After a long season of silence and dismissal, Sony has finally kicked the Playstation Vita back into high-gear thanks to the release of the Playstation TV—a mini-home-console-slash-streaming-box variant of the system—and the development efforts of Sony-owned Japan Studio, the same that graced us with Gravity Rush a couple of years ago. While it may be too early to call the Vita’s future secure just yet Sony is at least making another effort, and spearheading the charge is none other than the ...

Freedom Wars – Unshackling the Playstation Vita (Review)

In recent years it seems monitor product announcements and reviews have grown increasingly rare. Occasionally at events like CES we’ll see a company or two bring an interesting display with them, but these are typically ultra-widescreen or ultra-HD affairs that don’t make it to market—at least, not in a timely fashion or at a consumer price level. In the meantime more and more devices are coming with integrated screens, meaning you settle for whatever you get and don’t really consider the display ...

HP Pavilion 22/25bw – Great for the eyes and wallet (Review)

Feeling a little tired this fine Tuesday afternoon? Chances are good that’s because you were up at midnight (or much later) playing Bungie’s hotly-anticipated new shooter-slash-MMO, Destiny. After a very long wait that technically began all the way back in 2009 Destiny is finally live and officially available at retail wherever you may live in the world. It’s the most pre-ordered game in history, with figures surging up somewhere around five million copies (we haven’t seen official numbers in a ...

Destiny First Impressions (a not-first-day-review)

Customizing devices of all sorts to look like other devices is nothing new. Heck, I used to be fairly active on a forum board that specialized in theming a modified version of Windows 98, oftentimes to mimic other operating systems. As time has gone on software developers have grown increasingly unfriendly towards this kind of customization, and in general the latest technology looks pretty decent to begin with, but one bastion of personalization that practically everyone is familiar with is Android. And ...

Launcher 8 for Android – More Than Fake WP8 (Review)

With the videogame industry generally settled on a few select genres that like to reiterate the same style and mechanics over and over it’s easy to forget just how artful, creative, and unique the medium can be, but even two years after its original release Gravity Rush (aka Gravity Daze in the east) does an excellent job reminding us just how much more games can be than the accepted norm. Inspired by the style of French comic artists Moebius and Hergé, Gravity Rush takes place in the cel-shaded ...

Gravity Rush – Dizzyingly Enjoyable (Review)

Portable gaming consoles got off to a rough start this generation. With smartphone gaming on the rise Nintendo and Sony weren’t entirely sure how to compete and draw gamers’ attentions. Furthermore the last generation of handhelds sold incredibly well and boasted libraries of games that are tough to one-up even today. But that was the scenario a few years ago. Since then we’ve had time to realize that smartphone gaming can’t compare to dedicated hardware with physical buttons, and we’ve mostly ...

Playstation Vita Review – Third Year’s the Charm