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China Blocks Virtually All Of Google's Web Services As 18th Party Congress Gets Underway
According to multiple reports, China recently started blocking numerous Google services, including Gmail, Google Maps and others that usually pass through the country's so-called Great Firewall. Google's Transparency Report shows a significant drop in traffic from China that started around 12:30am GMT last night. According to a statement from Google, the company has checked and "there’s nothing wrong on our end."
Need for Speed: Most Wanted Review
I smell donuts
The Fast and the Furious wasn’t an especially great film, but it did feature a scene tangentially related to Need for Speed Most Wanted. In the opening act the engine in Brian Spilner’s Eclipse self destructs when he tries to push it too hard. As the wiry mechanic assesses the damage, he looks at Brian in utter disbelief and asks, “was that fun?” Brian doesn’t answer, but destroying an expensive car by driving it too fast is probably fun.
This question also seemed to be Criterion’s design philosophy when building Most Wanted. Every aspect of their previous open-world racer, Burnout Paradise, seems to have been given the “was that fun?” treatment and adjusted accordingly. Furthermore, many new ideas, some of which are undeniably outrageous, appear to have passed that test and qualified for inclusion. Is it fun? The Fast and the Furious didn’t seem to know the answer to that question – it alternated between melodrama and popcorn amusement – but almost every aspect of Most Wanted is confident in its response; yes, everything is a lot of damn fun.
This is quickly apparent in the way Most Wanted handles its suite of vehicles. A hundred or so “jackspots” dot every side road and off-area in the fictional city of Fairhaven. Every jackspot comes with a specific car and if you find it, you can drive it. Within minutes of starting the game it’s possible to be driving everything from an Arial Atom 500 to Lamborghini Gallardo. What’s novel is how easy it is to get back into any car you find. A lesser game would plot a garage on the map or force the player to drive all the way back to where they found it, but Most Wanted skips the tedium and provides the option to hop back in the car whenever you’d like. You can still drive back across Fairhaven and find it, if that’s your thing, but this seemingly tiny decision by Criterion is a huge convenience for the player. Across almost every facet of its design, Most Wanted strives to respect your time.
Gran Turismo franchise nears 68 million sales
Sony’s flagship PlayStation racing franchise Gran Turismo is approaching 68 million lifetime sales.
According to datarevealed by series creator Polyphony Digital, 67,890,000 Gran Turismo games were sold between the original’s PSone debut in 1997 and September 2012.
In comparison, Sony said in June that it had shipped over 21 million God of War games to retailers worldwide since the series debuted in 2005.
The original Gran Turismo has sold 10.85 million copies. 2001′s Gran Turismo 3 A-spec, the first game in the series to be released for PS2, is the best-selling GT title, having shifted almost 15 million copies. 2010 PS3 release Gran Turismo 5 has cleared nine million sales. Here’s a rundown by title:
- Gran Turismo: 10,850,000
- Gran Turismo 2: 9,370,000
- Gran Turismo 3 A-spec: 14,890,000
- Gran Turismo Concept Series: 1,560,000
- Gran Turismo 4 Prologue: 1,400,000
- Gran Turismo 4: 11,600,000
- Gran Turismo 5 Prologue: 5,350,000
- Gran Turismo PSP: 3,860,000
- Gran Turismo 5: 9,010,000
- Total: 67,890,000
Gran Turismo series producer Kazunori Yamauchi confirmed that Gran Turismo 6 was in development back in 2010, although he has left fans to speculate whether the game will arrive on PS3 or PlayStation 4.
This August Yamauchi suggested that the Gran Turismo 6 release date will remain a secret until Polyphony can be certain of its launch plans, telling press at the GT5 Asia Championship 2012: “If I carelessly say when it will be released, you’ll end up with people saying things like ‘it’s been delayed again’ so I will no longer say at this type of event.”
Source: computerandvideogames.com
Dropbox Review
Along with Microsoft’s Live Mesh, Dropbox was one of the first services to show how useful and versatile the cloud
could be, providing simple synchronisation of the contents of a single folder – the “Dropbox” – across multiple computers, OSes and users.
Dropbox provides 2GB (Can earn up to 15-20GB free)of free storage and up to 100GB for $20 (£13) per month. A client has to be installed on each device – Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS versions are available – and once installed you can sync files between them and your online Dropbox simply by dragging items into the Dropbox folder.
Other users can also share and sync with a folder. You can set this up by right-clicking a folder or through the Sharing tab on the web-based interface. Either way, it’s very simple. Once your folders are set up for syncing, you can keep track of events and change preferences through an icon in the System Tray.
In a way, Dropbox’s simplicity is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the concept of dropping files or folders into the Dropbox and knowing they’ll sync across all your devices is simple, and works brilliantly. On the other hand, there’s no way to sync specific files and folders – your Music folder, say – without moving them into the Dropbox, which doesn’t really suit the way Windows works. This limits Dropbox’s usefulness as a backup and restore program.
On the plus side, Dropbox’s excellent versioning features mean there’s no need to worry about files syncing after you’ve wrecked a key file; you can always drag it back from a previous copy.
Dropbox isn’t particularly media-savvy. It has photo-sharing and photo gallery features, but nothing outstanding. It’s also quite slow with big uploads, taking three and a half hours for our initial 500MB backup. However, it’s speedy at synchronisation. Photos added to one Dropbox appeared on another machine within 1min 44secs, while changes to a picture were synced to other systems within 1min 7secs.
For all its limitations, Dropbox is great because it makes sharing and syncing files so easy across most devices. Other services offer a more rounded package, but Dropbox is as useful now as ever.
| Sign up to Dropbox here |
Gameloft sales in Q3 grow 37% on freemium success
The mobile publisher is seeing 60% of revenues come from in-app purchases and advertising
Digital games publisher Gameloft has announced that its third-quarter sales grew 37 percent to €55.4 million, while sales for the company’s first nine months were up 28 percent to €150.6 million. While Gameloft publishes on digital platforms like Xbox Live, the majority of its growth is from smartphones and tablets, which combined saw growth of 124 percent for the company and accounted for 56 percent of total sales (compared to 34 percent a year ago).
Gameloft specifically cited its success with the freemium and paymium models, which it began using back in March 2011. In fact, 60 percent of of the company’s smartphone revenues came from in-app purchases and advertising. Gameloft’s monthly active users currently stands at 56 million.
With titles on the way like Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, Zombiewood, Heroes of Order & Chaos, My Little Pony, Playmobil Pirates, and UNO & Friends, Gameloft expects more growth in the quarters ahead. The company is now expecting full-year sales to hit over €205 million, up 25 percent.
Battlefield 1942 free on Origin to celebrate 10 year anniversary
Electronic Arts has made classic FPS Battlefield 1942 free as a “thank you” to Battlefield fans. The gift is being offered “in celebration of the ten year anniversary of the Battlefield series and Battlefield 3 Premium surpassing 2 million members worldwide.”
Of course, it’s also a clever ploy to get more people to try Origin, EA’s PC gaming client.
You can download the game here.
“When we launched Battlefield 1942 ten years ago, we had lofty ambitions to create a first-person shooter that would push the boundaries of innovation, creativity and design. We evolved the FPS gameplay formula by introducing the world to all-out warfare via land, air and sea,” DICE VP Karl Magnus Troedsson said in a release. “We wanted to thank our fans who have supported us throughout the years by restoring Battlefield 1942 for a digital re-release and give everyone a chance to play the game that started it all.”
Lose Your Mind Over These TrackMania Videos
Utilizing the patented RPS Matter Relocation Device (note: it is actually a very big catapult), we recently flung Dan so high that he landed on Maniaplanet. There, he slowly but surely integrated with their society and partook of their most exotic cultural fineries. When he returned using the patented RPS Inertia Disruption Field (which may or may not bear striking resemblance to a trampoline), he was quite rightly confused as to what exactly both new TrackManias are bringing to the table. Now, though, you can get a glimpse of what he experienced – namely,TrackMania: Stadium and TrackMania: Valley – and puzzle over the pair yourself.
Let’s Play Hitman: Absolution PC #1
Nov 22
Posted by kerwood91
This is the first part of my Hitman: Absolution Let plays. In this episode i will be playing the first level with some serious and some funny commentary
Walkthrough / Let’s Play / Gameplay
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