Review: Asus All-in-One PC ET2700INKS

The good: The Asus ET2700I is unique for its 27-inch display, a fast Core i7 GPU, and a discrete Nvidia graphics chip.
The bad: Like other 27-inch Windows all-in-ones, the Asus' 1080p resolution hurts its appeal next to the higher-resolution 27-inch iMac.
The bottom line: The Asus ET2700I will meet the needs of anyone searching for a fast, large-screen all-in-one for mainstream home entertainment and general-purpose productivity.

Review: Asus All-in-One PC ET2700INKS

HP debuted the first 27-inch Windows all-in-one earlier this year. Now Asus follows suit with its ET2700I. Like HP, Asus charges a reasonable premium for its large display, asking $1,399 for a system that might otherwise cost around $1,000 with the same components and a 24-inch LCD. None of these 27-inchers has the same high resolution as Apple's large iMacs, making them a better fit as home entertainment PCs than productivity workstations. Should you choose the Asus system over the HP? If overall performance and budget gaming capability are important to you, yes.

Asus offers a few different versions of the 27-inch ET2700I. This one is the most expensive, thanks to its Core i7 CPU, a discrete Nvidia graphics card, a Blu-ray drive and a standalone subwoofer unit that plugs into the side of the system.

I haven't seen an all-in-one with a breakout subwoofer before. It seems like a reasonable way to differentiate the system, but the effort is marred by underpowered hardware. Asus sends power and the audio signal to the sub via a single audio cable. The unit provides a slight boost to the bass output, but even at max volume and all of the various software effects enabled, the audio isn't what you would call room-filling. At the higher volume levels, the output also lost some integrity.

Cheap subwoofer aside, the 27-inch screen is the highlight of the ET2700I. The resolution tops out at 1,920x1,080 pixels. That's plenty for most non-professional users, and movies, games, and other media content will look great. You might be disappointed if you want a giant screen to cram full of open windows for multitasking. Professional digital image editors and others will also likely prefer the 27-inch iMac's denser 2,560x1,440-pixel resolution.

Also note that the ET2700I does not have a touch screen. Multiple PC vendors have told me that getting touch on a 27-inch display is prohibitively expensive. That didn't stop Lenovo and others from exhibiting touch-enabled 27-inchers at this year's CES, but whether those systems actually come to market here in the United States is another question.

It's worth noting that without touch, upgrading to Windows 8 later this year might feel rather pointless. How that might factor in to your present-day buying decision depends on what you think of Microsoft's ability to spur the development of compelling touch applications. For this system today, I expect most potential buyers won't find the lack of touch a deal killer. Get the full article >>>

Blizzard’s "Diablo III" The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

Blizzard’s ‘Diablo III’ is a guilty pleasure of a game, but not without problems. Diablo III is the big controversial title of May 2012, and I’ve played through the first half of Act III, so I’ll have more to say about the game once I’ve finished. The below review only covers up to that point.

Blizzard’s "Diablo III" The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

So far I’ve played on Normal difficulty so that I could get a good feel for as much of the game as possible. I’m playing on PC, though the game is available on both PC and Mac. I’ve played as a female Wizard, though I typically choose more tank-like classes.

I’ll play a different class on Nightmare or Inferno later and report back with an expanded review. Also, Player-vs-Player is still in development, so once that’s out I’ll give it a shot and let you all know how it works.

Disclosures aside, let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Diablo III. I can’t say whether this game is right for everyone, but over all I’ve had fun with it, which is exactly the point of a game like this.

The Good
Blizzard’s Diablo III was a long time in the making. It’s been over a decade since Diablo II came out, and many fans of the series have been disappointed in what they perceive as both a lack of progress in the third game and, a little paradoxically, too many changes from the original.

But I’ve been enjoying Diablo III a great deal for what it is: a guilty pleasure of a game. I see Diablo as a game you can simply dip in and out of whenever you want. Hop in with a couple other players, slaughter hordes of monsters, and hop back out again. There’s very little fluff weighing the game down, and not much of a story to get involved with. What story there is clips along at a nice pace, and bits of lore you pick up and listen to as you play add nice details around the edges.

Graphically, many people complained that the game looked as though it was crafted using 2005 technology, but I disagree there as well. The painted 3-dimensional look is really lovely in its own way. Instead of a flat dungeon crawler, there are layers upon layers. Fighting along the ramparts of a fortress, you can see monsters down below and up above. They come not just from all sides, but from the sky, from clifftops and gorges. The juxtaposition of both 2D crawling, and 3D graphics makes the game more fluid and entertaining.

Diablo III is all about being a powerful hero, wielding massive power and doing massive damage to endless waves of enemies. There isn’t a ton of strategy beyond picking which awesome powers to wield. If you’re looking for tactical combat, look elsewhere. It’s not a smart game, really, but it is fun.

Some fans of the older games also complained about a lack of a skill tree. Again, I disagree. The skills you unlock each have a series of runes that are also unlocked as you progress. New skills and new runes are not necessarily more powerful than older skills and runes. Instead, they do a variety of things. One rune may change the cool down time of a power, another may increase its damage, still another may increase the distance or width of that power. You have to choose which rune and which skill you’ll place in each slot. This creates something of a skill web rather than a skill tree and I like how it works quite a bit.

All told, the graphics, the frenetic combat, and the powers are all pretty pitch perfect as far as I’m concerned. Diablo III works for what it is: a melodrama, where everything, including the story and the villains is larger than life, and where slaughtering demons and monsters is a gaudy parade of powers and lights.

Beyond that, I like the music and the sound-effects seem fine. Nicely produced all the way around if nothing particularly special. The cinematics, while blessedly rare, are gorgeous. The angelic fight in particular is really lovely animation.

The Bad

Not everything about the game actually works, however. Only two or three times have I been able to join a full four-person co-op. This is extremely frustrating, as four-person co-op is by far the best way to play. The monsters are at their most difficult, and the variety of powers that four players wield makes the game a lot more fun. Almost without fail, if I’m playing multi-player I’m playing alongside just one other player. Having a menu of games to choose from, and being able to see how many players (and possibly what class players) were available would be very helpful. Indeed, it seems like a no-brainer.

As with all dungeon-crawler, hack-and-slash action RPGs, the gameplay does get old after a while. While Blizzard did a good job making each Act have its own distinct look – you travel between grave-infested forests, plains, deserts, and besieged castles, just to name a few – the dungeons you enter start to wear thin after a while. This isn’t so much a complaint as it is an acknowledgment of the inherent limitations of the genre. Or maybe the limitations of the genre so far, and an indication that more innovation is required.

The merchants are pretty much only useful to sell gear. And I haven’t had much use for the craftsmen either. By the time I’m at a level to actually buy or craft a better weapon, I’ve almost certainly found something that’s way more powerful, making buying and selling all but irrelevant except to get rid of loot. So far the most interesting thing I’ve actually bought has been dye for my armor.

This item imbalance – and it is an imbalance – is not the only problem with creating an even-keeled game. Some bosses are far too easy, making the difficult bosses surprising and unexpected. I’d like it if all the bosses were a great deal harder, or at least if each new boss was progressively more difficult from the last.

Meanwhile, weapons serve as little more than stat upgrades, granting extra life or magic damage (etc.) to your character. You never actually wield the weapon for its own sake. I’m not terribly bothered by this. I hardly ever play magic users in RPGs, but in Diablo III it’s actually pretty fun to play as a Wizard and just lay down the powers of mass destruction. Double-beamed Disintegrate is a wonderful thing. Raining meteors down on the approaching horde is also great. Who needs to whack baddies with swords or axes when you can cause so much magic destruction?

Still, it does feel a little off not to have more emphasis on weapons.
Beyond this I have relatively few complaints about gameplay. The hack-and-slash action-RPG is not my game of choice. I prefer games where combat is tense and strategic, at least to some degree, such as Dark Souls or Dragon’s Dogma. But you have to critique these things on their own terms, and Diablo III isn’t trying to be anything other than what it is.

The Ugly
Outside of gameplay, there’s plenty of ugly with this game. The painted world Blizzard created is fine in my book, but when it comes to certain business decisions there’s much to be desired.

For simplicity’s sake, I’ll list these problems:

• Blizzard made the odd and troubling decision to require all players to be logged online all the time in order to play the game. Even in single-player mode, players are forced to have an internet connection and be logged into Battle.net. Always-online DRM creates its own set of problems and inconveniences for players such as…
• Launch issues. The problem with relying on Blizzard servers isn’t really that they’re going to go away any time soon. But whenever any problem takes place with the servers, those problems extend to anyone who owns the game. Want to play single player if Battle.net is down? Tough. If hackers decide to bring the servers to their knees, you’re out of a game. This brings up questions about ownership of digital property that don’t look good for gamers.
•     Bugs. Lots of bugs. And hacks. Apparently lots of hacks. Players have reported numerous incidents of hacked accounts where all their items and gold have been stolen. This is a problem with always-online DRM, but it’s also a symptom of…
• The real-money Auction House, where players can buy and sell items from one another, giving Blizzard a cut of each transaction. I can understand the convenience of this, and I can understand how such a system can extend the revenue stream for Blizzard. But it also rubs me the wrong way. It encourages playing a game to make a profit, and can create incentives for hackers to break into accounts, steal items, and then sell them for real money.
• $60 is not the right price point for this title. With competition like Torchlight 2 priced at $20, it just doesn’t make sense. This isn’t to say it’s a bad game or not worth spending money on, but it seems way too expensive for this sort of game. Then again, I think a lot of games are overpriced. I think there really is decent replay value in Diablo III, but something closer to the competition would be more accurate and fair to gamers’ pocketbooks. Blizzard could easily release expansion packs or DLC down the road to increase replay value and bring in more bacon.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of issues that people may have with this game, both in terms of what it gets wrong in-game and on the business side. And I’m sure many Diablo purists will disagree with some of what I found really enjoyable about the game.

But that’s thing about games. We all have different tastes and opinions and we can’t do much better than say “To each their own.” For me, Diablo III is a great escapist title. Not much meat on the bones, but plenty of bones to keep you busy not thinking about the meat.

Best Buy Canada release of the Galaxy S III

Jitters have persisted that the Canadian release of the Galaxy S III might face the customary weeks-long delays that those north of the border are used to. If we go by what looks to be an escaped Best Buy Canada flyer graphic, Samsung's Android 4.0 beast should be going up for pre-orders soon - MobileSyrup hears May 30th - with launches on at least Bell, Rogers, Telus and a Bell-owned Virgin Mobile around June 20th. We know that Samsung has publicly promised a US release in June, so there's a real chance that we could be seeing a simultaneous North American appearance that brings everyone together in TouchWiz harmony. 

There's still some big questions left open even if we're seeing an accurate snapshot, such as when Mobilicity, Wind and other LTE-less carriers will get their units as well as whether or not the LTE versions use Snapdragons instead of the Exynos 4 Quad.

Kindle Store spam has been banned by Amazon

Amazon is finally banning some of the junkier content in the Kindle Store, including “content that is freely available on the web unless you are the copyright owner of that content.” The company is making new rules on public domain and “other non-exclusive content.” Seth Godin got an e-mail highlighting the new rules (because he’s a Kindle author, not because he’s a spammer) and here they are:

Public Domain and Other Non-Exclusive Content
Some types of content, such as public domain content, may be free to use by anyone, or may be licensed for use by more than one party. We will not accept content that is freely available on the web unless you are the copyright owner of that content. For example, if you received your book content from a source that allows you and others to re-distribute it, and the content is freely available on the web, we will not accept it for sale on the Kindle store. We do accept public domain content, however we may choose to not sell a public domain book if its content is undifferentiated or barely differentiated from one or more other books.

In other words, Amazon appears to be officially banning private-label rights content — articles that can be bought cheaply online and quickly formatted into an e-book — as well as public-domain works like “Alice in Wonderland” that many users are trying to sell. In the past, the company has taken a few steps to get this type of content under control, but this is a stricter policy. It’s not clear how the new rules will be enforced, but they could mean stricter vetting at the submission stage. E-book retailer Smashwords already bans this type of content.

See the Disney Pixar Adventure at Xbox 360

A Disney Pixar Adventure is fun and exhausting! Players enter a virtual amusement park where they will find five themed adventures based on some of the most popular Disney/Pixar movies – The Incredibles, Toy Story, Cars, Ratatouille and Up – making the game instantly playable.

First up, this game is obviously aimed at the younger generation – anyone between six- and 12-years-old will absolutely love it and will be kept busy for hours. Anyone older will also have fun, but will soon be exhausted, except for divorced dads and stepfathers, who will forge ahead regardless.

At the beginning, players are guided through a process whereby their avatar is created. They then head off to the theme park, where they are met by a bunch of young friends who guide and encourage them to go on the various rides.

The Incredibles takes the player to the island in the film where they are tasked with rescuing damsels or destroying giant robots and the like. By waving their arms and moving their legs, players are propelled along a linear path where they can gather coins and complete clearly highlighted tasks, some of which include throwing huge concrete blocks at windows. Show me a 10-year-old boy who wouldn't be thrilled!
Click here

This particular chapter also has a free-fall scenario that's fast and fun! In Ratatouille, the player is obviously a rat that gets to scurry about and rescue fellow rats, do some serious balancing acts and slide down roofs at rat-neck-breaking speeds.

One thing about this game is that it is very polished. The graphics are beautiful and true to the films. Even watching someone playing is a pleasure. The gameplay is linear and fairly obvious, and the player is given a companion to lead the way and to encourage or give hints on how to complete puzzles or scenarios.

At any time, a second player can jump right into the action by simply waving an arm. Of course this means that if the second player is seated behind the first player, he or she better sit still – or risk getting shouted at.

I have to give this game a perfect score; it's superbly made, a lot of fun to play and watch, and I believe it will have a very long shelf life. As for the time it will take to complete, that's a tough one; many of the scenes are fairly short, but are more fun the second or third time around, and as players get better at the gestures, they go faster and score higher points. This, in turn, unlocks special features and extra levels. There are three “stages” for every game, so expect to play this for a long time.

Refund for the purchase of the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft

Microsoft is offering one of the most radical appeasements that any video game company can possibly offer – a refund for a digitally downloaded title. Anyone who purchased the Xbox 360 version of Minecraft and doesn’t own an HDTV is eligible to receive a full refund. That’s because one of the game’s key selling points doesn’t work unless you’re using a high-def set.

Apparently the development offices didn’t have any old-school TVs in their testing labs. But even though Microsoft never realized it, it didn’t take long for gamers to complain that anyone with a standard-definition TV was not able to enable the split-screen multiplayer feature. As Minecraft has risen to epic popularity as a solely single-player endeavor, the addition of a multiplayer component was one of the most significant aspects to the Xbox 360 version.

A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted as saying, “We updated our pre-sale notification to inform customers that an HD screen is required for the split-screen multiplayer feature on Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition. If a player does not have an HD screen and purchased this game prior to the notification update, they are eligible for a full refund through customer support.” The game sells for 1600 Microsoft Points, or $20.