There are some moments in life when you do some things not expecting much excitement but you do it anyway. And then out of no where you begin to have a lot of fun and you come out mighty impressed. And a nice happy feeling that is. This typically happens with movies, books and music. But recently it happened to me while playing this game called Trine.


I was linked to the game trailer and asked to play it. When I asked what it was about I was informed that it was a 2D scrolling game in a 3D World. I took upon playing the game for nostalgic reasons. It had been almost an eternity when I last played a 2D Scrolling game like Mario, Contra, Dangerous Dave or Digger. These had been my favorites and clearly no game was going to replace them. Let alone replace, how impressed could I get by a 2D game in a world where 3D is the in-thing? So I began to play Trine with very low expectations, expecting to give up in repetitive boredom.

Trine, simply put, is the most beautiful game I have ever played. The art work, lighting and narration are the best I have ever seen in any game. Not because the visuals are very realistic but because the game truly is a fairy tale brought to life. If you grew up as a kid listening to fairy tales about kingdoms, wizards and magic, Trine gives you all that at its visual best and whats even better, it allows you to be a part of it.

The game is set in a kingdom beset by evil and it is up to you to get rid of the undead (thats what they call skeletons with a soul) from the kingdom and bring peace and happiness into everyones lives. A wizard, a knight and a thief are bounded into a single body because they touch an ancient artifact called the Trine and these 3 set out on an adventure to defeat evil, win riches and separate their souls from the body. There are enough puzzles, booby traps, underwater adventures, big monsters and dangerous object that can hurt you to keep the gameplay interesting.

The game makes extensive use of physics and I feel is the first game that truly shows the value of the otherwise hyped Nvidia Physx technology. You can switch between the wizard, the knight or the thief anytime you want and use their skills to kill enemies, move objects, traverse obstacles. The knight is all about brute force, while the wizard is good for creating simple objects out of thin air and moving them around magically. The thief's acrobatic skills remind of spider-man and she is also good with archery.

The background score of the game is awesome and the game is best played with all eye-candy options turned on. A game this beautiful deserves to be viewed as the developers intended to with all graphics settings set to high. It is preferable to have an Nvidia GPU that supports Physx but it will work even otherwise. To play on laptops one might have to reduce all the graphics settings in the game launch menu.

My only gripe about the game is the last level. If all but the last level was rated 3/10 for difficulty level, the last level would be rated 9/10. The game suddenly changes pace and gets extremely difficult in the last stage. To win this level requires repeated playing to memorize the path to travel to clear obstacles and reach the end. In the end it is all worth it.

All in all Trine is one of those games that you will treasure if you own it. It will bring back a lot of nostalgia about 2D scrollers if you are an old time gamer. No wonder it got the Gamespot's Editor's Choice award at E3 '09.

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Do you like the Wild Wild West? Do you like quick draws and cow boys? Do you visualize the Arizona desert with Cactus and like the Clint Eastwood movies based around this period? Do you want to be a gunslinger? If the answers are YES, Call of Juarez - Bound in Blood is a game that will go right through the top of your all-time favorites once you finish playing the game.

Call of Juarez is a first person PC shooter based in 19th century America around the period of the American Civil War. The game starts of in the middle of the Civil War with the two playable characters - Ray and Thomas, fighting as soldiers for the Confederate army of the southern States. Unfortunately for them, they desert their side against orders from their Colonel to protect their family house under attack by the union Army. What starts off seeming like a typical FPS war game, like countless other World War games, rapidly changes pace and becomes a whole new species. The game moves on from the civil war to treasure chase, siding with native Americans, sometimes fighting them, killing bandits and many other adventures. The game play is fast paced and it just keeps getting better and better. The plot is tightly woven and even with optional missions for characters to choose the game never gets boring any time. Not to mention the rivalry between the two brothers to win a beautiful woman.



You can choose to play either as Ray or as Thomas and both of them have their own special skills. Thomas mostly does the jumping around and has Bows as a unique weapon. Ray likes the stable ground and likes revolvers and dynamite. You are forced to play one of the characters in certain chapters to keep the plot sensible. In other chapters you get to choose. Riding on horses and shooting , quick-draws, shooting horse riders chasing you from inside a horse driven carriage, fighting native Americans, Gatling guns, WANTED posters and accompanying missions all add a lot of value to the game. Very few moments feel repetitive and you really feel like Clint Eastwood in a game that feels like a combination of The Good, the bad, the ugly, A fist full of Dollars and For a few dollars more; all three movies rolled into one single game. The background score though initially not impressive quickly catches on and feels as good as some of the tunes churned out by Ennio Morricone for the Clint Eastwood Movies.

I was able to play the game quite comfortable with all settings maxed out at a resolution of 1920 X 1200 using an Nvidia GeForce GTX275. I suspect the basic game-play can be enjoyed even on a Geforce 8 Series GPU based laptop with all eye-candy settings in the game set to medium or low.



The game play felt like the type that should have been originally there in Far Cry 2. Unfortunately, the period of the game made a big difference. The only difficulty I had in the game was figuring out the Quick-draw duels. Facing off a single opponent at the strike of the town bell with a revolver is something that I have always wanted to do since watching the old western flicks. And when I finally got my chance to do it, it felt very tough. It takes some time to get the tactic to win the duel. Once you know what needs to be done, winning the duel is a piece of cake. In case you get struck at a Duel while playing, don't give up. The grass is green on the other side.



All in all Call of Juarez is a super entertainer, different and totally worth the money. If Sergio Leone was alive and had made a game, this would have been it. I missed out playing the first part of the game which was just called Call of Juarez. I am told that Bound in Blood is a prequel to the first game. Can't wait to lay my hands on the old game now.

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There has been an onslaught of new technologies for people to interact with computers off late. I wrote about some of them earlier like the 6th sense technology from MIT, Project Natal from Microsoft, Mgestyk hand gesture controller etc. Most of these technologies seem to have started after Nintendo released the Wii controller that took the next level of human machine interface to consumers with a product they could actually buy.

Today we look at another level of interaction between humans and machines in the form of an augmented reality shooter using a mobile phone like device powered by Nvidia Tegra. The player looks through the camera of the device at a two dimensional picture which looks 3 dimensional model on the device screen. He then goes on to interact with the 3D Model in ways that will blow your socks off.

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Microsoft is at it again - trying to emulate everything its competitors does and doing a not so good job of it. After the Zune, Microsoft is now eyeing the mobile phone market and this is its rumoured iPhone competitor. While the three style keypad idea looks very user friendly, something about the phone makes it feel all eye candy without much functionality. A circular screen and having to read emails in the arranged as concentric circles is just not appealing. I hope this is not the real product (but for 3 keypad styles in one phone).

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Nvidia is known for its graphics processors that power gaming. But very few know that it is also into supercomputing and mobile processing. Here is a video with clips of interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang where he talks about the new supercomputers that fit into a box, are cheap and consume low power. There is also a snippet of information on what Nvidia offices in India are working on. 

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Check out this trailer of the new game from Electronic arts: Mirrors edge with Physx by Nvidia bringing in an immersive gaming experience with realistic physics showing off broken mirror shards, wavy and torn clothes etc. While these might look like simple cosmetic improvements, a combination of many such small things can lead to a more interesting game play. Initial reports indicate that the game is realistic enough to make one feel like wanting to throw up because of all the ingame jumping and tumbling.

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