Electricpig.co.uk - tech news fast! |
- Halo Reach: First UK look and impressions!
- Hacked Facebook data grabbed by Scientologists and other major companies
- Starcraft II ‘melting’ some video cards
- Inception Toy Story 3 mash up trailer: because it’s Friday
- Samsung Galaxy tablet: confirmed for this quarter
- iPhone 4 jailbreak: Shitra1n solution promised but is it fake?
- Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update confirmed for September
- Obama says BlackBerry is “no fun”
- Three (finally) gets the iPhone 4: good news for heavy data users
- YouTube stars now famous for 15 Minutes
| Halo Reach: First UK look and impressions! Posted: 30 Jul 2010 09:00 AM PDT  Halo: Reach, the prequel to previous Halo titles is arguably the year’s most-anticipated Xbox 360 game. It’s also developer Bungie’s last ever Halo outing before moving onto new game shaped pastures. It’s not in shops till 14th September, but we’ve just been given a first UK look at the single player campaign, multiplayer and level editor, Forge by Bungie themselves. How’s it shaping up? Read on to find out. Yesterday afternoon we headed to the Churchill War Rooms, an underground bunker in London used by Sir Winston Churchill during the Second World War – what better place to get our first proper UK look at Halo: Reach. We were joined by Campaign Designer, Niles Sankey and Bungie's Community Director, Brian Jarrard, who told us why Halo: Reach is the best in the series yet. Halo: Reach is “…the biggest Halo game we’ve ever made. Halo: Combat Evolved was our inspiration. We want to recapture that magic,” he said. We were then shown the intro to Reach and a demo of the Reach’s first level, before getting hands-on with the Firefight mode. Single player campaign Our look at the single player campaign started off with the game’s intro. Reach is a prequel taking us back to when the Spartans were making their last stand against the Covenant. A scene showing a panning shot of a Spartan helmet with a bullet hole in its centre hints at the carnage to come before fading into the start of proceedings. We start off with a group of Noble Team Spartans whose first objective is to respond to a distress call. “Stay focussed” one shouted. At this point Bungie’s Niles Sankey commented on the new improved graphics and level design. “It’s wide open, players can play it in many different ways.” He went on to tell us that everything is improved, even the AI animation. As the play continued we watched as our Spartans investigated structures for dodgy activity. The surrounding is bare at this point, besides a few ostrich like animals running freely. “They will impact the gameplay experience in many ways,” apparently. You’ll also come across the civilian population of Planet Reach. “We wanted to portray the tragedy. They are the victims.” Eventually the team stumble onto some corpses, before panic erupts. “I see movement!” Soon lots of enemies come at you from all angles. It’s the Covenant. They’re invading, and being dropped by large spaceships. After taking the aliens out the team grab a vehicle, which handily has a gun turret atop. “We’ve gotta find the source of that distress call,” they said before coming under fire once more. “We are under attack from the Covenant!” Bungie then brought an end to our look at the campaign mode. “The story is just beginning. The game really picks up,” Sankey said. Forge level editor Brian Jarrad, Bungie’s Community Manager said the level editor that appeared in Halo 3 is “bigger and better” in Reach, letting you “build complex structures more easily.” Bungie’s really gone to town it seems. They’ve created their own massive level for multiplayer for all players to play - Forge World. It’s “the biggest environment we’ve ever created for multiplayer” Jarrad explained. We got to play it later. He wasn’t kidding. To create levels It’ll offer better tools this time around. It’s the LittleBigPlanet of first-person shooters. Well, not quite, but it is more intuitive than previously. Handy tools to make level editing easier include the ability to make objects float without piling lots of things under them, then taking them away as a long winded workaround. Instead you can now select an object, (Jarrad used a massive boulder) use a “fixed” tool and set it to float. A similar process can be used to make objects fuse into one another using the “Phased” tool letting you “mush” together objects. Jarrad then hopped into a new Falcon helicopter to show us how big the world is. It’s big. And with over 150 bits of unique structure to play with there’s scope for all kinds of level building madness. You could tell they can’t wait to see what other players will come up with. Firefight mode (multiplayer) Those familiar with the Halo franchise will recognise the Firefight mode letting you face-off against waves of enemies. As most Halo fans will know, it’s back. Speaking about it Brian Jarrad explained that Bungie wanted to bring it back, along with matchmaking and added customisation to improve the Firefight experience. You’ll be able to make the Firefight experience your own. We were shown how players can set different properties to each wave, including placing limits on the number of waves you’ll have to fend off and the time limit to do so. You’ll also be able to select the types of enemies you’ll come up against. For example you can face an initial wave of Jackals, Elites or “whatever suits you.” Other wave options include being able to change the ’shootiness’ of enemies. Then there’s the addition of Skulls in Firefight, which players can pick up off the floor. These will impact on gameplay. Some will benefit players by giving them double running speed and health, while others will take away health. Jarrad also explained the Rocketfight mode. It’s basically a multiplayer mode with the addition of infinite ammo toting rocket launchers. Everyone likes exploding things. Right? The Versus mode – a round-based head-to-head affair pitting Spartans and Elites against each other is “even better than ever” Jarrad added. We soon got a chance to have more than a few hours worth of play on different modes that had us protecting a series of generators from Covenant attack, Versus mode where we could play as the Covenant alongside its army against a group of Spartans and the Slayer mode (think team deathmatch). If you’ve already played the beta you’ll have some idea of what to expect. Fans will be glad to know it plays as Halo should. On harder difficulties the Firefight mode is a particular challenge, with enemies coming at you from all directions and of varying size and weapons. Running out of ammo involves a customary mad dash to the nearest ammo stockpile, or ransacking deceased foes. Setting foot down on the new Forge World map it’s as massive as Bungie said it is. Some bits of land are even a tad too large for our liking. We kept getting run over by vehicles with acres to the next hidey spot! And you of course get to purchase new items without he credits you’ve earned after each round ranging from shoulder pads, to helmets and more. In all a lot of care has clearly gone into making sure Halo: Reach builds on everything that made the first game such a master blaster, and making it quadruply times better. If you’re a Halo fan it looks like you’ll be in for a treat come 14th September. Out 14 September | £TBC | Bungie Related posts:
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| Hacked Facebook data grabbed by Scientologists and other major companies Posted: 30 Jul 2010 08:45 AM PDT 
When 100 Million Facebook user’s personal details wound upon a BitTorrent tracker last week, it looked as though Christmas had come early to the direct marketing world. Although all the data was publicly available, this was the first time it had been so easily collated in a form that was ripe for exploitation by spammers, direct marketers and others.  As a reader of Gadget blog Gizmodo has discovered, there is some evidence that major companies and organisations have decided to do just that. Using software called PeerBlock he was able to find the IP addresses of the various parties currently downloading the Facebook data. By checking these against a DNS server he has created a list of organisations he says are grabbing it. The Church of Scientology (the religion with Science right there in the name) is on the list, as are Time Warner, Sun Microsystems, Motorola, Pepsi Cola and many others – most of whom we thought would know better. It is important to note that this only represents a list of companies who IP address has been linked to the torrent – this could be down to someone in IT grabbing it while on a lunch break rather than any kind of corporate policy. Still, food for thought. (via Gizmodo) Related posts:
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| Starcraft II ‘melting’ some video cards Posted: 30 Jul 2010 07:45 AM PDT 
Some players of StarCraft have reported overheating problems when playing the game. In some cases, the machines have been physically damaged. To their credit, Blizzard have stepped up and (pretty much) admitted that there is a problem. In post to the Starcraft II forums it said that “Certain screens make your hardware work pretty hard.” Well, yes. Understatement. “Screens that are light on detail may make your system overheat if cooling is overall insufficient,” the post continued, “This is because the game has nothing to do so it is primarily just working on drawing the screen very quickly.” So this is actually the menu screen, rather than the actual game. Fairly ironic, when you think of it. Luckily, the same forum post contains a workaround – just search for the Documents\StarCraft II Beta\variables.txt file and ann teh lines
Save the file, then run the game and all should be well. Out July 27th | £30 | Blizzard Related posts:
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| Inception Toy Story 3 mash up trailer: because it’s Friday Posted: 30 Jul 2010 07:41 AM PDT 
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| Samsung Galaxy tablet: confirmed for this quarter Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:56 AM PDT 
Given the success of the Samsung Galaxy S, a Samsung tablet could prove to be a real second player in the tablet market, which is set to explode with devices from Toshiba, Acer, Dell and others all getting in on the game. When Samsung South Africa leaked the tablet back in early June, the image showed a tablet posing next to a Galaxy S, apparently running on Android and with a phone icon on the home screen. It also appeared to be running with a Super AMOLED screen. What do you think? Can other tablets take a portion of the market off Apple? Related posts:
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| iPhone 4 jailbreak: Shitra1n solution promised but is it fake? Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:35 AM PDT 
The self-proclaimed New iPhone Dev Team is led by a coder using the pseudonym Josh Wrobel (@joshwrobel) who promises in his Twitter bio that the Shitra1n iPhone 4 jailbreak will be released tomorrow (August 1). Images on his blog purport to show a successful iPhone 4 jailbreak but he has so far refused to release a video of it in action. A executable file purporting to be the Shitra1n iPhone 4 jailbreak has already been released into the wild and contains a virus. Though the New iPhone Dev Team says it’s sending out beta versions of their iPhone 4 jailbreak, it denies having created the virus-laden fake. While we found a smattering of Twitter users claiming to have used the Shitra1n beta iPhone 4 jailbreak, many of them were extremely new to the site with just a few followers and very few tweets. The iPhone 4 jailbreak being tinkered with by Comex was shown in this iPhone 4 jailbreak video. Shitra1n on the other hand seems extremely dubious from the name to the self-aggrandising antics of the New iPhone Dev Team on Twitter. Josh Wrobel has even accused Comex of stealing his iPhone 4 jailbreak code. We'll keep our eyes peeled for evidence that Shitra1n does work but in the meantime, if you're waiting for an iPhone 4 jailbreak to arrive hold off until a proven solution has been released. If you’re one of the mysterious Shitra1n beta testers and can prove that it’s a working iPhone 4 jailbreak, feel free to sling some evidence our way. Related posts:
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| Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update confirmed for September Posted: 30 Jul 2010 06:05 AM PDT 
In a short but sweet Twitter update, Samsung says: “We’ve seen a lot of Q’s about the Froyo update; it’s currently in development & will be released for all networks at the end of September…” So unlike HTC Desire fans, it seems Samsung Galaxy S owners will all get their taste of Froyo at the same time rather than folk packing unlocked phones getting the first bite. We’d previously heard that the Samsung Galaxy S Android 2.2 update was on the way but Samsung hadn’t given us any idea of when it might arrive. Samsung needs some time to get Android 2.2 to play nicely with its Touchwiz UI and it seems a few weeks will be enough to make that happen. If you’ve been holding off getting your hands on the Samsung Galaxy S because of the lack Froyo, take a look at our Samsung Galaxy S review before you make your mind up. If you’ve already got hold of the Samsung Galaxy S, let us know what Android 2.2 Froyo features you’re looking forward to getting your hands on with the Samsung Galaxy S Froyo update. Out September | £free | Samsung Related posts:
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| Obama says BlackBerry is “no fun” Posted: 30 Jul 2010 05:45 AM PDT 
When Obama was elected President of the United States we reported that he fought long and hard to hold on to his BlackBerry. The phone had been his constant companion while he was a senator but the Secret Service were concerned that a smartphone in the pocket of the world’s most power4ful man might be a bit of a security risk. Obama won the day, but the spooks insisted that access to the phone be restricted to a handful of government officials and contacts. Unfortunately, the fact that virtually nobody he knows is authorised to send the president email or call him up for a gossip means that the BlackBerry has lost some of its appeal. Speaking on The View (think Loose Women, but with better-paid hosts) Obama said, “I’ve got to admit, it’s no fun because they think that it’s probably going to be subject to the presidential records act, so nobody wants to send me the real juicy stuff.” We are not sure what Mr President means by ‘the real juicy stuff’ but we have to say we would prefer him to be concentrating on things like the War on Terror, the global economy and not accidentally pressing that big red button rather than reading this week’s Popbitch. Available now | £varies | BlackBerry (via Yahoo News) Related posts:
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| Three (finally) gets the iPhone 4: good news for heavy data users Posted: 30 Jul 2010 05:36 AM PDT 
Three announced they'd be getting their first iPhone, the iPhone 4 back in early June. The iPhone 4 has always been available on Three through Apple stores, but it's not until now that Three has nabbed some of the devices for its own stores. The top end 24 month contract will set you back £45 a month, and gets you a free iPhone 4, with 2000 any network minutes and 5000 Three to Three network minutes, with Three's standard 1GB data limit. At the bottom end, a 24 month £30 contract gives you 500 any network minutes, 5000 Three to Three minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB of data, with the iPhone 4 setting you back £99. Asked about the white iPhone 4, a spokesperson said that they don't know if they'll be getting the white iPhone 4, if and when it ever arrives. Related posts:
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| YouTube stars now famous for 15 Minutes Posted: 30 Jul 2010 04:45 AM PDT 
YouTube has decided to allow longer videos to be uploaded. Not much longer, we have to say, but if you were finding ten minutes too restrictive for your garbled, ill-thought-out ‘answer’ to the Newport State Of Mind video then hopefully an extra 5 minutes will let you vent your spleen sufficiently. YouTube product manager Joshua Siegel offered this, slightly confusing, explanation for the change, “Now, all of the major U.S. movie studios, music labels and over 1,000 other global partners use Content ID to manage their content on YouTube. Because of the success of these ongoing technological efforts, we are able to increase the upload limit today.” What we think he means is that content holders pressured YouTube into limit clips to ten minutes to try and stop[ people uploading whole feature films. Now YouTube’s content managing software is a bit better they can unclench a bit – but only a little bit. Available now | £Free | YouTube (via MediaMemo) Related posts:
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