Author: Brad Lang

It’s been a whole 35 years since Mario Mario, to give the Italian plumber his full name (seriously), graced the Nintendo Entertainment System and since then he’s become arguably one of the most recognisable characters in the video game industry. Actually, scratch that. Mario is probably one of the most iconic characters of all time and his games reflect that. He’s appeared in some of the best games ever designed and, while there are some obvious duds, with a success/failure ratio as strong as his those failures very easy to overlook. It just so happens that the newly announced Super…

We at Stuff really enjoy a solid mid-range device. The high-end products are cool to play with for a while but it never quite leaves your mind that most versions that want to be hailed as top-of-the-range are disgustingly overrated and unnecessary. As for the cheaper options, they’re nice from an accessibility standpoint but cut features and lower quality builds are difficult to overlook in a market that’s become so competitive over the years. That’s why a mid-range device is best: It takes elements of both extremes and unites them into a package for the average person. The Nokia 5.3 is one…

Ray-tracing is a bit of a buzzword at the moment and for good reason. For those of you who don’t know, ray-tracing technology is an evolving form of hyper-advanced lighting seen in digitally rendered environments. It’s been used by animated movies for ages now but it’s taken a while to burst into the video game industry, largely because it’s more expensive to design around and it requires some real specialised technology to actually run it. Yet that hasn’t stopped Nvidia, one of the more notable producers of GPUs for decades now, from implementing the tech in their graphics cards. Yet…

Let’s think of all the reasons we use our phones, shall we? We call people sometimes, send loads of messages, maybe a few emails, browse the internet with it, check social media and maybe most enjoyably, listen to our music. Remember the days of walking around with a Walkman to listen to your tapes and CDs? I don’t because I’m young and I’ve been able to stash my music on my phone ever since I can remember having one! Small blessings, I suppose. Yet in a world where streaming music is becoming more popular than actually storing songs on your phone, it…

Uber wasn’t exactly making huge profits before the entire world ended so I can’t imagine the last few months have been all that kind to the quickly expanding and diversifying ride-sharing app. While catching an Uber to get to work might not be as…safe as it used to be, I have to imagine that Uber’s really pleased to have branched out into food delivery with Uber Eats. Yet that’s clearly not been enough as the company has now announced that a long awaited new feature is being added to its growing list of services it provides: package delivery. While the…

Xiaomi, best known for being the Chinese tech company that isn’t Huawei, has made an impact in the last few years due to their phones being more affordable than most while still retaining the features that come with most high-end smartphones. While clearly happy to coast along with that reputation, Xiaomi has been hard at work on technology that might have a significant impact on the production of future smartphones. Under-display cameras have been mentioned in passing for years but it looks like Xiaomi is ready to for them to become more widespread. Shown off in a brief video, Xiaomi is very…

There’s been a good amount of discussion lately surrounding DStv’s new range of products. The company was rather excited to announce some new devices a few weeks ago and while the Streama and the Explora Ultra decoder do appear to be rather neat little upgrades, that hasn’t stopped confusion surrounding either box from spreading. There have been some mixed messages around the new devices and it’s resulted in plenty of folks maybe not fully understanding how they’re actually going to work. DStv was aware of this issue and sat down with us last week to discuss the pricing of the…

Here we go, folks. Another virtual event to make up for the fact that if Gamescom were to actually happen, a great many folks would most likely contract COVID-19 and we’d bounce all the way back to May, 2020. So while it’s nowhere near as exciting or enjoyable, a virtual event will have to suffice for all those game developers and publishers looking to announce their new projects. Gamescom is one of the highlights of the video game industry, with many companies anticipating the event as a great way to promote their upcoming games and last night’s Opening Night Live showcase was…

Following the whole Epic Games lawsuit against Apple and Google for both companies’ predatory and monopolistic policies in both app stores, it’s become a little harder to play Fortnite than you’d expect. Okay, well maybe not that hard given that you can still access the game on nearly every platform and console available but if you’re wanting to play the mobile version, well, you’ll need to jump through a few hoops, I’m afraid. With Fortnite no longer included on neither the Google Play Store nor the App Store store, it’s become impossible to access the game’s new content which is genuinely a…

The original Call of Duty: Black Ops, the one that started off this whole franchise-within-a-franchise remains one of our most beloved games since it launched nearly a decade ago. On that note, did you know that Black Ops 1 launched a decade ago? Crack open the retirement village, lads. We’re getting older just thinking about that. Of course, being old hasn’t exactly been much of a barrier for the Call of Duty franchise as they’re still churning out more games every year with the latest one being Black Ops: Cold War. The trailer for the campaign dropped last night and it…