Very nice, Engadget.

/golf clap

Yes this is a repost from the last article about this, but I thought people might still find it useful.

I just got done playing all the new games (a short skim anyway).

Audio surf is far and away the best app. It was the only one that really kept me from wondering about the remaining apps I had not seen yet for at least 30 minutes. Being able to play it with all your tracks gives this almost unlimited replay potential too. The graphics are as smooth as butter (not surprising as there are next to no textures to render) and give a real sense of speed on faster songs. The design of the tracks do seem to at least try to fit the music and often having you pick up "dots" to the rhythm of the song. Control was tight, responsive and amazingly controllable for a tilt racer. I've never been a fan of tilt racers as they are usually very difficult and tedious to control (see below), but this one seemed to have resolved my concerns by limiting movement to three lanes and not "crashing" on the sides. Simply LOVE this game!! 9+

PGR is next in fun factor. Graphics blow Audio surf away, but control can be overly sensitive and difficult to pick up. I've never been a fan of tilt racing games for this reason as I stated above and this game is no exception. Still, it's free and I'll try to get the hang of it. 8

Next is the skater game. It's ok. The graphics are between Audio Surf and PGR. I would discribe it to fit right between DS and PSP level. The framerate dropped SEVERAL times in the short test I gave it, but I doubt that is because of tegra and more because of flawed coding that will probably be optimized later on. The real issue with this game is very complicated, tedious, and unintuitive controls. The Zune MUST be held parallel with the ground to work right. It took me 5 minutes just to figure THAT out because the tutorial doesn't say so. Even after I figured that out, my neck did not like the proposition and it did not make controls much easier. Once again, perhaps it will be more fun after I get the hang of it, but for now.....6.

You'll feel right at home with the bowling game if you've ever played Wii sports. It's very cutesy and almost "Mii"ish. The graphics are about right on par with Wii bowling as well. You can control it by either drawing lines or swinging your Zune. Simply put....the controls need a lot of work. The movement of the ball seemed to have little correlation with the lines you draw. And just forget about the swing method. No really....just forget about it. It was HORRID. It works with the Wii because the TV doesn't move. But swinging the Zune means you have to stop looking at the game and imagine what you are aiming at. Worse still, the controls were simply laughable in its interpretation of your movement. Simply UNPLAYABLE by this method. The designers and MS really could have put a better foot forward here especially for such a simple App. 6....but only because the line drawing method is at least playable.

The piano app and checkers are just that...graphics were SNES level if that. Nothing to really talk about here. n/a on a score.

Anyway, download them all because they are free and take up very little space on the Zune, but the only real app that you simply should not miss is Audio Surf. This this app NOW! It should be a standard on all PMPs from now on IMO. It simply makes that much sense and is that fun.

I just got done playing all the new games (a short skim anyway).

Audio surf is far and away the best app. It was the only one that really kept me from wondering about the remaining apps I had not seen yet for at least 30 minutes. Being able to play it with all your tracks gives this almost unlimited replay potential too. The graphics are as smooth as butter (not surprising as there are next to no textures to render) and give a real sense of speed on faster songs. The design of the tracks do seem to at least try to fit the music to often having you pick up "dots" to the rhythm of the song. Control was tight, responsive and amazingly controllable for a tilt racer. I've never been a fan of tilt racers as they are usually very difficult and tedious to control (see below), but this one seemed to solved it by limiting movement to three lanes and not "crashing" on the sides. Simply LOVE this game!! 9.4

PGR is next in quality. Graphics blow Audio surf away, but control can be overly sensitive and difficult to pick up. I've never been a fan of tilt racing games for this reason as I stated above and this game is no exception. Still, it's free and I'll try to get the hang of it. 8

Next is the skater game. It's ok. The graphics are a step below PGR and seem to fit right between DS and PSP level. The framerate dropped SEVERAL times in the short test I gave it, but I doubt that is because of tegra and more because of flawed coding that will probably be optimized later on. The real issue with this game is very complicated, tedious, and unintuitive controls. The Zune MUST be held parallel with the ground to work right. It took me 5 minutes just to figure THAT out because the tutorial doesn't say so. Even after I figured that out, my neck did not like the proposition and it did not make control much easier. Once again, perhaps it will be more fun after I get the hang of it, but for now.....6.

You'll feel right at home with the bowling game if you've ever played Wii sports. It's very cutsy and almost "Mii"ish. The graphics are about right on par with Wii bowling as well. You can control it by either drawing lines or swinging your Zune. Simply put....the controls need a lot of work. The movement of the ball seemed to have little correlation with the lines you draw. And just forget about the swing method. No really....just forget about it. It was HORRID. It works with the Wii because the TV doesn't move. But swinging the Zune means you have to imagine what you are aiming at and the controls were simply laughable in its interpretation of your movement. Simply UNPLAYABLE by this method. The designers really could have put a better foot forward here especially for such a simple App. 6....but only because the line drawing method is at least playable.

The piano app is a piano app.....what do you really expect out of it? lol n/a on a score.

Anyway, download them all because they are free and take up very little space on the Zune, but the only real app that you simply should not miss is Audio Surf. This this app NOW! It should be a standard on all PMPs from now on IMO. It simply makes that much sense and is that fun.

Oh and another thing....

Wii has sold more than the 360 and PS3 combined even though the latter two have "had HDMI and 1080i from day one".....

You know what the Wii has had from day one?

A PROFIT.

It's fashionably late.........just like Michael Jackson himself?

Not wall of text....

Wall of truth.

Get rid of enough lazy to at least SKIM what he wrote and you'll learn something.

Excellent job, Invader.

^this

Todays mega hardware is nice, but it comes with a price. Learning to do more with less resources is a lost art. Code is often heavy and highly unoptimized and why WoW is currently tracking 180,000 bugs.

Basically, our code is just as obese as our children.

Getting back to our "roots" with the netbook and handheld markets helps programmers learn to be efficient again.

This is important because the large, heavy hardware demographic is becoming smaller. Light weight and functional is the future.

Besides, we have no clue what may be in store, learning to code for the future means learning to code for ANYTHING.

So basically EB is at IDF show off a new MID....

Clear as bell to most people I'm sure, Engadget. /rolls eyes

So THAT'S what fail looks like on the inside......I think I see some corn.

I wonder how this cataclysm will affect Gnomer!