Fog your computer screen with a little Steam

Gamers find many different ways to play the video games they love. Some play on consoles like Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii in front of their wall-sized HD TV's while others play in front of a PC monitor with their keyboard and mouse in hand ready to raid another dungeon or kick some zombie hide.

The console gamers have their own platforms to play on, being the systems themselves, but what do PC gamers have? They have the famous and most used platform, Steam. Steam is an online video game platform that hosts video game downloads such as full games, demos, trailers, screenshots and a wide variety of information on the games it has available. Steam users create an online account, download the desktop program, and that is it, time to shop.

Speaking of shopping, buying a game on Steam is as simple as putting in a valid credit or debit card information, placing a game in your virtual "cart" and checking out. One can buy a game for them self or they have an alternate option to buy a game for someone as a gift and send it to them via email or through the Steam platform itself. Once the purchased game downloads, which can take from 20 to a couple of hours for a game to download depending on the size of the install, gamers can be on their way towards playing some fantastic games such as Plants vs. Zombies, Peggle Deluxe, Fallout 3, Borderlands, and Batman: Arkham Asylum.
Games run just as good or even better than they do if they were on an install disk. On a Lenovo Thinkpad model T400 laptop with 4 gigs of ram and 140 gig hard drive, games run fairly well. Certain games like Fallout 3 or Borderlands might need a better PC for them to run smoothly, but they worked very proficiently while smaller games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Peggle Deluxe ran extremely smooth with the occasional slow down, but those are few and far between.

There are other platforms such as Direct-2-Drive and Amazon, which is not really considered a platform but it still allows gamers to download online versions of a large variety of video games. Steam still tops them off however due to the great deals they release every weekend which can start from 10 percent off a game with bonus content to even 50 percent off a pack of video games. Black Friday gave gamers a glimpse at the best deals on Steam that included a pack of games that totaled almost $400 but it was cut by nearly 75 percent.

Some PC gamers don’t have the luxury of owning top notch rigs that allow them to play almost realistic games such as Fallout 3 or Crysis, but they do all have a steady and stable platform to play video games together as a growing and powerful community, and it is known as Steam.

Announcement: no more Nintendo DS reviews

Why are there no more Nintendo DS reviews?

I sold my Nintendo DS Lite and all the games I had for it in order to take my girlfriend out on a date before I left for my university. I will still be making my PC video game reviews and maybe I might review some of the great applications I find online on the blog and in the student campus newspaper.

We shall see what happens in the future times but for now, The Random Robo Profile is back in action with the loss of a great friend. R.I.P Nintendo DS Lite. We will miss you.

Apple: Bias against competition creates competition

Apple is one of the leading providers in multimedia. They’ve created some of the sleekest and most powerful laptops and desktops. They’ve developed such gadgetry as Apple TV and the numerous versions of iPods.

The iPod Touch and iPhone has allowed developers to create applications that change the way we view reality and live our daily lives. Developers can create almost anything on the little devices such as social networking apps like Facebook, MySpace, Bump, and Twitterrific or video games like Peggle, Madden 10, Drop 7, and Karmastar. It allows users to manage their lives in the palm of their hands.

Recently, Apple has been denying some apps. It has been questioned by most gadget enthusiasts, and it appears that Apple may be biased towards competition.
Google voice, one of the many apps Google has created, allows users to make phones calls through a generated number. Google tried to release a version of the app onto the iPhone, but was shot down by Apple, who decides what applications go onto their iTunes App Store. Every app has to go through Apple’s screening process before being approved or denied. Apple not only denied the application, but pulled other already approved apps like it. This disapproval of the app could lean heavily on the fact that the app would have been competition against the main functionality of the iPhone.

Apple also rejected a dictionary application, Ninjawords, for not meeting the required rating settings, which required the app to have a 17+ rating. Apple has some fault in this because they were not clear about the rules and regulations about their censorship and rating policies.

Apple has denied applications which do not coincide with their own application functionality or accidentally went past their policies, even when it is partially their fault. Apple will, however, release a number of fart-emulating applications and apps with almost naked women in them, such as “Attack of the Zombie Bikini Babes from Outer Space” or “Asian Boobs”.

As Apple denies other companies’ apps from their devices, the companies are either looking at other spaces to place their virtual products or even making their own platforms. Research In Motion has their Blackberry App World for Blackberry users. Palm is working on their own app pool for developers to swim through. Windows is also producing an app store of their own inside Windows Mobile. They are even attempting to capture iPhone users by gaining popular iPhone apps onto their own platform.

Apple will still stay around the top and it probably won’t lose a massive amount of customers. Apple has, however, not only given incentive for current users to switch to another platform to find their app needs, it also put itself on the same playing field as other top media companies like Microsoft, Palm, and RIM.
Varity has become a bigger name in the app industry and everybody is working to give you, the customer, just about anything.

The Key is within your Heart: Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days Review

How would you feel if you found out you’re secretly a mirror image of a person with a mind full of memories that are not yours? Roxas, one of the main characters in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, has to live with that reality every minute of his eventful life.

This new installment in the Kingdom Hearts timeline has you playing as Roxas, a copy of Sora, the main character within all of the Kingdom Hearts games before 385/2 Days, who is trying to find out about himself while unraveling the intent of Organization XIII and the search for Kingdom Hearts, which are the key to the Organization’s plan.

Game play is just like the Playstation 2 versions of Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. The controls are pretty solid: you move with the directional pad while attacking with A, jumping with Y, and navigating the menus with X. You control the camera with the R and L buttons. Touch screen integration is almost non-existent. There is nothing new to the game play, but for fans that enjoyed the style of controls in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, you will be pretty content with these.

There are some new features in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, such as the new panel system. Before, the player would have to go into different menus to equip abilities, magic, and equipment. Now, players use panels for everything. These panels have slots where you put items and abilities you earn through missions. These slots are filled with abilities like fire, blizzard or thunder or roll, dodge and block. Items such as potions and elixers can be added. The successfulness of the mission depends on how well you’ve fitted your panels and with what skills you’ve given yourself.   

The missions are the meat of the game. You continue the story through missions which the Organization gives you as days go by. There are a variety of ways to play these missions, like search and destroy or sneak around town to grab intel before the civilians spot you. The game play in this title is enough to keep a hard core fan satisfied while keeping new comers a little confused.     

The graphics are pretty decent for a DS title. They are, at times, muddy in appearance, but overall moderate. The cut scenes themselves look like they came out of the PS2 titles and they also include voiceover which was something of a surprise.

The bond that drives the story is between Roxas, Axel, and Xion. The whole timeline between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts 2 has been pretty unclear so far, but now its revealed what occurs to the fourteenth member of Organization XIII and Roxas, along with his relationship with Axel.

 A person’s heart is what makes them a person, without it they are nobody. Kingdom Hearts 385/2 Days is a game about nobodies who are looking for a heart, while some are looking for a purpose. Kingdom Hearts fans who are looking for a deeper look at what really happened inside of Organization XIII and also want to see what happened between Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts 2 and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories will find a great experience in 358/2 Days.