Burnout Paradise first impressions (Xbox 360 version)

I download the demo of this from XBLA over the weekend, and tested it out on Alex. Yeah, might be out of his age bracket really, but he likes Cars (also on Xbox 360) a lot, so the premise of him driving around a big city and watching how he reacts was too good to pass up. ;)

Have to say, but this game is very impressive. The city and surrounding environs are graphically superb. The frame rate stays at a constant level.. it may not be quite 60fps, but it's pretty darn smooth. The whole sensation of speed is immense, and certainly continues where the previous Burnout (Revenge) left off. Sound is as good as it ever was, with some really decent tunes in there. I noticed it had some classic tracks from the first couple of Burnout games too, a nice touch.

The whole pick-up-and-play mechanic is why I love this game. There's no need to wade through tons of menus just to get into a car and drive around. If I have 30 minutes to spare for gaming, then this game is perfect for such short stints. It plays much like previous Burnouts, in that you can compete in events, with races, road rages, stunt runs and so on all included. Or, you can simply just drive around the beautifully-realised city and cause havoc. :D

Multiplayer is nicely done too, in that it's almost seemless when moving from single player online. Once you get online, the HUD tells you who is in the game, and you just drive around as normal. You can challenge the other players to certain events, or simply just drive around and cause mayhem together.

All in all, a must have Xbox 360 title. Even Alex loves it! :D

Halo 2 is gone.. all hail Halo 3

Finished Halo 2 finally on Sunday last. The ending was very anti-climatic and left everything very much on a cliff-hanger. Luckily, I've also got Halo 3, so straight into that now. Man, the visuals are so much better (Xbox to Xbox 360, of course), and the start is straight into the action too. So far, so excellent. :D

Macworld 2008: The World's thinnest laptop

Finally watched the final section of the Macworld 2008 keynote. Item 4 was, of course, the rather spectacular looking Macbook Air. The World's thinnest laptop computer, Mr Jobs emphatically chimed. And who are we to argue? This new Apple product does look totally awesome.

I've mentioned more than once before that I've not been a lifelong Mac fan, but I'm beginning to use my Mac PowerPC G5 (thanks to Olie) more and more, and beginning to love it and the totally cool iLife applications. Have I told you before that GarageBand rocks? Oh, I have? They're just a joy to use.

Would I now consider a portable Mac? Totally! I liked the Macbook, very nice design, but never quite thought about it seriously enough though, especially after getting our latest Sony Vaio C notebook in Hong Kong last March. The Macbook Air has got me thinking about it again. Must check out a few online reviews first, but it looks promising. :D

Macworld 2008: (Partial) Overview

Apple and Steve Job's keynote speech for Macworld this year has come up with some tasty new technologies! You guys will know that I'm no Mac fan, but I love my iPods, and little by little I'm beginning to take to my Mac G5 too. I just love Garage Band!

Anyways, Jobs mentioned 4 new things to unveil this year, and I've only watched the keynote vid up to the third unveiling, which happened to be the iTunes movie rental thing and Apple TV Take 2. All the media frenzy is on item 4 of course, the new Macbook Air.

I'll comment on the Macbook Air on a different post. On the other three items, I've pretty impressed with both the new iPod Touch extras (maps, mail etc.) but wished they'd given it away for free, and also with the Apple TV changes. I might just get an Apple TV now, just so I can watch podcasts and rent movies from iTunes! The Time Capsule thing is a very neat idea too.. why doesn't anyone in the PC world think of such cool things! I'm still manually backing up my files and stuff to external USB drives.. and it's a pain to catalog everything and do things using Windows Explorer. Mental note: either find some decent backup software for Vista, or get OS X Leopard onto my Mac and use Time Machine with Time Capsule.

Now I understand why all the Apple fanboys are so enthusiastic about their company. They DO make cool stuff! Now.. how about a 3G iPhone with GPS?..

Coming up soon.. Macworld 2008 keynote

Look forward to the Apple Macworld 2008 keynote now.. only a few hours away! I've never been an Apple fan in the past, but since getting numerous iPods and my first ever Mac, I'm slowly becoming a big fan! :D

Chinese roast duck chain feels heat over electricity

Hehe.. I love technology, and I love roast duck.. this seems to be a nice combination methinks. :D

Uck! Has it been that long since..

Hmm.. lazy is me indeed. I haven't realised it's been sooo long since my last blog entry. Christmas has come and gone, the new car has arrived (still putting it through it's paces, more on that some other day) and we're well into 2008. Happy New Year to you all anyways. :D

I've been messing around with Facebook for a little bit, since Lucy seems to use it well to keep in touch with her friends in the Far East. I have to say, it's surprisingly handy, and quite addictive too in some weird way.

New car order for 2008

After much humming and hawing, finally decided to plump for the Audi TT Coupé as my replacement car for 2008. Going for the slower but still quite rapid 2.0TFSI engine, dolphin grey metallic exterior, black leather seats, bits and bobs.

Thanks to Grahamo, Olie and Stevo for their nice opinions and help! I figured out that I'm much more picky than I pretend to be.. even mulling over the colour took 2 weeks! :o

It'll be a mega bit different to my A4. After driving that demo TT 3.2 Quattro, my appetite was truly whetted!! :D Looking forward to this now.

First day at school for Alex

Well, it's playschool, but to us it counts as school for him. :P

We were pretty nervous about it; not quite sure if he'd settle in there at the start, but we need not have worried! He loved it, and didn't seem to want to leave when the day was over! :D

Laaaazy.. boy..

Yep, that's me! I've not done much posting of late.. must.. try.. harder... ZZZzzz