When it comes to the Vita, the majority of the games available upon launch are ports, sequels, or offshoots of recognizable franchises. Very few new games are in the mix, which is why Escape Plan has always stuck out during preview events. It’s also one of the few games custom built for the Vita that feels like it belongs on the handheld, rather than one that just happens to appear on it with Vita functionality shoehorned in.[Escape]

Escape Plan stars two characters whose names match their distinguishable size variation. Lil is the smaller sidekick who can sprint while on a caffeine high and inhale helium to float around the environment. The lumbering Laarg can break through wooden barriers and trigger heavy switches. The duo’s goal is to escape the facility that the evil Bakuki is holding them in. It’s a simple story, but it has some emotional resonance thanks to the mournful, bondage-inspired art direction. All the humanistic and animal characters resemble shy guys from Super Mario Bros. wrapped in leather and drawn by Tim Burton, and it gives the world a sense of oppression.

Fun Bits Interactive lightens the dark mood with flashes of humor and levity. An applause track plays to reward puzzle solving, and the developers also shoved a fair bit of sexual innuendo, farting sound effects, and a random “intermission” cutscene in the middle of the game that features the enemies of Escape Plan dancing to classical music. It’s bizarre, out of place, and one of my favorite parts about the game.

Players must direct Lil and Laarg through a series of obstacles without dying. Sometimes you direct both simultaneously, but mostly you control them independently as they make their way through their own rooms. You tap the screens to create platforms to walk across, rotate fans to move poisonous gas and cool lava to create navigable paths, and rotate the system to control a floating Lil. Traps are repeated room to room, but they are organized in a way that makes each puzzle feel distinct, even if they all look fairly similar.

The game isn’t particularly difficult, but I frequently died thanks to the back touch panel’s inaccuracy. In order to move certain platforms away from the foreground, you must physically tap them. To push them back into the foreground, you have to tap them from the back panel. It’s an interesting mechanic, but it needs refinement. I died often thanks to missing the block I was trying to tap forward.

Escape Plan’s other major gameplay issue is one that plagues many touchscreen games. When you touch the screen, your finger obscures the playing field. This can be troubling when the game requires you to block multiple pipe leaks by holding your fingers over them while controlling the camera with the left and right sticks. You also must frequently squeeze Lil to make him perform special actions, which requires you to place one finger on the touchscreen and another on the back. I never found a comfortable way to perform this frequent action without moving my entire hand. It’s even more difficult if the system is plugged in and charging or if you’re using headphones (something I recommend since the music is excellent).

Challenge modes that require the player to get through the game with as few deaths as possible, hidden items, and possible three star rankings that can be earned for each level help extend the length of the game. Escape Plan is short, but the lower $ 14.99 price tag compared to other Vita games makes its brevity difficult to complain about.

I love the way Escape Plan looks, the way it sounds, and how puzzles are complicated in an interesting way without ever becoming overwhelming. Physically interacting with the game is where it falls short. I still consider it a worthy addition to your early Vita library – especially when there are so few original titles for the handheld.

Metal Gear’s story weaves through eight canonical games and has many surprising twists. Clones, sentient computers, and nanomachines occasionally take the plot in incomprehensible directions, making the series daunting to approach for first-timers. The fact that Snake Eater’s story stands well on its own was probably the major reason Kojima Productions decided to bring it to the 3DS, but gamers who want to play Snake Eater are better off leaving this 3D incarnation on the shelf in favor of another version.

The core game hasn’t changed; you are still Snake, a top-secret operative infiltrating the Soviet Union during the Cold War. You sneak through jungles, eat local wildlife to survive, and unravel a plot that threatens the safety of the world. The story is cool, and the way it serves as the genesis for the rest of the series’ events makes it a great place to start.

Unfortunately, the unique features of this 3DS port do more to hinder the experience than enhance it. The tilt sensor gimmicks (like balancing as you cross a bridge) feel out of place, and using the buttons to control the camera and aim is awful – especially during boss fights. The touchscreen interface is functional but clumsy; I quickly stopped using it in favor of d-pad menu navigation, which still isn’t as elegant as previous versions. Some people may say it’s unfair to compare handheld titles to those on console, but given that Snake Eater 3D is essentially the same game as its console-based brothers, the comparison is inevitable.

The visuals look good, and the 3D effect works fine – though the chuggy framerate doesn’t stack up to the 60 fps of the HD Collection version. The only substantial improvement here is the addition of MGS 4’s crouch walk, which allows Snake to retain a degree of cover while moving and aiming.

I’m not saying that Snake Eater is an inferior game; it’s my favorite in the series. However, this version is only worthwhile for people who have no other choice. Even then, with the $ 40 you’d spend on Snake Eater 3D, you could probably buy an old PS2 and the original game, or the HD Collection on 360 and PS3. If you want the real Snake Eater experience, those are far better options.

Majestic Software's Blot is an odd amalgamation of artistic expression and art theft. If you can look past the adorable ink blot protagonist who is always smiling and staring deep into your soul with his shifty eyes, the backdrops behind him are filled with stunning black and white illustrations of wars, ponies, majestic forests, snakes, milkshakes, gigantic candy bars, aliens, and pretty much any spectacle inserted with the hope of stealing the player's attention away from the action. Perhaps it's a clever way of pulling focus away from the gameplay design, which is just a jetpack shy of being a clone of Halfbrick's renowned Jetpack Joyride.

Blot may have the magical power to fly, but gravity is always pulling at him. When the player touches the screen, he ascends. Let go and he falls. This simplistic control method works flawlessly, and, if you've played any Jetpack Joyride before, feels like a well-worn glove. It's kind of scary how similar Blot's floating feels to Barry Steakfries'. Blot is a little heavier than Barry, but the rate of ascent and tactics required successful navigate a perilous path are identical. Even the act of collecting coins brings about obvious comparisons, as many of the coin configurations spell out words and messages.

Blot doesn't have to worry about electrical fences, but instead must steer clear of pointy pencils and pins. The challenge that arises falls more on the side of skill than luck. Obstacles are not highlighted in any way before they reach the screen, yet rarely did I find myself in a position where I couldn't quickly maneuver out of the way. As a result, my runs lasted much longer than in other cavern flyers.

Blot separates itself from its inspiration through its power-up system. If Blot touches a "boost buddy" he'll grow in size, both making navigation more difficult and coins easier to grab. Once four boost buddies are consumed, the camera zooms in and Blot launches across the screen uncontested, grabbing any coins and boost buddies he touches along the way. This mechanic adds unique challenges and excitement to the tried and true cave flyer formula it wholly apes. Blot also offers dozens of unlockable skins (including one that SpongeBob SquarePants' legal team might take issue with) and 28 achievements, including one that can only be unlocked if you fly past a walrus riding a unicycle.

Cavern flyers are littered throughout the App Store, yet found myself engaged with Blot's colorful presentation and unique spin on power-ups. It's worth a look, both for the fun it delivers and also to see how closely it comes to mimicking the genre conventions. It's available now in Apple's App Store for 99 cents.

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What are you options when you're in need of repair? (Photo: kevin dooley)

The regular users of MS Excel can only understand the importance of the data they store in their workbooks and spreadsheets. They know that one bad day can ruin their entire hard work and valuable time which they spent in storing the data in Excel. To prevent their precious data from getting lost, people create the backups regularly. However, despite of taking various precautions to prevent the Excel spreadsheets from being unusable, there are situations in which we lose the accessibility of our MS Excel file.  This can even happen when the  backup also becomes corrupt. But, you need not to worry even at that devastating situation as there are third-party Excel repair tools available which provide complete retrieval of your precious Excel spreadsheet.

Let us understand the above situation with a practical example. Suppose, you have a large Excel spreadsheet which contains around 1000 contact details of your clients. One morning when you boot up your computer and try to open your Excel sheet to view the contact of one of the clients, you’re stopped by the below mentioned error:

“File error: data may have been lost”

Since, this error itself states about the possibility of data loss, it may scare any user who has precious data in his/her spreadsheet. But, before rectifying this issue, we must understand what exactly causing the irruption of this error message.

Cause:

Some very obvious causes of getting this unexpected error message are:

• You are trying to open the spreadsheet in the newer version of Excel whereas it is created in older version.

• If the spreadsheet is corrupt or damaged.

Resolutions:

Try the following measures to workaround this issue:

• Open the spreadsheet in the same version in which it was created. If it opens then the issue is resolved.

• But, if your problem is not due to this issue or if your spreadsheet is not opening then it is corrupt. To repair corrupt spreadsheet, you need to opt for third-party Excel repair software.

If you search on the internet for software which can repair your Excel sheet, you will get bunch of tools. These tools repair Excel sheets despite of the reason of corruption and recover all the data intact. One of the reliable software for Excel recovery is a product that my company makes called Stellar Phoenix Excel Recovery software. This software repairs corrupt Excel spreadsheets and recovers their objects such as charts, tables, numbers, cell comments, etc. By preserving the formatting of the spreadsheet, the software supports Excel repair in MS Excel 2010, 2007, 2003, and 2000.

Recovering MS Excel Spreadsheet Post File Error is a post from: Technshare

In the first installment of the Alan Wake series, developer Remedy
Entertainment invited gamers to experience a mystery with no end. After
leaving Alan in a precarious position at Cauldron Lake, gamers flocked
to message boards to provide clarity to this game’s story. Was Alan an
asylum escapee conjuring demons in his mind? Was he a writer whose typed
words magically altered the world? Or was he fast asleep and trapped in
a nightmare? Any one of these theories – not to mention a handful of
others I’ve discussed with fellow Alan Wake fans – could be the answer
guiding this tormented protagonist into the heart of hell.

After I
completed American Nightmare, the first sequel in this series, my coworker
Joe Juba didn’t ask me the usual, “How was it?” He instead led with,
“Does it explain anything?” Not since the TV show Lost have I seen people more concerned about plot revelations than the quality of the product.

American
Nightmare expands upon the mystery and fuels the fire behind almost
every theory out there, but ends up coming across as the second chapter
of a lengthy book. If the first game in the series can be viewed as the
introduction to the mystery, this sequel shows us just how crazy, deep,
and confusing it can be. Story content surrounding the mysteries is deep
and layered, allowing new theories to be generated and old ones to
still exist, but don’t expect to walk away from this game with any sort
of understanding as to what is happening to Alan.

Remedy is taking
us deeper into the rabbit hole, with Alan trapped in a time loop and
forced to relive the same moments of his life over and over again. In an
interesting twist, Alan isn’t the only one person experiencing déjà vu.
All of the inhabitants of small Arizona town Night Springs are
cognizant of the time paradox and most are willing to lend a hand to
Alan to figure out how to stop it. At the heart of the problem is Alan’s
evil doppelganger, Mr. Scratch, a villain who mostly appears on screen
as a real human being played by Finnish actor Iikka Villi. He delivers a
strong performance and makes for a great antagonist.

The story
that Remedy spins is both engaging and exciting, but is too quickly
paced and doesn’t take the time to flesh out the secondary characters or
establish Night Springs as an attention-grabbing location. Those great
slow moments in the first game (Alan first arriving in Bright Falls, the
cabin, the asylum) are nowhere to be found in this sequel, though
cutting the long, eventless stretches of highway driving is welcome.
Conversations with Night Springs residents are mostly focused on the
events at hand, and there isn’t much in terms of exploration or
wandering. The most memorable story moments came from hidden documents
that Alan had written (which are much easier to find this time thanks to
them being highlighted on the mini-map).

The speed with which
Alan can move from one story sequence to the next also has a negative
effect on Remedy’s decision to repeat entire gameplay sequences. I know
that the feeling of repetition is intentional, but when the environments
and people I interacted with along the way were uninteresting the first
time, my disenchantment with them only grew on the second and third
visits. Remedy does a great job of conveying Alan’s growing knowledge of
the events at hand for each subsequent visit, but the moments were
pedestrian to begin with and the variations made to them are minor.

Alan’s
exploration of his surroundings is a more concentrated experience,
which works in favor of the gameplay but against getting immersed into
the world. The three areas he visits (and visits again and again) are
smaller in size, more guided in the direction he must go, and loaded
with excellently crafted combat encounters.

Alan’s most powerful
weapon is still his flashlight, the only tool in the world that can burn
away the evil presence affecting Night Springs’ townsfolk, but he also
wields a more robust selection of firearms. Chewing up adversaries with a
machine gun or carbine rifle feels fantastic and is a testament to
Remedy’s excellent gunplay design.

The selection of enemies is
much better this time around as well. Yes, enemies are repeated often
and I ended up killing more firefighters than New York City probably
employs, but Remedy does a nice job of changing up the adversary
formations and scaling the difficulty tied to each. The combat system
shines the most in the game’s new Arcade Action mode, which pits Alan
against increasingly difficult waves of enemies over a set amount of
time. The player’s goal in this mode is to chain together kills to raise
a scoring multiplier. Arcade Action is surprisingly deep, consisting of 10 nicely designed maps.

I didn’t feel as connected to Alan’s
world or story, which were the main draws for me in
the first game, but the gameplay is streamlined and improved in this sequel. American
Nightmare is not quite as gripping of an experience, but I certainly got
my mystery-laden, flashlight-burning fun out of it.

The original ModNation Racers was a flawed but entertaining
attempt to innovate in the kart racing genre. Its easy-to-use toolset for
creating and sharing content has produced over a million user-made tracks,
karts, and racers for players to download, putting the offerings of Mario
Kart's countless iterations to shame. While Road Trip's touchscreen support
makes fashioning your own creations easier than ever, some old and new missteps
make playing this handheld version significantly less fun than the original.

As with all Vita launch titles, a lot of effort has been
placed in utilizing the handheld's unique features, primarily the front and
back touchscreen panels. A wide range of gestures let you place, resize, and
rotate objects and decals, lay down and shape roads, and even bank turns with
ease. You may still want to use the control sticks to fine-tune your
masterpiece, but the touchscreen lets you work quickly and naturally.

The solid controls carry over to gameplay as well. The Vita's
small control sticks are responsive, and using the shoulder buttons for the gas
and brakes instead of triggers is a non-factor. A number of new weapons (my
favorites being a rockslide that bombards the track with boulders, and the
ability to transform into a giant snowball and run down your foes) spice up
combat nicely.

For every improvement, however, there's a frustrating downside.
The developer crafted all-new tracks for Road Trip, but the career mode has
been stripped of the cutscenes introducing your rivals and highlighting your
achievements. The announcers also hit the cutting room floor, leaving the
career mode less of a career, and more of a string of races.

After enjoying the first two competitive circuits, the
action quickly takes a turn for the annoying. The later tracks, while
impressive on a technical and creative level, are packed with so many obstacles
and pitfalls that races devolve into chaos. This pandemonium is compounded by
the worst rubberband AI I've ever seen; I won the overwhelming majority of my
races by just a few tenths of a second, and lost many more at the finish line.
There's nothing more frustrating than losing a race at the last moment, then
shaving a dozen-plus seconds off your time – only to be beat at the last second
again. Having your opponents always on your heels may ratchet up the intensity,
but it also requires flawless racing to finish first, which Road Trip's
frenzied action simply doesn't support. All of this makes racing against the
computer less fun, which, it turns out, is a big problem.

The biggest of Road Trip's drawbacks is inexplicable: There's
no online multiplayer support. You can still create and download user-made
content – including everything from the PS3 version of the game – but if you
want to race against humans, the best you get is a four-player ad hoc mode, or downloadable
time trial ghosts. Even the PSP version of ModNation Racers has 6-player online
support – what was Sony thinking? Downloading user-made courses is simply not
as enjoyable when you can only play them in one-off races against the computer.

ModNation Racers remains a bastion for creativity, and I can
only hope its focus on user-made content influences other kart racers and the
racing genre as a whole. Road Trip's new touchscreen controls further refine
content creation, but they aren't a game changer. Unfortunately, the lack of online
multiplayer is.

Can't decide if you want to purchase Sony's new system? Read our review of the Vita handheld.

The Wipeout series and Sony consoles have a long history together, dating back to the PSone’s launch window in 1995. When Sony released its first portable 10 years later, the anti-gravity racer was sitting on store shelves right alongside it. History repeats itself this year, as Wipeout 2048 greets new Vita owners on day one. It’s a gorgeous and fast-paced racer as always, but a strong sense of familiarity and some questionable hardware utilization bring the experience down a bit.

If you’ve played any recent game in the series, you have a good idea of what to expect from 2048. Bells and whistles like photo mode, pilot assist, and motion controls have been seen before, and the core gameplay still revolves around hitting speed pads and collecting (or absorbing) weapons and power-ups.

Campaign mode is the meat of the game, featuring several seasons with optional paths. You participate in required races, combat events, time trials, and zone races, but secondary events branch off the main path for those looking for more XP. These become more necessary as you reach the tougher races, as they often reward you with new vehicles. Leveling up is crucial, as it’s another method to unlock the more advanced crafts. The XP system is handled well, as you pocket your acquired experience at the end of each race regardless of where you landed on the leaderboard. It makes even your losing efforts worthwhile, which significantly decreases the frustration of a poor performance.

Your campaign can also be brought online, with leaderboards and secondary objectives mixing up the standard single-player experience. These secondary objectives are in place to give new players an incentive to participate against veterans, as it gives them a chance to earn XP even if they can’t compete for the fastest times. Ad-hoc play for up to eight players is supported, as is cross-platform play with owners of Wipeout HD on PlayStation 3.

Launch games are frequently engineered to showcase the new console’s hardware, and Wipeout 2048 is no different. One control option allows you to steer by tilting the Vita, thrust with the rear touchpad, and absorb pick-ups with the front touchpad. By no means does this improve the experience in any way, and I promptly reverted to standard controls.

It’s a competent racer, but Wipeout 2048 feels too familiar for its own good. Long loads and underwhelming touch controls don’t help the matter, and may dissuade anyone who isn’t a longtime fan of the series. If you need a solid racer right away when you get your Vita, Wipeout 2048 will suffice. However, others may want to wait until something fresher comes along.

For our review of the Vita hardware, follow this link.

The Vita has a lot of gizmos built into it, and judging from the back of Little Deviants’ package, developer Bigbig studios wanted to use them all. Informational boxes advertise the implementation of the microphone, touchscreen, rear touch pad, motion sensor, and rear camera. These hardware features may offer gamers a way to show off the capabilities of their new handheld, but Little Deviants isn’t supposed to be a tech demo. It’s a game, and not a good one.

The parade of minigames in Little Deviants is all about making players use the hardware in different ways. Marble Madness-style levels have you gingerly tilting the unit, while others have you pressing the rear touchpad to deform the environment. A singing challenge detects the pitch when you hum, and a whack-a-mole activity makes you use both touch surfaces to defeat robots. Each one only takes a few minutes to play, but they start to wear thin even sooner. 

Objectives are dull (usually variations on “collect stuff” or “race against the clock”), and the gameplay is painfully shallow. I was initially impressed by the variety of activities, but the second half torpedoes that by constantly recycling minigames. Even worse, the most frustrating ones tend to be the repeat performers, like steering a spaceship while being chased by a giant whale robot. While I had trouble with some of the controls (especially those involving tilting), most of games handled their unconventional inputs well.

While the technology is impressive, its failure to create an entertaining experience is at the heart of Little Deviants’ problems. When you talk about your favorite games, how often do you say, “The best part was how the controls functioned as intended”? Unfortunately, that’s the highest praise I can give to this slog. A majority of the minigames are not fun, and give you no reason to replay them apart from unlocking more boring games and beating previous high scores. You also unlock five different Deviants, but they’re all effectively identical with no special powers. You don’t even choose which one you control (they’re assigned to specific minigames), so there’s no gratification or depth to be found.

Considering its aggressive use of Vita’s bells and whistles, Little Deviants was probably a good choice to include in Sony’s bundle for early adopters. It certainly proves that the system’s various control methods can be successfully implemented on a technical level, but that doesn’t excuse the lack of substance when it comes to the content.

If there was a game that cried out for the Vita’s twin sticks, Super Stardust was it. Super Stardust Portable valiantly made due with the PSP’s single stick and face buttons, but with Super Stardust Delta, fans can get the frenetic action as it was meant to be experienced.

True to series’ form, in Super Stardust Delta, players pilot a tiny ship across a spheroid, blasting massive asteroids apart and fighting enemy ships. Your ship is equipped with a pair of main weapons – a stream of fire and a spread shot – as well as a trio of special-use items. They’ll be indispensable as you work through waves of enemies while traveling across a variety of planets and tearing apart massive bosses.

I enjoy the stripped-down test of reflexes that the twin-stick shooter genre provides, and Super Stardust Delta delivers on most fronts. The Vita’s stubby little sticks are generally up to the task, though I often felt as though I was on the verge of having my thumbs slip off. The bigger issue I faced was in how the special items were deployed. When done well, these games make me feel as though I’m a microsecond away from death – leaving virtually no time for futzing with distracting button presses. It’s cool to be able to rain down missile death or deploy a screen-clearing black hole, but the Vita’s limited input options made it tough to find a seamless way to access those functions. By default, they’re called into action by tapping the rear touchscreen, tapping the front screen, or shaking the system. Sure, they all work, but they’re also tricky to pull off while simultaneously weaving through a cluttered playfield unharmed. The alternative is to map them to face buttons, which isn’t much better.

Fortunately, the main attacks become powered up enough as you progress to become less of an issue. By the time you’ve maxed out the flame attack, for instance, it’s grown from a puny flagellum to a whirling tentacle of plasma, which can spiral around your ship while wreaking havoc on the alien threat. You’ll still need to swap between it and the spread gun, depending on the enemy types, which have their specific fire-or-ice weaknesses.

Once you’re finished saving the planets from the alien threat, there are a host of minigames to occupy your time as well. They include challenges where you skid your ship along like a puck, by flinging your finger on the screen. They may not all be winners (crushing things by pinching the front and back touchscreens had better not be a Vita calling card), but they’re nifty little diversions for when you’re not up to the intensity of Delta proper.

Niggling control issues aside, Housemarque’s latest entry is a great showcase for the handheld’s beautiful screen, and a wealth of modes will keep you blasting aliens until your batteries run dry.

Back in 2008 an ambitious indie mod was released using Valve’s Source Engine to tell the somber tale of a man coping with loss while exploring an enigmatic island. Thechineseroom’s Dear Esther has been remade with the help of Robert Briscoe, a former DICE employee and environmental artist for Mirror’s Edge. The update includes enhanced visuals, remastered music and narration, and polished stage design – though labeling the sprawling Hebridean landscapes and awe-inspiring caverns “stages” would be disingenuous. This brief glimpse into one man’s pained reflections may not qualify as a game to many, but it’s a journey worth taking for open-minded gamers.

Interaction with the world of Dear Esther is limited. Control of the main character is simplified to basic movement and observation. You won’t be leaping across gaps or even opening doors in this focused stroll across the geologically diverse island. Keeping the focus on only steering the protagonist allows players to lose themselves examining the game’s gorgeous setting. I loved gazing at the carcasses of ships battered against the coastline, stretches of lush, green hillsides pocked with intriguing rock formations, and a vast cavern network decorated with legions of dripstones lit by an otherworldly glow. Dozens of tiny story hints and other oddities are hidden in nearly every corner. Dear Esther finds success merely as a demonstration of the gorgeous environments that can be constructed with the Source engine, but the experience has even more to offer.

Sections of letters written to Esther are read by talented British actor Nigel Carrington, acting as the game’s narration. Carrington’s soothing voice is the only thing that breathes true meaning into the sights seen in Dear Esther, and the subtle emotion conveyed in his acting thoroughly invested me in the narrative. As a fan of cerebral storytelling that largely leaves the tale’s meaning up to interpretation, I enjoyed Dear Esther’s vagueness. After initially being put off by the dialogue’s heavy-handed literary style, I eventually warmed up to as I was drip-fed pieces of the puzzle. It’s the type of story you look forward to showing a friend or discussing around the water cooler or your favorite forum in an attempt to harvest what others took away from it.

I don’t regret my time with Dear Esther in any way, but the experience is much more enjoyable in hindsight. Walking the game’s linear trails at the plodding preset pace can be a bore. Dear Esther doesn’t once require the player to do any critical thinking outside of plot analysis. The true path is almost always crystal clear, and when it isn’t, it can usually be found by simply turning around. Tada! There’s that staircase you didn’t see initially. It’s difficult to take a true sense of satisfaction away from a game without overcoming any sort of puzzle, challenge, or obstacle. I know Dear Esther is an unconventional interactive experience, but I’ve had comparably thought-provoking experiences in games that were actually fun to play.

Dear Esther isn’t suited for every gamer. In fact, suggesting the game to someone based off other titles they’ve enjoyed would be a mistake. Rather, the game is recommended for anyone who likes taking a close look at a piece of art that goes against the grain of the medium. You should consider checking out Dear Esther the same way you’d appraise a film. If you’re interested in absorbing an intellectual story and gorgeous visuals without having to exert a drop of effort, take a chance on this curious experiment.