I was so in love with the first installment of this game so when I heard that there's a second installment, I was really looking forward to play it. It took me a while to finally download the app because I find it too expensive. Luckily, I won a contest online and was given a prize of an Amazon Gift card worth $15. I used it to buy the app from the Amazon store!




It's a wonderful experience to revisit the valley again, though to be honest, the ending of the gameplay was too abrupt for me. I wanted more. I wanted to stay longer in the valley.

Anyway, I hope ustwogames launches another sequel for this again. And by the way, this game won them awards again! (Best Mobile Game for 2017 🏆) Congrats!

~o~

Monument Valley II | Apple Store | Google Play

I never thought the time would come that I would actually transfer from using Android (Nexus 5, which was my phone for the last 3 years!) to using an iPhone. I am an avid fan of Android. I even attempted to learn how to develop applications in it, Because of the resources currently available to me, I had the option to switch to an iPhone.

Here are some things to note when doing the great move.

Transfer your files from your Android phone to your iPhone using the Move to iOS app.

Back up your files.
I know this should be an SOP for everyone already but in case you don't regularly do this for your phone, now's the time to do it. Back up your files (either in your PC or online).

Check the sim card size of the phones.
Usually newer models of phones have smaller sim card sizes. Double-check if you have the correct size for your new phone. Else, your network carrier can help you convert the sim card size, retaining the same mobile number. My transfer required a transfer from a micro sim to a nano sim. I just cut mine with a scissor.😂Do this at your own risk though, as one mistake in cutting the edges would make the sim card unusable.

Download the Move to iOS app.
Install this app on your Android phone. On your iPhone, there's an option to import data from Android (this feature currently only appears in the Setup process when you do a factory reset). This is a very useful option because it enables you to transfer all data across your phones - messages, photos, files, even applications (your iPhone will attempt to find and download the corresponding app in the AppStore).


These are the three items on my checklist for setting up your iPhone, but there's a few that I'd like to add, especially if you've been using the iPhone for a while and is planning to do a factory reset on it: remember the credentials of your Apple ID and safekeep your iPhone's receipt of purchase. I thought the process of transferring data between my phones would take only a few hours, but because I forgot my Apple ID credentials, it took days. 

For my case, I did a factory reset so that I could use the Move to iOS app. Apparently after doing the reset, I would need to input my Apple ID credentials to activate the phone again. This is part of Apple's high level of security, to make the phone unusable in case it gets lost or stolen. I had to call Apple support several times to retrieve my account (it was more complicated than what I expected because I didn't pass my account's security questions 😅). Good thing I still kept the device's receipt. That's what I sent over to Apple Support to prove that I am the owner of the device. After two days, my phone got unlocked. Yay!

I've been using the new phone for a week now, and so far so good! My screen is now a bit smaller, but I'm getting used to it. You've served me good my Nexus 5, but now it's time to retire. Hello there iPhone, and hey Siri, my new virtual assistant! 😊

📷: Wikipedia

Gameplay
This game is very minimalist - from the black and white UI to the sound effects and background music. Those just add actually to the creepiness and eeriness of the game. There are only a few details given about the plot of the game also.

One of my favorite parts: encounter with the giant spider (📷: Google Play)

Storyline
Aside from that cool gameplay, the storyline of Limbo is what made me long for the game after I have finished it. The ending gave me goosebumps (and I screamed, together with my niece and sister who were watching me play. because it was abrupt and unexpected, and I hate endings like that). There were lots of questions that got raised throughout the game (Why is the boy in that forest in the first place? What happened to him? Who are those people who are trying to kill him? What happened to his sister?). I researched on articles online and I discovered that players have the same concerns. This one article from Kotaku satisfyingly explained the possible plot of the game and underlying conclusions about the characters.


I was so drawn and moved by the game that I sent a gratitude email to Playdead, the game's developers. They actually have another game called Inside, and I told myself I'd purchase it as a reward for a goal that I want to accomplish this month.

~o~

Limbo Google Play | iTunes

I am a huge fan of the Nexus series. I've been using a Nexus 5 for two years now and I must say I am highly satisfied with my experience with my phone (which I have adorably nicknamed as Nexee 😉). Nexus 5 was one of the most advanced smartphone when I bought it then. Well fast foward to two years now, there are a lot of new phone models out in the market equipped with the most advanced technologies.

The latest model that we have in the Nexus Family tree is the Huawei Nexus 6P.



Nexus 6P is the first among the Nexus phones to have a full-metal unibody which gives it a very sleek and sophisticated look. It is made of anodized aluminium, with 3D curved glass and diamond chamfers. It comes in three colors - Aluminum, Graphite, and Frost.







So these specs make the Huawei Nexus 6P the #KingOfAndroid.

But how does this compare to the Nexus 5, which I currently use?

Specification	Nexus 6P	Nexus 5
Weight	6.28 oz (178 g)	4.59 oz (130 g)
Screen Display Physical Size	5.7 inches	5.0 inches
Resolution	1440 x 2560 pixels	1080 x 1920 pixels
Pixel Density	518 ppi	445 ppi
Camera	12.3 MP	8 MP
Camcorder	3840x2160 (4K) (30 fps) 1920x1080 (1080p HD) 1280x720 (720p HD)	1920x1080 (1080p HD) (30 fps)
Front-facing camera	8 megapixels	1.3 megapixels
System Chip	Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 MSM8994	Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 MSM8974
Processor	Octa-core, 2000 MHz, ARM Cortex-A57 and ARM Cortex-A53, 64-bit	Quad-core, 2260 MHz, Krait 400
Battery Capacity	3450 mAh	2300 mAh
Bluetooth	4.2	4.0
USB Connector	USB Type-C (reversible)	microUSB
System Memory	3072 MB RAM	2048 MB RAM
Built-in storage	128 GB	32 GB

The Nexus 6P, powered by #HuaweiXGoogle.

Hmm. I guess it's time to do a phone upgrade!  〜(￣▽￣〜)

I just upgraded my laptop to Windows 10. I have been looking forward to doing this since I found out that I am eligible for a free upgrade (find out if you are too). I love software upgrades (that's one of the reasons why I chose to get a Nexus phone) and so I was curious what this new Windows upgrade has to offer. Here's what I got from the first few hours since installing Windows 10.

Is it worth upgrading?

UI Changes
There's a bunch of new designs here on Windows 10, Below are a few that stood out to me.

Welcome Screen. The first thing to notice after the upgrade is the new welcome screen. It looks nice, I liked it.

Start Menu. Everyone was raving about the changes on the start menu, and I got to confirm the reason for myself. It was worth the hype after all.


The start menu setup is similar to Windows' previous versions (Windows 7 and earlier). You can now do a lot of things on it too (add/remove, rearrange, resize tiles) I had to remove several of the default tiles though. I don't need most of them anyway.


New Features
Together with the new look, there are new apps and functionalities available on W10!

Photos, Music, and Videos Apps. There's a whole set of new apps that are set by default to open your multimedia files for Windows 10 (i.e. there's Groove Music for your audio tracks). So far, I'm liking the Photo app because it lets me straightforwardly edit photos without opening another application!

I can now edit photos on the fly!

Groove Music's UI layout kind of reminds me of Spotify, actually.

Microsoft Edge. This is the new browser for the Windows 10. Internet Explorer is still available, though I am expecting it to be dropped off in the future altogether. On this new web browser, you could do several new things like doodling on the page, or attaching notes. I don't know yet how Edge compares to IE, but on first look, the browser looks promising.

Doodles and notes can be applied on web pages through Edge.

Game DVR. (I got to discover this thanks to this article!) Okay so this is a screen-recording tool made for gamers. However I'm finding this very useful for other things, especially if I want to do some tutorials online! I won't need to install a third-party app!



OneDrive for Android. This is not entirely new in Windows though. This is the first time it's introduced for the phone. The one for photo synching got my attention! I thought the phone synching would only be advantageous for those who also have a Windows phone, but apparently it's available for Android and iPhones too!



I tend to transfer photos a lot from my phone to my PC (for blogging purposes) so this feature is just so neat! Photos I take from my phone would automatically be uploaded and saved to my PC. How cool is that (though I'd appreciate it if there's a feature to select specific photos that I want to be synched. This kind of reminds me of the problem on photo syncing that I've also encountered back then).

That one for music synching is also interesting too (great for managing my morning playlists!). However it requires downloading the Groove Music application to your phone. Hmm I don't think I would like yet another music app to be installed on my device. I skipped that one.

Notification Center. There's a new icon now on the right side of the task bar, which looks like a notepad. I believe this will work like the one on phones and tablets. Apps that need to be updated will appear here, as well as other updates needed to be done for the PC.



Downsides
I understand Windows 10 is still in its beginning stages and of course there's a lot of things to improve.

Cortana is not available in my country. Cortana is a personal digital assistant, Window 10's version of Siri. I got a bit dissappointed that it's not available for me to use.

Built-in Twitter App looks so old-school. I'd prefer using the browser version anytime I'm on my PC.


The Guest account is gone! This one kind of got me puzzled actually. I mean why? My sister has files on my computer on that Guest account and now there's no way she could log into the account on my PC. The files are still accessible though thankfully! (just navigate to C:\Users\Guest\Desktop).

Movie player is a bit crappy. And the captions are being displayed on the upper left of the screen! VLC would still be my choice for viewing then.

How am I supposed to watch my Korean dramas using this? (」゜ロ゜)」

The apps and screen randomly freeze. Hope this stabilizes on future updates.

The wifi and sound icon on the Task Bar are a bit confusing. In the few hours that I got to explore Windows 10, I found myself mixing up these two icons.

Those waves are to blame. :p

So far these are all the observations I have from the first three hours of using Windows 10. Overall, I am satisfied with what I found. Hopefully Microsoft would fix the bugs soon!

~o~

If you have installed Windows 10 also, you may find these Lifehacker articles helpful to know:

Windows 10 Uses Your Bandwidth to Distribute Updates, Disable It 
The Best Windows 10 Features You Probably Haven’t Heard About

I am not really into mobile games. I was not into the Candy Crush craze, or the Temple Run, or even into that Draw Something app. I've just heard these games from friends, Also my phone back then cannot accommodate the large memory file of these applications, so there was really no chance to get those games on my phone.

But now that I have a more powerful phone, from time to time I wander and check the Play Store in search of games to play, and one of my recent discoveries (just yesterday actually xD) is Monument Valley.


I have seen this game some time in the past. I was already curious by then, but since it was a paid application, I couldn't download it. But now that I have the means, I downloaded it! I am very glad I did, because this game is surreal! This is exactly the kind of out-of-this-world and dream-like experience that I was searching for on games.


Gameplay
The original game consists of 10 stages, each set on a different dimension. Your goal is to reach a particular marker, where princess Ida, the main character,  places a floating shape that comes from inside her pointed hat. Each stage is fun to solve, with all those shapes with twirled paths only possible to exist within our dreams.

It's easy to get hooked on solving the puzzles. There's no dead end in solving them. I didn't encounter myself being stuck in a dimension wherein I had to restart that stage because I did a wrong move. You can solve all the puzzles in less than an hour. It's a bit short, I know but the experience is worth the price of the game. Though of course I would be delighted to have more stages available in it.




Fortunately for those who are craving for more, Ustwo, the makers of this game, did an update last November 2014 wherein 8 additional stages are added, which are called the Forgotten Shores. They  are just as awesome as the original ones.


I love the background music, the sound effects, and the animations. Ustwo really did a great job.

Storyline
The storyline of the game is not a bit established for me. The main character is this princess named Ida, and throughout the game you guide her in walking through the mazes of each dimension she goes into.


Some of the characters that Ida encounters are: the totem (which would come in handy in solving the puzzles in several dimensions), the crow people, which could be found walking casually along paths, or could also be just sitting down and curiously watching Ida from afar. I thought those crow people would hurt Ida, but all they did was just shout when Ida gets near to them. Lastly, theres the ghost queen (that's how I like to call her), that Ida speaks with. The queen seems to know a lot of things and so guides Ida as she does her journey through the dimensions.

Ida visits a grave in one dimension. (This is one of my favorite scenes in the game.)

Apparently, Monument Valley was named as Apple iPad's Game of the Year for 2014.

As with most of the other players, all I want is more stages! I really really enjoyed playing it so I hope they get to develop more stages for us to solve and enjoy.

If you haven't played Monument Valley, go and download it! You will not regret it. :D


~o~

Monument Valley | blog | facebook | twitter/ustwogames | fanarts on tumblr
Apple Store
Google Play

LINE, a social application available in iOS and Android, does not only have fun chat features, it also has lots of awesome games! The games have been widely loved by users that the download statistics reached a total of 250 million hits worldwide!

I have only used the app mostly for chat so when I heard of this news, I wanted to try out the games.


LINE Go! Go! Go!

This is too slow to be downloaded... 86 parts to go? :O

LINE Go! Go! Go! is a racing game bundled with lots of extra missions to accomplish (collect coins, avoid obstacles, overtake the rival car). This game is the last one that I have tried among the three LINE games that is featured here because it took the longest time to be downloaded.


The game allows you to choose among different cars to be used in the race. Each one has its own powers that can be taken advantage on in the competition.


There are also extra items that can be purchased to make your car more powerful.



I am just slightly disappointed that the car, while on the race, is controlled via touching the arrow buttons on both sides of the screen. rather than the motion sensor of the phone. It would have been more fun with the latter one.


LINE Cookie Run


Cookie Run kind of reminds me of the old games that I play on my Nintendo Game Boy console, except that the character on this game is continuously running so the ←↑→↓ buttons aren't necessary anymore.



Instead of those buttons, there's a Jump and A Slide button on both sides of the screen that does what the name states.


This is the game that I enjoyed the most, because it features familiar faces - the LINE gang which includes James, Cony, Brown, Sally and Moony among others.



The goal of the game is to catch the culprit that took your boss' valuables.

There's also a tutorial phase that is very easy to follow.

You can also make your character dress up different costumes, which is also bundled with a lot of additional features.


Now I understand why a lot of people download these games. It's so easy and fun to play! If you haven't tried playing the games, I recommend you do, especially the Party One app. ^____^