Never been Appier

So, the initial attempt at a non-gaming post then.

So after gaming then, my main passion in life is probably music, and as such I'm rarely seen out and about without my headphones (Coloud, Marvel licenced 'The Punisher' headphones, natch) permanently throned upon my colossal dome. For the last few years I've been enjoying the company of an old Sony Walkman something-or-other, with a 16gb capacity and trusty physical, actual buttons for navigating the interface, but as the headphone jack socket started to give out, I decided to upgrade to the Samsung Galaxy Player 50, pictured atop this very page beneath the title.

The Galaxy Player 50 is essentially to the Samsung Galaxy smartphone what the iPod Touch is to the iPhone, all the bells and whistles without the obligation to attempt a social life. As does it's parent, the Player runs on the Android OS, albeit a very basic version of it, can connect to the Internet via Wifi, and it's 16gb memory is easily expandable with a microSD card. I have equipped it with a 32gb card, bolstering the overall memory to 48gb. But that's not what this is about, no.

My point is that the old player had a little above 1800 tracks on it, all hand picked favourites from my own CD collection, and as absurd as it sounds, such a small amount of songs had gotten a little boring and predictable, so I decided to make use of my new-found capacity by loading full albums onto it, along with a whole bunch of new music, and before I knew it my play list had hit the 9000 song mark, and the Galaxy Player's built in music player had become sluggish under all that weight. When I attempted to search for a particular album or artist, the thing just died on me. So I decided to check the Android Marketplace for a solution, and came across an App called PowerAMP.

The app acts as a secondary music player, and is just what I needed. It not only has a more user-friendly interface than the built in player, but it's also a lot faster and more responsive. The website boasts that the app can scan 1000 tracks a second when you search a folder, and even on such a basic version of Android it was right on the ball when timed. Not only that you can filter by album, artist, title, genre, whatever at ease, and add tracks to the now-playing list instantly.

But wait, there's more. Swiping the displayed album art skips the track back or forth, which is surprisingly a lot easier than pressing the skip button on the touch screen. Not got the album art? Sorted. PowerAMP will download it for you as you listen, and can be set to only do this over Wifi so as not to ramp up those pesky data charges for Android smartphone users. It will also pause and resume a track when the headphone jack is removed/inserted, so you don't miss a second of the music, handy for lengthy podcasts and such. And the app comes with four slick visual themes to suit your mood, each in turn cooler than the default Galaxy music player.

For any Android device used as a music player, I'd call this app essential. I love it and I've only had it a few days. There's a 15 day free trial and then it's $4.99 to buy, a bit over £3 in real money, so it's great value for money too. Check it out at the official website here.

Holy Unboxing, Batman!

Alright, it took a bit longer than 24 hours but anyone who's played the game will understand that my free time has been somewhat occupied since the game's release. Anyway, after the crushing disappointment of Arkham Asylum's Batarang and the fairly poorly presented UK Mortal Kombat Kollector's Edition, WB have delivered a belter here. I'll start with a 360° shot of the box.

 

Note the last shot of one of the side panels, the contents sheet can be removed to reveal another panel underneath featuring the same artwork on a plain white background, much like the opposite side with The Joker.

When the plastic sleeve is removed the four outer panels fold down to reveal the Kotobukiya-produced statue (Kotobukiya make all of the DC Direct collectible statues commercially available, which are often priced upwards of £100). The statue is really we presented, and it feels sturdy and well made. It's probably on a par with the Assassin's Creed II White Edition's statue. Also need to point out (I found out after I finished with the photos) that on the back of the standing panel, behind the back fold-down panel, is another piece of black and white artwork, this time depicting The Riddler.

The base of the box has a drawer in it that conceals the animated movie Gotham Knight on BluRay in a plastic sleeve. I haven't actually watched this yet on BD, but I've owned the film on DVD since it's release, and it's quite a good watch. Story wise it fits between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and it is comprised of six short movies written by different authors and drawn by different artists in a similar manner to The Animatrix, and all feature the legendary Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman, just as the game does. Not sure if the film is still on BD for the XBox360 CE, presumably it's just a standard DVD as you can't assume that all 360 users have access to BD as you can with PS3 users.

The standing panel houses the artbook, pictured above (more on that in a second) and various leaflets which are (pictured row by row, left to right) the health and safety leaflet for the statue (no joke, it even shows you where the sharp points are on the ears and gauntlets, as if you can't work that out for yourself), A download voucher for the 'Music inspired by' album (featuring original music from bands such as Coheed and Cambria and Panic! at the Disco, which I have yet to listen to but I will at some point), The Frank Miller inspired Dark Knight Returns costume DLC code for use in the game's Challenge Rooms, The Iceberg Lounge Challenge Rooms DLC code, The game's instruction manual, the Catwoman DLC code (which adds her as a playable character in the challenge rooms, and also adds four Catwoman chapters to the main campaign), And finally a code to get access to the closed beta of Gotham City Imposters, which looks shite, and some B:AC themed content for the game once it's released. I'll more than likely not use that, so if anyone wants the code give me a shout. I think it's format of your choice, because you redeem it on the game's website.

A couple of shots of inside the art book, good quality print and all. Had a flick through and then put it back in the box where it shall live on for all eternity, as with every other art book I own. I purposefully chose a page with The Joker's arse on it though.

This is my only bugbear with the set, the Asylum CE had the game in a cardboard sleeve which was the size of a standard DVD case, which stood out a clear centimetre or so above the rest of the PS3 games on my shelf. The City CE just houses the game inside the art book. Is it so hard just to include the case?

Finally a close-up shot of the statue, next to two DC Direct figures as a size comparison. Also unintentionally pictured is the Sacred 2: Fallen Angel Collector's Edition 'Statue', further showcasing what a failure that was in comparison. This is now where the statue remains, rightfully in front of the Asylum Batarang that so let me down two years ago.

...Continue?

Hey.

Assuming you don't know who I am (and it's pretty safe to assume so in all honesty), My name is Pete. As far as blogging goes, I'm the ex author of the relatively popular 24 Hour Gamer UK, the ill-fated Gaming Overtime and The AC, and the complete non-starter 24 Hour Vision. Thing is, as I intended to show with 24HV, gaming isn't everything to me. It's pretty high on my priorities, but sometimes, particularly in the gaming drought months of the summer, I like to do other things, like immerse myself in a movie, marathon a DVD/BD box-set, find all sorts of humour down the back of the Internet, buy toys and read comics, play guitar, and sometimes, just sometimes, crack open those vault doors and brave the outside world.

So yes, there will still be gaming posts. There will probably be a Batman: Arkham City Collector's Edition unboxing within 24 hours of this post going live. I'm also still planning on bringing a Game of the Year post to you in early 2012 (although anyone who knows me can probably figure out what it is to be, but numbers 2-10 might be interesting), and I'm still going to review a game in the old style whenever I find one that strikes me as amazing (or amazingly bad) enough to write about.

But that's not all. This last few months alone I've seen Jurassic Park at the cinema, fallen in love with The Walking Dead and struggled with Battlestar Galactica, witnessed a return to form with the latest season of The Big Bang Theory, discovered untapped (to me anyway) music in the form of bands like Deez Nuts, Your Demise, All That Remains, Anti-Flag and Rise Against, along with new albums from old favourites like The Misfits' The Devil's Rain and Limp Bizkit's Gold Cobra, and come so close to finding the last vital piece to my Silent Bob outfit only to be shot down by the price-tag. I will not pay upwards of $400 for a coat.

So that's the purpose of this blog then, the adventures of me (which was to be the blogs actual title). As with 24HG-UK, it's completely self indulgent, I'm writing this for myself more than anything. And if other people read it, that's even better. Goodbye for now.