Posted by: Nik Taylor

Among the popular stories on Tech & Gadgets this week – including news on Sony’s 3D TV plans, iPlayer’s arrival on Freesat and the fact that the world hasn’t ended now the LHC is back up and running  – has been this tale of the world’s most expensive iPhone.

Now, you might think that shelling out for an iPhone is fairly expensive as it is, but try stumping up for this one that’s been lobbed in a bucket of 22-carat gold and covered in 190 diamonds (including one seven-carat beast of a stone which takes the place of the navigation key).

Tasteful? No. Pricey? You betcha. This understated little number will set you back the princely sum of £1.92 million – a chunky £1,919,400 more than your common or garden iPhone 3G S.

Still, it does come with a rather fancy presentation box, hewn from a single slab of granite and weighing a chunky 7kg. I’d imagine storing it in a case made of solid rock will have a somewhat detrimental effect on the phone’s reception, not to mention your own ability to hear it ring. But then, if you can afford a phone like this, you’ve probably got a flunky to take care of that kind of thing for you.

Tech & Gadgets greatest hits this week

Geocaching nears the million mark

Review: Left 4 Dead 2

Obsolete in 2010?

Posted by: Jane Douglas

The week in gadget news has brought us Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm for the Xbox, as well as a new video delivery service for the PlayStation 3, a delay for the mythical Apple tablet (now with OLED screen) and some revelations about the Chrome OS.

The expectation from Google that its OS will be for a secondary, supplementary device is notable – almost as much as the fact that “as a consumer, you can’t go download Chrome OS… You will have to go and buy a Chrome OS device.” Curiouser and curiouser.

And, to finish, a few bits from T&G. Bon weekend!

2010’s endangered gadgets

Review: Dragon Age: Origins

Is this the perfect netbook?*

*/internet tablet/netpad/smartbook?

Posted by: Jane Douglas

Despite many games having cleared the way for the Modern Warfare 2 juggernaut, strategically shifting release dates into next year, there’s more than enough to play right now, even if military shooters aren’t your bag.

I’m still sinking time into BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins which, like many a western RPG, got its claws into me somewhere around the 10-hour mark.

Assassin’s Creed II has been demanding my attention for days. So when am I going to make time for Left 4 Dead 2? And to top it off, New Super Nintendo Bros Wii - as raved about by Mr Martinet in the podcast - is out today.

It almost makes you grateful Modern Warfare 2’s single-player campaign was so very short. Almost.

The Grudge: The Game

Ju-on: The Grudge, a Wii exclusive, has been out in the UK for a while – and much longer in the US and Japan – but I hadn’t managed to give a spin till this week.

It’s a curious, even promising, concept, selling itself as a “haunted house simulator” instead of a survival horror game. So it’s a first-person ghost train, not a spooky shooting gallery: you’ve no gun, just the world’s least efficient flashlight, as you stumble through creepy deserted buildings after your runaway dog.

You’re not quite on rails, but there’s just one path; you direct your movement and your view with the remote, picking up a battery or key here, being assaulted by a mad-eyed onryō there.

Sadly, the jump moments lose their impact over time, despite the freakiness of the meowing kid-ghost, and the controls are awkward; I spent too much time turning in slow circles or unintentionally examining the ceiling.

There’s something to the concept, though: the forced (maddeningly slow) walking pace and absence of weapons do make a player feel vulnerable, which is all for the good in a horror game. How vulnerable did you feel as Resident Evil 5’s Chris Redfield, armed to the teeth and punching boulders?

Guest blog post: David McCarthy, Rising Star Games

This week, I've been playing Bayonetta. Bayonetta is a game that features a beehive-wearing, leather-clad dominatrix who wears a formidable set of secretary-glasses and four guns, strapped to her arms and legs. It's from the same guy who created Devil May Cry and Viewtiful Joe, and it's just as full of glorious silliness as both of those games. It is relentlessly fast and increasingly excessive, with an increasingly rapid succession of bosses that just get bigger and bigger as the game goes on.

But I think Bayonetta is interesting for another reason. It's entirely in English.

The relationship between most Japanese people and the English language is a strange one: everybody is made to learn English at school, but there seems to be very little enthusiasm, or even understanding, outside the school gates - a bit like the way almost nobody in Britain can speak French. In spite of this mass incomprehension, though, English is routinely used for advertising slogans (like Honda's ‘The Power of Dreams', or the make-up brand Kate and its ‘No More Rules') and (sometimes in pretty mangled form) as decoration on the packaging of products. 

But it's only games like Bayonetta that seem to subject the Japanese to prolonged exposure of English: Japanese games, intended for Japanese gamers (who, remember, generally can't speak English) are routinely in English. Imagine going into your local game store and buying Shenmue, or Final Fantasy, and finding that not only all of the voice-acting is in Japanese, but also all of the menus. That's a bit like what it must feel like for Japanese gamers when they buy a game like Bayonetta. It's difficult to even persuade publishers like Sega to release games like Yakuza or Shenmue with Japanese voices in the west; and yet here they are releasing a game in Japan with English voices.

But why? I don't really know the answer. I've been told that England is perceived as ‘glamorous' in Japan, but that doesn't tally with my experience. So I guess it must have something to do with the huge role that coin-op gaming has played in Japan, where English menus made it easy to localise beat ‘em ups for foreign markets. But I'm really just speculating - so if you know the answer, please let me know!

Read more from David on Hoshi Club at Rising Star Games

Posted by: Nik Taylor

There’s been plenty going on this week; YouTube announcing full HD streaming, jailbroken iPhones getting hit by another virus, the full launch of Microsoft’s search engine Bing. But really its been all about the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Activision’s steamrollering behemoth of a game that’s smashing every record in its path. If you missed our coverage on launch day, look back through the blog for games reviewer Simon Munk’s as-it-happened opinions on the whole of the single-player campaign, and then check out his full review on the main site. After that, if you’ve not already got a copy glued inside your console, well… you’d best go pick one up, hadn’t you? (and if it’s a PC copy you’re after – you can do just that at our games download store)

Previously, on T&G…

Vote for your game of the decade

The latest top gadgets

 
Hands-on with the Samsung H1

Posted by: Nik Taylor

Our friends over at T3 are on a mission: to create the ultimate netbook. They’re taking the whole concept back to basics and adding killer features to a slick design that, once complete, they hope will actually go into production. As you can see from the teaser pics below, things are coming along rather nicely.

MATERIALS
It stays ultra light thanks to a combination of magnesium alloys, perforated aluminium and carbon fibre, but it’s still a heavyweight on the inside, powered as it is by Windows 7

SIDE SCREENS
Two info bar touchstrips run along either side of the main display. They’re always visible and on hand to quickly change songs, spot new email arrivals and bring up photos as and when you want

KEYBOARD
This keyboard is retractable, so you can keep it out of the way when not in use. Even when pulled out, it’s not too imposing, with razor-thin keys like those developed for mobile phones

CONNECTIONS
With an industry-norm-shattering four USB ports, an audio out for headphones and speakers, and DVI to attach a monitor and a TV tuner, the Netpad keeps you connected in every conceivable way

MULTI-PURPOSE LID
A carbon fibre lid keeps the screen safe during transport, and transforms into a stand to prop up the screen when you want to watch movies. You can detach it completely if you prefer to lay the device flat

Keep an eye on the main site next week for a full photo gallery of how this uber-desirable gadget is shaping up. In the meantime, let us know on the message board what features you would like to see on the perfect netbook. You might even find your suggestion incorporated into the final design.

Posted by: Nik Taylor

Microsoft’s search engine Bing launches officially in the UK today, having shed the beta tag it’s been carrying since going live earlier in the year. It’s hard to write about this on an MSN blog without sounding like I’m trying to give it the hard sell, but there are some genuinely cool features on Bing that you really should see.

We’ve got a great feature in Tech & Gadgets which highlights all the key features, but for now here are some of my favourites.

Main page image
The home page background is changed every day, and the photos are always really striking. In the background are facts about that image, which you can uncover by hovering your mouse pointer over certain areas of the page. And you can scroll back through previous pictures by clicking on the arrows at the bottom right.

Visual search
This new feature already looks cool, but it will be excellent once it incorporates more content. It’s for those times when you want to search by image rather than word; for instance, if you’re looking for a footballer you’ve just seen on TV, but whose name you don’t know. Click on the category you want to search through and keep clicking through the sub-categories to bring up picture lists of all the matching results.

Categorized search
We’re told only one in four searches is successful straight away; all the rest have to be refined. The usual way to refine a search is to tweak your terms, either adding or removing words – but Bing is trying a different approach. It lists the results for your initial search and, on the left of the page, shows an ‘explore pane’ which lists categories you can click on to refine your search. It’s a quick way to drill down into results to get to what you’re looking for.

Better maps
Online maps just keep getting better, and the new Bing maps are very slick indeed. As a Londoner, my favourite feature is the option to overlay the tube map on top of the existing map.

All good stuff – take a look for yourself.

Right on time – the closing credits are rolling as I type this. So, that’s a total of around seven hours non-stop single-player play today. Overall? Absolutely slick presentation, spectacular setpieces, awesome gunfights – this is clearly one of the games of the year. It’s even more polished than Uncharted 2. Visually it’s brilliant too.

There are negatives to be had – it’s short, again (that was one of the gripes fans had with the original), and the plot and much of the script is bottom-of-the-barrel military-shooter standard. For such a slick game, it’s a shame more thought hasn’t been applied to providing emotive depth, some smart laughs to lighten things up and some real character voices. This would have made the game even more involving and intense in single-player. That said, it’s still an adrenaline ride like nothing else this year.

What about multi-player? That I’m saving for when my kids are asleep tonight (and can’t hear me cursing on Xbox Live). Full results on what I think of online and the new Special Ops coop mode tomorrow in the main review. For now, hope you’ve had as good a day as I have…

Ah, so it’s the old double, triple, quadruple cross. Or something. The plot has got so daft it may, as Charlie Brooker once said, be taking place in the mind of a goose. And the voiceovers are getting more and more deep-voiced and serious to match.

Still, while the plot is complete rubbish, the game continues to thrill – even though my hands and eyeballs are starting to tire. The last US Marine mission I played, through a nuked wasteland reminiscent of Fallout 3 might play starkly and emotively in the US, but here it felt a bit daft. Still, leave it to the British SAS missions in Modern Warfare 2 to focus the game again – with attack/defend missions heavy in tension, tactics and gunfire and a superb running battle through a airplane junkyard.

OK, I take it back – the US Marines kick butt in Modern Warfare 2. They settled into a bit of a holding pattern there, then blam, came out of it brilliantly. While the plot is still completely ridiculous, the latest Marines mission, set in a capital city, was excellent – building clearance, SAM sites, helicopter gunships – generally big fireworks action with suitably stirring music.

Mind you, a certain SAS prison escape mission preceding that was also quite good. Well, when I say quite I mean very.

On a separate note, as I delve deeper into the single-player, I’m really starting to appreciate how well-balanced the weaponry is. It’s always lying around in plentiful supply (on regular mode anyway). And so you’ve got lots of opportunity to try out the varied arsenal – so far, few have failed to impress, but I’ve got a few firm favourites already.

Right, back into it…