22. November 2007 by Costas Taliadoros.

A few weeks ago I got the Eye Camera together with the Eye of Judgement. The camera feels more solidly built than the 360 one and also has a microphone. Looks like another good hardware product from Sony.

As for the Eye of Judgement, for those who do not know, it’s a trading magic card board game. The game comes with a cloth which acts as the board and there are 9 boxes on it. The first player who controls 5 of these boxes wins. How do you control the boxes? On your magic cards you have creatures you can summon, spells you can cast and also other “utility” cards. Remember that all these are actually stuff you setup on your table. Now here is where the PS3 comes in. You setup the new PS3 eye camera so that it is overlooking the cloth/board. As you place the cards in each box the camera scans the cards (think barcode) and displays an animated image on the TV set of the creature or spell of the card. Then you make the decisions on who is attacking who and so on. All these are being shown and processed by the PS3 on the TV set with animated cut scenes.

One issue I had with the game was that the camera did not always recognise that the card was on the board and kept asking me to place it when it was already there. You need to have some proper lighting as it really affects this card recognition. Also the games made me feel that it is incomplete as there are extra cards coming out and are sold separately. I like having the complete version of a game and not having to keep up with a constant stream of expansion packs especially so soon after the game is released.

The fact that I played the game once and never got back to it is indicative of the impressions I have of the game. It is a hassle to setup compared to other videogames and I don’t want to play it alone, either online or against the computer. I only want to play it when someone else is in the room.

It seems to me that Eye of Judgement tries to come off as a videogame when in practice it’s just the same board game it always was. You are better off getting the standalone camera package.

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22. November 2007 by Costas Taliadoros.

I came across this vocabulary game called Free Rice, which requires you to find the correct meaning of a word giving you 4 possible options (multiple choice). For each word you answer correctly they will donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations Food program.

So if you want to waste your time at the office why don’t you help someone in need in the process. Forget Zuma and Bejeweled.

Free Rice is the name of the game.

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