Insane Central Blog

With the launch of the Zune HD rolls out the Zune 4.0 software for PC. Adding features like quickplay, downloading Zune HD apps, smart playlists, and more. Quick play is the new default screen and allows you easily to play new songs in your collection, look at recently played songs, and room to bookmark artists, playlists, etc. It also offers apps for the Zune HD users from the marketplace such as weather, games, and Facebook is soon to come. The update also includes a much needed mini player so you can keep music running without having to take up your whole screen.

They also changed up the now playing screen with a little better graphics. Another new feature added is a “Smart DJ”, very similar to iTunes Genius bar. Basically the Smart DJ feature allows you to automatically make a playlist by putting in an artist you like and it generates a playlist from other bands based on it. Overall a great update, and an even better update if you’re a Zune HD user (if apps take off more, only a few at the moment).

Been playing Fallout 3 over the past week and must say it is one amazing game. This game is very similar to Oblivion, but with guns and it really creates one hell of a game. I’ve only done few of the main story missions, I’ve had a ton of fun just exploring.

  

As someone who hasn’t played earlier versions of Fallout the VATS aiming system is really a lot of fun. Shooting someone right in the head gives you a great gory kill you would expect in a game. Overall it feels like Oblivion, Bioshock, and Stalker combined into one; which is an experience no one should miss out on.

Saints Row 2 is a sequel to Saints Row where you arrive at a hospital in prison after waking up from a coma which you get put into in the first game. Compared to the first game, there is a lot more stuff in this game, more activities, more missions, more cars (and planes!), more action, and more weapons. When you awake you are met by someone who breaks you out of prison which eventually leads to you becoming the leader of the saints and “owning” Stillwater.

You no longer own the church in the game (and never do) because it belongs to the Ultor corporation which is taking over the city. One thing I must say that this is NOT Grad Theft Auto IV, don’t expect amazing graphics or incredible AI, this is like GTA on cocaine. That said, it is still a very good game though, all the activities and missions all feel fresh and are a lot of fun. The whole game will take you about 25 hours to beat but thats not including finishing all the activites. Much of the fun I had was playing coop which you can play every mission and every activity together and adds new elements for the 2nd player rather then rehashing the original activity. Coop and vs multiplayer are totally different though, coop is little lag and you can roam the whole city while the versus is laggy, in a small level and overall not a lot of fun. Overall the game is a lot of fun and I think it’s worth playing atleast once.

Looking for a webcam for your pc? Well here are the console cameras that you may already have.

The Xbox Vision Camera has a better picture then the eyetoy. It is easier to install, easier to focus and much smaller then the eyetoy.

The Playstation Eyetoy is a little bigger and a stretch to install, but includes a great mic which is a huge plus.

Out of the both I would recommend the Eyetoy more because it’s most likely cheaper and the mic can be used for programs such as skype and works great.

Your first impress of spore will be wow, this is the most amazing game I’ve ever played. Then as the game progresses your opinion will drop lower and lower. At the first stage (the cell stage) the game is very solid and the creature stage has a few flaws but is still good fun. But as the game goes on it just feels more flawed, especially after playing through once. All the objectives are the same except for 1 tweak such as impress/kill this group. The last stage (space stage) can be some fun trying to get new tools but it envolves doing the same things over and over to get money to buy these tools.

You can beat the game in about 5 or 6 hours and in about 3 hours if you have played before. As a whole the game did not live up to what is should have been and is way to goal oriented to make a lot of fun out of it.

When Google Chrome was first released it caused quite a stir do to the biggest search engine releasing it. But Google Chrome is just seems like a lite version of Mozilla Firefox (or any browser). It doesn’t offer much new to the browser game and doesn’t let you install add-ons (yet). It mainly sports a simple interface that is good for users that are new to computers or don’t want a cluttered browser. But there is no new feature that puts it over the top of the many browser out there. You can’t even integrate your Google account into the browser to check email. One cool feature though is you can import all your passwords and bookmarks from another browser and the recent pages page when you start up the browser is also worth seeing. Download it your self and see what you think.
[Download Google Chrome]

The new version of the Zune software and firmware came out. Much was improved in both, including the ability to browse the marketplace straight form the device and games on Zune including Hexic and Texas Holdem. The software is updated also including a new “Now Playing” screen which shows pictures of the current artist playing.

 

Also a new “Mix View” which allows you to view artists or users similar to the artist you are viewing. Much has been improved in the update making Zune a more stable PMP option for many (which I would recommend).

Video of some update features.

Also check out Zunerama and Zuneboards for the latest news.