A fabulously detailed and lovingly produced version of the entire city of Rome is open for your exploration. Now Brotherhood lays wide the great metropolis of Western antiquity. The previous game in the series, Assassin’s Creed II, was set in the north of Italy, in Florence and Venice. ![]() ![]() Here in the early 21st century, you are actually a modern Assassin named Desmond Miles who is strapped into a machine that gives him access to the memories of his ancestors, in this case Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a nobleman and Assassin whose family and holdings have been ravaged by the Borgia clan. In Renaissance Italy the Assassins, led by Machiavelli and aided by Leonardo, are at war with the Templars, led by the Borgia. But no other series creates such enjoyably evocative renderings of the ancient and medieval worlds as Assassin’s Creed, published by Ubisoft of France.Īs in the previous games in the series, your character is still a member of the Assassins, a cryptic order devoted over the millenniums to battling a rival cult known as the Templars over nothing less than the soul of humanity. For instance, the most successful and appealing dimension of Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption games have been their settings in modern urbanism and the Old West. That is because it has recently become clear that the best games usually have a strong relation to the real world. With Brotherhood, the Assassin’s Creed series takes a clear spot as one of the most interesting and important game franchises around. A swashbuckling revenge tale set amid otherworldly conspiracies, Brotherhood is a fine historical adventure brimming with wit and flair. This is Rome in 1500, the expansive, captivating and stylish world of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood. Directly beneath me, in the dungeons of the debased Rodrigo Borgia (also known as Pope Alexander VI), the Countess of Forli, Caterina Sforza, languishes as I plot her rescue. In the distance below, beyond streets teeming with merchants and thieves, beggars and courtesans, I spy the Colosseum and the Pantheon. ![]() Perched like a ballet dancer atop the giant, majestic flagpole rising from the pinnacle of Castel Sant’ Angelo, I survey the seven hills of the ancient city rolling to the horizon before me.
0 Comments
![]() If you've spent the last 15 minutes reducing someone to a mushy pulp without taking so much as a single punch, there can't be any justification for losing in the last second. The AI opponents aren't particularly challenging in the moment-to-moment gameplay of matches, though it sometimes feels like the computer is cheating when it comes to things such as recovery and stamina. A running grapple, a flurry of hits, a signature move, and then a finisher - the controls flow smoothly and the game is pretty easy to get started with, so you'll be wiping the mat with your opponents in no time. You'll spend a lot of time pressing the right trigger (the reversal button) on the Xbox One, while the left trigger is used to start running. The fights themselves are polished and well executed. Submissions seem to have been improved slightly from last year's iteration - something we had complained about at the time. Still, if you're sitting down with a couple of friends to mess around with the game, you're going to have a good time. ![]() This is a great looking game that sounds amazing too - though it's not really very different from the last two games in the series. The moves, the attitude, and the camera cuts - it's all very familiar, and it's helped along by an audio track made up of licensed tracks that you've likely heard before. Some of the 120-wrestlers on the roster, such as John Cena, look like they're on TV and not in a game. Instead, what you get is a game that's increasingly polished, and WWE2K17 is certainly polished. It's a successful franchise that gets a lot of things right - and this makes change very challenging. Sports games such as FIFA get yearly updates which feel like small changes, and today, the same can be said about the WWE games. That's not to say that WWE2K17 isn't fun - just that it feels too familiar to last year's game, and the changes that have come aren't all positive. Five years in, the series is starting to feel long in the tooth. The games used to be goofy and unreal, but we've been moving closer to simulation ever since the WWE 2K series started. WWE has been a fixture in gaming since back when the company was still called WWF. ![]() Choose what missions to take on, which people to recruit and how silent or how loud you want to be in your endeavors. Literally any route you pick to liberate London is suitable. ![]() These will determine how best to proceed, as you probably will not leave a stealth mission to a brute with neon-pink hair… then again, you can do anything within the city! Just remember to deal with the aftermath. You can alter your appearance, your companions’ appearance and once you get enough of playing dress-up, take a look at the abilities and improvements each of them can receive. So download Watch Dogs: Legion, make smart decisions do not take on more than you can conquer and be sure to utilize your people to the best of their ability.įreedom and liberty aren’t only the themes of the game they also seep into the game’s mechanics. ![]() And it’s permanent, which means you lose an asset. And remember, while you can seamlessly switch from one to another, your characters can also die. These would be combat, stealth, and hacking, so be sure to use your characters in the appropriate setting. Recruited characters are assigned into one of three classes, each with different gameplay. Therefore, if you ever wanted to save the world with a team of geeks and misfits, download Watch Dogs: Legion and go nuts! Or perhaps proving the superiority of the noble minds is more your style? Well, the characters you recruit all have their own skills and motivations, making their part in the revolution truly unique. Download Watch Dogs: Legion and step into the streets of a futuristic London, gather a crew of trusted companions (or pawns in your plans) and take the city back! Revolution might be an ancient concept, but now it’s time to make it viral.ĭo you remember the time when having 10 companions seem a lot and even excessive? Well, try having the whole city as a potential team! The game boasts with the ability to recruit any and all people on the street. Fans of the well-established cybernetic franchise can rejoice! Watch Dogs are back with a bang – or rather, a very clandestine whisper of revolution. The boxy shape looks very different from the sloped, angled edges found on other Satellite laptops the straight, vertical edges bring to mind the shape of an Apple MacBook Pro. The Toshiba Satellite E105-S1802 uses the same chassis as last year's Satellite E105-S1602, which is to say it's a departure from the standard Satellite styling. Competing Best Buy models make strong cases for themselves, with the 14-inch Dell Inspiron 1470-3282 offering even better battery life (though with a steep performance hit), the 14-inch HP Pavilion dv4-1555dx costing $100 less with vastly superior audio (but with poor battery life), and the 15.5-inch Sony Vaio VGN-NW270 throwing in a Blu-ray drive while saving you $150 in the process. We're not thrilled with paying more for basically the same laptop as its precursor, but the Toshiba Satellite E105-S1802 offers a strong feature set if you're buying a laptop first for productivity use, with entertainment a distant second. The chief drawback is its terribly weak speakers. Other Blue Label bonuses include a backlit keyboard and a boxy (not to be confused with clunky) design that's unique among Toshiba Satellites. What you will like about this 14.1-inch laptop is its long-running battery and two-year warranty. Depending on your opinion of Vista, you may or may not agree with the price hike. The cost of these improvements is $50, putting the Toshiba Satellite E105-S1802's price at $849. ![]() ![]() Much less significant is a slight update to the processor, moving from the Core 2 Duo P7350 to the P7450. The big move is with the OS, trading Vista for Windows 7. ![]() Toshiba's latest Blue Label laptop from Best Buy, the Satellite E105-S1802, is an exact replica of the company's earlier Satellite E105-S1602 model with one major and one minor exception. ![]() It's trying to do everything the latest smartphone can do. At checkout, the card can be swiped, dipped or even tapped (like Apple Pay or Samsung Pay). Oberthur will be trying to convince banks to upgrade their cards - just two years after the current upgrade.įerenczi said the reduced fraud costs and minimized headache to customers is worth it. "Now the question is, is there a business model for that price?" Ferenczi said. Replacing 30 million cards might cost $300 million. The largest banks issue tens of millions of cards. Oberthur plans to sell these dynamic CVV cards for $10 to $20 a piece. ![]() And it's 10 times more expensive than the latest chip-based cards.īanks buy magnetic stripe cards for about 20 cents each. ![]() One major barrier, though, is that each card is 50 times more expensive than the magnetic stripe cards still being issued by banks in the United States. That is, if criminals don't figure out number-changing mathematical algorithm inside. "The hope here is that the dynamic CVV will severely cut down on fraud," said Martin Ferenczi, Oberthur's top executive in North America. This approach makes it a temporary password verified by your bank with every transaction, so stolen data is useless after the first few minutes. Hence, the value in a dynamic CVV code (that number on the back of your card). It'll just move online, where anyone can use stolen card data for purchases that only require static credit card numbers. banks are upgrading credit cards won't actually stop fraud. The American credit card system is undergoing a huge, $33 billion upgrade to computer chip-based smart cards that you'll dip into new machines (instead of swipe).īut the way U.S. ![]() PAL:720* :720* high-quality video resolution.Capture Video & Audio though USB 2.0 interface. Audio input: Stereo audio (RCA).Video input: One RCA composite, One S-Video. ![]() Support also NTSC-433 (significant if You want to play 60Hz games with full colors). Compatible with: Windows 98 / ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8. Support for All Formats: Record in DVD+/-R/RW, DVD+/-VR, and DVD-Video. Support Brightness, Contrast, Hue, and Saturation control.Could capture audio without the sound card. Send Video to your PC through the USB port and Record Video in DVD/VCD/MP3/4 format and save in hard driveWatch Video on Desktop/Laptop Monitor Screen Support for all formats: record in DVD+ -R RW, DVD + -VR, and DVD-Video The Easycap or Video DVR USB 2.0 Video Adapter with Audio it can capture High-quality video and audio file direct by USB 2.0 interface without sound card. I nearly purchased the Easycap for mac.glad i found. It doesn't read my VHS machine at all on both computers. According to the manual, it is supposed to download the drivers for the gadget automatically when you plug it in. It downloads the program to work in but doesn't download the drivers for the USB plug-in gadget when you plug it in. The only complaints I have it does not scale properly and there is no way to adjust the time out. Works ok was easy to setup, using it with my Chromebox which is fantastic for me. This is a very useful tool for setting a satellite dish antenna with a mobile app.Įasycap device is available in the market with different names such as: The greatest feature of easycap is that this can be used with a smartphone by the android app. ![]() With the help of easy capture software, we can do the smooth adjustment of image parameters. It can be connected by USB 2.0 interface. Easy cap also allows using a camera as a webcam. It is very useful for capturing the analog audio/video signal. Easycap is a special device that allows connecting a camera or a VCR to a computer. ![]() Park player 1 on a nearby weapon spawn point and just destroy player 2, causing him to drop the disruptor. Start the event and have player 2 pick up the disruptor, which should always spawn right in the middle of the arena. Select Oil Rig Arena, set Drops to Win to 5, Weapons to Satellite Quake and Friendly Fire to Yes. This is another 2 player event and you will need to play this mode at least 7 times. You can just exit out of the event once the achievement pops. Restart a third time to get 10 more kills and unlock your achievement. Once you reach 20 kills, restart the event again for 20 more. ![]() You can actually just sit on a weapon spawn point, wait for player 2 to respawn and kill them again. Select whatever track you like, set the Takedowns to 20, Weapons to Satellite Quake and Friendly Fire to Yes. You will need to plug in a second controller for this mode. mode, go into freeplay and select Arena Mode. Just playing through story mode will take you 6-7 hours depending on skill. You can work on them now if you'd like but I'd recommend just worring about getting your required medals to finish story mode and come back for anything you may have missed in free play. There are also achievements relating to the 20 Spy Points and going to specific sections of the tracks. Consult the achievement guide for specifics. Some of these achievements are cumulative while others require a certain amount of actions to be completed within a single event. If you read through the achievement list ahead of time, you will also be able to work on specific actions like air time, tricks, drafting, kills, etc. ![]() The medal you currently have is displayed on the level select screen. If you don't get the medal you are trying for, just replay the level until you do or you can come back via level select later. So all you need is, all golds on Hunter mode, 1 gold on Survivor mode and bronze on everything else. On every other event, as long as you get at least a bronze, there is no reason to replay that level in story mode anymore (unless you want to). You need to get a gold medal on any one of the Survival levels and a gold medal on ALL Hunter levels. You need to get 40 perfect starts throughout the course of the game, so always try to get one to help minimize the amount of grinding you have to do later.Īs you play through the levels, you need to pay attention and be on the lookout for 2 specific types of events in particular: Survival and Hunter. Alternatively, you can use a turbo controller to get this with ease although I did all 40 without one so it is not a necessity. Tip the controller up and use your index/pointer finger to rapidly tap the button. This is accomplished by pressing as fast as possible. Get enough points in level 1 to unlock level 2 and so on.Īt the start of each race, you have the opportunity to get a "Perfect Start". When you get enough points, you will increase to level 1 which will unlock the next series of races. You start on training and recieve points based on your performance in the events. In addition to the New Agent Training (tutorial), there are a total of 6 clearance levels to play through. This mode is the main "story" of the game and while playing through you will unlock all the other tracks, cars and modes. You will unlock all the modes and tracks as you play so that is not really neccessary and laser guided aim is more a preference. Unlimited turbo is the most useful and will make winning events much easier. From the main menu go to Options and choose "Enter Codes". The majority of the achievements will come through natural progression and then you'll have a few hours to finish up the rest.Ĭheats do not affect the achievements in this game so feel free to use them to make the game go by as fast as possible. This game is similar to the previous 3 versions of the Cars games but focuses mostly on races and battles. Extra equipment needed?: A second controller Does difficulty affect achievements?: No Do cheat codes disable achievements?: No (see cheats section below) Number of missable achievements: None (Everything can be replayed) Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1 Approximate amount of time to 1000 : 8-10 hours ![]() Roolenstein against a black background while the super-happy credits music plays.
![]() The granular element continues this dual work-mode as either a straight-up sampler or granular synth. You can even import a PNG image file to create a sound and then demolish it. You can perform all sorts of sonic manipulation on a visual representation of the re-synthesized file using Photoshop-like tools - or start one from scratch. Finally, it can work its own re-synthesis magic. Or you can use it to add the noise element (like breath) back into the Additive engine when you import. To the VA, you can add filtered noise to your sound just like any analog synth does. ![]() The Spectral element also has a dual use - either as a complete sound source or as a noise source. Then you use the same controls for altering the sound as you do for the VA, though they may work a little differently. There isn't room here for a technical description of additive synthesis (or any of the other methods Alchemy uses), but basically a series of sine waves (partials) produces the fundamental pitch as well as any overtones. Click on the file, and Alchemy quickly calculates the wave-shape as it loads the file into whichever engine, and you are ready to go. However, I was told this is on the to-do list for the next update. One glitch was that I couldn't use my mouse scroll-wheel to roll through the files I had to use the sidebar scrollbar. (SFZ organizes the audio via an attached text file.) Import is a separate page where you can easily bring the same sound into each of the three engines or load different files to each via a pop-up browser. Alchemy works with WAV, AIFF, and SFZ formats. You get another pop-up list of wave-shapes to choose from, or you can import an audio file. A button on the Additive subpage switches from VA to the Additive mode (there is a button to bring up each element's subpage, as well as switches for on/off, solo, etc.). If that isn't enough, you can detune all those oscillators. I rolled it less than a third of the way up and had 24 oscillators. If you want phat, use the NOsc (number of oscillators) knob. ![]() The pulse-width controls not just the square waves, but the ramps and other waves too. Chose a wave-shape and you can adjust and modulate the pulse-width as well as the phase starting point. The additive engine generates all the usual analog waveforms for VA. So, when you strike a key, you can have twelve different sounds going at once, which ought to be enough layers for anyone.įrom the main expanded view, you click on one of the A through D sources to bring up that source's individual page. Each of these is a complete synth voice and each of these sources uses three different types of synthesis engines at once - a Virtual Analog or additive element a granular or traditional sample and a spectral or noise element. Alchemy uses four separate "sources" to make each sound. Alchemy (VSTi/AU) isn't an update of their Cameleon 5000 additive synth, but it slathers on granular and spectral synthesis, covering many of the ways a computer can make noise. Additive synthesis is another scheme that exists almost exclusively in software, and Camel Audio came out with a good one a few years ago. Sampling and FM synthesis are prime examples where cutting out the hardware aspect shouldn't hurt the sound. Though no software will replace my analog Minimoog, many hardware synths are nothing more than specialized computers running software. But there are some that software does better - synths, for example. There are many jobs for which hardware still rules the music roost. This is how it looks like after the changes are done. Scroll to the right of the editor for the columns that are not visible. Click on Insert Row.ġ4) In your newly created row, carefully enter these values. Our goal is to add a new row in this file.ġ3) Right-click anywhere in the editor content and a menu will show. Click on Load txt and then select the cubemain.txt you saved in step 9.ġ2) The excel editor will load all the known cube recipes in the game. Click to run it.ġ1) This will open the editor which we will use to load and change the cube recipes. Inside there is a program called D2Excel.exe. Close the MPQ Viewer.ġ0) Go back to the folders of modding tools and enter this folder - D2Excel v1.0. We are interested in the file called cubemain.txtĩ) Save the file on your desktop so you can edit it later. This is the actual file, not the backup.Ĩ) It will show the contents of the mpq file. It is located in the same folder only.ħ) Click on Open archive and select the file you looked for in step 1 - Patch_D2.mpq. Make a copy and put it in a safe location.ģ) Go back to your Modding folder and enter this folder: MPQView v1.1 betaĤ) Click the file MPQView.exe, and it will open the program belowĥ) Go to the menu like in the above screenshot, click on File -> Open data file.Ħ) It will open a new window, select the file as shown below - Datafile for Diablo 2 Lod v1.09d.txt. You will normally find it in C:\Program Files\Diablo IIĢ) Create a backup of that file. The new recipe uses three flawless gems of any kind.ġ) Go to your Diablo II program folder and look for a file named Patch_D2.mpq We will now add the new cube recipe we decided above. We will refer to them in the steps that will follow. The formula we will use for this Horadric Cube Recipe is:įortunately, this is very easy to achieve and does not involve complicated modding techniques. The ingredients for unsocketing should not be too easy to find or too hard.
|
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |