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  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 Review Round-up

    // Gradly // blog, Consoles, Games, Poster, Rants & Raves, Reviews No Responses

    Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

    Here’s what everyone had to say about the game:

    • OXM UK: 9/10 – Like it or not, it’s heartening to know that the most popular game on the Xbox 360 is also one of the best.
    • Edge: 9/10 – Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare trilogy stands as this generation’s defining FPS series – and Modern Warfare 3 is an emphatic, feature-packed and sometimes stunning final act.
    • OXM: 9.5 – When everything here is this well-executed and offers so many enduring thrills, it’s hard to knock it too much. MW3 absolutely delivers.
    • GamesRadar: 9/10 – If you’re looking for a new kind of shooter, look elsewhere. Modern Warfare 3 succeeds by doing more – much, much, much more – of what’s always worked spectacularly for the series. We still can’t get enough.
    • Guardian: 5/5 – The Infinity Ward engine is far from cutting edge – the overall look of the game has not moved on enormously since MW2. But the vision, the choreography, the sense of scale and detail – they are awe-inspiring at times.
    • Telegraph: 5/5 – Modern Warfare 3 is a shining example of refinement and improvement. It’s familiar, sure, but here familiarity doesn’t breed contempt, just respect and reward for those who’ve dedicated so much time to the series. And for new players, it’s the perfect starting point, more accommodating and encompassing than ever.
    • AusGamers: 9.6/10 – Don’t go hating on this because it’s Call of Duty. This is Modern Warfare 3 – the final chapter in an epic tale, and part of a series that changed the first-person shooter landscape forever. It’s an absolutely solid title, the best entry in the series and something that should keep you playing for some time to come. More than worth the investment.
    • Destructoid: 9.5/10 – Whether you like what it does is a matter of personal taste, but the skill and experience brought to the table is hard to refute. Modern Warfare 3 gets it done, and it gets it done damn well.
    • GameTrailers: 9.3/10 – If you’re expecting a huge departure from what’s come before you’ll be disappointed, but fans will get exactly what they’re looking for. World War III shouldn’t be this fun.
    • 1UP: A- – I’m glad to say the multiplayer remains addicting and is more balanced than ever.
    • VideoGamer: 9/10 – Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 doesn’t do anything new, but it also doesn’t do anything wrong. For better or worse, this is a slick and well-metered trio of modes that make an entertaining package, but Sledgehammer Games and Infinity Ward are simply looking to augment previous games rather than expand the series into pastures new
    • Joystiq: 4.5/5 – Modern Warfare 3 is a great Call of Duty game, just as every other entry in the franchise is a great Call of Duty game. However, it shares more than quality with its predecessors – it, like its forefathers, leaves you waiting for something perfect.
    • IGN: 9/10 – Despite its flaws, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 takes the fantastic series we’ve come to love over the years and iterates on it with great success. The multiplayer is hands-down the best it has ever been, with more features, more modes and a ton of new levels and ways to interact via Call of Duty Elite. The singleplayer campaign and Spec Ops mode add value to the overall package, creating something that may not be perfect, but is too damn addicting to pass up.
    • GameInformer: 9/10 – When it comes down to it, Modern Warfare 3 meets expectations. The core elements of multiplayer and the campaign remain fundamentally unchanged, but the game serves as a great example of how many subtle tweaks can add up to an improved overall product.
    • GameSpot: 8.5/10 – This is some of the best online shooter action around, and with the daunting challenges of Spec Ops and the exciting, globe-trotting campaign, Modern Warfare 3 stands tall as another great descendant of the game that changed a generation.
    • GiantBomb: 4/5 – Modern Warfare 3 feels split between the great excitement of its time-tested multiplayer and the feeling that this whole style of game has just gotten old.
    • Eurogamer: 8/10 – That the single-player story brings the Modern Warfare saga to a fairly definitive end is, then, cause for celebration. Whatever next year’s entry brings, some measure of reinvention will be essential. For now, its exuberant blend of testicular bravado and blockbuster gloss ensures that Call of Duty retains its crown as the shooter genre’s biggest, boldest rollercoaster ride for at least one more year.

  • How to Enable the Hidden Panorama Camera Mode in iOS 5

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Cydia, Hack, How To, iPhone, Jailbreak, Tutorials No Responses

    Panorama functionality in iOS 5

    After the first beta of iOS 5 was seeded to developers in June, a series of code strings suggested the company could implement a panoramic photo-taking feature in the OS, allowing users to shoot wider photos with a Panorama functionality allegedly similar to what third-party apps like 360 Panorama and Pano are already offering. As Apple kept seeding more betas and eventually released iOS 5 to the public, Panorama was nowhere to be found in iOS, suggesting Apple wasn’t ready to debut the feature yet.

    One Developer did a little digging around inside the camera app and discovered that editing a particular .plist file made the missing panorama mode to appear, however, a new Cydia tweak made available now, called Firebreak. to simply enable camera’s panorama mode:

    Firebreak via Cydia

    Requires iOS 5 or higher

    Requires Gyroscope capable device, iPhone 4, or newer, or iPad 2.

    Enable built-in panoramas on iOS 5 Camera app.

    No icons added to the homescreen. The panorama button is added to the Options menu in the Camera app.

    Once downloaded and installed you will have the panorama mode enabled.

  • Samsung is Working on Flexible Screens for Smartphones and Tablets

    // Gradly // blog, News, Samsung, Tech. 2 Responses

    Galaxy Skin

    During a call to discuss Samsung’s most recent financial results, the company’s spokesman, Robert Yi, said that Samsung was working on a flexible display for its upcoming smartphones and tablets. Samsung hopes to introduce flexible displays to its smartphone lineup in as early as 2012

    “The flexible display, we are looking to introduce sometime in 2012, hopefully the earlier part,” said spokesman Robert Yi during an earnings call. “The application probably will start from the handset side.”

    Yi said tablets and other mobile devices with flexible displays would follow.”

    Samsung has already shown flexible screen technology in the past, with the OLED display held inside rigid cases that kept them curved.

    The new Samsung Galaxy Skin will feature an AMOLED display that will allow the phone to bend around a cylinder with a 1-inch diameter. Brighter than the normal screen, the AMOLED display is also low-energy and almost unbreakable, according to the reports.

    Using a plastic polyimide substrate instead of glass, Samsung has produced displays that are “rollable and bendable” and which can even “survive blows from a hammer”. The phone was developed by Prof Haeseong Jee and Jye Yeon You.

    The key material of this new technology is ‘graphene’, touted as “the miracle material”. Research by scientists from Columbia University has established that ‘graphene’ is the strongest material in the world, “some 200 times stronger than structural steel”.

    The Galaxy Skin will offer a high-resolution 800×480 flexible AMOLED screen, eight megapixel camera and 1Gb of RAM as well as a 1.2GHz processor. Samsung has not yet disclosed the device’s operating system, but there have been rumors about Jelly Bean – Google’s next Android release after Ice Cream Sandwich – or a new release called Android Flexy.

    The new core technology also allows the phone to be used as a mouse, a clock or a wrist-watch. Samsung has not confirmed the exact date of release.

  • Siri Successfully Ported to Run on iPhone 4 and iPod Touch

    // Gradly // Apple, blog, Featured, iPhone, Jailbreak, News, Rants & Raves, Tech. 1 Response

    Siri has finally made its way to the iPhone 4

    Developer Steven Troughton-Smith had successfully ported the Siri onto the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch. The video provided below not only shows the Siri functionality on an iPhone 4, but is in depth and shows a side-to-side comparison against the iPhone 4S. In addition, the video shows the Siri Dictation in action.

    iPhone 4S jailbreak was the key to make the port working successfully on iPhone 4. 9to5mac’s Mark Gurman has brought this story and an got exclusive interview about the port with the developer:

    Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?

    Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.

    Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?

    Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here.

    Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?

    Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices.

    Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?

    Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod.

    Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?

    Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.