Hasta La Gadget!

Gran Turismo is one of the premier titles in the Sony PlayStation stable. It’s existed on every one of the PlayStation platforms, from the original PlayStation to the PSP to the latest version on the PS3. It is the poker of racing simulation games, since it’s easy to pick up in minutes, yet it’s so deep that it will reward hours of gameplay. Usually the second question out of gamers’ mouths after Sony announces a new PlayStation is “When will Gran Turismo appear on this platform?”

It took a while to program the new version, which is why there was an almost six-year gap between Gran Turismo 4 on the PS2 to Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3. Though hardcore fans have been chomping at the bit, the game is worth the wait. The gameplay instantly feels like Gran Tursimo, rather than the arcade-like driving on the Project Gotham racing series on the Xbox. If you’ve played before, you can pick it up almost from muscle memory. If you’ve never played before, it’s still easy to learn.

The game comes with over 1,000 cars, including a variety for makes and models from the lowly Fiat 500 and to multi-million dollar supercars like the Bugatti Veyron and McLaren F1. True-blue racecars appear, from Formula One to WRC Rally racers to NASCAR (WRC and NASCAR are new for GT5). Notable cars include the Tesla Roadster (an electric-only supercar), The GT by Citroën (a real concept car initially created for Gran Turismo 5 Prologue), and the Mercedes SLS AMG (The gull-winged car on the cover). You’ll be able to drive more modest, everyday cars like the Toyota Prius, Honda Fit, and the Scion xB as well.

Car models are beautiful, and they reflect the environment, adding to the realism. If you choose one of the Premium models (roughly 20% of the cars), then the interior view will include cockpit details like working mirrors, tachometer, and speedometer in the car’s instrument cluster. The illusion of being in the car extends to snow or rain hitting the windshield at speed. You’ll actually need to use the windshield wipers to avoid being blinded.

Fifteen years ago, Nintendo blew our minds with the Donkey Kong
Country series. Prerendered graphics brought out some of the best-looking games
on the Super Nintendo, and incredibly clever level design offered some of the
best gameplay this side of anything with “Mario” in the title.

The last Donkey Kong Country game came out in 1999, and
since then gaming’s most famous ape has been restricted to playing drums, kart
racing, rhythmic vine-climbing, and brawling. Now, in 2010, Donkey Kong Country
is back with Donkey Kong Country Returns on the Nintendo Wii.

The game looks and plays just like the Donkey Kong Country
games of yore. You play Donkey Kong and his buddy Diddy, jumping, rolling, and
throwing barrels across a tropical island in a quest to recover your precious
stash of bananas. Of course, that’s not all you do. You fight various bosses,
solve puzzles, collect banana coins, jigsaw puzzles, and the letters K, O, N,
and G to unlock different things in the game, and generally find many, many
excuses to play through the game’s several dozen states several times over.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is fun. It’s also hard.
Painfully, frustratingly, controller-throwingly hard. It’s safe to say you’re
going to die many times in this game. It doesn’t ever feel unfair, though; just
very, very challenging. Every time you fall in a pit, or onto some spikes, or
into an enemy’s path, you can be certain it was a matter of your own timing and
controls, and not the game’s glitches. That won’t soften the frustration when
you die for the 20^th time trying to get that elusive jigsaw puzzle
piece, though.

You might occasionally waggle and shake the Wiimote to
perform certain moves, but otherwise Donkey Kong Country Returns feels just
like the old Donkey Kong Country games, and that’s a very good thing. It’s
deceptively simple, remarkably challenging, and incredibly polished, and a
worthy purchase for any fan of old-school side-scrolling Nintendo action.

Strap this onto a bicycle and ride for a mere six hours, and voila! Your phone is wind-charged.

Zooming. Most people only do it before or after taking a photograph—never during. Well here are 152 remarkable pieces of proof that most people are wrong. Zooming while taking a photograph is a surprisingly versatile, inevitably eye-catching technique. More »

We’ve had plenty of pre-knowledge on this, but surprisingly this is our first actual glimpse of Google’s new unbranded “Cr-48,” the very first Chrome OS laptop. Google will distribute the laptop through its Chrome OS Pilot Program, in a sort of public beta. You actually have to apply to join the program, and there are going to be a limited number of the laptops available — retail Chrome OS models from Acer and Samsung will be available in the middle of 2011 for the masses. Google’s doing a number of little promotions to give away the devices to interested users and businesses which will provide feedback, and it looks like there’s no way to actually pay money for one right now. Now, for the specs:

• 12.1-inch screen.
• Full size keyboard.
• Oversized clickpad.
• Qualcomm Gobi 3G chip for Verizon data in the US, your carrier of choice internationally.
• 802.11n dual-band WiFi.
• 8+ hours of active use.
• 8+ days of standby.
• Webcam.
• Flash storage.

The keyboard is the one we uncovered last week, with no function keys, but a full row of Apple Keyboard-style actions. The caps lock key has been replaced with a search button, which will enrage internet trolls and screenwriters alike. Branding-wise… there is none. The “Cr-48” refers to an isotope of the material chromium, there’s no logo and no design frills on the laptop itself, and it only comes in black. It seems Google is going out of its way to make it clear that this isn’t a mass market device, with Chrome OS still in the beta stage, and no apparent intentions to compete with third parties in the hardware space. Still, we gotta say: we wish more manufacturers would take a page out of this no-frills book. The murdered out Cr-48 looks like pure sex to us.

Google unveils Cr-48, the first Chrome OS laptop originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Dec 2010 14:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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