Monthly Archives: August 2011

Technology ,

The Social Network and Skype Video on Facebook

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Facebook Video Calling - Get Started

Image by stevegarfield via Flickr

Last night I watched the Social Network. I really enjoyed it but it left me with a few questions about some of the intricacies of the story of facebook, and it also got me thinking about what they’ve been doing lately.

The Skype Video on Facebook rumour was around for a long time before it was finally announced. It’s one of those things that initially you think is going to change the game completely, but then on reflection you start to wonder how many people will actually understand and use this new function.

If Skype are providing most of the back-end for this service, I’m not entirely sure how it helps them in the long run. They must have some sort of financial deal with Facebook to make this tie-up commercially viable, but it must also extend towards further integration which could include using skype’s paid services within the Facebook site itself, which would open up Skype’s paid offerings to practically everyone in the world where before it was a more niche product.

Obviously, now they’ve been bought by Microsoft (still would have prefered Google or Facebook) they don’t have to worry about money, but even so, I’m sure they want to prove to their new owners that they are very much self-sufficient and worthy of the big money takeover.

The newest version of Skype that I just downloaded includes even more Facebook integration. Now, rather than simply being able to read your newsfeed and call people who make their phone number public, you can actually instant message your Facebook friends directly from Skype. It sounds interesting, but from my quick experiment, it seems to override your group settings so you’ll appear online to everyone whenever you’re on Skype, and that’s hardly ideal especially for people with a ton of “friends”. I like the idea though, and surely the next step is to add cross platform video calling, as the technology is surely there now to do it. Unfortunately, this new version of Skype is riddled with bugs and is unstable, so I’m kind of wanting to go back to the previous one.

It’s going to be increasingly tough for people who aren’t particularly comfortable with appearing on video chat to avoid it. This technology will become more and more mainstream, what with the inevitable growth of services such as facetime and other mobile video chat clients. Then again, no one’s going to chain anyone down and force them to use it, so I say bring on the revolution.

Game Reviews , , 1 Comment

Dirt 3 Review

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DiRT 3

Image by Dekuwa via Flickr

I’m a fan of codemasters games generally, and I love rally, so you would think that Dirt 3 would end up being my favourite game. It is a very good game, but it just never reaches the level of brilliance that I was hoping for.

There is a lot more rally content in this game than there was in Dirt 2 which is a great thing. There are many different types of cars from different eras of rallying too which is also hard to fault.

The graphics are good, the cars look and sound great especially from the interior viewpoint and even the co-driver’s pace notes sound good. Much better than the official WRC game that’s for sure.

The game has a lot of content, but I feel that in terms of locations, it spreads itself possibly a bit too thin. Once you’ve gone through all of the events in the Dirt Tour, you’ll be absolutely tired of playing the same stages over and over, just with different cars.

This problem was compounded by the fact that many of the individual stages in a rally location felt stitched together using stage parts, and so most of the stages don’t feel very unique. This was a big problem in the official WRC game as well but you would expect better from Codemasters.

It seems strange to say but there’s just something about the game that stops it from going from very good to amazing in my eyes. The DLC doesn’t help either. I bought all of it, in large part because I like the company and want to support them, so I suppose I knew what I was getting myself into. DLC in this game, like many others just never feels worth the money you’re paying. The cars you can download, like songs in Rockband, unless you play with them endlessly, you’ll struggle to feel like you got your money’s worth.

The Monte Carlo track pack was solid but as with the other rally locations, once you’ve played a couple, you feel like you’ve seen it all and once you’ve gone through the events in Dirt Tour that use those stages, you’ll feel like you want your £6 back.

The other modes aside from rally: trailblazer, rallycross, land rush and gymkhana are all good, but I don’t think they’ll be the main event for many people who pick the game up. Trailblazer is intense because of how fast the cars are and the fact that you don’t get pace notes, so you have to try to glance at the map as you’re hurtling through the fast stages.

Rallycross is fun but a lot of the time, the car handling feels too twitchy and floaty. It didn’t feel that realistic a lot of the time, and that was a bit disappointing. Gymkhana is my least favourite event and in some ways it does feel a bit of a tacked on gimmick. It does provide interesting and unique gameplay, but it can also be frustrating when you’re struggling to make some of the stunts when you first start or when you’re just not in the groove. Land rush is essentially just rallycross but with trucks and buggies, which have different handling mechanics and bounce far more over the terrain.

The online aspect of the game does work well, and you’d expect this from Codemasters who probably do the best online driving games of anyone. The thing that puts me off this time though is the fact that when you start a rally stage, everyone starts at exactly the same time and so you can see all of the ghosts of other players around you constantly, which is extremely off-putting. I don’t see why they didn’t just leave it alone and keep using the stuttered start method, which is true to rallying anyway. I doubt people would have complained if 10 second delayed starts were kept from Dirt 2.

Overall, I think it’s a great Rally game but I’m left with the feeling that they could have done more. The fact that I’m still playing and enjoying GT5 so long after release should go to show other developers out there how to treat their players. Free DLC, or in GT5′s case, weekly challenges give people incentive to keep their disc and not trade it in, and after all, that’s one of the main reasons why DLC exists in the first place.

I guess if you’re looking for a rally game, then it’s a good choice and has little competition. I just hope that with Dirt 4 they really focus on creating a larger number of diverse environments to stop it feeling quite as repetitive.