount, although it's worth noting right now that the PS3 Slim's extra heft also counts for the system's internal power supply, which disappointingly remains external (albeit smaller than the previous power brick) in the new Xbox.

Instead, the more significant changes are in the console's aesthetics and hardware configuration. First of all, that matte plastic has been swapped for a super sexy gloss black.

Where the old console's bubble-like roundness wouldn't look too out of place on the Tomy Toys page of your Argos catalogue, the new console dons sharp edges and harsh lines that almost resemble a stealth fighter (fittingly so given its new quieter operating volume, but more on that later).

And then there's that grill on the side – a surprisingly large and aggressive opening that's more like something you'd expect from a third-party case mod than the usually reserved standard skin. Consoles usually hide away their tightly-packed insides but the new Xbox flaunts it, giving you a good look at the system's case fan.

Touch-buttons

The power and disc eject buttons are no longer the clunky things they were before. In fact you don't press them at all – they're capacitive touch buttons that respond to no more than a gentle prod.

The console makes a funky beep sound to acknowledge your touch, but it's thankfully a more calming chime and not that horrible microwave-style bleep of the PS3.

The console's cleaner appearance is also partly thanks to the omission of the proprietary memory stick ports – MS updated the 360 recently to accept any USB stick as usable memory; a move which pretty much rendered the notoriously more expensive native memory cards redundant anyway.

The two front-loading USB ports remain, tucked neatly way behind a little flap which sits in line with the new bigger and more responsive controller sync button.

The console actually now has five USB ports total instead of the previous three, but those additional ones have been tucked away on the back of the console.

The new disc drive is considerably smoother and quieter than before. Now, we know some of you will, right off the bat, question MS' decision to stick with a disc tray rather than the admittedly sleeker slot-loading drive like on PS3 and Wii. Honestly speaking we would have preferred a slot loader too.

Anyhow, the new drive has none of that Aiwa tape deck-like clunkyness to it. We always wondered what part of the old Xbox could possibly make such a loud 'ker-chunk' sound as the drive closed – that teeth-gritting sound is no longer present here.

We tried moving the console while a disc was spinning inside – something that resulted in a severely scratched disc in the old console. The result? We're certain the result was even worse!

Clearly Microsoft has been unable to find a solution the intense centrifugal forces that bend the disc and make it touch harmful nearby surfaces in the drive. The console does in fact have a sticker on the front which warns against moving it while a disc is spinning. Does this make up for the flaw in our eyes? Not a chance.

On the backside

Flip the console round and you're greeted by a few new ports, too. As we said before, there are three USB ports back here instead of one. You'll now be able to plug a digital optical audio lead directly into the console for your 5.1 surround kits, instead of having to go through external ports on the AV lead.

Click to enlarge

Most interesting though is the 'Aux' port, which is basically where Kinect, Microsoft's new motion-sensing gadget releasing in November, will be plugged in. This port will both operate and power the device. Users of the old console will plug Kinect in via a USB adapter and draw power from a wall socket.

Video is delivered to your TV either via standard HDMI or the proprietary Xbox AV port, which is the same size as before so all your old AV cables will work, which is handy for anyone upgrading from the old console because, ridiculously, the new Xbox comes with no HD video leads whatsoever.

All you get in the box is the standard composite lead, which only does SD – and poorly at that. Everyone else will otherwise have to add the cost of an HDMI lead to their bill before they can see the crisp HD resolutions this machine is capable of.

There's an Ethernet network port back here too, although we'd like to think anyone grabbing the new console will make use of the now built-in Wi-Fi capability.

Finally, Microsoft is no longer bending you over a table with its £70 proprietary Wi-Fi adapter necessary before. Just turn it on and you're wireless right out of the box.

Noise and storage

Compare the noise of the new Xbox 360 to the Elite and the PS3 Slim:

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5QpoKwVcSk

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Sound recordings were made six inches from the front of each of the three consoles. Results should only be used by way of comparison.

White noise

Perhaps the biggest improvement over the older console is actually an intangible one – the system's operating sound. The quieter disc drive is coupled with a single larger internal cooling fan instead of three smaller ones as before, resulting in a stealthier console.

This is made possible by using a slimmer, more power efficient 45nm CPU with integrated GPU. With less power being generated by the processing chip, the console is able to run cooler, with a quieter fan. The difference is night and day.

When there's no disc in the tray the console is totally inaudible. Fire up a game and the drive's rapid read speed still inevitably makes sound, but it's more of a gliding 'whoosh' than the whirring sound of the motor.

Take a look at the video clip above to get some idea of how the noise of the new Xbox 360 compares against the original model and also the PS3 Slim.

Storage

Instead of the fat top-loading hard drive of the old console, Microsoft has now hidden a more compact hard drive case in a slot accessed on the underside of the console (underside when stood vertically, that is).

To extract it you must remove the hatch covering and pull on a flimsy tag on the top of the drive, which does not seem like a good idea to us at all. If there's one thing on this new Xbox we can see breaking, it's this tag.

New controller

As with the other Xbox 360 consoles, the new 250GB model comes with one wireless controller. Aesthetically, it's slightly different to the one that shipped with the 360 Elite.

The grey trim is replaced with glossy black, while the round silver Xbox button is now glossy silver rather than matte and the thumbsticks are black instead of grey.

Interface

Connect your Xbox 360 to Xbox Live (and with wireless now fitted as standard, you've no excuse not to) and you'll be prompted to download an update to your console, which contains 2011's sweeping dashboard refresh.

While the Metro-based design is too busy to be considered truly handsome, it's borne of necessity. There is an enormous amount of content available to connected Xbox 360 users and the new dashboard does a great job of presenting it all in a logical fashion.

We had gripes with the NXE system that debuted in 2008, because of the jargon-heavy nomenclature of the various menu options. But now you're presented with nine tabs across the top which are visible at all times and have logical titles.

The only potential confusion could come from the division between 'video' and 'tv', the lines of which are being blurred with every passing day. But while the 'tv' tab is the least populated at launch, as on-demand services such as iPlayer, 4oD and Five On Demand arrive on the service, that division will seem much more logical as another way to sort and subdivide the astonishing amount of media available to you.

The 'video' tab is the preserve of movies and the forthcoming YouTube application.

Similarly at launch the apps tab provides a number of redundant links to features that can be accessed elsewhere, such as the Zune Video and Zune Music marketplaces, both of which are also in their relevant tabs, and Sky Go which sits in the 'tv' tab.

While there's unlikely to ever be as wide a range as Apple's app store, if Microsoft is canny it'll have apps that are cross platform compatible with Windows Phone 7 equivalents. At the moment though, this is arguably the biggest unknown on the Xbox 360 – less a case of anticipation as just waiting.

Games have actually been made more awkward to get to. While the disc in the tray (still the priority for most users) can be accessed from the first panel on the home screen, if you have an extensive selection of titles downloaded from Xbox Live Arcade, you have to navigate four tabs over to view them all.

Microsoft clearly feels that gamers will be more prepared to explore the interface than casual users, but the problem could easily be solved by a customisable home tab, something that feels more and more like a glaring omission the longer you spend with the dashboard.

Of course, the Guide button menu, activated by pressing the silver Xbox motif on any controller, remains largely the same as it always was and the savvier gamers may find that this is the most efficient way to get at what the console was originally designed for.

For everyone else, it would be easy for the amount of available content to become overwhelming and for that, Microsoft has included Bing-branded search functions. As an attempt to promote its ailing search brand, which currently claims less than four per cent of UK searches, it's likely to be a busted flush, but as a means to sift through the movies, games and music on Xbox Live it's a godsend.

If you're a huge Batman fan, simply searching for Batman will bring up all Batman related content available on Xbox Live.

That means games, movies and even original soundtracks from the Zune Music marketplace. If that scattergun approach is too much, searching specifically for 'Batman games' will prioritise downloadable content relating to those and even full games on demand. It's impressive stuff and a brisk education in just how much there is for sale through your Xbox.

If you're not keen on navigating using the Xbox pad that, while brilliant for twin-stick shooters or precise racing games, still suffers from a doughy directional pad, you can use Kinect for either gesture or voice control.

It's pleasing that it's no longer ghettoised in a separate menu, but in practice, Kinect control largely feels like a novelty. Sweeping between the different tabs and using a hand cursor to select the various panels is absolutely as efficient and precise as Kinect has ever been.

There has clearly been plenty of time spent tuning it. But unless you don't have a controller to hand or simply aren't as accustomed to their use, it's still a less efficient way to navigate the dash.

It's a similar story with voice. While you can bark the name of any of the tabs and be whisked there, you can only 'say what you see'. Memorising longer phrases in an attempt to dig into secondary and tertiary layers of the interface bears no fruit, meaning you'll have to insert pauses into your speech patterns.

Also, given that many Xbox 360s have a microphone in the shape of an Xbox Live headset, the fact that voice control is limited to Kinect owners feels like a cynical, artificial restriction.

Voice control's only real triumph is when it comes to Bing searches. From anywhere on the dashboard, saying 'Xbox, Bing' and then a search term will perform a near instantaneous search. It recognises a remarkable number of phrases too, meaning you can say actor names, obscure game titles and even the odd profanity and it will do an impressive job of obliging.

What the dashboard does offer you though is freedom of choice. Whether you're most comfortable with controller, gesture, voice or some combination of the three, the entire interface supports it and that's to be applauded.

Xbox Live

Whereas previously an Xbox Live Gold subscription was seen as a tax on online multiplayer gaming, now that the service has spread to social networking and television, it feels like you get much more for your £34.99 a year.

And even if you only have a free 'Silver' account, it's still worth connecting your Xbox 360 up.

Naturally Microsoft isn't going to prevent you from spending money, so the marketplace is fully open to all Live users. What's more, the BBC has maintained its position that the iPlayer must be free to download on all systems, meaning more frugal Live users will still get to enjoy Auntie on demand.

For subscribers, the reward remains the best online gaming experience around. Friends are managed in a global list and chatting or playing games together is made as simple as possible.

If you're in a multiplayer session, simply bringing up the guide, selecting a friend and clicking the invite button is usually enough to have you playing together in a matter of moments. It makes a mockery of both PS3 and PC multiplayer, which are almost impossible to co-ordinate without an external form of communication.

The new dashboard brings several welcome new additions to the Xbox Live experience. Beacons are a new system to notify friends that you are keen to play a particular game without having to manually invite them all. Add a beacon, select the game you're interested in playing together and set an optional message and the Xbox will inform all of your online friends.

Even if they miss the notification, when they hover over your avatar in the friends list, a speech bubble appears showing the game and your plea for companionship. With the new dashboard's integration with Facebook (which also allows you to post your unlocked achievements to the social network) you can announce your play-date on your wall.

Another new feature is one that will be most useful to more social gamers, or those who own two Xbox 360s. Previous restrictions on profiles have been lifted, meaning an Xbox Live profile is now no longer tied to a single device. This means downloading your profile at a friend's place has been made immeasurably easier.

Working in tandem with this is a new cloud storage facility. This appears as just another storage option along with your system's hard drive and memory sticks, offers 511MB of space per profile and works absolutely seamlessly. There's no noticeable delay as games are saved to it and is a godsend for anyone who has reason to play on more than one console.

Of course, even if you only have a single system, you can always use it to back up your most treasured save games in case of natural disasters, USB drives in the wash or the intervention of the vengeful god of hard-drive failure.

As a service, Xbox Live Gold is absolutely worth a monthly outlay of under three quid for anyone who regularly plays games on the system – it's stable and still easily the most convenient way to play with friends, which given the often hostile online environment is usually preferable. The addition of new or updated apps and, crucially, television services means it's recommended for consideration by casual users as well.

Verdict

In the Xbox 360, Microsoft has successfully extended the lifespan of its console well beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected back when it was launched in 2005.

Granted there have been hardware updates and the arrival of Kinect, but neither has sustained the machine's longevity as much as the services that are provided.

The NXE could be seen as Microsoft dipping its toe in the multimedia waters, but with this most recent dashboard update the Xbox 360 truly is a one-stop-shop for every conceivable piece of entertainment content you could hope to be pumped to a living room television.

We liked:

The hardware on the Xbox 360 S is now a device you'd happily have nestled underneath the TV in your living room. It's slimmer, sleeker and most importantly nearly silent – ensuring it won't be whirring away during the quieter moments of a film or TV show.

Xbox Live is still the leading online gaming platform and it now boasts more instantly accessible content than ever before and a search engine capable of filtering results intelligently and with the minimum of fuss.

The new dashboard is cluttered, but it's as elegant a system as you're likely to find for arranging the sheer bulk of the content now available.

We disliked

There's little customisation of the new dashboard beyond a new background. We'd like to be able to arrange our most used apps and contents on our home page for easy access.

Voice control requires stilted speech rather than a natural flow, meaning it takes some getting to grips with. Also, why can't we use voice control on the Xbox Live headset we've been using for six years?

Verdict

In light of the recent software updates, the new Xbox 360 is probably the most complete and convenient box that you can stick under your telly. Not only does it play the latest video games, but it offers a huge amount of other content in one slickly designed interface.

As more and more content fills the system, it's only going to become more essential. What's more, the lack of a Blu-Ray drive now seems almost inconsequential, with the Zune Video Marketplace filled with 1080p content that can be discovered and streamed or downloaded in a matter of moments.

The only sticking point will be the requirement for Xbox Live Gold for an increasing amount of what's presented on the dashboard. Still, as long as you are the comfortable with the concept of subrscribing at all it still comes off as a reasonable deal and is by no means mandatory to take advantage of marketplace content.

Whether you're a gamer or not, it's time to start seriously considering the Xbox 360 as more than just another place to play the latest Call of Duty or FIFA game.

Review: OnLive

Andy Robinson — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Just what is OnLive?

After over a year of forcing North Americans to do the guinea pig work for us, OnLive has finally granted Great Britain access to its ambitious cloud gaming service. The platform could, in theory at least, pave the way for how we consume and play videogames in the future.

The firm says its on-demand service is now more robust thanks to the work of the good old US of A, but can it really compete with the likes of PS3 and Xbox 360? More importantly, can the UK's broadband architecture cope with OnLive's lofty demands?

OnLive works rather differently to a traditional games console stuffed full of various high-end components and screeching heat fans, streaming all of the actual computing involved in your game of, say, Splinter Cell to one of the company's faraway servers, which it says it upgrades every month with the latest graphics cards and RAM sticks.

Basically, you're playing a game remotely via the internet. When you aim your silenced pistol at a nasty henchman's bonce and pull the trigger, the command is sent over to OnLive's server den, which does all the computer work and then sends back the result of your gunshot via images down your broadband pipe.

The advantage of farming out the hardware bit is that you can run OnLive's library of titles on a number of different devices that would normally never be able to the cope with that calibre of game without 300 quid's worth of heatsink strapped to their sides.

PCs, Android tablets and iPads all support the OnLive platform, with the latter even supporting custom touch interfaces for some games, such as Ubisoft's excellent god sim From Dust. There's also a dedicated Games System, which you can buy to play the service on your TV.

Check out our Hands on: OnLive video to see what we think about the service:

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The Games System hardware

Inside the shoebox-sized starter pack, which costs around £69, is a tiny Game System, Xbox 360-style Wireless Controller, all the power adaptors you need to get it going, plus USB, Ethernet and HDMI leads.

Setup is straightforward and guided by a minimalist, Apple-style leaflet inside the box. Plug the box into your television via HDMI, connect it to the power mains, attach an Ethernet cable from your router – unfortunately there's no Wi-FI, but you can set up a bridge – and OnLive will be ready to put pretty pictures on your TV screen.

It only takes about five minutes to set up your free account and get started, and then you're left to navigate the platform's main Dashboard to purchase games, spectate other players' activities or watch Brag Clips (more on those later).

The Wireless Controller feels sturdy and includes every button and trigger you could possibly need for today's top games, although it's perhaps not quite as comfortable as the similar Xbox 360 joypad.

Face buttons carry the same naming convention as Microsoft's controller (A, B, X and Y), and the pad also boasts a pair of triggers, left and right bumpers and a D-pad on the bottom left of the controller.

Unlike Microsoft's controller, though, the OnLive peripheral houses a number of inputs along the bottom for controlling video, including buttons to play, stop and fast forward.

Does it work?

Now, so far you're probably thinking this all sounds like a nice idea, but will it actually work on your old BT Broadband connection? The answer is: probably. On a 50Mb Virgin connection, the OnLive technology really is impressive – we played various online sessions of first-person shooter Homefront and almost forgot we weren't holding a PlayStation 3 controller.

On the right connection, games start up quicker than you'd be able to walk to the television and fiddle with a DVD, and OnLive really starts to feel like the future of gaming.

However, on the less speedy 3Mb connections that most of the country has to make do with, the 2011 on-demand gaming scene can be a completely different experience (if your old pipe's good enough to connect in the first place, that is).

Those lower down the broadband chain might find that while less reaction-speed-reliant games such as Lego Batman work fine, titles in the vein of Assassin's Creed that require quick movements of the analogue sticks to keep the camera pointing in the right direction feel sluggish. It's a bit like playing when you haven't activated Game Mode on your brand new 400Hz OLED TV.

Outside of lightning-quick connections, there's also a noticeable – but not huge – drop in picture quality compared to the lush visuals outputted by the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

At times, graphics don't look as crisp as their console counterparts, and some distortion can also be apparent when your broadband throws a wobbly, especially on HD televisions. Lower-resolution PC monitors seem to hide this better.

The good news if you have to make do with a single-figure connection is that OnLive includes a five-minute drop-out feature that means you've still got a chance of rescuing your game if your connection drops.

With such a pioneering platform, it's probably acceptable that not everyone's going to get perfect service from the off, and it's certainly likely to improve along with Britain's internet infrastructure.

If you're worried your connection might not be up for the job of efficiently streaming a 16-man Unreal deathmatch from 100 miles away, the beauty is it won't cost you a thing to try. OnLive is free to sign up for and you can easily jump on and have a go on a few game trials on your PC or Mac.

Social gaming

The thing that really impresses us about OnLive most is not its ability to magically put Prince Of Persia on our iPads, but its exciting interface and platform, which includes some features that the big console manufacturers could really do with nicking – if they have the technology to even implement them.

The first is simple but incredibly impressive: when you start up your little box, a flashy boot-up screen will illuminate your telly, depicting a giant globe built entirely out of little video screens, eventually settling on the same gameplay windows that make up the backdrop of OnLive's menus.

Those squares of video aren't just placeholders – they're real-world users playing away in real time. The Arena is the showcase for this baffling and brilliant innovation, enabling you to browse a wall of live gaming, picking any box you like to stretch the video to full screen and watch another OnLive user playing a game live from their living room.

It's very, very impressive stuff and from here you can leave your spy victim a thumbs up message, add them as a friend, or simply enjoy their half-pipe skills in Skate.

The Arena has more practical benefits for the game-playing experience too. If you're considering handing over your hard-earned cash for a title you're perhaps not too sure about, you can highlight the Arena tab and bring up every user with open privacy options who's playing that game right now. (You can also trial the title for 30 full minutes, as is possible with almost all OnLive games.)

You don't have to own the title as you would on an Xbox or PlayStation in order to spectate, of course – the hardware doing all the work is in some warehouse God knows how far away.

Another head-spinning feature comes via those video input buttons on the bottom of the Wireless Controller. Press the tiny record button on your pad and OnLive will instantly record your last 10 seconds of gameplay, attach it to your profile and upload it to the service's YouTube equivalent, Brag Clips.

That means the next time you pull off a mental Virtua Tennis shot or expose a game-breaking glitch in Batman: Arkham Asylum, you can record it on video and share it with the world.

The Brag Clips interface looks identical to the Arena – basically, a giant wall of video all playing at once, like the end scene from The Matrix Reloaded. From here, you can arrange the clips by highest rated, most viewed or most recent.

It's no surprise that at the moment a lot of the popular Brag Clips are saucy scenes from Duke Nukem Forever, but there are some hilarious Homefront kills and Red Faction glitches to be discovered.

The games

Around 120 games are available on the service at the time of writing, the newest including big hitters such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution and DiRT 3. The most popular games at the moment appear to be sandbox titles such as Just Cause 2 and Saints Row, and these work well with both varying internet connections and the comedy Brag Clips you'll be keen to stick in your user profile.

At the moment, OnLive is running a promotion that means UK users can purchase their first game for just £1, after which you'll have to shell out as much as £35 for some games. That's disappointing considering how much you can pick up their boxed equivalents for.

Renting options, however, are far more tempting, with three-day (£3.49) and five-day (£4.99) passes available – you could easily finish Warhammer 40k: Space Marine in that kind of time.

There's also a PlayPack Bundle, which gives you access to 100-plus games for less than a tenner a month at £6.99. While the newest titles aren't included, there's plenty to give you your money's worth.

As a whole, there are undoubtedly some quality titles on the service at the moment, but there are also glaring holes in the portfolio that need to be addressed over time (and we suspect they will be).

For the UK market, there's no football game on the platform right now, and a lot of the big titles gamers will be searching for this Christmas – Call Of Duty, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim – will only be available on the traditional home consoles.

That said, we imagine OnLive's business model is extremely attractive to games publishers, so it's probably only a matter of time before the gaps in its service are aptly filled up.

OnLive gaming also needs to progress. Shooters such as Homefront, as we mentioned previously, cope very well with the doubled network task of streaming both game and shooting-your-mate-in-the-face data. Other types of game, such racing and sports, suffer from reduced picture quality and lag at times.

The service as a whole isn't exactly bursting with online players either, but then again there aren't many titles available yet that offer multiplayer. Once again, we suspect this is something that will be fixed over time.

Verdict

It's clear that the cloud is going to be a big feature in all of our lives, and that includes our virtual worlds as well, and as connections get faster and more robust things will get better and better.

OnLive is impressive enough to convince us that cloud gaming will play a part in how we consume videogames in future – but that doesn't necessarily mean it'll take over from the traditional method of sticking a disc in a box in front of the telly just yet.

We liked

It's a remarkable system to witness in action and the social features that make up its flashy interface are very exciting indeed.

The user interface is well designed, and it is clear that this has been built with a community in mind, and our cynicism over the latency issue has been greatly reduced as we spent time trying out the games.

For older games and those less reliant on super speedy reactions, the lag simply isn't a major factor, unless your connection is truly ponderous, prone to dropping out, or your ISP decides that OnLive is actually a P2P connection and throttles the speed.

Once the games library starts to fill up – especially with OnLive exclusive titles taking advantage of its superior hardware and iPad options – we can see the platform really taking off as an alternative to traditional out-of-the-box thumb waggling.

We didn't like

There's a part of us that's left feeling that it's not the gamers – the ones who'll care about the slight reduction in image quality and miniscule response lag – but the mainstream populous who OnLive should be aiming at.

The newer games are currently run on 'optimum' settings, which can mean that the super-high end graphics you are used to from your computer are simply not even attempted.

At the moment, there are parts of England that don't quite have the broadband connections to run every game at its top-notch capabilities. That said, we do urge those curious to give OnLive a go for free on their PCs before dismissing it entirely.

Verdict

OnLive is an impressive glimpse into the future of gaming. It's not perfect, but it is far from the laggy-monster we feared. For casual gamers this is a very real option.

Review: MadCatz Cyborg Gaming Lights

Phil Iwaniuk — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Enjoying that game, are you? You know what you really need, don't you? That's right. Some lights. Some lights like the Mad Catz Cyborg Gaming Lights that approximate the colours on screen and illuminate the wall behind your monitor.

Well you're in luck. Cyborg's gaming lights can softly illuminate your walls for a measly £90. If the game you're playing supports the amBX technology that powers the lights, that is.

But don't worry about that, think of those colours! If the screen's filled with deep blue ocean, the lights go blue. If you're stalking through moonlit streets on screen… not much happens.

You should be fine though, as long as you play games that only use primary colours. And support amBX.

There are some positives. When something explodes on screen, the gaming lights respond with an impressive burst of light. They're built to a high standard, and relatively easy to get up and running.

It's just that, well, they're entirely useless. You need to play in a dark room to notice the effect at all, and even then you'll barely notice, because you'll be looking at the screen.

If this amBX tech came attached to a monitor for less money, we'd be interested. As it is, it's a monumental pile of cash for little reward.

Review: Logitech Driving Force GT

Phil Iwaniuk — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 09:00:00 GMT

Have you felt the sting of Sunday afternoon envy watching F1 drivers frolic in their hydraulic simulators like giddy children on priceless corporate bucking bronco rides? 'I could probably go quicker than that' you whisper through gritted teeth, 'if only my dad had spent all his money on karting licences instead of bourgeois nonsense like mortgages and food'.

But until Red Bull Racing spot you executing perfect doughnuts in Homebase car park and decide to offer you a racing contract, the closest you'll get to the pro race driver life is getting a decent force feedback steering wheel and loading up an unforgiving racing sim.

Logitech's Driving Force GT is such a wheel. Decent. It'll work on PC or PS3, and the Gran Turismo logo on the front hints it's better suited to the latter, where expectations are lower.

Right enough, there's convincing force feedback, but compared to the superlative G27 in Logitech's arsenal it hardly compares. Gear shifting is the Driving Force GT's real bogey, though. Lacking paddles, the wheel-mounted buttons feel stiff and unsatisfying and the flimsy stick offers little relief.

It's capable then, but at £100 it's not worth the money and dangerously close to the greatly superior G25, also in the Logitech camp. Consider only if you want cross-platform driving.

Review: Updated: Nintendo 3DS

Tom Pakinkis — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 12:26:00 GMT

Nintendo 3DS: Overview

The UK release of the Nintendo 3DS on 25 March 2011 saw Europe welcome the latest offering from arguably the most innovative company in the gaming world.

Nintendo is responsible for iconic household names like Super Mario, SNES and Gameboy all of which have made a massive contribution to how we play today.

But the Japanese company has also been busy redefining the modern medium with its most recognised bit of kit - the Wii, dragging everyone from nine year old girls to 79-year-old grandaddys around the TV to wave a white remote in the air.

Read: PS Vita review

Nintendo's current handheld line – the Nintendo DS – has had a similar amount of pull on the public, creating a world where everyone's a gamer. You might be Brain Training on the bus or leaping over spike pits at lunch, either way you're a part of a video game boom (at least in terms of awareness) that's never been seen before, and that's largely thanks to Nintendo.

After such success you might forgive Nintendo for resting on its laurels and, indeed, since the UK release of the first DS back in 2004, the progression of the portable has been something of a slow evolution.

Sticking a couple of extra letters on the end of each edition, with devices like the DS Lite, the DSi and the DSi XL Nintendo made the common alterations; making things bigger/smaller/lighter, adding a camera here and a bit more power there.

The core of the DS remained the same though; a book-like, dual-screen handheld with the touch functionality that augments the gaming experience with an extra dimension of interactivity that spawned the DS success in the beginning.

But now, with the release of the Nintendo 3DS, Ninty is having a punt at revolutionising video games for a third time and 'extra dimension' is the key phrase again.

The 3DS originally launched for well over £200 - closing in on £300 in many stores. But after poor sales, Nintendo has slashed the price drastically, and the console can now be picked up for a little over £110.

At first glance it looks like a shinier, sleeker version of its brothers and it still has the same dual-screen, touch sensitive set up. This time, however, the top screen boasts the ability to beam your gaming experience in full auto-stereoscopic 3D - that's 3D without the need for a pair of 3D specs.

Ok, so the likes of Avatar have already reignited the 3D interest for cinema and Sony's pushing 3D gaming on the PS3 – pricey TVs and cumbersome glasses included - but unassisted, palm of your hand 3D is a completely different and massively exciting prospect.

The Nintendo 3DS has the potential to be a massive stride forward from its predecessors and another landmark product that Nintendo can lay claim to. If it works, that is. We've been working on our Nintendo 3DS review for the last week - here's the verdict...

Nintendo 3DS: Features

To look at the, the Nintendo 3DS is more or less classic DS design.

It's slightly smaller than the DSi in terms of sheer size, at approximately 135mm x 74mm but is a bit thicker at 20mm deep compared to the DSi (137mm x 75mm x 19mm) and weighs around 8 ounces with battery, stylus and SD card on board.

It looks that bit sleeker though, with curved corners, angled edges and shiny gloss finish. This time the lid houses two cameras rather than one (necessary for the 3D camera we'll come on to), both placed centrally at the top of the panel, and each about half the size of the DSi's camera.

Placed at the back on either hinge, as with the DSi, are the two shoulder buttons which look slightly smaller this time in that they don't protrude quite so much as on the last model. The hinges themselves carry on the gradual lines of the device to complete the look.

Lift the lid on the 3DS and the more sophisticated design ethos is continued with a black, gloss finish border that makes up the front face of the 3DS and surrounds the top screen. It's a neat departure from the single colour-scheme we're used to.

In terms of how the new device is to hold, the 3DS doesn't feel quite so expensive or solid as something like the Sony PSP. The d-pad, face and shoulder buttons are small with that distinctly 'clicky' feel. We'd also say that when fully open, the top panel encroaches on the space your fingers need around the shoulder buttons. A minor quibble that's only noticed every now and then, and who's to say we don't have chubby fingers?

Where the 3DS does trump the PSP in terms of control, however, is with its new analogue nub – officially called the Circle Pad. The point of analogue control has obviously been a tough nut to crack for designers of portable games consoles recently.

Sony's current handheld has a flat nub with imprinted grip, something that has been criticised for being difficult to manoeuvre because of its flat design that sees players slide their thumb around awkwardly rather than pushing and pulling as they would with a stick.

Having gone down the nub route as well, Nintendo's Circle Pad is still a bit of a chore to push around compared to a proper stick as well and Sony's NGP will likely take the analogue control crown when it releases with two full-on sticks.

What does help the Nintendo 3DS, however is the fact that the Circle Pad has a concave surface. The shallow banks of the nub act as a nest for your thumb and mean that you have at least something to push and pull against to an extent without slipping off.

The Circle Pad was responsive with a quick snap back to the centre once it was released. We had a couple of handhelds to play with, however, and one demonstrated a particularly sticky Pad which didn't come all the way back to the middle if it was pushed to its boundaries

Since this was just one case, though, we have to give the 3DS the benefit of the doubt, although it does make us wonder whether the nub design could be prone to stickiness over time.

Also of note the placement of the front facing camera, now above the screen rather than on the join between the panels and the addition of three new buttons (Home, Start and Select) under the bottom screen.

Getting onto the technology that drives the 3DS, that lower screen is LCD with the resistive touch capabilities that can be controlled with the included, 4mm, extendible stylus your finger. It measures 3.02 inches and has a 320 x 240 resolution.

The top screen is the important one though. It makes use of lenticular lens technology to create the final 3D image. Simply put, the screen uses a series of long thin lenses called lenticules that have cured fronts.

Because of their shape the lenticules direct the pixels' light in different directions and each eye sees an alternate column of pixels. You can probably fill in the rest: Two images are rendered by the 3DS' GPU, they are sent to separate eyes by the lenticules and, as you probably know, by seeing two slightly separated versions of the same image we get glorious 3D.

Of course, to look as good as the current Nintendo DSi, the 3DS needs to have twice the resolution, and it has exactly that and then some.

Where the DSi screen ran at a resolution of 256 x 192 This time we're treated to a 3.53 inch wide-screen LCD display zapping 16.77 million colours in what Nintendo's calling 800 x 240 pixel resolution (what it actually means is you get 400 x 240 in each eye and then the same in both eyes when in 2D mode). Not only does the 3DS present you with unassisted 3D then, it's bested its predecessors significantly in terms of resolution in the 2D arena as well.

PAPER: The 3DS comes with a wad-like and not-exactly-environmentally-friendly multi-lingual user guide

What's driving the 3D machine hasn't actually been officially disclosed and without being able to take the console to pieces just yet we have to rely on reports that the handheld contains a twin ARM11 266 MHz processor and the PICA200 GPU from Digital Media Professionals.

Also reported is 1.5GB of flash storage, 63MB of RAM (although some contesting reports suggest 96MB) and 4MB of dedicated video memory. Also tucked away inside the body is a motion-sensor and Gyroscope, which will come into play later.

All this is powered by a battery that Nintendo has estimated will offer 3 – 5 hours of life and longer when playing games from the DS back-catalogue using the 3DS' backwards compatibility.

Not too different to the DSi then, although after putting the 3DS through its paces it seems that the avid amongst us will only hit the minimum estimation - we were out of juice at three hours of constant play in full 3D. Nintendo does, however, provide a nice little charging cradle as part of the package and the handheld had no problem lasting the day when in sleep mode.

Nintendo 3DS: Performance

The 3D effect that's conjured as a result has a focus on depth rather than throwing objects out of the screen at you all the time. How much depth exactly depends on the design of the game itself and player discretion. A slider on the side of the top panels allows gamers to adjust the level of depth, acting almost as a visual volume button.

The slider will probably be used in varying amounts as people take to 3D differently. We had the effect on maximum for the most part though and found the effect to be sharp, deep and with very little ghosting when we had the 3DS positioned in a way that hit the 'sweet spot'.

And the sweet spot is crucial. You need to hold the 3DS so that it's central, still and head on if you want the best effect. It's by no means hard to find the right angle, it's the one you'd most naturally adopt, but movement does interfere with the picture significantly.

The amount of forgiveness you get for straying depends on how 3D your image is in the first place. If the images are split to a greater extent to give the impression of more depth, the difference will be more apparent once you start to angle the screen in such a way that makes one image more prominent than the other.

The games we played

We were able to get our hands on two games; Nintendogs + Cats and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition. Nintendogs + Cats boasted the greater amount of depth and so even a degree of sideways rotation of the 3DS caused flickering of the image and the occasional split-second blackout. Titling the handheld forwards and backwards doesn't have the same amount of visual degradation, though.

Street Fighter could take more movement in all directions before the image started to ghost significantly. There was generally less depth in Street Fighter, though, since the focus is on two players – there's no gameplay element that requires roaming in and out of the foreground so the background plays an aesthetic role.

But there are two camera angles in the 3D Edition of Street Fighter - the traditional side-on view is 3D only in the sense of having different layers of 2D cell-shaded art stacked on top of each other.

A second camera angle, however, rotates the side-view around so that it's more a diagonal over-the-shoulder shot and this is the angle at which to get the best 3D effect. The characters become full 3D models and the sense of depth is much more obvious and complete as objects in the background have depth to them as well as looking further away.

There're also some examples of protruding pixels here as well; because of the angle, the outside of your character's body – particularly the elbow, for example, as certain punches are thrown – noticeably occupy the foreground in comparison to your opponent who appears in the background.

The best example of a 3D image coming out of the screen we witnessed, however, was during Nintendogs + Cats, when our kitten came right up to the screen and then poked its head clearly beyond the glass.

In both cases though, like we've said, the 3D effect is more one of depth. When we're considering how much more immersive the gaming experience becomes, it doesn't work in the sense of surrounding your head and making you feel like you're actually sitting in the game, but it does make you feel like you could stick your hand into the world and touch everything.

It also enhances the graphics, not necessarily in a technical sense of quality, just in the way objects look more realistic and solid because of their added depth.

It was when our cat pushed its head right out of the screen that we started to really appreciate the extra graphical quality the 3DS has over previous iterations, regardless of the 3D wow factor. The graphics in Nintendogs & Cats are far more detailed than previous versions, showing off the extra power and resolution of the 3DS.

Using the 3D slider to turn off the effect, there wasn't too much difference in visual quality when playing both games in 2D. The lines in the backgrounds of both games became sharper in 2D but only negligibly, there a more noticeable dulling in colour with 3D mode activated though.

Outside of its gaming capabilities, the 3DS tech is also used for a 3D camera with a 640 x 480 resolution and an active pixel count of around 300,000. The photos that come out of the other end are good for a bit of pointing and cooing but we found them to be a bit grainy and the 3D effect is actually a case of have 2D images layered on a 3D plain.

For the core Nintendo audience, this will be more than impressive and a nice gimmick, but after playing 3D games that use the tech so well we couldn't help but be a bit disappointed by the camera.

Another trick in the 3DS repertoire is its augmented reality, which makes use of both the camera and the on-board gyroscope. Face Raiders, for example, is a small first person, sci-fi blaster that sees you move the 3DS around to target enemies in a similar way to GunRange for the iPhone 4.

When you miss an enemy and shoot the backdrop it breaks away, sending debris floating towards you and revealing the view from the camera.

It's a simple game but it does seem like a bit of an error of judgement since moving the 3DS around so vigorously means that you'll inevitably lose that sweet spot at some point. The 3D usage in Face Raiders, however, is comparatively less than what we've seen in the full games, with not too much moving in and out of the foreground, which is probably a good thing for the above reason.

There's also a group of more specific augmented reality games that make much more use of the tech. They're activated by putting a yellow card on a clear surface like a desk and pointing the 3DS camera at it. The best of the bunch sees the card turn into a tree covered island before your eyes giving you the task of finding and shooting a number of targets.

By moving the 3DS around the scene as if it were actually there you can look around trees, behind objects and even down holes that are two deep for your desk to accommodate in order to find the targets.

A lot of the other AR features are probably better described as tech demos more than anything, they're there to look impressive but don't actually do much. 'Star pics' is especially guilty of this; it uses separate cards with famous Nintendo faces on them which spawn statues of Link, Kirby, Mario and Samus depending on which dedicated card you put in front of the camera.

Once they're standing on your desk you can change their size, pose or glide them slowly along the table. There's nothing more to them than that, but hopefully they'll be the start of something much bigger.

There's a social element to the 3DS' as well in the Street Pass system. This automatically exchanges things like high-scores and custom characters which other 3DS portables in close proximity.

It also tries to encourage gamers to use the system and keep their 3DS active in sleep mode at least by rewarding them with a piece to a jigsaw puzzle for every new person (and their virtual Mii avatar), more interestingly, a piece to a jigsaw puzzle or XP for a basic RPG action game centred around your Mii.

The 3DS could pick up our fellow users the second we walked into the office, so it seems sharp in terms of connectivity there. The related mini-games are overly simple but will be enjoyed by gamers with a gotta catch 'em all mentality. Besides, it's more a way for Nintendo to keep 3DS consoles active so that they can automatically grab updates and software from the net using the Spot Pass system over WiFi.

Nintendo 3DS: Verdict

While 3D gaming still splits opinion, this is a relatively cheap, accessible way to enjoy it and the quality is more than good enough to offer an impressive and immersive experience.

We liked:

The revelation that is glasses-free 3D visuals in a handheld device. More to point, the fact that it works so well. Okay, there's a definite sweet spot that you need to maintain if you want that 3D image to remain sharp but it's not really that hard to work it out.

Couple this with the extra power and resolution that the 3DS has over its closest ancestor and there's a much better graphical showcase on offer for 2D lovers as well, which is why we can expect bigger and better looking games than what's been possible on the DS to date.

The new price is very attractive, too.

We disliked:

The camera. For us it fails to be much more than a gimmick. Perhaps we're coming from a hyper-critical perspective and may fall just outside of the audience Ninty is hoping the camera will please but, with its slightly grainy quality and 2D layering, it's little more than a toy to us. A good chunk of people will be pleased with it for that reason though.

We're not completely taken with the application of the augmented reality tech either, especially the Star pics feature which has little more than slightly movable statues of Nintendo greats to offer. However, if there's any company we feel we can trust to take the foundations of what feels more like a tech demo and turn it into something great, it's Nintendo.

Verdict:

The 3DS outdoes its predecessors significantly when it comes to power and visual output, which means Ninty players can look forward to demanding names like Resident Evil and Metal Gear Solid in the future.

This is a device that's going to grab everyone all over again but, at the same time, it's got plenty to offer the gaming hardcore as well and that's just as big a step forward as the specless 3D visuals.

Review: Vogel's TwistDock

Matthew Bolton — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:30:00 GMT

The TwistDock is, put simply, a stand and controller charging port for your PlayStation 3. It's circular and twists around so you can reach the controllers, which sit hidden behind your PS3. It's designed to look good, feel premium, and keep things tidy.

However, you'll definitely pay for that high-end feeling. The dock itself will cost around £80, with the USB Hub and Cable Set add-on packs both coming in at around £30. We had the full set to play with, so let's see if it's really worth £140.

The basic TwistDock is a round stand with two controller holders in the back. To charge your controllers, you have to attach a little add-on to the top of them that slots into their USB port. This has some contacts on it that press against matching contacts on the TwistDock.

We can guess why they didn't just put USB plugs on the TwistDock: because it's premium. But it would have been simpler. Two lights on the front of the dock tell you whether the controllers are charged (which is actually quite good).

To charge your controllers. the TwistDock naturally needs some power. It comes with a European mains plug, which slots into a UK adaptor. The two really don't look like they've been designed to sit together. They're loose, wobbly and awkward, but didn't actually fall apart in our time using the dock, so escape total condemnation.

There are two USB ports on the back of the TwistDock, so you could charge two more controllers or… um, your phone? These USB ports don't do anything other than power, so they're no good for PS3 accessories that send information to the console.

The USB Hub pack, which adds data functionality (for more money!), actually comes with a new mains adaptor with more power than the TwistDock's original to give the necessary juice to the extra ports. Why didn't they just make the original stronger?

The hub was an absolute pain to get slotted into its hole properly, but we eventually got it in and working. The PS3 had no trouble spotting any peripherals we attached.

Now, the TwistDock's cunning plan to keep your PS3 tidy is to run all cables under the console, through the centre of the dock, under it and out the back. However, to make this really work, you'll need the TwistDock Cable Set, which includes an HDMI cable and a PS3 power cable, both with plugs at right angles.

Your PS3's normal plugs, being straight, will cause the cables to loop quite far out before they come back under the dock to be hidden. "Why, that's not tidy at all!" the TwistDock people probably said. "Let's provide alternative cables that don't loop out thanks to their right-angled connectors, and charge more for them."

There are two problems here. The first is that you have to pay more. Again.

The second is that the provided power cable is the two-pin figure-eight kind used by the PS3 Slim. The old-style PS3 uses the chunky three-pin kettle lead, making 50 per cent of the Cable Set totally useless to any original-style PS3 owners.

On the plus side, the HDMI cable is really well built, and works just fine. On the down side, jamming the kettle-lead cable through the whole in the TwistDock clearly meant for a smaller plug is a damn pain. Especially since the HDMI cable is so thick and covered that it takes up half the space itself.

Apart from this oversight, the TwistDock does work well for both flavours of Sony's machine. And, yeah, it looks good. It's a convenient way to hide your controllers and charge them at the same time.

It's also pretty expensive to begin with, and then you need to add two accessory packs if you want USB data functionality or cables that don't stick out.

The TwistDock is easy on the eye and nice to have around, but it only stays interested in you if you keep spending money on it. As far as we're concerned, it's just too fiddly and awkward to really be the premium product it wants to be and justify how expensive it is.

Review: Microsoft Kinect for Xbox 360

James Rivington — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:01:00 GMT

Kinect review: Overview

The Nintendo Wii made waves when it came out in 2006.

It wasn't because of an exciting array of incredible launch titles - there weren't any. And it absolutely wasn't due to the Wii packing dazzling HD graphics - it doesn't.

It was all down to the motion-controlled gaming interface which put players inside games for the first time.

Playing a tennis game suddenly became about swinging and hitting a ball, instead of using your fingers to hit the right buttons on a control pad in the right order. Gaming was revolutionised.

Four years and 75 million worldwide Wii sales later, Microsoft and Sony have now both released their high-tech answers to the Wii-mote, and they couldn't be more different.

While Sony's PlayStation Move uses the PlayStation Eye camera to detect and measure the location of high-tech and spatially-aware handheld controllers, Kinect has no physical controllers to speak of at all.

The idea is that your body is the controller. It's up to the Kinect games and apps to use the camera and microphone to work out what you're doing and what you're saying, and to interpret your commands in the appropriate fashion.

How it works

The Kinect sensor contains an RGB camera and a depth sensor to track your movement. It measures the positioning of 48 key joints in your anatomy and by tracking the movements of these joints, it can work out exactly what position your body is in. What's more, it sees in 3D by overlaying the input from the RGB camera with the depth sensor.

Meanwhile the built-in multiarray microphone monitors the room for your voice - yep, Kinect even allows you to control your Xbox 360 using voice commands alone.

It's almost too good to be true, isn't it? These are the hopes and dreams of every 6-year old child come-true. It's the sort of technology we only dreamed about while watching '60s TV series' like The Jetsons as kids.

But this isn't fantasy. This is real. And so what we nervously want to know is - does it really work, and is it any good?

Kinect review: Features

Kinect has a colour, and it's purple.

While all Xbox games thus far have come in those distinctive green DVD cases, Kinect boxes are purple. So from now on, purple means 'Requires Kinect Sensor' and green means normal 360 game.

Some games which don't require Kinect, but have Kinect features for those who have it, will come with a 'Better with Kinect' sticker on the box.

It's Microsoft's way of avoiding confusion in the market place. So there'll be no trying to work out if something is Kinect compatible or not. If the box is purple, it's a Kinect game.

How much?

The Kinect Sensor will set you back £125 on launch. It comes with a free copy of Kinect Adventures - a title with lots of mini sub-games like Wii Sports, designed to showcase the various capabilities of the Kinect sensor.

Now, it probably won't have escaped your notice that £125 is rather a lot of money. After all, you can pick up a brand new Xbox 360 console for about £140. Meanwhile, a PlayStation Move controller costs about £40.

However, despite this, we don't think Kinect is necessarily bad value for money, and this is why.

Kinect can detect up to six people in a room, and supports two active players at a time. So that £125 brings with it two-player gaming from the word go. That compares favourably to the £127 you'd have to pay for the equivalent PS Move setup (with PS Eye, two Move controllers
and two navigation controllers).

The main downside with Kinect is that if you have no friends and just want to play on your own, you're going to have to fork out the full £125 regardless. While this is a pain, the single-piece nature of the device doesn't allow it to work any other way.

Setting up

There are two different ways to, erm, connect Kinect to your Xbox 360. If you've got one of the new, slim models, there's a proprietary connection on the back which you can plug Kinect into directly. This also supplies power to the sensor.

However, if you're stuck with an older model, you can still plug Kinect in by using one of the two USB ports on the front and you'll need to plug it into the wall for power using this method, too.

Ideally, the Kinect sensor needs at least six feet of space between you and it, to work properly. And really, you're going to need another five feet or so either side of you in order to have room to move around freely. And we're talking bare minimum, here - you wouldn't want to have any less space than that.

This is obviously a bit of a handicap as there'll be plenty of keen Xbox gamers out there who just don't have the room for it.

We found that positioning the Kinect Sensor on top of the TV instead of below and in front helped a bit in this respect. That way, the camera has more to look at, and you can make the most of the room you have if you've got limited space available.

And it's as easy as that. Once you've placed the Kinect sensor, you switch your Xbox on and you're taken through an easy peasy set-up process.

Interface

Kinect comes with its own menu system, accessible from the Xbox 360's dashboard. Inside this menu, you are able to access all of the Kinect-compatible entertainment features that are available to you.

What's more, you can browse to these features without using the Xbox 360 controller.

The Kinect experience begins as soon as you switch on your 360. At the sign-in screen, if you wave at your TV, Kinect will recognise your face and sign you straight into your own Xbox Live account. Once you're into the Xbox dashboard, another wave at the TV will take you to the special new Kinect dashboard menu.

In this menu you can access all your Kinect-compatible content including whatever game you have in your drive, Sky Player, Last fm, Zune music service, etc.

You can navigate using your Xbox controller, but what Microsoft really wants you to do is use hand gestures. And this is the point where you find out if Kinect is for you or not.

You interact with the Kinect dashboard and with most Kinect games in mostly the same way. If you hold your hand out in front of you, a hand icon appears on the screen. You then move your hand so that the icon moves to the option you want to select and you hold it there for a couple of seconds.

A circular progress bar around the hand icon depicts the time you need to hold your hand in place. We found it to be a slightly tedious experience.

Some games, such as Dance Central, use a point-and-swipe sort of system which seemed a lot more intuitive and less of a hassle. We found the point-and-hold system just a bit awkward, it was hard to actually get the hand icon to stay on the option we wanted and once in position, holding for a second or two was just a bit of a pain.

You get used to it after a while, but frankly, we can't see why anyone would want to navigate an Xbox menu by holding their arm in the air, instead of just pressing a few buttons on the controller.

There's a certain novelty aspect to it, of course, and while we didn't allow ourselves to go back to using the 360 controller, we certainly wanted to at times.

Voice control

Possibly the most Star Trek-like feature of Kinect is voice control. When using media services such as Sky Player or the Zune music service, you can control your Xbox using your voice alone.

You get the Xbox's attention by saying "Xbox". A list of commands then pops up from the top of the screen. If you're playing music or watching a video, these commands typically include
pause/play/stop/rewind/fastforward/faster/slower. We'll discuss how well this all works on the next page.

Microsoft Kinect: Performance

There's no denying that there's some fantastic tech inside Kinect. It's an impressive system, but in order to really enjoy it, you may have to readjust your expectations with regard to what it is and what it isn't capable of.

If you're expecting to play a game and have your on-screen avatar do exactly as you do with your body, quickly, completely in sync and with no lag - you're going to be disappointed. You just can't do that in most games.

Kinect is less about having your exact real-world movements appearing on screen in real-time and more about using your body as a controller.

Take a game such as Fighters Uncaged as an example. It's a 3D Beat 'em up title where you control your fighter by performing fighting moves. But there's a significant delay between you unleashing your kicks and punches, and them being mirrored on screen.

Jump!

If you let rip with a heaving uppercut, you'll have already finished swinging before your avatar will mirror your move.

It's the same for all games. In the River Rush minigame in Kinect Adventures, you have to lean and jump in order to avoid obstacles. But your character doesn't jump perfectly in time with you - there's a split-second delay.

Across the board, with all games and apps, this delay is dependant on how fast you move. A slow, gradual movement, for example, has almost no noticeable lag at all. The faster you move, the more pronounced the lag is.

It also doesn't matter how high you jump or whether you tuck your knees in or anything like that - your on-screen avatar will just jump in the same way each time. It won't mirror your exact movements.

And that's because with most games, your movements merely trigger a pre-animated action in the game - rather than the avatars exactly mimicking you.

The first few times we played with Kinect, this bothered us a lot. It prevented us from having the kind of fun we envisioned having when Microsoft first announced the product.

But if you can get over this issue, it's not all doom and gloom.

The better news

With many games, this lag issue is actually totally irrelevant anyway.

Dance Central, for instance, from Harmonix - the makers of Guitar Hero and Rock Band - is all about skill, precision and timing. You must perform the right dance moves in time with the music and dancers on screen, in order to get a good score. Lag doesn't come into it because you're mirroring the dancers, rather than the dancers mirroring you.

Equally, there are plenty of health and fitness-themed games such as The Biggest Loser: Ultimate Workout. They're all about balance and body position rather than quick moves, flying kicks and punches.

Imagine a Yoga game where the on-screen tutor analyses your posture and tells you how to perform Downward-facing dog a bit better. Kinect is just as much about this kind of thing as it is about the hardcore action titles.

And so what it's done is make the Xbox a much more appealing console for casual gamers. This is something PlayStation Move does not offer.

Accuracy

It does take a while to get to grips with Kinect. Ignoring the lag issues with some games, the other major battle facing you is to get the hang of a new kind of hand-eye coordination.

Some people find it hard enough to catch a ball or donk a pingpong ball in real life without messing up. With Kinect, you've got to do those things on behalf of your on-screen character. You've got to transplant your thinking into the body of your avatar, timing your movements on its behalf, which is more tricky that it sounds - especially when you have to factor in the lag.

When it came to games such as Kinect Adventures throwing obstacles at us, we found ourselves wanting to wait until that obstacle reached the screen before performing the appropriate manoeuvre, rather than waiting until it reached our on-screen character. This meant we were often too late to perform the jump or sidestep.

Again, this is something which improved over time. But still, again it represents a barrier between you and the game. We wanted to feel like we were inside the games we were playing. But in general, you don't get that feeling at all - you're still just controlling a character - who isn't you - on the screen.

Once you've got the hang of it though, Kinect is perfectly accurate enough. If you mess up, you generally feel like it was your fault rather than the game not working properly.

Confusion

There were a few occasions when Kinect got rather confused. The most frequent issue we encountered was when someone stepped into view of the Kinect sensor when someone else was gaming. Occasionally Kinect would then lock on to the wrong person, which caused obvious problems. There were also a few issues with voice control.

Voice control - does it work?

Controlling something like Sky Player with voice commands is good fun and works almost perfectly.

The voice command 'Xbox' lets the console know you're going to talk to it, and the on-screen options (which bare some resemblance to the original Monkey Island command menu) pop up quickly. The Xbox more often than not did exactly as we asked it to, it's really good fun. Kids will love it.

However, that's not to say it's a perfect system, because it's not.

As you can imagine, the likelihood of someone saying the word 'Xbox' while you're fiddling with your... Xbox, is quite high. So unsurprisingly, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence for someone in the room to say "Xbox" only to trigger the Xbox's voice command feature by mistake.

This would be easily remedied if there was any kind of individual voice recognition system, where you could tell the Xbox only to respond to a specific person's voice. But unfortunately that's not possible - not yet.

Our second problem with voice control is that while it technically takes almost no effort at all to say "Xbox.... pause" when the naughty bit in Wild Things comes on, it's still a lot quicker to just grab the controller and hit the pause button with your finger.

For this reason, we can imagine many people simply abandoning the voice control system completely.

Equally, we can also see a just as many people being so fascinated by this feature that they never want to go back to their controller.

Kinect review: Verdict

Kinect has had a bit of a rocky ride up to now. There's been plenty of criticism - including from us at TechRadar - but you know what? We think Kinect is actually pretty good.

The problem is that the people who'll be most interested in Kinect from the off are the hardcore gamers who've had their 360s for ages. They've got a mountain of games, and they're looking for something new.

But Kinect is not necessarily for that type of gamer. Sure, there are plenty of Kinect games aimed at that hardcore audience, but we think Kinect is a product designed to bring the Xbox 360 to a wider audience.

Kinect turns the Xbox 360 from a console predominantly aimed at young men, to a family machine with infinite possibilities.

Games such as Kinectimals are a prime example. That game is not aimed at anyone other than young children, and for them it's fantastic. Equally, there's going to be a raft of new Kinect titles coming out to cater for other untapped demographics.

We liked:

Voice control works nicely, and we never had a problem with games or apps misunderstanding what we were saying.

We also love the way Kinect is opening up the 360 into a much more well-rounded console. Microsoft is going to sell a lot of consoles to a wider range of people off the back of Kinect, and so if it gets more people involved, that's a good thing in our book.

We didn't like:

We don't like having to hold our arms in the air in order to select from the Kinect menus. It's annoying and we much preferred the point-and-swipe method employed by some of the games.

Space is also a major negative - there'll be plenty of budding Kinect gamers out there who won't be able to join in due to not having enough space in their living rooms. We suspect this will be more of a problem for European gamers than North American ones.

Lag is also an issue, and while you can get used to it, Kinect doesn't quite feel like the finished article while these delays exist. It's also a bit more expensive than we'd like, but it's hard to criticise this simply because Kinect is such a unique product.

Verdict:

We like Kinect a lot. But it's not a perfect product by any means, and many hardcore gamers out there are going to be disappointed by it.

However, we think it's an impressive piece of technology, and in the months and years ahead we envisage it spawning some truly revolutionary games.

For the moment though, the launch titles seem a bit weak and that £125 price tag looks just a bit too much.

Review: PlayStation Move

TechRadar — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:50:00 GMT

Sony PlayStation Move: Overview

It's surprising to think that the Wii has been on sale for nearly four years, and we're only now seeing true competition from Nintendo's rivals. Of course, considering the half-hearted motion controls of the Sixaxis, it's probably wise for Sony to have been cooking PlayStation Move slowly since its introduction 15 months ago.

The PlayStation's motion controller sticks much closer to the Wii's mould than Microsoft's Kinect, with E3's Move tagline being "This changes everything". Hyperbole aside, Sony is aiming to take the technological high road, as it does with all things PS3, and beat the Wii on precision and movement accuracy.

The technology used is actually pretty similar to Nintendo's, but on steroids. The Wii's sensor bar sits by the TV and gives out infrared lights that a camera in the remote picks up in order for the pointer to function.

Move flips this around, with a camera next to the TV picking up the glowing ball on the end of the controller. The PS3 can then measure distance from the controller using the size of the ball as a reference.

The Move controller also has all the movement sensing bells and whistles of the Wii remote and MotionPlus attachment, demonstrating that Sony's thinking was obviously that they weren't attempting to reinvent the wheel so much as make it a little rounder.

Move controllers are available alone for £35, or with the PlayStation Eye camera for £50. The Navigation controller (the equivalent to the Wii's nunchuck) is £25, though we haven't included it in our testing it here.

Sony PlayStation Move: Design

The most noticeable thing about Move's primary controller is the glowing ball on top, unsurprisingly. When the controller is off, the orb is white and softly translucent, and looks remarkably like a ping-pong ball (it's about the same size as one, too).

When the controller's in full use, the ball lights up in a range of colours, so it can be tracked by the PlayStation Eye camera. While the ball might seem to be a weak point should the controller ever make contact with your wall/lamp/friend's skull, it's actually squishy, and just pops back into shape after an impact.

The rest of the controller has a more organic look than the Wii remote. It's round, and becomes slightly thinner in the middle, presumably to be more ergonomic.

On the front, you have the four familiar PlayStation face buttons, though the fact that they're arranged in a square, rather than a diamond, makes it a little hard to remember which one is where for a while.

Between those is the Move button, a thumb-sized new addition, clearly meant as Move's version of the Wii remote's big A button.

Beneath those is the PS button, which serves the same function is it does on the DualShock 3 or SixAxis controller of bringing up the XMB. It sits in a concave, which avoids accidental presses neatly.

The underside of the controller is mostly clear, but features a trigger, known as the T button. This is analogue – like R2/L2 on the DualShock 3 or the left and right triggers on the Xbox 360 controller – in contrast to the crisp, clicking B button on the Wii.

The left-hand side features the Select button, which is quite hard to hit, but is rarely needed.

On the right side, you find the Start button, which can be pressed accidentally depending on you hold the controller, though it only happened once or twice.

At the base of the move is a micro-USB port for charging, a slot for the provided wrist straps, and two mystery connectors that could be used for accessories in the future.

At first, the Move controller feels a little more comfortable than the Wii remote. It's not that Nintendo's controller was uncomfortable, but the roundness of Move goes some way toward helping it sit neatly in the hand.

That said, we found that we started to feel the effects of prolonged use faster with Move, and we think it's to do with the shape. The tapered middle means you're often gripping harder than you would have to with the Wii's controller, especially when playing something with hard swings, like Table Tennis on Sports Champions. Discomfort in the wrist crept in earlier than it did during an equivalent session of Wii Sports Resort.

Let's be clear, though: We're not saying Move is painful, uncomfortable, bad for you, or anything like that (assuming you have no joint problems to begin with). After all, we were playing for quite long periods during our review time, though not unusually long for a committed gamer.

We're not even saying it's definitely less comfortable than the Wii remote – as we said, it's actually a bit nicer just to hold – but we do think that the shape isn't ideal for long periods of the more wrist-bending games.

There are a few other things about the Move's design that seem a little odd to us. Why add a new button with the Move logo (which is, let's remember, just a squiggly line, and so doesn't jump out at you on-screen), when Sony could have just used X or Circle?

Of course, the most contentious design decision will always be that orb. We don't deny that accuracy that it brings (more on that later), but it really does look silly. We're not going to make the laboured sex-toy joke, because all of your friends who see it will. Seriously, it's not just a meme – it's the first thing that people who've never even heard of Move say.

The light is also quite distracting. If you're trying to do something else in the room while someone's playing a game with two controllers, your eye is constantly drawn. The Wii remote was designed to be inconspicuous – the shape fits in with your TV remotes, and it almost disappears into your hand when you hold it – but this can be borderline gaudy.

That said, motion-controlled gaming always has and always will make you look a bit weird. It's not like the wild flailing was dignified before the glowing ball was added, so maybe we should just be happy with the extra accuracy and possibilities it offers.

Sony PlayStation Move: Performance

In the games Sony provided us to test with, we were able to get a feel for much of what's possible with Move, but we also became aware that these tests are somewhat limited by the way the games are programmed.

This has always been one of the Wii's biggest caveats, and the worry is always that games will use motion sensing in a way that really should have just been achieved with buttons.

With that in mind, we can safely say that we came away hugely impressed with what Move can do, but it still needs a careful, measured implementation.

The controller's ball certainly seems to offer an accuracy of pointer movement that goes beyond what the Wii remote is capable of. The idea that it could be as accurate as a mouse is probably a bit ambitious, but it's good enough that we could see it giving real-time strategy games, and a few other genres that do better on PCs, a new lease of life on consoles.

When you navigate the XMB with the Move controller, you point it at the screen, hold trigger, and then point it up, down, left or right to move in that direction in the menu.

Interestingly, the ball stays dark during this time, so it seems to be using only the motion sensing capabilities, but it's so fluid and accurate that you wouldn't know the difference.

When the ball is being used as a pointer, we found that it often only operated in a very narrow field compared to the Wii, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it makes navigating some menus a little more fiddly than we're used to. On the other hand, it works perfectly at much further distances than the Wii remote is capable of.

There are several games where the orb needs to be visible to the camera, even when you'd think the control would be all motion-sensing based.

With the Wii, you could walk into another room and bowl if you wanted, but that's rarely the case here. In fact, leaving the camera's field of view with the active controller seems to stop all functions from working – including the buttons.

While one of the criticisms of Kinect that's going around is the space needed to use it, this is actually also an occasional problem for Move. Sports Champions demands that you stand eight feet (2.5 meters) away from your TV, and then it still expects you to be able to step backwards, and swing your arms all around.

For some people, this won't be a problem, but in our case it meant shifting a sofa back a couple of feet every time we wanted to play (not to mention getting rid of the coffee table). Yes, we always needed to make some space when playing on the Wii, but nowhere near as much as this.

Of course, we're just talking about living rooms here. These space restrictions will just about rule out Sports Champions for bedrooms.

Why is this an issue for Move when it isn't for the Wii (some of the most energetic Wii games be played sitting on your sofa or standing up without too much of a penalty)? It's the restriction of the ball and camera system. You need to be able to swing your arm well out occasionally, and still be on camera.

This restriction follows through into some of the multiplayer games. We only tried with two people, which was fine once we'd made enough space, but if you were playing four-player Volleyball, where everyone has to be on camera at once, it would be absolute carnage.

Annoyingly, Sport Champions wasn't the only game that caused us a distance problem. Our sofa was too close to the TV for us to be able to play that game, but when we popped in Start the Party!, we were too far back!

Start the Party! uses the camera and Move controller for augmented reality (AR) WarioWare-esque party games, so each active player needs to be quite close to the camera to be the right size on-screen. This distance inconsistency is another sacrifice for the accuracy on offer, but it's simply a problem that the Wii doesn't have.

The AR in Start the Party! is very impressive though (and it actually makes an occasional appearance in Sports Champions too). Giant foam hands stick like glue to the end of your controller, wobbling convincingly with the momentum of your swings. Tennis rackets twist in your hand, meaning that you have to careful to hit with the strings, and not the rim.

Win one round in particular and the controller becomes a pencil, enabling you to deface your opponent's image – all with incredible accuracy, though the fact that you're seeing yourself from the other way makes it a little confusing when you're rotating things, or moving them to and from the camera.

Naturally, there's a horror story too. Kung Fu Rider – a kind of Tony Hawk's meets Pain, with a Crazy Taxi heart – is a classic early-Wii case of unnecessary waggle. Thrust the controller up to jump, but to accelerate you have to shake it up and down, resulting in numerous accidental jumps. And yet, when you actually want to jump, it's frequently unresponsive.

It's a perfect example that the Move technology can only be as good as the software harnessing it.

Sony PlayStation Move: Head-to-head

With Sports Champions sitting happily alongside Wii Sports Resort on our shelf, the obvious test for Move was to put it up against Nintendo's offering. There are several like-for-like games here, so how do they compare?

Table Tennis

A tricky one. The Wii version offered a huge amount of control over the spin on your ball, but you still had control over your Mii's movement, and the accuracy of your swing didn't matter as long as the timing was right.

Move couldn't be more different. By stepping left, right, forwards and backwards, your character will do the same, enabling you to get in close for smashes, or to get back for a powerful top spin return.

You also need to think about the height of the ball, because it's quite possible to just swing at air underneath it.

Serving on Sports Champions is a nightmare, though. Not a single one of the people we got to play could get the hang of it.

Of course, adding elaborate physics to a sports game just means it can go wrong. Attempts to put slice on the ball can result in it pinging off at ridiculous angles for no discernible reason, probably in part due to the precision the game demands from you and Move. Precision that is there, but is hard to master.

Wii Sports Resort is the arcade version, wanting you to put crazy spin on the ball, but this Sports Champions is all simulation. If you want to put tonnes of side spin on, you'd better get some damn practice in.

Winner: Sports Champions

Disc Golf

Though there's no proper golf on Sports Champtions, which is a bit of a shame (though perhaps not unexpected, with Tiger Woods 11 already out), we do have a good ol' Frisbee to toss about.

There's barely anything between these two, in terms of the control system. Sports Champions seems to be a tad more forgiving in that it's slightly easier to throw the disc straight in front of you, but both games have totally convincing curves and wind effects in flight.

Winner: Draw

Bowling/Bocce

Okay, so this isn't exactly like for like in terms of the games, but the control scheme is the same for the pair, so it's a good comparison.

In Sports Champions, how much momentum you get on the Bocce balls from a throw can occasionally be a bit inconsistent. Throw the pallino hard and low on the S-shaped course and it occasionally only travels about 10 metres, while other times it rockets round the course, though you're sure you threw it pretty much the same.

It's also hard to really get the hang of left and right spin on the Move game, especially compared to Wii Sports Resort's bowling. We've always found that the Wii bowling game produces exactly the same slight left spin that we have in real life, and that adding a different spin is a just a matter of subtle wrist action.

Winner: Wii Sports Resort

Archery

To keep this fair, we compared the Wii remote-and-Nunchuck Archery game to using two motion controllers at once on Sports Champions.

The Wii version was always one of the most impressive MotionPlus demos, with every twitch and sag of the your arm translated to the screen. At first, Move really disappointed us. Control was laggy and accuracy was very tough.

However, it was then pointed out to us that, while we had made some effort to adopt a correct archery pose, we weren't doing it properly. So we turned fully 90 degrees from the TV, outstretched our arm all the way and tried again.

Suddenly, movement was perfect. Going from target to target is smooth (though you get more of an aiming aid from Sports Champions than from Resort), and using the second controller to bring arrows into the bow yourself gives you a great Robin Hood feeling.

The only thing we missed from the Wii version is a way to readjust where the centre of your aiming is (for example, you can aim slightly below the TV as your centre, so you're arm doesn't get in the way). This would be even more welcome on Move, due to the distraction of the glowing orb.

Yes, it's less realistic, but real archers don't have lights on their bows. However, this doesn't take away from the accuracy of the controls.

Winner: Draw

Swordplay/Gladiator Duel

The addition of shields in Gladiator Duel makes Sports Champions offering a little more elaborate than Resort's, but it's still swords.

Alas, the Swordplay game on the Wii was always a bit of a disappointment, because the actual hits tended to be restricted to vertical vs horizontal swipes and blocks. Despite the appearance of attacks at different angles, it pretty much boils down to those gestures, wasting the accuracy of MotionPlus.

Gladiator Duel makes good on these promises, especially with two controllers (for the sword and shield respectively). Attacks do more damage if you hit harder, but there's still the classic situation where a casual swing suddenly deals a huge amount of damage and you're not sure why.

To be honest, the swing strength detection is kind of inconsequential because everyone always swings hard anyway. The trick here is in careful use of your shield and timing and angle of attacks. In this, it's hugely impressive, and Move's accuracy enables truly tactical bouts.

Winner: Sports Champions

Sony PlayStation Move: Verdict

The biggest takeaway from our time with Move is its incredible accuracy. Augmented reality instruments move perfectly with the controller, Frisbees fly with the gentle curve you give them and you can select things with superb precision.

As we said, the controller is comfortable, but not for really long sessions of hard-swinging games. The glowing ball is undoubtedly ridiculous, but is the price you pay for accuracy. You'll get used to having it there, even if anyone who sees it for the first time will raise an eyebrow.

Move has advantages and disadvantages over the Wii remote. The orb enables a higher level of accuracy than the Wii can manage even with MotionPlus in some cases, but also seems to occasionally restrict Sony's controller.

Being able to operate only within strict confines of the camera is fine for one or two people, but when there are more of you, it's handy not to have to worry about such things. We suspect future game programmers can avoid an over-reliance on the camera (and the plethora of motion sensors should be able to compensate for this).

Similarly, while the accurate detection of depth that Move has is fantastic for some games, the inconsistency of sitting four feet away for Start the Party! and standing eight feet away for Sports Champions is irritating.

In fact, our single biggest concern is the space required to really go at the games. It won't be an issue for games like MAG and SOCOM, but it could be the difference between whether this or a Wii is more appropriate for your space.

Somewhere, in the gap between the Wii remote with MotionPlus and Move, is an ideal motion controller. But what we have is mightily impressive, even with its flaws. It's not a revolution of motion control, but a refocus from being unassuming and family-friendly to being all about precision and adding options.

However, it's not cheap. The starter pack containing one Move controller and the PlayStation Eye camera is £49.99. We think Sony would have been wise to include a game with that – Wii Play made buying a second controller far more palatable for millions of Wii owners.

At £35 each, the controllers alone aren't that expensive, but they're all /extra/ cost on top of what you've got already.

As a piece of technology, we heartily recommend Move to PlayStation 3 owners. The motion gaming bandwagon is growing and growing, and isn't going to disappear any time soon. Move won't be for everyone, if only because of its steep price as an optional extra, but those that do invest will find an excellent piece of gaming technology.

Review: Sony PS3

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 15:05:00 GMT

Overview

The Sony PS3 Slim is the latest incarnation of Sony's opinion-dividing PlayStation 3 games console.

It's essentially the same console as before, but with slimmed down components and a new, smaller chassis. The key improvements in the new PS3 are the 120GB hard drive, up from 40GB and 60GB in previous UK versions, and it's also 36 per cent lighter, 33 per cent smaller and it consumes at least 34 per cent less power (it's probably even more efficient than that).

So why is this such a big deal for Sony?

The answer is that the PS3 Slim represents a new age for Sony's gaming arm – one that could well herald the start of a new profit-making era.

The vast majority of PS3 consoles sold to date (Sony has shipped over 24 million of them so far) have been sold at a loss - even the original 60GB version which retailed at £425 made a thumping loss per unit.

However, new manufacturing procedures have changed this recently, and a redesigned 45nm Cell processor along with other similarly small and power efficient components have reduced Sony's manufacturing costs significantly.

IN THE BOX: You get the console, a DualShock 3 controller, power cable, AV cable and USB cable - but no HDMI cable

So coupled with the fact that the PS3 Slim is selling for £250 in the UK – only marginally cheaper than the bigger, fatter PS3 original – you can see that Sony can finally expect to start making a return on its investment. And it's about time.

But really, the questions are: should you care about that? And should you buy the new PS3 Slim?

Continue reading our PS3 Slim review to find out.

Design

The first thing to note about the PS3 Slim is undoubtedly the design. It's split opinions in the office so far, and although this reviewer thinks the design is an abomination, others think it's actually nicer than the original.

The differences are: the design is very similar, but one third smaller. So it actually looks like something of a smaller brother to the original PS3.

Instead of a nice glossy finish, what we have here is a dull matte, flimsy plastic casing that neither feels classy nor sturdy.

Gone, too, is the sexy chrome trimming, with the silver 'PlayStation 3' writing being replaced by a lacklustre 'PS3' logo embossed on the top of the case.

The on/off and disc-eject touch-sensitive buttons are also conspicuous by their absence, and they've been replaced by real buttons that give way when you push them. How boring is that?

You've still got two USB ports round the front, and round the pack there's the usual HDMI, AV multi-out, optical-out and ethernet ports. The kettle power cable has been replaced by a slimmer two-pin cable.

The problem with the PS3 Slim is that it looks so cheap. Sony has taken the opportunity to strip out all of the cool, aesthetic design features from the original, in what can only be a cost-cutting measure.

We're not totally against this, although we'd have liked some more of these savings to be passed on to us - the PS3 Slim is still £50 more expensive than the newly-priced £199 Xbox 360 Elite.

Consider also that the PlayStation 2 spent the vast majority of its life selling for $199 in the US and £199 in the UK. Nearly three years into its life, the PS3 still costs £250 – that's a lot of money in the scheme of things.

Performance

Once you get over the new-look design, and despite the slimmer, more power-efficient innards, the PS3 is still essentially the same beast.

Once you've turned it on, the differences end. The interface is the same. The controller is the same – although you do get a DualShock 3 controller instead of standard SIXAXIS – and the user experience is the same.

We did some very basic real-world benching and found that the PS3 Slim does actually boot a couple of seconds slower than our original 60GB PS3, although in practise that makes zero difference. The time it takes to load games and play DVDs are exactly the same.

Fan

One of the main gains you'd expect from a more power efficient PS3 would be that it would operate a lot more quietly. After all, with less energy being wasted as heat, the fan doesn't need to work so hard and thus pumps out less irritating white noise.

While we didn't measure the exact volume of the PS3 Slim's 17-blade fan, 95mm fan, it did seem to our trained ears to be slightly quieter when playing games. However – the PS3 has always been pretty quiet. Compared to the Xbox 360, the PS3 can be considered an extremely stealthy console.

The main noise actually comes from the disc drive. When you're watching a DVD, the spinning disc makes a lot more noise than the cooling fan. And this hasn't changed much – if at all. It's still loud enough to be annoying during those quieter scenes.

Home cinema

Of course, as before, the PS3's major trump card is its built-in Blu-ray drive which gives you the power to play back Blu-ray movies in glorious full HD 1080p.

The major new home cinema feature inside the PS3 Slim's new components, though, is its ability to bitstream Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio to a receiver over HDMI. This will seriously please the audiophiles, but for the rest of us it'll make almost no difference at all.

One slight disappointment with the PS3 Slim is its performance as a CD player. The original was a pretty decent CD and DVD spinner – but the Slim's thinner Blu-ray drive has proven to be a bit of a let-down.

Our colleagues at Home Cinema Choice actually measured the audio jitter of the slim – which returned a figure of over 460ps – a world apart from the original PS3's 138ps.

The audio in DVD playback was also disappointing from a perfectionist's point of view – with a measured high frequency response of -6.14dB. Will you notice this if you haven't got a top of the range hi-fi set up and a perfect set of ears? Probably not.

Still, though, the PS3's ability to upscale DVDs remains. The console uses its Cell processor to upscale DVDs to 1080p high definition, so even your DVD movies will look fantastic on an HD display. The Cell's enormous processing power can also be used to clean up fuzzy, blocky or grainy parts in DVDs or downloaded movie files.

Media and gaming

The PS3 is also compatible with a wide array of file formats which means you can play almost any media file – picture, video or music – without a problem. Popular DivX and Xvid video formats are supported out of the box so playing your digital movie collection is pretty straight forward.

And you can do that in two ways - you can copy them to a USB storage device and plug it in, or you can stream them from your PC over your home network either wirelessly or via Ethernet.

All media can be accessed in this way, which means if you've got a lot of photos, music and videos on your computer, you can view them on your PS3 as though they were stored locally.

Gaming

As a gaming device, the PS3 is arguably slightly more powerful than the Xbox 360. So technically, in terms of graphical fidelity, the PS3 is as good as they come.

However, three year's into its life cycle, the PS3 still lags far behind the Xbox 360 as a gaming device, and that's because of the games available.

The Xbox 360 launched over a year before the PS3, and so was able to build up a large catalogue of games before the PS3 even made it into one living room. And even since then, the Xbox 360 platform has seen more games launched.

And that's before we even mention the differences between Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network (PSN). Comparing the two services is like comparing a fine wine to a bottle of Lambrini. For multiplayer gaming then, the 360 has it.

But the PSN on the PS3 is catching up, with big updates expected very soon.

The PlayStation 3 does, of course, have plenty of gaming exclusives of its own. Series' such as Metal Gear Solid will only ever be available on PlayStation consoles, and then the much-mooted Gran Turismo 5 will be launched on PS3 this Christmas.

Back compatibility

You also need to remember that other than the original 60GB model, no PS3 is compatible with PS2 games. So beware if you're thinking of ditching your PS2 and upgrading - you'll need to hang on to your old console if you still want to play all your existing games.

So if gaming is your main consideration when buying a console – and it seems likely that it is – your best bet is just to look at the games available for each platform and make a decision from there. Who knows, maybe you'll realise that what you've wanted all along is actually a Nintendo Wii?

Verdict

The jury is out on whether you should buy the new PS3 Slim. If you've already got a PS3 in either its 40GB, 60GB or 80GB flavours, it's almost definitely not worth upgrading to this slimmer 120GB version.

Unless you're desperate for more storage, there's not much here to justify spending another £250 on the newer model.

However, as a games console and media device, the PS3 is an unbelievably powerful contraption. It's an unrivalled living room media machine, and a powerful games console.

We do have serious concerns about the price, though - £250 is a lot to spend these days, especially when you can get the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for less than £200.

We liked

Even though we don't like the aesthetics of the design, the smaller size is great – at last, here's a PS3 console that isn't so big that it dominates any room you put it in.

Other than that, it's business as usual. We loved the PS3 before the PS3 Slim came out, and we still love it. The Blu-ray drive is great as ever, but what we really love is the ability to stream almost any media file format from your PC or memory stick.

We also like the fact that you can use almost any Bluetooth device with the PS3. You can use any Bluetooth headset to chat with your friends. And you can use Bluetooth keyboard and mouse to navigate the built-in web browser.

We disliked

Yeah, we think the design is ugly. But hey, you might like it – some do, some don't. But even if you do like the look of it, it's impossible to appreciate the general cheapness of its build. The original PS3 felt bullet proof. The new one feels like it might break if a moth landed on it.

Considering the reduced manufacturing costs associated with the PS3 Slim, and the horrible, cheap plastic it's encased in, we'd have expected a price closer to £200 – so cost is another big drawback.

Conclusion

Over all, the PS3 Slim is a phenomenal piece of kit. It's amazing that something so small can do so much. And so if you've just bought a new telly, that extra £50 you'd have to spend over the cost of an Xbox 360 Elite will be worth it just for the Blu-ray player.

Review: Nintendo DSi XL

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:19:00 GMT

Nintendo DSi XL: Overview

Nintendo releases the new Nintendo DSi XL in the UK this month, featuring a notably bigger screen and a wider viewing angle than 2009's version of its popular handheld gaming console, the DSi.

The Japanese gaming giant's top brass – CEO Satoru Iwata and game design genius Shigeru Miyamoto – have made a lot of noise in Japan about how the new extra-large DS should appeal to older gamers in particular.

Especially those consumers that buy up the latest brain-training games and are more likely to spend money on ebooks and other types of non-gaming software for the device.

But all of that marketing strategy talk aside, the true Nintendo fan really only wants to know one thing: "Is this sufficiently better than the handheld I bought last year to enjoy Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Wario and all the other classic first party Nintendo games that gamers buy DSs for?"

COMPARE: A comparison of the DSi XL with the DSi

After all we, most probably like you, have spent a good wedge over the last five years on DS consoles, from that first 'phat' grey Nintendo DS that launched (to widespread confusion on the part of Nintendo fans at the time) at E3 way back in June 2004 through to last year's DSi.

The original model was followed by the DS Lite in 2006 with its glossy white casing, slimmer form factor and four levels of LCD screen brightness, and then came the aforementioned DSi, which launched early 2009 in the UK and was again even thinner, with a slightly larger screen (and saw the end of GBA cartridge-support in favour of an SD card slot, AAC playback capability, and two cameras).

MATT UNDERSIDE: The stickiness of the DSi XL's bottom is a bonus

Having spent the best part of a fortnight playing through Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the new machine there is no question that it is Nintendo's finest handheld gaming console to date. Although the question as to whether it is £160 better than your current DS Phat or DS Lite or DSi still remains…

Nintendo DSi XL: Features

Both of the new colours of the Nintendo DSi XL – wine red and dark brown – indicate that Nintendo is no longer slavishly following the lead of the Apple iPod with a its glossy white sheen, as they were widely accused of with the first DS Lite console.

Both are also fairly conservative, a deliberate design choice to attempt to appeal to older users that are unlikely to go for bilious green or hot pink.

Perhaps the coolest aspect of the new DSi XL is the fact that the console has a matt finish on the underside which means that you can pop it on a table or pretty much any other flat surface for those extended Zelda sessions.

DS-READER: The DSi XL easily doubles up as a decent enough ebook

The DSi XL also comes pre-loaded with A Little Bit of... Dr Kawashima's Brain Training: Arts Edition and Dictionary 6 in 1 with Camera Function, as well as the Nintendo DSi Browser, which means that you can get online via the console's Opera browser wherever you have a free Wi-Fi connection.

And while the web browsing experience on the DSi XL is hardly going to give the iPhone a run for its money, it is the best internet experience yet on a handheld games console. A country mile better than attempting to surf the web with Sony's PSP. Which certainly counts for something.

One of the other nice touches out of the box is the DSi XL's larger pen-like stylus - perfect for the larger-fingered gent and a clear indication that Nintendo is properly starting to design its consoles for use by (western) adults and seniors.

The most obvious benefit here is, of course, that larger 4.2-inch dual screen which, compared with the 3.25-inch screen of our old DSi, really makes gaming on the DSi XL a lot more fun.

We have completed the new Zelda on this latest Nintendo handheld and going back to playing the same game on a smaller screen on a DS Lite or DSi is just not an option.

It is difficult to quantify, but if you like to get lost in Nintendo's (read: Mr Miyamoto's) greatest games, we would certainly say this latest large-screened DS was well worth the £160 investment (or whatever that price would be minus the trade-in value of your older DS).

Playing other recent classics such as New Super Mario Bros on the DSi XL only served to convince us that this device is something considerably more than an 'annual refresh' of a popular handheld rolled out by Nintendo in order to sell a few more units.

It actually made the game better and more fun to play. As well as looking loads better it became easier to judge jumps and distance on the screen – a vital component to any Mario title.

DR KAWASHIMA RETURNS: Brain training game is bundled with the DSi XL

If pushed, we might suggest that the fact that the games are displayed in the same 256 x 192 resolution as they are on the DS Lite and DSi means that they appear slightly blockier on the DSi XL.

However, there is no way we would trade back to the smaller screen after playing on this. Though Nintendo fans will no doubt be hoping to see 2011's iteration of the DS feature a better resolution screen.

In addition to better visuals, the DSi XL has slightly better sound quality than its older brother, something that is sure to delight many public bus passengers in the coming years, as the kids whip out the new console on the back seat.

Nintendo DSi XL: Verdict

If you already have a DS Lite or a DSi and are an occasional gamer (or brain exerciser or virtual dog trainer) then you might not be persuaded to part with £160 for what is essentially the same machine with a slightly bigger screen with better sound and a larger stylus.

However, if you are the type of gamer that plays every new essential Nintendo DS release through from start to finish, you will immediately realise the need to upgrade to a DSi XL, because it just adds a lot to your gaming experience.

Sure, you might need slightly larger pockets to carry it around, but then the DSi XL's predecessors could hardly be described as pocket-sized.

We liked:

The bigger screen, the crisper sound and the 'phat' stylus all appealed to us. Though we are not sure if this is because we fall into the 'older gamer' category (eyesight and hearing and basic motor skills all declining) or because we just like seeing Link and Mario on a larger, better screen. The latter, we like to hope.

The DSi XL means less hand cramps for adult gamers. One issue with the DS Lite and the DSi was the fact that you had to have the slim hands of a pianist (or the small hands of a child) to really be able to play it for any length of time. No longer. The DSi XL now means that even fat-fingered rugby lads can still enjoy pretending to be a squat Italian plumber for hours on end.

A bigger screen and a better stylus allowed us to achieve a better overall control of games, particularly where the perception of distance is key to controlling your on-screen character, as in New Super Mario Bros.

We disliked:

It's still fiddly to get online via your home Wi-Fi. Nintendo really needs to make whole process of getting this thing online a lot easier. The strategy is to sell mini-games via the internet, but that is not going to work if people get bored with the hurdles of connecting to their home router.

The slightly larger form factor means it is less portable. This is hardly a deal-breaker, because the DSi will only fit in the largest of combat trouser pockets, but compared side to side with the Sony's new PSPgo, for example, the DSi XL seems huge.

That 'wine red' colour – even though we are in the demographic that Nintendo is aiming to market the DSi XL to (ie old) we would still prefer 'iPod white' or glossy piano black. Whoever decided to plump for 'wine red' instead made the wrong design choice.

Verdict:

The DSi XL is the best way to play Mario and Zelda and Metroid on the bus to work to date, which effectively makes it the best handheld console yet developed

Plus the bigger screen means that we would actually consider using the DSi XL as an electronic reader and, occasionally, as a portable web browser.

We don't even mind throwing it in our man-bag, because the build quality is solid. This thing will not break unless you stand on it or throw it at a wall in anger.

For adult gamers it is a must, because it feels a hundred times more comfortable than the previous versions of the DS, which were essentially designed for children

It just goes to show that smaller is not necessarily always better in the cut-throat world of consumer electronics and portable games consoles.

Review: Logitech G27

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:00:00 GMT

There's no other way to play a top racing game with any vague sense of realism than with a wheel bolted securely to your desk and a set of pedals sat on the mess of wires under your feet.

The difference in satisfaction and visual realism is immediate; so much so that you'll never want to race without a wheel again. But how much will you pay for the privilege?

That's a question that Logitech is asking again with its new top-of-the-line racing wheel, the G27.

Sure, it's tricky to get the hang of hurtling around in-game with a steering wheel when you're used to the mouse/keyboard combo or the analogue sticks of your favourite gamepad, but when you manage to drift around a corner with just the right amount of throttle and opposite lock to make you look like a Finn you'll be grinning like a loon. Which will make you look even more like a Finnish rally driver…

DiRT 2 is the perfect example – I can't imagine playing the game on a gamepad having reviewed it using a wheel. But what do you really need in a decent racing controller?

Force feedback is the most essential thing and here Logitech and the G27 rule. With good force feedback you can actually feel the way the car is handling, enabling you to react much faster than if you had to rely on visual cues alone.

Need for speed

But do you need a proper six-speed gear shift to get the most out of your wheel? If you want the ultimate in race-driving realism then the answer is probably yes, but then you also need a racing seat and one of those frames you can build a PC and screen into to make you feel like you're in a proper simulator.

And if you want all that then it's going to cost you a couple of grand anyway, so you might as well get a £330 steering wheel…

This is definitely a wheel for the enthusiast; the casual racer isn't going to get enough out of this leather, plastic and metal monster to justify the outlay.

The problem here, though, is that the previous Logitech beastie, the G25, is available for about £160 if you shop around – half the price of this latest wheel.

So what do you miss out on with the older model? Strangely, all you seem to lose are six programmable buttons. That said, the G25 has a switch to change the gated gear shift to a simple sequential shift, which the G27 oddly lacks.

I'd hoped that the G27's finish would be better and the clamps more secure, but it's still disturbingly easy to wrench either the shift or the wheel from the desk on a tight turn, and the gear stick is as lightweight as ever.

The G25, then, is still a fantastic racing wheel and at £160 it's a bargain for such a serious simulator setup. By comparison, the G27 brings little to the table for its somewhat crazy price tag.

Review: Sky Player on Xbox 360

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Sky Player on Xbox 360: Overview

All hail the Sky Player for Xbox. As well as being a video-on-demand system online, Sky Player has been streaming live channels for over a year to PC users, and Sky Player for Xbox tries to replicate that experience on a games console.

It's a nice idea – and it effortlessly makes the best possible use of the Xbox 360's luscious new interface to create a service that's lots of fun to use.

It's expensive to non-Sky subscribers though and certainly a niche product in the mass market, but for Sky converts it's essentially a VoD solution for the home (or a second home) that beats Sky Anytime hands-down.

The look and feel of the interface is stunning. 'Xboxy' is the only way to describe it; sweeping between the icons for live channels, VoD content and movie listings is familiar and effortless.

There's no way to personalise the service and it doesn't make recommendations about content it might think you like, but it's so easy to use and the on-screen menus are mostly lightning quick.

Sky Player on Xbox 360: Features

Most Xboxy of all the features is Party mode, which only works with live TV channels.

The screen shows your avatar watching a huge TV screen, which fills most of the space. Send invites to your friends and if they accept, their avatars appear next to yours, and interact using an E-mote; a small dial appears on the screen and you can play your avatar like a puppet, making him shout at the screen or clap ferociously.

Back to the serious stuff. Scroll to live TV and you'll find a thumbnail playing the last live channel you visited (with sound) alongside a stack of other channels and a TV guide, though it only gives listings for the next 48 hours and can't handle reminders.

In terms of content, Sky Player is an exact copy of the online version, but unless you already have access to (or stump up the cash for) the Entertainment or Sky Sports packages, it's not much to get excited about.

The 16 free live channels comprise GOLD, Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, MTV, Sky Sports News, Eurosport UK, Sky News, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Nick Jr.

Add an Entertainment Pack and you'll receive both the Sky Screen channels, which show the latest blockbusters on a loop – though that does seem decidedly old fashioned in the age of VoD.

Buy a Sky Sports Pack and you'll get Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, Sky Sports 3, Sky Sports Xtra, ESPN and ESPN Classic.

The movie VoD section is excellent and surely the backbone of Sky Player's appeal. Stuffed with 421 movies (to be exact), you can browse via A-Z, genre, latest additions or most popular.

Choose one and you get a synopsis and information on the length, file size (for a future download service perhaps?) and, best of all, a list of related films, which makes navigation even easier.

Aside from movies, there are repeats from Sky Sports, and a mix or free and paid documentaries from Sky, Nat Geo and the History Channel (at £0.98 an episode).

Some material – and occasionally, the interface as a whole – can be slow to load. Once it's playing, you can call up a FF/RW/pause control and speed through content at 2x, 4x, 8x and 16x speeds.

Sky Player on Xbox 360: Verdict

We used the service on a 2Mpbs broadband line and the service struggled, buffering constantly, though upped to 6Mbps it worked without a hitch. If you do struggle, medium and low quality settings are available, but picture quality is very poor.

The advice is clear; don't think about getting Sky Player on Xbox unless you always have upwards of 2Mbps.

What you'll actually be able to watch on Sky Player depends on your regular Sky subscription.

If you already subscribe to the Sky Sports package via the satellite service, you can watch those same channels on your Xbox360 for free, wherever it's used – though Xbox LIVE Gold membership is a prerequisite.

If you're not a Sky subscriber and are looking at this as a way of getting live Premiership football into your life, you'll need an Xbox LIVE Gold membership (£39.99 per year), a £15 Entertainment Pack for the movies, and a £19 Sports Pack.

That works out at £468 a year, though there is a £29.99 introductory deal that gets you three months of Xbox LIVE Gold and Sky Sports for a month.

If Sky Player and Xbox want to rival the BBC's iPlayer as well as the PS3's VoD service, it's going to have to be super-slick, easy to use – and affordable.

In typical Sky fashion, Sky Player on Xbox fulfils those first two criteria with aplomb. Equally typical is its premium price for non-Sky subscribers, but if you're already signed-up to its satellite service, Sky Player for Xbox is an innovation that introduces VoD and multiroom in the smoothest way possible.

Review: Sony PS3 Slim 250GB

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:50:00 GMT

PS3 Slim 250GB: Overview

Even before the Sony PlayStation 3 Slim 120GB came out in September, there were rumours that a 250GB beast was on the horizon.

And here it is. You might not have even noticed it thus far – it slinked onto the shelves earlier this month without much fanfare and only a token PR effort from Sony.

However, despite the low-key launch, what we have here is the best PlayStation 3 system you can buy.

That said, it's essentially exactly the same as the 120GB version, but with 130 more of those precious gigabytes packed in for good measure.

That extra storage capacity is likely to become invaluable in the future. With the PlayStation Network (PSN) improving all the time, and with downloadable games, demos, movies and HD content becoming more mainstream, you could that you fill up a smaller HDD quite quickly.

But it depends on your usage of course, so if you can't see yourself downloading HD movies or buying games from the PSN, you might be better off plumping for the cheaper option.

It's worth pointing out that at the time of publishing, the 250GB PS3 Slim is retailing for around £270. That's £20 more pricey than the 120GB version - but with more than double the storage capacity, it seems like a good deal to us.

It's also available as part of an Uncharted 2: Among Thieves bundle at no extra cost, so be sure to snap that one up before they sell out.

PS3 Slim 250GB: Design

The differences are: the design is very similar, but one third smaller. So it actually looks like something of a smaller brother to the original PS3.

Instead of a nice glossy finish, what we have here is a dull matte, flimsy plastic casing that neither feels classy nor sturdy.

Gone, too, is the sexy chrome trimming, with the silver 'PlayStation 3' writing being replaced by a lacklustre 'PS3' logo embossed on the top of the case.

The on/off and disc-eject touch-sensitive buttons are also conspicuous by their absence, and they've been replaced by real buttons that give way when you push them. How boring is that?

We're not totally against this, although we'd have liked some more of these savings to be passed on to us - the PS3 Slim 250GB is still £70 more expensive than the newly-priced £199 Xbox 360 Elite, and £30 more than the PS3 Slim 120GB for that matter.

Consider also that the PlayStation 2 spent the vast majority of its life selling for $199 in the US and £199 in the UK. Nearly three years into its life, the cheapest PS3 still costs £250 – that's a lot of money in the scheme of things.

PS3 Slim 250GB: Performance

Once you get over the new-look design, and despite the slimmer, more power-efficient innards, the PS3 is still essentially the same beast.

Fan

Home cinema

Of course, as before, the PS3's major trump card is its built-in Blu-ray drive which gives you the power to play back Blu-ray movies in glorious full HD 1080p.

Our colleagues at Home Cinema Choice actually measured the audio jitter of the slim – which returned a figure of over 460ps – a world apart from the original PS3's 138ps.

PS3 Slim 250GB: Media and gaming

And you can do that in two ways - you can copy them to a USB storage device and plug it in, or you can stream them from your PC over your home network either wirelessly or via Ethernet.

All media can be accessed in this way, which means if you've got a lot of photos, music and videos on your computer, you can view them on your PS3 as though they were stored locally.

Gaming

As a gaming device, the PS3 is arguably slightly more powerful than the Xbox 360. So technically, in terms of graphics, the PS3 is as good as they come.

However, three year's into its life cycle, the PS3 still lags far behind the Xbox 360 as a gaming device, and that's because of the games available.

But the PSN on the PS3 is catching up, with big updates expected very soon.

Back compatibility

PS3 Slim 250GB: Graphics

While the nature of a console's 6-10 year life cycle means that they usually lag behind PCs in terms of graphical fidelity, that's not to say that the eye-candy on offer here isn't breathtaking.

The fact that the current generation of consoles heralded the jump to high-definition, means that while textures and models might be rendered at higher resolutions in games such as Crysis on PC, PS3 games can still look absolutely stunning.

Take two of the prettiest games around at the moment as examples; Dirt 2 (also available on Xbox 360) and Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3 exclusive).

Both are at the cutting edge, and push the PS3 almost as far as it can go. Uncharted 2 in particular is probably the prettiest game ever made.

See for yourself:

Dirt 2

See high-res version

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

See high-res version

PS3 Slim 250GB: Verdict

The jury is out on whether you should buy the new PS3 Slim. If you've already got a PS3 in either its 40GB, 60GB, 80GB or 120GB flavours, it's almost definitely not worth upgrading to this 250GB version.

Unless you're desperate for more storage, there's not much here to justify spending another £270 on the newer model.

However, as a games console and media device, the PS3 is an unbelievably powerful contraption. It's an unrivalled living room media machine, and a powerful games console.

We do have serious concerns about the price, though - £270 is a lot to spend these days, especially when you can get the 120GB Xbox 360 Elite for less than £200.

We liked

Even though we don't like the aesthetics of the design, the smaller size is great – at last, here's a PS3 console that isn't so big that it dominates any room you put it in.

We disliked

Conclusion

Over all, the PS3 Slim 250B is a phenomenal piece of kit. It's amazing that something so small can do so much. And so if you've just bought a new telly, that extra £70 you'd have to spend over the cost of an Xbox 360 Elite will be worth it just for the Blu-ray player and massive storage drive.

Review: Sony PSP Go

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:00:00 GMT

Sony's first PlayStation Portable PSP handheld gaming console was first announced at E3 way back in 2003 and first arrived in UK stores in September 2005.

Fast forward four and a bit years and Sony has finally released a pocket-sized version of the PSP, dropping the hugely unpopular Universal Media Disc (UMD) format in favour of digital downloads via its online store.

The PSP was Sony's attempt to capitalise on the massive popularity of its PlayStation 2 while moving across into a new market – and one that was pretty much owned by its number one competitor in the gaming space, Nintendo.

And while it's easy with the benefit of hindsight to say that Nintendo's 'disruptive' strategy with its lower-cost, dual touch-screen device has proven to be far more popular than Sony's notably higher-spec and costlier option, the truth is that Sony has still managed to carve out a significant market for itself with the sleeker, faster and sexier PSP.

Perhaps the major problem with both the original models of the PSP, as well as pretty much all of Nintendo's various iterations of the DS in the last five years (including the latest DSi refresh), has been that while they can properly be described as portable handheld consoles, they couldn't really be described as truly 'pocket friendly'.

Unless you favour cargo pants with immense-O-pocket styling.

Until now, that is, because the most immediate benefit of Sony's PSP Go is the fact that it's tiny enough to easily fit into the pocket of a loose-fitting pair of jeans, without too much of an embarrassing bulge.

If you're a gamer who likes to rock the skinny-jeaned look, then you're still not going to shoehorn the PSP Go into your pockets.

But fashion faux-pas aside, what's the deal with Sony's new £225 price-tag for its latest bit of kit?

As numerous people have pointed out to us since we obtained a review sample of the UMD-free handheld, you can almost get a new PS3 Slim for that price. So why would you opt to buy this tiddler instead?

You might choose to buy it because you want to put some serious time in on your commutes to work this winter with the new Gran Turismo, Motorstorm: Arctic Edge or FIFA 10, (all of which we can heartily recommend).

If you do, then the next thing you'll immediately notice, after the obvious decrease in width of the PSP Go, is the fact that while the 3.8-inch screen is just a smidgeon smaller than a PSP-3000, the colours and screen-brightness have been ever-so-slightly improved.

Add to this the fact that the controls are now hidden away in a slider that pulls out from underneath the screen whenever you want to start playing (or viewing a movie), and you can see how Sony's product designers have so impressively reduced the size and weight of the console.

Yet while the Go's screen is noticeably improved and the hidden-away controls are a clear design win, there are a few minor gripes that we had in relation to Sony's ongoing march towards miniaturisation.

Firstly, there's no option to remove the battery, so you're going to have to ensure that you're no further than three to four hours of gaming time away from a power point.

Not too bad for daily use, but a killer blow if you're on a long-haul flight, perhaps.

Also, for those gentlemen with larger hands, the squeezing of the D-pad and analogue nub into a much smaller space might well prove to be a deal-breaker. Basically, if you have big hands, we would recommend you get at least a half an hour of demo (or borrow) time with Sony's new console before you consider buying.

Still, we did fare far better in terms of overall finger and thumb control and dexterity with the Sony PSP Go, when compared with Nintendo's latest DSi.

Secondly, and this really is the main reason why you may (or may not) choose to invest your £225, downloading games, demos, movies and trailers from the PlayStation Store via your PC or PS3 is pretty straightforward.

But if you have a stack of older UMD games that aren't being made available on the PS Store, then you are going to be a bit scuppered. And we imagine there aren't many gamers out there who will be happy carrying around two PSPs with them, to overcome these issues.

Sony's new PSP Go is a beautifully designed bit of kit for gaming on the go and it certainly boasts that all-important wow-factor if you enjoy impressing your mates with genuinely new and innovative tech.

We liked:

While the slider screen initially seems like it might be a little frail, the decent build-quality means that you can happily throw this into your bag or jeans pocket without worrying too much about breakage.

The size is just about perfect for a handheld console – Sony has achieved an almost perfect balance between portability and functionality for gaming and this fits in your pocket better than any other handheld on the market.

Sony's downloadable game store works well either via your PS3 or PC, with a full copy of Gran Turismo (weighing in at just over 1GB) taking no longer than 30 minutes to download on a half-decent broadband connection.

The Bluetooth tethering function is superb – letting you hook up to the internet via your mobile phone and letting you use a wireless headset to Skype with.

We disliked:

After around half an hour of playing with your shiny new Sony toy you're going to have to reach for the duster and pledge, because while the piano-black, glossy finish looks the part, it's very easily smudged by clammy hands.

The cost at launch is nothing less than ridiculous! At an RRP of £225 you could almost afford to buy a new PS3 Slim with the Uncharted 2 bundle – not to mention Sony's penchant for expensive accessorising, with cases and straps and the like all set to cost you even more.

Luckily, retailers are already slashing this price to a more favourable £199, so make sure you shop around.

Another gripe is that there are still no real killer-apps when compared with Nintendo's DS Lite/DSi.

Our favourite PSP games are generally a few years old – and we keep returning to Ridge Racer 2, Lumines 2 and the like. Not a good sign. Gran Turismo is not enough.

Sony also needs to work on the PSP Go's battery life. Without the option of replacing your battery and with only around only 3-4 hours constant gaming on a full charge, this isn't a very useful device for long trips where you are away from a power point.

The lack of UMD-to-download programme for older games is sure to put off a lot of current PSP gamers, who will not want to buy a console that doesn't offer them a way of playing all of their favourite games.

Verdict:

With all of the above criticisms taken into consideration, this is still the best commercially available handheld gaming console on the market.

It feels, looks and plays better than older versions of the PSP and in most ways better than Nintendo's DSi.

Of course, the major issue that's going to really decide whether or not the PSP Go has a long-term sustainable life beyond Christmas 2009, is whether or not third party publishers decide to put their all-important development budgets behind the machine – because Nintendo unarguably has the edge when it comes to winning handheld game content.

And while Gran Turismo is a superb game, it's simply not enough when compared with the software on offer from the house of Mario, Zelda and Metroid.

Content, as the hoary old cliché goes, is king. Sony's new PSP Minis might well prove to be mildly diverting and cheap gaming snacks, but we need to see more quality, full-length AAA-titles in 2010 to be confident that the PSP is still a contender.

Overall, if you're a fan of Sony products, you're unlikely to wince (too much) at that unnecessarily-high launch price.

With the in-built Bluetooth, you can sync with your mobile phone (and use it to tether your PSP Go to the internet – natch!) or sync it to a wireless headset, which we found is particularly useful for Skype-ing.

You can also stuff plenty of games and demos on the 16GB of internal flash memory to keep you going for weeks on end. And if you still need more, you can put it all on a Memory Stick Micro (M2) card.

Related Links

Review: Dingoo A320 Micro Game Station

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:20:00 GMT

Launching in China earlier this year, the Dingoo Digital A320 is an attempt to "break the monopoly of foreign brands into the game market." Dubbed 'China's PSP', units are now slowly making their way to the West, and gamers in the UK can now pick up a Dingoo for under £70.

Destined to remain an underground console, the Dingoo A320 is building momentum thanks to its bargain price, out-of-the-box support for classic emulators and a vibrant development scene – thanks to its open source nature.

Enthusiast developers have already coded a wealth of applications, with attentions now focused on Dingux – Linux port, which opens up the console to further possibilities.

What's in the box?

Available in a choice of black or white, the Dingoo A320 packs in 4GB of built-in memory, with a miniSD slot for a further 4GB.

STORAGE: the Dingoo takes MiniSD cards - not a popular format on these shores but cards are nevertheless available

The console also plays your digital video files, a contains a digital recorder, FM radio and TV-out connection.

And if you can stop chuckling at Dingoo's pidgin English packaging, you'll find a charger, mini USB, headphones and composite TV lead inside – accessories that other games companies charge extra for.

Dingoo has bundled several of its own Chinese-developed games on the A320, but the console comes alive by shamelessly ripping off the foreign games they claim to fight against.

Through its variety of built-in emulators, the Dingoo plays over 8000 classic games originally played on Nintendo and Sega consoles such NES, SNES, MegaDrive, as well as arcade platforms.

A dream console for fans of classic gaming formats, the A320 is a nightmare for legal teams across the globe.

The Dingoo is not supplied with any of the classic games it plays for good reason – the rom images themselves are illegal. Whilst you can easily find these games in darker corners of the internet, you run the risk of being saddled with a massive fine if you download them.

Is that a Dingoo in your pocket?

It was on long journeys that the Dingoo made its mark as a credible handheld. Whilst the A320 isn't gifted with the huggable ergonomics of its rivals, it weighs in as the smallest handheld, measuring just 12cm across and 6cm high. The Dingoo happily fits in your pocket.

With its tiny 320x240 QVGA screen, the Dingoo delivers performance close to its quoted seven hours of battery life, even when regularly switching between the console's in-built Aladdin's cave of features.

You look familiar

As far as the interface goes, never before has a console been graced with such a shameless Sony XMB rip-off. Yep, it's very very similar the the XrossMediaBar interface found on the Sony PS3, PSP and new Sony Bravia TVs.

Imitation is the greatest form of flattery, as the A320's front-end allows you to easily find the function you want to use within seconds of switching the console on – despite Dingoo's amusing use of English.

As a sub £70 MP4 player, the Dingoo punches way above its weight, hiding some delights behind occasionally impenetrable instructions.

Spend time with the complex features of the A320 and your patience to be rewarded. The console makes light work of DVD rips and other commonly-used online video formats, with the bundled TV-out cable making it a viable source of entertainment on the road, and delivered performance comparable to any budget media player on a hotel TV.

WORM: one of the less-than-inspiring legal games that comes with the Dingoo

On the audio side, you'll find some surprises, with APE and FLAC lossless audio codecs rubbing shoulders with the usual formats. Dingoo also promises to support additional codecs with forthcoming firmware updates.

Gaming

Dingoo's wish to make a viable Chinese gaming format are questionable, as the bundled software is risible. Graphically uninspiring racing title Ultimate Drift would reduce any gamer into tears of laughter as their rally car leaps to 1000mph. Michael Schumacher would be proud of the car's ability to perform a full 360 degree spin without loss of speed.

With the A320's stated 3D power, the first-party software seldom raises the console beyond JAVA mobile standard. Top-rated Chinese games won't be high of the list of gamers in the western world who purchase the Dingoo for its emulation and open-source nature.

Legalities already discussed, the A320 emulates a wealth of long-dead gaming hardware, including Nintendo's NES, Gameboy Advance and Super Nintendo, as well as Sega's Megadrive. Surprisingly, you'll also get support for several arcade formats, the Neo Geo and Capcom's CPS1 and CPS2, home to legendary coin-ops like Final Fight, Metal Slug and Street Fighter II.

The A320 ships with first generation versions of their in-house coded emulators, and this shows. Whilst gamers report NES and Gameboy Advance emulation as perfect, mixed results are found on other platforms. Dingoo promises further updates to the emulation software.

Open Sesame

If a commendable set of built-in emulators and Dingoo's promise of continued support and improvements doesn't tempt you, the fast-growing Dingoo community should.

The budget alternative to other open-source consoles like Korea's GP2X Wiz, Dingoo development has been opened up with huge possibilities, with a vibrant online community already investigating the quirky abilities of its silicon – successfully porting popular emulators and applications.

Development of the dual booting Dingux allows the A320 to switch between its stock firmware and a fully-fledged version of Linux. Early days of development have already seen a Dingux version of MAME4ALL running on the console. Offering support for over 2000 arcade roms it silences many of the complaints raised by users over the console's built-in emulators.

We liked

Long battery life
Loads of video and audio formats supported
Vibrant development scene – Linux port available
Emulation out-of-the-box
TV-out – for gaming and media on the move
Value packed – all accessories included

Dislikes

Square-edges means discomfort whilst gaming
Varying results from built-in emulators
Appalling 'first party' support
Quirky firmware

A flawed gem, the A320 offers a tantalising glimpse into the moment that Chinese consoles began to grow up.

Whilst the Dingoo keeps one paw dipped in China's murky past of copyright melting rip-offs, it packs an intriguing level of features into a reasonably priced pocket-sized console.

The Dingoo is not for casual gamers though – mainstream consoles never launch with the quirks that blight the A320.

In a routine session with the console it is common to see a user lurch from love to undying hatred and back in a single breath.

That said, the Dingoo impresses on many levels and the comments of enthusiast developers point to a very exciting future, thousands of miles away from its homeland.

Review: Nintendo DSi

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:05:00 GMT

TechRadar has been playing with the Nintendo DSi - the latest version of the massively popular handheld (which launches in the UK this week) - ever since we managed to get our hands on a Japanese import machine late last year.

Ninty's handheld has been ever-so-slightly improved in a number of ways, with the addition of a couple of new features such as two in-built low-res 0.3-megapixel digi-cameras and much improved music and audio recording and playback options.

See our Nintendo DSi XL review

While the DS Lite seemed in many ways an almost perfect handheld when we first saw it back at E3 2006, Nintendo's product designers have, impressively, managed to improve upon it by introducing a brighter screen, a fingerprint-friendly matte-finish and slimming down the form factor a tad. The DSi looks and feels fresh and modern and – interestingly – a little less like a games console than its predecessors.

Good value for gamers?

If you are a gamer then you probably want to know what would entice you to shell out another £150 on a new handheld, when the likelihood is that you already have a DS Lite that you are fairy happy with already. Is the addition of two low-res cameras and a few quirky new audio features really worth trading the old machine in for?

Well, if that were all the DSi was offering the gamer, we would have to advise you to stick with the DS Lite (though if you are still gaming on an original grey first-gen DS 'phat' it really is time to upgrade!).

Hardcore gamers may well initially pooh-pooh the latest offering from Nintendo, as there are no major AAA-games on the release schedule for 2009 that you really 'need' a DSi to play. And even though the recently announced Zelda (out later this year) is set to offer some camera-based features, Ninty has been quick to reassure gamers that these are not going to be essential to the gameplay. They are, in all likelihood going to be little more than fun gimmicks - much like waggling the Wii Remote to brandish your sword in the last Wii version of Zelda was. Fun, but hardly game-changing.

However, fear not fanboys, because the real unique selling point here is that, in addition to the above-mentioned improved audio/camera features, a slightly brighter screen and the removal of that old unwieldy GBA slot in favour of SD card support, it is far, far easier to get online with this latest handheld, with the DSi packing in an Opera browser to allow internet-on-the-go. Well, wherever you can find an open Wi-Fi connection, that is…

DSi's killer app

Most importantly, this means that it is going to be much easier to download demos and buy new games or fun utilities from Nintendo's new DSi store. This is really the DSi's killer app. And the fact that Nintendo UK plans to make the DSi store into, effectively, a virtual console system (a la the Wii's weekly game download service), with weekly updates offering instant access to older Gameboy, Gameboy Colour and DS titles alongside new, quirky minigames is why gamers are going to be happy that they made the trade-in.

Nintendo wants the DSi to encourage gamers away from carts and physical media towards buying downloads. Simply store your new downloaded games and utilities on the 256 MB onboard memory or an SD card. Which, as well as being loads easier for the consumer, also has the extra added bonus of combating the rampant piracy problem faced by Nintendo and its partners on DS.

Finally, if you are still not convinced, it is also worth noting that the first batch of DSi-specific games for download includes Wario: Photograph (imagine Sony's EyeToy, but on a handheld, and loads more fun) which – in our opinion – is reason enough to buy one!

Related Links

Nintendo UK - DSi

Review: Sony PlayStation 3 80GB

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:01:00 GMT

When the Sony PS3 launched way back in November 2006 (March 2007 in the UK), even the harshest of critics couldn't have predicted the hostile greeting it would get. It was a baptism in a fiery nuclear inferno - and it goes without saying that it wasn't exactly the reception Sony was expecting.

When Sony finally gave birth to the finished console, it was extremely expensive and frankly, it wasn't a great package. No wonder sales in the early days were so phenomenally poor.

However, 18 months since the initial UK launch, the PlayStation 3 is a different beast entirely. A glut of regular firmware updates and a number of new models and price cuts has seen the console improve exponentially while the price has tumbled.

And here we are today, the 60GB model has been retired, the 40GB version has come and gone, and so here's the brand new 80GB model.

Value for money

It costs £299 which is about £125 cheaper than the original launch price. And what you're getting is a fundamentally better games console.

There are some bits of hardware that have been trimmed off this model - the original PS3 had a chip for backwards compatibility with PS2 games, as well as more USB ports and a front-mounted card reader. These features are gone now, but despite that, the 80GB PS3 is a fantastic games console.

And really, to describe the PlayStation 3 as a mere games console is not doing it justice. It's a super-slick gaming powerhouse with a built-in media centre you have to see to believe.

So let's start from the beginning. As a games console, the 80GB PlayStation 3 is fantastic. Powered by IBM's magical Cell processor, it's arguably more powerful than the Xbox 360.

As a result, the potential regarding the future of gaming on the PS3 is enormous. The full-HD 1080p graphics are already looking superb, and that will only get better over time as game developers get better at grappling with the PS's unique back-end code.

The mandatory 80GB hard drive inside the PS3 is a Godsend. That's because if a game can be installed on the HDD, it's not going to be held back by having to read from the sluggish Blu-ray drive.

It also means that games that are installed to the hard drive can be loaded quicker. Despite the enormity of GTA IV on the PS3, there are no loading screens beyond the initial start-up.

Universal standards

And the hard drive itself is a standard notebook one, which means if it ever failed or if you wanted to install one with a larger capacity, you could easily do it.

And that's one of the best things about the PS3 - it supports open standards and so is compatible with the same kind of hardware as your PC.

For a start, it's got built-in Bluetooth for the SIXAXIS and DualShock 3 controllers. And that Bluetooth can be used with pretty much any Bluetooth device you can think of.

It'll communicate with your phone. It'll sync with your Bluetooth headset, enabling you to chat with your friends when playing multiplayer games. It's compatible with Bluetooth mice and keyboards meaning you can type without having to use the controller.

The Xbox 360 doesn't have Bluetooth. Nor does it have built-in Wireless B/G networking, which the PS3 has.

So even though the 80GB PS3 is slightly more expensive than the Xbox 360 Elite, it's good value and the extra cash is absolutely justifiable.

The PlayStation 3's main trump card, though, is its built-in Blu-ray drive. Don't underestimate the inclusion of this feature. By combining a Blu-ray player with the most powerful games machine ever created, you're essentially getting two £300 devices for the price of one.

Plus, the regular PS3 firmware updates keep the Blu-ray player inside the console completely up to date with all the newest standards and features. You can't say that about the vast majority of other BD players our there.

DVD playback is also fantastic. The PS3 uses its Cell processor to upscale DVDs to 1080p high definition, so even your DVD movies will look fantastic on an HD display. The Cell's enormous processing power can also be used to clean up fuzzy, blocky or grainy parts in DVDs or downloaded movie files.

And while we're on the topic of movie files, the PS3 is now compatible with most popular media formats, pictures, audio and video. DivX playback is a recent firmware addition, meaning videos downloaded from the internet can now be played on the PS3.

And you can do that in two ways - you can copy them to a USB storage device and plug it in, or your can stream them from your PC over your home network.

All media can be accessed in this way, which means if you've got a lot of photos, music and videos on your computer, you can view them on your PS3 as though they were stored locally.

Screaming fans

One of the biggest drawbacks with the Xbox 360 is that it makes a lot of noise. The internal parts generate so much heat that the Xbox requires large cooling fans, which rotate at such a speed as to create a perpetual drone. When playing games and watching DVD movies this noise gets worse.

The PS3 in contrast make no such noise. If you're playing a game or watching a movie, you won't hear any annoying buzz noises unless you hit the mute button - and even then you'll need a pair of razor sharp ears.

So finally, let's talk about value for money. As previously mentioned, you're getting a lot more than just a games console here.

You've also got a future-proof Blu-ray player; a web browser; a music, video and picture viewer; an upscaling DVD player; a social networking hub; and you can even install Linux on it. Plus, this model now comes with a DualShock 3 controller.

The PS3 is a brilliant, brilliant games console that will only get better over time. The PSN (PlayStation Network) is not yet up to the standard of Xbox Live, but it's on its way.

And as soon as this is brought up to date, the PS3 will surely be the most desirable HD console on the market.

Write your own review of the 80GB PlayStation 3

Review: Microsoft Xbox 360 with NXE

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:38:00 GMT

The Xbox 360 was the first mass-market hi-def entertainment system to hit the market, and now three years later it's hit a price point truly accessible to every household - credit crunch or not.

A few months ago Microsoft reduced the price of its console's three SKUs - Arcade, Pro and Elite - with almost the entire trio scaling under the £199.99 mark.

Xbox 360 Elite, the 120GB beast complete with a slick black finish, is now on shelves for an impressive £229.99 - £50 cheaper and with more memory than the comparatively-lacklustre 20GB machine launched in 2005.

The HDD-less Arcade console meanwhile, which is packed with a 256MB memory card, wireless pad and five Xbox Live Arcade games, is in the shops for an incredible £129.99 - that's almost a whole £200 cheaper than a PlayStation 3. Today, Xbox 360 is undoubtedly the best value HD games console on the market.

New Xbox Experience

"Accessible" seems to be the buzzword in the Xbox 360's story up to 2009. From Wednesday 19th November the completely redesigned backend interface, the 'New Xbox Experience' begins streaming onto consoles worldwide as a free, mandatory update.

The new interface is smoother, slicker-looking and yes, makes accessing HD content a lot easier for the ever-lucrative expanded audience, a group which Microsoft's has firmly in its sights this Christmas.

The redesign isn't too dissimilar from Windows Media Player; boxes of content slide elegantly on a horizontal line, while indexes such as your Friends list and Video Marketplace - currently the only games console digital download service for movies in Europe - are selected on a vertical list.

As a whole, it's far more well catered for hi-def displays than the original Xbox 360 backend. Menu boxes and the amount of information displayed by the console's interface is expanded and spread out in higher resolutions , something that the old dashboard disappointingly lacked.

It looks and works wonderfully, and is certainly a world above the cluttered, sometime sluggish dashboard of the launch 360.

There's also a ton of feature additions that improve the Xbox 360 as a whole; retail games can now be installed to the HDD for drastically shortened load times, and of course less noise coming from the fan vent on the side of the box.

The Xbox 360 Guide also seems to open faster and browsing through your movie and games collection in the iPod Cover View-style menu is effortless. Mii-like Avatars are also on hand to add personality to the animated backgrounds, which can be stunningly customised by new themes available on Xbox Live Marketplace.

Head to head

So it's looking slicker and sporting an incredibly attractive new price point, but how does the Xbox 360 compare to the pricier, more technically plump PlayStation 3 after three years on the market? The answer is; very well.

The Xbox 360 may lack the built-in Wi-Fi and Blu-ray drive of Sony's console (and in fact no HD disc playback at all with the ill-fated HD DVD add-on in the bin) but with currently the only games console movie download service in Europe, and now the ability to install games to hard disk, for gaming especially there's little reason to feel stung by the Xbox's lack of Blu'.

The mass of high-quality titles in the Xbox 360's game library alone too - both on disc and digital - make it a real force to be reckoned with as far as gaming goes - and the 360 versions of many multi-format titles such as Fallout 3, which suffers graphical problems on Sony's box, are still coming out on top.

But it's often forgotten that Microsoft's console is also an excellent media extender. You can share files from any PC running Windows XP or Vista, and Windows Media Player interchanges media files such as video and photos fluidly and with ease.

Every Xbox 360 model now also includes a built-in HDMI port, and the middle-ground Pro model has had an HDD memory bump to 60GB for no extra cost, making the box even more competitive with the PS3 where hardware and HD content is concerned.

Let's also not forget Xbox Live, which boasts over 10 million subscribers and is hands-down the best online service on a games console.

Even after various component revisions, the actual hardware is admittedly still slightly noisy, and lacks the selection of full-1080p disc games boasted by the PlayStation 3.

But overall the Xbox 360 is a stunning HD games console at a price point that's impossible for any gaming or movie enthusiast not to have underneath their television.

Microsoft Xbox 360 with NXE

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:16:00 GMT

The Xbox 360 was the first mass-market hi-def entertainment system to hit the market, and now three years later it's hit a price point truly accessible to every household - credit crunch or not.

A few months ago Microsoft reduced the price of its console's three SKUs - Arcade, Pro and Elite - with almost the entire trio scaling under the £199.99 mark.

Xbox 360 Elite, the 80GB beast complete with a slick black finish, is now on shelves for an impressive £229.99 - £50 cheaper and with more memory than the comparatively-lacklustre 20GB machine launched in 2005.

New Xbox Experience

It looks and works wonderfully, and is certainly a world above the cluttered, sometime sluggish dashboard of the launch 360.

Head to head

Let's also not forget Xbox Live, which boasts over 10 million subscribers and is hands-down the best online service on a games console.

Even after various component revisions, the actual hardware is admittedly still slightly noisy, and lacks the selection of full-1080p disc games boasted by the PlayStation 3.

But overall the Xbox 360 is a stunning HD games console at a price point that's impossible for any gaming or movie enthusiast not to have underneath their television.

Review: Nintendo DS Lite

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

A lot has happened in the three and half years since the Nintendo DS made its UK debut.

We've seen a whole new generation of home consoles in the shape of the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

Then there was the Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) - a handheld that teamed superior on-the-go gaming performance with the ability to playback audio and video files too. And now we have game-toting multi-tasking iPhone and iPod touch.

So where does that leave the Nintendo DS?

The good stuff

At its UK launch in March 2005, the Nintendo DS had three great strengths:

1) It was truly portable. Its 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm dimensions and light 218g weight meant you really could stick it in your shirt pocket.

2) It had some brilliantly innovative games and gaming features - the mind-melting tasks found in Professor Kawashima's Brain Training, or innovative use of the built-in microphone or Hotel Dusk: Room 215, for example.

3) Long playing times - up to 19 hours at minimum brightness setting.

Nintendo cleverly also made a virtue of the DS's compact size, with two colour displays - one in the lid, flanked by stereo speakers, for the visuals; and a second touchscreen in the base for certain gameplay controls which could be accessed using a stylus, or a finger.

Much of Nintendo DS Lite's success - it's chalked up 20 million sales in Europe since 2005 - is down to the quality of its games.

Compared to Sony's PSP (which arrived in September 2005), the Nintendo DS's games catalogue has been broader, more innovative and exciting.

It hasn't seem to matter than DS's graphics performance was sub-par, or that it relied on horrible chip music and reams of tiny on-screen text.

That's probably because, like the Wii, much of the DS's appeal lies with casual as well as hardcore gamers - just look at the range of titles obviously aimed at girls and young women, for example.

Where it's all gone wrong

Despite all of its innovative features and games, time hasn't been very kind to the Nintendo DS.

It's easily bested on spec by rivals like the PlayStation Portable and iPod touch, both of which have been revamped in the years since the DS made its debut.

One key differentiator is the size of the twin displays on the Nintendo compared to its rivals. The DS has two 7.62cm displays offering a non-widescreen 4:3 aspect ratio; the new iPod touch boasts an 8.9cm widescreen display; while the PSP packs a 10.9cm widescreen display.

What a waste

Sadly Nintendo could have easily added a bigger main display from the get-go. Even a casual glance at the DS reveals vast amounts of wasted real estate surround the main display - suggesting that Nintendo could have - should have - snuck in a widescreen version without increasing the DS's overall size.

No doubt this was due to the need to hit a £99.99 price point, but having such a small screen also means you squint a lot - not good.

Grim graphics

The small screen size also belies another increasingly painful failing of the Nintendo DS. Graphically it easily bested by the PlayStation Portable in late 2005, but even the Apple iPhone and iPod touch now give it graphical going over.

Just try comparing the graphics of Lego Star Wars titles on both the DS and the PSP and you'll realise what a huge gulf exists between the two. Crap graphics plus tiny display does not a great gaming experience make.

The Nintendo DS interface also looks rather inadequate compared to the iPhone.

While you wouldn't want to dispense with the DS's physical keypad and control buttons, adding motion sensors like those in the iPhone - or even the Wiimote come to that - would add a whole new dimension to gaming on the DS.

Finger tip control on the touchscreen, perhaps with haptic feedback, would also help bring the DS up to date.

So what should Nintendo do now?

Here are seven things we'd like to see in the next Nintendo DS:

1) A bigger, higher resolution display
2) Much better graphics performance
3) Bluetooth A2DP for wireless audio,
4) iPhone-like touch controls and motion sensing
5) World-class web-surfing and email capability via Wi-Fi
6) Better sound to match that bigger screen
7) The ability to sync games and other content to a Mac or PC

Nintendo DS Lite

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

A lot has happened in the three and half years since the Nintendo DS made its UK debut.

We've seen a whole new generation of home consoles in the shape of the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

So where does that leave the Nintendo DS?

The good stuff

At its UK launch in March 2005, the Nintendo DS had three great strengths:

1) It was truly portable. Its 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm dimensions and light 218g weight meant you really could stick it in your shirt pocket.

3) Long playing times - up to 19 hours at minimum brightness setting.

Much of Nintendo DS Lite's success - it's chalked up 20 million sales in Europe since 2005 - is down to the quality of its games.

Compared to Sony's PSP (which arrived in September 2005), the Nintendo DS's games catalogue has been broader, more innovative and exciting.

It hasn't seem to matter than DS's graphics performance was sub-par, or that it relied on horrible chip music and reams of tiny on-screen text.

That's probably because, like the Wii, much of the DS's appeal lies with casual as well as hardcore gamers - just look at the range of titles obviously aimed at girls and young women, for example.

Where it's all gone wrong

Despite all of its innovative features and games, time hasn't been very kind to the Nintendo DS.

It's easily bested on spec by rivals like the PlayStation Portable and iPod touch, both of which have been revamped in the years since the DS made its debut.

What a waste

No doubt this was due to the need to hit a £99.99 price point, but having such a small screen also means you squint a lot - not good.

Grim graphics

The Nintendo DS interface also looks rather inadequate compared to the iPhone.

Finger tip control on the touchscreen, perhaps with haptic feedback, would also help bring the DS up to date.

So what should Nintendo do now?

Here are seven things we'd like to see in the next Nintendo DS:

Nintendo DS Lite

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

A lot has happened in the three and half years since the Nintendo DS made its UK debut.

We've seen a whole new generation of home consoles in the shape of the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

So where does that leave the Nintendo DS?

The good stuff

At its UK launch in March 2005, the Nintendo DS had three great strengths:

1) It was truly portable. Its 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm dimensions and light 218g weight meant you really could stick it in your shirt pocket.

3) Long playing times - up to 19 hours at minimum brightness setting.

Much of Nintendo DS Lite's success - it's chalked up 20 million sales in Europe since 2005 - is down to the quality of its games.

Compared to Sony's PSP (which arrived in September 2005), the Nintendo DS's games catalogue has been broader, more innovative and exciting.

It hasn't seem to matter than DS's graphics performance was sub-par, or that it relied on horrible chip music and reams of tiny on-screen text.

That's probably because, like the Wii, much of the DS's appeal lies with casual as well as hardcore gamers - just look at the range of titles obviously aimed at girls and young women, for example.

Where it's all gone wrong

Despite all of its innovative features and games, time hasn't been very kind to the Nintendo DS.

It's easily bested on spec by rivals like the PlayStation Portable and iPod touch, both of which have been revamped in the years since the DS made its debut.

What a waste

No doubt this was due to the need to hit a £99.99 price point, but having such a small screen also means you squint a lot - not good.

Grim graphics

The Nintendo DS interface also looks rather inadequate compared to the iPhone.

Finger tip control on the touchscreen, perhaps with haptic feedback, would also help bring the DS up to date.

So what should Nintendo do now?

Here are seven things we'd like to see in the next Nintendo DS:

Nintendo DS Lite

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:30:00 GMT

A lot has happened in the three and half years since the Nintendo DS made its UK debut.

We've seen a whole new generation of home consoles in the shape of the Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii.

So where does that leave the Nintendo DS?

The good stuff

At its UK launch in March 2005, the Nintendo DS had three great strengths:

1) It was truly portable. Its 133mm x 73.9mm x 21.5mm dimensions and light 218g weight meant you really could stick it in your shirt pocket.

3) Long playing times - up to 19 hours at minimum brightness setting.

Much of Nintendo DS Lite's success - it's chalked up 20 million sales in Europe since 2005 - is down to the quality of its games.

Compared to Sony's PSP (which arrived in September 2005), the Nintendo DS's games catalogue has been broader, more innovative and exciting.

It hasn't seem to matter than DS's graphics performance was sub-par, or that it relied on horrible chip music and reams of tiny on-screen text.

That's probably because, like the Wii, much of the DS's appeal lies with casual as well as hardcore gamers - just look at the range of titles obviously aimed at girls and young women, for example.

Where it's all gone wrong

Despite all of its innovative features and games, time hasn't been very kind to the Nintendo DS.

It's easily bested on spec by rivals like the PlayStation Portable and iPod touch, both of which have been revamped in the years since the DS made its debut.

What a waste

No doubt this was due to the need to hit a £99.99 price point, but having such a small screen also means you squint a lot - not good.

Grim graphics

The Nintendo DS interface also looks rather inadequate compared to the iPhone.

Finger tip control on the touchscreen, perhaps with haptic feedback, would also help bring the DS up to date.

So what should Nintendo do now?

Here are seven things we'd like to see in the next Nintendo DS: