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Indie Royale Stuffing Bundle crams together Dream Machine, Puzzle Agent 2 and more
Before the holidays have you engorged to the point where the only game you can play is called nap, Indie Royale wanted to proposition you with a new tempting smorgasbord of indie games. The Indie Royale Stuffing Bundle groups together Dream Machine: Chapters 1-3, Puzzle Agent 2, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, Children of the Nile and Adventure Apes and the Mayan Mystery. Dream Machine uses cardboard and clay to tell the story of Victor Neff and his wife who just moved into an apartment building that just isn't quite right. (Dream Machine is a five-part series, so keep in mind you won't get the entire award-winning point-and-click adventure experience in this bundle.) Puzzle Agent 2 is the 2011 sequel to Telltale Games' and Graham Annable's original adventure/puzzle outing and Pilot Program winner. Anomaly: Warzone Earth you've probably heard of since it's on every platform ever invented, while Adventure Apes and the Mayan Mystery is a Metroidvania game with lots of exploration. Finally, Children of the Nile is a city-building sim set in ancient Egypt – the Enhanced Edition is a Steam key, while the Desura/DRM-free code included in the bundle is based on the 2004 original, Immortal Cities: Children of the Nile.
EVGA's dual-CPU Classified SR-2 motherboard put to the test: worth the money if you know what you're doing
You know things are changing when cooling units that could once stave off overheating on top-tier graphics cards are starting to show up on motherboards. EVGA's Classified SR-2 is a supersized, dual-socket desktop building block that tries to do it all, and -- unusually for dual-CPU logic boards -- it's targeted at enthusiasts rather than buttoned-down business types. Four PCI-Express x16 slots, room for a dozen memory sticks (up to 48GB of RAM), and two USB 3.0 ports add some spec sheet glamor, but you'll likely be wanting to know how much performance you can wring out of two 3.33GHz Intel Xeon 5680 chips working in tandem. The short answer is a lot. The long answer is, of course, that you'll need to apply those 24 threads of power to applications that can really utilize them, such as the predictable video processing and 3D rendering. That's where the multithreaded, multicore, multiprocessor rig really shone in this review, and the EVGA board underpinning it also acquitted itself with distinction. Hit the source for the benchmark results and more photography of exposed circuitry.
Sony ICF-CL75iP alarm clock / digital frame / iPod dock a surprisingly attractive assimilation
We'll be honest, it takes a whole lot to get us excited about iPhone / iPod docks or digital picture frames these days, but congratulations Sony, you've managed to pierce through our hardened hearts with the ICF-CL75iP Dream Machine. Sony Insider brings word of the actually quite handsome bedside attraction, an assimilation of those aforementioned products with an alarm clock to boot. We're looking at a 7-inch WVGA LCD screen, 1GB built-in memory, FM / AM radio, and a retractable dock -- in case you don't feel like capitalizing on the total synergistic package. Photos can be pulled directly from the Apple handheld or loaded via USB, and your wake-up options include built-in presets, a customizable 10-second voice recording, or the iPod / iPhone itself. Our only knock at this point is the minimal codec support -- MP3 and WMA for audio, and MP4, M-JPEG, and AVI for video -- but if the $149.95 price on a cached SonyStyle listing stays accurate, we can be a little forgiving. In fact, throw in Chumby widget support and we'll be downright smitten -- make it happen, Sony. Update: Turns out it's actually up for pre-order right now through Sony Style Canada, CAN $199.99 (that's US $180) and shipping out October 1st. [Thanks, Neil!] Read - Sony Insider Read - Sony Style cached listing
