Texting with an astronaut. That’s not something you can say you do every day. Lifeline is a text adventure game like no other and actually is an evolution thanks to, well, cell phones. You receive an incoming message from a stranded astronaut named Taylor on an unknown moon. Your job is to give him the advice he needs to survive and find a way off the moon. It sounds boring and stupid, but it isn’t. Lifeline is one of the most unique mobile games I have ever played.
The best part about Lifeline is that you actually have to wait for Taylor to reply in real-time. If Taylor is going down to bed, you may have to wait 4-5 hours; if he’s eating, maybe 30 minutes. This sounds boring, but it’s actually quite engaging and thrilling; it leaves you wanting more. Of course, there’s a fast mode, but what’s the fun in that? My journey with Taylor was quite memorable, and the pace picked up towards the end of the story, which took me about two days to actually get there. Several times I wound up giving poor Taylor some bad advice, and our plucky, sarcastic astronaut died a few times. During my adventure, Taylor ran across two spaceships. The way Taylor describes everything paints a perfect picture in our heads of what the moon could look like. It’s a sci-fi horror mystery with no pictures or spoken dialog, which is what makes it that much more thrilling.
Several times Taylor would stop midway through sentences and cut off, and I wanted to know what happened. I would get a lot of “OH MY GOD” or “YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED.” You get a choice of two short responses, and while some may be similar, a few will decide Taylor’s fate. I was able to get Taylor to calm down after seeing strange creatures; we got some glow rods, a generator, and then a long and rough journey to a large crater with a tower in the middle that kept disappearing. Without spoiling anything, after you reach the tower, this is where the climax begins, and the wait times are non-existent. I really felt Taylor’s psyche start to deteriorate and felt his suffering. I actually felt like I was texting a stranded astronaut, and that’s the beauty of this game.
The best part about Lifeline is that you can go back to any point and rewind the story to that point or to the beginning of the day. This allows for zero frustration and complete fluidity through the story—something that other text adventures need to take note of. I just wish the story was longer and we could have explored nearly the entire moon. I wouldn’t mind a game like this lasting days or even weeks with dozens of hours of gameplay; it’s just so satisfying and engaging. With that said, Lifeline is a phenomenal idea, and hopefully more people will pick it up. The writing is believable, and the fact that you’re just staring at a gray screen with scrolling text and some haunting music makes it that much better and more engaging. The game forces you to use your imagination; it uses the unknown and lacks sensory input to make you want more and to really care about Taylor. On top of this, you can tell everyone you have texted an astronaut.
Here we are, the fifth and sixth generations of long-running phones, showing just how far technology has come. Phones are probably some of the most advanced pieces of technology on the planet, and each generation shows it. The Samsung Galaxy Note series has been one of the most popular smartphones ever created. The S Pen—its staple feature—and the large, gorgeous screens are what people come to the Note series for. The Note 5 doesn’t disappoint, and it improves immensely on the Note 4 in many ways. What exactly has a year done for the Note series? From the outside, it may not seem like much, but the Note 5 proves that the little things matter the most for a better long-term experience.
Face Lift
The Note 5 may look nearly the same from the front. The iconic physical home button, the Samsung logo at the top, the round edges, and the chrome speaker at the top all look familiar. The silhouette of the Note series has never changed; one good look at the phone, and you know what it is. However, turn the phone around and on its side, and you will notice a stark difference. No longer does the phone look like cheap plastic and aluminum. The Note 5 now has a glass back with rounded edges and brushed aluminum sides. This makes it one of the sleekest smartphones to ever be created. The top comes out a little and is a tad thicker than the rest of the body. This is so the phone fits better in your hand and looks prettier. The Note 5 is a looker, with the Sapphire Black looking almost navy blue in certain light and being quite eye-catching.
The bottom of Note 5 is also a new change. The speaker is now located next to the S-Pen (with improved quality), and the S-Pen is now completely surrounded by the inside of the phone and clicks out. The power button is smaller and has a more satisfying click to it; the same goes for the volume buttons. For the first time, the volume buttons are no longer rockers. Each button is the size of the power button and is separated. This allows you to easily feel which button you are on. It helps the phone feel less cheap with smaller, more subtle buttons that have a better clicking feeling to them. The Note 5’s screen is also made of Gorilla Glass 4, so it feels sleeker than ever and is less prone to having fingerprints stick to it, which is a first for any smartphone I have used.
Fast Just Got Faster
The Note 4 was an extremely fast phone—the fastest of its generation. The Note 5 is now one of the first octa-core smartphones. What does this mean? Two sets of four cores running at two different speeds for various multi-tasking purposes. While the Note 4 was a quad-core device running at 2.7 GHz, the Note 5 uses Samsung’s own Exynos chipset rather than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chipset. The 7420 set has a 2.1 GHz quad-core set running alongside a 1.5 GHz quad-core set. The Exynos chipset is also more battery-efficient than the Snapdragon chipsets Samsung has been using for the longest time.
The Note 5 is also the first smartphone to have a whopping 4GB of RAM. This is one of the phone’s secret weapons, as it allows a massive amount of apps to stay loaded into the RAM for ultrafast speeds. The RAM is also LPDDR4, which is the fastest available right now, running at 1600 MHz. Want to put this into perspective? The iPhone 6 Plus has only 1GB of RAM. The Note 5 also switches over from Adreno GPUs to Mali GPUs. The Mali T760 MP8 performs much faster than the Adreno 430 that was in the Note 4. With double the frame rate during benchmark tests and higher clock speeds, the Note 5 is the best choice for gamers who want to run the latest and greatest.
One of the biggest decisions for phone buyers is the camera. Don’t worry. The Note 5 has one of the best cameras on the market. While it’s still 16 MP, it has better technology inside to allow more control and speed. With an exposure of f/1.9, 4K video at 30FPS, 1080p video at 60FPS, and 720p video at 120FPS, video stabilization, auto HDR, manual focus, tracking focus, and various other features, the Note 5 becomes an extremely powerful camera. The Note 5 is also one of the first phones to save in RAW format for complete manual editing in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop. The Note 5 also has various other features, like video collages and faster editing, thanks to the more powerful hardware. It can’t be said how beautiful the pictures turn out. Even low-light images are pretty impressive for a phone camera.
What about installing apps, downloading, and writing to the internal memory? The Note 5 uses UFS 2.0 flash memory, so read/write speeds are nearly double those of the Note 4. Games load faster, apps install quicker, and everything is just lightning quick. This is honestly the fastest phone I have ever used. Never have I used a phone before where everything just happened instantly or near-instantly. No slowdown, no loading, no freezing. From swiping up on the camera app from the lock screen to taking a photo, it took all of two seconds. Yes, just two.
Benchmarks
Just like PCs, high-end phones are benchmarked for their performance, from CPU and GPU load to physics tests. 3DMark has extensive benchmarking software just for these reasons and allows you to compare your phone to pretty much every device in existence. The Note 5 stands as the most powerful phone available, with only tablets beating it (which is expected). Below are the various benchmarks, including the brand new Open ES 3.1 and 3.0 graphics tests, which are the most demanding in the world (for phones). Remember, the Slingshot tests are meant to be too powerful for phones to run at a high frame rate. FutureMark benchmarks are designed to be too much for devices to handle to truly push them to their limits.
Open ES 3.1 Slingshot
The Slingshot 3.1 benchmark shows that the Galaxy Note 5 is one of the most powerful devices available, with only four tablets outperforming it (the Nvidia Shield TV is at the top of the list). This is extremely impressive and shows that the Note 5 is ready for the latest and greatest in gaming.
The Slingshot 3.1 test includes three: Test 1 uses particles and post-processing effects that are very GPU-intensive. Test 2 consists of volumetric illumination, and then Test 3 is a physics test for the CPU. All of this is rendered in 1440p, which is higher than your standard 1080p, which is quite impressive. The iPhone 6 Plus, in comparison, is about 70 down the list with a score below 1,000.
IceStorm Unlimited
IceStorm Unlimited shows the Note 5 is extremely powerful when it comes to Open ES 2.0 rendering at 720p. IceStorm is a benchmark that can give a more even and balanced test over nearly every device that has been released in the past 3 years. The Note 5 actually outperforms some tablets and laptops, which is extremely impressive. The IceStorm Unlimited test consists of three: Test 1 stresses the GPU with vertices, while Test 2 uses a lot of pixels on the screen. Test 3 is a physics test to stress the CPU. The iPhone 6 Plus is about 100 down the list, with a score of around 17,000.
PCMark
PCMark is actually a benchmark for everyday use of the phone, including video streaming, read/write access speed, web browsing, photo editing, and typing. This benchmark shows that the Galaxy Note 5 outperforms tablets and laptops, which is once again very impressive. The buttery smooth operation of the Note 5 just can’t be stressed enough. This is the fastest and smoothest phone I have ever used, and that’s not just because the phone is new. The PCMark app is not available for the iPhone, so a comparison can’t be done.
The S-Pen
Samsung continues to improve on the iconic S-Pen that the Note series is famous for. How could they improve on the excellent Note 4 S-Pen? Well, they found a way by making the S-Pen more sturdy using thicker plastic, making it less like a toothpick. The button is much smaller but more responsive, and the pen also has a new metallic look. Ideally, the best thing would be to make it out of metal, but maybe another time. For now, we have a fantastic new pen that is more responsive and sensitive than ever before. The bottom of the pen clicks in (think a clicky pen), so it lays flush with the phone.
What’s a stylus without good software? The S-Pen software suite has actually been improved in many ways I didn’t think would happen. My favorite new feature is the lock screen writing. Just eject the pen and start writing on the black screen with white ink. You can save your note or delete it to go straight to the standard lock screen. This is great for taking quick notes when launching the suite isn’t an option.
Outside of the lock screenwriting is a more advanced and much faster suite of options. The usual four apps are back that we are familiar with, but with new features. The most notable is the scrolling capture in the screen capture app. This allows you to save large sections of text or an entire webpage. However, a huge feature has been removed, and I don’t understand why. The smart select does not detect what kind of content you are selecting anymore and rather just lets you save the content as an image. Why this was taken out is unknown, but it’s a slight setback that may annoy some people.
Air Command now lets you add two of your own shortcuts to the list of four, which is a nice touch. The air command icon is also always on screen, so you don’t always have to click the pen button. Thanks to the buttery smooth operation speeds, everything comes up instantly with no lag, and my S-Pen experience has never been better. I would have liked to see more features or a new Air Command app, but don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.
A Bigger Bite of Lollipop
Android 5.0 Lollipop has been around for a while, but 5.01 broke the Note 4. The Note 5 uses 5.1.1, and I couldn’t be happier. Lollipop is just a fantastically streamlined OS and is Google’s best yet. The Samsung skin on top of Lollipop is actually better as well, with their awful TouchWiz home launcher being redone and improved. Samsung now offers themes that change everything on the phone and can be quite fun. Even if you use a third-party home launcher, anything system-wise will be changed via the theme. This is a nice step up and makes it that much easier to customize your phone, which has always been a pain up until now.
One of my favorite additions to Lollipop was the lock screen notifications. No longer do you have to unlock your phone or swipe your drawer down. Just swipe away on the lock screen or double tap to open the notification in the app. The same goes for when you are using your phone; you now get a nice pop-up at the top of your screen instead of the entire notification scrolling in the home bar at the top. Outside of this, Samsung toned down the various hand-waving gestures you can do. They are no longer the front-running features like when the Galaxy S4 was released. Using your hand to hang up, put someone on hold, and various other features using the Smart Stay are now on the back burner, and that’s a good thing. These features no longer drain your battery, but if you don’t mind pressing one extra button, you can just turn them off.
One major addition to the Note series that is built-in is the Samsung SideSync app. This allows you to mirror your phone on your computer and easily transfer files back and forth. I used it a lot on my Note 4, and it works great with the Note 5. Samsung is one of the first phone makers to have good-working proprietary software to use your phone on your computer.
Thanks to the faster-running software, tapping to pay has never been easier. I could never get it to really work on the Note 4 due to the Lollipop update slowing the phone down. However, Samsung Pay and Google Wallet are both available to use for tap-to-pay. It’s never been easier; just link your bank accounts or cards, set a pin, tap your phone to the card reader, and you’re done. Naysayers and paranoid users aside, tap-to-pay is the future of electronic payments. However, I still suggest carrying your cards with you in case it somehow doesn’t work.
Sacrifices Must Be Made
The Note 5 isn’t perfect; there were a few key design choices that Samsung had to sacrifice. One of those is the battery and expandable memory. To make the Note 5 look as sleek as it does, it had to enclose the battery, which means expandable memory as well. The Note 5 also has a slightly smaller battery over the Note 4, at 3000 mAh, despite being a little thicker. However, Samsung has its power management down pretty well, so the battery won’t drain as fast as you think if you optimize your phone correctly. The Note 5 comes in 32GB and 64GB variants, and I highly recommend the 64GB. This has been the biggest gripe over the phone, but honestly, you can transfer your files to a computer or use cloud storage. These are probably the biggest hits to the phone, but after using it for some time, it feels less of a deal.
The Little Things Matter
Wireless charging is another huge addition to the Note series. Using a Qi wireless charger allows you to charge your phone without the cables, and it charges just as fast. While wireless chargers are a little expensive right now, they’re worth the investment.
I can’t stress enough how much these little changes make the phone feel better. The new buttons, glass back, better S-Pen, and overall design tweaks really mean a lot once you have the phone in your hand. The Note 5 represents subtly and elegance and proves that you don’t need a rebooted design to make a phone have a huge impact on the market. Sometimes a minor adjustment can make that much of a difference. However, the question comes to mind: were there so many little adjustments that Samsung really felt the smaller battery and lack of expandable storage were worth it? Only the sales will tell. I, for one, think they are, and maybe the Note 6 will have expandable memory again. Could this be a field test to see just how much people care about expandable memory? Who knows, but there are other solutions available that are easy, from cloud storage to portable hard drives and even your computer.
As it stands, the Galaxy Note 5 is truly a beautiful piece of hardware and proves that the evolution of phones is heading in an all-new direction. With phones becoming and replacing computers more and more, a fast OS and operating speeds are becoming paramount—maybe even the most important thing a phone can have.
Smartphone controllers are not a new thing. However, Android users have been lacking a great controller for quite a while. Moga has been considered the name brand for Android controllers for a couple of years now. From small pocket-sized controllers to full-sized ones, Moga is the way to go; that doesn’t mean they are the best controllers ever made.
The Moga Pro Hero feels like an Xbox 360 controller with an alternate analog layout, triggers, bumpers, and face buttons. The controller feels good in your hands and is very familiar; however, that’s about where it stops being familiar. Like other Moga controllers, the game feels too rigid, while we appreciate sturdy controllers, and on this one, the buttons are too stiff. The face buttons make a very loud clicking noise and require a good hard press. The D-pad also feels too D-pad; there’s no diagonal movement whatsoever. While this is good for older games on emulators, it is not good for fighting games. I also felt the triggers were too stiff and required too much heavy-handed pressing to feel comfortable; the same goes for the bumpers. The analog sticks are probably the only things on here that feel familiar and right, but that’s still not saying this is a bad controller. The arm that holds your phone is nicely cushioned; however, the inner piece feels too loose, and I felt the phone wobble a tiny bit when moving.
A nice feature of this controller is that it has a built-in battery, so no more AAA or AA batteries. You can also charge your phone from the controller thanks to its large battery, which is nice for long gaming sessions. I also love the HID (Human Interface Device) mode for emulators, as games must support the regular mode natively. Emulators respond nicely to this controller, and it has more than enough buttons for what you need.
Overall, if you need more buttons and a full-sized experience, the Pro Hero is a perfect choice. Just be ready to get used to some stiff buttons and a weird D-pad.
Fighting Fantasy novels are some of the best fiction I have ever read. Being translated into a game is even better, thanks to all the perks that come with a game. Not having to keep track of stats, inventory, or where to turn the page. Sorcery is a series created by Steve Jackson and is wonderfully crafted. It’s not so much the characters in the game as the world itself and how it’s portrayed.
When the game starts out, the player comes across a beggar and has complete freedom to kill him, greet him, or just ignore him. In fact, this is a completely open game; every choice matters until the very end. I was just surprised at how much detail went into each choice and each move. Every step of the way, a choice can be made that can kill you, help you, or show consequences later in the game. Just greeting or ignoring someone can be optional, or that is the person you need to talk to to make your path easier. It’s so organic, though, and that’s the magic of this game.
The goal of the game is to find four magic lines that you must recite at the north gate of the city, which has been locked for thousands of years. Of course, you can leave the city and leave it to be burned down by the raiding orcs and goblins; however, this is the cheap way out. If you missed one of the four nobles, you must find them so you can go back to a point in the city and try the area again. Another thing I really loved is that your character remembers going through these areas, so the game is adjusted accordingly. You can avoid traps, being captured, and fights to make going to areas you missed easier. You can also rewind any encounter at any time without any penalties, which is a blessing for these adventure games.
The visuals are rather charming and feel like something that has come right out of a book. The sound design is a little lacking, but when it does kick in, along with the music, it’s fantastic. The other two elements of the game, besides adventuring, are magic and combat. Magic is used throughout the entire game, whether for predicting traps, weakening enemies, creating shields, or making yourself bigger. Magic can be used to help or harm people. Combat is strategic in a way that you must read what’s going on with the enemy and then watch their stamina bar to predict how hard your next attack should be or to defend.
In the end, I had one problem: I couldn’t figure out where the last two nobles were. I almost gave up on the game, but some of the clues finally made sense, and I was able to find both nobles in one try before going back to the north gate. The story flowing organically allowed me to remember where I heard about the nobles and that I had visited those areas, and it finally clicked. Once I opened the game, I finished the ending and couldn’t wait to jump into Sorcery 3. This game is highly recommended for RPG fans and adventure fans.
It’s been a long time since I played a game through an entire day and couldn’t put it down. Valiant Hearts will keep you instantly glued to the screen thanks to its rich history, characters, and story. Valiant Hearts is probably the only WW1 game I can remember playing. There is a huge lack of WW1 games, and I’m glad Ubisoft decided to make it a 2D platformer rather than an FPS. The game is brilliant on many levels, and fans of these types of games will not be disappointed.
You play four different characters, all fighting the tragic war in France. A German, an American, a French woman, and a Frenchman. The game reenacts major battles from World War I and also gives you a history of what really happened during that time period. You can also go around collecting trinkets that are from the war. It’s great for history buffs or anyone who’s curious about what really happened during WW1, since WWII is all anyone talks about.
With that said, the game mixes up stealth, action, and puzzle solving, all of which are excellent. There’s no real fighting in the game; you don’t get a gun. You are mainly just trying to survive this tragic war while you watch everyone around you die. It gives you a sense of helplessness and makes you realize just how terrible and brutal World War I was. The game is played on several 2D planes. Using the background and foreground to solve puzzles, all of which are completely different, but the mechanics tend to be the same, and it gets a bit old towards the end. However, many sequences are cinematic and scripted, which keeps you glued. I can honestly say the game is well-paced and perfect for a one-day gaming spree.
I did find some issues here and there, such as a few puzzles being extremely vague, but it’s nothing that some trial and error and exploration won’t solve. There is a hint system for people who aren’t very good at puzzles, but it can also be turned off. Some of the more frustrating areas were the action sequences in which bombs drop and you have to dodge enemy fire. A lot of it is trial-and-error because the game rushes you through it. Expect to restart and die several times throughout this game.
The graphics alone are just gorgeous, and the colors pop on PS4 and Xbox One. The sound is excellent, and the music is wonderful. Many pieces are classical symphonies from the time period, so it adds even more authenticity to the game.
With that said, Valiant Hearts is probably a hidden gem that many people will pass up. It’s tragic; it really teaches and shows you every step of WWI and enlightens you on just how terrible the human race can be. From mustard gas bombings to the creation of tanks and aircraft, World War I was just a stepping stone for WWII.
If you have been following this site for a while, you will know by now that I don’t have much patience for JRPGs. They are usually extremely long, random battles get tedious to the point of me wanting to quit the game completely, and sometimes the stories and battle systems can be boring, convoluted, or both. Tales of Hearts R just so happened to be one of the few JRPGs available on Vita, so I thought I would give it a try. I was in for a strange surprise.
The story itself is actually pretty decent and actually makes sense, despite how involved it is. You play as a young hero named Kor Metor who is traveling the world to help save a girl named Kohaku along with her brother. There are links within people called Spirias. This is kind of like their soul. Somatics has weapons that are formed from this spiria, and Kor discovers he is one after watching his grandfather die at the hands of a woman named Incarose. There is a “Spiria disease” called xeroms that can cause dispiration within people, meaning part of their Spiria Core is missing or corrupted. Kor and his friends “link” with people to fight off this corruption. Kor does this to Kohaku and shatters her core, sending the shards into eight pieces across the globe. However, what threw me for a loop was that this whole adventure was only the first half of the game. The second half involves another huge plot with an entire ancient planet that can suck out these Spirias. Of course, your new goal is to stop this new evil madman.
Holy crap… I can’t believe I remember all that! With that said, the story consists of endless cut scenes—I mean, endless. There are probably hundreds of cutscenes in this game, but 90% of them are spoken Japanese dialog, which is nice. There are a few anime cutscenes that are beautiful, but I wish there were more. I know most people like cut scenes, but I honestly felt it held up the game too much, but that’s just personal preference. Aside from the story, the combat is actually pretty intense and deep. You can control four different party members in real-time in an arena. The attack buttons are completely customizable, allowing you to assign new skills and “arts” to Circle and X. While you hack away at enemies, a meter will charge that allows you to go into a “hyperdrive” mode to deal more damage and take less. All while this is going on, you can also assign other members’ skills to the touch screen by flicking their icon, which I thought was a nice touch. I had one party member heal at my beck and call exactly how I wanted him to instead of relying on his AI, which would usually wait until everyone’s HP was in the red.
Secondly, you level up in this game very oddly, and it took me a while to figure it out. You don’t buy weapons in shops, only armor. Weapons are acquired by leveling up your members through their Somas. There’s some sort of complicated line chart in the form of a star, but thankfully the auto-level button just lets you choose what type of fighting style you want for that character, and it will assign the points accordingly. Along with this, there are also cooking items that give you boosts during battles, but I never really got into this much. It did come in handy at times, but thankfully you level up fairly quickly while only hitting a difficulty spike on the last two bosses of the game. This required me to level grind for over a day just to raise my members up to about 12 levels to get an edge over the bosses.
Lastly, there’s a lot of side content in this game and a New Game+, which is usually unheard of in JRPGs as they are linear and follow a set pattern and path. There are other difficulty levels that also raise the level cap (200), as well as a few side quests for people interested in some more side stories (I usually hate side quests in JRPGs). With all that said, it’s optional.
After the credits rolled and I logged 30 hours into this game, I felt satisfied. The ending had closure, the final boss was rewarding to fight, and I felt myself feeling relieved that the game was just the right amount of challenge throughout and did not require constant bouts of level grinding. Graphically, the game is average. It’s not very ugly, but it also doesn’t push the Vita to its limits. The music is monotonous and typical of a JRPG, but at least the voice acting is great. If you own a Vita, this is probably the best JRPG you can plan outside of all those PS1 classics.
Samsung is the top dog right now in the phone business. They know what customers want and know exactly how to utilize the Android OS on their device the best. With the Note 4 being my second Samsung Android phone and my fourth Android phone in general, I have to say Samsung has finally perfected the smartphone. Even after playing with this thing for three days and running numerous apps and benchmark tests, I can’t find anything wrong with the phone. I honestly really tried hard to find some minute detail that I overlooked and just can’t like I was able to with previous Android phones. Why is this phone so perfect? Let’s start with what’s under the hood to get an idea of why this phone can do what it can do.
Under the Hood
The Note 4 is a beast in small clothing. There is so much going on under the hood—so much amazing hardware crammed into this tiny shell—that I am just flabbergasted at how Samsung was able to pull it off. Let’s start with the basics. The phone is 6.04″ tall, 3.09″ wide, and 8.5mm thick. That’s not a lot of room to cram this much hardware into. The phone actually has a good weight to it—not too light but also not too heavy. It doesn’t feel overly cheap like the iPhone 6 does. The actual material doesn’t feel cheap either. The edges are solid aluminum and won’t bend or twist in your pocket or under pressure. The back has a faux leather texture, which feels extremely nice. While Samsung is known for cheap plastic backs, faux leather makes up for it.
With any Samsung phone, you will be familiar with the hardware button layout. A menu button, volume rocker, and power button, as well as two soft keys. I actually have to compliment the volume rocker here; it feels more solid and easier to find with your thumb. Instead of the whole rocker being flush, each side sticks out a tad more than the middle section. One thing that will throw users off is the new task list softkey that replaced the soft menu key on the Galaxy S5. It took a while to get used to this, as I was always hitting the app list key, thinking the app menu would come up.
After the sleek and comfortable design is looked over, you will notice what is probably the best-looking phone screen available right now. The 5.7″ Super AMOLED screen just looks fantastic. While Samsung device owners will be used to quality screens, this one is a huge jump up. Being twice the resolution of most large phone screens. This screen has a whopping 2560×1440 resolution with 515 PPI. every other smartphone, including the iPhone 6 Plus, which has a 5.5″ screen and a 1920×1080 resolution. This quad-HD screen is just addictive to look at. Everything, no matter what it is, just looks gorgeous with deep colors and a vibrant backlight. The screen is also much brighter than previous Samsung phones, but for some reason it uses less battery power than even the Galaxy S4 did.
For the picture lovers out there, the Note 4 has one of the most powerful phone cameras available and is one of the few that can shoot in full 4K resolution. The Sony IMX240 camera allows 5K photos. The 16 MP rear and 3.7 MP front-facing cameras are just fantastic. With the front being a 3.7 MP camera, it is a better quality camera than the average 2 MP front-facing camera that most phones have. Under the rear-facing camera is a heart rate sensor as well as a UV sensor. This heart rate sensor is more useful than you think. Want to take a selfie with a better rear camera? Press your finger against this sensor, and it will snap the photo for you. Health nuts will also love the sensor for fitness apps.
Let’s get to the heart of the phone. The Note 4 uses the Snapdragon 805 chipset, which sports a Krait 540 quad-core CPU at an astounding 2.7 GHz. The GPU is the Adreno 420, which is one of the most powerful phone GPUs out right now. The phone also sports some of the most RAM you will find at a solid 3GB of LPDDR3 RAM. The internal memory is 32GB, which is great for photo takers and gamers. What does this mean to the average user? Your phone will operate at lightning-fast speed with no slowdown when switching or using apps. If you want to know just how powerful the Note 4 is, take a look at the screenshots for benchmarks from 3D Futuremark’s benchmarking software. The Note 4 ranks as the fourth most powerful phone in existence, while the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are way down to 31 and 26, respectively.
There are other hardware features, such as 2.4/5GHz WiFi and even an MHL-AV link for connecting your phone to your TV. While the Note 4 surprisingly lacks the USB 3.0 port seen in the Galaxy S5 and Note 3, it is replaced with a fast-charging Adaptive Charge technology that allows the phone to fully charge in 1 hour.
While that is a lot of technology, there is one thing that the Note series has been beloved for, and that’s the S Pen. This little guy does so much and becomes so useful in situations you didn’t think it would. The software suite for the pen may be small, but it is all useful. Artists will love how accurate the pen is for drawing thanks to pressure recognition and pinpoint accuracy. Writing memos is extremely easy. Once you pop out the pen, you can use it to highlight text, write down email addresses, phone numbers, and links, and turn them into usable actions on your phone. This is a very neat idea and even comes in handy at job sites. The pen hides away on the bottom right of the phone and is completely flush. It feels nice in your hand and is nearly as long as the phone. My favorite feature is being able to have your phone alert you if you leave your pen somewhere and even show you where you last had it on Google Maps.
Software
Software-wise The Note 4 uses a tweaked version of the Galaxy S5 OS. With a better drop-down menu and more options in the device settings, you can completely hand-tailor this device to every possible need yourself. One feature I wanted to save for last is the fingerprint scanner. Yes, I know the iPhone 5S started it, but it’s a fantastic feature to have. The sensor is actually more responsive than the 5S sensor, as it also recognizes the tip of your pad. You honestly would have no idea the menu button has a sensor built into it. I found linking my PayPal account to the sensor for logging in was great and added a ton of security. You can even set this as a lock screen and save up to three different fingers.
There are various other little features, such as a download booster. If you have weak WiFi, the phone will use your 4G speeds along with WiFi to break data up into packets and increase your download speed. I tested this with my work’s WiFi, as its max speed is about 4 mbp/s. I downloaded a 250MB app, and the download booster kicked in and showed me a comparison bar. While the WiFi was pulling in about 4 MB/s, the 4G was pulling 35 MB/s. Of course, this is only if the file size is over 30MB to keep everything you download from kicking in the booster.
Another neat feature is emergency assistance. Add your contacts, and you can press the power button three times, and it will send pictures and sound recordings to those contacts. This is great if you are in a car accident with no one around and need help. While this isn’t a substitute for 911, it can be used in situations where 911 doesn’t apply.
Overall, the Galaxy Note 4 is just a fantastic phone all around. With a solid physical design, a gorgeous screen, a very useful S Pen, and various other software features, you are just going to fall in love with this phone.
Mobile gaming hits are usually casual-friendly, like Angry Birds, Farmville, Flappy Bird, and many others. Most of those games are fairly mindless and don’t require much thought. Along comes Threes, a game that requires strategy and thinking beyond just a simple tile-sliding game.
Threes is simple, minimalistic, and quite charming. The board is made up of 16 tiles. You get six random tiles made up of numbers 1, 2, or 3. You must slide these tiles into each other to add them up. If you slide to the left, everything on the board will slide to the left. This single gameplay element is what distinguishes it from regular slider puzzles. With this in mind, you have to be careful to slide all the tiles in the right direction. Once you get 3, you can slide 3 and 3 together to make 6. Two of those make 12, and so on. However, the higher the number you have, the harder it is to get another number like it together to join those two. It’s a brilliant gameplay design that gets extremely addictive.
It takes a lot of practice, and sliding randomly won’t get you anywhere. You can easily gridlock yourself without even realizing it if you aren’t careful. Thankfully, Threes is pleasant to look at and listen to. Each number tile has its own voice and caricature, and the simple, washed-out white design is easy on the eyes. Even the music is charming and great to listen to. This is the kind of zen game that Angry Birds or Clash of Clans can’t get to.
Even if you aren’t a fan of numbers or math, you are missing out on one of the best mobile games ever made that doesn’t require microtransactions. Even that alone is worth the purchase.
It’s very rare that a mobile game gets as artsy as an indie console or PC game. Monument Valley is where Journey meets Echochrome straight out of the gate. It has the aesthetics of Journey and the gameplay of Echochrome. Flipping levels to create illusions that create new pathways—that’s what Monument is all about. The game isn’t really all that hard; in fact, it’s a cakewalk, but it’s all about the experience.
There’s an underlying story here, and the ending is a bit touching. You’re a princess (that resembles a white cloak from Journey) who is trying to restore gems at the end of each level. If I say more, I will spoil the experience. New gameplay elements are slowly added in, like crows getting in your way that you must avoid or use to press switches. Walking on different planes is another, while an interactive column (that’s actually a small character) becomes an ally. The game is strange, yet so damn beautiful.
But there is one huge problem. The game is only 10 levels long, and they are extremely short. For $4, you’re getting a fantastic experience, but it’s over way too soon. I would have liked an endless mode or some sort of puzzle mode that didn’t include a story. The puzzles are just so fun to solve, and each level is like opening a present. The more you fiddle with the level, the more beautiful everything gets and the more fun it becomes.
As it is, Monument Valley is a rare gem on mobile devices. It looks and plays beautifully, but the shortness will enrage people who fall in love with it.
The Nexus 7 was the best 7-inch tablet on the market at the time. With the powerful Tegra 3 chipset, it seemed like it was unstoppable—that is, until its cousin came along to trump it. Not only is the 2013 addition thinner and sleeker, but it’s also four times as powerful and well worth upgrading. Google partnered with Asus once again, but this time ditched the Tegra chipset and threw in the Snapdragon CPU and Adreno GPU. Once you open the box, you will immediately notice the physical changes to the tablet. The deep black and the overall more rectangular shape and sharper edges look slick and clean. Gone is the soft bumpy back from before, replaced with plastic and a beveled Nexus logo. I do miss that softback, as it didn’t scratch, but the new back still has a soft, fuzzy feeling to it.
Apart from that, you will also notice the front-facing camera has moved to the right, as there is now a back camera that is 5.0 MP. The front camera has improved slightly by 0.1 MP, but it makes a difference. While other tablets have more powerful rear-facing cameras, the Nexus 7 does record in 1080p and looks pretty good in well-lit areas. I would have liked to see at least an 8 MP camera, but just having a camera added is a great addition. There isn’t a flash, so the camera is nearly useless at night.
Let’s talk about the screen. It’s absolutely gorgeous. The 1920×1200 resolution LCD screen looks clear, bright, and crisp. The resolution upgrade is very noticeable compared to the 2012 model. With 323 PPI, everything is going to pop out at you, from games to comics. The sound is also something I love on this tablet that most tablets don’t have. We have 5.1 surround sound in this thing. There are two small speakers at the bottom and one large one at the top. The speakers are made by Fraunhofer, who is the guy who invented the MP3. I immediately noticed the sound difference when I started playing games. It sounds like everything is coming at you from all angles; it’s rich, crisp, and so much clearer than the 2012 model.
So what’s under the hood? The speed increase is incredible, as apps load faster and things just process at a much faster rate. My comics rendered faster, games loaded quicker, and I had zero hangs when loading graphics-heavy websites in Chrome or switching apps quickly. The Snapdragon Krait 300 CPU is clocked at 1.51 GHz and is quad-core. This is much faster than the 2012’s 1.3 GHz CPU. The Adreno 320 GPU helps a lot as well and loads faster than the Tegra 3. The games looked better, and everything loaded so much faster. For example, on the 2012 model, I could not select the best graphics option in Rival Knights; on the 2013 model, I could. I also had a lot of slowdown with low framerate on the 2012 model in Joe Dever’s Lone Wolf. On the 2013 model, it ran at 60 FPS.
The battery also lasts a good while for a slimmer battery. You will get hours of gaming or reading out of this thing, even with WiFi on. Besides processing speed, the 2013 model has Bluetooth 4.0, screen mirroring, Qi wireless battery charging, and a notification indicator at the bottom of the tablet. These may not seem like much, but they make a big difference in an upgrade. Not to mention the loose charging port from the previous model has been fixed with a more sturdy USB slot. The tablet is also 2 ounces lighter, so you can’t really complain.
Bottom line: The Google Nexus 7 (2013) is the best 7-inch tablet you can get your hands on at a great price. If you own the 2012 model, I highly recommend upgrading like I did. It’s fast, sleek, has a gorgeous screen, and has fantastic surround and sound speakers.
thebinarymessiah.com 
Yeah, it's pretty damn awful. Notoriously one of the worst games on the PSP. A 4 was actually being generous.…