I'm one of those players who usually avoid survival games, which is perhaps why I took so long to get to We Happy Few. Eventually my gamer instinct whispered in my ear: "You have to play this someday! Apparently it's very similar to Bioshock - not only in terms of its graphic style …". So […]
With each passing day technological inventions combined with creative, but at the same time utilitarian approach make life easier for millions of people around the world who for several computerized years have naturally been adopting all the fruits of that development. The storm of new (not necessarily good) ideas does not go on par with marketing and consumers before they purchase, download or even think about something. First they have to hear about it, or something similar. One such invention (which itself is a concept that has long been used on many other areas) drifting on the Internet for several years is Raptr.
The idea is simple. An application that joins the accounts of players from consoles, Steam and various instant messaging applications, and a social platform that stands behind it. I have used Raptr since 2009 and I am extremely happy with it. Although it still needs a few tweaks (the inability to talk with users of the Playstation 3 hurts the most) but the magnitude of the existing possibilities is a sufficient compensation.
Raptr lets you combine accounts with different instant messaging and gaming platforms using a single application, with which you can easily conduct conversations with friends on Steam, Xbox and Facebook at the same time. Communication is paramount. Not necessarily must be in both directions. Thanks to the profile on the Raptr each player has access to information about other users by checking what are they currently playing, how many hours do they spend with the game and how far they got. There are also the so-called "gamecards," which the players like to put on a forum or a blog to brag about your achievements. You can also keep track of the browser games and more casual productions, so less active players may also find some of the features offered by Raptr fancy. Of course Raptr can't substitute Facebook, but if someone is using several social networking sites on a daily basis, Raptr can be a very efficient tool in such case. There is no problem to share your achievements, screenshots, posts, comments, and reviews straight to Facebook or Twitter.
Raptr - Friends listDelving into there is no way not to mention the overlay (similar to Steam or Xfire) which allows you to access the browser, Instant Messenger and many other functions while playing. After a recent update all the features of Raptr are available on a sliding panel on the left or right edge of the screen. You can attach to it for example a window with YouTube, Gmail, or the button responsible for making a screenshot. Unfortunately, owners of Windows 8 will have to wait a bit because the overlay has not been adapted to the system yet - everything is a matter of time because it is already well underway working on fixing this problem.
Raptr - some of many featuresThere also remains the question of competition, which is growing day by day. In theory, an alternative to Raptr is Playfire or Xfire. Unfortunately, each of these services is missing something, what Raptr does already offer for a long time or will be shortly introduced (the ability to record videos footage from games is in development). Playfire service is missing an application to gather all the messengers in one place, and Xfire (whose co-founder is the creator of Raptr - Dennis "Thresh" Fong) only supports PC. This is why Raptr is on its way to move gaming on even higher, fully socialized level of advancement. The more that user base for this service is more than 12 million lives, of which the lion's share resides in the United States.
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