Nostalgia

School started a couple of weeks ago, and class 10th is already buzzing past at the speed of the Bistromathic drive. Definitely not as fast as the Infinite Improbability Drive . There is no time to even think about symposiums.  But even as I look forward to school everyday, its not the same as last year. Or the year before that. Its because of the Converge Clan. Nostalgia.

I was sitting in the computer lab today, attending the class, and I was suddenly overcome by emotion. I had spend a lot of time here with those Converge Clan guys.  It stills gives me pangs of sorrow in my heart, when I realise that I will never see them at school again – not in the school uniform at least. Arjun (that traitor!) left school to join DPS Vasant Kunj about a couple of years ago, and I did feel bad. But it was fun how I and Mridul vowed to beat him at quizzes. The fact that he never participated in any quiz, is another story. Arjun actually cleared two places for me (as a quizzer) and Shikhar (as a digital imager). His  exit from school for actually quite beneficial to us. But when all the others left this year, it was like real bad. I was feeling bad at the farewell itself. No Mridul will turn up, excited about a new Linus distro he installed. No Arpit, being picked upon by Bar-man. No Tapas, complaining about ProStreet screwing up his PC. No Aayush, discussing about the many flaws in Windows XP SP3. No Mayank, criticizing life in his endless vocabulary. No Mudit, who, hardly ever talked anyway. Its sad. Real sad.

I often recollect those times, when we had a smashing time while returning from a competition.  Especially that part, when, when Tapas shouted at this guy on a scooter, and he lifted both his legs up in the air, while driving. And also that time, when I was relatively new, I conducted Kaun Banega Crorepati in the vehicle. It was fun.

I still feel it will be difficult to adjust to the fact that none of them will be there to help me anymore, or the Converge Clan as a whole. It’ll be difficult to digest that. Mridul and me often used to plot against the Bee, while he was still quizzing, that is. (Oh, the “Bee” is this guy. Thats because when the name is pronounced, it gets “bee” in the end. So, the bee.) Many of the plans involved mixing “filthy liquids almost, but not entirely, unlike tea” in the refreshments.

I wonder all the time, what all of them would be doing now. Mridul would probably be finding out more about the Special Theory of Relativity, or still be playing Counter-Strike. Arpit would probably be chilling out with Grappo Fizz (his cousin) in some fridge. Tapas might have bought the new Core i7, or an Xbox 360, or a XFX Geforce. Mudit will be arguing with a McDonald’s waiter for putting cheese in his burger. Mayank will be writing a poem. Aayush would be playing Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2.

Review: Burnout Dominator (PlayStation 2)

Burnout Dominator

Developer: Electronic Arts/Criterion Games

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Burnout Dominator is Electronic Arts’s final venture into the PlayStation 2 market. It is (probably) the only Burnout game not developed by Criterion Software. Burnout Dominator is the successor to the extremely popular and critically acclaimed Burnout 3:Takedown and Burnout Revenge. Obviously, it has a lot riding on it.

The game starts with a basic training video. What strikes players who have already played Burnout 3 is the reintroduction of the Burnout. A burnout is done when you empty your boost completely in one go, by pressing R1. Burnout Dominator is not a new game, as it takes bits and pieces from previous Burnout titles and puts them together in a new fashion. The result is a refreshingly good experience, as it has all the things which previous Burnout games were lacking.

Gameplay, as usual, is fabulous. As always, Burnout Dominator has no story. You complete events, earn dominator points, and unlock another series containing a particular set of cars, like Muscle or Hotrod. Its fast, and feels good, with the controller vibrating mildly in your hands. But unfortunately, the game is so fast, that is generally stays a step or two behind itself. For example, when you crash, and you do an aftertouch takedown (thats when you make other cars deliberately crash into your wreck), your boost bar gets filled with a blue flame, and when you press R1 to boost when you recover from the crash, you will be boosting, but the sound effects will make it look like you’re driving normally. There are minor bugs, but there’s forgiveness factor for such a good game. Multiplayer mode to, is not good, and there is no online play at all.

The graphics are quite good. The cars are detailed pretty well, and even the crashes look good, but not as good as they did in Burnout Revenge. The atmosphere looks great. The sky looks good – just the right shade of blue and 0range. The buildings, trees and under construction stuff also looks good. The trucks and the traffic on the street are also good, but because of the extremely fast gameplay, halfway through the game when you begin to unlock new cars, you notice the blockiness of traffic vehicles. Fast gameplay also makes it tough to recognise the already indistinguishable traffic cars, making you crash badly, especially when your average driving speed is about 270 kmph. Unlike Burnout Revenge, you crash even when you hit a car from behind. Minus marks, EA.

Cars have specific groups, such as Hotrod, Race Special, etc. but each group has only about four to five cars, and more can be unlocked after fulfilling certain conditions in certain races, such as taking down a particular car three times, or winning a gold in a race. But still, there isn’t a really vast choice of cars. Cars from a particular group cannot be used in another; not that you’ll need to do that. Unlocking all cars unlocks a special event: the Dominator Challenge. I never played one as yet, because of the difficulty level. Burnout Dominator is quite tough. The difficulty level is high. Very high. Even a bronze medal will get you a sigh of relief. You have to be an exceptionally good gamer to win gold in all medals. Lots of practice is needed. Of course, this has its own benefits – trophies. Completing a particular set of challenges will earn you a trophy. And show you a nice trophy video. Wow!

Also there are some other good things too. Game physics are not bad. Cars dont make a full 360 while hitting a wall. And the best part is the harder you rub against a wall, the more will be the emission of sparks. Another cool thing is that EA managed to make the car controllable in in the highest of speeds. Also, the soundtrack is phenomenal. Superb music in the menu and in the races. The electric guitars seem to go very well with the crashes and drifts and boosts. Avril Lavigne’s (then) new song Girlfriend from the album The Best Damn Thing is also on Burnout Dominator, and it seems to go well with high speed.

Burnout Dominator shows the reintroduction of Burnout, which was last seen in Burnout 2: Point of Impact. A burnout is achieved, when the boost bar is emptied completely at one time. The new modification is a supercharge boost. You increase your boost bar by driving dangerously on the wrong side of the roads, smashing cars, rubbin’ with ‘em, and closely escaping a speeding vehicle. And once the boost bar is full, the orange flame turns shocking blue. Hold R1 and empty the boost meter at one go. Burnout. Drive dangerously while emptying the boost bar, and yellow arrows light up at the boost bar. If all the yellow arrows are while boosting and then you do a burnout, you get your boost bar full once again. Do this continuously, and you can have chains of burnouts. Get better at it, and master the game. This is amazing stuff! But the greed of chaining burnouts is often the cause of many crashes.

A striking fact about Burnout Dominator, is that you begin to wonder why this was made for the PlayStation 2 in the first place. The controls are designed to fit the PlayStation Portable, and the game does not take advantage of all the extra controls on the Dualshock 2 controller, such as R3, L3, R2 and L2. L2 is used for changing songs, but you won’t do that during a race anyway. Its clear that EA had no desire to release this on the PlayStation 2, but designed it with the PlayStation Portable in mind, after the immense success of Burnout Legends, the first ever Burnout game on Sony’s handheld console.

So to sum it up, Burnout Dominator is a great racing game, but definitely not the best one. Its extremely interesting and even though its extremely difficult, it is the burning passion in you which will compel you to finish the game and win all trophies. Rent or borrow it, but buy it (if its still available in the stores) only and only if you’re a Burnout addict (like me). And  oh, a funny incident just popped up in my mind. I unlocked Menu Damage in one of the races. After enabling it from options, a huge glass-cracking sickening sound came and made a huge crack in the menu, as if Sehwag had smashed the ball into the TV. The crack did look really awesome and came as a mild surprise.

Detailed Ratings [Out of 10]

Gameplay: 9

Graphics: 8

Difficulty: 7

Music: 9

Physics: 8

Rating: 8.2/10 [Great]

Boost Your Internet Speed

Did you know that Windows XP reserves 20% of your bandwidth by default  for other applications, meaning that you will not be able to access your browser at maximum speed, because of some other application? It sucks, right? Well now you can change it. As usual, not by any 3rd party application, but by some clever tweaking. Lets edit group policies!

Steps

1] Hit WinKey+R to open the Run… dialog box.

2] Type gpedit.msc in the Run… dialog box and hit Enter or click OK. The Group Policy window opens up.

3] Navigate to Local Computer Policy/Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates…

…QoS Packet Scheduler.

4] Now, in the right pane, double-click on Limit reservable bandwidth.

This window should open. This is how it looks like, originally.

6] Click the Enabled radio button. You will see 20% entered in the Bandwidth limit (%) text box. Type 0 instead. Zero. Not O. It should now look like this.

7] Click OK and close all the other windows. Restart Windows. You will surely notice a change in the speed.

It worked for me. Comment if it worked, or didn’t!