IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (AnandTech) 11/21/2013

Humble Mobile Bundle 3: Android Only

Need more games for your mobile Android device? Humble Bundle has you covered, with their latest set of six games. And for those of you who haven’t been keeping track, there will likely be several more added to the bundle next Tuesday. Options for supporting charity this time around consist of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Child’s Play Charity. Two of the games in the current bundle are also debut titles for Android, making this potentially more attractive than usual. And as an added twist, all of the games are only available for Android this round.
The four titles available with any contribution are EPOCH (iOS 11/2011, 77%), rymdkapsel (iOS 08/2013, 85%), SpellTower (iOS 11/2011, 84%), and Swordigo (iOS 03/2012, 86%) – the last being an Android debut title on this bundle. Pay more than the current average ($4.94 and rising) and you unlock two additional titles: Kingdom Rush (iOS 12/2011, 89%) and Ridiculous Fishing (iOS 03/2013, 91%) – the latter being the other Android debut title in the bundle. As you can see, the average score for these mobile games is actually very respectable, at just over 85%. Soundtracks are also available in FLAC and MP3 format for Kingdom Rush, Ridiculous Fishing, rymdkapsel, and Swordigo.
Note that all of the above links/scores are for the iOS releases, but again this bundle is only for Android users. Installing the games on Android also involves a bit more work than your typical Steam key redemption (or GoG DRM-free package). First, you need to get the Humble Bundle (beta) Android apk and install that (I used ES File Explorer to install it and it worked fine; feel free to use something else). Then launch the Humble Bundle (beta) and sign in to your Humble Bundle account, and you should be able to download all of the above packages. EPOCH is by far the largest of the bunch, tipping the scales at over 500MB; Kingdom Rush weighs in at 133MB, Swordigo is 49MB, Ridiculous Fishing is 41MB, rymdkapsel is 30MB, and SpellTower is 12MB. In total, the six games will require 767MB for the APK files, and presumably additional space after installation, so plan accordingly.
Once downloaded in the Humble Bundle app, you can then install the games and you should be all set to play. The HB app should also alert you with any updates, though I’m not quite sure how that will work as these are the first games I’ve snagged via HB for Android. It’s not quite as convenient as snagging updates through the Google Play Store, but that’s part of the package at present. I’ll update this next week when additional content is announced.
As far as the games go, EPOCH is an Unreal Engine powered strategy/action game – you tap to target enemies and swipe to dodge, take cover, and reload, with additional power-ups available. rymdkapsel on the other hand is a bit difficult to describe; it’s a strategy/resource management game mixed with Tetris base building – you build your space station and fend off attacks, while trying to uncover the monoliths and gather resources. SpellTower should make vocabulary fans happy, with its game of words and several different modes available. Swordigo is a typical platformer with you jumping and stabbing/slashing/spelling your way through the world.
Moving to the bonus titles, Kingdom Rush is a pretty standard tower defense game with four tower types and a variety of upgrades to the towers, along with special abilities to help boost you when needed. And as for Ridiculous Fishing, its name is absolutely accurate, and it has very little to do with actual fishing – instead you dodge fish on the way down, grab as many fish as you can on the way up, and then go crazy with your gun as they launch into the air. Also, Ridiculous Fishing is at least buggy and laggy on one tablet where I tried it (Dell Venue 8).
Keep in mind that as these are all mobile Android games, pricing is generally far lower than on PC games. EPOCH is normally $2.83, rymdkapsel is $3.99, SpellTower is $1.99, and Kingdom Rush is $1.99. Swordigo and Ridiculous Fishing aren’t listed on the Play Store yet, but they’re both normally $2.99 on iOS. All together that means the retail price of the six (current) games comes to $16.78. Of course you can give all of your donation to charity, but if you’re looking for a bargain on some games keep those prices in mind – you’re basically looking at a 66% off sale.

Gallery: Humble Mobile Bundle 3: Android Only

NVIDIA 331.82 Game Ready WHQL Drivers Available

Just in time for the release of Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag and Need for Speed: Rivals, NVIDIA has an updated driver available. The 331.82 driver builds on the current R331 drivers, which added support for ShadowPlay and GameStream for SHIELD owners. The new release also includes all the previous updates, which included optimizations for Battlefield 4, Batman: Arkham Origins, and Call of Duty: Ghosts. You can find the full release notes on NVIDIA’s site, as usual.
I just finished the Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag download, a paltry 22.5 GiB download (thank goodness for high-speed Internet!), But unfortunately I have too much on my plate to really spend any time with the game right now. ACIV is one of the titles that comes with some of NVIDIA’s latest GPUs, so it’s not too surprising that it’s getting a “game ready” driver release. But what we would really like to see is some additional new games with built-in benchmarking support.
Yes, 2013 is coming to a close, so we’ll be going through our annual “let’s discuss updates to our gaming benchmark suite” debates in the near future. If you have any recommendations, feel free to sound off in the comments. As for the 331.82 drivers, they’re available at NVIDIA’s site, with the regular 32-bit and 64-bit desktop and mobile versions for most current OSes. Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, and 8.1 all have 331.82 available for desktop users (at least with the right GPU selection). Mobile users on the other hand are primarily relegated to Windows 7/8/8.1 with the latest 700M GPUs – which isn’t too surprising, considering I don’t know of any laptop or notebook shipped in the past several years that hasn’t included at least Windows 7 as the OS.
It’s likely just a bug in their web site right now, but oddly enough the GTX 780 isn’t showing any drivers on several OSes (and there are probably other GPUs that aren’t properly listing the latest drivers either). If you can’t seem to find any drivers for your particular GPU, try searching for a similar model (e.g. GTX 770), or else check for driver updates via GeForce Experience.

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