Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Spiderman: Shattered Dimensions - PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, DS

Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions Review
source: http://www.gamerant.com

Marvel's famous web slinger bounces back for yet another action-packed adventure in Spider-Man. Shattered Dimensions. With the developer being Beenox, the formula has been changed around a bit, which though refreshing is a slightly underwhelming experience.
The story revolves around the accidental destruction of the Tablet of Order and Chaos, a mystical artifact wtth magical power, during a battle between Spider-Man and Mysteno. Through a twist of fate, the Tablet's shattered pieces make their way into the hands of various villains across the different Marvel universe realities, causing problems across the multiple dimensions - and it's now up to each world's Spider-Man to restore the balance. Although comic scribe, Dan Slott penned down the story, it falls way short of engaging the player within the game world. The best you will get out of the experience are a few genuinely witty one-lmers before the plot wears thin.

Taking on a linear approach as opposed to most games in the series, Shattered Dimensions' main focus is placing the player in four different alternate realities - each with its own unique game style and mechanics. There is the Amazing universe, which plays like the games we are accustomed to, the Ultimate universe where Spider-Man dons a Symbiote costume to destroy enemies, the Spider-Man 2099 dimension with a more futuristic focus and delightful free-falling sections, and the 1933 Noir universe that has Spider-Man sneaking in the shadows and taking on enemies Batman-style. The change of pace is pretty favourable and brings the game a certain degree of quality. Combat is easy to get used to and works well, though a troublesome camera is irritating at times. The game's trump card is the Web of Destiny challenge available at each level, which provides a deep level of replayability by allowing players to defeat enemies, find collectibles and beat timed objectives in order to level-up with experience points These can then be spent to unlock health upgrades, extended combos, alternate costumes and other goodies.
Visually, the game environments are distinct from one another, with eel-shaded, neon-tinted and black-and-white areas punctuating the aesthetics. While it isn't anything groundbreaking, each level looks comfortable and feels just right. The voice-acting is quite good, with veteran actors, such as Neil Patrick Harris, reprising their roles as the webslinger's many incarnations. The familiar voices all sound well, and help players bond with the Spider-Man they control.
The multiple-worlds concept that Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions portrays works to a certain degree, though not the way you would expect it to. Weak storyline and technical flaws aside, the title makes for a good playthrough with some good concepts, entertaining gameplay and bonus content. If you're a die-hard fan of the superhero, be sure to websling your way to this one.

Friday, October 29, 2010

How Does A Search Engine Work?

How it works
Though the workings of different search engines vary from each other, they all perform some basic functions. Essentially, all search engines work in an orderly fashion, performing three main operations -Web crawling, indexing and searching.
Web cmwflng: Before it can give you the information you want, a search engine has to find the information you are looking for. To find that information, search engines, which are basically webpages that respond to search queries, "crawl" the Web. Web crawling or spidering is one of the basic functions of a search engine. Spidering is achieved by retrieving stored information from webpages by means of a bot, referred to as a Web crawler or spider. A Web crawler is a computer program that navigates the internet in an automated, organised manner and retrieves the information directly from the page itself. It makes a copy of every link on each website visited, and analyses the content for indexing. Websites and URLs are not the only entries that spiders identify, they also take note of words within pages and where they were found, though means and techniques could vary from search engine to search engine.
Indexing: Once the spiders have collected all the information, it needs to be stored, compiled and organised so that it is accessible for users and available for searching. To be more than a website that lists links, search engines often store additional information including the frequency of the occurrence of words on a page, and the importance given to them (for rankings). Some engines also assign "weight" to each entry - measuring the differing value of words as they appear on a certain page. The entire information is then compacted and stored - ready for indexing. The most efficient means of building an index is by creating a hash table, which assigns a formula to the numeric value of each word, and consists of a hash number and a pointer to the actual data This arrangement makes the indexing and storage system effective for quick search results - even in cases of a complicated search.
Searching: This process is the first instance of the user's interaction with the search engine. Step one, build a query; step two, submit it. Once the query is submitted, it is processed by the search engine, which then extracts the information from the index.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Apple iPod - The Goods and The Bads

Apple has got us to a diverse age where the whole thing can be completed in a click of a button. It has confirmed to be a very inventive company in bringing us the vital music player - the iPod.
The iPod is a music player and has set the point for different music players in the marketplace. It is the top brand when it comes up to to music players. The iPod allows you to save files into its system and can accumulate up to some hundreds of songs into your iPod.
The iPod's battery is as essential as the iPod itself. With no battery, the iPod would not work and for that reason, you will not be capable to listen to the songs.
You can find the way through your iPod using the LCD screen. The screen allows you to look at the files you have stored in your iPod. You can also watch movies on your iPod with the aid of the LCD screen.
The iPod can store as many as a thousand songs with the aid of its huge storage capacity. Some iPods have a storage capability of 30GB whilst others have as huge as 160GB. That's the matching size as your computer's hard disk. And the best object about this is that it comes off inexpensive.
Headphones come with your iPod for you to hear songs. You will at all times need your headphones. You can plug it directly into your iPod and ram to the beat of the music.
There are special types of headphones out in the marketplace. Some come off quite inexpensive as much as 8$ whereas others may be expensive. They vary in prices as well as the quality of sound they create. The superior the price the improved the quality but that is not all the time the case.
Repairing your iPod can be simple with the aid of some toolkits. Screwdrivers and other gears can aid preserve your iPod's veracity and keep it in operation for a long time.