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The HTC Droid Incredible 2 has arrived and everything suggests that it is a great successor to the original HTC Droid Incredible (check our Droid Incredible Review if you missed it). Some things have changed, like the loss of the AMOLED display (HTC could not procure enough of them), but other things have not: the Incredible 2 still has a great industrial design, solid software and a colorful display.

HTC presents the Incredible 2 as a smartphone for those who “dare to be different”, as a “standout cinematic experience” and a great imaging phone. This sounds great but is that really so? In this review, I’m going to go over the most frequently used features to tell you how the HTC Droid Incredible 2 looks -and behaves- in the real world. Are you ready? Let’s dive…

Context

We all use smartphones in our own way, so it’s important that I tell you where I come from: I typically check my email (a lot!) with Exchange, and I reply moderately because the virtual keyboard is not as productive as a physical one. I browse the web several times a day to check on news sites, but I rarely watch movies or play music. I don’t call much – maybe 10mn a day. On the “apps” side, I have a couple of social networks, but I rarely play games (on Android – what games?). This usage pattern will affect battery life and the perception of what features are useful.

Technical Highlights

Just to set some background information, here are some technical highlights related to the Droid Incredible 2. If you want to look at the full specifications, head to the official specs page at HTC.

Soc: SnapDragon 8655, 1Ghz  (what is an SoC?)
GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
HSPA/WCDMA: for Europe/Asia: 900/AWS/2100 MHz
OS: Android 2.2.1 (+HTC Sense)
RAM: 768MB
User Storage: 7GB + MicroSD slot
Camera: 8 Megapixel + 1.3 Megapixel
Sensors: G-sensor, Compass, Proximity sensor, Light sensor
GPS: yes
Local networks: WIFI + Bluetooth
Battery: 1450mAh

Physical Design

Body

I like the design of the Droid Incredible 2, very much. The body has a matte black finish that has a slight “leathery” texture to it which makes it almost immune to fingerprints and increases the grip that your fingers will exert on it, thus reducing the odds of an encounter with concrete… The design in the back resembles the original Droid Incredible: it has a “bump” that houses the camera and battery. When holding the phone, you cannot feel the it with the palm of your hands (phew!). The design makes the phone looks significantly thinner than it really is – but it works. This is a nice object to look at.

The design is clean and consistent. Good job HTC!

The phone doesn’t feel like “plastic” at all, and seems extremely rigid. Some of you will love this, while others might want to have something that is a little bit lighter. Unfortunately, you can’t have it both ways. All the super-light phones have a “plastic” feel. It’s up to you to decide.

The Droid Incredible 2 also has very few physical buttons on its sides: basically “Power” and “Volume”, which is great because the more buttons you have, and the more likely you will press some of them unintentionally. HTC used to make phones with buttons *everywhere*, but this is a better way in my view.

Nice detail : the Android buttons rotate along with the image on screen. Now -that- is “polish”!

The Android buttons rotate with the screen. Nice.

Display

Indoors, the display is great

You might remember that the original Droid Incredible had an AMOLED display. We all agree that AMOLED has superior contrast and saturation, but good LCD displays tend to have more accurate colors and possibly better power consumption with bright content (AMOLED draws more power to display a white screen than a black screen).

Indoors, the screen is very good. The colors are nice, and it is plenty bright for my taste. If you push the brightness, you will lose in contrast, but this is not something that is unusual with LCD displays. I wish that HTC could have used an IPS LCD (like the iPhone 4 or the Optimus 2X) – but this is another story, and I’m not sure that IPS manufacturers can actually supply enough of them anyway.

In a bright environment, the glare from the screen can challenge the user

The only thing that I hold against this display is its shininess: outdoor usage can be challenging at time, especially here in California. The HTC Evo Shift 4G had a similar glare situation, but the Droid Incredible’s LCD seems overall better, except for that.

HTC Sense

HTC sense is a software layer unique to HTC smartphones. Its goal is to add functionalities that makes HTC users lives better. The best example is the copy/paste function (that actually works), but there are many other “add-ons”, like an LED flashlight, and Social Media widgets. If you want to know more about HTC Sense, check their (sparse) product page.

Basics

Dialing: No problem there, dialing a number can be done with the numeric pad, a contact card, or better yet, a “direct dial” shortcut on the phone’s main screen. If you have less than 10 people that you call all the time, the direct dial shortcut will do wonders as you can’t get any faster than that. If not, searching someone with their name should be pretty quick too.

Wireless Reception: The wireless situation has changed very little since last year when we reviewed the Droid Incredible. I have to say that ATT has improved the coverage around our offices, but overall, Verizon remains a more reliable network for data and even voice – especially in big cities like San Francisco or New York. I’ll never say that enough: it doesn’t matter what *my* network conditions are, as yours will be different. Try asking friends and family to see how their network is where you hang out.

Audio Quality: I found the call audio quality of the HTC Droid Incredible 2 to be above-average. It’s not “great” but it’s clear enough and voices aren’t muffled at all. There’s nothing to report on that front. This is your average+ voice quality over a wireless network.

The HTC virtual keyboard offers more functions, but is also visually cluttered

Virtual keyboard: As always, HTC has ditched the default Android keyboard in favor of its own, which has the particularity of showing which special characters will be used if the user leaves a key pressed for a second. Some people love it, others find it visually “busy” – I’ll let you make up your own mind.

I *love* the arrow keys at the bottom as they are very handy to navigate a few characters left and right, which is handy to fix typos. Those keys were not there when I played with the first Droid Incredible. I also like the voice keyboard key (it was there before) because it usually works very well. I’ve been impressed with Google’s voice recognition, especially since it works great, even with my foreign accent.

The copy/paste works beautifully

Copy/Paste: As you may know, there are plenty of Android 2.2 phones that *still* do not have a proper copy/paste. Although Google mostly fixed this in Android 2.3 (codenamed “GingerBread”), the Nexus S is still the only device with that OS. Most of the other phones are still on 2.2.x.

Thanks to HTC Sense, the Incredible 2 has a functional copy/paste that looks like what Android 2.3 has. It seems like a small thing, but when you need to copy/paste a human-unreadable piece of text like a 128-bit WEP key, you’ll thank HTC for this.

Web browsing works great. Flash support is not the fastest.

Web Browsing: It’s been pretty much proven that Android 2.2 has a great mobile web browsing. This is no different, and really it would stink if Google -the largest web company in the world- could not get a great web browser in their mobile OS

In-Browser Flash Support: As I’ve just said, regular HTML pages display just fine. But Flash support is something that more and more among you want, or simply *demand*! The good news is that in-browser Flash support is here. As a test, I went to a few Flash sites, one of which is wechoosethemoon.org. It works perfectly, and most of the plain-vanilla Flash sites (small business, restaurants…) should work just fine.

Flash games are a different story. Some will work fine, but remember that most have been designed for a desktop computer, so they might simply require too much processing power, or memory, to run smoothly on a phone. The Droid Incredible 2 is also not the fastest Flash-friendly Android phone out there, but we’ll get back to that in the Performance section.

Work

The Email app is efficient and has a functional search that many Android phones don’t have

Microsoft Exchange: A lot of professionals care about Exchange, and I do too because we’re using Microsoft’s email system at work. Android has long supported Exchange, even if handset  manufacturers sometime come up with their own email app.

On the HTC Droid 2 Incredible 2, the email app is very good. First, it uses a white background, which makes it much more readable in direct sunlight. Many other Android phones use a black background (users can’t change it!), and I think that it is a mistake. Secondly, HTC’s email app has everything that I need directly on the screen, including flags, batch actions and quick access to calendar invites.

Switching from a list view to a threaded view is quick and easy as well. I don’t use it much, but I do know that many users just love threaded views. In the end, I’m impressed with the email app, and this is one of the best on Android. Did I mention that it has a functional email search too?

GMail: Android being a Google product, it is almost a given that GMail would get a special treatment, and it does: it has its own email application that lets Google users “star” a message or labels use labels to categorize it. GMail also supports push-email, which means that messages arrive practically in real-time without requiring you to hit a “send/receive” button, which is called “pull-email”. Push is also more battery efficient than pull.

Other Email accounts: Most popular web email services are easy to setup, but if you host your email on your own domain, chances are that you have POP3 access. The Droid Incredible 2 can handle those as well obviously, but you would have to forget about push-email. Fortunately, hosted exchange or GMail pro can give you push-email with your own domain.

Google Docs: Back in the days, Google Docs was not editable on smartphone, but Google has fixed this a while back. If you wonder, Google Docs are accessible and editable on this smartphone. By the way, there is a free Google Docs app now. If you want something more MS Office friendly, try looking at DocumentsToGo.

Play

Smartphones have become great entertainment devices, and the Incredible 2 is no exception. Online (via wifi) or local videos can be played smoothly on its colorful display, and the compatibility with existing music and video files is higher than on most smartphones. Even Windows Media files are supported out of the box. The Incredible 2 won’t stream 1080p content to your TV, but the reality is that most people simply don’t do that kind of stuff.

Actually, the main issue with Android today is to find a legitimate source of HD content. Android users really deserve a good solution here. For tech-savvy folks, there’s always PlayOn for Android, but this requires having a PC  media server.

Video content: the HTC Droid Incredible 2 has been able to play all the MP4 files from my PSP collection, and a few that I created myself for reviews on this site. The quality of the playback is impeccable for those files, even for the DVD-quality (800×740, 30fps, 2.4Mbps) file that I had encoded with Nero Vision.

I haven’t tried all MP4 variants, but so far this is looking good. Some Android phones could not play all the files. The phone might be able to play 720p videos, but without an HDMI output I’m not sure what 720p would be used for… Officially supported format (out of the box: 3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv)

Games: I have tested the phone with a 3D racing game called Raging Thunder 2 Lite (free download). The game is smooth, and completely playable – no problem there. Like most 3D games on Android, it doesn’t utilize all the latest graphics feature from OpenGL ES 2.0, but on the other hand, it’s fast.

The overall issue with Android is the lack of cool games in my opinion. I’m not saying that you can’t find anything, but the choice is pretty thin compared to the iPhone. Things have gotten better, but if you haven’t been using Android before, it’s something that you should be aware of.

Music: Music playback is a basic function for any smartphone, and it is rare that one does poorly. With Android, you have the choice between using a web service via an application, or copy MP3 files (without copy-protection) from any other source. Overall, it is usually easy, especially if you don’t have thousands of files to deal with. Officially supported formats: aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma (Windows Media Audio 9)

The speaker sound is simply not very good

Speaker quality: There’s a small rear speaker in the Droid Incredible 2, but unfortunately, I don’t think that is it very good. The sound is not very loud and gets saturated quickly if you crank it to the max. I’ve definitely heard better speaker sound coming out of a smartphone: the Motorola Atrix, for example, does have an excellent sound quality.

Photos and Videos (Good)

Outdoor photos usually look very good

In broad daylight, the HTC Droid Incredible 2 snaps good photos. They are great for sharing photos over social media networks, and look fantastic on the web, especially when scaled down to 640×480 or something like that. I bet that you could also print that motorbike photo, and get a good 6×4” paper photo as well. If you want to look at the original photo files, go to our Ubergizmo Flickr page. You can also find samples from other smartphones there.

In low-light conditions, things get a little more difficult, especially for the focus. I’ve shot two photos in a shaded area near where we are, and although this is not “low-light” (as in “party/diner”), the auto focus already had a hard time keeping up with the subject.

Low-light is truly the next frontier for smartphones, and to be fair, this is a very difficult thing to pull off. From what I can tell, Sony’s EX-MOR sensor still remains the best low-light hardware that we’ve seen, but to put it in context, the Droid Incredible 2 does a very good job in daylight, and is slightly above average for low-light conditions.

Video capture is very similar, and I tried to shoot a movie with both bright lighting and some areas in the shadows (+transitions). The video is very slightly blurry, but on the other hand, there’s no pixel artifacts popping in high-frequencies areas (windows, trees…). Some handset manufacturer to try artificially crank up the “crispness” of the video, but that can also introduce other image-quality issues. Videos shot with the Droid Incredible 2 should look great on YouTube, and it is impressive to see that smartphones can easily beat my old “720p” camcorder that is 6x the size. (videos are recorded in .3gp format)

Data Sync

Media files: With The HTC Droid Incredible 2, it is easy to connect over USB and browse/copy user files just like you would on a regular USB drive/key. If you don’t have a lot of files to move around, this is actually much easier to deal with than Apple’s iTunes. Want to copy some photos? Connect the phone in “disk mode” and copy from/to. Really, it’s a no-brainer.

If you have tons of media files and music that constantly change, it’s a bit more complicated as this is a typical case where a data management application, like iTunes, is handy. The thing is: people who tend to have large collections of media files are probably savvy enough to figure things out.

These days, you also have the option to upload your content to an online storage and streaming service like Amazon Cloud Music. It works quite efficiently, but requires you to have an Internet connection. Winamp from AOL can also be used to manage large quantities of music files. In the end, you’ll have to poke around and see what works for you, but I think that the large majority of users will do just fine with copying their media files manually over USB.

Contacts, Emails: out of the box, Android is built for synchronizing everything over the Internet. However, some vendors add utilities to synchronize contacts and media files. Desktop email however is not an option (you might be able to find an app for that). Even Microsoft does not provide an email synchronization software with its Windows Phone 7, so in this smartphone world, you’re clearly better off with an online service.

For contacts, HTC provides a software that will sync contacts from Microsoft outlook to your Droid Incredible 2 phone. If you want to know all the little details, here’s the support page on HTC’s website:

Internet Connection

One of the perks of having a Droid Incredible 2 is that you have an Internet connection with you at all times. And fortunately, you can use the Droid Incredible 2 as a mobile hotspot, or a USB modem.

The Mobile Hotspot is -by far- the easiest way to share your phone’s internet with a laptop/tablet

Mobile hotspot: this is the easiest way to share your Internet connection. You simply need to go in the settings, enable the Mobile Hotspot feature, eventually setup a password, and that’s it – you can connect to it from your laptop. This is great if you need to go online in a pinch, but most people definitely can’t replace an Internet home connection with it – unless you have very basic Internet needs. The one downside of the Mobile Hotspot: it depletes the phone’s battery faster (but you can USB charge the phone at the same time).

USB modem: I never use this, but one could argue that it is slightly more secure. You will need to install drivers before using your phone as a modem. It’s a good fallback to have if you don’t have WIFI handy in your computer.

To get these speeds with a single “bar” qualifies as good, right?

Network Speed: in terms of raw speed, it will depend mostly on your location. For example at my desk, I get 1/4 bars and a Speedtest.net test yields a 1Mbps of download speed and 920kbps of upload speed. This is nowhere near the HTC Thunderbolt’s 4G performance, but yet it’s pretty good given the conditions.

Network quality: I have to say that with the Verizon network, I’ve never experienced a network “hang”, especially when I have 3-4 bars of connectivity. I unfortunately can’t say the same for my ATT iPhone 4.

Now, there’s a small catch: you can’t use the data network and the voice network at the same time. It has to do with how the Verizon network (CDMA) is built, but if you’re on the phone and need to check a Google map or something – this can be annoying, but most definitely not a show stopper for me.

System Performance

When talking about performance with a consumer electronics device, I always try to separate the “measured” and “perceived” performance. Measured metrics are obtained by running synthetic (not always life-like) benchmarks to stress specific parts of the system.

On the other hand, “perceived” performance is the user observation of performance. Although they should correlate, I would always place perceived performance as being the most important thing. After all, what is performance good for if you can’t tell?

“Measured performance”

To measure performance, we run a number of tests that show how the HTC Droid Incredible 2 measures against other popular smartphones.

BrowserMark, SunSpider: BrowserMark and SunSpider are two tests that measure the speed of Javascript, a key component for interactivity in websites. To be clear, this does not measure “how fast” pages are loading. Instead this look at how fast scripting code can execute. Javascript is used in modern websites for user interface or even complete applications/games.

The Droid Incredible 2 gets an “average” score, which is not abnormal considering that it is a single-core smartphone. The smartphones that lead this test have two cores (Tegra 2 SoC). Fortunately, few sites are truly javascript intensive, especially sites for mobiles.

GUIMark 2 (Flash): This test measure the Adobe Flash performance. Flash is a widely used multimedia platform and you can find it virtually everywhere as advertisement, video or other forms of interactive web page module.

To put things in context, there are plenty of phones that don’t support Flash at all, so the mere fact that it works is already a good thing. Now, the Droid Incredible 2 scores in the 12-15 frames per second (FPS) ballpark, which is respectable. However, other phones that have hardware acceleration for Flash are almost twice as fast.

Flash performance addresses several needs. The basic needs for it are Flash websites like small businesses, restaurants, art galleries etc… There, you won’t have any problems – they work well. On the other hand, the HTC Incredible 2 performance is probably too low for many Flash-based games, and for higher definition Flash video (if there is such a thing on Mobile…).

CPU Benchmark: This test tries to measure the number-crunching capabilities of the phone. Again, the Droid Incredible 2 gets an average score, but it is not far away from very popular phones like the Google Nexus S or the HTC Thunderbolt.

NeoCore Graphics Benchmark: Neocore is an old polygonal 3D graphics test, but most Android games are still using relatively old graphics techniques, so it is still relevant – hopefully not for long.

As you can see, the smartphones are packed in “clumps”: each basically represents a different generation of graphics processors (GPUs). While the Droid Incredible 2 graphics processor fares reasonably well, it simply cannot match the current generation of Tegra dual-core + Geforce GPUs. In short, if you are a gamer, you might have to choose between slower frame rate with this phone, or another phone. Keep in mind that higher framerate also means faster battery depletion as games will render many more frames…

Note: I have removed the Motorola Atrix from this chart because the test is not adapted to its higher screen resolution. The final FPS score is artificially low, and I have to write a few more paragraphs to explain what’s going on. If you are curious, go check my Motorola Atrix review and jump to the performance section.

“Perceived performance”

All those numbers are great, but the perceived (or “felt”) performance can be a slightly different story. Out of the box, the Droid Incredible 2 feels very responsive and fast. This is something that has been getting consistently better with Android in the past 6 months.

As long as you’re not playing a game, or browsing a Javascript-heavy site, the phone is actually very similar to other recent smartphones, including those with stratospheric graphics or javascript scores.

The only exception to this is web browsing (+Flash). I have to say that on a dual-core phone, web browsing is noticeably faster, even if it is not twice as fast. This is a “clear-cut” improvement from dual-core architectures that I think virtually everyone would benefit from.

Keep it fast: If you want to keep the Incredible 2 zippy, make sure that you don’t have many apps running in the background. Android fanboys will tell you that the OS takes care of everything (blablabla…), but it doesn’t. Just yesterday, some friends played with this phone, left a bunch of apps ON, and after 15mn it was starting to get “warm” which is always a sign of heavy processor activity. Sure enough, the battery was being drained quickly, and the phone started to be sluggish.

Battery Life (good)

I’ve gathered some data that I hope will give you a good hint as of what things “cost” when you use this smartphone. I’ve taken a few frequent cases that everybody will bump into, eventually.

30mn of activity will cost you (50% display, no sound):

• Gaming: 12% of battery life (Raging Thunder 2 lite)
• 3G Web Browsing: 10% of battery life (random popular site browsing, automated)
• WIFI Youtube Video: 10% of battery life (mobile HQ)

Note that I tried this with a battery that was 80% charged. It is possible that battery depletion is not linear (although it often is). Devices that get hot are also bad for battery performance.

I would like to take more time to use the HTC Droid Incredible 2 in “normal” (non-review) conditions so that I can provide you with a more accurate battery life estimate that corresponds to my “context” paragraph at the beginning. I don’t want to hold the whole review for this, so check back in a couple of days, and I should have an answer for you. (thanks!)

Interestingly, the official specifications show that the theoretical talk time over a GSM network is 580 minutes, but only 380 minutes if using a WCDMA network. I’m not quite sure if this is taking into account that GSM networks might be denser, but the difference is huge.

On the other hand, the official standby time for WCDMA is 370 hours, while in GSM, it is only 290 hours. This is something that I’ll try to dig into, but for now, I don’t know the answer.

Conclusion (very good)

The Droid Incredible 2 is a very good phone. Its design, ergonomics and usability more than make up for the relative lack of performance when compared to the fastest handsets out there. For folks who value aesthetics, this phone is up there with the Nexus S and one of the best Android smartphones. And while it might not have the latest “Gingerbread” Android 2.3 (this unit is on 2.2.1), the HTC Sense software does a great job of providing some of the things that are missing.

The ideal user for this phone is someone who wants a nice-looking Android phone with very decent performance and battery life.

Don’t miss these

Those who seek the latest features might want to look at the HTC Thunderbolt for its uber-fast 4G LTE support (amazing, really), and gamers might want to check the Atrix and Optimus 2X smartphones.

Obviously, outside of the Android realm, you have the iPhone 4 – but you should know that the iPhone 5 (or iPhone 4S, whatever Apple will call it) is on the way… you’ve been warned.

Article source: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/04/droid-incredible-2-review/

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Continue reading »]]> OnLive is launching the world’s highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macs.

Founded by noted technology entrepreneur Steve Perlman (WebTV, QuickTime) and incubated within the Rearden media and technology incubator, OnLive spent seven years in stealth development before officially unveiling in March 2009.

OnLive, together with its Mova subsidiary, lies directly at the nexus of several key trends, all of which are reshaping the way we think about and use digital media:

• The shift to cloud computing, displacing the limitations, cost and complexity of local computing;
• An explosion of consumer broadband connectivity, bringing fast bandwidth to the home;
• Unprecedented innovation, creativity and expansion within the video game market.

Pioneering the delivery of rich interactive media to the home, OnLive will change the way that entertainment applications are created, delivered and consumed.

On Beta

Currently Onlive.com is in beta, To sign up you need to be at least 18, based in the US and have a broadband-connected PC running Windows Vista®/XP®, or an Intel®-based Mac. Sign up for beta

In the News

• Few startups have a chance to revolutionize an industry. But if entrepreneur Steve Perlman’s OnLive lives up to its goals, the company will disrupt the entire video game industry — to the delight of both game publishers and gamers. – venturebeat
• The founder of a new service that plans to stream on-demand video games over the internet says he feels like he has a big target on his back. No wonder, given that Stephen Perlman’s vision to revolutionise the way games are distributed and played has been talked up as threatening the future of the console and of retail stores. – BBC
• OnLive is launching the world’s highest performance Games On Demand service, instantly delivering the latest high-end titles over home broadband Internet to the TV and entry-level PCs and Macs. Netcrunch

Links

• Onlive.com

Continue reading »]]> Burnout Paradise (formerly known as Burnout 5) is Criterion Games’s newest installment in the Burnout video game series. It was released in January 2008 for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was also released on the PlayStation Store in September 2008 and will be available on Microsoft Windows from February 2009. It has an open world set in the fictional Paradise City, with no loading times and no traditional online lobbies or game menus. The song “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses is the game’s title music and also featured on the in-game soundtrack.

Gameplay

According to Alex Ward from developer Criterion Games, this game is a “complete reinvention” of the Burnout series. He also said “To create truly next-generation gameplay, we needed to create a truly next-generation game, from the ground up.” Despite being in an open world, the game still retains the 60 frames-per-second most Burnout games have used. Initially day and night cycles were not included in the game but a software update entitled “Davis” added this element to the game. Records will now be kept on players’ drivers licenses and there will be statistics such as fastest time and biggest crash for every street in the game. Unlike in previous Burnout games, Crash Mode, now called Showtime, can now be started at any time and place in the game; though Showtime mode is rather different from the usual Crash Mode. Also, for races, players may now take any route to get to the destination. Races and other events are simply started by stopping at any of the 120 traffic lights around Paradise City and applying the accelerator and brake at the same time. Multiple settings have been confirmed to be fully customisable such as:

• Boost Rules”, where the player may choose cars that use the boost styles from previous Burnout games.
• Whether or not there is traffic in an online event.
• Start and finish points for online events with up to 16 checkpoints.

The damage system has also been reworked. There are now two different types of crash based on the car’s condition after the crash. If the player’s car manages to retain all four wheels, and not break its chassis, the player may drive out of the crash and continue playing; this is called a “driveaway”. If a player’s car loses any of its wheels, has the engine damaged too much from an impact, or winds up outside of the game’s map, the car is in a “wrecked” state and the player will have to wait until their car is reset. Cars can also be torn into several pieces, be compressed and deform around objects as you crash into them. However, Alex Ward confirmed in the Official Crash FM podcast that cars may not be ripped in half, as concept pictures and early information had stated. There are also other cars which can be obtained by typing in a sponsor code. These only work for certain regions. One of these sponsor code cars is the Steel Wheels version of the Carson GT concept car, which features the car with an armor plate and supercharger. The code for this car could be obtained from pre-ordering the game from certain retailers. When starting the single player mode you are assigned with a learner’s permit and a single car. While playing you race and win events to earn points towards a higher license, from a Learners Permit (E-class), D-class, C-class, B-class, A-class, Burnout Paradise (S-class), Burnout Elite (SS-class) up to Criterion Elite (SSS-class). After earning a new license every event that you complete is reset so you can replay the event again to earn credit towards a new license.

Cars now have manufacturer and model names, which are loosely based on real-world cars but are mostly fictional (some of the cars are even based on those from a previous Burnout game, e.g. the Hunter Manhattan is the Classic from Burnout 2). Cars may not be “tuned up” or customized apart from color changes, which may be done in real-time by driving through the forecourt of a blow shop, which will randomly assign a color to the car, or by selecting the color in the Junkyard where you select your vehicle (after taking the car through an Auto Repair drivethru at least once). Other real-time changes include driving through the forecourt of a gas station to automatically refill your Burnout meter, and driving through the forecourt of a repair shop to automatically repair your car, allowing you to extend a Road Rage or Marked Man event beyond the car’s damage limits.

The online lobby system used by most video games has been replaced by a streamlined system known as “Easy Drive”. While driving, players simply hit right on the D-Pad and the Easy Drive menu pops up on the bottom left hand corner of their screen. From there, players are able to invite another player from their friends list. Once friends have joined the game, the hosting player is then able to pick from a variety of events to play. There are also special Burnout Racing Team cars that you can get.

Car types

Cars in Burnout Paradise can have one of three types of “Boost Standard”, showing what a player will have to do with the car in order to build up their boost bar:

• Speed: Driving the car at high speeds through oncoming traffic and/or weaving through traffic (performing a “Near Miss” where the car avoids another by a few inches or less) builds up the boost bar. This is the only type of boost in which the boost is not available until the meter is completely filled. When it is filled, the boost bar becomes inflamed and the player may use it until they crash, let off of the boost, or run out of boost power. However, the depletion of boost power on a Speed Boost can cause a “Burnout” if the player keeps the boost button pressed after their boost bar is depleted, after which the bar refills allowing the player to continue using their boost. As long as the boost is continued to be used and the car is continuing to be driven, the player can create a “Burnout Chain” for as long as the player is able. This is the only standard that allows a Burnout chain.
• Stunt: The player can only build up this boost bar by performing stunts with the car (driving through oncoming traffic counts). However, as long as there is boost power stored, the player is able to use it. The Stunt boost is the longest boost bar initially.
• Aggression: The player can fill up this boost bar by reckless driving, such as performing traffic checks and/or takedowns, knocking over signs, performing stunts, and driving through oncoming traffic. Initially, the boost bar of these cars shows a “x2″ at the end of the bar. If a player performs a takedown, the bar can be extended until the player switches cars (the only boost standard that has this ability), thereby showing a “x3″ at the end of the bar instead. Like the Stunt standard, boost can be used immediately, regardless of if the player has the bar completely filled.

Cars are also rated on three merits when viewed at the Junkyard:

• Speed: How fast a car can go. The higher the rating, the higher the top speed in which a car will be able to reach without using boost.
• Boost: The cars boost power. The higher this rating, the longer the boost power on that car will last before running out.
• Strength: How long a car can go before becoming completely totaled. The higher the rating, the more likely the car will be able to survive a crash or be able to make another car crash instead of them (if a car is stronger than another, it is more likely that it will takedown the other in a collision). This rating also determines how many crashes a car can withstand in a Road Rage or Marked Man event if the car enters when it is in perfect condition.

Event types

Races, Marked Man events and Burning Routes can start in any location around Paradise City, but the destination is always one of eight: the Maplemount Country Club, the Coastguard HQ, the Waterfront Plaza, the Paradise Wildcats Baseball Stadium, the Fort Lawrence Naval Yard, the Lone Stallion Ranch, the Paradise City Wind Farm and the Crystal Summit Observatory. Road Rages and Stunt Runs have no set end destination.

• Race: Races consist of the player and at least one other car (races with just one opponent are known as ‘Duels’). The player is given a location to race to. The player can take any route through the city to the location, with the aid of a flashing road names at the top of the screen when the player is advised to turn. The first to arrive at the destination wins; there are no points or prizes awarded for placing second or third, unlike most racing games. Online races can also include checkpoints that need to be crossed before reaching the finish.

• Road Rage: The player is given a target number of takedowns and a time limit. A Road Rage event is won by meeting or exceeding this target in the given time limit. A variant of this event was made available for online play in the “Cagney” update.

• Marked Man: In this event, the player is given a destination. At least one opponent is trying to stop the player from reaching the destination by scoring takedowns against them. The player must survive from start to finish in order to win (the player can be part of collisions, but loses the event if he totals the car). A variant designed for online gameplay was included in the “Cagney” update.

• Stunt Run: Players are given a target score. They must earn points towards that score by using boosts, jumps, drifts and other such stunt moves. An online version of this event type was added to the game as part of the “Cagney” update.

• Burning Route: Each Burning Route requires the player to use a specific car. Once the player is driving the required car, they race against the clock to a specified location. When a Burning Route is won the player wins an upgraded version of the vehicle they completed it with. The upgraded vehicle can boast extra boost power, more base speed or a stronger body (but usually in exchange for another category being made weaker). This event is unique in that it does not reset when the player earns a new license, because it’s tied to the car used to run it rather than the license level the player is presently at.

After the “Burnout Bikes Update” (formerly called “Davis”), two new events were added that are exclusive to the Motorcycle

• Burning Ride: Same as a Burning Route but for the motorcycles. However, some of these are now timed checkpoint events wherein the rider must ride through a set number of checkpoints before the time limit expires. These checkpoint events also do not have to end at one of the predetermined endpoints in Paradise City (they can terminate at intersections).

• Midnight Ride: Same as a Burning Ride but takes place between the in-game hours of 8PM and 8AM.

More Information

• Developer(s)  Criterion Games
• Publisher(s)  Electronic Arts
• Designer(s)  Alex Ward (Creative director)
• Series  Burnout
• Platform(s)  PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
• Release date(s)  Retail, PS3, Xbox 360, NA January 22, 2008, EU January 25, 2008, Download, NA September 25, 2008, EU September 25, 2008, Ultimate Box, February 2009
• Genre(s)  Racing, Sandbox
• Mode(s)  Single-player, Multiplayer

Links

• Official developer web site
• Official publisher website
• Wiki on this subject at Burnout Wiki

Continue reading »]]> High praise: 2008 was the best year for video games, ever.

As such, when game reviewers name their favorite games of 2008, they will make good cases — probably for the epics, “Grand Theft Auto IV,” “LittleBigPlanet,” “Rock Band 2” and “Fallout 3.”

But everything is personal. So here are my Top 10 games of 2008, based on: how much they made my heart race and how many hours I played them.

•“God of War: Chains of Olympus” by Sony for PSP. This is the best PSP game yet created. You play once more as Kratos, the killing muscle of mythical gods. Its cinematic sweep is breathtaking; screenshots could hang in galleries; the orchestral score hums. It’s a flawless masterpiece.

•“Frontlines: Fuel of War” by THQ for Xbox 360. Offline, “Fuel” is a short, war-for-oil, shooting adventure. Online, this was the best shooter of 2008, featuring some of the most fun battlefields, rocket launchers, tanks and helicopters you’ll ever see.

•“Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots” by Konami for PS3. Legendary co-writer-director Hideo Kojima directed this very long work of art in an action-adventure (spanning the globe with guns).

•“Patapon” by Sony for PSP. You make stick-figure warriors march and toss spears by touching PSP buttons as if they are drum pads. It is unforgettable, clever and endearing.

•“Call of Duty: World at War” by Activision for Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, DS. Offline, it’s more World War II battlefields, trenches and killing. You can also unlock a bonus “Nazi Zombie” mini-game (hilarious).

•“Mirror’s Edge” by E.A. for Xbox 360 and PS3. You play as a “runner” in an anti-utopian futuristic city (drawn with primary colors in street art style), jumping from roof to roof in human ways, and “wall-climbing” Jackie Chan-style. It ends too soon, though.

•“Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution” by 2K Games for Xbox 360, PS3 and DS. You play this engrossing “Risk”-style strategy role-player by leading your nation to empirical victory, starting from the Stone Age and ending with the Space Age.

•“The Club” by Sega for PS3 and Xbox 360. This was a stellar online shooter, though after just 10 months on the market, I find only a handful of gamers still shooting each other online via PS3.

•“MotorStorm: Pacific Rift” by Sony for PS3. Drive motorcycles, trucks and four-wheelers across incredibly vast and gorgeously illustrated open spaces in the great outdoors, offline and online.

•“WALL-E” by THQ for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, PSP and DS. This movie-based game is a solid journey where you portray Earth’s last garbage-cleaning robot who goes to space in search of love and companionship. Other games were better in traditional ways. But the profound heart of “WALL-E” almost made me cry every half-hour. That is the first time a game has ever made me emotional.

The top 10 video games of 2008 – Kansas City Star

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Continue reading »]]> If you’ve been playing Fallout 3, you’ve probably found a few Bobbleheads tucked away on dusty shelves and desks. You’ll need to collect at least ten to unlock the “Yes, I Play with Dolls” achievement and all twenty for the “Vault-Tec C.E.O.” achievement. But even if you don’t give a hoot about your gamer score, you’ll still need to collect every one of these wobbly figurines to create the ultimate, kickass, Wasteland survivor. That’s because there are seven Bobbleheads that boost your core S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, and thirteen that give a healthy bonus to your skills. This means you’ll be able to spread out your points more every time you level-up, allowing you to max out even more skills.

Having trouble finding any of these stat-boosting collectibles? Read on for videos, maps, and detailed directions that explain how to find all twenty Bobbleheads. Although we’ve done our best to avoid any major spoilers, explaining how to find each one may reveal a few details that you may not want to see. So scroll on with care, fellow Wastelanders.

You’ll find the Strength Bobblehead in Lucas Simm’s home in Megaton. It’s the very first shack on your immediate right when you enter the city. It’ll be locked, so you’ll either have to pick the lock, steal the key from Lucas, kill Lucas and take the key, or get Mr. Burke to kill Lucas by reporting him. Enter the house, climb up the stairs and enter Lucas Simm’s bedroom on your left. Check the top of his desk for a boost to your Strength.

WARNING: If you’re planning to take the evil route by blowing up the city of Megaton, make sure you grab the Strength Bobblehead first! If you don’t, it’ll be blown to smithereens along with the rest of the city.

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Continue reading »]]> Since launch, residents of Little Big Planet will no doubt of noticed a few oddities in the game. Like, for example – why their Play, Create and Share scores remain at zero. Where are the scores for all that hard work and play!?

News that the “Play, Create, Share” scoring system will be reactivated soon enough, since it was de-activated for a long while, leaving folks wondering why.

Sam_Protagonist, Senior Community Development Manager posting on the Official PlayStation EU forums, shed some light on the feature earlier this week…

It’ll be good to see it up and running in the game, although whether or not it will backwardly add all your previous scores for time spent playing, creating and sharing looks pretty unlikely.