Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two Review - Xbox 360

Nobody knew quite what to make of Disney Epic Mickey when its strange and unusual concept art first hit the internet years ago. Upon release, Junction Point’s compelling exploration of lost and forgotten cartoon characters inhabiting a dark reflection of Disneyland called Wasteland suddenly being rediscovered by the most famous cartoon character of all time was one of our favorite games of 2010. Thankfully, Disney saw fit to greenlight a sequel, this time on all console platforms, and Disney Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two continues what will hopefully be a long series of fresh takes on familiar material.

Musical Therapy

The Mad Doctor, a villain from the first game, has returned to Wasteland. He has had an apparent change of heart and a newfound tendency to turn everything into a musical number, which Oswald and his friends amusingly find very strange. Oswald believes the doctor deserves a second chance, which is a major theme throughout the game, and possibly a self-referential one. Still, something is rotten in Wasteland, and so Oswald’s friends summon Mickey to save the day with his Magic Paintbrush. This time he teams up with Oswald rather than competing with him, and the rabbit becomes an integral part of the gameplay.

As before, Mickey’s paintbrush can paint in “toon” objects to create platforms, befriend enemies, and create mostly beneficial or constructive effects. It can also fire streams of thinner, which dissolves said objects and generally causes destruction if you’re not careful. Also like the first game, which type of magic substance you use more often will impact the world around Mickey and how characters see him. Unlike the first game, many of your decisions are irreversible. Thin a building to the point that non-toon parts of it collapse, and that’s it – that building will be damaged for the rest of your game. Some may find this restrictive, but I found it added a nice layer of depth to the paint/thinner balancing act, and caused me to think about the results of thinner-oriented actions before just dissolving everything in sight to get to a treasure chest.

Oswald’s abilities are not morally significant, but they do change the way the game is played. His remote control can electrify things, stun enemies and operate control panels. He can also fly short distances with his helicopter ears, and even give Mickey a ride across gaps. A constant presence throughout the game, Oswald can be controlled by a second player at any time thanks to drop-in/drop-out split-screen play. The co-op does not support online play, but Epic Mickey 2 somehow feels like it should be a side-by-side experience. Each character plays uniquely enough that both players contribute in different ways to the puzzle solving and platform traversing.

Power of Two, Irritation of One

Oswald sticks around when you play solo, and that’s when problems arise. Because of the tandem nature of the level design and puzzles, Mickey and Oswald must work together frequently to surmount obstacles, defeat enemies and make progress. When you don’t have a buddy handy you have to rely on the AI-controlled Oswald to help you out, and this can be a risky proposition in some circumstances. You can call him over and give him close-range commands to activate his propeller ears or open an electrically-controlled object, but there will be times when you’d really like Oswald to activate that switch that’s only accessible due to the pressure plate you’re standing on while dodging incoming thinner attacks, but he’s too busy shocking offscreen enemies or staring at a wall.

The squirrely camera of the first game has been heavily overhauled, and requires very little babysitting or adjustment. Using an analog stick to aim Mickey’s paint is obviously a much more reliable control solution than a Wiimote, and it’s a joy to navigate Wasteland without worrying about Mickey’s positioning versus where the camera wants to point independently of your in-game actions. The welcome addition of a “hold the button to leave areas” feature also prevents accidental entering of shops and unneeded load times.

The main story is a bit on the short side, but tons of sidequests and optional tasks await Mickey and Oswald, and there is no lack of things to do. There are outfits for both heroes to collect, photos to take of hidden Mickey and Oswald heads all over the game’s levels, multiple paths and bonus items to gather in the classic cartoon inspired 2D levels, the ever addictive pin trading, and even some post-credits intrigue to investigate. The multiple solutions to many of the game’s puzzles and quests adds a strong element of replay value on top of all that.

Visual Justice

One of the few downsides of the first game was that Junction Point's brilliant reimaginings of classic Disney properties were not in HD, because the game was a Wii exclusive and thus trapped in standard definition limbo. Epic Mickey 2 is multiplatform, which means Wasteland is finally available in HD on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U, and it is a true treat for Disney fans. Homages and references are packed into every frame of the game, and some truly obscure pieces of Disneyana (yes, that’s a real term) await discovery. You know they’re digging deep when there’s a prominent enemy based on The Black Hole.

Epic Mickey 2 once again pays heartfelt tribute to animation history, and does it with style and sincerity. As with the original game, anyone who loves Disney, Mickey Mouse, or just animation history in general will find something to enjoy here, and the fact that the game is a superb platformer and co-op title is icing on the cake. Here's hoping for many more adventures in Wasteland courtesy of Junction Point Studios.

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Hitman: Absolution Review - Xbox 360

Hitman: Absolution is outstanding. Best in the series by a wide margin, and easily one of the best games released in 2012.

IO Interactive tapped into something unique in 2000 when Hitman: Codename 47 was released. There's always been this vision in popular entertainment of the well-dressed, urbane contract killer, and 47 emobodied that vision perfectly. Each new hit amounted to a murderer's sandbox, with makeshift weapons, disguises, and environment-specific features that all existed for the singular purpose of pulling off an improbable kill.

Now, more than a decade later, IO Interactive returns to the universe that launched the studio with Hitman: Absolution. The sandbox is much bigger and more elaborate now, but the song remains the same. Kill your target and don't be seen


More Than Just A Contract


Hitman: Absolution dives deep into the series' established fiction, though you won't need any kind of background with the previous games to figure out what's going on. An intro cutscene lays out the basic setup, which establishes that Agent 47's former handler, Diana Burnwood, went rogue in the time leading up to the game. She blew the whistle on 47's empoyer, the ICA. and the newly re-formed organization now wants her dead.


You quickly learn in the game's prologue that there's more to Diana turning on her former employer than a crisis of conscience over what the ICA represents. She's also protecting a young woman named Victoria. It's not clear why the girl or the USB drive-looking necklace that she wears is so important, but you eventually come to learn that it ties in with 47's own origins at a professional hitman.


The story's execution is surprisingly tight given the length of the game (around 15-20 hours on the Normal difficulty). This isn't groundbreaking storytelling, but it's a perfectly competent noir-ish thriller with some light sci-fi thrown in. More importantly, the plot never falls into the trap of becoming too convoluted. There's always a clear picture of the action driving 47 from location to location, especially now that the proceedings amount to more than a loosely connected series of contracted murders.


You'll take out your fair share of miscreants, of course, but you'll also find yourself on the run from the cops, embarking on fact-finding missions, and breaking out of capture situations. The unfolding plot aligns various forces against 47, which in turn serves to throw a variety of obstacles into your path, on both sides of the law.

Sandbox Murder

Fundamentally, Hitman: Absolution is the same game that it's always been. It's bigger for sure, offering a lot more flexibility in terms of how you approach any given situation. New features like Point Shooting -- which functions much like Splinter Cell: Conviction's Mark and Execute feature -- give a boost to the more action-packed side of the game, but a "proper" Absolution playthough still avoids violence almost entirely, except where specific targets are concerned. Same as it ever was.


While you'll still use many of the same tools that 47 always has -- a garrote, those signature Silverballer pistols, a variety of disguises -- there's one major addition to the toolbox that fundamentally alters the way you approach the game: Instinct. Pressing and holding a button (RB on an Xbox 360 controller) layers an enhanced view on top of the existing world, similar to Batman: Arkham Asylum/City's Detective Mode.


Using Instinct, you are able to see outlines of enemies and innocents alike in your immediate vicinity, even if they're on the other side of a wall. The range won't cover most of Absolution's large maps, but it's certainly large enough to work with when planning your stealthy advance. Instinct also highlights the movements of enemy patrols, allowing you to see who's coming and where they're headed.

Instinct is a game-changing feature, particularly on the lower difficulty settings (a "Purist" difficulty removes it entirely, along with everything other than your crosshair). It isn't foolproof, since you still can't predict when someone's going to suddenly turn around a see your sneaking, bald-headed self creeping up. It's also not terribly useful when you hide away in a dumpster or locker due to (seemingly unnecessary) limitations placed on your field of view in those circumstances.


In addition to giving you a clearer view of the world around you, Instinct also has more direct uses. For stealthy play, you can "spend" Instinct (via a diminishing on screen meter) to blend in when you're wearing a disguise. An enemy guard might realize you're not part of the team when he sees you disguised as one of his fellow lackeys, but using Instinct as you walk past effectively keeps your cover from being blown.


The possibilities for social stealth are greatly enhanced by this. Agent 47 sticks out in any crowd when he's wearing his trademark suit and tie, but the combination of a disguise with Instinct allows you to navigate your way through hostile environments that would have been impossible to explore in earlier games.

Credit goes as well to the Glacier 2 engine that powers Absolution. Every one of the game's 50+ discrete environments is brimming with life and personality, as well as any number of points of interaction. There are makeshift weapons to be found, shortcuts and secret access points accessible via ledges and air ducts, distraction opportunities... so much that it's almost daunting. Replay value is at an all-time high in the campaign since you can approach any challenge in a ridiculous variety of ways.


There are even dangling carrots to keep you going after that "perfect hit" in each mission. Any given map that you explore comes with a set of challenges, some of which are conflicting. Completing one might involve wearing every disguise available in that area while another might call for you to make it through without ever abandoning your suit. Completing these unlocks disguises and improves 47's skills, making him more effective in both the campaign and the new Contracts mode.

Murder By H.O.R.S.E.



Contracts is essentially Hitman's own take on H.O.R.S.E.. Instead of lining up impossible basketball shots, you're trying to best the Hitman-playing community with an impossible kill challenge.

The catch is that you've got to complete the hit (or hits) yourself first. Creating a Contract is easy enough. You select a map pulled from any of the chunks of campaign that you've played through already. Once you're in, you find whoever you'd like to target for your hit, mark him or her (with a Y button press), and execute the kill in the manner of your choosing.

Contracts automatically tracks the type of weapon used, the disguise you're wearing, whether or not the body was hidden, and the like, setting these as optional kill objectives for those who would take on your Contract. What's really neat about Contracts is the way it fundamentally changes how you approach the game. You're stepping into the map of your choosing with no specific goal beyond "select up to three targets and kill them however you like."

Instead of trying to out-think an AI-controlled enemy force, you're working to develop enough of an understanding of the AI's inner workings to create advantageous kill scenarios that are difficult for others to replicate.

That said, Contracts still could have used more depth. You might, for example, want to set a kill condition that involves using a specific, unique revolver that is only found on the map you've selected. Contracts only recognizes firearms by class, however, which means that any revolver will satisfy the optional kill objective.

There's also no way to have a contract condition depend on the murder happening in a specific location. These are small complaints given how flexible and entertaining Contracts is in its current, finished form. You earn money for completing contracts that can then be spent on new disguises and upgrading a select assortment of Agency weapons, but the dangling carrots are secondary to the raw level of fun that you'll just have taking on friends' contracts and pitting them against your own.

The Perfect Kill



Hitman: Absolution is a triumph, top to bottom. Fans of the series can look forward to the best entry yet, without question. In a year that has already seen some of the best stealth games of this generation, veteran developer IO Interactive delivers an experience that still manages to stand out. This is an outstanding effort from the veteran developer, and an absolute must-play for anyone who embraces the thrill of striking from the shadows and slipping away unseen.

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Remember Me Review

Remember Me never comes into its own, but it's an entertaining and attractive adventure all the same.

Within Remember Me, there's an outstanding game struggling to be set free, held back by a story that never takes off and claustrophobic levels that never allow the fantastic near-future setting to take center stage. Remember Me is not the game its world and premise hint that it could have been; rather, it's simply a good third-person action game: entertaining, slickly produced, and flavorful enough to keep you engaged to the end of its six-hour run time. It also stars a great heroine who is both powerful and vulnerable, allowing her to stand out in an intriguing world of corporate influence and lurking danger.

That world is centered on the Paris of the future, where technology has allowed us to exchange and purchase memories, perhaps to replace painful memories with pleasant ones, or to share intimate recollections with friends and lovers. But of course, such power over human emotion also proves dangerous, and happy memories can be bought and abused like drugs, or even stolen and corrupted. Remember Me's opening moments show you the dark side of Neo-Paris, dropping you into a macabre science facility, and forcing you to share the young protagonist's fear and confusion.

Nilin is her name, and guided by the voice in her ear, she escapes into the welcoming arms of a separatist movement called the Errorists. As it turns out, she is a messiah of sorts to its members, though it isn't immediately clear just why she's such an important part of this group's plans. And so as Nilin, you set off to free the populace from the tyranny of the technology that has led to such abuse, and to fell the corporation that controls it. You also seek to recover your lost past. Who are you? What events led to this moment? Can you trust the words of this mysterious Edge, whose voice guides you from one objective to the next?

This is a fantastic premise, and occasionally, Remember Me makes good on it. The chilling opening is one such example, though late-game developments prove poignant as well, revealing how personal pain can lead to far-reaching consequences for the ones we love--and even for entire cultures. In between, however, Remember Me falls into a rut, leaning on typical video game tropes, the voice in your ear leading you from one objective to the next with only a few words of exposition to motivate you. Nilin even makes a crack about being a simple errand runner, and all too often, that's the role you play.

Elsewhere, corny dialogue and forced metaphors dull the story's edge. When Nilin plaintively calls out to a fellow Errorist codenamed "Bad Request" using only "Bad," as though it's his first name, it's hard to take the story seriously. Nilin herself is the common narrative element that pulls you through in the face of loopy writing. Her ability to change memories at will, and her tendency to kick major butt in hand-to-hand combat, make her an appealing game lead, but it's her strength in the face of a vague past and an uncertain future that makes her an intriguing individual. Nilin is wonderfully voiced, betraying her fear in harsh whispers and crying out in anger when the burden is too great to bear.

The world, too, provides phenomenal possibilities, only to reveal itself as a façade, rather than the well-defined setting it seems to be. Neo-Paris is a gorgeous mix of the traditional and the advanced. Café patrons sit at wrought-iron tables, while behind them, high-style skyscrapers reach into the clear cerulean sky. At one point, you collide with a busy shopper on your travels--but that shopper is not a fashionably dressed Parisian, but a fashionably dressed Parisian's android, frantically running errands for its demanding owner. Remember Me's second half leaves behind its most evocative sights for more mundane environments, but even so, the production values remain typically expert. Ambient lighting brings an eerie beauty to subterranean corridors, and digital glitches appear to remind you of the gaps in your memory. Audio glitches appear in the superb musical soundtrack, as well, taking on particular power when the musical score slows or hastens in accordance with your on-screen actions.

It's a shame that you never get a chance to explore this world to any notable degree. Remember Me is one of the most linear, guided games in recent memory, giving you little choice but to wander down its narrow paths until you reach the next battle, the next cutscene, or the next scripted platforming sequence. "Linear" needn't be a bad thing, of course, and plenty of games lead you from point A to point Z with little room to breathe in between. Yet Remember Me stands out as a particularly egregious example of tightly controlled roller-coaster design, in spite of the few nooks hiding various collectibles. Some areas are so confined that the camera fails to find a good angle, and the paths you follow are so narrow that you long to break free. In the meanwhile, you look into the distance, aching to investigate the inviting Neo-Parisian sights and realizing you are an outsider looking in rather than a true part of this incredible place.

Give yourself over to this theme-park ride, however, and you'll have a good time. Remember Me takes on a predictable but comfortable rhythm of scripted platforming, melee combat, and light puzzle solving. The leaping and climbing take a clear cue from the Uncharted series, the game always leading you in the single direction towards your destination. Visual cues always shows the path; the fun comes not from the true dangers of navigation, but from the camera angles that highlight the deep chasms beneath you and the gorgeous Neo-Parisian architecture. A few platforming stretches impart a sense of urgency, having you evade an aircraft's gunfire, or hurrying along ledges being periodically electrified. But for the most part, Remember Me's platforming isn't likely to challenge you, only to stimulate your eyes and ears.

Actually, Remember Me isn't challenging in general, though you are still likely to be entertained by its combat. On its topmost level, beating up your foes is a relatively shallow button-mashing affair, but the melee combat has a few extra twists to keep it from falling into a rut. Nilin looks good in battle, tumbling, punching, and kicking with ease, each blow landing with a nice thud. You can string individual attacks into combos, and it's here that Remember Me makes its first effort to set its gameplay apart from the pack: you can create your own combos out of individual attacks called pressens. Some attacks focus on damage, while others provide you with healing or recharge the meter that allows you to perform special abilities.

It's a neat system, but it's less exciting than initially meets the eye. You only get a few combo templates to work with, and you unlock new pressens slowly, so the potential of the craft-your-own-combos mechanic is never fully exploited. But the nature of certain attacks, the self-heal in particular, gives some battles a modicum of tactical dimension. Some powerful corporate guards deal damage each time you make contact, which makes that self-heal an important part of your combos. Meanwhile, a ranged gadget you collect early on allows you to knock memory-addicted leapers off of walls and fire energy charges at robots vulnerable to them. Crowded encounters and boss fights give you a good chance to break out special attacks, such as an area-wide stun, and a bomb that you can attach to unsuspecting freaks.

Battle is rarely difficult, though it does take on a nice rhythm, particularly in the final hours, when you have a greater selection of attacks at your disposal. As with the platforming, Remember Me's combat is more interested in pleasing your senses than it is in providing depth. The camera frequently closes in to show you planting a destructive bomb, or to showcase the final kick in your longest combo. It's fun to feel like a participant in a sci-fi action film, but you can't always find a good view when the tight spaces get crowded with foes. In fact, the camera might even break, forcing you to restart at the most recent checkpoint so you can regain control. You might need to contend with other bugs as well; you can break a couple of environmental puzzles if you aren't careful, for instance, or a scripted event following a boss fight might not trigger, forcing you to replay the final stretch of that battle again. Bugs aren't enormously common, but Remember Me's highly scripted design makes such hitches seem a little more egregious than they might have been in a more flexible game.

Puzzles and stealth sections break up the pace nicely, though neither element is all that engaging on its own. You use your wrist device to manipulate sliding platforms, open doors, and transfer power from one door lock to another, and every so often, you need to move past roaming sentry bots without entering their danger zone. None of this proves very intellectually engaging however, with one exception: puzzles that require you to interpret mnemonics, and then manipulate objects accordingly. Not only do these few puzzles require a bit of brain power (provided you ignore the game's insistence on telling you the answer if you take too long), but also tie nicely into the narrative.

Remember Me's brightest spark, however, is emitted when Nilin enters and manipulates someone's memory in an effort to change their present state of mind. These sequences lead to a few of the game's more impactful narrative events, though they're best not analyzed too much, less the plot start to seem too nonsensical. More importantly, memory manipulation is Remember Me's most well-developed gameplay concept. Once you view the event as it originally occurred, you rewind and forward through the scene, seeking the telltale static indicating that you can interact with an object. You might move a piece of furniture, drop a cigarette, unfasten a safety belt, or move a firearm. Adjust the scene in just the right way, and you will change the past--or at least, the past as remembered by the mind you have manipulated--to accommodate the present you require.

Your attempts to properly shape another's memories may not go right the first few times, but the scene will still change based on your actions. The ensuing events may even lead to your subject's inadvertent death, or maybe just the innocuous fall of an object to the floor. It's intoxicating to watch an entire cinematic morph around your attempts to solve the puzzle at hand, and the final memory manipulation makes use of a delightful concept you must experience for yourself to appreciate. Disappointingly, Remember Me offers too few chances to concoct new memories for others.

The scarcity of memory manipulation isn't Remember Me's only disappointing element, yet there are just enough great ideas bubbling under its surface to give this adventure some heat. Nilin is the best reason to make this game a future memory: she's resolute, conflicted, and all too human, making her a terrific escort through this beautiful and underutilized world. Remember Me is a good game loaded with intriguing ideas; here's hoping that its sequel, should we ever have one, rides these ideas to greatness.

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Far Cry 3 Review - Xbox 360

Far Cry 3 Review:

Far Cry has always been a series with tremendous potential. The open tropical areas of the first game provided a lush setting for a fairly pedestrian adventure, marred by the eventual appearance of game-breaking mutant monsters. Far Cry 2 brought things down to earth with a gritty story of mercenaries in Africa, but suffered from irritating gameplay decisions like constantly respawning enemy outposts and a tendency for your character to have malaria attacks in the middle of firefights. Far Cry 3 is the promise of the series finally realized, with a compelling narrative driving you through a breathtakingly beautiful and hostile tropical island that challenges without irritation and guides without being restricting.

Heavy Traffic

Jason Brody is on vacation in Asia with his brothers, his girlfriend and a few other friends. They're doing the rich white American kid tour of the continent, racking up huge bar bills on daddy's Black Card and generally making asses of themselves in front of the locals, when a skydiving trip to an unremarkable island ends in disaster. They're captured by human traffickers, led by a clearly unhinged man named Vaas, destined to be ransomed and sold into slavery. Jason's Army-trained older brother manages to bust the two of you out at the beginning of the game, but gets killed because you decided to stop ten feet outside the slaver camp to read a map. Jason manages to get away, and is rescued by Dennis, a local resident who initiates the naïve but surprisingly adept Jason into the island natives' warrior culture.

From there, Jason sets about rescuing his remaining friends and ostensibly getting off the island, but slaughtering a couple thousand people changes a man, even if it's in the name of liberty. What results is a dark and sometimes drug-fueled descent into the depths of human behavior and an interesting exploration of the line between sanity and insanity, morality and immorality. Jason interacts with a number of memorable and well-written characters, each of which embodies a different vice that holds sway over the island. There are precious few "good guys" in Far Cry 3, and even Jason himself is not particularly likeable, even if he is understandable. The story is trying to do some very interesting things, and for the most part pulls them off, although to delve further into it would be to enter spoiler territory.

So Much Time, So Little To Do

Jason's odyssey takes you through 38 missions that offer the most guided and scripted experiences in the game. Here is where you'll escape burning buildings, man the turret in numerous AI-driven vehicles, explore long-forgotten tombs hidden beneath abandoned World War II era installations, and get to know the shady characters inhabiting the island. It's roughly a 10 hour journey straight through, but to sprint through the story alone is to miss the entire appeal of Far Cry 3.

The island is absolutely crammed with a wide variety of content. The immense map is revealed by reaching broadcast antennas, scaling them, and deactivating a jammer at the top, not unlike the way Viewpoints work in the Assassin's Creed series. This will reveal the immediate area and show you available missions and activities. The brilliant part is how all the disparate activities lead into one another due to the rewards they provide.

Strike That, Reverse It

The most immediate problem at the beginning of the game is your inability to carry much in the way of bullets, loot and weapons. Jason must hunt the wildlife and skin his kills to craft bags and pouches to hold more ammo and loot. You never really see Jason from the third person, but I imagine by the time he's fully upgraded he has more pouches than a Rob Liefeld character. To move around the map and hunt the specific game you need to craft each item, fast travel is the most useful option, which leads you to outposts. Outposts can be liberated to unlock new fast travel points and eliminate enemy patrols from an area. You get bonus XP for liberating outposts stealthily, which levels you up, allowing you to buy more skills in the extensive skill trees, making Jason a more effective warrior. Collectibles in the world also provide XP, as well as loot to sell for cash which can be used to buy customization items for your weapons at the stores in each liberated outpost. Oh, and as you deactivate more antenna, weapons become free in the shop. And completing certain numbers of side activities and collection goals earns you specialized weapons unavailable otherwise. And all of a sudden it's 4AM and you have to leave for work in three hours.

Far Cry 3 is a tremendously immersive and time-distorting game. It never wears out its welcome because of the variety of tasks at hand combined with the unpredictability of the enemies and the island itself. A digital camera lets you tag enemies from a distance, making them easy to track visually even through cover. Performing recon on a target location is extremely important, but several times I found myself suddenly stalked by a tiger or a bear while I was in the process of scouting an outpost from cover. Caged predators in outposts can be freed to wreak havoc among the enemies guarding it. The enemy humans are just dumb enough to be believable, and with practice it becomes possible to torment them creatively while remaining invisible. Of course, the game is perfectly willing to accept a player who just wants to stride into camp and start shooting, too, but you'll have to be extremely quick on the trigger, especially as the game progresses and the enemies up their arsenals accordingly.

Bonus Points

Two multiplayer modes are present in Far Cry 3. Co-op is a four-player romp through various locations on the island, featuring characters unrelated to Jason's plight who ended up on the island six weeks prior to the events of the single player game. It loses the open world feel in many places, but the gunplay of the game is satisfying enough to stand on its own in a co-op setting, and there is a decent variety of mission types.

Competitive multi consists of standard modes and a very detailed weapon/perk unlock system similar to that of Call of Duty. It leverages the basic combat gameplay well enough, but by limiting things to enclosed arenas it comes off as more adequate than exceptional. Honestly the multiplayer options are mostly just nice-to-haves; the star of the show here is the solo campaign, which may explain why the online servers have been so deserted, even on launch day.

Must Buy 3

Aside from the occasional texture glitch or stray enemy phasing into a rock (a problem easily solved with well-placed explosives), Far Cry 3 is a technically brilliant and expertly balanced gameplay experience that offers an immense amount of content and a high degree of polish. At the time of writing I have put nearly 60 hours into it across two playthroughs, and will probably play it a third time on PC later on. I suggest you do the same.

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ZombiU Review - Wii U

Ubisoft seems to have approached ZombiU with a sensible formula: introduce the relatively unique properties of the Wii U gamepad and present them in the context of a very accessible and appealing zombie apocalypse. In doing so, Ubisoft, no stranger to third-party launch titles, has stepped it up a notch to deliver one of the few worthwhile original Wii U titles out of the gate.

There's something eerily familiar about the outbreak imagined in ZombiU's London setting. Granted, dark and desolate urban areas are hardly original settings in undead nightmares, but this combined with the guitar-driven score made me wonder just how much Ubisoft drew particular influence from 28 Days Later. Here, however, the fast-moving zombies don't show up until later. If you classify zombie entertainment two-pronged, as either isolated incidents that survivors can overcome or end-of-the-world events that survivors can endure, you'll find ZombiU falling into the latter category.

ZombiU is played in the first person, always an efficiently immersive approach in the zombie survival mode. Your go-to melee weapon is the setting-appropriate English cricket bat, which while durable, isn't the easiest weapon to wield, and is one of the reasons I relied more on the limited firearms or in some sections just avoided zombies altogether. Moving around worked well enough, though the same can't be said for object interaction. Whether it's going through doors or looting the undead, it can be a challenge precisely centering your camera for the needed button prompt to appear.

Of the many Wii U launch and launch window titles out now, ZombiU is on that short list of games not allowing you to make a full playthrough on the console's unique new gamepad. That's not much of a detractor here, with the secondary gamepad screen acting as a special makeshift device that allows you to detect objects and signs not visible on your primary screen. It's also what you'll refer to for inventory management, making for extremely tense situations that force your attention from the primary screen even when zombies are in the midst.

Of the many terms that surfaced during the gaming year that was 2012, "permadeath" could be the one most oft repeated. Thanks to the success of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, gamers rediscovered what it feels like to emotionally invest in playable characters without the assistance of high-production cinematics or even deep character development. ZombiU works off this concept of permadeath, but, unlike XCOM's concern for an entire squad, has you focusing your protection onto one character at a time. This creates a great sense of caution and with the first character you control almost paranoia, until that faint hope you can beat the game without dying flitters away upon first death. But die you (probably) will in ZombiU, and once you get over it you'll find it's not the end of the world. Though it can be difficult if you had stored in your backpack all ammo and items at the time of your demise. You'll have to track down and kill this last character you played, now one of the walking undead, for any chance at recovering those items. If on the way to recover these items your new character gets infected, then those items are gone for good. This leads to judgment calls on what items you ought to bring with you and what you should save in the storage container in the safehouse.

In trying to keep your survivor alive, the game provides a number of avenues beyond the standard up close and personal approach. The outdoor areas of London can be especially roomy in providing non-confrontational routes to sneak past zombies and focus on your immediate missions. These missions include anything from activating closed circuit cameras to recovering key items.

Next to Tekken Tag Tournament 2 and New Super Mario Bros. U, ZombiU ranks as one of the best local multiplayer games for the Wii U. Much like the adversarial forms of multiplayer in Nintendo Land, the asymmetrical set up of pitting players against someone with the Wii U gamepad provides a level of entertainment you wouldn't get from a regular match on traditional controllers. In ZombiU, there are the player-controlled survivors, while the player with the gamepad takes on the role of zombie summoner. In the gamepad user's eyes, it's sort of a form of "tower offense" as you're able to send a number of zombies to stop the other players.

Taking a page from the classic multiplayer conquest mode, ZombiU pits survivors against zombies in a competition to take over capture points. I was pleased with how fair and balanced the challenges were from both the zombie and the survivor perspective. One zombie type is designed to capture points while the rest are designed to torment the survivors. The latter group is an utter joy to disperse out into the field and make things hard for your friends. There's nothing like the sadistic glee of overwhelming others with fast moving joggers and spitters.

ZombiU should also be recognized as one of those rare launch titles that doesn't have the classic earmarks of a launch title that's been rushed out the door. The melee combat is a little rough, but that's compensated for by the other tools available in the game. Moreover, ZombiU's levels are developed well enough that your wits become a useful asset. The full integration of the gamepad and how it forces your gaze away from the television creates a special kind of suspense you couldn't get in other zombie games.

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Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara Review

Two of Capcom's best arcade beat-'em-ups get HD ports worthy of their heritage, providing a good, if easy, co-op experience.


The pair of games in Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara collection may very well be the best of its beat-'em-up games from the '90s arcade era, and these ports from Iron Galaxy are the most robust versions of the duo of Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara to date. The 1999 Sega Saturn ports were exclusive to Japan and were unfortunately downgraded from four-player to two-player co-op, but these new HD ports are upscaled versions of the four-player arcade originals with a few modern additions, such as visual filters, unlockable rules, and concept art. Of course, the real draw is the co-op beat-'em-up experience, which has stood the test of time surprisingly well. It's a return to form for these nearly 20-year-old games; for players who remember them, and even those who don't, Chronicles is worth the time it takes to wrangle a party of warriors and suit up for battle.

Coming toward the end of Capcom's stint in side-scrolling brawlers, these games are far more advanced than was typical of the genre at the time, when their contemporaries included only temporarily equippable secondary weapons and a small selection of combo attacks and special moves. Capcom took a more role-playing-game-like approach by including elements of level progression, optional equipment, and supply shops. There are branching paths and conditional events, and even the name you give your character determines certain factors of your character's skill and equipment loadout. These nuances, especially in Shadow Over Mystara, with its advanced Street Fighter-like inputs, provide plenty of depth. There are moments when fighting common enemies becomes repetitive, but it's not difficult to find new ways to play to keep the experience fresh; it's often as easy as choosing a different character and exploring their distinct moveset.

You and your co-op cohorts have four character classes to choose from in Tower of Doom: fighter, elf, cleric, and dwarf. Shadow Over Mystara contains those four and adds the thief and magic-user classes to the roster. The classes differ quite noticeably in speed, power, and abilities, and though you can charge your way through the game with any selection thanks to unlimited continues, it's a far more rewarding experience to plan and build a team of complementary characters. The availability of unlimited continues is good in the sense that it lets you see everything the game has to offer, but it ultimately cheapens the thrill of victory.

Typical thief. Picking up loot while everyone else does the dirty work.

Both Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were designed for co-op play, and though playing solo can be enjoyable, it pales in comparison to the fun that can be had when joining up with a team. Without expert knowledge of the nuanced controls, such as the proper timing of a riposte with the cleric, it's not uncommon to die quite frequently when fighting monsters on your own. Each class's default abilities are detailed in the main menu, but it will take considerable practice to memorize, and consistently perform, some advanced but crucial maneuvers, a task that's more easily done when someone has got your back.

Health pickups are few and far between, but again, the unlimited-continues system negates their worth. Don't bother spending money on health in shops between levels (unless you're chasing a high score); you're fully revitalized the next time you continue after death. It's the nature of a direct arcade port that doesn't include a coin limit. The unlockable Elimination mode does away with the default continue system--entirely. Once it's enabled, you die the first time your HP runs out. This is good for those trying to prove their mastery, but it doesn't really resolve the hand-holding nature of the default system in a desirable fashion.

And people wonder why dragons get such a bad rap.

Of course, judging classic games by modern standards is tricky. Ultimately, it comes down to expectations. Tower of Doom and Shadow Over Mystara were revered upon release, but their classic traits can be off-putting without a nostalgic perspective to give them context. Players who have graduated from the past and are looking for a more advanced experience may view this collection as a lighthearted diversion. However, for anyone who has waited the better part of two decades to play these games, their arrival on modern platforms is nothing short of awesome. Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara is a great port of two delightful games, and unsurprisingly, they're the very best versions that you can get your hands on.

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State of Decay Review

State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.
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The Good

Breakable weapons keep the focus on stealth
Permadeath for characters ensures that you're careful about taking risks
Heavy doses of suspense in a large, immersive open world
Convincing stat-driven survival system Welcome focus on interpersonal relationships.

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The Bad

Many glitches mar the overall experience
Some key concepts are poorly explained.
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State of Decay certainly doesn't waste any time. Mere seconds past the Start screen, it throws you headlong into a zombie apocalypse in full bloom. Tree branch in hand, you clobber the shambling corpses attempting to munch on your screaming camping buddy, and then seek out the few remaining survivors while scrounging for supplies, weapons, and ever-safer home bases. That's just the first 20 minutes, but the core of State of Decay's gameplay never changes as you make your way through its open world and battle an endless cast of zombies. State of Decay finds its soul in the dreary repetition of apocalyptic survival.

                           

                              You'll probably do more running than fighting. Make sure your cardio's up.

State of Decay's open world manages a substantial degree of immersion, complete with an expansive and occasionally intimidating map and the ability to drive cars freely across the landscape. The cars handle poorly, but the ability to use them to mow down roving zombie swarms offers a malicious satisfaction. Yet this isn't some zombie free-for-all; far from it. In developer Undead Labs' impressive first effort, melee weapons break with frightening ease, ammo runs out quickly, silencers break in the midst of careful attempts at stealth sniping, and even vehicles run out of gas unless refueled. There's a heavy dose of "the real" here, and the game is better for it.

You thus quickly learn to fight zombies only if you absolutely have to in State of Decay, and therein lies much of its appeal. This is not a game about Bruce Campbell badassing about in Evil Dead; it's a celebration of the normal person and all of his or her associated weaknesses. Some of the characters you come across (and can befriend and thus control, if you perform enough tasks for them) have no combat experience at all; they're cooks and gaming buffs, and only through taking them out in the world against the undead hordes can you max out their stats in areas like cardio and shooting to their full seven levels.

This might look cool, but this guy probably got a good zombie chomping two seconds later.

Some befriend you easily; others are outright hostile in their worry that bringing in another mouth to feed only weakens your group's strength. Still, there's enough variety among them to warrant answering almost every cry for help you encounter either through your home base's radio or while roving the land. Ignore a plea, and you'll never know if you missed out on finding a world-class zombie killer or even someone who's just witty enough to keep the morale of your home base up.

Just don't get too attached. Death is permanent in State of Decay, which means that even characters with fully voiced storylines and unique dialogue die forever if you let them get overrun. From there, you can only continue through the eyes of another character you've befriended. Because death is permanent, you spend much of the game not in combat but in the more suspenseful act of slinking through bushes on foot. Indeed, every action carries with it the threat of fatal zombie attraction, such as choosing to ram your way through a locked door or even speeding up your usually slow searches through cabinets and bags with a click of the left bumper.

_______________________________________________________________________________

State of Decay is an immersive and suspenseful open-world zombie adventure that shouldn't be missed.

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Few things add more tension to State of Decay than the terrifying noise guns make, because a single foolish shot can bring an unmanageable horde upon you. And if your character doesn't have the cardio to outrun them? You'll watch helplessly as the zombies rip his legs from his torso. Unfortunately, considering that there are a host of bugs in State of Decay that make zombies pop up out of nowhere or even send them straight through walls, it's possible that will happen anyway despite your most careful efforts.

Hasn't anyone ever told these people that riding in the bed of a pickup truck is extremely dangerous?

Permanent death is a smart addition, though, since losing characters with high skills across the board carries with it a real sense of loss, particularly if their voice quests and customized responses in some quests led you to believe they were an essential (and thus effectively immortal) character. Sometimes they don't even have to die in the field; if a character you've been controlling sustains enough injuries--a few undead chomps don't result in instant zombification in State of Decay--he'll lie bedridden and useless at your home base. The good news is that the need to rest and switch out characters results in you amassing a balanced group of playable characters anyway; the bad news is that the process isn't explained very well, as with so many of State of Decay's essential systems.

You're never told, for instance, that the supplies you place in your home base's storage to earn reputation (essentially State of Decay's currency) may vanish forever, especially if you log out and return to play several hours later. That's right--the world of State of Decay keeps going even if you're not in it. You're never told about the importance of items like coffee, and you're never warned that prolonged absence from the game can leave the morale of your home base so low that key non-player characters start committing suicide out of despair. For the most part, State of Decay maintains the harrowing lack of direction of its first few minutes throughout the entire game, and that lack of hand-holding means that you'll likely lose more characters than you anticipated as you play.

It's also strange that a game that places such a heavy emphasis on interpersonal relationships should have no cooperative mode. You spend your time with State of Decay alone, joining up with other NPCs only for specialized quests and escort missions that bring other survivors back to your current base camp. It's especially odd since State of Decay starts out with a party of two, suggesting that you'll always have a buddy at your side if need be. While the decision undeniably adds tension to the act of exploration, such solo forays seem foolish considering the circumstances, and the experience may have been better if Undead Labs had let you choose whether or not you wanted a friendly NPC with you as you explored rather than forcing you to go without.

Daytime is scary enough in State of Decay. Night is downright terrifying.

State of Decay serves up a near constant barrage of suspense and immersion that leaves even the briefest jaunts away from your home base tinged with the threat of death. Fair warning: it ends too abruptly with an all-too-obvious nod toward downloadable content or a sequel (perhaps, rumors say, in massively multiplayer online role-playing game form), but an option to return to your latest save file ensures that you can continue foraging for as long as you like. And you should. Its flaws are numerous and impossible to ignore, but in spite of them, State of Decay is a captivating survival adventure set in a bleak and harrowing world.

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Mobile Call Logs Can Reveal a Lot to the NSA

Research shows how much the NSA could glean from call records, and why efforts to downplay the significance of such metadata are misleading.



Of all the recent revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance activities, the collection of metadata from Verizon’s U.S. call records may be the most concerning.

Despite reassurances that the information collected is limited in its scope, academics who study such data say it could still reveal a great deal about the people being monitored. To defend the program, members of Congress have been instructed to refer to these logs as mere “bare-bones records,” according to a set of leaked talking points.

But in reality, the metadata subject to the court order obtained by the NSA—including phone numbers, call time and duration, and information about device interactions with cellular towers—gives intelligence analysts a clear window into sensitive interactions and movements of the U.S. population.

The term “metadata” simply refers to information that is used to track or describe another piece of data, whether that is a cell-phone conversation or a money transfer. One study published this March, using records provided by a European wireless carrier, shows the surveillance power of telecommunications metadata.

Vincent Blondel, an applied mathematician at MIT and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, and collaborators analyzed 15 months of anonymous call records from 1.5 million people. His team was able to uniquely pinpoint the movements of 95 percent of people from only four records, using only the location of a nearby cellular station and the time each call was made. “You can infer a lot, such as where people work and where people live,” says Blondel. “You don’t need information about the content [of the call].”

From there, connecting such movements with a person’s real identity would be a relatively simple matter of cross-referencing the records with other sources of data. The NSA may be able to do this using credit card transactions or e-mail communications, Blondel says, or simply by knowing who has the phone number. These techniques could reveal sensitive activity such as attendance at a particular church or a visit to an abortion clinic.

Analysts could even surmise where and when two individuals are meeting face to face, Blondel says, or construct a diagram of complex relationships among far-flung communities. It’s not known exactly how and to what extent the NSA is mining Verizon’s data, other than that it is collecting the information every day.

And the practice may well assist the NSA in locating terrorism suspects or networks that are actively seeking to evade detection. “These individuals are very aware that there is a high probability their communications are being monitored,” says Drew Conway, a scientist in residence at IA Ventures, who has studied data mining techniques used in counterterrorism efforts.

But a more computationally intensive “big data” approach, without specific targets or questions in mind, could also be used to flag unusual communication patterns in hopes of predicting suspicious activity, he says. Similar tactics have been used successfully against the U.S. In 2011, the Lebanese militant party Hezbollah was reportedly able to pinpoint a CIA network by mining cell-phone data for anomalies, like phones that were used only rarely and in specific locations. In recent years, some mobile carriers have made various kinds of anonymous metadata available for uses ranging from marketing to development studies and transportation planning .

Unlike what the NSA is collecting, these data sets don’t include actual phone numbers or other unique personal identifiers. However, the methods of mining and gleaning information are similar, and so are its potential uses. In the aftermath of this month’s revelations, privacy advocates are worried about what other kinds of metadata the NSA may collect now or in the future.

The Wall Street Journal has reported, for example, that credit card purchases and Internet service provider (ISP) metadata may be part of a similar program, along with call data from AT&T and Sprint. Technology companies like Google and Facebook have denied that they hand over metadata on a comprehensive basis, but they have also said they fear an order to do so.

What, exactly, metadata means is fuzzier online than in the context of phone calls. If this type of data were gathered, it would deeply extend the reach of the government’s surveillance. “One of the problems here is that metadata is kind of a relative term,” says Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. “There’s information that is metadata to Facebook and Google that might be data to the ISP.”

In the context of e-mail, for example, metadata might mean the IP addresses of the sender and recipient and perhaps a time stamp or, arguably, the subject line. For Facebook, perhaps it’s information about when a friend request is being made. More broadly, whether the security benefits of this sweeping surveillance scheme outweigh the privacy costs won’t be clear unless the Obama administration declassifies detailed information about instances in which such data proved crucial to combating terrorism but would have been difficult to obtain with a warrant.And Sanchez believes it is unlikely the government will prove its case.

“It may well be the case that this kind of thing is of some utility in some situations,” he says, but only “in the same way a general warrant to search any house you please might be useful in preventing crime.”

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MacBook Air review (13-inch, mid-2013)

What once was a fresh and exciting design has now, it must be said, become rather familiar. That's in part because of the success of the MacBook Air -- we see them popping open on trains and airplanes all the time these days -- but largely this is thanks to Apple not significantly revamping the design for nearly three years, a period over which we've seen radical changes on the PC side of things. Is this the result of priorities being committed elsewhere? Or, is it simply a case of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? We'll let the reader decide on that front, and while we tend to lean toward the latter option, the net result is the same: we won't spend an awful lot of time describing this now-familiar machine.

This 13-inch MacBook Air maintains its wedge-shaped profile, a maximum of 0.68 inch thick at the back tapering down to a 0.11-inch terminal edge at the front. It's 12.8 inches wide, 8.9 inches deep and weighs just a hair under three pounds (1.35 kg).

These specs were nothing short of amazing a few years back, but today, devices like the Samsung Series 9 and Sony VAIO Pro 13 manage to be even thinner and even lighter. 

Though its thin-and-light crown may be long gone, the Air is still a very sleek device, the sort that may leave you peeking in your bag one more time before you leave home to make sure you didn't forget your laptop.

It also retains its impressive overall feel, with a very stiff chassis that does not flex and a keyboard tray that can stand up to the most vigorous of typists. There's still just the one color option, the matte, raw-aluminum color that looks clean and lovely out of the box, but, as we've seen, can be scratch-prone.

Ports are exactly the same as last year. On the right, you get a USB 3.0 port flanked by Thunderbolt on one side and an SDXC card reader on the other. Move over to the left and you'll find the MagSafe 2 connector, a second USB 3.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone / mic jack.

Look very closely next to that and you'll marvel at the one, single, solitary external difference compared to last year: a second hole in the side for the integrated microphone, intended for active noise cancellation. And that's it. So, if you're a current Air user who packs a USB hub and Ethernet adapter wherever you go, that won't be changing this year. That said, with the new 802.11ac support, maybe you won't need that Ethernet adapter after all.

 KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD

Neither the keyboard nor the trackpad have changed this year, but that's a good thing. In 2011 the MacBook Air finally received backlit keys with what felt like a slightly springier feel than before, making an already great typing experience even better.

That design is retained in 2013, leaving a keyboard that not only has great tactility, but also has a very broad and comfortable layout. Also broad and comfortable is the glass trackpad, which, along with the keyboard, remains one of our favorites.

The sensation of dragging a finger across the matte glass is as good as ever and the responsiveness is perfect for executing all of the many and myriad gestures that OS X has on offer.

DISPLAY AND SOUND

It's no Retina, a fact that can be confirmed with a quick glance. Still, this remains a great-looking LCD, making the most of its 1,440 x 900 resolution.

Viewing angles are as good as ever and brightness does not disappoint. Color reproduction is spot-on and the LED backlighting is both good for your battery and the environment.

The Air's built-in speakers are capable of getting impressively (and uncomfortably) loud if cranked all the way, so hearing a concall from across a room won't be an issue. Still, it's hardly an ideal machine for music playback, with flat, bass-free renditions of all your favorite music.

It'll certainly do in a pinch, but you'll want to make use of that 3.5mm jack (or, indeed, a Bluetooth connection) to enable something with a bit more acoustic range.

PERFORMANCE AND BATTERY LIFE

As usual, we're testing the base-spec 13-inch MacBook Air, the one most consumers are likely to buy. For $1,099 we get a 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor of the Haswell generation, paired with integrated Intel HD 5000 graphics.

The graphics themselves are a nice bump up over the previous-generation machine, but the clock speed is a step down. Last year's base Air came with a 1.8GHz CPU, and as you can see in the table below, this machine does indeed test slightly slower.

But, there is one area where this new machine is significantly faster than before: I/O. This year's Air moves to PCIe storage internally, which means significantly faster speeds in theory. And in practice, as it turns out.

The BlackMagic benchmark showed us 433.4 MB/s for writes and 725.4 MB/s for reads, considerably quicker even than the current Retina MacBook Pro. That helps the boot-up time too. Last year was a speedy 18 seconds. This year? Cold boot to login screen occurs in just under 12.

CONFIGURATION OPTIONS

The base-spec 2013 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099, $100 less than last year. But, as we've just seen, the lower-performance CPU must certainly be taken into consideration here. If you'd like to step up to a 1.7GHz Core i7 processor, you're looking at a $150 premium. Doubling the storage from the default 128GB to 256GB is $200 and, if you want to go all the way up to 512GB, you'll pay another $300. 4GB of RAM is standard, though you can get 8GB for $100 more and, other than the usual bevy of accessories that Apple would love for you to tack on to your purchase (SuperDrive, Thunderbolt display, etc.) those are all the boxes you're able to tick. Fully loaded, you're looking at $1,849. Of course, you can save $100 by going with the 11-inch MacBook Air. That machine starts at $999 for the 128GB model (up from 64 before) and from there you're looking at the same price increments as on the 13-inch model: $150 for more a better CPU, $200 or $500 for the two increased storage options and $100 for more RAM. Predictably, then, a fully specced model also costs $100 less: $1,749.

THE COMPETITION

To say that the laptop space has shifted in the past 12 months since the 2012 MacBook Air shipped would be a gross understatement. PC makers have invented and reinvented their wares to stay relevant in this incredibly competitive (and shrinking) market, adding touchscreens, removable keyboards, crazy convertible designs and lots of other features -- some needed, some not. Still, even if you strip away all the tricks, it's clear that the MacBook Air, with only its new Haswell CPU and faster storage, is facing far stiffer competition than ever before. And, that competition will only get better as more machines move up to Intel's latest and greatest. Of those that have already made the shift, the Sony VAIO Pro looks to be the most compelling. At 2.34 pounds, the 13-inch model is lighter than the Air and it's exactly the same 0.68-inch thickness. Promised battery life is 13 hours -- but to get that you'll have to use an additional sheet battery. It does cost a fair bit more, starting at $1,249 for the 13-inch model, but for that you get a full 1080p IPS LCD. We'd guess that many potential Air buyers would spend another $150 to get the same. (We certainly would.) Another Haswell-having machine is the recently announced Dell XPS 12. We haven't had a chance to test out this year's iteration, but last year's model left us reasonably impressed and, at $1,200 again with a 1080p display, it's even closer in price to the Air. And then there's Samsung's Series 9. It was one of our favorite Ultrabooks of last year and remains a top contender, standing toe to toe with the previous Air. But, with a presumed Haswell refresh not far off, we can't say we'd be seriously considering this model right now -- unless you find it discounted well below its $1,300 MSRP. Finally, there's the sibling rivalry with Apple's own Retina MacBook Pro machines. Last year we were quite fond of both the 15-inch and 13-inch varieties and, indeed, both are still powerhouses. But, again, Haswell updates there can't be far away, and so it's hard to recommend either model now. That said, if you're not in a big rush, it wouldn't hurt to wait a month or three. With any luck, Pros with faster I/O and killer battery life are right around the corner.

WRAP-UP

So, is this a case of a great thing getting even greater, or an aged product getting the bare-minimum upgrade required to keep it relevant?

The truth lies somewhere in between, but it goes without saying that the MacBook Air isn't quite the straightforward "buy" that it has been in the past. While I/O performance and battery life definitely set it ahead of the crowd, and its overall design and keyboard / trackpad combo are as good as ever, that middling display resolution is evolving from an excusable omission to a proper handicap.

Still, it's hard to knock the Air for what it is: a very thin laptop with incredible battery life and good performance for a minimum price that puts it ahead of its competition. If you want a portable Mac with a real focus on portability and can live without a Retina display then we'd say this is still the machine to get. But, if you're not tied to the platform or are a stickler for pixel density, it might just be time to look elsewhere.

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Facebook’s Wi-Fi Spreads in the Wild

The idea of offering people free Wi-Fi in exchange for their physical coordinates began at Facebook as a one-off experiment, a project by two engineers during an all-nighter in May 2012. Since then, Facebook has gradually spread what it now calls “Facebook Wi-Fi” further and further beyond the company’s corporate walls, deploying the system to cafes in Palo Alto and San Francisco and even into a line of routers made by Cisco.

The growth of Facebook’s free internet offering underscores the extent to which the social network is trying to vacuum up more and more information about its members, including their physical movements, and how valuable such data has become in selling advertising. Intended for use in businesses like cafes, Facebook Wi-Fi asks users to “check in” at the business location using their Facebook account.

Once they do, or once they click a small opt-out link, they are granted wireless internet access. The system was developed during a hackathon at Facebook’s Seattle office by engineers Mohit Talwar and Adrian Potra. After winning raucous applause at a “prototype forum” after the programming marathon, it was forwarded to top Facebook brass, who assigned a team of three at the company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters to develop the idea further.

When we first wrote about Facebook Wi-Fi in November, Facebook told us the system was highly experimental, “a small test with a few local businesses” around headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Within a few months, reports on Twitter indicated the experiment had spread to San Francisco locations of the Philz Coffee chain.

We were able to use the system at the Philz location near AT&T Park and have been told it’s up and running in Philz’s Castro location as well. In May, Facebook Wi-Fi graduated beyond experiment as Cisco announced the service would be included as an optional service on its Meraki line of routers.

Facebook is in discussions with other router makers to get Facebook Wi-Fi adopted more broadly, according to Facebook mobile product manager Erick Tseng. Where Facebook Wi-Fi goes from there remains to be seen.

It was impossible not to wonder if a major expansion might be in store last week, when Facebook sent out java-stained invitations to the press, inviting reporters to “join us for coffee and learn about a new product… a small team has been working on.”

But with Facebook in deals to harness grocery store purchase data and with the company having reportedly considered spending $1 billion to buy an app that shares car location data, there’s no question the social network is hungry for data on where you’re going and what you might be buying.

That’s precisely the sort of siloed information internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are increasingly being asked to use for ever-more-precise ad targeting. Given all the private location that’s shared without people even realizing it, Facebook Wi-Fi has the virtue of at least offering the user something valuable in return for her location. Which is why we won’t be surprised to see the long steady march of the system continue.

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The iPhone 5S rumor roundup

It's inevitable...but when will it happen? The rumor roundup for Apple's next iPhone starts now.

iPhone rumors are like flies at a summer picnic: they're nearly unstoppable. Collected in one batch are all the iPhone 5S/6 rumors CNET has reported so far, with some commentary on where these rumors came from.

We always have long wish lists for newer features and further redesigns, but the bottom line is this: nobody knows exactly what we'll get until Tim Cook reveals it on stage later this year.

That said, we've got plenty of educated guesses. But before we get started:

When will we get it:

Odds are strong that the immediate successor to the iPhone 5 will debut in September or October-- the last two iPhones were announced within the same window.

The release will all but certainly coincide with the availability of iOS 7 and the new phone's design should follow the iPhone 5's.

Beyond those obvious notes, the areas that seem most ripe for updating on the "iPhone 5S" would be the resolution of the cameras. And now that there's a 128GB iPad, maybe there will finally be a 128GB iPhone option, too.

What we don't know:

Everything else is pretty much a crapshoot. A bigger screen? CEO Tim Cook says no -- but saying one thing and doing the opposite would hardly be a first for Apple. Beyond a screen size change, though, Apple could also go with a different technology -- say, Igzo or OLED. There are plenty of other unknowns, too.

Will there be another iPhone that debuts with a fall model? Could the iPhone product line split into several differently sized models? Will an affordable "new" budget-line iPhone emerge? Will Apple finally add NFC to the iPhone, as part of a new mobile payments scheme? Anything could happen. Or not.

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In iOS 7, Twitter takes over social -- again

New integrations turn Twitter into an intelligent content provider for iOS device owners, and make Facebook seem less relevant. It's like 2011 all over again.

Showing some repeat favoritism, Apple has once again picked Twitter to power the coolest social experiences for its 600 million iOS device owners.

During a keynote address at its annual Worldwide Developer Conference, the Cupertino company lifted the veil on iOS 7, its next-generation mobile operating system that reflects a new way of thinking around design. Aside from its altered appearance, the redone OS -- coming to consumers' iPhones and iPads this fall -- features a new Control Center, improved multitasking, iTunes Radio, better Camera and Photos apps, and an updated Safari browser.

Twitter is also ever-present in the release, having been upgraded from dumb social pipe to intelligent content provider. The information network has had an intimate connection to Apple and iOS customers since getting system-level integration in the 2011 release of iOS 5. The blessing helped Twitter instantly triple its iOS sign-ups. A year later, Facebook got the same treatment. (Curiously, both Twitter and Facebook status update options have been removed from the Notification Center in iOS 7.)

With iOS 7, Twitter will further infiltrate your device, going deeper into the operating system and becoming one with the system. Facebook not so much.

For starter
s, in the new version of Safari, iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch owners will find something called Shared Links, a pre-populated reading list of articles as shared by the people they follow on Twitter. Here they can scroll through all the URLs from their Twitter timeline, as plucked out by Apple and Twitter. The Twitter browser addition, also coming to the new version of Safari for OS X Mavericks, acts as an alternative to searching, and gives people a no-nonsense, all-content view of what's happening on Twitter, as it's happening.

But when it comes to searching, Siri and Twitter can do that too. In iOS 7, Siri has sucked in Twitter intelligence so that when you ask what people are saying about certain topics, she (or he now!) can tell you by showing you their tweets.

As an extra bonus, Twitter gets to play along with Apple's iTunes Radio, the brand-new Pandora-like digital radio service for Apple devices. iTunes Radio comes with more than 200 promoted genre-based stations, including one featured station that plays tracks trending on Twitter.

The music inclusion means that Twitter's own two-month old radio offering won't be getting trounced by the far bigger digital media player. Instead, it will be boosted by the association.

It's not as if Facebook has been booted from Apple handsets -- it's still a part of share sheets for one-click posting -- but the social network has certainly being pushed to the background, relegated to a distance second place in social in Apple's world.

History could repeat itself with Facebook eventually getting the same treatment, but for now Apple is team Twitter.

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