FIFA 10

Creating a new game in an already successful series that lives up to the high expectations created by over a dozen of brilliant games is difficult but EA has managed to do just that.

Last year’s game was quite awesome except for a few minor problems. FIFA 10 has not only fixed these problems, but also thrown in some new features.

Though the game can be played on a keyboard, a gamepad is recommended because it is nearly impossible to pull off skill moves with keyboard controls (without pulling your hair out in frustration at least).

 

Player control has been overhauled and you can control your player with great fluidity thanks to the great 360 degree player control. This is only possible using a good gamepad. Those not having a gamepad can also control the movement using your mouse. The “Be a Pro” and "Manager Mode” are the highlights of this game. In Be a Pro, you control a player through his career, guiding him through the League matches and International matches. The manager mode has got a whole lot of improvements as well which includes a whole new transfer system, scouting reports and a few minor tweaks. Other new features include a Legendary difficulty mode (not for the faint hearted!). All these minor changes make the game a treat.

 

Gameplay has got its share of steroids too. The players now move more realistically. Players can now chest the ball instead of waiting for it to land on their feet. Goalkeepers animations have been improved significantly. Now they can move in a more life like manner rather than a few jumps and dives previous games offered.

The graphics are great, right from the lush green turf to the player models. Player faces are easily recognisable. This game shows that game character models  have come a long way from the cardboard cut outs that barely looked like creatures from the homo sapien race.

One of the annoying features of the game is the menu music which is primarily in Portuguese (or whichever language that is). What we have is a bunch of idiots mouthing totally annoying songs which are nothing less than a torture. The reason I chose to ignore this is that the thick of the action takes place in the stadium. The crowd sounds are excellent. Its great to hear the crowd go wild the moment the ball reaches in the vicinity of the goalpost.

Nothing on this earth is perfect and this game is no exception. Your mates in the Be a pro mode are really dumb. They rely too much on your orders. If you don’t make calls quickly, they just keep running towards the other end unless another equally  retarded teammate comes in their way. If you happen to call for a pass from a short range, your brain dead teammate will pass it so hard that it will bounce off you and land anywhere. The CPU AI is not really great either. Sometimes, you have players who let you get through without putting up a fight and sometimes, they can get so aggressive that keeping possession for more than a few micro seconds will be tougher than scoring goals. These problems, somehow vanish when you are playing on higher difficulty levels.

Overall, this game is great unless you’re playing “Be a Pro” mode on a Easy difficulty level. This game is probably the best football game ever made.

Dell Studio XPS 15

At a time when most laptop manufacturers are turning to netbooks, Dell seems to be the only brand not guilty of flooding the market with dozens of netbooks. Dell’s Studio XPS series brings a breath of fresh air by offering great value for money and a great configuration.

EXTERIOR

Dell studio 15 looks classy to say the least with a glossy lid (which is also a fingerprint magnet) that comes in a variety of colours and a few artist editions (which, by the way, look too eye catching for my liking). It has just 3 USB ports (one of them also doubles up as an eSATA port). It 2 audio out ports and 1 microphone jack. Apart from that, it comes with both D-Sub and HDMI ports, LAN port, eSATA and 4-in-1 card reader. A slot loading DVD writer is also thrown in.

OPENING THE LID

When you open the lid, you are greeted with a glossy, 16:9 15 inch screen. Above the screen, there is a barely noticeable webcam which can be used for face recognition as well. The speakers are present above the keyboard. The multimedia keys are integrated with the function keys.

TURNING IT ON

The notebook comes loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit which, thanks to the fast processor and ample RAM, runs quite smoothly. Being a multimedia notebook, it comes loaded with a copy of Power DVD DX. Watching HD videos on the 1366x768 screen is a good experience as the videos are free of framing issues. The keyboard is good with right sized and well spaced keys. The touchpad supports multi touch gestures like pinch to zoom. Sometimes, while typing, the palm of your hand can rest on the touchpad without you noticing it. When you try to use the touchpad, the zoom function gets activated. This can be quite irritating. Moreover, there is no button to turn off the touchpad. One minor problem with the laptop is that pressing the function keys executes the multimedia functions. To use the F1-F12 keys, they have to be pressed with the Fn key pressed. This can be inconvenient if you use shortcuts like Alt+F4, F5, etc.

UNDER THE HOOD

This notebook comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 2.1 GHz processor, which is enough for most tasks coupled up with 4GB DDR2 RAM. The discreet graphics solution is ATi Mobility Radeon 4570 with 512 MB GDDR3 memory which can run HD videos and run most recent games on low to medium settings at decent resolutions. The roomy 320GB hard drive will be enough for most users. Connectivity options like WLAN 802.11n and Bluetooth are present.

ACCESSORIES

The notebook comes bundled with an AC adapter, a pair of Creative earphones and a laptop backpack. Driver CD and Windows reinstallation CDs are provided too.

VERDICT

This is a good multimedia notebook that offers great value for money.

Need for Speed: Shift

After a long chain of not so good games, NFS franchise is back with a new game Need for Speed: Shift which promises to do a lot of things that a thousand other games have already perfected.

Shift goes back to the ProStreet style organized and totally legal (damn!) racing. Like ProStreet, it’s not clear whether it is a simulation or an arcade game.

There are two game modes, Quick Race and Career. Quick race, lets you race on quite a few tracks with a car of your choice. In career mode, you start off with a tier 1 car and have to play through races to earn stars and upgrade your tier. After the race, you earn up to 3 stars for position, 2 for precision and aggression and 1 for bonus acts which can be anything from performing clean sections to reaching a particular speed. The star rating system adds a level of replay value to the races. Talking about replaying races, there will be moments when you need to replay 10 lap races all over again just because you hit that @#$%*^ wall just near the end of the race. The opponents are not very polite either as they don’t hesitate to slam you into walls or grind you off the track. The drift mode is a tad difficult for average gamers.

Car modification is not very different from previous games. Applying performance upgrades like new engine and transmission not only makes your car quicker, but also changes the engine sound which is a nice touch. Menu music (by the way, it’s a sin to call it music) starts getting on your nerves as soon as you hear it. Apart from that, morphing vinyls is so time consuming that you will be better off without vinyls altogether.

Graphics are not eye popping but they aren’t too bad either. It’s nice to see the environments blur when you are driving your car at 150 miles per hour. You can almost smell the asphalt in the heat of an intense race.

As I said, this game is neither a simulation, nor arcade so it won’t satisfy fans of any of these but casual gamers might like this game provided they can handle the steep learning curve.

Rating: 7.5/10