The Mac Gamer

Anyone for a spot of iConquer?

Alex McLarty — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:03:05 +0000

Anyone play iConquer, Kavasoft’s game of world conquest? I played iConquer years ago on an aging iMac and loved it, impressed by the polish and instant, gratifying gameplay.

I’ve acquired a new copy (it’s still great) and fancy some good ol’ multiplayer. Lo and behold, Russell has a copy too and collectively we’d like to kick your ass! And then write about it. Hopefully it won’t be as shameful as the battering I gave Brice on Quake Live.

We’ve pencilled in some time this coming Saturday at 10PM GMT/ 4PM CST.

Sound off in the comments if you’re man enough.

Where is my Rage?

Alex McLarty — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 19:50:27 +0000

Remember this?

John Carmack back in 2007:

“…for the last couple years at id we’ve been working pretty much in secrecy on next-generation technology and a next-generation game for it, and actually this is the first time we’re going to show anything we’re doing publicly…”

Back in 2007 this got Mac users pretty fired up. It’s not everyday we see big titles on the platform let alone them being demoed first. Hit fast forward and RAGE has finally been announced for PS3, PC and xBox 360. Wait, where’s the Mac version?

On the hunt for truth, justice and all things moral I spoke to Tracy Thompson, Director of PR at Bethseda (Beth absorbed id about a year ago). She confirmed that “no Mac version of the game has been announced”.

I got a little niggled by this as the demo in 2007 is clearly RAGE for Mac - just look at those post-apocalyptic racing environments! Even if Carmack didn’t wear a RAGE for Mac t-shirt and do a RAGE for Mac dance, it’s bloody RAGE for Mac!

A few emails later, the PR ambiguity:

We haven’t announced a Mac version of RAGE. I’m not saying that a Mac focus has disappeared, I’m just saying that no definitive plans or announcements have been made to date.

Ho hum. Sadists, the lot of them. First they make a game based on hell, then they tease Mac users, build up expectation and rip out the rug from beneath our feet. Below our feet, not hell, not a wasteland, but emptiness, the void and the coldness of abandonment. I’m a PR pessimist. I never buy into the maybes, the cleverly worded ambiguity.

RAGE may be coming to your Mac. Or not at all. But it’s definitely coming to your iPhone (unless that was a laugh, too).

Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior HD: I loved it expect when I hated it

Luis Sosa — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 20:21:23 +0000

Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior HD reminds me of countless afternoons trying to master the drunken fighting style of my favorite Virtual fighter character in the local arcade. But at times BLDW felt frustratingly like trying to play on a machine with a button that sticks a bit. You could still play, but pulling tricky moves took real effort.

Visually BLDW is fantastic. Graphics are blocky at times but that hardly matters when there’s such a wonderful fluidity to the movement. Every punch, kick, and grab feels real, only aided by excellent sound design that also provides audio cues that help to execute moves.

BLDW has a surprising amount of content, too. There are five game modes (Story Mode, Arcade, Time Attack, Versus and Survival) and a grand total of ten unlockable characters each with their own style of fighting. These fighting styles can also be mixed and matched to replace any character defaults. Although you can’t customize the look of the characters you do have an amazing amount of variety in what type of fighter you can use.

The majority of BLDW takes place in the fairly entertaining Story Mode. You start as a young, brawling Bruce Lee who gets noticed after a street fight by a bloke from a local Dojo. After challenging you to a fight he is so impressed that he invites you to join the school. From there you get into the meat of the game, fighting sparing matches, tournaments, and random opponents in order to level up, unlock other moves and fighters, and in my case get my ass repeatedly handed to me by an AI set to Medium. It would take me an insane amount of tries against the same opponent to win. Sometimes out of frustration I’d just button mash, which usually caused the AI to block all the high punches and kicks and then throw me to the ground. I’d try to buy some time to pause and check the combo list, double tap back so I could move quickly away from my opponent, only to see him match my direction and speed. The opponents were on me like lifers on the prison noob who dropped the soap.

Prison rape reference aside, this does bring me to my reason for hating BLDW: it has no real buttons. It’s a bit of a conundrum as the iPad wouldn’t be what it is if Apple embraced physical buttons or even allowed reassignment of the few buttons available. Developers can only try to make the best out of a less than ideal hardware situation and in that lies my basic dislike. The game falls squarely into the “just because you can do a thing it doesn’t necessarily follow that you must do that thing.” BLDW clearly proves that there can be good fighting games on the iPad, but I’m not convinced that “good” is good enough.

Can a fighting game stand on it’s other merits enough to ignore a basic deficit in the controls? Is a good story, fun fighting mechanics, and Bruce Lee enough? My basic memories of the fighting games I’ve loved are composed 50% of muscle memory. Two button combo presses for Soul Calibur, forward half moon + Punch for Street Fighter. I need the tactile feedback. I need it because it works. Because some 17 years since I stood in front of an SFII arcade I can still remember the exact feel of the timing to unleash Guiles Sonic Boom.

BLDW has a very basic control layout. You have a D-Pad/Analogue Stick on the left and two buttons on your right for punch and kick. That’s it. Any variations of that are achieved by combining the D-Pad with those two buttons. The game comes with a fairly decent tutorial mode where you can practice the basics and more complicated combos, counters, and grabs. Trust me when I say that I have spent more time in Training Mode than in Story Mode. I’ve been desperately trying to commit to memory that Forward, Down allows me to counter moves (or was it Down, Forward?). I’ve practiced and practiced and started getting the timing almost correct against the tutorial A.I. but then I play a real match and watch as my opponent kicks my ass.

Wining, when it happens, can be very satisfying, but is such a rarity against these “Medium Difficulty” opponents that half the time I just shut the game off in frustration.

There’s something odd about the way the game queues inputs, too. I could be flat on my ass and the game will queue my taps with all the judgment of a lemming so that little by little the the more complex moves I try to use the more like an epileptic seizure my attacks becomes. It all becomes a bit more playable dialed back to “easy”.

Truth be told I have a grudging admiration for Digital Legends for making a good fighting game for the iPad. I’m just not sure it’s enough even if in the end the game is still on my iPad for the occasional indulgence of making Bruce Lee do his signature “Waaaaa” sound when stomach punching an opponent.

Apple address 10.6.4 graphics performance issues

Alex McLarty — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 23:06:47 +0000

Nearly two months after Valve reported that some of their games ran poorly on 10.6.4, Apple update their graphics drivers:

The Snow Leopard Graphics Update contains stability and performance fixes for graphics applications and games, including fixes that:

address frame rate issues occurring in Portal and Team Fortress 2 on certain Macs

resolve an issue that could cause Aperture 3 or StarCraft II to unexpectedly quit or become unresponsive

For more information about this update, please visit this website:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4286

Any improvements?

Fear of flying

Alex McLarty — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 22:52:19 +0000

[The Parrot AR.Drone is the] first quadricopter that can be controlled by an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad. Thanks to its on-board Wi-Fi system, you can control the Parrot AR.Drone using an iPhone, iPod Touch, or an iPad.

And I tell you, flying the Parrot AR.Drone is fun but frightening. Fun because it’s a high-tech toy that promises super-cool aerial moves. Frightening because it costs a penny shy of £300. If that’s not enough to scare you away, it’s a temperamental beast, too. Sometimes the Drone would mindlessly wander off as if drunk. Once the Drone lost connection with the iPhone, refused to reconnect and hovered above us until the battery ran down. I could tell it was judging us. Frightening.

Controlling the Drone is achieved via two on-screen control circles (below). The right circle allows you to control the altitude of the Drone by touching up or down. Left and right rotate the Drone. If you press and hold the left circle this enables your device’s accelerometer; tilting your device forward will cause the Drone to move forward, tilting sideways will move the Drone sideways, and so on. Combine the accelerometer movement with left and right movements and you’ve got a nippy, highly controllable iPhone controlled quadracopter. Fun!

The Drone is suitably high-tech and features front and downward facing cameras that are viewable on your device. We tried the Drone on an iPhone 3G, 3GS, iPhone 4 and iPad. Video performance is best on the latest hardware, with the iPhone 3G struggling a little. Recalling the pains of trying to manually dock spaceships in Elite, I’m suddenly thankful that take off and landing of the Drone is automated.

Here’s what Parrot have to say about the innards:

The cockpit of the AR.Drone includes an inertial unit, ultrasound sensors and a vertical camera. The combination of these elements which are controlled by an autopilot program allows extremely accurate piloting of the quadricopter. The AR.Drone detects the movements of your iPod Touch/iPhone (to go up, down, turn, reverse, go forwards etc.). Anyone can pilot the AR.Drone, it is extremely simple to use.

I couldn’t help feel that the AR.Drone would benefit from some physical controls, like those analogue nubs on the PSP. When flying the Drone you often look at your device’s screen and then at the actual Drone in the air. When you look away from your device’s screen there is nothing to stop your fingers leaving the on-screen controls. Thankfully the Drone simply hovers waiting for your command, but it can make flying an awkward experience. Relying on a digital representation of an analogue control makes sense, but it just doesn’t work that well. It’s up to developers to come up with novel ways for us to use touch based devices.

While the AR.Drone is an impressive technical achievement, at £299.99 with a battery life of around 13 minutes I’m doubtful these Drones will be flying off the shelves.

Gish - pay what you want

Alex McLarty — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 10:56:51 +0000

Gish, the 12 pound ball of tar, destructible environment puzzler-platformer by Chronic Logic is now “pay what you want”:

Gish isn’t your average hero, in fact he’s not your average anything… see Gish is a ball of tar. A Sunday stroll with his lady friend Brea goes awry when a shadowy figure emerges from an open man hole and pulls Brea into the ground below. Following Brea’s calls for help Gish suddenly finds himself in the subterranean sewers of Dross, a long forgotten city filled with twisting corridors, evil traps and some of the most demented creatures imaginable.

Don’t be cheap, fellas!

The Orochi Gaming Mouse by Razer

Russell Marsh — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 19:06:59 +0000

Razer supports OS X for several of their gamer-grade mice, namely: the Mamba, Naga, Imperator, Orochi, DeathAdder, and the left-handed version of the DeathAdder. I’ve been playing with the Orochi for the past two months. I’ll soon review the new 3500DPI version of the DeathAdder. I’ll also review its big brother, the Imperator. (Razer graciously provided all three for us to review.)

The Orochi is a tiny mouse. From the outset I figured that I’d like it more than the other two since, of the three, its size compares best to my Magic Mouse. Like Razer’s Mamba, the Orochi supports both wireless and wired play. It connects wirelessly to the Mac via Bluetooth 2.0. It sports a 3G Laser sensor. It has seven buttons, on-board memory, and Teflon feet. In wired mode it can poll up to 1000Hz and track up to 4000DPI. At first these numbers didn’t mean much to me, so I did a little reading. So before we start, I’ll regurgitate a bit of mouse technology as well as the advantages of Razer mice. The latter, of course, is according to my primary reading source, the Razer website.

Without elegance, here we go.

I. The Tech

DPI, or Dots Per Inch. Razer defines DPI as “the number of counts recorded by the sensor over 1 inch of physical movement of the mouse.”[1] Why is this important? Well, a greater DPI setting allows me to move a larger on-screen distance with less physical movement of my mouse. At 4000DPI I can conceivably move the same on-screen distance in one-quarter the physical movement as 1000DPI. Higher DPI yields higher sensitivity, so one’s setting should be based on preference more than anything else. I found that 2000DPI feels comfortable in most games and when browsing menus in OSX. I can pretty much move the mouse anywhere on the screen without having to lift the anchor that my wrist creates on the pad. Also, I don’t fall prey to the overcorrecting I do when running at 4000. Razer says that they do not and will never never use interpolated DPI, which is the artificial injection of extra DPI counts by software, or in some cases firmware.[2] Interpolated DPI tricks the computer into thinking that the mouse generates more counts than it really does as it moves across a physical surface. As Razer suggests, interpolated DPI ultimately decreases the functionality of the mouse as a gaming device because it decreases accuracy. On-screen movement may not actually reflect what you perform. Instead, you may have a smoothed, rounded version of how you actually moved.

Additionally, some Razer mice such as the Orochi and Mamba support on-the-fly sensitivity, which allows you to change DPI without minimizing the application and distracting yourself from the game at hand. I never found much use for it, but you could conceivably use high-sensitive controls while running-and-gunning and then switch to a slower, more manageable sensitivity when pausing for a long-distance shot. In the case of the Orochi, the hardware handles this function by having its maximum DPI (4000) as its default sensitivity. Every lower DPI setting tells the mouse to intermittently refrain a transmit count, calculated by the appropriate amount of pauses for the desired sensitivity. I think of this as the opposite application of interpolated DPI. Interpolated DPI interjects artificial counts to mimic a high sensitivity; the Orochi throttles a naturally high sensitivity by injecting pauses into its own count transmission.

Polling. The polling rate is how often the mouse sends information like axes movement or the press of a button. Most mice have a 125Hz polling rate, which translates into a signal every 8ms. The faster a mouse can transmit its data, the quicker the game can receive it. In wireless mode, the Orochi transmits at the standard 125Hz. In wired mode, though, the Orochi uses Ultrapolling, which runs at 1000Hz, and which sends a signal every 1ms, meaning that your tracking accuracy increases.[3] Although I couldn’t distinguish a difference in practice, I assume that a mouse transmitting faster data will allow a computer to parse its input faster. In, say, an FPS, this could result in the difference between who fires first shot.

Optical versus laser mice. This one usually slips my mind, and while I’m ashamed to admit it, I’ve included it for the sake of those who may be in my shoes (or as I like to rationalize, for the sake of thoroughness). The difference between laser and optical mice is in their tracking engines. An optical mouse uses an LED to beam light downward. This light reflects off your mousepad or desk surface and is tracked by the mouse. A laser mouse, on the other hand, uses a laser for this function. Even though the latter is a denotative subset of the former, laser mice generally have higher DPI than it’s optical predecessor. Optical mice track from 400 to 800DPI; laser mice often track more than 2000.[4]

II. The Philosophy

Razer devotes a lot of space on its website to design philosophy, which I found appealing to my curiosity and rather rewarding to read. Razer promotes a philosophy of individual design. No one mouse is suitable for all gamers. In fact, some mice should even be paired with certain mouse pads for specific effect, which is sort of like pairing good beer to steak. For example, I consider myself the type of gamer who likes a definitive, tactile feedback to his mouse glide. I don’t like a completely icy glide because I theorize that a little resistance allows the muscle memory in my hand and arm to detect the distance I have moved, which I hope sort of circumvents the whole hand-arm-brain-eye cognitive circuit. For me, Razer suggests the Sphex pad. This is good because it’s low-profile and because I need a low-profile pad for my rather high sitting desk. But before I read all of this, I had fallen in love with the monochromatic look of Razer’s Destructor pad. I bought it about a month before receiving the Orochi. Now, the Destructor glides smoothly. And the Orochi has Teflon feet, which promotes a slick, fast glide. Having paired these two, I sort of feel that I’ve stunted myself by having doggedly stuck to a gritty, friction-based schema all this long. So, good-bye ancient, cloth-covered Duke Nukem 3D mousepad. I retire you to a drawer of knickknacks and lost clothing buttons. Hello, Destructor and the sexy glide that you give when Teflon kisses your surface.

Razer says that in choosing a mouse you should consider your comfort, hand grip, and preference to things like glide and button location. All Razer mice purport some level of ergonomics, although you see less of this in the ambidextrous models like the Orochi. With hand grip, Razer broadly categorizes gamers into two type, one which has a subset where I fall. First there’s the Palm Grip. This grip uses the largest and most numerous points of contact under the user’s hand. On the plus side, the Palm Grip allows the palm, the pinkie, and the thumb to stabilize the mouse. It’s the most common grip. It’s more readily employed on hand-specific, ergonomic mice such as the right- or left-handed versions of the DeathAdder. It’s also the grip that induces the least amount of hand fatigue during long game sessions. On the downside, though, a strict Palm Grip minimizes your actuation points. Since you move the mouse at the wrist and forearm more than at the fingertips, you lose a slight amount of precision, which often begs you to lower your sensitivity, and which in turn asks you to make broad, sweeping movements with the mouse.[5]

The second main category is the Claw Grip. The Fingertip Grip is a subset of the Claw, and it is my preferred style. The Claw and Fingertip usually allow for higher sensitivity settings since the mouse is controlled by the fingertips and is stabilized by the pinkie or ring finger and the thumb. In addition, the Claw and Fingertip can allow for slightly quicker button response. Since the Palm encourages you to rest the length of your finger across each button, you must move that finger farther to activate the click. A fingertip, on the other hand, simply moves a short distance, which is usually straight down. With less distance to travel, there’s can be a quicker and more accurate touch to the button.

The Fingertip differs from the Claw in that the Claw rests the mouse into the cup of your palm while the Fingertip pushes the mouse forward so that space exists between your palm and the device. Thus, the Fingertip has the least points of contact with the mouse. As downside to the aforementioned perks, the Fingertip and Claw can generate more hand fatigue. They can also feel a little unnatural, particularly if you are inclined to the Palm.

I’ve always held a mouse with the Fingertip Grip, though I was unaware it had a designation. I’ve always felt rather comfortable in my reaction time and accuracy, but I suffer from cramps during marathon game sessions. Perhaps like a handshake, one’s mouse grip is a natural preference for how he engages things external. I see no reason to worry between your grip and the next. Razer simply uses this observation to recommend a mouse that feels correct and that responds well to your hand’s natural disposition.

III. The Testing

For consistency I will test these three mice on the same surface: my Destructor mousepad. I will also play through the same genres of games. It’s not a competition between the three, so don’t expect a toe-to-toe comparison. But my process is kind of like the scientific method, although ordered and thorough to my transit sense of accuracy, not documented standards.

To test the Orochi I played through Portal, Half-Life 2, and several hours of Age of Empires 3. I’ve also been playing a pretty decent amount of Football Manager 2010, which is really a menu-driven game, so I’ll consider that time as an extension of my OS experience. I’m using Razer’s 2.00 Orochi drivers for the Mac. I’m also using the updated 1.06 firmware, which I patched from 1.03 via a Windows machines since there’s no Mac interface to do this yet.

A. Physical Appeal

The most attractive aspect of the Orochi is the texture of its six buttons, the wheel and its button, and the back of the mouse. I’m a texture kind of guy. I love certain foods because of their physical appeal as well as their flavor. When I grip the Orochi my brain fires off pleasure responses. Its texture isn’t tacky, but it grips my fingers to its buttons. My thumb and pinkie rest on a side of smooth plastic that flares out at the base, encouraging these stabilizing fingers to naturally push in toward the mouse. The wheel spins with a tight, definitively-notched rotation. The buttons click with consistent pressure, regardless of where my fingers seem to lie. In fact, the left and right mouse buttons sort of cup my index and ring fingers into grooves, which preserve a certain level of mouse control that I feel necessary for such a small device. In the long run, I think this dissuades hand fatigue as well. When I use my Mighty or Magic Mice for extended sessions, their smooth, androgynous faces allow my fingers to shift when tired. I really don’t feel this same inconsistency with the Orochi.

While not exclusively masculine, the Orochi looks aggressive. I’d argue that it’s as attractive as any other wireless device on my desk.

B. Response

For the most part, Portal is a paced game that doesn’t require the same sustained level of mouse control as does Half-Life 2. Sure, it has some tricky puzzles, but those are short bursts of hand-eye agility, needing confident controls and a little luck to best. In terms of agility, the Orochi responds well to my portal jumping. Since I’ve acclimated to a comfortable 2000DPI, I can shoot portals around the level with a slight nudge in my hand. As mentioned earlier, I anchor my wrist on the mouse pad and use my fingers to actuate the axes of movement, sliding my anchor when I need broad FPS movements akin to 180 degrees. I do lift-offs occasionally. Lift-offs are where I reposition the mouse by raising it off the pad and returning it to a more comfortable place, usually for on-screen FPS movements greater than 180 degrees. All Razer mice have a low lift-off threshold, which means I don’t have to lift the mouse very high for it to stop tracking. But, honestly, I find myself doing less lift-offs now that I’ve increased my DPI.

I spent most of my marathon sessions using the Orochi during my revisit of Half-Life 2. It’s been so long since I’ve played that game that I’ve forgotten wide swaths of the encounters; it’s been rather fun. I developed some hand fatigue after the first few hours. My hand cramped a little at the sides, probably due to the overly tight grip between my thumb and pinkie. In response, I developed what I’ll call the three-fingered salute so that I could minimize fatigue and maintain control of my hand as it tired.

In the three-fingered salute I put my index, middle, and ring fingers forward in a straight line. I rest the tips of these fingers on their respective parts of the mouse, barely touching the actual device. I grip the mouse with my thumb and pinkie fingers, which allow me to push the mouse forward, pull it back, and pan it sideways by actuating these movement points. My palm still anchors the mouse pad. But my grip now relies on short bursts of movement that are corrected by gradual shifts of my entire hand. After an acclimation period of about two days, the Orochi didn’t really fatigue my hand. After a week, the three-fingered salute felt second-nature, and I didn’t have to remind my hand of its position.

The Orochi paired with the Destructor pad makes my mouse glide feel like mercury rolling across glass — it’s really that smooth. As I mentioned, I found myself lifting-off less because this combination allowed me a higher sensitivity. And, honestly, I think my reaction time is the better for it. The Orochi feels hefty and weighted when its batteries are installed. It’s solid and present, allowing its texture and its weight to make me responsible with the device, though not readily cognizant of it during play. There are few things worse than frantically rolling a cheap, hollow mouse during an intense game. I become so aware of such things that I’m conscious of the illusion of gaming. Basically, I loose the magic. I never suffered similar fate after acclimating to the Orochi.

For all intents and purposes I consider the Orochi a three-button mouse. Blasphemy? Well, OS X recognizes the Orochi’s seven buttons and wheel. In fact, Orochi drivers integrate well into OS X’s System Preferences, allowing me to customize how the OS handles these buttons, the macros assigned to these buttons, sensitivity and acceleration, profile switching based on application, and cosmetic details such as the battery life indicator and the blued wheel light. But when playing Portal and Half-Life 2, I never used the two left-side buttons to instantly change DPI. In fact, I forgot this feature each time I played. When using the two right-side buttons, I found that my accuracy decreased to such an extreme that I simply reassigned their controls to the keyboard.

The Orochi is a fully-functioning, seven-button device in OS X and in every game that I played, but the side buttons just weren’t practical for me to use. I mean, they mechanically worked, but I was much happier to retain mouse stability and potential lift-off by not relocating my thumb and pinkie for button use. I’m used to a three-button limitation, so I glossed right through this snafu. To be honest, this is only a problem if you perceive it to be because the mouse’s accuracy and overall design outweighs this side button impracticality.

C. Play in Wireless Mode

Razer is pretty up-front about the differences between the wireless and wired modes of the Orochi. You can’t configure the Orochi in OS X during wireless mode. To configure, you’ll need to plug in the mouse and then launch the Orochi configuration panel under System Preferences. The good thing is that the configurations will carry over regardless of your mode of play. For example, I can still switch sensitivities and run macros in wireless mode, but I can’t edit these configurations without my little, braided USB mouse cable.

The depth of change unfortunately deepens a little from here. In wireless mode, the Orochi’s sensitivity is limited to 2000DPI, which is half of the mouse’s big-advert, marquee sensitivity. For me this is no problem since anything over 2000 is too quick for my tastes. Further, the Orochi does not support independent X- and Y-axis sensitivities in wireless mode. It also only operates at 125Hz in wireless mode, which is that of a normal mouse, but far less than its supported 1000Hz when wire is connected.[7] But the biggest fault I found with Orochi’s wireless mode resides in a slight hiccup that occurs after mouse idle. It seems to be a power-saving feature of sorts. When I stop using the mouse for a few seconds, my next movement is recorded rather erratically, and it’s something that has irritated me enough to make me plug in the cord. This is a huge problem if, say, you’re over-watching a zone in Counter-Strike and an enemy crosses your sniper’s reticle. I recorded a short video of this snafu so that you can see the problem. There’s no way to change it. Let the evidence of the moment speak for itself.

On the plus side, though, once you’ve configured the Orochi, changing between wired and wireless is as easy as unplugging the cable and flipping the slider on the mouse’s belly. It’s really no big deal. But since wireless is a marketed trait of this product, you should first ensure that you’re comfortable with this little hiccup. Also, make sure that you’re comfortable with small inconsistencies like a lacking on-screen sensitivity feedback in wireless mode even though you can still change sensitivity on the fly. Otherwise, you may be paying for a wireless device only to discover that it fits your needs if the cord is in tow.

D. Presentation Quality

I am honestly a sucker for good packaging. Even though it’s short and fleeting, opening a package can often be a treat in discovery. Here, Razer succeeds in aces. The Orochi comes with 2 AA batteries, a carrying case, a braided USB cable, some Razer stickers, and a handy paper guide for twits (or completionists like me) who like to read everything. I installed the mouse in the same and simple fashion as any other OS X-capable device. Sure, it would be nice to update the firmware without having to find a Windows machine (or without using Boot Camp, which Razer dissuades from doing), but that’s a minor quip in my book. I’m a pretty easy going guy, and it’s nice to have a solid-feeling mouse in my hand despite the tiny hurdle that keeps it from feeling like a fully-integrated OS X device.

IV. Final Thoughts

I like the Orochi. It’s aesthetically pleasing, accurate to use while in wired mode, and its configuration panels offer a breadth of customization that I normally gloss over. But before buying at the $79.99 MSRP, I’d make sure you’re okay with the caveats I listed under the wireless section. The Orochi is a fine, well-crafted mouse that’s engineered for the gamer. While I haven’t married myself to it, I have married myself to the idea of a Razer mouse. I’m very much looking forward to testing the other two.

Afterthought

I somehow failed to mention that the Orochi is advertised as a portable gaming mouse. With this, it’s aces.

Most of my testing occurred on my home office iMac. I travelled several times during my review period, and I took the Orochi along so I could game in hotel rooms. While I can’t attest to its size on a tray table (I never game on airplanes), I can say that having a consistent, dependable feel while on the road is surely a satisfying luxury.

For the curious: I always brought my wire.

References

Gratuitous Space Battles released for Mac

Alex McLarty — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:20:16 +0000

Cliffski’s Gratuitous Space Battles has been released for Mac:

GSB is the ultimate space strategy game. It’s a strategy / management / simulation game that does away with all the base building and delays and gets straight to the meat and potatoes of science-fiction games : The big space battles fought by huge spaceships with tons of laser beams and things going ‘zap!’, ‘ka-boom!’ and ‘ka-pow!’.\
In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).

I got a copy for PC a while ago but I’ve been holding out for the Mac version. Kapla!

Magic Trackpad minus the magic?

Alex McLarty — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:33:00 +0000

It’s funny, some people laugh at the concept of the iPad claiming it’s just a big iPhone. You’re missing the point, I say. The iPad is a platform. The iPad is whatever app you’re running, using your hands, your lovely natural, God given boobs hands as input. And then Apple release this:

A big bloody (magic) trackpad! It seems Apple is in the business of making their existing products bigger. Next up: an Apple TV that you and your mates can crawl inside and watch movies in (it’s just a bloody cinema).

I am a little baffled at the purpose of the Magic Trackpad. I’m all up for new ways to interact with your computer, but will this really change much? I don’t know about you, but I don’t read a lot on my Mac. I either print stuff out or read a book. One area where the Magic Trackpad could work is games and I’d like to see some developers utilise gestures. Imagine Angry Birds in glorious 1080p on your iMac? That’d be pretty darned cool. Or, how about using a stylus on the Magic Trackpad for quick doodles or notes? It is magic after all, it should be able to handle a fake pen.

But at £59 the Magic Trackpad is expensive piece of kit and the price put me off. But just as the iPad attracts negative, communist unbelievers, maybe this is a cool, nifty, even magical device. The proof is in the use and I’ll be waiting to read reactions and see applications before I drop 59 hard-earned pounds on this puppy.

What do you think, a game changer or just a big bloody trackpad?

The Dream Machine

Alex McLarty — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 15:32:40 +0000

Procedural content generation? Pah. Cardboard and cotton wool. No, really:

The Dream Machine is a point & click adventure game made out of clay and cardboard.

You play as Victor and Alicia, a couple who’ve just moved into a new apartment. While trying to get settled in, they soon discover that all is not as it seems in the quiet, unassuming apartment building…

In order to differentiate it from most other games out there we decided to steer as far away from all things polygonal as possible, and are actually building all the environments, props and characters out of clay and cardboard.

The Dream Machine is almost an exact opposite to .kkrieger, the procedurally generated 96k game. While .kkrieger can only run on the X86 architecture (it’s written in assembler), The Dream Machine uses Flash so everyone can experience it. Score!

I guess this is the right time to say that I find clay or plasticine worlds kinda freaky. Wallace and Gromit are fine (at a push) because their world makes sense and it’s safe and colourful and clean, but I’ve seen far too many modelled worlds where everything is not fine at all and toilets run around to bite your ankles, doors open to parallel hell dimensions and everything is scary! Blame Beetle Juice.