Terminator Salvation for iPhone captures the spirit of a desperate struggle against that machines pretty well for a hand held game. The textures are pretty good, some of the best I’ve seen on the iPhone and really give the sense of realism to the post-apocalytic scenes which are bolstered by decent cut scenes.

Hit the read link for more

You take charge of John Connor in a third-person shooter that follows the events of the film it’s based off. Unfortunately you don’t get to be verbally abused by the Welsh actor, but the overall presentation of the game makes the lack of vocal talent a minor point.

The control scheme is pretty good, giving you a few options to play with depending on your preferences. Aiming by dragging across the screen with the aiming reticule slightly above your finger negates the problem of stubby fingers blotting out the action. The cover system used throughout the game can get a little annoying with you simply walk up against the wall to snap to it. When it works it’s pretty effective but there is the odd time when it just won’t snap. If I’m honest I’ve come across this problem in PSP games and the alike where the lack of two thumb sticks makes it difficult to get the right angle, so I think on the iPhone this can be somewhat forgiven. Another annoying aspect can also be the whole switching weapon task, which can only be completed when stationary. This means that there’s no dashing about switching weapons ready to blast the next T-600 to smithereens. However there aren’t that many really fast paced areas of the game that require the kind of instant reactions that you might expect from a console shooter, so it’s not that much of an issue.

The story is also a little scattered, sticking with elements from the film battling your way against SkyNet, blasting the heads off T-600s but the story jumps from place to place and switches characters from JC to Marus Wright with little explanation. This can be a little confusing at times but to be honest the game is only about an hour or so long and that’s not really enough time to develop a co-herent story.

Luckily Terminator Salvation is all about the action and here’s where it delivers in droves. T-600s can put up a fair fight, especially when there’s quite a few of them, but when you get to take on the massive HK-Tank or flee from the Harvester you really get drawn into the action. There is one mini-game where a little bit of hacking is required, takes the form of a marble maze a little like those ‘hacking’ mini-games found in Ratchet & Clank if anyone’s familiar with the series. The down-side to hacking is that it forces you to play with the iPhone parallel to the ground without the option to calibrate the flat level. The mini-game doesn’t last long so it’s not that much of an issue and provides a nice little break from blasting should you want it.

Overall Terminator Salvation is definitely an impressive game to have on your iPhone or iPod touch, but like the film may be a little lacking in longevity. After your first play-through, which as I’ve said before can be done in about an hour, you get to play as a Terminator with a harder difficulty. There’s also additional artwork pickups available in the form of microchips picked up from dead SkyNet machines, but overall there isn’t much replay value. A multiplayer would have been awesome, or some more levels might have bulked the game out a bit but for the current price of $4.99 (£2.99) the impressive graphics and decent action carry the game through.

 

]]> http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/06/iphone-app-review-terminator-salvation/feed/ 0 http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/05/terminator-salvation-movie-review/ http://pixelatedgeek.com/2009/05/terminator-salvation-movie-review/#comments Tue, 26 May 2009 18:16:09 +0000 Nelson http://pixelatedgeek.com/?p=7885

I’ll admit something that will ruin my well-earned reputation as geek: I went into Terminator Salvation with not a clue about the first movies of this franchise. But hang on – don’t dismiss me too quickly.

The opening credits began playing; my girlfriend (Girlfriend? More geek-point deductions) and I were amused by the typeface. This was the first time we’ve seen a big-budget film use ascii characters. Every bracket, front-slash, underscore and asterisk earned a hearty giggle.

So from a complete noob’s perspective, the film was a fun watch – mostly because of the intense action and the gritty cinematography. I enjoyed the action sequences but not so much the plot. Was there a plot? Yes, there was. I think. It was nothing too complicated and but rather very predictable. The action sequences were very Bruckheimer-ish but with a certain “cool” factor I couldn’t put my finger on.

But during the whole film, a couple of little geeky things stood out.

• The terminator motorcycles still use USB 2.0 Type-B?
• Skynet was able to use cool touch screens but never thought to use USB 3.0 in the year 2018?
• Being robots, did terminators not think to equip themselves with heat sensors?
• My second laptop was a Sony VAIO. It did not survive two years of common usage. How could any VAIO survive Judgment Day? Nice product placement, though

Overall, the film was fun to watch. If you need a good summer flick with great action and a nonsense plot (but better than Wolverine), watch this. Also, both my girlfriend and I agreed that Blair was damn hot.

Kinda funny, after Judgment Day, her hair and teeth looked good.

Skynet is coming. Are you ready? Are you part of the resistance? Watch the clip above to see what’s in store for you on May 21st. I promise, no DPs (Director of Photography) will be in your line of sight while you’re watching this.

Current Rankings:

1. Star Trek – Read review
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine – Read review

Movies yet to be reviewed:

• Terminator Salvation
• Pixar’s UP
• G.I. Joe
• Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

“It will try to understand a user’s question and intent and understand it at a rudimentary level and provide and accurate and confident answer.”

Of course buzzing in with a wrong answer in Jeopardy is costly and so Watson must be absolutely sure before answering. This kind of open ended question answering is something that hasn’t been tackled successfully in the past. Playing chess means calculating millions of chess moves to find the best solution to a fixed problem. Answering questions on a game show like Jeopary requires a very different skill set, something computers are not naturally good at requiring broad general knowledge, quick prompt analysis of meaning, irony, riddles and other natural language subtleties that are at a pinch out of the remit of a computer. Matching words to words is something a computer excels at but matching meaning to meaning is still something that although we take it for granted in our own lives, computationally is exceptionally hard.

Hit the read link for more on what could become your computer overlords in the near future.

Watson will be given the questions as electronic text while the human contestants will both see the text and hear it spoken by the show’s host Alex Trebek. Watson will also be disconnected from the internet allowing only the use of previously parsed information stored in it’s memory. Watson will answer the questions in a synthesised voice and be able to choose follow-up questions. IBM and the show’s producers aim to involve Ken Jennings, the legendary grand master of Jeopardy with 74 consecutive wins and collected a prise fund of $2.52m in 2004.

Click here to view the embedded video.

IBM does have a constructive business plan behind this high-profile stunt. The aim is to provide accurate and fast answers by having the computer look at all the information associated with a search regardless of how remote that might impinge on an answer that you might be building towards. Traditional search returns lots of information, but unless you have an infinite amount of time to search through every resource for even the smallest pieces of information you’re at risk of missing something and creating an ill informed decision. Dr. Ferrucci aims to have Watson “…able to be applied to all sorts of applications in the world and essentially cut the time to find answers to very difficult problems… [by]…getting the computer to work in human terms”.

IBM's Watson laboratory

Once Watson has taken on and beaten Ken Jennings (it’s not a case of if but when one supposes) what’s next for the mightly computing machine? Building better humans? Understanding the meaning of emotions and finding the hatred that drives the human race? How about taking on humans in the ultimate battle, Quake Live? Yeah ok, the computer already kicks my ass at that one too.

What would you, our dear readers, have Watson do for you? The answer is 42 remember.

[Via BBC]

Comic-Con 2008 is one of those events where you must pray to get into various panels. We had high hopes of making it into 3-4 panels including Street Fighter IV, Afro Samurai and some films by Lionsgate however we only made it to the all female Scream 2008 lead by Comic-Con favorite Kevin Smith.

The 2008 Scream panel was pure laughs. The panelist included Gale An Hurd (Terminator, Terminator 2), Lucy Lawless (Xena, Battlestar Galactica), Jaime King (Sin City, The Spirit) and Pia Guerra (Y: The Last Man) and of course Kevin Smith.

After the introductions and of course Kevin Smith asking the questions (from cards no less) he had to scratch his itch and ask the panel who gets the most lesbian sex. Lucy Lawless played into his hand and said she gets as much as she wants. Obviously Kevin not expecting any answer was able to deliver a nice laugh to the crowd with this opening and set the tone for the rest of the questions to follow.

Below are the highlights:

We found that Jaime King was named after the Bionic Woman when asked about childhood heroes.

Lucy Lawless got to tell her NBC Tonight Show’s horse and broken pelvis story in which the tonight show now calls their last take the Lawless. Kevin Smith promptly followed with questions of suing the crap out of NBC. She replied she was too stupid at the time and was afraid they would never call her back. Kevin replied you could have owned the show with something like that.

Gale Ann Hurd discussed about getting the Terminator into theatres and the process of selling her script as a masculine lead role whom which everyone thought was a man at first. Little did investors realize it was a woman lead until the movie was nearly complete. This is the method that had helped her make great movies time over time including with films like Aliens.

Pia Guerra didn’t really have much to say throughout this panel however we did learn her first dog was named Jamie Summers.

At the end several lucky individuals one tickets to Scream 2008 and one girl in pink (also the person with the best question for the panel) won an on stage appearance at Scream 2008. Winners were decided by a sticker on the back of buttons handed out at the beginning of the panel.

Check out some picks of the panel below.