Elysium got me N+ for the Nintendo DS this Christmas, and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying battling my way through the 300 single player levels, which are all varied and fun. I’ve unfortunately not had chance to try the multiplayer, and the online N+ Community facility just refuses to work for me, which is annoying.

N+ is a very retro arcade-y platformer, based off the free flash game ‘N‘ by Metanet, where you are a ninja who can jump about 4 times his own height, slide down walls, and run at ‘god-like speed‘. In each of the 300 levels you have to activate a switch to open the door, and get to the door. You have a limited amount of time (which is also your score) and you can collect little gold pieces to extend this time (and thus raise your score). The levels have numerous hazards; massive drops, lasers, rockets, floor sweeping robots, robots that chase after you, or follow the walls, mines, and trapdoors which have to be opened by activating additional switches. The levels get harder as you progress, some of them requiring precision timing on jumps and quick dodges of rockets.

Overall, I’ve really been enjoying playing through the single player, I’m approaching the end already, but some of them are extremely tricky (requiring potentially 50+ attempts!) and I get a great sense of achievement from finally completing them (often showing off the replay to Elysium if it required some fancy jumping, which I don’t think she was that impressed by!). Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try out the N+ Community too soon, but for the single player alone if you enjoy retro arcade-y style games (and enjoy the original flash game) then you’ll love this.

N+ is also available for XBox Live Arcade.

LinuxJournal, via reddit.

O2 today announced a record 166 million messages were sent over its network in a 24-hour period ending at 7.30 am on New Year’s Day 2009. An average of 1,900 messages were sent every second.

O2

If you’ve played Oblivion, you’re going to recognise the game engine and the similarities that result - the AI, the controls, the menus, the mechanics of leveling up and using stat points (I’m not going to go into detail about the game mechanics, I’ll leave that to Wikipedia). But at the same time, Fallout 3 feels like more than just a re-skinned Oblivion. In fact, I found I needed to let go of my ideals based on Oblivion in order to play the game properly.

The game is set in the year 2277, 200 years after the nuclear war that devastated the game world, however the culture contains elements from 1950s America, which makes the style of the game feel very similar to Bioshock (which had a similar theme), not that this is a bad thing to feel similar to!

You start the game progressing through snippets of your character’s childhood in a nuclear vault (starting with your birth) in order to determine the look of your character, your initial skills, and major stats. This is a very effective way of integrating character creation into the game, and makes it quick and seamless and helps you feel immersed from very early on.

Very soon after playing, you break out of the vault and into the wide world. I’ve read some reviews which suggest more time in the vault would’ve been good, but personally I couldn’t wait to get out and start playing the main game. When I first stepped out and surveyed the world before me, I was reminded of stepping out of the sewers in Oblivion, only this time I had an even greater sense of bewilderment and ‘where the hell do I go now?’ because the world map was completely unhelpful, and unlike Oblivion you’re not even given a starting direction for the main quest (which I didn’t want to follow at first anyway). In the end I stumbled across the nearby town of Megaton. At first I didn’t even realise it was a town, I was creeping up on the robot outside ready for it to open fire on me. This is a big contrast to Oblivion, in which it’s pretty obvious where the big cities are.

Once I reached Megaton however, things started to flow - I got a few quests, giving me the opportunity to explore the world, which led on to more quests, and so on. Again, this game mechanic feels very similar to Oblivion, definitely no bad thing in my opinion. So far I’ve done just a couple of quests, and during that I’ve found enemies to be quite tough, and I’m often running completely out of ammo and health packs, and I have very little money with which to buy any more. Although this gives great atmosphere, it can also make gameplay a little frustrating, so I hope this eases up as the game progresses.

I’ll have a more in-depth review when I have played it more. Suffice to say, I am enjoying it a lot.

sudo rmmod r8169
sudo modprobe r8169

Bear in mind doing this will obviously cut out your network connection, so don’t do it over SSH!

Does anyone know of a proper solution? Or a more elegant hack.

Until the day that Moore’s Law completely gives out on us, one thing’s for sure: hardware is cheap — and programmers are expensive.

Jeff Atwood on investing in hardware versus investing in programmers to solve a performance issue.

Uhuh…

via 9to5mac

…at times, its over-the-top racing physics make it seem like you’re trying to steer a cannonball — in a good way….Asphalt 4’s fast style of play sets a new standard for mobile racing.

1UP on Asphalt 4 for the iPhone

…it fails at basic things like smooth framerates, varied gameplay, and solid controls.

Me on Asphalt 4 for the iPhone