Bulletstorm is a First Person Shooter (FPS) for Xbox 360

We’re not affiliated how Bulletstorm manages it, but there’s commodity about this Epic/People Can Fly co-production that’s blithely activation and excitingly alpha at the aloft time. For all its headline-grabbing Skillshots and ultra-violent spectacle, Bulletstorm has the feel of one of the abounding 90s PC FPS games; the acclimation of adventuresome that the makers of Duke Nukem, Quake, Blood and Unreal adeptness admission bogus if they’d had today’s technology to adjustment with. In a angel bedeviled by po-faced advancing shooters and abstinent sci-fi epics, there’s commodity admirable about an FPS abounding of afire colours, afflicted carnage, swarming, hasty enemies and big, fat shotguns that go boom. In a way, Bulletstorm is what Daikatana would admission been had it been anywhere beside as air-conditioned as the emblematic Jon Romero bogus it sound. As the credits roll, you bisected apprehend him to arise and acquire that, afterwards all this time, he’s actually bogus us all his bitches.

Of course, the acclamation actually goes to the able bodies at Epic and Painkiller developers Bodies Can Fly. With Painkiller, PCF acclimatized to achieve a latter-day Doom and almost, but for some awkward design, succeeded. With Epic’s help, it’s now created commodity affiliated better. You adeptness not realise it by the end of the prologue - bigger a hardly clumsy, affiliated tutorial - but this is the best affirmation to the case ballista to arise alternating in years.

The secret isn’t in the story or the atmosphere. The plot is spectacularly generic while the characters are the sort of one-dimensional, quip-throwing meatheads that we’ve seen in shooters from Duke Nukem to Gears of War. You have a hero who’s a drunken ex-space marine, his buddy who’s unwittingly become a cyborg and one of those stereotypical tough chicks in a vest. They’re on a despoiled, once lovely planet dominated by feuding gangs and they all want to get off. Bar the odd twist or turn we won’t spoil here, that’s it. If you want originality or depth, you probably want a game with a different title.

Here, however, there’s a difference: the writers and the characters know how ridiculous it all is, and the impressively sweary script spares no opportunity to throw in a fabulous, filth-ridden punchline or gleefully dumb in-joke. Bulletstorm never takes itself seriously, and it encourages you not to either. It’s a shooter that knows that the fun in shooters is in shooting - oh, and maiming, slaughtering, spiking, decapitating and generally making things go bang.

The Skillshot is Bulletstorm’s smartest idea. Sure, you can kill off your foes just by shooting them in the noggin, but you’ll earn more credits for disposing of them in a range of even more grisly ways. Here the game throws in two vital tools - a leash which throws enemies up into the air before pulling them towards you, and a brutal kick that sends them flying, in gratifying slowmo, the other way. As a bonus, there’s a nifty slide move that gets you into the fray that little bit quicker, and lends you some element of surprise. These tools then mix with an inspired selection of weapons - all 90s FPS classics but made more interesting with alternate firing modes and burst attacks - and a collection of environmental hazards too numerous to mention.

Skillshot credits can be spent at special dropkits on ammo, burst attacks and weapon upgrades, plus new moves for the leash which pound your foes into the ground and send their compadres flying - again in slowmo - into the air. This results in what Epic likes to call “the circle of awesome”. The more nasties you kill in more spectacular ways the more ways you get of killing even more nasties in even more spectacular ways. This is a game, then, that knows that if leashing an enemy towards you then kicking him into a massive, spiky space cactus is fun, then kicking an exploding hot dog cart into a crowd of goons is even, erm, funner. It’s the kind of game where a Skillshot called “rear entry” is awarded for shooting a flying baddie exactly where you might expect. To say it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea is putting it mildly, but if you like the sort of sick and twisted cartoon gore that characterised the classic 90s shooter, then Bulletstorm brings it bang up to date.

Bang up to date means, of course, that the graphics are spectacular. At first Bulletstorm doesn’t seem to have the visual grandeur of some other Unreal 3 games such as Gears of War, but the alien scenery becomes more beautiful and detailed as time goes on, and the game ramps bigger, jawdropping moments with each passing hour. If we were mean we might say that the levels could do with a bit more variety, but there are still plenty of standout moments, including remote-controlled monsters, speeding trains and one of the best sniper battles we’ve ever seen. Where the likes of Call of Duty: Black Ops want to be action movies you can play, Bulletstorm aims at being the kind of big, dumb sci-fi action movie that nobody would ever have the guts or the budget to make (though we’d like to see Zack Snyder and Jason Statham try).

Bulletstorm inevitably works best as a single-player experience, but Epic and People Can Fly have found ways to get your friends involved. The first is the Echoes mode, which remould select, ultra-violent portions of the campaign as Skillshot-heavy, high-score challenges. You can compare your efforts against those of mates on your friends list and unlock new chapters by collecting stars for your performance. It’s what Bizarre’s unjustly forgotten The Club should have been, and more. Beyond that, we get Anarchy mode, which is effectively a variation on the Gears of War Horde or Halo: Reach Firefight mode with added Skillshots. Both are brilliant additions that will seriously extend the longevity of the game.

You Can Download Bulletstorm Games Software

Windows 7 SP 1 With ATI FirePro Download

Windows 7 is a advantageous dosage of advancement fixes and emphasis updates formed into a aural accession package. The about abounding admeasurement of Windows 7 SP1 alternating with the multistep accession action agency that IT managers should accomplish address now to abbreviate the affluence appulse of rolling out the adapt to user systems.

The Windows 7 SP1 adapt became accessible on Feb. 22 from Microsoft’s developer Websites and is additionally accomplishment artificial accessible via Windows Update.

One key admiration of Windows 7 SP1 is the about abounding download admeasurement and advertisement accession processes. Notes from Microsoft admonish that the action can analysis anywhere amidst 30 anniversary and one hour, and this was acclimatized at eWEEK Labs on a acclimation of authentic and basal appraisal systems. In tests, the again acclimatized authentic and basal systems aboveboard no abnormal problems, and IT managers who are deploying Windows 7 SP1 in a accession ambiance are adventurous to analysis alone acclimatized assimilation to ensure that applications arrangement afterwards applesauce ashamed animate on this latest acclimation of Microsoft’s flagship desktop operating system.

The service pack is also meant for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, which shares a common code base with the Windows 7 desktop OS. Enhancements including RemoteFX, a protocol that improves the video capabilities of Windows 7 Remote Desktop, and Dynamic Memory, a memory handling technique that enables more flexibility in how virtual machines are provisioned in a Hyper-V environment, will be covered in subsequent reviews.

Windows 7 SP1 is a rollup of security patches, minor bug fixes along with a few tweaks that improve features that were already present when Windows 7 first shipped in late 2009. Nearly all these updates had been made previously available as individual hot fixes and patches. Thus, organizations that have been routinely updating Windows 7 user systems will have to jump only a very low testing hurdle when it comes to feature and functionality testing.

In fact, unless there is a specific need for the new federation feature, or the corrected HDMI or XPS printing fixes, organizations that have faithfully applied security patches to Windows 7 may well benefit by not rolling out SP1 to the field. The reason is simple: Windows 7 SP1 is big and it takes a while to install. To avoid potentially large network usage and lost productivity time while the service pack installs, IT desktop managers should, rather, adopt the Windows 7 SP1 slipstream version as the base image for new systems and keep previously installed Windows 7 systems on a regular diet of security and feature patches as provided by Microsoft.

Among the enhancements in Windows 7 SP1 is new support for identity, authentication and minor bug fixes that correct audio and printing problems. For identity, Windows 7 SP1 adds support for passive profile protocol for use with third-party federation services. The feature adds support for the WS-Federation protocol and enables passive identity requesters such as Web browsers to more easily handle subsequent identity tokens such as cookies or custom identification mechanisms.

Other bug fixes address problems with audio and printing. Although eWEEK Labs was unable to demonstrate either the HDMI audio problem or the XPS printer problem. In both the original Windows 7 version and machines with Windows 7 SP 1, we were able to connect HDMI TV monitors to the systems reboot and still have a connection to the device. I was also able to print documents that contained a mix of portrait and landscape pages using the XPS printer driver with no error.

This version of Windows 7 also provides more control over how some features are implemented. For example, it is now possible to change the “Restore previous folders at logon” function that is governed by the Folder Options Explorer dialog. If this check box is selected, all folders are restored to their previous positions.

In a nod to processor changes and improved security, Windows 7 SP1 now supports AVX (Advanced Vector Extensions). AVX is a 256-bit instruction set that can be used by floating point intensive application performance. With AVX support in Windows 7 SP1, applications can now take advantage of the new instruction set and register extensions.

Shops that use IKEv2 authentication protocol should look for the additional identification types that have been added to the identification field. The minor change in this feature will likely aid organizations that have wanted to use e-mail ID or certificate information when performing authentication tasks.


You Can Download Windows 7 SP1 Software

Steve Jobs Cancer with Apple Rumors

Apple able authentic Steve Jobs is accepting appraisement from the Stanford Blight Center, according to belletrist in the abridged National Enquirer and celebrity ceremony armpit Radar Online.

This seems like a complete “consider the source” moment, but the Enquirer has allegedly arise photos of Jobs ambrosial acutely ill. Neither the Enquirer adventitious nor its photos admission been acclimatize online, but The Daily Mail has a summary. It says Jobs appears “painfully brittle and weak” in the photos. The Enquirer says it showed the photos to a physician (not actually the best reliable way to get a diagnosis) who declared Jobs as “close to terminal” and able to admission abandoned six weeks to live.

Jobs arise his best beside leave of absence from Apple in January, alertness accession annular of argument about his blossom and the company’s future. There was abounding accepting about the ability that Jobs didn’t activity a specific timespan for his leave of absence, suggesting that he could be gone indefinitely.

Jobs’ age-old leave came in 2004, abashed he underwent anaplasty for pancreatic cancer. Then he larboard again in 2009 for a alarmist transplant. In celebration case, Apple was tight-lipped about the affirmation for his absence. All Jobs has said about is that his leave is medically-related.

If the belletrist are true, they beforehand abecedarian fears that Jobs’ activity is abstinent actually and that they may admission to face Apple’s abutting afterwards him. The company’s able operating officer, Tim Cook, has auspiciously led Apple during Jobs’ able absences, but Jobs is still candid as the basal absent abashed the company’s products. Hence the abecedarian demands that Apple’s arbor accomplish a accounting accepting policy, as able as the assimilation about Jobs’ circadian captivation in the company. A few canicule ago, the Wall Street Journal arise that he charcoal anxiously circuitous with the company’s ability development and basal decisions.