Since my last posting on this topic I was trying out TomTom and Navigon for the iPhone 3G. TomTom hardly found a decent GPS signal at all – although Google Maps had no problems at all with the fix I found.
Navigon did a little better but altogether I can not recommend replacing a real navigation system with the iPhone 3G. Not worth the money, in my opinion.
I really hope that the iPone 3GS does better with GPS than the old 3G.
Yesterday I needed to go to a place north of Zurich where I have never been before. I decided not to take my regular TomTom with me. Instead I decided to fully trust my iPhone 3G, loaded with TomTom’s Iphone version.
It was a catastrophe… no really. It could barely position the phone. I had the feeling that it was using triangulation and not GPS. I swore never to trust the iPhone again, when it comes to location services.
After I came home I was still mad but curious if I was the only one on this planet with this problem. After a quick Yahoo query I found that this is actually a common problem. In the Apple discussion boards I found a post, suggesting to turn of 3G (apparently it has an influence on the location service of the iPhone) and then reboot the device. After powering up the Iphone again the posting suggests to go to the Google Maps App and doing a quick self locate. This apparently re-initializes the GPS module and should fix my problem.
The posting also says that turning 3G on again after the self location is safe. I will give this a try. If it fixes my issues with the iPhone GPS I am happy. But really… Apple, this can’t be it. How would one find this solution. How bad is GPS implemented on the Iphone.
Update 1: I tried it out. It does not really work better. The self location service works “OK” fast but it is totally inaccurate. 50m deviation at least. And I can also confirm that 3G has an influence on the GPS signal. Leaving 3G off helps.
After I reached Tiamat (the first boss) I had my first real frustration with the game. Don’t get me wrong, it was my lack of experience with this game genre. Nothing wrong with Darksiders. I was killed by Tiamat 10 times until I figured out the strategy to kill her.
After I knew what to do it still took me 10-15 tries until I down’ed her. Damn… it felt so good.
Phase 1: First I had to throw a sticky lava ball at her and then use the blade in ‘homing mode’ in order to bring the lave ball to explode (R3 for aiming mode, and L2 for homing on both targets). You have to be very quick here, because Tiamat starts to throw fireballs at you. As soon as Tiamat flew next to a torch I quickly threw the blade to first hit the torch and then the lava ball, which was sticking on her. This explosion lets her crash to the ground. Now that she lay on the ground I could hit her a couple of times with the sword (around 12-15 times).She quickly regains strength and starts to fly again.
Phase 2: Then I had to run quickly to the middle, because in the second phase she starts attacking you from the sky with her claws. I found that it greatly helps pressing L2 during this phase because this button refocuses the camera so that you will always see where she is. Once she starts her attack, she will not change direction again. So as soon as she charged me I simply had to dodge with R1. Tiamat does this three times.
Phase 3: Same game as Phase 1. I had to hit her with the lava ball and then throw the blade again. Again, I had to be really quick because she starts to throw fireballs again. Once I brought the lava ball to explosion she – once again – fells to the ground. I charged her quickly and was able to launch a couple of more hits with the sword\
Phase 4: Tiamat now stood on the ground. She basically has three things that she does at this stage of the fight.
Between these three events I found it useful to use a mix between R3 to aimfully throw a fully charged blade (hold R2) at her and approaching her quickly and hitting her with the sword a couple of times before start dodging again.
From time to time she charged me during this phase. I had to quickly press O (circle) a couple of times to hit her in the face. When I was not quick enough she threw me in the air and then fired a huge fireball at me. This is what you want to avoid.
Looping through this routine she was down after around 3 minutes (at least that’s how it felt). I had three of these action sequences where I quickly had to press the circle button. I don’t know if this is hardcoded or if you guys had more of these action scenes.
But yeah.. a rewarding fight. I am looking forward to the next boss. Maybe I should really consider platform games in the future.
Just wanted to let you know that I finally got some time to play around with Final Cut Express (which I purchased when I bought my first macbook).
This is the result, if you are curious. Had to share it 
I took these shots in Portugal last summer.
I just played Darksiders on the PS3 for around 4h. It is my first platform game. Never played the “God of War” series before and I dislike the Japanese style games like “Devil May Cry” or “Bayonetta”.
So far I must really say that Vigil did an awesome job with Darksiders (which I shall referr as DS from now on). Pretty neat graphics, awesome animations and very easy for beginners of this genre.
Lots of levels play like a tutorial and the player is being introduced nicely to the game and combat mode.
After around 3h of play I was on my way to Tiamat. The first boss in the game. Before reaching Tiamat I had to face three waves of foes with no checkpoint in between. OMG… I got so frustrated, since I am not used to this kind of games. I will let you guys know how this goes. Enough for now. I will write a short post once I finished my first boss in DS.
After the second evening with MW2 I had to find out that I was finished with the single player campaign. Puh… didn’t expect MW2 to be so short.
I must say that it has an awesome gameplay, nice graphics (although easily topped by Killzone 2 on the PS3) and one of the best setups that I have seen with shooters.
Now that I am done with the single player campaign I am left with multiplayer. My only problem is that I don’t know anybody who plays MW2 on the PS3 
So I guess MW2 has to go back to the shelf and make room for Darksiders which is next.
|
