Smash n Survive

PRICE IN INDIA

740

Since 2008, we’ve had quite a few console games being developed in India. These have been developed by various studios and are spread across different platforms, but they've all had one thing in common – they were bad. While some were worse than others, they were all a far cry from what we’ve come to expect from international games. Another thing they’ve had in common is that they were all distinctly Indian in theme, whether it was the Indian mythology of Hanuman: Boy Warrior, the Tinkle license-bearing Cart Kings, or most recently, the Bollywood tie-in Ra.One. So it’s a welcome change to see an Indian game that isn’t going after solely the ‘desi’ audience.

Smash n Survive (SnS) is a vehicle combat game, much like Twisted Metal, and is developed by Hyderabad-based Version2Games. Having played some the other Indian console games released over the past few years, I went into SnS with a lot of caution and rock bottom expectations. But from the outset, you can tell that this is a far superior game than others we’ve seen from Indian studios. The attention to detail and the production values are at a level many notches below international standards, however, the first impression is still pretty good.

I'm getting a bit dizzy to be honest

The presentation is very industrial, using greys and blacks with metal and stone textures. The sparse heavy metal soundtrack furthers the gritty feel the game is so obviously going for, but I wish there was more variety to the music. You can only listen to the same loop so many times before it starts driving you up the wall. That’s a minor annoyance though. The main menu is simple and functional, but well done. Visuals are far better than the other Indian PS3 games out there, but still far behind international standards. Textures seem low res and the environments don’t pack as much details as you would expect. Moreover, frame rates tend to be very inconsistent during split-screen multiplayer.

The meat of the SnS experience is its single player campaign, which is essentially just a series of events linked together via a ham-fisted storyline that is conveyed to you via lines of text between events. There are a total of 19 missions, which comprise checkpoint races, destruction derbies, deathmatches, plant/diffuse bombs, and ‘find your mate’. The game boasts of close to 30 vehicles, each segregated on the basis of strength, speed and acceleration. However, these attributes aren’t always accurate and don’t always behave as expected during events. Most vehicles also come loaded with weapons that you can use to take out opponenets. These include a sonic boom that pushes nearby vehicles out of the way, flame throwers, chainsaws, and fork lifts. However, thanks to the iffy hit detection, these weapons aren’t very effective, and most of the time, you’ll just find yourself relying on your driving skills to get the job done. There’s vehicle customization too, but this is only for cosmetic effect.

Can someone hit the lights?

Vehicle handling is quite inconsistent too, and even within the same event, you’ll find your vehicle suddenly losing grip or sliding around in certain parts of the map. Cars with exceptionally high acceleration ratings will sometimes be slow out of the blocks. These aren’t persistent issues, but the fact that they creep up every now and then is quite disconcerting. Environments are quite varied, with a mix of large sand-box like spaces and smaller arenas. Opponent AI too is quite competent, but again the hit-detection issues hamper the experience in events like the destruction derbies, where you’re never sure how much damage a collision really has on you and your opponent.

Overall, the campaign is quite barebones, but there’s a decent amount of content in there, with lots of variety in event types and frequent rewards in the form of new vehicles. It’s enough to make you see the campaign all the way through. The game also includes a two-player split-screen multiplayer mode that features only a few of the event types found in the campaign. The checkpoint races are quite annoying as the GPS pointer seems to go haywire, and the plant/diffuse the bomb is pretty much useless. Destruction derbies can be fun, but the experience is sullied by frame rate isses, and a couple of times, the game froze on me during multiplayer, forcing a hard reset.

Your new ride

Smash n Survive is a commendable first effort by Version2Games. It offers a surprisingly large amount of content for a downloadable game, and there’s enough variety here to keep you interested through the campaign. It falls short in the presentation department and some technical inadequacies hold it back, but at the core it's a fairly competent vehicle brawler. It may not give Twisted Metal a run for its money, but it’s certainly proof that Indian developers can definitely create games for a global audience rather than restricting themselves to “desi” themes.

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WeTopia - Social gaming for social good

PRICE IN INDIA

0

It's time something like this has been done. While Farmville is/was fun, it's largely a waste of time and electricity. Here is a social game that utilizes the concept of Farmville and pushes resources to children in need. The game is called WeTopia and while it may provide much of the same notification nightmare that Farmville burdens us with, the game is helping kids in Haiti live a better life. The game has been developed by Sojo Studios who believe that people are already playing socially and that activity can be used for social good.

The game has multiple parts to it. You have multiple goals, to rise levels, to gain money, supplies, and ultimately 'joy' that you donate. Like in Farmville, you rise levels by gaining experience points, you make money by collecting rent from houses and cash from businesses, you gain supplies by harvesting crops and you collect 'joy' from your regular activity as well as building 'joy' parks. The game has you literally building up a town from scratch as if you were building in Haiti or another impoverished nation. Every building has to be connected to a road in order to be functional and, of course, there is an option for you to make roads. The population of your town increases with every house you build but you have a population capacity based on the joy parks you build. The creators of the game are very adamant about having joy in the towns that you build which is why they created the population cap. Finally, multiple celebrities have gotten on board with the game but you'll see one very obvious one, Ellen DeGeneres. For those of you who don't know who she is, Ellen is a comedian, she's the voice of Doree in Finding Nemo and she has her own talk show. And as a treat for you, Justin Bieber is also a WeTopia supporter. But don't let that stop you from playing the game, you won't see him around. I promise.

Ellen's WeTopia village

Design
The game is designed as you would expect it to be. Bright colours, short and wide elements and of course, indicative of a small tropical town. A lot of the elements take up more room than what's comfortable which ends you up with a lot of wasted space. For instance, some trees are two by two even if they don't appear to take up all that space. The houses don't take up too much space but the joy parks are five by fives which end up taking a lot of the space you need for other elements. And the joy parks are what are required for you to even progress through the game. The houses though, are designed very true to their element. There are various styles of houses like Japanese Bamboo Houses, Italian Farmhouses, British Manors and Indian Kutirs which look very much like their real life counterparts. One thing that's a little freaky looking is The Giving Tree. This is a tree that you collect joy points from everyday and it has the face of Ellen DeGeneres carved into its bark. It's a little scary to look at. The nice thing about the design though, is even if your planning is haphazard, your whole 'town' can still look nice. Unlike Farmville where if you don't group things together correctly, you'll be seen as a bad farmer.

Features
I have more gripes with this game than I would like. Which is a shame because it actually is a game for good and more people should be engaged with it. You will receive quests through your game, a lot of which can only be completed if you send your friends requests for certain things. For instance, one quest will be to build a soccer park, but then you have to send three of your friends requests to be soccer players and referees in the park. It's almost a bigger notification nightmare than Farmville. We get it, it's a way to spread the word, but there has to be a better way to do it than the same reason Farmville annoyed everyone. Friends have learned not to pay attention and to even block notifications from certain Facebook apps. As expected, this will hurt WeTopia more than help it.

You have to either buy or annoy. Or wait.

Furthermore, while virtually everything requires energy to do, you'll find yourself running out of energy soon and the only way to get around it is buy Facebook credits and/or wait around till you fill up again. You'll see many instances where the game will let you complete a quest with Facebook credits. This is because a part of the revenue from Facebook credits not only funds the game but is actually donated to the charities that the game supports. In addition to Facebook credits, the game also collects money from advertisers to donate. You will notice that as you collect 100 joy points, you'll be able to donate them to a charity of your choice. The time that it takes to collect that many joy points builds up a substantial coin pile for the game itself to donate. Donating joy through the game means donating food, clean water, medicines as well as resources for education and healthcare.The game allows you to see the impact you've made in the real world. 50% of Sojo's profits from WeTopia go to the various causes the game is supporting.

Donating joy. It's worth it.

One thing that is nice about the game, which Farmville created much time wastage at work with, is a lot of the crops that you grow will not wither. Furthermore, in addition to joy, the game tries to inculcate certain values that a town must have like recycling and day care centers.

In addition to the obvious reasons for donation of joy points (umm, humanity?), there is an added incentive of receiving coins and energy. You gain levels of joy points donations too, and every time you level up, a liter of clean water is donated to an area that needs it. Of course, in an ideal world, the water would just be donated anyway, but since we don't live in an ideal world, you have a way of helping out for free. You also get rewarded for helping out in friends' towns and while Abe is a friend the game already gives you, Ellen is a friend you earn and other friends have to be invited from your Facebook list. PS, for those of you playing the game (warning: there's a giveaway here), the secret Ellen word is Ellentopia.

The choice of charities and causes to donate to are a little limited right now. Certain charities can only be donated to once you level up in donation levels. While the idea is to give you an incentive to keep playing, it, in a way, defeats the purpose of the game. You should have a variety of causes to donate to and not have to be at specific levels to donate. For example, if you feel strongly about child education, your passion itself will bring you back to the game. The charities that you can currently support through the game are in the United States and in Haiti. Charities in Africa, in particular, Mali will be coming soon. Haiti has a huge presence because the game was conceptualized after the Haiti earthquake in 2010. As mentioned earlier, I really would like to see more regions you can contribute to, especially when the game is being played world over. I would like to choose to be able to help out kids on my very own home turf, India.

Quests in WeTopia help you advance and donate more

And finally, the game takes forever to load and seems to be designed for only first world speeds of internet. There are two levels of the game loading and the second one especially, takes at least four to five minutes on my onaverage 150 Kb/s download speed. Again, not something that will help the game, that hopefully, the creators want to have it played all over the world, not just in countries with very good internet speed. Also, there is no mobile version of this game yet. And even if we could play it on the Facebook applications for our respective smart devices, with how buggy those apps are, would we really bother?

It's not 'You'-topia, it's WeTopia

Conclusion
You know what, at the end of the day, no matter what the downfalls, the game exists for a good cause. If it's helping people in need, I say go for it. This isn't the first social game to exist for 'good', there wasHappy Oasis whose aim was to spread awareness about life in the Middle East to other parts of the world, as well as spread progressive messages like women driving to users in the Middle East itself. The aim of that game was essentially spreading awareness. However, the aim of WeTopia is to re-channel resources to those in need. I say play it, play it now.

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Belkin N600 DB Review

PRICE IN INDIA

4,799

Belkin is no stranger to networking peripherals and being a long time player in this field, have established themselves as one of the big players when it comes to wireless routers. Their earlier lineup of routers, especially the Play Max router failed to live up to its feature set which was disappointing since it had the potential to be a really good router. The company has since then done a major overhaul on their entire lineup and their 2012 lineup features sleeker and more streamlined designs with hopefully, better functionality. Today, we have the N600 DB, one of the cheapest dual-band routers you’ll find on the market so let’s see if it is every bit as good as it looks.

Design and Build
The N600 DB makes a very good first impression as it looks very striking and it won’t spoil the decor of your home, in fact, it will complement it well. It looks like a little alien pod with a glossy finish on either side and the desk stand. The router comes assembled and with the LAN cable plugged in so all you really have to do is plug in the power. The router cannot be mounted on a wall though, you have to use it placed upright on a surface. Just like their earlier models, there aren’t any external antennae but you do get four internal ones. As before, Belkin just uses a single LED in the front for power and some other states but there’s nothing for LAN like you see in most routers. The WPS buttons is placed upfront as well.

Belkin N600 DB

The rear of the router features a WAN port, four 10/100 LAN ports (not Gigabit), USB 2.0 port for connecting a printer or a hard drive to share videos, reset and finally, the power socket. That’s all there’s to it. The N600 DB is incredibly light and the stand gives it adequate support with four rubber feet planting it firmly on the surface. One thing missing is a physical power switch on the router. The N600 DB is built well and doesn’t have any creaking parts. The plastic used feels sturdy and seems like it will survive accidental drops.

Features
Some of the new features of the N600 DB is their Multibeam antenna technology which is supposed to give you good coverage despite having all the antenna internally. It’s also a dual-band router which can work on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands simultaneously. The USB ports lets you share files from a hard drive over a network.

All connectivity ports are placed at the back

The firmware also comes with four apps like Self-Healing, which automatically sorts out network issues. Print Zone lets you use a USB printer as a network printer.Video Mover lets you share video and other types of files through your home network.

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Brother MFC-J430W Review

PRICE IN INDIA

9,390

The MFC-J430W by Brother, one of the largest and well-known manufacturers of MFP and AIO units, is an all-in-one printer which features print, scan, copy and fax. Most of these AIOs are usually similar in looks, but differ in features. Let’s have a look at what this one has to offer.

Build quality and design

The MFC-J430W has a superb build quality. The shell has a matte-finished exterior, but the ADF cover (which also acts as the ADF paper feed tray) is made of a high-gloss translucent plastic which can collect dust, fingerprints and scratches in no time. The input paper is rugged, but the output paper tray is a bit flimsy. Towards the right of the paper tray is a door which opens up to the cartridge compartment. The control panel is available on the top and comprises of a 1.9-inch colour display for all functions and photo viewing before printing. The rest of the control panel is made up of rubber buttons which are well-spaced and tactile. 

Neatly placed buttons with an easy to view display

Features 

The MFC-J430W is a compact inkjet all-in-one printer with a built-in fax. It can be connected to the PC via the USB 2.0 interface and can also be shared / connected via the built-in wireless networking interface. Documents and photos can be printed using the wireless network from any smartphone, be it Android, IOS or Windows phone. The printer can print at high resolutions of 6000 x 1200 dpi and the manufacturer claims that print speeds can be acquired as fast as 30 pages per minute in black. The printer features a front tray-loading mechanism with a paper tray that can accommodate up to 100 sheets.

Load up your cartridges and start printing away

The output tray is also located on the front. The printer uses a four cartridge ink tank system (CMYK) and uses Brother’s Innobella inks. The monthly duty cycle of the printer is 2,500 pages while the recommended monthly print volume is around 800 pages. The scanner featured is a flatbed with an optical resolution of 2400 x 1200 dpi @ 48-bit. The scanner lid also includes an automatic document feeder (ADF) mechanism with a capacity of 20 sheets. Reduction and enlargement of photocopying documents is available. Scanning from the glass to email, image or OCR is possible and the available formats are TIFF, JPEG, BMP, MAX, HTM, PCX, DCX, PNG, FPX and PDF. The fax featured here has a speed of 14.4 Kbps which includes caller-ID and distinctive ring modes.

It also features a built-in fax storage memory of up to 170 pages in case you run out of blank pages in the paper tray. The AIO lacks both the multimedia card reader and the USB port for pen drives or for PictBridge support which would have been helpful for those who want to print directly from pen drives, mobile phones or camera. The only option is to print from a wireless source or from the PC. The printer also does not feature an automatic duplex mechanism that could help save time and paper. The product bundles along the four Innobella ink cartridges, a few 4x6 BP71GLTR photo papers and a driver CD with OCR and a document viewer utility.

Well built MFP

Performance

The MFC-J430W is pretty simple to install or connect via the wireless network. It supports Wi-fi 802.11 b/g/n network connection in both Ad-Hoc as well as infrastructure modes. To test the printing capabilities with respect to both speed and quality, we fired a few test prints from the test PC. The printer could spew out a maximum of 19 ppm (text) and 15 ppm (mixed text and graphics) in draft mode. Normal printing modes can give you a maximum of 9 ppm and 8 ppm respectively.

Scanning an A4 sized photo using 300 dpi resolution at 24-bit can take you just 16 seconds while photocopying black and color documents can take you 18 seconds and 23 seconds respectively. A single 4x6 color photo in best print mode takes about 1 minute and 45 seconds. The qualities of the prints are pretty good in all modes—draft, normal and best. Photo printing was excellent—it looks like Brother is heading on forward to give Epson and Canon close competition in terms of photo printing quality. 

On a final note, we have to say that Brother is doing a pretty god job with their printers. The print speed with great printing quality at a very economical price seems to be a good choice for those opting for AIOs for their homes or business environment. 

Verdict

The MFC-J430W by Brother is a great AIO option for those who need speedy document printing, good quality photos. It's a compact AIO with wireless networking abilities at an economical price making it even more attractive. Of course the fact that it lacks a PictBridge port and card reader slot does put a dampner on things; however, on the whole, the product is nevertheless worth the money.

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Canon PowerShot SX260 HS Review

PRICE IN INDIA

22,995

Last year bridge cameras became overly popular because they had far reaching zooms and the DSLR look that appealed to most audiences. However, a sub-segment of cameras also started gaining popularity and this genre of cameras came to be known as travel compacts. They offered the luxury of having a large zoom lens along with the ability to be pocketable as opposed to the bridge cameras. Building up on their existing range of PowerShot compact cameras, Canon has recently taken the wraps off the SX260 HS which is a successor to the SX230 HS. The older camera had solid performances when it was put to the test in our review. Today we take a look at the SX260 which has recently arrived at our lab. Read on to know more about this model from Canon.

Design and Build Quality
The Canon PowerShot SX260 HS has received a fair transformation as compared to the SX230 HS and both look attractive in their respective shells. While the SX230 HS was available in three colours, the current version is available in either black or pink. Canon has provided us with the black option and it features a band running along the side that is finished in gunmetal. The front of the camera features the lens that protrudes slightly away from the body. Apart from this, the face of the camera features an AF assist and a grip that had not been present on the previous model.

Flash housed within the body of the camera

Like the SX230 HS, the brand have added a 3-inch display at the back and it too features a resolution of approximately 430k dots. The right side of the display is where all the buttons lie and featured here are controls for video recording, playback, display, menu, a multifunctional jog dial, a set button and a mode dial. The build quality of the buttons at the back are good but the mode dial feels a bit rigid and it takes some effort to change the mode. The power button for the camera is located in a slight depression on the top and alongside it is the shutter release button and zoom rocker. A neat design feature here is that the GPS unit is not housed under a hump at the top. This feature did tend to take away the look of the SX230 HS. The pop up flash is also located in the body of the camera and there is no button to physically deploy it. Instead one needs to go into the menu to activate the flash.

Connectivity options for the camera are located to the side and connectors here include a mini HDMI port along with a mini USB port. As is the case with most cameras, the battery bay is located at the bottom. To open it one needs to push and slide. The bay houses the memory card as well and the flap for it is sturdy. Canon has a knack of building products that are visually as well as aesthetically pleasing and the SX260HS is no different. As for the overall build quality, the camera can be accidentally dropped a few times and still come out on top. It is slightly on the heavier side though and weighs more than the SX230 HS at 231g. However, due to its compact form factor, it is easily pocketable.

Features
The main feature of this camera is undoubtedly the 20x optical zoom in a compact body. The lens covers a focal length of 25 - 500mm in respect to a 35mm equivalent. The fact that Canon have managed to fit such a large lens on such a compact body is a huge feat. This feature dwarfs the optical zoom on the SX230 HS which was 14x. Where Canon have added to the zoom capability, they have not added to the pixel count with it featuring a similar 12.1MP CMOS sensor. However, they have changed their processing engine here and added their latest DIGIC 5 processor. With this processor, there are a fair amount of improvements such as the ability to capture images at a full resolution at a rate of 10.3fps in High-Speed Burst HQ. The camera can record images at a resolution of 4000 x 2248 which is fairly sufficient for most audiences.

A grip in the front is a good addition to this point and shoot

A reason many users find Canon cameras easy to use is because the interface is well designed and first time digital camera users can get accustomed to it within a matter of minutes. There is absolutely no learning curve required to operate this option and Canon have maintained a consistency in the interface amongst all of their cameras, be it compact point and shoot or DSLR cameras. One can adjust the different modes by merely switching the mode dial to the desired option and then adjust the various settings by hitting the function switch. The interface of the camera is really fluid and one can use a combination of the multifunctional dial and the function/set button to adjust the different settings. Having manual and semi manual modes, this camera can be used to adjust the exact settings required to click pictures. The ability to have semi manual and manual modes on the camera is a great feature to have along with a high powered zoom such as this.

Video recording at full HD 1080p is possible and one can record these clips at a maximum frame rate of 24fps. Competing brands have unveiled cameras with the ability to record full HD videos at 30fps, therefore this is a bit limited in comparison. This camera comes with a range of other features as well such as Face ID, Face Detect, High Speed Burst HQ, Stitch assist and a host of other interesting scene presets allowing one to get the most of this camera. Besides these scene modes there are other effects such as fish-eye, miniature, toy camera and a range of others which can be used to be uploaded on sites such as Facebook and Instagram. Apart from that, it also comes with GPS capabilities allowing one to geotag their images using satellites. For a point and shoot camera, this camera is loaded with features that can certainly appease a casual as well as an enthusiast level photographer.

Performance
The grip at the front of the camera assists in the handling of the Canon PowerShot SX260 HS. One can find it easy to shoot with a single hand however, the mode dial at the back comes slightly in the way while shooting. Carrying it around and shooting is not difficult due to its weight but one would want to add the strap for that added bit of surety. While clicking pictures outdoors we noticed that the camera does more than a decent job of handling sunlight and the images shot while facing it had a lot of detail and the image was not washed out. The purple colour fringing is hardly noticeable while facing the sun as well making the camera stand out well when it comes to outdoor performances. In indoor shooting, the camera does a decent job of handling grain and it does well in ambient as well as fluorescent lighting. During macro photography, the SX260 HS was quick to focus on the subject and there was a sufficicient amount of depth of field seen.

ISO sensitivity test

ISO Sensitivity Test
The ISO of this camera ranges from 100 to 3200. As expected, the camera handles noise well at ISO 100. The noise levels are kept in check till ISO 400, however, from ISO 800 onwards the sensor does not keep the noise levels in check.

Aperture Priority
The aperture on this camera ranges from F/8 to F/ 3.5. There is not much depth of field seen at aperture priority of F/ 3.5 but at aperture F/ 8, the image appeared clear.

Aperture priority test

Zoom Test
The camera handles blur extremely well and even with the optical zoom set to full, there was a lot of detail found in the shots.

Zoom test

Performance Continued
The camera captures videos in full HD 1080p at 24fps. As expected the file size is quite large and for a 40 second video, it recorded a file size of 163MB. The video quality is decent as well and when reviewed on a PC we noticed that the there are no transition issues and all colours appeared natural.

Close up shot

The flash of the camera is quite powerful and it can easily light up an area of 12 feet. The brand bundles 1000mAh battery with the SX260 HS and they rate it at approximately 230 shots.

Large 20x zoom on a compact body

Verdict
The Canon PowerShot SX260 HS is available in India at an MRP of 22,995. This camera is a solid performer and has a great build quality to match. The only real issue we had with it was that it had an unexpected amount of image noise at ISO 800 and above. This put us off to an extent as images shot in low light may not be as great as desired. The camera has an incredible zoom capability and there was no blur noticed as well. This is a big plus point for a camera that has such a small body. It is primarily designed for travelers to capture long distance shots easily but with such a compact form factor and the ability to tweak the settings, this camera can be a great option for nearly everyone looking to purchase a high end compact point and shoot.

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