Tag: Android

Ingress: The GPS Game That Gets You Off The Couch And Into An Alternate World

by Shane O'Hare

It was 1 A.M. and I was sitting on the couch watching some bad T.V. My Android phone clutched in front of my face, and my Reddit feed was scrolling across my eyes. The myriad of cat posts, angry atheists and white guilt racism was beginning to blur together. I was pondering whether to attempt sleep yet or not when I heard a deafening sound. *BABUNG*. My phone sounded a notification, ” You received a new Email! ” scrolled across my notification bar. I lazily tapped it not interested in what message awaited me. NIANTIC OPS soon displayed in the FROM field. ” Shit, what is happening now “, I literally said aloud. I opened up the message and read it. JakeAK had destroyed my portal mods and retook a portal for the resistance. I looked at the activity log and the clock, he wasn’t going to be there for much longer, so I stood up and wondered what my next move would be. My rabbit looked over at me, with that same disproving look I’ve seen countless times before.

 

You aren't about to do what I THINK you're going to do. You fucking nerd!
You aren’t about to do what I THINK you’re going to do. You fucking nerd!

 

I did. I got up, threw on clothes and ran outside. The 12 degree weather hit me hard in the face, I pulled my hat down and ran into my truck. I fired up my Ingress App and got my bearings. I saw the globe circling as it zoomed in on my location. I got to the dashboard and saw that I was almost out of XM. Dammit. I needed to fill up… maybe I am getting a little too far ahead of myself. Let’s go back to the beginning.

 

Ingress is an Android app that uses your GPS to connect you to an alternate reality. The story that goes along with it is that a mysterious energy source has been appearing all over the globe, XM. Along with this mysterious energy a race of aliens known as the Shapers have come to Earth. They have come with the intention of peace, to help us use this new energy but not everyone believes their motives. Soon a resistance has gathered up to stop the shapers from coming into our dimension, while a group of sympathizers known as the Enlightened have come to help the aliens. A war has broken out between the Resistance and the Enlightened.

 

The two sides are fighting over control points know as portals. Portals are real life locations that you have to physically go to and interact with. You can submit portals by taking a GPS tagged picture and sending it to the game creators. Some great portals are signs, statues and businesses. Players can put resonators and shields on the portals. Resonators range in levels from 1 to 8. 1 being the weakest and most common. The average level of resonators determines the portal level, which in turn determines the overall strength and range it can reach. Players can then hack active portals for items. If you hack one that is on your own side you getter better and more items but no experience.
If you get lucky hacking you can get a portal key. This let’s you recharge the portals energy remotely or connect other portals to it. The whole object of the game is to control more portals and link them. If you link enough portals that all connect into a closed off shape it creates a control area. The control area is valued in MUs or mind units. Its believes that this number is derived from population. The minds in the control field are the ” uninvolved ” citizens that will be more inclined to take your side. So the more minds the better!

 

Now to be able to do ANYTHING in Ingress you need XM. The mysterious energy. You can collect XM by walking or driving and picking up the crystals that appear on the map. How XM is created is still unclear but it is believed to be connected to mobile data usage. So apartments or cities usually have more around.

 

Now that you got the basic understanding let’s get back to our story.

 

I needed XM. I was extremely low, I had been remotely recharging a Portal in Anchorage hours before and had run out. I knew of a great cache of XM, The local AT&T store. So I put turned on my Zune, fired up the most recent episode of  Geekscape and drove off. Looking at the recent activity in the region chat I saw that a lot had been going on, Anchorage had been going through a lot of changes, portals being taken back and forth. With only two portals in a 20 mile radius of each other out in Wasilla, each 45 minute drive into “town” to go to a store, DJ a gig or just get some Mongolian food turns into an adventure. Seeing the different world on the phone is always thrilling.

 

I soon got to the AT&T store. It was covered in XM, I circled the building and filled my tanks and drove down the road to the portal. The Schwabenhof German pub was my target, well the heavily weathered sign at the bottom of the HILL to the pub. I pulled off on the side of the road and got a peak at the portal. JakeAK must have just hit Level 4 as this was the first time I had ever seen him post up Level 4 resonators. I opened up my Ingress Calculator and ran the numbers. Being only Level 3, I can only fire Level 3 and below weapons, the XMP bursters. I looked at the info and figured I could do it, if I got smart. The resonators circle around the portal, at the 8 different points of the compass, at about 40 meters from the center. I needed to be standing right on top them to do maximum damage. So I hopped out, back into the cold and started running around over frozen snow banks firing my bursters. Geekscape playing over my headphones, Jon talking to an EX-NFL star about Skyrim.

 

WELCOME TO THE SCHWAB!
WELCOME TO THE SCHWAB!

 

Soon the resonators started falling. JakeAK would be getting emails of my attack, but I doubt he’d come back out. I ran over another snow bank, but this one wasn’t solid on the back. I fell into snow up to my knee, but was right on top of a resonator, so I continued to fire. My shots flying outwards in a circle, doing direct damage at my feet and less at the edges. I was hitting three at once from this spot, and soon three fell. I dug myself out and took inventory. Three damaged resonators left, two Level 3 and one at 4. I was running out of gear so all my shots had to count. I looked at their location, two were on the other side of the road. I got to the edge of Palmer-Wasilla Highway and ran across. It’s called a highway but they’re kidding themselves. Two lanes a highway does not make. Not a lot of traffic at 1 AM.

 

I got to the other side and started to make my shots. Hitting two resonators at once. Jon was talking about seeing a geek movie at SXSW, he was worried that it would just end up being a parody movie, made by people that were not geeks. I wondered what he would think of me right now, fighting a fake intergalactic war on my phone. In a ditch. At 1 AM. The two resonators I was attacking fell. Only one Level 4 remained. It was severly damaged but I had used a lot of gear. So, I ran back to my warm truck and parked right on top of it. I fired and fired. Chipping away at the weak resonator. If I can destroy this I can recapture the Portal and claim control for the Enlightened. I fired and fired. More and more damage coming off. I fired and fired. Victory was soon mine. I fired and fired and…nothing. I had shot off my last Level 1 burster. The resonator still stood. So damaged it was practically on fire, but it still stood. Its blue glow signaled it was still under Resistance control.

 

It was a valiant effort for a lone Level 3, but I did not succeed. I sent a text to my friend Dylan, letting him know of my attack. He was surely asleep but I hoped he would wake up and come finish it off. I put my truck into gear and drove home.

 

Ingress San Diego
This is downtown San Diego. Comic Con 2013 is going to be freaking insane!

 

Ingress is a game, but it is a different kind of game. It gets lazy nerds outside, running down streets, through ditches and over snow banks. It has introduced me and my friends to cool new people. We have run into people from the other team while on a raid. Dylan and I were in a town halfway to Anchorage, Eagle River, and were attacking portals and creating control fields. We had taken a few and gotten to our last portals of the run and a car pulled in behind us. I got out and said hello to a player from the other team, Tarpon. A really great guy who we got to chat with. He told us that he got emails of our attacks and planned to wait for us at the library, hoping we would keep attacking and he’d try to stop us by repairing our damage. He then told us he was thwarted when he saw us drive through the library parking lot to just collect XM.

 

This is just one of our encounters with Ingress. The people we’ve met have all been awesome. I can always expect to meet a nice geeky person at a Portal. I mean you have to be PRETTY nerdy to go on a city wide raid with eight other players, that was fun in itself! Finding the hiding resistance player in the parking lot to the Hockey arena was hilarious.

 

I highly suggest anyone with an Android phone go the official site and request an invite. You can play this anywhere! I was watching the Intel maps for the Vatican when the new Pope was being announced, watching Portals change sides faster than a strobe light was entertaining. A lot of those guests at the Vatican that day must have players.

 

Be sure to check out the official Ingress site. Apply for a code and hopefully you can start playing and meeting new people and finding new places that you never knew existed!

NVIDIA Announces New Portable Gaming System: Project Shield

by Shane O'Hare

In a text book example of “out of left field” Nvidia, the video card creator Juggernaut, has announced that they are getting into the video game platform market. Dubbed Project Shield, it will bridge the gap between PC and Console gaming.

Powered by the newest portable chip, the Tegra 4, it will allow gamers to have console quality content in a portable platform. The brand new custom chip, which combines a 72 core Nvidia GPU and A15 arm quad core processor, allows immense graphical power that doesn’t demand a lot on your battery. The results? Hours of console quality gaming that can be run off a large cellphone battery.

The main drive behind the development of Project Shield was getting high quality games into your hands. The device runs off a vanilla Android OS which gives gamers access to all Google Play games, but the real reason to pick this sucker up is it’s ability to stream your PC games to the device. If you have an Nvidia GTX 650 or higher graphics card, you can play any of your PC games to your device. With a pretty beefy retina display attached to the controller you will get some stunning clarity in your hands.

Not much else to report, check out the full release HERE on Nvidias official site. To see an extensive gallery and some of the footage from the Press Event check out our friends over at The Verge

My initial thoughts? I am pretty intrigued. I always love seeing new technology so when I get this press release I was excited. There has been a pretty strong push lately with getting the PC out of the computer room. With stuff like STEAMS Big Picture and 1:1 desktop display streaming to iDevices it seems like there is a market for changing how we consume PC games. As for the the handheld portion itself, it seems dubious. There are a couple of gaming devices out now that will attach to an Android phone (Check out some humorous commercials for the MOGA HERE and HERE) and it seems like there is a strong market with getting a controller on an Android.

‘Avengers Initiative’ Mobile Game, Now With More Captain America!

by Derek Kraneveldt

All the way back in September, Marvel and Wideload Games released a funky little game for mobile devices (well, iOS and Android anyways) called Avengers Initiative. We reviewed the title just a day after it released, and while it definitely had (and continues to have) room for improvements, it was a decent title at the right price.

Upon release, Wideload stated that subsequent DLC packs would be released for the game, furthering the plot while adding Avengers and other goodies. Today the first pack is available, all for the low, low price of free (as long as you’ve already purchased the game of course).

Captain America is now a playable character, but he isn’t the only thing that’s new. The change log points out plenty of other additions too:

– Optimized for iPad mini and iPad Retina display
– Added support for iPhone 5 resolution
– Captain America now fully playable, improve your skills with Captain America’s agile takedowns and tactical shield attacks
– Fight aboard the Hydracarrier against Taskmaster and the forces of Hydra.
– Go up against Hydra War Drones, Skrull, Hydra Brutes, and Taskmaster himself.
– Added new Hulk costumes, including Mr. Fixit
– Added new Captain America costumes, including WWII Super Soldier
– Added Russian language support
– Unlock new Marvel XP audio logs including Mockingbird’s undercover mission and new Captain America Awards
– Fixed Verizon iPhone 4 framerate bug
– General bug fixes

Sadly, the one feature that I really wanted is still strangely absent: iCloud Support. $6.99 puts the game on both my iPad and iPhone, but SAVES DON’T TRANSFER!

In any case, the update is free for existing players. If you’re interested in the game, you can try the lite version for free, and then get the paid version if you deem it worthy!

Played the Captain America update? What do you think?

‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ Headed To iOS And Android!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Around this time last year, to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Grand Theft Auto III, Rockstar was kind enough to port the game over to iOS and Android devices.

Vice City is approaching that same mark, and today Rockstar announced that the 80’s edition of GTA will be getting the same treatment. The release date for this new version has not been set, but as Vice City’s 10th anniversary falls in just three days, it’s likely coming pretty quick.

I was quite impressed with how well GTA III transitioned to a touch screen device (I played the game on iPhone and iPad, so I can’t speak for Android performance). It wasn’t perfect though, and I definitely hope that Vice City improves on some of the technical aspects of GTA III: the game didn’t have iCloud support which was a huge oversight, and also was never updated for the 3rd Generation iPad’s Retina Display. Rockstar did a great job otherwise, and I’m definitely looking forward to picking up another one of their mobile titles.

To make things even sweeter, as part of the anniversary celebration, Rockstar is offering GTA III and GTA: Chinatown Wars for just $.99

Geekscape Games Review: ‘Avengers Initiative’

by Derek Kraneveldt

On Wednesday we gave you a look at Marvels latest mobile title, Avengers Initiative. The game released yesterday, and after putting a few hours into it and clearing the first campaign, I’ve got a pretty strong opinion on the title.

Note: Avengers Initiative is available for iOS as well as Android devices. The review is based on the iOS versions of the game, though the Android edition should offer a similar experience.

Intro Video

I was hooked on Avengers Initiative from the start. After a short loading screen, Nick Fury brings you up to speed with a very flashy and very sharp looking cutscene. The story is simple: a lot of baddies have escaped from the Vault, and it’s up to you to find them, fight them, and send them back where they belong.

We mentioned on Wednesday that the game takes an episodic approach (as explained in the story, simply too many villains have escaped for the team to stick together, each episode will have you playing a different hero). You buy the game for $6.99, you’ll get to play the first chapter featuring the Hulk, and subsequent episodes will be delivered free of charge. Telltale Games typically takes the same approach, and it works wonders for them (insert obligatory The Walking Dead praise here), Marvel has to be hoping for that same success.

In-Game

As you can see from our screenshots, the game looks great (especially on Apple’s retina devices). Hulk is extremely detailed, complete with a lot of polygons and some great textures. He even shows off some strong facial animations throughout the episode. This carries to other characters as well – each one looks fantastic. Sometimes it’s really hard to believe that visuals like this are being pushed from your cell phone. It sounds almost as good as it looks too, Avengers Initiative features some very strong voice acting and sound effects.

The game may look fresh, but gameplay wise, it feels more like a skin on a two year old title. Infinity Blade was released to much fanfare in 2010. The game was designed from the ground up for touchscreen devices: no virtual joysticks or buttons, just taps and swipes to control your onscreen hero. Combat has you doing the same, tapping and swiping to dodge and block your opponents advances, while you wait for an opening to strike.

Wendigo Fight

Now isn’t all bad: Infinity Blade and its sequel are fantastic, addicting titles. The developer could have done much worse when choosing a game to take inspiration from. Sadly however, some of Infinity Blade’s strongest and most addicting features are strangely absent from Avengers Initiative. 

Your Infinity Blade hero is infinitely customizable. Every piece of armor, every weapon, and there is even jewelry to give you magic abilities and stat bonuses. You find items in chests, by defeating creatures, and with credit you’ve saved from battling multitudes of enemies. It makes the game exponentially more replayable as you strive to master all of the possible equipment. Avengers Initiative sees very little of this: Hulk has a few costumes you can purchase which give you stat bonuses, but the quantity and level of customizability is nothing compared to that of Infinity Blade. I’ve finished the Avengers Initiative campaign, and I honestly can’t see myself returning until another chapter is released.

Costume Screen

Another huge oversight by developer Wideload Games is iCloud support. With games like Infinity Blade and Batman: Arkham City Lockdown, I can jump into the game on whatever device I’m currently holding and not have to worry about it: if I play Infinity Blade on my phone while on the bus, I can open it on my iPad later and be in the exact same spot. By not including this, I’d have to run separate campaigns on each device, essentially meaning I’m going to end up playing Avengers Initiative on only one of them

Avengers Initiative is a lot of fun, and the title has some great presentation (though loading screens are sometimes a bit too frequent). The gameplay that Epic Games introduced with Infinity Blade works perfectly here, I simply wish that Wideload could have introduced some of their own innovations to the formula. Hopefully with the episodic nature of the title, they will build on what the game has to offer instead of simply throwing a new character into the same situations.

As mentioned above, the title is priced well at $6.99 (though it is plagued with a ton of in-app purchases). It’s a good buy at this level, had it been priced higher however, I wouldn’t be so sure.

Avengers Initiative scores a respectable 3/5

‘Avengers Initiative’ Mobile Game Launches Tomorrow!

by Derek Kraneveldt

I’m a huge fan of mobile games. More often than not I find myself away from home with nothing but my mobile phone.

Five years ago, that was a bad situation unless you were lucky enough to have a portable console with you. Oh how things change: I can now have dozens of AAA titles in my pocket, on a device that I always have with me anyways.

Hulk

Today Marvel gave us a look at Avengers Initiative. It’s a pretty smooth looking new title that takes Telltale’s approach to gaming – the game will be episodic. You purchase the title for $6.99, and later episodes will be delivered to you free of charge.

Tomorrow, us iOS and Android owners will step into the Hulk’s shoes. From the trailer (posted below) it appears as though a lot of villains are causing a lot of havoc. Nick Fury has made it your responsibility to stop them.

At first glance, Avengers Initiative looks remarkably similar to Epic Games’ Infinity Blade. While I’m a sucker for originality, I’m also a huge fan of that title. It’s perfectly suited for a touch screen, and rather than have to use a virtual joystick and fake buttons, you swipe and tap around, which leads to a much better and more natural experience. If Avengers Initiative can offer the same quality story and addicting gameplay that the Infinity Blade series does, Epic Games’ will have some serious competition on their hands.

The graphics look great, the sound seems solid, and the gameplay is tried and true. Check out Avengers Initiative on your mobile devices tomorrow, and look for our review in the upcoming days.

 

Read Brian K Vaughan’s Saga #1 For FREE!

by Derek Kraneveldt

Five months since launch. Six issues in. I’m enamored with these characters. I’m in love with this world. I’ll buy every issue until its sweet, sweet conclusion.

If you haven’t taken the plunge with Vaughan’s latest, here’s an awesome opportunity. All you need is an iOS or Android device and a copy of ComiXology.

Again, Brian K Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, Runaways, Lost) spins an elegant, action-packed, gripping tale of love, loss, war, philosophy, and so much more.

This has also been my first taste of artist Fiona Staples, whose insanely vibrant, unbelievably beautiful art is just as evocative as Brian’s work, if not more so. I want more, constantly. I’d cover my walls with it if I could.

There isn’t much more to say. It’s an amazing book, and you can get into it for free right now. But get on it! I’m sure it won’t last long!

Download it now on Comixology!

Saga #1

Geekscape Games Reviews ‘Babel Rising’

by jake108

Babel Rising casts you as an angry god set on destroying everyone and everything that is contributing to building a tower set to reach the heavens. Anyone familiar with the Tower of Babel story can already get the gist of this Xbox Live Arcade title. Still, is Babel Rising worthy of your attention?

Babel Rising is all about gameplay. If you’re looking for a dense story, you can stop reading now. The concept is simple: hurl stones, fireballs, ice, and gusts of wind at figures who are building a tower. The campaign consists of missions with objectives and is better served as a tutorial for leaning the four different set of powers you have. Each power set has a total of two types of attacks, basic and heavy. As you use your powers, a meter will fill up based on what power you use. Once one of the meters fills up, you will be able to use a special attack meant to deal a great amount of damage.

Your tools of destruction are Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water. None are similar and depending on what game mode you’re playing, you will have the option to choose what two sets you want with preference being an underlining reason for choosing.

Babel Rising has Kinect functionality which allows players to control the elements with their hands rather than a controller. While some might enjoy this Kinect functionality, I found that using a controller was overall more responsive to what I wanted to do and who I wanted to attack. The resulting conclusion will have you sitting on the couch while trying to drive up your high score.

Babel Rising offers up both multiplayer and cooperative modes. These multiplayer modes are not Xbox Live enabled. Babel Rising is a case of what you see is what you get. While it’s good to pass the time, there’s really nothing serious or “hardcore” about Babel Rising.

Babel Rising is available today on the PSN and XBLA for $9.99 and 800 Micorsoft Points respectively. Babel Rising will also be available on iOS devices, Android, and Windows PC.

Google Play: Needed Upgrade or Disastrous Marketing Move?

by Shane O'Hare

Three days ago Google made a push to make it’s online store more like Apples. You may have noticed on your phone when you opened the marketplace you were greeted with a prompt to upgrade to Google Play. Like most, you probably just hit yes and moved on but what is really changing and what do these changes mean for you.

If we watch the hipster fueled marketing video we get the very basic understanding of what the Play change is. It centralizes and aggregates your “Google experience”. Instead of having your Google: Video, Market, Books, Apps and Music market places and accounts, you will access everything through your Play account.

Now the boffins over at Google have been pretty good with the apps and games on the Android platform. If you get a new device and log in with your account, all the stuff you bought and downloaded on the previous device will automatically start downloading right away, even the friggin backround is saved. So their big push to make the move to Play is to unify their Music and Movies market.

For the longest time the two sites were connected but still separate by having different features and access. Google music lets you upload a very LARGE collection of songs to their cloud service as it stands, and leading up to the Play name change were offering crazy cheap deals on songs an albums. On the Movie side, they offer rentals and purchases of films and television yadda yadda yadda more of the same.

The saving grace of the Android Marketplace was that it wasn’t Apple. It brought a compelling removal of the evil locked down monolith that the I-Devices brought, and that all changed when they moved to Play.

If you have an Android device that is rooted, like a good majority of people have (Cyanogen users being the most prevalent.) then you are kind of screwed. Any rentals or purchases on the Play Movies store on a rooted device will not play. They will take your money just fine but when it comes to actually consuming the content you paid money for you get a nice little warning

Well shit. Looks like in the sideways move to be more and less like Apple at the same time they’ve gone and fucked it all up. Couple that with certain Motorola devices telling Play that they are rooted when they are not Google inadvertently gave the middle finger to some of the most influential users on their devices. Geeks. Another prime example of being considered guilty before trial. All rooted users are evil pirates!

Then you have the NON-Geeks. The everyday users who bought a HTC phone from ATT when they updated their package or those who got a cheapy Android smartphone when they got upsold at Verizon. Those people have no idea what is going on.

Check out this collection of confused consumers.

Now I know what you’re thinking, those people are idiots. They are, they had to click “YES I AGREE TO THESE TERMS AND PLAY”, but these people are the ones who are most likely going to be using your market. When a Geek goes on the marketplace they usually are going there to get something specific, an app or game they were told about by another.

These consumers are easily swayed by commercials and blind marketing. The slightest problem with their Android and they will fly out and get an iPhone. Take my mother as a prime example. She had been complaining about issues with her Samsung Galaxy. Said she wants to get an iPhone 4 because it lets her “do the zoomy thing”. Holding her phone I showed her that the multi touch gesture she was thinking of also worked on her Galaxy she “Just didnt think of trying it”.

So…whats the end game for Play? The centralized content management has worked in the past with Apps and Music. If they can knock the bugs out of the rooted devices issue and figure out why Motorola hates them, then they should be “A+ Would Do Business With Again” status with geeks in a heart beat. The marketing issues will still be there. Doing a hard flip the switch on the unaware or people who are just click happy and agree to any TOS was horribly stupid. As in Microsoft BOB stupid.

I guess it’s a time will tell story. Will the features work themselves out? Will the advent of centralized code actually be a good thing? Myself, having a Nexus One with Cyanogen Mod 7 on it, I am facing the same issues the other geeks are having. Though I never really found the need to have movies or content like movies on my phone, I’m just mad because I can’t. It’s like owning a gun, sometimes you do just because you can, and GOD DAMMIT I WANT DRM FREE JERSEY SHORE!