Dune Defeats AH

AH wins!

Dune

Zalgo Dune

Say hello to my(lo) little friend

Did your T-Mobile Sidekick walk out on you? BlackBerry rotten? iPod just not enough for your "gotta-stay-connected" lifestyle? Then introduce yourself to mylo, Sony's new personal Internet device.

The mylo, which stands for "My Life Online," allows you to chat with friends via IM or voice, view photos and movies, listen to music, and surf the Web all from the palm of your hand. The device connects to the Internet via standard Wi-Fi connection so you can use it wherever wireless Internet is available.

The gadget looks a lot like Sony's Playstation Portable, but a little more compact. Actually, mylo bears a lot of resemblances to its bigger brother in more than just looks; they both let you watch videos, view photos and browse Web sites. The difference is mylo loses the abilities to play PSP games and watch UMD videos, but picks up the ability to IM with the ease of a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the use of Skype software (a free service to make phone calls or voice chat over the Internet) while holding the device like a cell phone.

The mylo also uses Sony's Memory Stick system to store data. While it allows you to research information on an album with the touch of a button, you still can't access sites that let you buy music like iTunes, Rhapsody or Napster. Which to me, is the whole point of a wireless mp3 player; downloading new stuff on the go to keep you entertained.

While mylo looks handy and easy to use, you still have to be somewhere with Wi-Fi. So no using it while riding the subway, or on a road trip. At a pricey $349.95, and without a cell phone function, I'd rather use my latop.

For more info, check out mylo's site.

The big Wii news

Well, Nintendo finally let the cat out of the bag. Though the New York Times leaked the news before the Big N's media event, the Nintendo Wii will be released on Nov. 19 for $250. The system will come with a Wii remote, a nunchaku attachment, a copy of Wii Sports, all the stands and motion sensers, and even batteries will be included.

The release date is a few days behind Sony's PS3 but Nintendo is promising to deliver 4 million units worldwide by year's end.

There are to be around 30 first, and second party launch titles as well as several made available on the Virtual Console. First party cames are expected to retail for $50. VC games between $5-10. The inclusion of Wii Sports marks the first release of a Nintendo console with a game since the SNES. An extra Wii remote will cost you $40 and another $20 for a nunchaku attachment. Pretty pricey for an extra controller if you ask me.

Importers rejoice! Nintendo also announced that the Wii will be region free like the Nintendo DS. The Wii will also boost some sort of digital photo service and processing program similar to Photoshop, a Wii news and weather channel and Internet browsing using Opera.

The Wii's low price and different approach are a strong pull for me, and it may be the first home console system I'll own since the PSX.

For more details, check your favorite Web sites.

This week in gaming - Sept. 12

With the revival of the Geek Factory I thought I'd kick things off with a weekly recap of the games we've played in the past week, and perhaps beyond, to try and catch you faithful readers...readers...a reader...us up on what games have been going around in our living rooms.

Last Tuesday Chris and I were able to engage in a little Descent: Journeys into the Dark action. We started playing through the second scenario, Chris as the heroes, myself as the Overlord, but had to call it a night halfway through the game due to Chris' demanding bedtime schedule. Some excuse about having to "work." Why nobody else works the night shift like me, I don't know.

So we got to talking about other possibilities for shorter, dungeon crawling games. The next day Chris told me he'd been thinking a lot about, and reading up on Dungeoneer, a card-based game were each player controls a hero and acting as the dungeon lord at the same time. So, like any good little brother, I went to the game store for my brother while he was at worked and picked up Dungeoneer: Tomb of the Lich Lord for him.

We got a chance to play it Saturday night along with my wife. I figure we may give some games special spotlights, so I won't go into too many of the details now. After the first play through, my reaction was pretty "meh." The room my wife needed to complete her quests was the last card to be draw, but of course the fiends of the dungeon had finished her off before then. Also, it seemed pretty difficult to actually complete quests while your hero is on level 1, they don't have very good stats to start off with. The combat in the game isn't very deep, and depends on the roll of the dice, with plus or minus a few modifiers. Not that I'm criticizing it too much, it is after all supposed to be a light dungeon crawl. We finished in close to two hours. The game rules state 30-60 minutes per player is expected. So we did alright, and it was our first game. I think it will take another play or two to decide if the game is really worth it.

In other adventure game news we played Arkham Horror a little more than a week ago too. My initial impressions were that I liked it, but there are a lot of rules and steps you have to stay on top of which can make the game harder, or easier as was probably our case, to win. I'm definitely looking forward to playing it agian.

Chris and I have also been playing the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game's demo decks made available to print and play at the WoW TCG website. So far the record is 2-1 in my favor. I've been enjoying reading the card previews on the site, and a lot of mechanics in this game have got me intrigued.

In other news, Days of Wonder has announced it's follow up to Memoir '44 with Battlelore. This new game has the Web in a tizzy, and all of boardgamegeek is abuzz. That's all for now, we'll try and come up with some more indepth impressions of games in the days to come.

Geek Factory Revival!

The Geek Factory has started up again for geek news and views production! Commence the assembly line!