Assassin’s Creed Revelations review 0

t’s hard not to completely lose yourself in Assassin’s Creed Revelations. There's plenty to explore, loads to climb and arses to be kicked

As we review Assassin's Creed: Revelations, we can't help but feel a little teary eyed about the prospect of this being our hooded friend's final adventure.

It’s been a long, hard road for Ezio Auditore da Firenze but, as mentioned in this Assassin's Creed: Revelations review, the Italian rake gamers met all the way back in Assassin’s Creed II.

Over the last 50 years, he’s had his family torn from him, had his homestead burned to the ground, has suffered countless wounds and hardships and found himself embroiled in a civil war fought in the shadows of society. So how will he fare this year?

Assassin’s Creed Revelations Review: Gameplay

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations is, first and foremost, a giant, beautiful sandpit for the player to enjoy at their leisure. They can take out enemy strongholds and build new headquarters on the ruins.

They can recruit assassins to their guild and send them off on secret missions through Europe, Africa and the Middle East. They can bribe thugs or Romany women to distract guards while they help themselves to trinkets or the contents of a passer-by’s pockets.

They can use a Hook Blade to grab hold of roof ledges or rip out the throats of their opponents. They can craft a large array of bombs. They can defend their guilds against armies of attackers in a tower-defence game.

They can buy equipment, collect earnings and renovate buildings. But best of all, they can parkour through the game’s vast open expanse, shimmy up towers, leap from building to building and engage in a lot of swordplay.

The action-packed madness will certainly make for an exciting Assassin's Creed: Revelations film.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations Review: Features

There’s also a plot of sorts, and this is where a whole-hearted recommendation becomes a little hard to justify. This is because the game, which is by no means bad, is the latest section of a plot, which has become so barmy and convoluted by now that newcomers will battle to follow what’s going on.

Playing Assassin’s Creed: Revelations as an entry point to the series is like starting to watch The Wire with the eighth episode of the second season.

The backstory runs thus; a bartender called Desmond has been kidnapped by a secret society calling themselves the Templars.

Apparently he’s the descendent of a line of assassins and the Templars hope to access his ancestor’s memories, in order to track down some artefacts that can change the course of mankind (or something).

To that end, they stick Desmond in the Animus, a machine that allows the user to experience parts of the lifetimes of anyone who shares their DNA.

With the Animus, Desmond relives the memories of first Altair, a Medieval assassin, and then Ezio Auditore, an Italian noble who turned assassin during the Renaissance and…

…are you still following any of this? No? Good, I thought it was just me. All you really need to know is that in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, the lion’s share of your time will be spent as Ezio in Constantinople, during the time of the Ottoman Empire, with occasional visits to the Animus and the Medieval Middle East.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations Review: Verdict

The large portion of the game involving Ezio and Altair is absolutely ace; the sections involving the latter are a bit brief and bit too scripted, but overall they do the job.

The parts set in the future, where Desmond has to navigate the inside of the Animus in some sort of first-person platforming game are badly made, but thankfully they’re kept to a minimum.

The real draw, though, is Ezio, and his engrossing travails through Constantinople. Forget the convoluted story - you don’t need logic when you have bombs and a Hook Blade.

Assassin’s Creed Revelations availability: Out now

Assassin’s Creed Revelations price: £37.89

Watch the Assassin's Creed Revelations trailer (below)

Enjoyed this Assassin's Creed Revelations review

Dell XPS 14z Review: Just a Little Short of Laptop Perfection 0

Lost in all the hoopla over Intel’s Ultrabook initiative are the more traditional, full-function thin-and-light laptops. The Dell XPS 14z borrows some lines from Apple’s 13-inchMacBook Pro and incorporates a slightly larger display and a better keyboard. On the other hand, the shell appears to be mostly plastic, so it lacks the rigidity of the Apple laptop. The net result represents something close to the state of the art in the all-purpose class of notebook PCs, but it falls a little short of laptop perfection.

Our review unit came with an Intel Core i7-2640M clocked at 2.8GHz (up to 3.5GHz in Turbo Boost mode), and a generous 8GB of RAM. Also included was an Nvidia GeForce GT 520M discrete GPU with 1GB of dedicated frame-buffer memory. Dell supports Nvidia’s Optimus technology, which allows the integrated Intel HD Graphics to handle all the mainstream graphics chores, with the GeForce GT 520M kicking in when better 3D chops are necessary. Our test configuration will cost you $1299 (as of November 9, 2011). The entry-level configuration ($999) includes a Core i5-2430, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and integrated graphics. You’re better off springing for the upgrade to get the dedicated graphics chip.

Unfortunately, those better 3D chops aren’t all that much better. Although the Nvidia GPU surpasses the Intel HD Graphics in performance, you’ll still need to dial down the graphics detail significantly if you want to run games in DirectX 10 or DirectX 11 mode. The Nvidia GPU does make the XPS 14z quite a nice mobile machine for games such as World of Warcraft or Civilization V, though.

The display offers fairly accurate color rendition when showing photographs or video. The horizontal viewing angle is better than average, but the vertical viewing angle is quite shallow. Video playback quality is robust, with fairly light motion smearing. DVD playback upscaled to the full panel resolution appears just a touch soft, but lacks the "mosquito noise" visible in some competing laptop screens. HD content scaled down also looks very nice indeed.

One minor disappointment with the display is the resolution. Even though the XPS 14z has the same native resolution as most Windows laptops in this class do--1366 by 768 pixels--I expected a little better of Dell. After all, Sony now ships a 13.3-inch unit with a 1600-by-900-pixel display, and MacBook Airs offer 1440 by 900 pixels. Dell could have distinguished the XPS 14z's display from the pack by upping the resolution a bit. Nevertheless, it’s an attractive, usable display--and for older users, having slightly larger fonts on the 14-inch display may matter more than having additional pixels.

Audio playback quality is a mixed bag. Overall, I’d give it a cautious thumbs-up, but the Waves Maxx Audio software processing that fills out the sound also makes vocals in music sound a little artificial. Without Waves Maxx, volume levels are quite low--and even with the processing software enabled, volume levels never get particularly loud. Voice in DVD movies is clear and understandable.

The keyboard is excellent. The keys are sculpted, and feel quite good under the fingers. If you’re not a touch typist, you'll appreciate the fact that the letters on the keys are in a large, easy-to-read font, and that the keyboard itself has two backlight levels. The touchpad is large and fully supports multitouch gestures. It is a tad oversensitive, though, and you may occasionally see the mouse cursor jump across the screen as you’re typing.

Performance is a cut above average for this category, with the XPS 14z earning a score of 136 in WorldBench 6. Battery life is also quite good: At 5 hours, 29 minutes, the XPS 14z lasts a good hour longer than the average laptop in its class. That extra battery life means you won't have to lug around a power brick for a good chunk of the working day.

This $1299 version of the XPS 14z ships with a 750GB, 7200-rpm hard drive. If you carry around a lot of digital photos and music, you’ll be happy with that. If you’re willing to pony up another $300, Dell offers a nearly identical XPS 14z with a 256GB solid-state drive; you give up a little capacity, but get much speedier storage performance. The slot-loading DVD drive could be filed under “nice to have,” but in today’s streaming media world, it’s less essential it would have been a couple of years ago. Networking includes Bluetooth 3.0, plus 802.11n Wi-Fi and gigabit ethernet.

One respect in which the XPS 14z falls short is ports: It offers only two rear-mounted USB ports. That’s unfortunate, as USB connections are precious commodities on a laptop. One of the ports does support USB 3.0 (SuperSpeed), though. Also on the rear are a mini-DisplayPort connector, an HDMI port, and an ethernet jack (plus, of course, the power plug). A pair of audio jacks and an SD Card slot grace the left side; the SD Card slot supports the latest SDXC high-capacity cards. On the right side are the DVD drive and the battery-life indicator LEDs--but you won't find any additional USB ports there.

Overall, the Dell XPS 14z is an elegant-looking, lightweight laptop, weighing just 4 pounds, 7 ounces (5 pounds, 6 ounces with the 90W power brick). It’s easy to carry, easy on the eyes, and easy to type on. Most users will be happy with this laptop, but they may find themselves wishing for just one or two more USB ports.

Tear Down of Amazon's Kindle Fire Shows Texas Instruments Dominates Guts 0

If you've been wondering what makes Amazon's Kindle Fire media tablet tick, the teardown kings at iFixit have the answer for you. The DIY-focused site took apart the latest entrant into the tablet wars to see which components were hiding beneath the Fire's slick outer shell. We actually know a lot about the Fire's internals already such as its Texas Instruments OMAP 1GHz dual-core processor, 512MB RAM, 8GB onboard storage, and a 1024-by-600 LCD display.

But having a look inside the device is always fun so you can see exactly what's powering your gadget. IFixit found a few interesting things such as which TI OMAP dual-core processor the Fire uses. You can also see how much battery Amazon was able to pack into its new device and exactly how much trouble you'll have repairing your device should the glass panel have an untimely meeting with the sidewalk.

That's One Big Battery

As is typical of most mobile devices these days, the Fire's 4400 mAh battery takes up the bulk of the media tablet's internal space measuring 4.6-inches tall by 4.3-inches wide. The Fire's external casing measures 7.5-inches tall and 4.7-inches wide. But that's nothing compared to the three batteries packed inside the iPad 2.

Amazon promises the Fire's battery life will last up to 7.5 hours of video playback or 8 hours of continuous reading on one charge with the Wi-Fi radio turned off.

OMAP 4430

We already knew Amazon was using a 1 GHz dual-core OMAP processor from Texas Instruments and iFixit confirms the device is sporting TI's OMAP 4430. This is the same processor inside the BlackBerry PlayBook.

On top of the OMAP 4430 sits the Fire's 512MB of DDR2 mobile RAM made by Hynix.

LCD Easily Replaced

DIY types will be happy to find out that replacing the LG-made LCD panel will be relatively easy since it is not fused to the glass panel as it is in some mobile devices such as the iPhone 4. But replacing the Fire's front glass is another matter since it is fused to the plastic frame. That means you either have to use a heat gun to get the glass panel off or replace the components entirely, according to iFixit.

Overall, iFixit gave the Kindle Fire high marks for making a device that was easy to crack open. "Although its plain design (no volume buttons, cameras, etc.) meant fewer components, we had no hesitation in rewarding the Fire with a sterling 8 out of 10 for repairability," iFixit said.

Amazon's $200 Fire could be a big seller this holiday season as a budget alternative to more full-featured tablets such as the $500-$830 iPad. The online retailer's Android-based device is being praised for its seamless integration with Amazon's content store and solid hardware. Although critics aren't entirely pleased with its Web browsing capabilities or its small 7-inch screen for reading large format items such as magazines and comic books.

Nook Tablet: Hands-On With Barnes & Noble's Alternative to the Kindle Fire 0

B&N's Nook Tablet has beefier specs than Amazon's Kindle Fire, but it also has its share of limitations as a tablet.

The $250 Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet, available starting on November 16, will provide solid competition for Amazon's Kindle Fire. This is Barnes & Noble's second-generation device, a follow-on to last year's Nook Color, which now drops to $200, the same price as the Kindle Fire.

Now that I've had a chance to use the Nook Tablet, I've been able to identify some of its strengths, and a few of its weaknesses. Here are my initial impressions, particularly in comparison with the Kindle Fire. (This piece will be updated when we complete our full review.)

The Nook Tablet's main weakness--like the Kindle Fire's---is that it isn't a full-featured tablet. It lacks components such as built-in Bluetooth, stereo speakers, GPS, and front- and rear-facing cameras, most of which are common elements of tablets today. It also doesn't possess some common tablet capabilities, such as navigating primary tablet screens (for example, the home screen and content libraries) in landscape mode. Another omission: You can't view folders of images and movies in the included image gallery--all of the media thumbnails end up in one big bucket.

Still, the Nook Tablet's low price will make it appealing to fans of both e-readers and tablets. In fact, it's priced low enough to sway some consumers who might have been considering an iPad 2, which has a larger display, but also costs twice as much. Considering the Nook Tablet's competitive price and beefy specs, makers of other so-called "value" tablets (including Amazon, with its Kindle Fire tablet) may find that it poses a serious challenge.

And though the Nook Tablet doesn't excel as a tablet, it stays true to its roots as an LCD e-reader that is optimized for reading. That's one area where Amazon's Kindle Fire may have tripped up. The Nook Tablet's unique display has less reflectivity than the Kindle Fire's, and so is easier to read. In addition, some fonts and videos render more sharply on it than on the Fire.

Impressive Specs

Like the Amazon Kindle Fire, the Nook Tablet provides numerous reading options; but the Nook Tablet's screen is far superior.This tablet's beefed-up horsepower--in comparison to the earlier Nook Color e-reader's--really counts. The dual-core 1GHz Texas Instruments OMAP 4 CPU and 1GB of RAM made switching from app to app a breeze, with little lag or stuttering. Movies played smoothly and stutter-free in Netflix, and the high-definition images re-rendered for Nook's 1024-by-600-pixel display looked lovely, with terrific contrast.

The Nook Tablet's display was dazzling overall. It's basically the same as the one on the Nook Color; but Barnes & Noble says that the new display incorporates some improvements from the company's display supplier.

Those improvements--and not software enhancements--account for the Nook Tablet's superior handling of whites and browns. In a test image, for example, skin tones and a brown sweater looked far more realistic on the Nook Tablet than on the Nook Color.

The screen's glare was minimal, thanks to what Barnes & Noble calls its VividView display. The IPS display is laminated and bonded; so unlike on other tablets's displays--including the Kindle Fire's--there's no annoying, visible air gap between the glass screen and the LCD beneath.

That's not to say that glare has completely disappeared on the Nook Tablet, but the difference is obvious in a side-by-side comparison. The VividView display also enhances the contrast and viewing angle of the Nook Tablet versus the Kindle Fire. The tablet felt noticeably lighter than the Nook Color, even though the difference on paper--1.7 ounces--seem negligible. Still, I could feel the difference when holding the tablet in one hand, as I often do when using one.

Side-by-side with the Kindle Fire, the weight difference is less evident. Only hundredths of a pound separate the two, and their balance feels quite different because of their different dimensions (the Nook Tablet is about 0.67 inch taller than the Kindle Fire).

Navigating the Nook Tablet

The Nook Tablet's home screen is highly customizable and provides quick access to apps and reading material.With the original Nook Color, Barnes & Noble's operating system--a variant initially built on the Android 2.2 OS--evolved in keeping with the Nook Tablet's alignment into the bigger tablet universe.

The Nook Tablet takes that integration to a higher level, but only for some apps. At launch, the flagship example is Netflix, whose tablet-optimized app and options are accessible from the Nook Tablet's home screen. You can access your Netflix viewing history and recommendations from the home screen and from the home screen's More menu--a convenient and logical move, given the Nook Tablet's aim to embrace its full tablet potential from the get-go, and given that Barnes & Noble lacks the direct digital storefront tie-ins that Amazon's Kindle Fire offers.

As a whole, apps are now treated in much the same way as book and periodical content. You can reach all of them through the recently accessed bar along the bottom of the home screen, and you can pin any of them to the home screen for easy one-tap access. I appreciated that this area didn't get cluttered with specific, recently played video or music selections--as happens on the Kindle Fire.

For all of its expansion to embrace apps and multimedia, the Nook Tablet continues to be optimized for reading, as is clear from the display, from how you access books, and from tablet's the visual presentation of periodicals.

The new Read and Record feature in children's books is especially compelling; it worked very well when I tried it. I could create my own audio track to accompany a book, a feature with special appeal for families with a loved one who travels or is far away. I hope we'll see the mic incorporated into other applications. Regrettably, video chat won't be one of those applications, since B&N didn't include a front-facing camera.

Where Are the Apps?

Apps are the lifeblood of any tablet--as can be seen from the thriving 100,000+ strong app ecosystem for the Apple iPad. Android tablets have struggled, though, in part because of the fragmentation caused by different Android OS versions and different screen sizes. Among competing, full-blown 7-inch tablets, the latest models from Acer, Samsung, Toshiba, and leading tablet makers use Google's Android 3.2 Honeycomb operating system, which was optimized for the larger screen sizes of tablets. Other models--particularly those produced by budget-conscious tablet makers--use some version of Android 2.2 or Android 2.3, neither of which was intended for use on tablets. In either case, finding apps that fit the tablet screen and look appropriate on a tablet has been an ongoing issue for Android tablets in general.

The Nook Tablet Apps library is accessible from within a single library option that's divvied up into books, magazines, newspapers, apps, and more.Barnes & Noble based the Nook Tablet OS on Android 2.3, but the company doesn't include support for Android Market. Instead, apps are funneled through B&N's own, growing app store.

But there is some advantage to consumers in B&N's curated approach. In practice, the contrast to the messy Android Market experience was quite refreshing. I've downloaded plenty of apps from the Android Market onto 7-inch tablets only to have them crash and force-close on me--or not stretch properly to fit the tablet's screen. It was also a pleasant switch from what I saw in the Kindle Fire's Amazon Appstore.

What Barnes & Noble Missed

The Nook Tablet is missing such common tablet features as Bluetooth, stereo speakers, a GPS, and front- and rear-facing cameras. The Nook Color omitted those features as well, but considering that the Nook Tablet calls itself a tablet and is trying to compete with tablets, Barnes & Noble should have added at least some of them.

Admittedly, some of the "value" competition lacks Google services and cameras, too; but the Nook Tablet's core specs are good enough for it to play in the big kids' sandbox, alongside 7-inch Android Honeycomb tablets from the likes of Samsung and Toshiba.

The Nook Tablet would stand up better to the competition if it had added a more competitive feature set.

I would also like to have seen B&N step up the display's resolution. B&N's bonded and laminated VividView display qualities significantly improve the display's quality, but in some fonts, I could still see pixelation in the text.

I prefer the smooth text rendering of higher-resolution displays, such as those offered by Toshiba's 7” Thrive and T-Mobile's SpringBoard, two Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablets that have raised their display resolution to 1280 by 800 pixels. And even Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus--another Honeycomb tablet, but one that has the same resolution as the Nook Tablet--does a better job of text rendering than the Nook Tablet.

Though B&N clearly missed a few opportunities to forge ahead of the 7-inch tablet pack, these omissions were undoubtedly carefully calculated trade-offs necessitated by the need to achieve an attractive price. And attractive it is: At $250, the Nook Tablet is a bargain compared with theSamsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus (shipping now) and the Thrive 7” (shipping in December), both priced at $399. It's also far cheaper than the SpringBoard ($440 across its two-year contract, plus monthly mobile broadband payments).

As for how the Nook Tablet tracks with the Kindle Fire, here's our first take: For reading, you're better off with the Nook Tablet. For everything else, check back soon to read our full evaluation of the Nook Tablet, and to see where it fits into the current tablet landscape.