Pfaff Spot

Diablo 3 announced, art style fails.

2008-07-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

Diablo 3 was recently announced by blizzard at the Blizzard WWI in Paris. If you are one of the many people who are disgusted with the art style please sign this petition.
This petition was not created by me I'm just trying to get it around. Read what the petition says and its examples, there's good stuff in there. Please digg this to help spread the word!

http://www.petitiononline.com/d3art/petition.html

Super Bowl XLII Champions New York Giants

2008-02-03T21:31:00.001-08:00

The New York Giants defeated the New England Patriots to win Super Bowl XLII. Story has a nice summary of the game.

read more | digg story

Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack Review

2007-12-13T18:37:00.000-08:00

Bungie has just released three new maps for it's hit game Halo 3. The map pack will set you back 800 Microsoft points or roughly 10 dollars. Should you buy it or wait until its free? Read on to find out.

The first map we will talk about is "Standoff." This map is the best map in the map pack and is extremely fun to play objective based game types on. If you play 4 player split screen you need this map. It's small-medium sized and is symmetrical which is what Halo . There is a base on each side of the map and a road going around the whole map. If you were a fan of beaver creek or you were disappointed that Halo 3 didn't have beaver creek then you must get this map.

An overview of standoff

The second map in the pack is called Foundry. This map is another small symmetrical map and a great map for split screen play although it is in no way limited to that as we found 16 player on live to be a blast. Foundry is a cqb map with narrow hallways and a few more open spaces. Foundry's hallways and barriers are made up of a bunch of new crates,boxes, and other various items (broken down trucks, spools, fences, fence boxes.) All of these items are now available to use in the forge. The man cannon and a giant soccer ball are also now available in the forge. We were able to make a really cool game inside of Foundry using the forge, it was a giant soccer match with open crates as goals and man cannons in the back of the goals for a kick off when you scored a point. We used gravity hammers to propel the ball. We also tried playing polo by having two people on a mongoose riding around swinging gravity hammers but we ended up flipping each others mongooses upside down over and over. This map has a lot to offer, it's a great map to mess around with in the forge and just an all around fun map for slayer and team slayer.

The third and final map is called Rat's nest. It is a medium sized map and it features a giant race track that loops the entire map. The track cuts across the middle of the track through the building which the track goes around. There is a rocket launcher located in the middle of the track and most games start out as a race to the rocket launcher so that you can rack up some kills against whatever sorry foe decides to hop on a vehicle again.

This is the middle of the track and on the right side is where the track cuts across the middle into the main building.

This is the inside of the main building.

Here we can see the amount of vehicles available to each team

All of the maps available in the Heroic Map Pack are very fun and are good additions to the current list of maps. If you play halo a lot, we have to recommend you buy the pack asap, it is well worth the 800 Microsoft points and we can guarantee you will have a good time with these new maps.

LG Voyager Review

2007-12-08T22:45:00.000-08:00

LG VOYAGER: VERIZON'S NEW
FLAGSHIP MOBILE DEVICE

The LG VX10000-also known as the Voyager-is Verizon's new flagship phone. Along with the Samsung Juke, BlackBerry Pearl, and LG Venus this phone is part of Verizon's "Big 4".

DESIGN:
The LG Voyager's looks are impressive. It sports 2 luscious 2.81" QVGA screens. The touch-screen is excellently built. With the option of using haptic feedback, you get a vibrate telling you that a button has been pressed. The touch keyboard on the Voyager is at the perfect sensitivity. Though we were quite disappointed that for sending messages on the external screen we could only use a virtual 12-key pad. This, however, is compensated with the internal QWERTY hard-key pad. There is also 5 different font options on the phone as well.

Verizon has also put their same user interface on the Voyager just like on any Smartphone or BlackBerry Verizon has to offer. The interface, though, is customized for the Voyager and is actually quite pleasant to use while navigating.

CALLS:
The call quality on the Voyager is quite good as well. We liked the speaker-phone sound quality which is nice, crisp, and clear but sounded much better opened than closed.

Making calls on the Voyager were easy. The contacts list was easily navigable. There is a search option and an option to search by letter with the touch of the screen. Another way to make a call is to bring up the phone menu and dial in the speed dial or the number. The virtual dial pad is very responsive and nice to look at. Voice-dialing is also relatively easy to use and most of the time accurately depicts what you are trying to do.

MEDIA:
Media is excellent on this phone as it should be since it is Verizon's flagship phone. Verizon has packed in VCast Mobile TV, VCast Video & Music, SMS, MMS, Mobile IM that supports AIM, Yahoo, and MSN, E-Mail, a 2.0 megapixel camera/camcorder, GPS,and a full HTML web browser.

Unfortunately, VCast Mobile TV was not available in the area so it could not be reviewed. VCast Video however, was available. With the fast EV-DO service, it ran the videos well with a decent quality. Though with some videos in full screen, the video would start chopping.

VCast Music is a very useful tool for buying music on the go, but it should probably not be used for all of your music purchases. Songs cost $1.99, twice as much as you would get the same song on iTunes or any other online music store. Nevertheless, the music downloaded fast and the quality was good. The music player on the phone is fantastic, however. It can play your MP3's, WMA's, ACC's, and ACC+'s. Though we wish there was support for the protected ACC files we and other people buy off iTunes.

Texting and IM on the phone are excellent. With the QWERTY keyboard, texts and IM's are easily made and sent. We also like the option that it can read out your texts to you. This option is completely useless, but still very cool.

E-mail was a little weak on the Voyager. There is a monthly subscription price of $5 for access to email. Though it did work nicely with gmail, yahoo, and etc.

The 2.0 megapixel camera/camcorder is excellent on the LG Voyager. Though there is no flash, the auto-focus on the camera makes up for it in the long run. The picture quality was excellent and clear. There were also many effects that you could put on the picture. The camcorder is a good one. With the option to take QVGA videos, the quality is not too shabby. The microphone can fail on you and distort the sound if you are in loud places or someone is yelling by you and your phone (but what camera phone doesn't?). The Voyager can also playback MPEG 4, WMV, 3GP, and 3G2 formats. You can also set videos that are under 5 MB as wallpapers.
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This picture was taken with the Voyager.

The web browser on the phone is, at sometimes, very frustrating to use. We liked that we could view basic sites with no flash or java, but the fact that we could access sites like youtube.com (yes, you can use the mobile youtube site but it is not the same.) or any site with flash or java was very impressive. The browser is a speedy one. with 2-3 bars of EV-DO, it would load sites in about 3-6 seconds, depending on the intensity of the site. Navigation was also easy on the touchscreen, although it was a bit choppy on the more intense sites.

GPS is another good thing Verizon added to the LG Voyager. It can be very useful in times were you do not know where you are going. It found us nearly everywhere and could navigate us to where we wanted to go. Loading maps on VZNavigator is also fast and is convenient to use in order to find almost any location you want.

THE PROS:
Responsive and nice touchscreen, camera, user interface a bit more free, call quality.

THE CONS:
Laggy scrolling on some websites, still Verizon's UI, speaker phone not accessible from the outside.

OVERALL:
The LG Voyager is a giant feat in Verizon Wireless's phone selection. Though there is the Verizon UI to deal with, it is upgraded enough to have it seem to be new. With its good looks, some solid features, and good call quality, this phone could be the best phone for Verizon for a while. You can purchase this phone for $300 with a 2-year contract and a rebate.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare PC Review

2007-12-08T20:05:00.000-08:00

Synopsis: Call of Duty 4 strays away from the game's previous setting of WWII, and good thing it did. COD 4 is a refreshing new game for the series and brings fantastic game play and graphics with it.

Review
COD 4 is made by Infinity Ward, the master minds behind COD 1 and 2 (not that dismal 3rd one.) It uses a proprietary engine from Infinity Ward as well. COD 4 has some of the best graphics of any game out right now. The engine exhibits features like depth of field, hdr lighting, dynamic shadows, and world dynamic lighting. The game also runs very, very well. On a system equipped with an x800xl, Intel core 2 duo @ 3.2ghz, and 2gb of ram we were able to run the game on all high settings with no hiccups or slow downs.

Here we can clearly see depth of field being used in the bottom left corner.

  COD4's campaign is very fun and has several very unique missions, such as being an ac-130 gunship gunner, and being part of a two man sniper team behind enemy lines. The campaign has an interesting story line and missions that keep you coming back for more. The only downfall of the campaign is that we were able to beat it in 7 hours on hardened mode.
  COD4 has a lot to offer for multiplayer and it's really a big part of what makes this game great. In multiplayer you get xp and unlock new weapons by completing challenges and racking up kills and assists. You can also get xp from completing objectives in objective based multiplayer modes. One thing we really loved about multiplayer was hardcore mode. In hardcore mode you don't have a HUD and weapons do realistic damage, if you get shot your almost guaranteed immediate death. This game type proves to be very fun and it feels like you're playing a whole new game because of the new tactics that must be used to survive.

Summary
Gameplay: 90
  We gave game play 90 points because of the games awesome bullet penetration system and fun campaign. Although the campaign is fairly short.
Graphics: 95
  We gave graphics 95 points because these are some of the best graphics out today and the game runs great with Infinity Ward's proprietary engine but it is no match for games like Crysis in the graphics department.
Value: 100
  We gave value 100 points because of the great variety in multi player games types and modes. We can see ourselves playing Call of Duty 4 multi player a good 4-5 years down the road, granted Call of Duty 5 does not come out before that.
Overall: 95
  With awesome graphics, great scaling, and limitless multiplayer thanks to many different game types and a ranking system earns Call of Duty 4 95 points.