Features
The X100e is surprisingly well featured for a small ultraportable. It provides three USB ports (one powered), VGA output, a 4-in-1 card reader, and a decent set of built-in speakers.Connectivity is provided by 3G capability, standard WiFi support (b/g/n), Bluetooth and a LAN port.
Display is catered for by a 11.6″ backlit HD LCD screen. The screen is surprisingly bright for those who are used to more dim displays. The screen showed very saturated colours which can cause eye strain, dimming it down does wonders for long term usage.Construction
The laptop is made from tough reinforced plastic which gives it a light but solid feel. Even with the 6 cell battery the laptop only weights in at a modest 1.5kg, which is lighter than most textbooks and infinitely lighter than regular laptops.Usability & Ergonomics
The full sized keyboard makes typing a breeze, although the keyboard can be a bit more resistant that most other keyboards. For that matter, one must tap the keys a bit harder than most other laptops or keyboards.
The touchpad lives in small recess directly below the keyboard. Its clicking buttons sit flush with the bottom edge of the laptop. It was only satisfactory as it did miss some strokes such, as the scrolling action for webpages.
The Trackpoint system makes for easy scrolling thanks to a dedicated button that you hold down and move the pointer forwards and backwards to scroll. It’s not as fast as the touchpad but for scrolling it’s useful.

Performance
Lenovo offers a choice of two pre-built models: the ‘entry’ and ‘enhanced’ version. The model being reviewed is the latter model with the optional processor upgrade to a Turion Neo X2 L625, which offers an extra 512KB of L2 cache.The processor is no Ferrari but it does get the job done. Most applications run smoothly, it handles light photo editing very well, runs older games, and can multitask without slowing down to a crawl. For an entry level unit, this isn’t bad at all. However when the power states start being decreased below medium, applications start becoming sluggish. Even typing in Word or browsing Firefox becomes a bit slow.

Battery LifeThe six cell affords roughly five hours by Lenovo’s estimates. Although I haven’t run lab tests, I can confirm it is possible to squeeze five hours out of the battery. Don’t expect to be playing games and watching movies for five hours. The best it will do depending on how hard you flog the system, is 2 to 3 hours. I managed the five hours with word processing, some music and web browsing.

Verdict
The X100e is a great entry level ultraportable for reps on the go or those people that like to spend hours at a cafe. It packs decent performance, good battery life, is comfortable to use, great looks, but it is pricey and is only for those that can afford it. At the time of the sale the difference between the ‘enhanced’ X100e and the higher end X200s was only a few hundred dollars, so my recommendation is if you can afford the extra money, go with the X200s. However if you simply can’t afford it, its entry level cousin will serve you well.

Photos by yours truely

First off a bit of background as to who Sanya is:

Sanya V. Litvyak hailing from the cold regions of the Orussian Empire she is the 2nd youngest member of the 501st, she has limited contact with the other members of the team and sometimes is seen asleep on her feet relying on Eila to move her around this is due to her duties as the resident night fighter.
Her magical abilities mimic those of radar enabling her to sense activity beyond visual range and also able to pick up on signals such as radio waves, this ability when used manifests as antennas that resemble those used on German Lichtenstein radar sets. Sanya’s striker is the MiG60 a fictional warbird that combines the features of the MiG-1, MiG-3 and Yak-1 and when equipped she gains the ears and tail of a black cat.
Her pilot archetype is based off the real world ace Lydia Litvyak.

She’s a recent release from Alter only just out in mid July for the modest cost of 6,630 yen at Hobby Search. Being an Alter release the quality is top notch a variable A+ job, oddly enough she’s still available for purchase as of writing this post which is somewhat understandable as there isn’t a huge as following for Sanya as the other girls.

True to her night fighter duties she is posed flying on a one can imagine a routine patrol, this particular instance of Sanya is much more conservative than Kotobukiya’s version released September 2009 and to be honest captures Sanya’s essence so to speak much better especially her facial expression.
Details are well painted, neat and decals applied flawlessly resulting in an amazing show piece.

Her iconic rocket launcher ‘Fliegerhummer’ is held at the ready in her hands and a magnet inside her head prevents the rocket launcher from slipping from it’s position, she’s attached to the mounting plate with a small metal peg which connects to the bottom of one of her striker units, which have interchangeable propellers one set of simulated action and the other normal props.
I suspect that in a few months time she’ll be quite sought after by collectors as aside from being a high quality Alter figurine, she’s incredibly cute to have on your desk or display case. Who doesn’t want a girl to protect their desk from the Neuroi invasion?

Anyway it looks like I’ll be even more broke than I am now if Alter decides to release an Eila figurine as having Sanya is not complete without her best friend Eila.

Oh well enjoy the photos.

Having finally bought all the Borderlands DLCs off Steam I thought I’d give them a spin, then review them after finishing or getting stuck.

Accurate depiction of what you will be facing

First up is Dr. Ned’s Zombie Island – This DLC promises us the opportunity to slay zombies and lots of them.
Set on a island bought by the Jacobs corporation which for some reason is now crawling with zombies, wereskags and other undead abominations.

This looks promising...

As you materialise from the Fast Travel system you are greeted by a Claptrap imploring you to clear the local township of zombies and reset its defenses. You are then set on a journey through swamps, forests and hordes of zombies to meet the [in]famous Dr. Ned who sends you on your way to run errands to collect data on the zombies which he created accidentally but is apparently looking for a cure.

I really am helping...

From this point onwards you are thrust into an adventure to find out the truth behind the zombie infection, fighting mutated citizens and undead creations that only Dr. Frankenstein would think up.

My flesh, it burns!!!

Gameplay is the same as Borderlands just this time there’s more emphasis on use of incendiary, explosive weapons and copious headshots to be had on your undead foes – those who decided to invest in elemental weapons you won’t be disappointed by the lightshow.
Pack rats and trigger happy folks are well catered for with the zombies dropping masses of loot, and ammo.

I don't think we're in Kansas anymore...

The Zombie Island arc difficulty is scaled to your current progress in the main arc, resulting in more challenging zombies and better loot the further you are. Unfortunately for me I was only a third way through my second play-through when I decided  to give Zombie Island a spin which resulted in a less than challenging run.

Watch out for the clay pidgeons

The AI is rather dumb with most zombies charging at you with exceptions of those that attack you at range with slowing mud or explosive barrels (that can be blown up), all of which can be countered by simply backpedaling and setting the poor souls on fire. They do have a few tricks up their rotten sleeves such as the ability to spawn anywhere that there is dirt, so watch out for that midget creeping up behind you as you’re fight the tank in front.

The new art assets for the zombies look great in their rotting glory, the new maps although simple are loaded with atmosphere everything from creepy looking trees to angry crows that want to eat you; the new local include a hospital graveyard, lumber mill and haunted swamps. Gearbox have done a great job getting the point across that something is not right in paradise.
Network play also gets a mention here as it seems like the various patches for Borderlands has finally fixed the inability to host private games, unfortunately what they haven’t fixed is the lack of information about the server such as ping, and location. Aside from those faults the netplay runs like butter.

I think a saw a body move...

This is a great DLC but there are a few shortcomings such as Gearbox recycling the Lance outpost featured in the main arc – reskining it, placing a few corpses strategically and changing the lighting to make it all creepy. Unfortunately that won’t fool anyone as even the vending machines are in the same spots.
The problem with items partially showing or not showing at all still exists and remains unpatched by Gearbox.

This picture contains spoilers click at your own risk

Overall what did I think of this DLC? It’s a great distraction from the main plot, lets you kill zombies in the most spectacular ways, has a few plot twists, and features Claptrap on Claptrap action: All in all a fun package wrapped in rotting zombie flesh.
Go grab it and you too can be a hotshot zombie slayer!

Yeah I know you're look at those funbags.

Stay tuned for my review of  Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot DLC!

As one can probably gleam from the title it’s a defence game more specificly a highly addictive Tower Defence game.

The premise is simple: to defend a group of power cores from aliens of varying types that run the gauntlet through your barrier of towers in waves, these waves get harder and more numerous as the game progresses.

Run rabbit, run rabbit, run, run, run...

Enemies come in all shapes and sizes from tiny swarming bugs, to flying and cloaky bugs who can only be shot at by towers point blank.

So many towers, so little time...

The towers also come in various flavors from the simple machine gun tower to cluster bomb towers.

HMS Dreadnought would be proud

Each tower has its strengths and weaknesses for example the concussion towers drop cluster bombs over a small area and are extremely effective against swarming aliens but are completely inadequate against single tough units, conversely towers such as the Cannon towers deal massive damage to single units but their rate of fire does not allow them to effectively counter aliens that swarm.

(Left to right) Dakka, More Dakka, Even More Dakka

The towers are upgradeable up to two times each upgrade increases firepower, range and rate of fire boosting their effectiveness each time, the towers upon upgrade redeploy with a bigger gun or even more guns (‘More Dakka‘) and are colour coded green (level 1), yellow (level 2) and red (level 3).

Enlighten the Xenos today!

For those who are familiar with Tower Defence games they tend to feature a super weapon capable of saving the player when he/she gets overwhelmed usually in the form of a bomb: Defense Grid gives the player a giant laser satellite that shows the Xenos the light of god in a limited area.

As previously stated the game is very simple: aliens attack your base and you have to defend it with a series of defensive towers, in the default story mode your power cores that are stolen can be returned to your base providing you kill the alien running away with it at which point the alien will drop its prize and the core will slowly float back to its rightful place.

Screamin' Eagles!

The maps make ingenious use of  height opening up new tactics such as perching towers up higher so that they can rain shells on the enemy below while also covering their own level, other design features are multiple entry/exit points for aliens, multiple power core locations and attack paths that can be ‘shaped’ by blocking them with towers.

Make for interesting game play and unlike more primitive tower defence games allows for a more expanded tactics to be used.

Do it you know you want to.

For the masochistic, challenge modes can be unlocked one of such modes is ‘Poison Core’ in which any alien that picks up a dropped power core will instantly die and the core is lost. This challenge and other challenges are available after completion of the related story mission.

The game’s visuals are pleasing to the eyes – crisp, vibrant, and conveys the game’s atmosphere and gameplay very well. The camera allows only one view direction but does let the player to zoom in right down to the heat of the action.

The audio is not bad the soundtrack plays very well with the action, and sound effects are excellent with cannons giving off a chunky ‘Bam!’ when they let loose. Unfortunately the voice acting in story mode is rather cheesy. Your AI partner speaks with a heavily stereotyped British accent with lines that only James May would utter, just will less sarcasm and ‘luxuriousness’.

When talking about it just isn't enough.

As for online features Defence Grid offers leaderboards, highscores and four DLC packs up for sale for $0.99 each which apparently includes more steam achievements and extra maps to slug it out on.

All in all Defence Grid: The Awakening was a great game it fills all the criteria for a game of this type (in my books): Addictive, simple, and entertaining.

Which Defence Grid managed to pull off with flying colours, unfortunately it was only let down by the cheesy voice acting otherwise it’s a great time waster for when you’re sick of playing soldier, taking over the world or just plain procrastinating.

Grab a copy off Steam today!

Welcome to Pandora

I digress, Borderlands is not Gearbox’s first foray into the world of PC games with the release of Gears of War for PC being their debut title.
What does Borderlands promise us? Apparently it promises a compelling storyline, co-operative play and lots of guns all set on a far away planet called Pandora.

You’re placed in the shoes of a treasure hunter who arrives on Pandora to look for a legendary ‘Vault’ which apparently contains riches from a long lost alien world but only opens every few millenia.

The Vault: it's more likely than you think

From the get go the game opens up with a slick opening like something out of a Tarentino movie, you get the choice of four class types: Brick a close combat character that relies on brute force and raw power your general RPG Tank. Lilith a Siren apparently gifted with the ability to enter another dimension for a limited amount of time before re-emerging otherwise known as ‘Phasewalk’; she is a mage/assassin hybrid type of character.

Phasewalk: The only way to travel

Mordecai your typical hunter archetype blessed with the ability to kill stuff from really far away and able to summon a pet Bloodbird that can attack and help scavenge supplies, finally you have Roland a former mercenary who specialises in close range weapons, is able to deploy turrets and later on is able to regenerate ammo for weapons.
The characters are introduced by the bus driver who you find out later is the owner of a chain of weapons/ammo vending machines.

Personalities (Left to Right): Roland, Mordecai, Brick & Lilith

After you select your character you’re kicked off the bus by the seemingly friendly bus driver and are welcomed to the world of Pandora by a robot with an attitude called a Claptrap, you’re run through a quick tutorial, and starter missions that outline basic controls, skills, combat and questing in general.
Then from there you are then left to your own devices to complete quests that allow you to collect various special guns or artefacts that can be combined with your skills (In my case I played as the Siren and was able to make a fiery exit out of Phasewalk) think of it like the artefacts that modify your stats in S.T.A.L.K.E.R unfortunately the variety of artefacts on offer from missions is rather limited at least in the case of the Siren…

The questing in-game is in the form of a bounty board that allows you to access missions be they side missions or important storyline missions of course it’s highly advisable to do the side quests as sometimes the swag you receive is worth it; missions vary from simple scavenging for particular items to going to ‘dungeons’ to fight giant beasts or defeat warlords/barbarians.

Werk, Werk, Werk (Top to Bottom): Bounty Board & Quest Log

The gameplay is still very much standard FPS fair but with an elements of RPG showing through such as headshots not always being an instant kill specially if the weapon you’re using is weak or the enemy is at a higher level than you of course there are skills that allow you to do more critical damage to score instant kills.
As previously mentioned skills can be be trained up each time you level and you’re freely able to put the skill points into whatever character development branch you want, these points can be freely redistributed by paying a small fee to reset all your points.
Weapons can be buffed with the aforementioned skills and Proficiencies – meaning the more you use a weapon the more proficient your character becomes which results in better damage, higher fire rates and faster reload times.

Leet Skills (Left to Right): Character Skill Branches & Weapon Proficiencies Menues.

On the subject of weapons the developers claim that there are over 17 million weapons in game with 750 thousand variations as of release, the weapons in game are indeed plentiful and for those of us who are pack rats will end up with full backpacks after missions of course all the common weapons are not worth keeping and are usually sold at the next vending machine.

The weapons that are worth collecting are the semi-rare weapons that drop off bosses and legendary weapons that can be either found or bought; these weapons tend to have a little red text related to the weapon’s name and insanely good stats ranging from crazy damage percentages to ammo regeneration this applies to shields in-game as well with rarer shields being able to quickly regenerate both shields and health.

Sick Loot: Inventory System

Death is dealt in its own way; when your health hits zero you are given a small amount of time to quickly kill an enemy which immediately revives you with full shields giving you an opportunity to make an escape or take cover until your health recovers.
Otherwise if you are unable to kill anything in time you are revived at a ‘New-U’ station for a fee.

Row, Row, Fight the Power

Possibly the most fun aspect of Borderland’s weapons are the Elemental weapons made by Maliwan they’re typically weaker in terms of base damage compared to other weapons of the same type but offer the chance of doing one of the four elemental damages: Incendiary, Corrosive, Explosive and Shock.
All four damage types each carry a unique death animation when the elemental damage finishes your victim each of which are show in the image below.

Using the Elements (Left to Right): Bake 'em, Melt 'em, Explode 'em and Shock 'em.

How does the game look? Being developed on the Unreal 3 engine Borderlands looks gorgeous, the pseudo-cell shaded art direction looks great with [almost] endless wasteland to explore with a day/night cycle, effects like explosions from incendiary weapons look great and the character models are a detailed and gritty.

Although it would have been preferable that Borderlands had Anti-aliasing as the cell shaded nature of the game means ‘jaggies’ are more obvious which is a real let down as the game looks great on PC.
The game music is good and fits very well with what is happening on screen as you play, the sound effects are great especially the sound of various firearms such as the various shotguns and revolvers at your disposal all producing a meaty ‘Bang!’ sound (the epitome of this is probably the M3 Pump action in Counter-Strike).

Git off mah lawn!

Finally we get to the point were I post about what I find was bad about Borderlands.
First off is: The AI is a bit too easy most involve either charging mindlessly at you or hiding behind cover and occasionally popping up to shoot sporadicly at you both of which can easily be dealt with so it does get a bit old fighting the same enemies over and over again.
Second network play is horrible in its own way before the game was patched, the game was barely able to play co-op mode with various bugs preventing someone from hosting a private game and the only option was to host a public game, which brings me to the next point relating to network play.
The server browser is simply the worst server browser I’ve used in the years of online gaming under my belt, the server browser only displays what the server’s name is, the characters in-game, what slots are left in the game and which part of the wastelands they are up to.
For those who play multiplayer online will notice is that I’ve failed to mention one of the most important things when choosing a server: The ping which alludes to where the server would be hosted which ends up with people having to name their server in which country their game is being hosted in otherwise you end up joining games in Russia which results in 9000 bajillion ping making the game unplayable.

Worst server browser ever

Although the implementation of co-op is a good idea on paper it doesn’t work too well in practice as I’ve noticed while playing co-op that players don’t seem to realise they have a voice chat button or the ‘Talk To Team’ button to at least communicate with their teammates so it ends up feeling like you’re playing with bots; if I wanted bot teammates I would have played Call of Duty or a scripted shooter and in those games at least the bots communicate to you.
So my recommendation for co-op is round up some mates, all get the game and go forth to conquer the wastelands.

Next is a few niggles I had with the game relating to the interface although it’s slick and great overall there are a few flaws that annoy me as hell the one of the worst being the weapons description box: you’re probably asking yourself why a I’m being anal about it well it’s annoying because when you see a rare/legendary (gold) weapon you can’t see all its stats meaning you can’t determine if the weapon is just rare because its got this giant rice scope on it or because it regenerates ammo. This links on to another problem relating to weapons is that some weapons have descriptions missing altogether such as a semi-rare shield drop called ‘Wee Wee’s Super Booster’ has no description what-so-ever meaning you can’t tell what it does (See video above).
My last complaint is that the game does not have an Anti-aliasing option meaning I can’t enjoy my game without jaggies but otherwise I have no other quams with the visuals.

Your Guardian Angel or is she?

In conclusion Borderlands was a great game, even with its thin plot it was a great shooter to blast through, sound and music was great, excellent visuals, gorgeous game world, fun gameplay and interesting co-op mode so long as you have some mates to game with.
So if you’re looking for a fun RPG/FPS hybrid game for Christmas then grab yourself a cheap copy during the Christmas sales, if you’re looking for a fast pace co-op experience I suggest looking at games like Left 4 Dead: 1 and 2 (for L4D:2 those in Australia are advised to get gifted an overseas version to avoid getting the censored local version).

First off I would like to apologize for the late review.

Admitantly I have been lazy these past few weeks of holidays (bliss) so without further ado I present to you my Fallout 3 review.

Fallout 3 was originally developed by Black Isle Studios a studio owned by Interplay Entertainment, under the title of Van Buren. That was before Interplay went bust and the game was left in limbo and the rights to develop Fallout 3 sold to Bethesda Softworks famous for the Elder Scrolls titles.

Van Buren did though reach a workable tech demo before Interplay shut Black Isle down. The development of Fallout 3 did not start until July 2004 but major development only took place after the release of the fourth installment of Elder Scrolls – Oblivion.

Bethesda decided to make Fallout 3 with a focus on non-linear gameplay, solid story and obligatory black humor – similar to its predecessors Fallout and Fallout 2 respectively. But leaving out the self-referential gags of the previous two games, so as to no break the suspension of disbelief within the game allowing the player to feel that the Fallout world is in fact ‘real’.Fallout 3 went gold on October the 9^th 2008 and was released in Australia on the 30^th of October 2008 for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3.

I ended up buying the limited edition from GAME on release date.

The game itself is very pretty as it was developed on the Gamebryo engine, the same engine used for Oblivion. Although this game is not ‘Crysis pretty’ it is enough to convey what the developers are trying to get across and they successfully roped me into the Fallout universe.

The game itself opens with the player’s birth allowing the player to choose their gender, name, facial features, hair colour and heritage. The player then proceeds through various stages of life in Vault 101 finally ending with their 10^th birthday, before the player now 19 is awoken by a friend from the Vault, told that his/her father has left the vault and that the Overseer’s men are looking for the player.

The player then proceeds to escape the troubled Vault to finally emerge from the ground to see the war ravaged Capital Wasteland. From there the player has the option to follow the main quest to look for their father or to simply wander the Wastes and sample the many fruits the Wasteland has on offer, this includes a town built round a life atomic bomb, the landmarks of Washington D.C and an old aircraft carrier turned city.

Everything related to your character is controlled through the PIP-Boy 3000 that is given to them during the early stages of life in the Vault, the PIP-Boy provides information on everything from your character’s current state of health, radiation poisoning levels, their inventory, weapons, quests and map data.

The player’s avatar is limited to a maximum level cap of 20 with the player able to choose 3 ‘Tag’ skills in which 15 points are added instantly to the player’s chosen skills another skill can be ‘Tagged’ later on in the game with a perk. Perks are gained at every level there is a selection of over 60 different perks some of which can be earned through leveling or doing specific quests.

Combat in-game can be handled the old fashioned way in real time or in The Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System otherwise known as V.A.T.S mode. When the player activates VATS mode the game pauses and the player has a certain amount of ‘Action Points’ to use for their attacks, the number of action points can be determined by the amount of Agility a character has, more can be added with perks or the usage of drugs such as ‘Jet’.

The advantage of VATS is that it allows the player to target specific body parts on the enemy such as shooting the enemy’s weapon out of their hands.

Above: VATS in action

Above: Result of successful headshot in VATS

However the player must be aware that their skills also affect the chances of hitting the target, this also affects the real time combat as you shots are wildly inaccurate at range.

On the subject of weapons the player’s weapons slowly decay with use some more so than others; of course the player can repair weapons with a similar weapon. The novel part of the game when it comes to weapons is the inclusion of homemade weapons such as the Nuka Grenade a concoction of a special Cola and some cleaning solution to create the ultimate grenade capable of killing even the toughest of foes in a single hit.

Ammo in game does not have a weight penalty unlike the earlier Fallout games; the reason for this was Bethesda did not want to bog down inventory management.

Players have Karma a game mechanic that determines how the game world views your avatar wither he or she has been up to no good or a saint. One example of Karma at work is when the player gets to a certain level of ‘Good’ karma bounty hunters are sent after them to kill them.

Some quirks I have found with the game relates to in-game physics let me illustrate a situation there is a super mutant standing guard on a tall building, I snipe him blasting off his head but for some reason his body is flung off the building as if something had exploded behind him have a look at the screenshot below to see the flying corpse.

Another problem with the game is how enemies are sometimes spawned in the game material so their bodies are in fact inside the floor mesh this resulted in some hairy situations where I had fire breathing ants pop out of the ground in front of me.

The game’s AI pathing system isn’t all that flash as most enemies will just charge you making the use of landmines very desirable, but this does not come without its quirks such an example was a mirelurk (giant mutant crab) decided to attack me but couldn’t get to me because I was on a high vantage point so the mirelurk just kept running at the scaffolding, a few seconds later it just spawned in front of me forcing me to take damage and promptly turn it into a puddle of green goo.

All in all, Fallout 3 was an amazing experience with much to offer the discerning gamer with its lovely atmosphere and brilliant gameplay; despite its various quirks I would award it 10/10.

This game has a lot of replayability, and since it was build on the Gamebryo engine we’re sure to see mods being release when the development package is released to the public.

On a side note this game is an Role Play Game from a first person perspective not a first person shooter so to fully enjoy the game don’t rush the main quest instead just wander the wastes.

So people get out there grab a copy of Fallout 3 and discover the Capital Wasteland.