Gadgets Express

Monday 12 January 2009

Alliance of Valiant Arms: REVIEWED

While browsing around on Nicovideo, there was an advertisement in the corner of the screen that caught my eye. It was for a game. Not the usual Mech Quest or Conquer ads, but this one was for an MMOFPS, one supposedly better than the legendary Counter-Strike. I clicked on it and was taken to the website (http://www.avaonline.jp/). With a little help from google translator, I managed to get through the Japanese sign up process so I could download and install the game.

As soon as I ran it, I was amazed by the realism of the graphics. I could see why the said it was better than Counter-Strike. The gameplay is smooth and exciting, and the audio is excellent quality. The player can either be on the side of the EU or the Russians, referred to as the NRF in the game.

There are four game modes in total. Annihilation, which is basically a team deathmatch. Demolition, where the EU team must plant a bomb and the NRF must prevent them from doing so. Escort, where the EU must guide a tank from one side of the map to the other, whilst the NRF attempt to stop it with rocket launchers. And finally Transport, where the EU must locate a nuclear suitcase and bring it back to the spawn point before time runs out.

An element of this game which sets it apart from others in the genre is the ability to buy a gun permanently instead of in a set time before a round. Players can either rent a gun which is thrown away after a certain amount of uses, of buy one permanently which an be repaired. There are also many ways to customise the guns ranging from silencers to scopes.

With all of that said, I still haven't mentioned the best part... It's absolutely free to play. All you need to do is make an account. This game easily gets 5/5 from me.

If you play the game, make sure to look out for me, my username is Tazz93.

Thursday 1 January 2009

BitDefender Anti-Virus 2009 Reviewed

I was searching around on Google for some Anti-Virus program recommendations, when i read on TopTenReviews.com, that BitDefender was amazing, rated 5/5 and even cost less then most of the competition. So I thought I might as well give it a try. What's the worst that could happen?

Well, the worst that could happen was that my PC was overloaded with Trojans and various other types of malware within a few days of installing it, and to add to that, the virus scan was so slow that i had to leave my computer on for 3 days just for it to complete and tell me that my system was clean. Just to make sure, I uninstalled BitDefender and installed AVG Pro 8.0, with quite a lot of trouble since BitDefender decided to change the permissions in the registry, and did a full system scan. You wont be surprised to hear, it found about 50 viruses and was finished within 4 hours.

I rate BitDefender Anti-Virus 2009: 1/5.