Chessasaur's Video Game Blog

Game of the Week Mk. 2 - Week #2

2009-08-17T13:22:00.000-07:00

Ok, so maybe the idea of having 2 games for a week was a bad plan. I never did get any Hitman 2 in and still haven't tried a full TimeSplitters 2 run on the first level on Normal. Instead, I got onto a bit of a Tomb Raider kick (brought on by playing a little bit of the 360 version of Underworld). I played (or tried to play) a little bit of Tomb Raider 2 for the Playstation (how in God's name did people stand playing games like that - side-scrollers on the SNES looked and played better). I also did some of TR:Angel of Darkness. That wasn't too bad, but it was still pretty clunky. I can see how people were disappointed given the considerable step-up in processing power of the PS2. I wasn't too happy with the "strength" bar - it just made moving around ledges harder because you didn't know where to go and she doesn't move very fast that way anyway. You felt like saying, "Get a move on, bitch! You can't hang there forever!" From what I remember of the reviews, logic was one of the biggest losers in the design. Things like not being able to move a cot or having to kill dogs with only with bullets, take away from the feeling of being "in the world". But, it was an interesting start and I might get back to it as some point - just to see if there is anything else amazingly stupid they did.

As for my new game of the week, I'm thinking I'll give a good Lara Croft game a try. My choices are Legend or Anniversary. This actually leads me to a new "problem" I'm having. A number of my games have never been opened. With mint copies of these games disappearing, it's getting harder to just unwrap them and spoil their potential value (not that I would want to sell them, of course). But, this will be a good thing to do - time to get one out in the open. I'm leaning toward Legend for the PS2, but I might go for the Cube version instead. Either way, it ought to make for a good week.

Back to Basics - Game of the Week Restarted

2009-08-04T16:07:00.000-07:00

Looking back on previous posts, I'm always struck by how much I like my Game of the Week posts. I never really got a long ways into a game, but it gave me some much needed focus in an otherwise fuzzy gaming picture. I also liked the growing collection of save games I made on my private memory card - each is like a pre-Achievments kind of award. So, I have decided to try it again.

To kick off this refresh, I've decided to pick two games for the same week. (This might become a new way of running GotW. As long as one of them isn't a big RPG, I could see advantages to having two different styles of games to switch between instead of getting stuck on just one.) The two games are both ones I've played on other platforms to varying degrees of success (ie, not much). They are Hitman 2 and TimeSplitters 2 for the PS2. (That's a lot of 2's.) I tried Hitman 2 on both the XBox (ugly graphics) and the Cube (better graphics but cumbersome controls) and am looking forward to a better experience on the PS2. TimeSplitters 2 has been an arch nemisis of mine for years. My goal on that one is to get through the first level, just the first level, mind you (!), on...wait for it...NORMAL DIFFICULTY! While I applaud Free Radical (may they rest in pieces) on having the ingenuity to make a game where an Easy mode gives you an abridged version of a level, it's always left me with the feeling that I need to work harder to get though the whole thing. I'm hoping the PS2, with it's better controller, will allow me to reach my goal.

Let the games begin.

Update #1: Got some hands-on time with TimeSplitters 2 last night (or early this morning, depending on how you look at it). I played though the first two episodes on Easy (of course), to get a feel for the way the PS2 version worked. Playing this gem had me thinking of two things. First, "old gen" is still just fine, and second, I'm still not as accurate in an FPS with a gamepad as I'd like to be. I need a steadying brace for my thumbs, damnit! Oh, well, it will have to do, as they say.

Update #2: To keep this short, I'm just going to add to this post for this week as I didn't get as much time in on TS2 and Hitman 2 as I wanted (ok, none on Hitman 2). I did get some time over the weekend on Tomb Raider Underworld for the 360. Nice graphics, but nothing that couldn't have been done on last gen (ie, my gen) hardware. Larger environments with less "fog" and better fire effects.

Weekly Game Blog - 7/13/09 - 7/19/09

2009-07-13T16:27:00.000-07:00

New feature - a running commentary during the week.

Monday: Lunchtime CoD4 on the DS. Played the rather cool air support stages. Not sure how accurate they were, but major kudos to the designers for coming up with the idea and making it work...While I still can, I had to buy a black DS. Amazon is the only ones that still have them and when those are gone, I'll kick myself for not picking one up.

Tuesday/Wednesday: Been on a bit of tear buying PS2 games, but not sure why. I do consider the PS2 to be the best console ever, but my library is going to outlast me by decades. Some of the games are for Sarah (fighting games, RB1 for PS2), some are ones I've meant to buy in the past (.hack, Tourist Trophy), and some are duplicates of of favorites (Timesplitters 2 for PS2). I now have TS2 for all 3 systems - and I'm still trying to get through level 1 on Normal mode! What is it about that game! Mind you, I think it's excellent. I'm just hoping that running it on the PS2 or Xbox will give me a better chance....Recent disappointment: Red Faction 2. Reviewers thought it was good? Why? The graphics and gameplay are just slightly higher in quality then a PS1 game. If these are systems that can do TS2 and MGS2, RF2 could have been a lot better. Maybe I'll have to try it on PS2 (I played a bit of the Cube version). I do remember a distinct difference between the Xbox and Cube versions of Hitman 2 (but there is was the Cube's version that looked better!).

DNF

2009-05-11T13:30:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the global economic slump. Maybe it's the profusion of 'casual' games. Maybe it's just a kind of natural selection. Whatever it is, it sucks.

A few months ago, I read with almost disbelief that Free Radical, the makers of Time Splitters, was shutting down. It seemed impossible that a studio with more than a few hits was having to close down. I mourned the TS titles that would now never be.

But there was worse to come.

Word came out last week that 3D Realms (aka Apogee) was closing it's doors. The house that Duke built was gone.

I might be being a bit over dramatic, but the shock of all this hasn't really sunk in yet. Losing Free Radical tore at the sentimental but newer bastions of my gaming. Their games had a distinctive look that I will miss very much. It's a shame they never had a chance to put those quirky, puppet-like characters (and monkeys) into a high-powered game for the 360.

But hearing that 3D Realms was gone left me reeling. The early Apogee games were hallmarks of what platform gaming should be. While others were playing Mario on their NES's (in sickly colors), I was playing Cosmo and Duke in glorious VGA (ok, it was a long time ago). Then Duke 3D changed everything.

I remember Duke 3D being the anti-Doom game. Doom was (and is) a fantastic game and Duke 3D owes it's life to it. But while Doom was an abstract, sterile, sci-fi inspired landscape that was difficult to relate to (much less explain), Duke 3D took us to the streets of our cities - places we knew from the action movies of our youth. It also encouraged exploration and interaction with the game environment that had previously been unknown. And it gave our avatar a wise-cracking voice, full of Bruce Campbell one-liners.

I remember the announcement about Duke Nukem Forever in 1997 and I was thrilled. A better, more detailed FPS in the style of Duke Nukem? Hell, yes! While the years and jokes flew, I honestly never lost hope. Yeah, it NEVER should have taken this long. Yes, they SHOULD have just put SOMETHING out (as long as it wasn't complete trash) using some engine or another. But I never doubted that DNF would come out someday. And when it did, I would want to play it.

But 3D Realms sudden collapse has put an end to Duke's last adventure. Rest easy Duke, you now pass into gaming history.

Monday check-in

2009-04-27T14:17:00.000-07:00

I can't say I really have a lot to offer this week, but I felt it was important to at least try to put some words out. I hate having big gaps in the blog. If anyone comes and reads it (like THAT'S going to happen), I don't want them thinking that this is a dead page. Too many of those out there already.

Well, the game buying drought continues. If this keeps up, I'll have almost no new games for all of 2009 - and that's not a bad thing really. I was all set the other day to go to Gamestop to see about picking up a few games in their B2G1F sale and I wanted to check my library to see which ones I was missing from a couple of series. After looking at the games for a few minutes, I quickly decided not to bother even going. I've got so many really good games that adding more just doesn't make any sense. Are there any out there that I'm willing to spend money on anymore?

As for actual play, I've been Rock Band-ing (could play that game forever!) and some Dokapon on the DS. Too soon to say about Dokapon, but so far it seems like it's just the mechanics of the game without any of the charm or humor. At least it doesn't seem to cheat. Also been playing some very casual games on Bigfish and Facebook. Nothing special, just some time killers.

Demoing on the PSP

2009-04-22T17:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, only 2 days since the last post. A new trend maybe?

Anyway, I tried the demo for the Resistance PSP game last night. In general, the thing that impressed me was the graphics - stunning cut scenes and good in-game third-person action for such a small screen. What didn't impress me was that I had to fight way too many monsters with waaaay too little ammo. Note to designers: checkpoints that don't replenish your ammo to reasonable levels when you return to them aren't very helpful. It's a "no buy" for me.

The PSP has been something of an oddball for me. If I were still doing business travel, it would be my constant traveling companion. But, it's hard to find a niche for it when I'm never away from my consoles. I have gotten into making movie files for it, which can be fun, but games are harder to get into. I like that Sony keeps updating the firmware, adding more features and refining others. In some ways, it adds that "tinkering" aspect that computers have to them. I've bought a number of UMD movie for it, but I haven't watched a single one. The only reason I broke down and bought this one (aside from having the money at the time) was that I liked the case color!

Somewhere in April '09

2009-04-20T09:45:00.000-07:00

So this is my first 2009 post? Wow, time flies when you aren't having lots of fun.

Yeah, been busy. I've gotten some playtime in. On my own, I'm working on "007 Everything or Nothing" for the PS2 as the first of the Wowbagger Project and enjoying the game quite a bit. However, I do apologize for getting Pierce Brosnan shot so many times.

What is the Wowbagger Project, you ask? For those who haven't read, or don't remember, Wowbagger was a character from that wholly remarkable book, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Wowbagger was an alien that had become immortal as the result of an experiment gone wrong. At first he loved it, but then all those Sunday afternoons got to him and he needed something to focus his eternal life on - insulting the whole universe.

In a way, I'm going to take page from Wowbagger's book and do something similar, but less insulting - I'm going to play all the games in my collection, individually, one-by-one, and in alphabetical order!

So, that's why I'm playing 007 Everything or Nothing because in my sorting scheme, 007 was the first game. (Other sites like Metacritic list it as "James Bond 007 etc", but if you look at the box it seems to start with "007").

Because of this plan, I've really lost my great desire to constantly buy new games - a decision that has had beneficial effects on the family budget. I've also started to get disillusioned with where the industry is going. I don't think that at this point they can return to the glory days of the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube period. Big titles are expensive to produce for the 360 and PS3 and frequently return too little. The Wii is losing steam (which was more hype than anything to begin with) and is swamped with crapware. The handhelds (read: DS and DSi) are doing well, but gaming on pocket systems is a stop-gap solution to real games. You can't have a real driving, adventure, or sports game on that small a platform.

Anyway, enough of the rant for now. All I know is that at this point my "2009 Videogame and Computer Receipts" folder at home is VERY thin for being almost 5 months into 2009.

Updates

2008-10-10T09:20:00.000-07:00

Nearly 3 months have passed since my last post and a lot has happened...most of it not so good. I think that for the time being I'll just stick to the video game stuff.

The biggest news involves my smallest system, the DS. I have started to use "a device" that is allowing me "access" to games in "a different manner". Is it a good thing? Too soon to tell.

I'm getting overwhelmed with the quantity of games I have and frustrated with the outcome that I never seem to be playing the same game long enough to get to some conclusion, be it completion, stagnation or boredom. Nearly every game starts with a tutorial and contains some measure of specialized controls. If I don't continue with the same game, I spend time just learning new games (tutorials can be tedious) and then can't remember control schemes when I do get the opportunity to get back to old games. But I can't overlook the fact that some games get boring on their own, just repeating the same game mechanic over and over in order to draw out the play time for a selling bullet point.

Going to post this and start a new thread.

40 on 47

2008-07-22T15:41:00.000-07:00

Well, I've gone and done it now - joined the widescreen, HD generation...and there's no going back.

As of this writing, I'm only a few hours shy of pre-ordering my next game machine, the new 60gb Xbox 360. It's not without a certain degree of concern that I do this, too. My library of games, to this point, is crammed with non-HD titles that I don't know if I'll be able to tolerate, let alone enjoy, after seeing the kind of widescreen, ocular-bleed inducing graphics that the 360 and a Sony Bravia can produce. I've already seen what this behemoth can do with just upscaled movies and I'm spoiled. My poor PS2 is relagated to a mesealy composite input and I haven't had the courage yet to put in a disk. Will Rez look ok? How about the already low texture land of GTA:SA? I might be alright with GoW and Shadow of the Colossus might even look cooler, but there are so many. At least GH doesn't care - it's just basic graphics anyway. Cube games will fair better, given that they are going through the component input and some are even setup to do 480p anyway. I'm also planning on marking Xbox games that will work on the 360, maybe with a green dot or something, so I know which ones I can use and which I can't. It will be interesting to see how many are upwardly compatible.

Gaming in July '08

2008-07-02T14:09:00.000-07:00

1 - Got in about 1/2 hour of Zelda PH. Really amazing how much they have packed into that little cartridge. Downloaded (but didn't install) patches for Diablo 2 that should make it CD-free. That's always nice.

2 - Some more Zelda at lunch. Damn, why did they make that sail-through-the-fog sequence so hard?? Played some GW:N with John. Tried a demo of Carnival Games DS...and it sucks as bad as the Wii version. (Big surprise, I know.) Note to self: Guitar Hero is not real gaming. It's just rhythmic button pressing. Played some more Zelda late into the night as I had a hard time relaxing after some junior terrorist popped our main circuit breakers around 11pm.

3 - Oh, rapture! I finally made it through that @#$% fog! Mario Kart Wii with John. Di's getting better after her Time Trial workout to open Birdo.

4 - A little Zelda here and there, and several hours of GW:N. Running joke: John says we have to play 12 hours of GW. I say that if those are FFXI hours, we'll be done in 2.

5 - Some more Zelda. I can't believe I didn't figure out that I needed to "blow" on the windmills to make them turn! Wow! What a dummy! Guess I don't "get" these new fangled gaming machines (*grumble*). Tried Super Smash Bros and can't say it was a hit. Same button mashing of the previous games. Did an interesting test with John - Mario Kart wheel vs Wavebird. On open racing, there didn't seem to be much difference. But on close maneuvers and coin or balloon courses, the advantage seemed to be with the gamepad. Also played quite a bit of GW:N. Good game. Update: Serious late night session playing (finally) Second Sight for Cube. An hour and a half of the first section and training (in that order lol) and I remember why I have mountains of games to catch up on before worrying about anything on the 360. It's truly sad to see how much detail was poured into a game like this that had a short shelf life and was, almost certainly, considered a financial disappointment. It's that legacy of poor performance that has caused the piles of corporate and focus group approved titles we see today. Cherish the past.

6 - A nice long GW:N session with John. Good fun.

7 - Aside from changing the DVD drive in my second-hand Xbox (the patient lived!), I tried Red Steel and I think I'll keep it - since it only cost about $9. Not the easiest to control, but I do like the style of the game. Also did 9 holes of Tiger. On the easy setting, it reminds me of Wii Golf, which isn't a bad thing at all. Late night run on the newly refurbished Xbox playing Conker's Bad Fur Day. This title was a good test as there are lots of loading screens early on (with progress bars) and the old drive could barely even make the game run. That old drive was (HOLY CRAP, I BETTER MAKE SURE MY HALO DISC ISN'T STILL IN IT!) in very bad shape. Why it could read Halo ok but not other games, I don't know. Might have to see about getting one more, just to have a spare around. As for the game, it's a funny and crude platformer. Not easy, but fun.

8 - Some Mario Kart Wii with John. Di has a gold wheel now! (And yes, I did leave my Halo disc in the old drive. Fortunately, taking the top off the drive gave me access to it. Good thing as I didn't find a release button.)

9 - Only about 15 minutes of Zelda at lunch. New chargers for Wii-motes came. It's going to be nice to not have to feel bad about running down batteries.

10 - Mario Kart Wii with John to test out the new Wii-mote chargers. Looks pretty good so far. After 1 1/2 hours, one showed 4 bars and the other 3. Downloaded, but not yet played, the new Trauma Center 2 demo.

11 - Off-Friday day off! Tried the TC2 demo. Lame! It was just a quick tumor removal process. Same thing I did during my short stint on the first one. Not sure what I was expecting. Maybe brain surgery!...Loaded L.A. Rush into the Xbox for a spin. A strange merging of Burnout (fast driving and crashing around the streets of LA - complete with automatic "Crashbreaker" explosions) and GTA (race from one yellow beam to the next; even had the stars in the upper right corner when you pissed off the cops; easier to lose stars however). Overall not bad. I'm disappointed with the graphics for an Xbox game. Looked like Burnout 1 stuff. Wish I could lose the crap rap music. Very much a barrio theme to the story mode...Wow! Two white dots in one day. Got some time in with Area-51 for PS2. Good shooter if a bit repetitive. Alien-mutated humans with guns! And LOTS of them. I'm still mostly crap with the aiming, but, thankfully, my teammates make up for it. Actually, there were times when I thought that if I just sat in a corner, they would do all the killing for me. Lazy, I know....GW:N with John. Knocked off 2nd mission.

12 - Enough Zelda:PH to get past the Gust Island boss (yeah!)....GW:N with John.

13 - Decided to take the wrapper of Super Mario Galaxy, if for no other reason that to open a new character in Mario Kart Wii. Very cool game, but I don't know if it was making me nauseous or not. Have to try it again....Mario Kart Wii with John. Yep, Rosilina was opened!....Late night Zelda:PH session. Damn strat guide was wrong about getting the key on the 2nd level of the Ocean King Temple. You don't have to pull the switch, but you do have to hit both orbs to get the key to fall. Still working on getting through the lower levels. Ran out of sand on my last run.

....and this is where the log ends. Sorry, folks. That wasn't working.

I had gone back and re-read some of my old posts, ones I was doing before and during my "Game-a-Week" period. What I found is that I was writing much more informative and interesting entries then; something more like mini-reviews. This "diary" format wasn't providing much more than "good game" or "seems interesting" (note: may not be actual quotes, but close enough). And face it: keeping a record of nightly play isn't something I'm going to want to read again in a month or a year. It's boring and tedious.

There is one more reason to stop this format. Originally, I was trying to convince myself I didn't need a game system from the "next/new generation" beyond my DS or Wii. Well, I will soon (very soon) have a 360 to add to my stable of gaming platforms. Birthdays and sweethearts have a way of changing things. So, I will now have to add another page to my videogame database and my count of unplayed games will jump up by 5 to just under 400. I guess I'm destined to be surrounded by virtual worlds I still need to visit.

June '08 wrap-up rap

2008-06-30T14:34:00.000-07:00

Well, as June draws to a close, I thought I'd babble a bit before the month of my 47th birthday starts.

I like the format I started this month and I think I'll continue with it (until I think of something else or just get bored of it). I don't know if it will accomplish its intended purpose of convincing me that I don't need an Xbox 360, however. July will be a tough month to hold out on. Between my b-day and a pretty good rumor that it will drop $50 the weekend just before, I may just fall victim to my own obsession. I mean, I already have 5 games for it! (Yes, I have games for a system I don't own. Sheesh!) But I think I'd rather have the TV upgrade before the game system. As this month has shown, I have so little time for real console gaming anymore unless John is in town. What would be the point?

Gaming in June '08

2008-06-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, new feature - a running (b)log of what I've played for a given month. This sprang from a need to get back to this blog with something about gaming again and a desire to justify my lack of a need for a new game system (in this case, a 360). Also, I just like "talking" about games. ;) So, here goes!

1 - GW session in the afternoon. Finally finished the first real dungeon in Zelda Phantom Hourglass (the fire one). Sucks that you always end up at the beginning of the dungeon when you die and at this point I only had 3 hearts! The drawing mechanic in the game is interesting, but if you can't hold the stylus steady you end up throwing the boomerang into walls a lot. I found using the full sized pen stylus easier.

2 - Mario Kart Wii with John. Got the Lego Indy demo working on the computer! Had to minimize and restore the program to get it to start (weird). I played it with the gamepad (only real way to do it) and it's a good game but I can't help thinking it got "content nerfed" to be more acceptable for today's PC market. I mean, doesn't Indy get to have a gun?

3 - Only got about 10 minutes on Hitman 2 for the Cube. Strange that the game looks better on it than the Xbox. I found the way out of the first mission and it looks like I must have killed just about everyone in the compound. Not very subtle lol.

4 - About 15 minutes of lunchtime play on Zelda Phantom Hourglass...and I actually got it in the game! GW session with John in the evening.

5 - Another lunchtime Zelda break (that countdown timer is going to take a little getting used to). Mario Kart Wii with John (it's always fun!). New thing seen: running over a goombah while giant sized! Downloaded demos for Pirates and Mummy, but only played a little Mummy so far. Interesting to see a demo so early before the movie is released.

6 - GW with John. Finished a really big mission for lots of points!

7 - GW with John, twice. Finished more missions.

8 - Ditto, but no missions done.

9 - The Mummy DS demo sucks; too many sudden death traps that have you right back at the start. Mario Kart Wii with John.

10 - Started playing Arkanoid DS demo. Hate that it "uses the middle", but not too bad. Can't get past the second screen. Tried stylus and pad controls; no clear winner.

11 - No gaming at all.

12 - None again, but was working on stuff for Sarah.

13 - Don't remember, but probably not much if any.

14 to 22 - Gaming vacation! With John out, we played lots of games, but not exactly the ones I expected. Biggest hits: Mario Party 8 for Wii, Pinball for Wii, Guitar Hero II and III for PS2. Tried and tossed: Raving Rabbids 2 for Wii, Excite Truck for Wii, Call of Duty 3 for Wii (looked at the Xbox version and it was MUCH better graphically, but harder to control), Mario Kart Wii (split screens were too small). Quick spins: Mario Party DS, Mario Kart DS. Missing In Action: Lego Indiana Jones (bought but not played), any games from the Xbox collection.

23 - Mario Kart Wii with John. Demoed Hulk DS game from download. Pretty much sucks.

24 - Only a little Zelda PH before bed. Got stuck in an area that was unusually hard for a Zelda game, I thought.

25 - Mario Kart Wii with John.

26 - A little Zelda PH at lunch. Worked on my games spreadsheet. According to latest figures, I have 400 games for various consoles that I've bought, but have never touched. Eeek!

27 - A little more Zelda PH at lunch and Mario Kart Wii with John. Looks like the 360 will drop $50 around the middle of July. B-day, maybe?

28 - A bit more Zelda PH (that new stylus John found works great!). Risk with John (after 2 failed attempts due to network game issues). And 9 holes of Tiger Wii with Ghost before bed. (and boy! Did I wake up with sore arms! Lots of fun, though.)

29 - Got GW Nightfall up and running with John. Pretty much the same as normal GW, but more of a dessert look. Best part is being able to share inventory and money with characters from Prophecies. What would take an ordinary character a week to get together, we had done in an hour!

30 - Well, end of the month and I only did about 10 minutes on a very old 007 game for the N64, The World is Not Enough. Man, by today's standards, did those games look bad! But it was the best they could do. Am I going to look back on PS2/Gamecube/Xbox games with the same level of "horror" when I start gaming in HD? I hope not.

Wanderings in the 64, or The 17th Piece

2008-02-25T15:03:00.000-08:00

More chess. More chess books. Better play? Maybe.

I've been playing chess (or at least knew how to play it) for nearly 4 decades. My mom taught me to play on her set which I still have fond memories of. (I think any child who is going to be introduced to the game should be done so using pieces that are not as abstract as the Staunton pieces.) From time to time, I've put chess on the top shelf of my activites. During those times I've read some books and played a handful of games. The result is that now, in my mid 40's, I have to play in the beginner rooms on the online chess rooms.

Some notes and observations:

The "social" room on a chess server seldom is.

I am beginning to see some of my faults when playing. One is that I almost always think I'm going to lose whenever I play anyone who is even remotely capable. The other is that I need to think about my opening moves with the same attention to tactics as I do the middle game. Either that or I need to really start memorizing opening books - like that's going to happen!

The perfect chess computer would be a wood board and pieces with a wireless link back to your PC where the software would run. Games would be saved on the PC and you could also link it into chess servers to play other people while sitting on your sofa or at the table. I guess a USB board that you could hook into a laptop would be almost as good.

I feel like I need to prioritize my chess book reading. I'm starting to build a decent library again and there are books that I should go through.

Different chess machines for different uses: table top ones to play against (good for quick play), PDA programs for game analysis, computer based clients to play against people online. And the occasional wood set for that true chess feel.

Pawn Moves #5: Opening moves

2008-02-11T13:45:00.000-08:00

If this keeps up, I may have to change the blog's name or start a new one. I haven't done any video gaming since my last post, unless you count on-line chess as "video gaming".

Nah, I didn't think so.

But so far, I'm still in the grip of Bobby's ghost. I've been surfing chess sites, keeping up with international tournaments, buying chess programs and books (I have to be buying something, you know), restructuring my environment to put chess materials in prominent locations, and, of course, playing chess on-line.

I've taken a slightly different approach to the books this time. At one time, I had a considerable library of chess books. Then, for whatever reason causes me to do these things, I either sold most of them or put them in an unmarked box in the garage. Under my previous ways of doing things, I would have gone to almost any lengths to find them again. Not this time. I fortunately kept the cream of the crop inside and these are now the building blocks for my new collection. I'm giving up on whatever I might or might not still have in the moldy (and slightly vermin attacked) garage. In addition, I'm going to add to it primarily from new books purchased with the frequent coupons I get from Borders and B&N. And, here's the good part, I'm actually going to read the ones I have and buy! Shocker, isn't it?

As for playing games, I've been doing mostly the turn at a time sites. It seems all the head-to-head sites are primarily for quick play. Pardon me if I want to take a few minutes and study a position!

I could go into more detail, but have to go back to the grind. Things to do, ya know.

Pawn Moves #4: Fischer's Ghost

2008-01-27T23:25:00.000-08:00

An unexpected change of direction. A new plan of attack. A farewell that awakens old feelings.

When I heard about Bobby Fischer’s passing, I was at work. I felt stunned, reading and rereading the article. Growing up, Fischer was basically my sports hero, my Babe Ruth, my Wilt Chamberlain, my Tiger Woods. Even his decline into an eccentric madness didn’t tarnish how I felt about him. He was still, to me, the greatest chess player that ever lived, or at least, lived in my time. As a silent tribute, I took the white king from a chess set I keep at work and placed it, on its side, on the tray of the white board in my office. To me, he was the fallen king.

As if infecting me like a virus, touching that king piece and remembering my feelings from those days long ago got me, I fear, back into chess. This last week I’ve done little else but check out websites for playing and reading about chess. I’ve ordered a new chess computer, dug out old books (can’t find the bulk – they might have been sold – but thankfully, I kept some of the best ones), ordered new ones from Amazon, and bought two new programs – Cyber Chess (a cheesy and cheap looking program) and Fritz Grandmaster Challenge (I always wanted to get a Fritz chess program). Both were $10 value packs from Fry’s so the investment was minor. The new chess computer (sort of a chess dedicated PDA) was a bit more, coming in at $45.

Actual gaming has been somewhat less than the “material collection” but that’s always how it starts. I’ve played one game on Yahoo (someone thought I’d fall for a fool’s mate) and won. A DS game went somewhat less well. And I’ve got a game going on my Kasparov mini.

How long will this last? Hard to say. Probably not going to get much video gaming in while it lasts, but maybe absence makes the controller grow fonder.

Fossil Findings #3: Playstation Retro

2008-01-17T08:13:00.000-08:00

Lost changes to this post just as I was saving. Damn web editor. Just going to post basics and go to bed. :(

Games Played this Week: PS1

Deathtrap Dungeon - crap
Tomb Raider II - crap
Resident Evil: Survivor - clunky, but fun, like a lot of RE games.
The Italian Job - Didn't know it was a Rockstar game.
Tomb Raider III - crap
Apocalypse - Robotron movie starring Bruce Willis
JP:Lost World - Dino-platformer

opening cinematic vs in-game
ps1 controller - no thumbsticks means no camera control
logitech controller - no directional buttons
PS1 pushed into 3D

From Russia with Love (PS2) - Master Chief in a tux.

Games Bought this Week: None

Fossil Findings #2: Notes work

2008-01-13T23:00:00.000-08:00

Can't tell you how many times I tried to come up with new names for this blog entry. Some of the rejected ones were: Notes from the Fossil Pit, Fossil Diggs *wink*, and my truly low point, Gaming to (or with) the Oldies. The name Fossil Findings feels right, at least for now.

I tried something this week that seems to work well - keeping a running entry open and putting in little bits to remind myself what to write Sunday night. Going to keep that up, for sure.

I realized this week that this year will be the first that I won't buy anymore Xbox or Gamecube games. With no new ones being made and my collection containing just about everything there is to get for them, why buy more? As for PS2, there are maybe a few here and there, but I'm not figuring too many. Probably going to be more DS than anything else, with PC second and Wii third. Have to see what the tally is at year's end.

I had some fun this weekend following the exploits of some guys who were trying to play 4 Zelda games (Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess) in 48 hours! Unfortunately, they didn't make it (too much trouble with Mask between lock ups and it being a really hard game), but their "donate to our pizza" fund raised over $1100 for Child's Play!! I can't help but feel slightly envious of these gamers; if I were a college student now, I'd have gone for something like this in half a heartbeat. I'm looking forward to their next attempt.

Games played this week:

Advance Wars (DS) - Started in on this as the new AW:DoR is coming out in a week or two. The DS is the perfect platform for a game like this. And if you can get by the fact the every continent is named for a Greek letter and the armies are all named for colors, it's a fun story lol.

Sims 2 (GBA) - My lunch-time pastime. A very interesting game that is more adventure than Sims, but that's actually a good thing. I named my character Paris and dressed her mostly in pink.

Halo (Xbox) - The perennial favorite to play while Sarah is in the shower. Someday in '08 I'll finish this one. (And why is it I can make one-shot kills on aliens by hitting them over the head with the weapon I'm holding, but I have to pump them full of lead otherwise?)

Games bought this week:

Animal Crossing (DS)- Gamestop had a 20% off coupon and I figured that this was a good game to get with it.

(Almost bought World in Conflict since it was on sale for $30, but chickened out at the register. Alternate history RTS isn't really my kind of game and I already have a ton to play.)

GotW #1: It begins...

2008-01-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my first Games of the Week of '08. This was going to be WCBP, which stood for What's Chessasaur Been Playing, but that just sounded dorky. (Ok, GotW isn't a lot better, but I have to go with something.)

This installment (done on Sunday night now, instead of Monday afternoon) is a bit of a catch up on last year, so more here than usual:

Midnight Club II XBox- Not a bad little racer. Typically tight Xbox controls, GTA style radio blaring, and (strangely) GT style indestructible cars. That last one was a bit of a let down. This was more of a "test drive" for MCIII and my first exposure to the franchise.

House of the Dead III XBox - Wanted to play a bit of quick zombie blasting and went for this sans light gun. It was actually easier to get multiple headshots (all the heads were on the same plane) but much harder to get bonus items and fight the bosses.

Scorpion King GC - Got this a long time ago for the Cube. The movie wasn't too bad and the game got decent reviews. Basically a good experience, but I worry that save points are few and far between. I had to go through a lengthy tutorial, a test, then get several fights into the first mission before I found a save point. Lots of moves to remember. Not the kind of game that is going to be easy to go back to. Camera was a bit hard to control too.

Call of Duty GC - One word: ugh!. This was a console "port" of the fantastic PC game, and frankly, they screwed it up. Crap graphics and poor sound (didn't the designers know what an SMG should sound like? Hint: not like a propeller turning in water) Also, why start with the Stalingrad battle? If this is going to a US audience, why start with the Russkies? Doesn't help in setting the mood. This is one game I could get rid of and not miss.

Final Fantasy X PS2 - My "AAA" Game of the Month. Just got into this (about 1 1/2 hours). I forgot I played a little of the beginning in a demo many years ago. This is one pretty trippy game. Battles aren't really random, which is good, but starting the game with something like 300+ hit points makes you feel like you are playing someone else's character that they started.

Gametap - I got around to playing on Gametap this week and I think I'm hooked. I don't know how they can do what they do (allow users to download games from a library of 70+ free ones, or a giant library of others for $5-$10 a month). I also don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing for gaming. Basically, you only get to rent games (you can buy them, but it's relatively expensive). On the other hand, games that "died out" years ago have been given new life. And the interface is impressive - if the game plays in full screen mode, you'd never even know you were on Gametap. I've been into the free ones (tried Daikatana and found out just how bad it was, but found out good Cannon Fodder was) and might go for the 1 year deal for $60. Not "cheap", but the same I would spend on 3 games at my magic price point.

Oh, and speaking of spending, I did a little math on what I dropped last year on games - just games, mind you. Not controllers, guides, etc. Also, I excluded games I bought as gifts for Sarah and didn't figure in ones I bought on eBay. The total came to basically $2000! OMG!

2K7 Game-a-Week: The Wrap-up

2007-12-23T23:23:00.000-08:00

As I start writing this, there are only a handful of days left in '07 (if your hand could hold 8 days). Looking back on the 2K7 posts I've made, I'm struck by how few there actually are that kept to my "vision". Things came up and getting around to playing that new game every week sort of fell apart. But, I have to say that at least I enjoyed the games I did get in and it's probably more than what I would have played if I had started with no plan at all.

So, for 2008, I've come up with a different idea (not necessarily better, just different). In my "collection", there are games that I really should have played by now. Games that fueled forum posts, graced magazine covers, and landed on numerous "piles of shame". As I seem determined not to be dragged into the next generation of gaming, I think it's especially important that I tackle each of these before moving on to more high definition pastures.

For the most part, I haven't picked any particular order for these. Only a few, like October's fare, for example, fit a particular theme. I also decided to go on a monthly schedule as these games warrant more than what I can manage in a week's time.

Jan. Final Fantasy X (PS2)
Feb. Ico (PS2)
Mar. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time (Xbox)
Apr. Beyond Good & Evil (Xbox)
May Metal Gear Solid 2 (PS2)
Jun. God of War (PS2)
Jul. Shadow of the Colossus (PS2)
Aug. Splinter Cell (Xbox)
Sep. Halo 2 (Xbox)
Oct. Manhunt (Xbox) \ Fatal Frame (Xbox)
Nov. Okami (PS2)
Dec. Devil May Cry 1, 2 & 3 (PS2)

All year: Animal Crossing (Cube)

I haven't put in DS or GBA games as they can be played at off-times at work. These are ones that I have to be at a console for the experience. While there aren't any Gamecube games on the list, having Animal Crossing be a year long run seemed like a good way to experience all the assorted holiday treats it provides.

And since every other source of on-line gaming goodness is doing their End of the Year specials, I humbly present my own:

Major stories of 2007:

A Wii Comes Home - Yes, this was the year I dove into a platform that I expressed perhaps more hate for than the DS. Insanely, the Wii is just as hard to get this Xmas as last, selling nearly a million units in November alone! Since its original release it has never been "easy" to obtain. I got mine by being in Gamestop at the right time. And I've been very happy with the purchase. The Wii is a nice, simple kind of gaming fun. It may herald the end of the "serious" video game, but I have a feeling that the last generation was the final bastion for that style anyway.

Still no HD - Unless things change dramatically, there will be no 360 (or even less chance, a PS3) in my corral of game devices. Hell, I already run 5, so why do I need more? Basically the problem is price and selection - the Premium is $350, but I really would prefer the Elite, which is another $100. Five hundred dollars (or more) for a game system (assuming tax and some accessories) is just ridiculous. I'll get a 360 when I can get a Premium system for $250.

A DS for mom - Yup, seemed like a long shot, but she likes it. Plays the Clubhouse games during commercials while watching TV. I guess Ninny's plan to make a system even casual gamers can play didn't go so badly.

A change of MMO's - This year saw a major shift - one away from FFXI. We had come to a halt as far as what our characters could do. Funny how easy it was to walk away from 2 1/2 years of building up a character. We've started into Guild Wars (after a brief detour into Dungeon Runners) and that seems to be going very well.

End of Year Collection Tally - The total number of my games (PS2, Xbox, Cube, DS, GBA, Wii, SNES, N64, PS1) as of the end of 2007 is 880. And I still need to add in my Genesis and original Gameboy games. Good grief!

Game of the Year - Mind you, this is "my" game of the year, as in what game did I play this year that I had the most fun/best experience with. The nominee's for Chessasaur's Game of the Year 2007 are:

Bioshock (PC) for presenting a vision of an undersea city gone mad
Guild Wars (PC) for showing me there can be beauty and fun again in an MMO
Call of Duty (PC) for putting me in the blasted streets of Stalingrad and caring about my virtual squad mates
Wii Sports (Wii) for pure bowling and golfing joy
Oblivion (PC) for a rich sword and sorcery world (but with ugly people)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (DS) for letting me touch a dream

And the winner is...........Wii Sports! As much as the other games stand out, Wii Play was the portal into a new type of gaming. It was more than going through the simulated motions. It was lots of OMG moments when a pin or a ball did something I didn't expect and I broke that 4th wall and was part of the game.

Congratulations to all the contenders and let's see what 2008 brings!

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #48: Home stretch for 2007

2007-12-03T09:35:00.000-08:00

With the last bits of 2007 running out of that giant hourglass in the void, a few changes have occurred in my gaming landscape.

Dungeon Runners has pretty much run it's course. While it was a great experience at first, it hasn't been able to maintain our interest. Too many reused tilesets for levels, too many reused monsters, not enough variety of combat situations, and an increasingly disappointing return on King's coins. All in all, a good 3 months game that we should have cut off before the credit cards got charged again. Oh, well. I guess it's ok in the "supporting the little folks of gaming" sort of way.

In its stead we have taken up Guild Wars in a big way. A bit frustrating at first because of the abrupt apocalyptic change in the world, we went back and prepared better and are now a much more effective fighting force. (As with most RPG's, a magic user is still basically a wimp and a warrior with a sword is a far better damage dealer.)

I've had a chance to run through the Call of Duty 4 demo and for the most part, it's very much just an updated CoD 2. I seem to get shot a lot more than CoD2 and there are more people yelling at me because I guess every soldier in the modern army has a headset on. When given a choice for an Xmas present between this game and one where I get to shoot zombies with the Wii-mote (Resident Evil: Umbrella Chronicles), it was an easy choice. Zombies FTW!

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #45: The more they stay the same...

2007-11-12T13:55:00.000-08:00

It's been 2 weeks since my last post, and, frankly, not much has changed. I'm still playing Halo, FFIII and Dungeon Runners. I think I got some time with a couple other games, but nothing to make note of (just sort of made sure the ones I bought worked ok). I'm staying on budget, for the most part - a welcome relief to the general flow, I'm sure. However, Black Friday will be here in less than 2 weeks. Will a 360 actually make it onto the credit cards? I saw a Mass Effect trailer the other night and it looks amazing, so I can't rule another console purchase out. Hard to believe that the 360 has been out for 2 years already.

One interesting note with FFIII: What facination do Japanese game designers have with credits? I was playing what could be considered the first chapter in the game last night and when I beat this Djinn, credits starting running on the screen! I couldn't imagine that the game was over already (and it wasn't, of course), so why did they put them in there like that? I saw something similar when I played the Hamtaro game. That game had 3 sets of credits depending on how far you played the game. Too wierd!

I've gotten back into gaming podcasts, but I'm not forgetting my collection of games for visions of "newer and better" experiences. I'm just using them as a means to stay up to date and because they are fun to listen to.

With the end of the year nearly upon us, I've been thinking about plans for next year's gaming. At this point, I'm thinking about dedicating each month of 2008 to a different Triple-A title. In other words, play games that any self-respecting gamer has already played. I'll have to work on a list and maybe even print up a calendar. Details to follow so watch this space.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week# 43: Info dump

2007-10-29T14:55:00.000-07:00

I had hoped to get to this blog again sooner, but time (and fires) had other plans. Basically I just wanted to reconnect with this journal and put a few items down for posterity.

Game-wise, I've been playing a few different titles - sort of how people say they are reading several books at one time. When Halo 3 came out, I decided it was time to really try to make some progress with Halo 1. For the most part, I have. I've actually gotten to the point of rescuing the captain and finding out that the structure floating in space is called *gasp* Halo! So that's where the name came from. Who knew?

On my DS I've been playing Final Fantasy III. Having the DS is great - I can play for 15-20 minutes before bed, while I'm already in bed and can close it up, put it on the head board and go to sleep without getting up again. The game itself is well made, but I will echo the critics in saying that the touch screen is very under used. I normally don't even take out the stylus. This isn't really a bad thing, however. Running an RPG with just buttons is fine with me.

I got out my old (very old by game standards) Zelda Oracle of Seasons CGB cart and am playing it in my trusty SP. And oh, does it look sweet! The colors they used were terribly muted by the Color Gameboy's hardware (not that the CGB was a bad unit - no such thing; the original GBA was bad!). I will likely have to get another SP to hang onto for the future. Nothing else plays the original Gameboy games in such glory (except the Gameboy player, to a degree).

Online, we are still playing at Dungeon Runners. Nice to play for an hour or so at a time. Nothing too hard or too frustrating, but I do wish it had a bit more diversity of monsters and tile sets.

One thing I have had to change is my videogame addiction spending habits - in short, I was running amok with the credit cards. A hundred dollars a week (or more!) is just not acceptable. And, what I realized is that, I've already got a mountain of games to play that represent some of the best there is to play! Everytime I look at my collection, I frequently see a set of 3 or more games, that I'd love to play that have never seen the inside of my consoles. What's the point of adding to that pile, especially if the games I'm adding are inferior to what I already have? So, I'm running on a budget now. I have to really plan my next purchase instead of just buying whatever looks good. With the coming holiday season (and glut of new releases), that's going to take some restraint. I know my first purchase post-budgeting is going to be Manhunt 2, but I still can't decide if it's going to be for the Wii or PS2. At this point, probably the Wii. (Interesting note: Will Wright, game dev master god, was recently quoted as saying the Wii was the only real "next generation" system, because the others were just graphically enhanced versions of what was already on the market. And ya know what, that's why I got a Wii! There isn't anything the PS3 or 360 can do that can't be done on the respective previous platforms, just in lower resolutions. I remember thinking that at least the Wii wasn't just another game-pad machine.)

Well, that's it for now. With any luck, I'll be able to restart my real Game-a-Week program in the near future - 2008 if nothing else!

2K7 Game-a-week Week#39: But not really...

2007-09-24T15:01:00.001-07:00

I have to admit that my "Game-a-Week" plan has fallen apart. Not only am I not working on a title a week, but the posts aren't even always a weekly event or directed toward a single game. Well, better to get something out then nothing.

I wanted to mention something that happened about a month ago. Our merry band of FFXI characters have been given a timeout. The three of us decided to halt our subscriptions as the game was getting to be too much - too much "work" to get up in levels after 71, too much time to get anything done, too much risk in getting killed, too much trouble to get a group of people together to do things we couldn't do ourselves. So, we walked away and by the end of November we have to decide if it's worth re-upping to keep our characters alive. It's quite possible they will be kept on the servers, but there are no guarantees. In the meantime, we have gotten into Dungeon Runners, a sort of Dungeon Siege meets WoW-lite. Lots of fun, but not a lot of depth. We all have copies of Guild Wars and Neverwinter Nights 2 that will probably see action soon.

Halo 3 comes out tomorrow and, like many recent video game events, I'm on the shoulder of the road, watching it go by. While I do have two current gen systems (the Wii and DS), they aren't what you would call gaming powerhouses on the order of the 360 or PS3. But I find myself still digging in, content in my trenches with last gen games that I am continuing to buy.

I really don't feel like I need the new systems. They cost too much, the games are too expensive, and unless you have an HD TV, they don't look that good. I got the Wii because I liked the motion control idea and the online aspect, even if I only get a few of the offered titles. Is the Wii contributing to the diluting of the hardcore game industry? Probably. Does that make me complicit? In a small way, yes. Does that bother me? No, as this movement will continue as long as the money trail is there to follow.

I've been in a similar position in the past, namely when the N64 came out, and then later when the PS2/Xbox/Cube era started. However, I think this time is different (famous last words) because the technology of the past is still very good, at least by my standards. There's also the fact that I have amassed a library of hundreds of titles that I haven't played. I don't need to go buy a new game; just pick one off the shelf without a dot on it (or one that hasn't been opened lol). The Wii and DS give me some connection to newly marketed games (can't resist all the advertising) but even those are in the affordable range.

So, Halo 3, go save the universe without me. Maybe I'll finally finish Halo 1 or even open Halo 2!

2K7 Game-a-Week Week# 37: Game Retreat #2

2007-09-17T13:49:00.000-07:00

For the second time this year, my brother came to visit and it was a week long GameFest! We got him hooked on the Wii via Wii Sports and were even able to find one at a Circuit City that he could take back with him. Our game for the trip was Rayman's Raving Rabbids which actually only lasted about 3 or 4 days. The mini-games were very funny, but they reused some too much and others, that looked interesting, were just quick one offs. A very enjoyable game, but not one with much replayability and, I'm sorry to say, had a pretty lame ending. (Did the programmers just get tired at the end or did they run out of time?) We are planning on putting it up on eBay soon. Tiger Woods '07 for the Wii got quite a bit of play too, but I didn't do very well until I got some tips from my "golf pro" brother. We also got into some paper games like Lost Cities, Dungeon Quest (which I want to make a computer version of), and a cash-less version of Monopoly. Add in a fantastic Indian cuisine dinner and it was a great vacation!

Resident Wii-vil FTW

2007-08-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

Last night I shook off a little zombie monkey that had been on my back since I bought RE4 for the Wii - specifically, could I play it.

My sole experience with RE4 had been the demo disk, which concludes with a frantic battle in the village. On the Cube, I was able to complete it, but only after a number of defeats (including getting my head chain-sawed off) and the overwhelming feeling that I had just been damn lucky to finish. It's a hard fight.

Knowing that and how "quirky" the Wii controls are, almost made me skip getting the game altogether. Even after I bought it, I was afraid I wouldn't be coordinated enough to stay alive while all the villagers were trying to kill me. So last night I decided to see and I'm happy to report that (after fewer deaths than on the Cube) I was able to survive the onslaught. The biggest advantage was the aiming - trying to aim with the control sticks on the Cube was never very easy. With the Wii-mote, I could target much quicker in tight spots like the bottom floor of the tower. Also, not having independent camera control made it a little easier, I think. Less chance of looking where I couldn't fire. The "quick knife" function is very useful too - for fighting and for quickly opening boxes and barrels.

So, the smelly little ape is gone and I will have to see how much farther I can go without losing my head.

On Older Games: Echoes in the Night

2007-08-08T14:55:00.000-07:00

I had some time last night for a little pre-bed gaming and decided upon a handful of PS1 titles. My thought was that I would go through a few titles, figuring I wouldn't spend much time on any of them. Just at random, I started with a game called Echo Night.

I didn't get to any of the others before having to finally shutdown around midnight.

Made by the same group that created "King's Field" (NOT a resounding endorsement), EN is a first person survival horror game that looks all of its 8 years old. Since "game years" are much like "dog years", the game looks more like it is 25 years old. Textures are muddy, character models look like they were carved from a block of wood with an axe, and movement speed is something just above a crawl. By even PS2 standards, it was a graphical mess. So why did I keep playing it?

Because the story had me hooked (and I didn't get stuck on any of the puzzles). Take a story about a lost cruise ship, throw in some ghosts and a few flashbacks, mix with some family intrigue and I wasn't able to stop, even though I knew it was probably one of the crudest games I could play short of Space Invaders.

It all got me to thinking about the merit of playing older games. How much of the value of a game is graphics and special effects, and how much is story? I know I have a limited amount of time to play games and a huge collection to pick from. Most of the games I have are from platforms with vastly better visual quality then the PS1 games, but I have always been unable to be prejudiced against older consoles. Does that just make me foolish or a dedicated gamer?

2K7 Game-a-Week #30: Short term results

2007-07-30T14:26:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I cut myself off from the constant flood of game news and podcasts. (During this time I also was literally cut off from it at work with the installation of new content filters. Premonition? Maybe.) And the result?....Calm, mostly.

Without the repeated bombardment of previews, scoops, interviews, press event coverage and whatnot, I'm feeling a renewed fondness for my existing game collection that I think I was starting to lose. The only downside is that with the exception of the DS and Wii, I don't really have much on the other platforms left to shop for.

** Insert a one week break here. Thought I posted this already.. **

When I said I didn't have much to shop for, I wasn't being entirely honest. While nothing "new" is being put out on Xbox1, Gamecube, and (for the most part) PS2, I always seem to find some title that I have missed and want. For example, I got Black and Delta Force BHD for the Xbox, and Th3 Plan and Amplitude for the PS just these last couple of days. I still haunt eBay and just got an old copy of Fear Effect along with 4 PS2 titles I never had. Sometimes I think my standards have slipped a little and it often seems I buy games more like a stamp collector than a gamer. The Collection now stands at (counting PS2, Xbox1, Cube, N64, SNES, GBA, DS, PS1) just under 800.

The latest MMO we are playing is Dungeon Runners. It is a blast! Like a cross between the old Runescape and Dungeon Siege. It has replaced any thoughts of FFXI which was starting to get way too annoying. If I were Morbo, I'd consider getting a good retirement plan setup - quick!

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #28: The Transformation of an E3 Epiphany

2007-07-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

I'm hoping this doesn't go on too long as it isn't what you would call "earth shaking news" (that happened in Japan today).

It all started with last week's E3, or rather the gaming media's coverage of the new "mini-" E3 up in Santa Monica. The websites and podcasts have been dishing up a Hometown Buffet of items on new games, the war between the console makers, and how great the future of gaming will be. As a dedicated gamer (or nut, take your pick), something was becoming clearly obvious to me. My epiphany was that like it or not, costly or not, I was going to have to have an Xbox 360 AND a PS3 if I didn't want to miss all the incredible gaming experiences that were building on the horizon. I felt this was going to be a fact of life as important as eating McDonalds french fries - you could go without them, but would you really call that living?

That same night (or the next), I got a chance to play a game I got from Gameworld - the old Transformers game for PS2. I haven't had a chance to see the new movie, but I saw that the old game had pretty good reviews and I found a nice copy for a decent price (complete with manual, of course). I had a bit of difficulty at first (one of the games that maps several features to the shoulder buttons), but after an hour or so, I was fairly hooked. Nice 3D graphical environments, good selection of weapons even on the early missions, decent controls, good camera, and I could turn Optimus Prime into a semi-truck. That night, lying in bed, I thought about something that is frequently not far from my mind - how the hell am I going to play (much less finish) all the games I've bought. I have hundreds of titles that I haven't ever even booted up, that I would probably like just as much as Transformers - probably more.

Then it hit me - I already have my Library of Eden. The quality of the PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube games is more than sufficient to transport me to other worlds. And they are the zenith of what I've come to expect from a videogame. I grew up with games that were self contained without downloadable content, friends lists, or (worse) patches. Then why did I feel like I was missing out not having a 360 or PS3? Because I'm flooding myself with podcasts, and websites, and magazines that are all talking about the new systems and their games!

That's why I'm changing a few things. For now, I'm staying away from gaming podcasts completely and going back to MP3-books. Also, I'm only visiting gaming websites for review info and to see what is releasing for the week. What I'm not changing is trying to get in as much play time as possible.

(I should mention that while I did feel it "necessary" to get a Wii, it doesn't really fall into the same category as the 360 and PS3. It's cheaper, doesn't need HD, and because of the motion controls, it offers a different experience than the other consoles.)

So, I'll see if this relieves some of my "next gen" anxiety. I'll never say never when it comes to something new, but for now I'm happy with the "old gen".

Quick Bits: We all got Promy's done on Saturday with the help of Jinxy, Skorn, and Hell! All 3 done in about 3 hours....Playing Super Paper Mario on the Wii. I have to admit, they did a great job with the controls. It wouldn't have been as much fun on the Cube....Doing a little GTA GBA. Overhead view is ok, but not great....Also playing a little Lego Star Wars for GBA. Nice to see that the levels are different, but it gets a little too repetitive sometimes.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #27: Where do Wii go from here?

2007-07-09T14:08:00.000-07:00

It happened so suddenly, I didn't even have time to waffle. I was in Gamestop and they had them on a Thursday during my lunch break. Not with bundles, just on their $249.99 own. It was now or who knew when. So now it's official.

I have a Wii.

"What??", you cry. "The lone wolf Wii hater has given up and joined the sheep?!?"

I'll admit it's a little hard to explain. I have wanted a "new" system, but the idea of dropping $600-$700 for a 360 or a PS3 (after tax and games) just seemed ridiculous. The Wii is a bargain at $200 (if you figure out the pack in game) and it has some features that other's don't, like built-in wireless network support. There have been some games I have wanted (like Super Paper Mario and the Wii version of RE4) plus more on the way - ones that are Nintendo exclusives. I was also attracted to the online concept, admittedly not as robust as Xbox Live, but not as annoying. And some of it might be the continuing hype and lack of availability (even after 8 months, it's still almost impossible to find unless you get lucky like I did). We covet that which we can't have (or something like that).

But even after I bought it, the Wii sat under my desk for 3 weeks before I opened it. I felt that if I broke the invisible seal (it, oddly enough, wasn't actually sealed), I'd be joining what may be a regression in videogame quality and content. This system is becoming so wildly popular that cut rate developers will be falling over each other so fast, trying to get something out on the shelves to sell to unsuspecting "casual gamers", that we could see a recurrence of the Crash of '83. These titles (some of which are already showing up) would be the kind of inoffensive and vacuous tripe that not even the most regular church-going soccer mom could object to. And with an install base in the millions, almost anything that has a hint of consumer awareness with the Walmart crowd should sell enough to make publishers green-light virtually any dreck.

Eventually, it was setup or take back time - I took the red pill and fell down the rabbit hole. It isn't Wonderland, but it's not bad.

Packed like a fancy tea set from Tokyo, you can't escape the aesthetic quality of the system. It has the outward look and feel of expensive Apple components. The console itself feels like no space inside was wasted. Even the external power supply is modest in size and completely encased in a neutral colored plastic to further distance itself from view. Setup, both unit and software was as simple as anything you'd expect from Nintendo - in other words, click, plug, power, go. The much maligned (by me) remote had an almost eerie quality to the way it just slightly vibrated each time I moved to a different key on the on-screen keyboard - not unlike the feel you'd get running your fingertip across a real one. In no time at all, my Wii was communicating with the Nintendo mothership and all was as smooth as Japanese silk.

Unlike the nearly archival quantity of games I have for other systems, I own only 4 so far for the Wii, not counting a game I downloaded. Instead of getting games just because they were cheap, I decided to go with the top titles for the system - something I will try to uphold during what is certain to be a holiday season of quick cash-in shovelware and drastic discounting of titles that didn't do so well at launch. I may make liberal use of Gamestop's return policy to try titles that have questionable control formats, like driving games. (One thing Ninny needs to work on is downloadable demos.)

My game time with the Wii has been extremely enjoyable. The much maligned (by me again) Wii Sports has been lots of fun for me and Ghosty, plus Super Paper Mario, while originally bemoaned as a stolen Gamecube title (by me yet again!) admittedly works better on the Wii. RE4 is taking some getting used to, but I'm working on it. And Wii Play...well, it has it's good and bad points, but I needed the extra remote anyway.

One thing I really like about the Wii is that for the first time in console progression, a technology hasn't just been tossed out the window. By this I mean, the Gamecube was (and still is) a very powerful and competent game console. I think some people forget that during the fight between PS2, Xbox and Gamecube, the 'cube was considered better than the PS2 in overall performance. Gamecube's biggest problem was that it was #3 in a 3 man race - a position once in, it was never able to get out of. It was good to see the little ATI logo on the outside of the Wii, like a symbol that the Gamecube's technology will live on.

I'm not trying to make up for my previous disdain for the system. What was said, is said. But I'm going to keep playing and enjoying the system. I applaud Nintendo for making an affordable system that has maintained a hold on a proven platform and is centered on games. Microsoft and Sony seem to be busier with making their systems into Trojan horses, to be rolled into your living rooms in the hopes of funneling your media budget into their corporate coffers. Now, if they just make a Wii version of the new Burnout, I might not get wooden wheel marks on the carpet this fall.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #23: Ch-ch-ch-changes...

2007-06-11T14:22:00.000-07:00

Alternately, I had considered calling this blog "The Pitfall of PC Gaming", but I liked the song reference better.

Some changes are in the wind for my late night gaming sessions, as I may not have ready access to my PC into the wee hours of the night anymore. At first I thought this was a bad thing, but I've been rolling it over in my aging gray matter and have come up with the thought that it isn't that bad. Why? Because for the most part, when i sit down to game on the PC, I'm more often than not, distracted by that 3000 pound gorilla - the internet. Many nights have been lost in aimless wandering around the endless expanse of words and pictures, while time ticks away and my games go unplayed. Conversely, if I power off my computers early and only have the consoles to play, I *gasp* actually play some games. I can't surf on a PS2, Xbox, or Cube. Even the DS, while having a basic web browser, is only really for playing (Go Pokemon Diamond!). So, while my gaming may have been focused on PC for awhile, I may have to redirect myself to the piles of console games I've built up. Hardly a tough burden to bear.

I did get to Oblivion this week, installing it and seeing where my save games were. Now, however, I've become interested in creating faces that look like celebrities using the editor. Not that it makes the game any different, but maybe a bit more fun.

Lots to do, so I have to cut it short here.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #22: Before too much more time passes...

2007-06-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Well, this post isn't as far from the last as it was from the previous (was that in English?), so that's saying something. Again, however, I can only update in bits and pieces since I haven't committed myself to a particular game (yet):

We all made 70 in FFXI last week, and have almost all beat Maat. The Black Mage battle is a bitch and our little Mews is taking a pounding. In fact, I almost wanted to beat him up when I saw him at Kaiser this morning. Had to be him; same blue clothes, white beard and blue seaman's cap.
I've actually started looking for a Wii. I realized this week that it's only a matter of time before I get one. The price is right, the graphics are good (even if they only look like the 'Cube ones), and there are some games I wouldn't mind playing on it. Hearing about the Mortal Kombat finishing moves made me think there's something for me there after all. Now if I can only get lucky from Amazon again (no sales tax).
Have been playing more Pokemon Diamond. Good game, but I do wish they had put more touch screen interaction in it. I added a Nerf Armor to my DS Lite which makes it bigger than the old phatty but much easier on the hands to hold. Plus the neon green is easy to spot.
Finished up my hardware upgrades. I now have as much power as I can squeeze out of the P4 system (pretty much doubled my 3DMark score) and I added a 300gb hard drive to the AMD utility system, which is good as I've gotten back into newsgroup lurking. I have to be a little careful how much time I let that suck up. You can download crap forever if you're not careful.

That about covers all I can think of now. As for a particular game, I'm going to try and get Oblivion installed and start playing it. After all, it was that game that prompted me to upgrade my deck in the first place.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #20: Been a long time...

2007-05-21T14:03:00.000-07:00

How over a month has passed since my last post, I'll never know. Part of the problem has been rushed days and a lack of access to my favorite blogging spot - namely one of the lesser used labs. I haven't had a fixed plan for these past weeks, so I'm just going to do a quick catch up on various game-wise things I've been doing:

If I've had a game this week (and last) it's been Call of Duty. As a shooter, CoD is a blast to play. It has an authentic feel while still keeping a war-movie atmosphere without being too detailed or punishing. The parts I've played as a Russian soldier are my favorites. Fighting in the ruins of Stalingrad is a markedly different vibe than stone corridors with crates and barrels. Like the little bit of CoD2 I played, I realize that my part in a real war would have been that of "causality". The other thing that I get from this game is a certain morale conflict. Often, my inaction in moving forward prompts another of my fellow soldiers to go first and often get shot. Should I have moved first and taken the hit? Should the game dock me points for letting my teammates take lead over me? Don't know.
FFXI continues with our main dudes (and dudette) reaching a staggering 69! Last night was a bit of a downer, though. I pulled what I thought was one Tragopan, but it was really 2 creatures, one on top of the other. Worse, we died in front of a bunch of other players, one of which tried to wake up the extra bird Mews put a Sleep on. Not much we could do except come up with better ways to handle a similar situation in the future.
I went through my PC games collection, the one I keep in 2 CaseLogic books. I decided to extract just the games I wanted to really play and put them in a smaller case. Well, out of 2 200+ cases, I came up with less than 80 discs. Yes, I have alot of filler in my collection.

Well, invaders at the gates - gotta go do some work.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #14 - The rest of it and Spring Cleaning

2007-04-09T14:06:00.001-07:00

Well, not much more to add. Been a busy week. I do want to say that after a few nights of Puzzle Quest my feeling toward the game has gone from mild interest...to out and out hate! While I do think the idea of putting a Magic the Gathering style spin on Bejeweled is interesting, I was not ready for the difficulty level. How do you take a nice, laid-back, solitaire style game and turn it into a vehicle of ego crushing on a Godzilla-sized scale? Anyhow, it and a couple of other demos were deleted from my computer last night. Gone as well were Penumbra (ok, but a bit pricey at $20 for the first episode) and Restricted Area (it's future Diablo, I get it). The next to go will probably be C&C3 - just a bit too hardcore RTS for me at this point. I still want to put some time in on Company of Heroes before it goes.

Tomorrow I will probably end up getting the Collector's edition of Oblivion from Mecca. I have a credit (or will have after returning the crappy wireless keyboard I got - no scroll lock key???) and this edition is starting to get harder to get. I'm hoping my upgraded deck will handle it better, plus there are a number of new patches. I knew I would rebuy it at some point, but I thought it would be for the 360. That now seems unlikely. The more I hear about what is going on with the new consoles, the less interested I am. Maybe I'm not the target audience anymore (oh, big shock there, Mr. Pushing Fifty). Well, the upgrades I'm making will get me through this year and then I will get a whole new rig in 2008 - one that will do DirectX 10 when games for it will start looking (we hope) amazing.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #13 (and some of #14): The Strategy of Demos

2007-04-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

I missed my usual post time this week because my little hideaway was invaded by other users. Oh well. It's not like there was a lot to talk about. I still haven't committed myself to a particular title. However, I have been playing a few demos, mostly to see if the games were worth getting.

Two of the demos (C&C 3 and Company of Heroes) are RTS games, a genre I've never really played much. That's odd in a way, considering my wargaming background. What I realized is that one of the basic tenants of RTS gaming (building troops from resource points) isn't a facet of wargaming I ever got into. My wargames were more "here are your troops, and there are the reinforcements that you will get if you survive until that turn". I kind of wish I could find a game that was more like that.

I tried the C&C 3 demo as the full game was on sale this week. After trying it, I think I would rename it P&A - for Pester & Annoy. During the first mission (not the tutorial, mind you), I was constantly hearing (or seeing via video pop-ups) about what units to build, where to move them, warnings of incoming troops, new objectives to take, new parts of the map that were opening up, and on and on. The Company of Heroes demo was better and I still have some more to play on it. I think they got me when I was able to bring in an artillery strike on some advancing German troops. Nothing says fun like big explosions and craters!

Also tried a demo for game I hadn't heard of before, Restricted Area. Sort of Diablo meets Blade Runner. An OK game, but not great. Might get it if I find it cheap. The bad part: it's published by the same house that released Psychotoxic. Yuck!

In other news, Microsoft lost my business with the release of the Xbox Elite. Making it black and boosting the HD to 120gb isn't enough to justify $80 more when they left out any other improvements (wireless net, quieter DVD, HD-DVD, better CPU chip). Of course, with that one out, I won't want the old 20gb version unless they drop it to around the price of the core. And all the units are still hundreds of dollars! I figured that getting an Elite and Burnout 5 (when it is released at the expected price of $60) would run about $583! That's just too much. Guess the "next/now generation" of consoles will have to make do without me.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #12: The Upgrade Game

2007-03-26T14:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, so this isn't a real game, but it's what I've been playing this week.

My main computer, Wintermute, has hit the age where the best components are now just short of hitting the surplus bins. This means that for about $300, I got a graphics card and CPU that will provide the maximum performance from the system. Any more improvement would require a new system and that is something I don't want to get into right now. (Having to buy for DX10 and Vista would suck. Not buying for them would be foolish.)

You might guess from this that I'm pretty deep into PC gaming again - and you'd be right. Of course, I spent nearly all this week looking for parts and/or finding utilities to analyze my system or run benchmarks (found a great site that evaluates your PC against game requirements - which is what kicked off this upgrade frenzy). I have to remember that shopping on Newegg doesn't constitute gaming.

This week will be spent installing the upgrades (which will be mercifully short I hope), coming up with a subset of games that I really intend to play from my 2 CD album books, and (shocker!) actually playing some stuff.

P.S. After reading last weeks post, I realized I had planned to do Gametap this week. That has been postponed until after John visits so I don't lose a week. And, of course, there's no rush on trying it.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #11: The week that wasn't

2007-03-19T13:55:00.000-07:00

Plans change. It's just the nature of things. No matter how good our intentions, reality has a bad habit of having its way with us.

Originally, I had planned this week to be my first crack at God of War since the sequel was coming out and I figured chances were good I would buy it. But I first thought that the TV in the bedroom (where most of my console gaming happens) was just not "good enough" for such a triple-A title. Also, it didn't look like anyone, even Mecca, was going to be having any decent incentives to buy GoW2 the first week. It was going to be $49.99; the last of the high priced PS2 games. CC was offering a shirt but frankly, it looked ugly and their track record of finding stuff in the store is not good. So, I started to think that I would kick up one of the collections of arcade games. Retro gaming has gotten big due to the various on-line services that the big 3 are offering. Of course, retro for today's gamers is memory lane for me.

At some point, I found myself drifting toward some PC games. I played a demo of a new survival horror game, Penumbra, and was very impressed with the way you had to use the mouse. It wasn't just point-and-click. You had to move the mouse the way you were moving something in the game - pull it to open a drawer, push it to open a door, click to hold while moving backward to drag something. The demo was very short but held my interest. I'm looking forward to picking this one up. I also played some more Halo on the PC primarily because I can control the vehicles better. (I'm useless on the Xbox version.) I also started the Company of Heroes demo.

This sudden spurt of PC gaming has me wondering where my gaming time is better spent. Back in the "old days" (ie, when NES was king), I was happily playing my Atari 800, ST and original PC. I was a late comer to consoles as computers had the significant edge in graphics and sound. I didn't start getting into consoles until the middle SNES days.

I know the debate between the two worlds, console and PC, is eternal. Consoles provide a cleaner, easier to drop into environment that has lots of exclusives and a more open atmosphere when playing with others. PC gaming has better production values (in general when comparing the same time periods), less corporate interference over content, and a better control scheme for FPS's, strategy, and simulation games. Also, PC gaming is almost completely "future proof" - you can almost always find a way to play an old game on a new system. And there are no clear lines between users. The weekly podcasts I listen to regularly cross-over boundaries - Xbox guys talking about PC games, PC gamers talking about Wii games, etc. There's no one answer - they will always co-exist in some form.

As for me, I think I'll just go with the flow for now and that seems to be taking me down the river of PC games. (It's a little easier to play on my PC at night than the consoles and I certainly have a large stock of games to play on the PC.) This usually lasts until I hit some sort of downer like a game that crashes a lot or something about my computer that makes me waste hours trying to fix it. Not a downer, but a different reason is a visit by my brother that gets me onto the consoles for a week. I've been on this ride long enough to know that making judgements and turning my back on one or the other only leads to me running back to the maligned, hoping I can recover whatever lost treasures I might have sold off in a fit of self righteous commitment. However, I do think I will set some goals and my first one is to try Gametap for a month (costing all of $0.99). I'm really interested to see how well it works and I can try the Sam & Max games as part of that.

A different reason I didn't do as much this week as others is that one of our cats, Randi, had to be euthanized this weekend. It wasn't unexpected and, truthfully, it was necessary. Her kidney problems were just more than we could take and at 17, there wasn't much we could do for her. At least I like to think she left this world without suffering too badly from the disease. Randi, I do thank you for the late night strolls into the computer room, looking for a pet or a scratch behind your twisty ear. You were a people cat and never missed a chance to nuzzle a hand or sit next to me on the sofa. I hope your time with us made you happy.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #10: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

2007-03-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

If I had to sum up my experience with GTA:LCS in one word, I think it would be "underwhelming". It basically played like a GTA clone from a budget software house. It was fun (for a few minutes) to be back in Liberty City but the thing that struck me, other than the bland graphics, was how little the city changed during the time that has passed. Most cities get new buildings or at least renovations during a few years time. From what I saw, the city must have blown its budget on something else

I know this was just a PSP port (how in Zeus's butthole did anyone play this on a handheld screen and not go blind!) so it obviously wasn't going to have the graphic level of the original PS2 game, but I think it should have gone thru the update. Also, and I don't think this is specific to the PS2 version of LCS, I had a lot of problems targeting bad guys with my gun. If they got too close, I would turn around and shoot behind me while getting shot at! One thing which was nice aside from having an overview map, was the short missions, but I don't think it's enough for me to go back to it. I did get the other one, GTA:VCS, which might not be much better, but at least both of these were cheap (under $15 at Mecca on sale) and they are part of the GTA "experience". It makes them necessary additions to The Collection.

In keeping with last week's game choice being based on new releases, I think it maybe time to crack the seal on one of my true triple-A titles - God of War. The sequel comes out this week and if I can get it at Circuit City with the free t-shirt, I might have to drop 50 clams on this one. Ouch! It hurts just typing that. That's a lot of shell fish for one game. Have to see.

Other news: Staying with Hotel Dusk, but still getting stuck at points where I had to do one thing in order to keep going. Like using chalk dust. How was I supposed to know that!...Played a little more Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. You actually have to watch what you are doing in that game. I tried just steaming through, not using special moves, and died pretty quickly. Despite what people have said, it seems fun. Maybe because I haven't played the previous mystery dungeon games....In Vana'diel, our new linkshell has proven very valuable. We now have more AF gear and last Saturday did 5-1 and 5-2! So, our little gang is 67 with a 6 in our Rank column. Very cool.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #9 - Kingdom Hearts - Part 2

2007-03-05T13:45:00.000-08:00

Well, I think I've gotten this game out of my system, at least for awhile. I did accomplish my goal of linking up with Goofy and Donald, then getting to a "real" Disney world (Alice in Wonderland) - even if it did take several hours of game time! While novel in design (a full fledged RPG with Disney characters), it pretty much boiled down to a) enter a world and fight some random monsters, b) via talking cutscenes, find out what you need to locate in another area, c) fight lots of random monsters in that area while you are trying to locate the items. Lots more button mashing than I expected. Oh, and let's not forget the Star Fox mini-game ripoff between worlds. Also, why did they not map the camera to the right thumbstick? Must have been before someone came up with that idea. Anyway, I'll keep the last save and might try it again some other time. (If I get to the end of this year with nothing more than memory cards full of started games, that isn't such a bad thing. Getting into these games to the point where they become interesting is sometimes the hardest part.)

This week I think I'll take a cue from a game to be released this week, GTA:VCS, and start playing GTA:LCS. I never have wanted (seriously) to get a PSP and these games were some of the only reasons I would have even have considered it. Interestingly, it was either Sony or Rockstar who proclaimed, rather strongly, that GTA:VCS would NEVER come to another platform. Rrrright. *Cough!*bullshit*Cough!* It really sucks when these guys (and it was probably Sony) ouright lie to us. Sony may have created (hell, DID) create the greatest gaming platform of all time, the PS2, but since then they have been nothing by arrogant bastards to the consumer. While very attached to my 3 PS2's, I don't see that I'll ever get a PS3. They are just too damn expensive! Even if they cut the price in half, that's still $300 - I've never paid that much for a console in my life. Now, I am considering an Xbox360 soon, but even that decision isn't final unless the price drops or I can get a deal with extra hardware (like a controller) or games (note to Fry's: THAT DON'T SUCK!). My ideal package would be a 360 with Oblivion, CoD2, and PGR3. And an extra controller, if I can get it. :)

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #8: Kingdom Hearts

2007-02-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

Going to be a short post today. Just wanted to say I'm finally into Kingdom Hearts a little farther than I was the first time I played it. My goal for this game is to get to at least one area that is from a Disney movie. After all, that was supposed to be the big draw of this game - Final Fantasy characters interacting with the Little Mermaid, Hercules, etc. So far I've only been on the island and in the town (which is where I stopped the last time). Frankly, I don't think they should have made players wait so long before getting to the Disney stuff. I know there are FF characters in this I should recognize, but I'm just not FF-literate yet. Maybe FFX should be on my list for this year. Anyway, more next week, I hope. (Oh, and I'm still plugging away at Hotel Dusk.)

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #7: Ooops...

2007-02-19T15:14:00.000-08:00

Well, with time schedules being what they are, this was bound to happen. I wasn't able to play any of my selected game for last week. However, I am going to try again this week to get at least to the point I stopped playing Kingdom Hearts before. I'd really like to get into some of the better parts of this this game (ie, battles in various Disney cartoons). Looks like this franchise is going to continue for some time and I already own the first 3 titles. Time to see if they are worth it. I did get some more time in on Hotel Dusk and even got to a "Game Over" screen for picking a wrong question to ask. The only penalty was going back to before I asked the question.

I'm starting to work up a "hunting list" of games to get for the last gen consoles while I battle with myself about getting a current gen console, namely the 360. Connecting it up to the TV while the DVD is also connected is the biggest hurdle now - the TV only has one set of component inputs. I'm going to look into S-video for the DVD player to see if that will solve the problem.

In Vana'diel, we are all up to level 66 with our big boys - a paltry 9 levels below the cap. It's interesting to see the effect of time on an MMO like FFXI. At any given time, I'd say 1/3 of the players in the game are 75th level, the highest in the game. Almost nothing is happening for lowbies anymore. Does Square just start making it so 75 is the new low level by making harder expansions and monsters? Will they up the level cap, and if they do, will it be like in WoW where the cap was hit by most users in less than a month?

Stocking up for the winter?

2007-02-15T15:36:00.000-08:00

I was over at a local Gameworld today, buying an unusual number of games (nine) and I couldn't help but think that the 6 Xbox games I had there represented one of the last times I may buy games for that console. New game releases for it have been reduced to a drying trickle and I've gotten almost all of the older titles I wanted to get. Coupled with BC issues for the 360 and the relative difficulty I have getting to it for gaming means that very soon, I will have all the Xbox games I want to play.

I've been down this road before. The road hasn't been as graphically attractive before, but the end of the SNES, N64 and Dreamcast all pretty much went the same way. When those beloved consoles were unceremoniously chucked out by the industry in favor of new ones, I dug my heels firmly into the past and railed about how much better the old systems were to the new ones. The SNES controller was vastly superior to the N64's "weird, alien" design. The N64's cartridge system was better than any disc based system because it was more durable and faster. The Dreamcast was...ok, so maybe I didn't stand up for that one as much.

And now that 2 of my 3 major console investments (in time and money) are going to the bargain bins, I'm doing the whole hoarding-while-there-are-still-a-few-nuts-on-the-tree thing again. The question is: am I stocking my pantry with wholesome foods for a long hibernation, or am I resisting change and not looking for better digs? Do the platforms of "yesterday" have enough to offer me, to keep me playing, while everyone else thunders along with bloated platforms that are as much about games as they are about getting their foot in your living room and their fingers in your wallet?

What do I really feel about the new systems? Well, the PS3 is overly expensive and has nothing that says "must play". The Wii looks as ridiculous as the day they announced what the controller looked like ("It's a TV remote!"). The 360's games are still expensive, I don't have a HDTV, and I have no real interest in playing on XBL, even if I had the time. True, I will need it when Burnout 5 comes out if it doesn't suck, but there isn't even a date for that. Plus I worry about how reliable the system is, how noisy it is and just where I would put that power brick.

I've said it before that "my next gen console is the DS". That system combined with whatever still comes out on the PS2 may well be my best bet, at least for now. The force is strong with the 360 and I doubt I can hold out much longer, but for now my warren is stacked to the earthen ceiling with much gaming goodness, even if it hails from an age soon to be past.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #6: Time Splitters: Future Perfect

2007-02-12T14:16:00.000-08:00

(As I'm not feeling quite "perfect" myself today, this will be a shorter than usual entry.)

I've always been a fan of the Time Splitters games all the way back to the first one which was also the first FPS I played on the PS2. I have to admit that it wasn't without problems. Trying to get used to a dual stick FPS was tough. Every time someone started shooting me, I spun around out of control or was staring into a corner while getting shot in the back. But I stuck with it and managed to get some fun out of it before selling it (the original TS) on eBay. Wasn't a whole lot in it for me to go back to once I got through a few missions.

TS2, however, has always been a major favorite of mine. The combination of smooth, visceral shooting with time travel and wacky scenarios made for a perfect game. My brother and I actually got through the story mode (on easy) in co-op mode. While I owned and played it on the Cube, I got a copy for the Xbox just because I thought it was that good.

I had heard the latest installment, TS:FP, was not quite as good as #2 but I had to give it a try anyway. What I found is that for the most part "they" were right. The game feels a bit too creaky (best word I can think of to describe it). While the story mode, which is driven by very amusing cutscenes, is more entertaining, the combat seems less smooth and harder to manage. I know about the endless criticisms that FPS's should only be played with mouse-and-keyboard, but I really don't remember having this much trouble with TS2. On easy mode (which is what I played TS2 on - never even could get through episode 1 on Normal!), I was dying or getting badly shot up fairly regularly after about the 3rd or 4th mission. Still, I was making progress and the auto-partner system really helps. What I don't know is how it works with co-op. Your "partner" in each level sort of directs you where to go next either through comments and/or heading to the next area. When John comes out next time, we will have to give it a try on the Xbox version I got (yeah, a $9.99 cheapy from Fry's). I also had problems with the Cube controller (again) because of the damn shoulder buttons. When you want to rapidly do something (like swinging a baseball bat), those buttons really slow you down. I may have to revisit my collection and see if there are any shooting games that I should rebuy in PS2 or Xbox versions while I can still get them from Gameworld.

One thing that did impress me was how much was packed into this game. In addition to the story mode, it has arcade mode (various versions of "multi" player), challenges (lots of mini-games), and a whole mapmaker utility. You could almost make a career out of this game!

All in all, I really enjoyed playing TS:FP even with some of the problems (Cube controller, long levels without saves, rough controls). I'm sure I'll get back to it from time to time as it is a very simple game to pick up and play again. Just have to remember to shoot more monkeys!

As this is Valentine's Day week, I'm picking a game that has something to do with hearts: Kingdom Hearts.

Other bits: Our FFXI linkshell goes between being annoying and helpful - sometimes within the same evening. We got some more AF gear and have actually put points on our 65's again (as opposed to dying and taking them off)....Playing more Hotel Dusk when the opportunity presents itself. I had to hit the FAQ's again to get past a block that really should have had a better hint.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #5: Hotel Dusk: Room 215

2007-02-05T13:31:00.000-08:00

I rarely get around to playing a game right after I buy it. Gone are the old days when getting a new game was an isolated event that required almost immediate playtime. With huge platform libraries, discount used game prices and other demands on my time, I often just get a game to add it to "The Collection" figuring I'll get around to playing it...someday...soon...I hope. So, it felt a bit odd to be playing a game that the podcasts were still talking about, hearing what they thought about it. And what do I think? Well,...

Visually, HDR215 is stunning in it's style. It's unlike any other game for the DS (or any other platform) that I know of. It's like a moving sketch book or comic and the vertical orientation of the device further enhances that feeling. The developers and publisher need to be congratulated for trying something so different in an era of game clones and media license crapware. But is it a good game? That depends.

I just finished "Chapter 1" at lunch which is supposed to cover 30 minutes of time in the game. That section probably took about 3 to 4 hours to play. Some of this time was spent just reading the interaction text between characters which could have really benefited from some editorial cutting or voice work. Hey, even GBA's Max Payne had speech! When you have to click to continue on everyone's piece of dialogue, a simple exchange takes way longer than it would in, say, a movie. (A couple of people on the podcasts complained about the speed of the text, but I found it fast enough to read, just more to read than I would have liked. Might be an age thing.) The rest of the time I played was spent trying to do things to the environment which usually I couldn't (a sandbox game this isn't). This is (at least so far) a very rigid point-and-click adventure to the point that I had to go back and ask questions of one character before I could get any farther. Insisting that you have additional conversations with an NPC should not be a prereq for continuing the game. Just work it into the script already! At this point, I've only had a few touch screen interactions (solving a jigsaw puzzle, picking things up, bending a paperclip, etc) so the action has been slow. If this were a movie, I would have been snoring a long time ago. I hope it doesn't turn into Hotel Myst. Oh, and a quick note, I don't really think plot quizzes should be used as level bosses.

But, all is not lost. I do find the story interesting, even if I have a bad feeling it will end up in some sort of Twilight Zone-esque twist and there are 9 more chapters to get through. Maybe it will pick up. I had originally planned to do the SMT:N thing again (go for another week) but I think I will pick a new game instead (in this case Timesplitters Future Perfect for the Cube) and keep working on Hotel Dusk when I can't be at a console (ie, lunch, appointments).

Other bits: FFVI for GBA comes out this week. A must buy for Wednesday....The new linkshell we joined has helped some (got two Assault locations and one promy), but we've taken a few casualties. Jury is still out.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #4: SMT: Nocturne - Part 2

2007-01-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

While I didn't get the chance to put the kind of time in that I'd hoped to, I'm glad I was able to play a bit more of SMT:N. In addition to leaving the first area (Shinjuku Medical Center), I was able to start adding demons to my party. Yes, it's Pokemon with demons. I should have named my character Ash and the other characters Brock and Misty. Maybe the next time I try it.

I did do the first boss battle (a rather demonic looking manta ray) and got my first glimpse of Dante, a special added bonus over the original Japanese only version. It's a cool game that I can see playing in bits and pieces. I don't think it will be too hard to pick up and play again - the menus are easy to use and the battles are fairly straight forward. That is becoming one of the advantages of this process that I didn't originally plan on - the ability to have a set of games that I can come back to whenever I have the time because I've already gotten into the game and know how to play them. There are still many facets of the game that I don't really grasp (when to use magatama, for example) and I figure that because the game is rated as hard there are certain resources that will need to be hoarded and used sparingly (like ammo in a Resident Evil game). One of the dangers of an RPG, but I'm glad I got into this one, nonetheless.

For next week, I thought that since I started the month with an older title, Ace Combat 04, I would end the month with a brand new one - Hotel Dusk: Room 215. This just came out for the DS and has been getting some very good reviews. Plus this will be my first Game-a-Week handheld title, giving me the ability to play it just before bed (as in just before turning out the lights) and/or at lunch time. It will be interesting to see how it goes.

Other bits: Our little squad of FFXI highbies has hit 65, found itself a new linkshell to join, and completed one of the three crags needed to enter CoP. Been a good week in Vana'diel....I got the Shadowrun cartridge and it does indeed have the right ROM. Booting it up, I forgot how good SNES games looked. That is still an amazing system. I'll have to plan a retro Game-a-Week month at some point. Can't forget our video gaming roots.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #3: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne

2007-01-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

After last week's fairly easy pick, I thought something more challenging was in order for this week. Also, I've been (dare I say) possessed with the desire to acquire all the games from this series - one that I only really started to notice after the arresting visuals from the latest title, Devil Summoner. (Hey, who can ignore a sexy chick dressed up like a SS vampire?) I figured that I should start to play at least one of these games that I've spent considerably more on than what my usual used or even new games cost. SMT has always been way below the standard retail radar. Considering the gruesome nature of the games and the fact they are VERY Japanese, that's probably a good thing.

As this is a very long game (and very hard from what I've read), I've decided to make this a two week effort. So far I've gotten about an hour and a half into it and I'm still in the first location! The game is done in a cell shaded style with lots of lengthy cut scenes. I haven't gotten lost or stuck yet, but I'm not sure I have a real good understanding of the mechanics of the game. What is interesting is the similarity to Pokemon. You run around with a party of demons (or other creatures - one is a fairy so far) fighting random battles and trying to capture more demons - to add to your party to fight...you get the idea. It's not tedious at this point (there is an "auto-fight" button that speeds up the fights considerably), but it may get to be a bit much as the game goes on. It controls nicely, but I do wish the camera was more like other games (ie, FFXI). Anyhow, I'm going to try to get more into it this week and will post final thoughts next Monday. If I can get a copy, I may start up that new DS game, Hotel Dusk, and play it during lunch some this week.

Other bits: Our FFXI band of merry misfits has made it to level 64 (well, the main jobs). It's a bit unsettling the way SquareEnix keeps changing the game. For example, we took some lowbies (my budding BLM) out and were able to fight "toughs" in the La Theine at level 6! When I started playing, you stayed in the Ronafure for at least 8 levels. Going into La Theine that low was suicide even with a PL....Wii's are still selling like mad, but I'm not going for one. The control concept just doesn't fit my kind of gameplay.....I finally got Shadowrun off eBay. Hope this one is actually in the case lol.....Got around to playing Super Mario World on the GBA. I haven't gotten my fingers working on the buttons as well as they did when I played the SNES one all those years ago. I'm hoping I can retrain them.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #2: SpyHunter

2007-01-15T13:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I admit it, this was a bit of a softball as games go. But I was a big fan of the original arcade game and this one was always on my "I hope I play it someday" list. However, instead of a gameplay experience, I got more of an experience in comparative game qualities over different platforms. I started playing the Gamecube version and while not awful, I really thought the cut scenes could have been of a better quality; they were pixelated and blotchy. Checking the game on Gamespot, I found the Cube version to be 1.1 points lower than the PS2 version (which was released first), mostly because the graphics were so much worse. So, I went to Gamestop and picked up the PS2 version for a cheap $6 (gotta love Gamestop!) and low and behold, the graphics were MUCH better. And not just the cut scenes, but the gameplay too. I also liked playing it on the PS2 because of the controller differences. (One thing I've never liked about my beloved Cube is the large shoulder buttons on the controller - they're great for lock-on but suck for things like firing guns and accelerators in vehicles).

This problem, of one version of a multi-platform game being so much better or worse than another, is a constant concern for me. In general I've always figured the Cube and Xbox versions of any game would be superior, even if just a little, to the same game on PS2. Such is not always the case. I may have to look deeper into my collection and see if I've got the best versions of titles that appear on more than one platform (within reason, of course). Stocks of what are now "last generation" games are at their highest point as people clear out game collections to build up credit for 360's, PS3's, and Wii's. Eventually that flood will trickle out and dry up. I don't want to be caught in that drought. My game console plans don't include buying any new hardware any time soon.

I didn't do much more than play the tutorial levels in both and the first level in the Cube version, but this is a good pick up and play type of game (a bit hard though). The levels seem to only last about 10 minutes or less, and it's a good quick shoot'em up. I'll probably pop this one in now and again to see if I can get anywhere with it. In general, it's about as hard as the old arcade game - I loved it, but it kicked my ass regularly.

This week I'm going to jump into (or at least sample) a game from a series that has had me searching eBay and Gamestops like a possessed lunatic - Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

2K7 Game-a-Week Week #1: Ace Combat 04

2007-01-08T13:43:00.000-08:00

The title of these posts seems a bit unwieldy, but it will do for now. So this was my first game to work on for a week and for the most part it went well - even though I wasn't (BAD flu). If this self-imposed exercise gives me a chance to experience games that would otherwise just sit on the shelf, it's a good thing.

I found Ace Combat 04 (it's "04" because the missions take place in 2004...um, yeah) to be like two games in one. The first is an incredible fighting flight sim; very easy to play (limited number of buttons to remember), awesome graphics for the PS2, arcade-like but with a touch of realism (the tactical summary fly throughs during the point summary are probably lost on most people). The other is an anime style story that plays out in bits between the missions. The game is about a fictious war in a fictious land, very similar to the war in "Howl's Moving Castle", except with modern weapons instead of dark fantasy ones. I didn't realize that this very USA military looking game was very Japanese. The singing and flying doves at the beginning were a bit of a shock! It was also a little unsettling to see that the "enemy" was portrayed with US soldiers and equipment. Were they trying to refight the end of WWII in the modern day? Have to look into that some in the online reviews. I also wonder what the original Japanese music sounded like. Oh, to be able to play imports. :P

I may try to play more of this, weekly commitments allowing. Have to see how I get back at Yellow 13! For this week: Spyhunter on the Cube.

Happy Gnu Year '07

2007-01-02T14:44:00.000-08:00

Time has passed, weeks became months and here we are in 2007.

Out of curiosity, I looked back at my first January 2006 post. My first thought is that I have finally stopped the hobby flipping that I used to do. Video gaming has been my sole past time for over a year now. Nice to buckle down and concentrate on something at the chipper age of 45.

In this first 2006 post I had given my thoughts on Obscure and the new consoles (the then just released 360 and the to be released PS3 and "Revolution"). Aside from the name change, not too much has changed over a years time - stores still carry the old console games along side the new ones. By this time next year that will undoubtedly change. I was more positive on the PS3 back then, but that was before the $600 price tag and lack of good games. As for the 360, not much has really changed in my view of it other than the games I want to play on it and the thought that going first was probably a good idea after all. What I missed altogether was the crushing strength of the DS. Well, back then I didn't even own one.

As 2007 opens, I have to think what it will bring. PS3 (and Sony) will have a tough time of it, I think. The system is just too expensive and it's not like games are pouring out. The 360 will get a refit this year that I believe will make it cheaper and more intergrated, but I still won't buy it til the next Burnout is released. I hope that by next year it will be nearly 100% BC. And Nin doesn't really have to worry about the Wii - even if it flops, they can live off the money DS Lite is making. But I doubt the Wii will fail as it has become the media darling this holiday season. I don't know if I will get one or not yet, but I can't say I'm really that interested. The control scheme just doesn't work for the games I play. Of course, it can always be a Cube replacement.

As for my "game plan" for 2007, I have decided to play one new (to me) game every week. Play starts Monday and finishes Sunday with a review post on the next Monday. During that week I will pick the next week's game. (I had thought about random, triple-A titles only, by release date, etc. but none of them seemed worth the time to work out.) I got off to a slow start this week as I was sick last night, but I have picked Ace Combat 4 as my first game. I haven't played a flight sim in a long time and never (that I can remember) on the PS2. I will play other games during this year, but at least this will help me work through my collection some.

Little notes: I played some of Call of Cthulhu and other than being very dark (as in hard to see) it's a good adventure game so far. A bit slow though...Not too much FFXI going on as Rath was in England and not feeling well to boot... Traded some crap games from the collection into Gameworld, instead of wasting time and money on eBay sales, to get a collector's copy of FFXII...Finally decided to go with the Cube version of Zelda and started playing this weekend. Great, but it's like OoT with better graphics. Not a big step up in design, but enjoyable...Found the Shin Megami Tensei series and am trying to get all the games...Gave up on playing through Fable:TLC. Too much to redo that I just don't want to do again to get to new stuff...Also had to give up on Still Life. Game was like CSI:Myst. Plot was interesting, but I couldn't do the puzzles without a cheat sheet and playing a game like that is no fun.

A Wii Pre-Xmas Fable

2006-12-18T13:20:00.000-08:00

With one of the NWK's in England for the next 2 weeks, gaming is taking a different turn. Mews and Morbo still have some things to do (like catch up with Rath), but I've also gotten a chance to work on some console gaming.

One big rift though is weither or not to open the copy of GC Zelda I got. I've been sorely tempted by the wily Wii. A few of my friends have gotten it and it's all over the net. I even considered an early Sunday run to get one, but was detered by a new Amazon play-and-pray scheme. I'll be up til midnight tonight to see if I'll be waving a wiimote around this holiday season (odds are 28 to 1 against).

As a diversion, I've started to play Fable:TLC. I didn't realize how tough it would be to get into this game again - not because of the game itself, but because I already know the story. And a damn good one it was too! I know other people were dissapointed by it but I never knew about the hype around it (I didn't pay much attention to gaming mags and websites back then). Even so, trying to ignore some of the upcoming battles and plot twists is an uphill struggle at this point. It might get better after I get out of the training area and start hitting some of the new content.

A quick note about my fighting game loving daughter - she is truly a blood thirstly little gal! I was watching her play Bloody Roar 4 on the PS2 the other day. She was playing this one character and having her do these gory (and I mean blood splatters everywhere!) moves over and over again. She can really kick ass on these games. Something her "old man" never got the hang of since MK on SNES. So, Rain Man was good at math, Rain Girl is l33t at fighting games. ;)

Still-ed Life and other ramblings

2006-12-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got back to a game I've played a little bit before, Xbox's Still Life. While I applaud the developers of this game with making a truly adult adventure game (it plays like an R rated movie), the second chapter is proving to be annoying. Why, for example, do I have to talk to my dim witted partner before I can put my camera in the evidence chute? And, why do I have to not only deduce what my access code is but also need to input it into a card reader within a limited amount of time? While the access code was fairly easy to figure out, nowhere was I told about the time limit. I just thought I needed a shorter number! I haven't given up entirely on this one, but it didn't do itself any favors.

My game collection size has hit the demonic level (666) with the inclusion of GBA games and the weekend purchase of used (but excellent condition) copies of Okami and Call of Cthulhu. I have to think that developers and publishers hate Game-World. Not only do they get nothing from the sale of a used game, but they lose a sale to boot. I do feel a little guilty not buying Okami from a place like Fry's since my purchase won't count toward how many they sold. From what I've heard, Okami isn't doing too well in the "units sold" department. Maybe they should have put it out at a lower price?

As this year draws to a close, the one thing gaming related I'll remember from 2006 is the loss of OPM. Of all the gaming mags it was the one I thought had no chance of being shutdown. Why stop a mag that covers a line of consoles that dominates the landscape of video gaming already and is just bringing a new powerhouse to the market? I'll admit that the demo disc was probably obsolete by now with the lack of new PS2 games to showcase and PS3 demos to be available ala Xbox Live. But they could have at least kept the magazine! R.I.P. OPM.

What do I think I'll do gaming wise next year? Well, I'm still planning some sort of play schedule for myself although it keeps going back and forth between a select group of top titles or a random pick of a larger amount. Quality to savor the best or quantity to cover more ground? Still working on that one.

Sifting through the ashes of Black Friday

2006-11-27T15:48:00.000-08:00

So another Turkey day has come and gone, and with it, Black Friday. Like every other one, I mangaged to score a stack of games to add to my horde. I say "horde" as my wife has likened my game collection to that of a pile of treasure protected by a dragon. Ok, sounds good to me.

Adding to my nearly 600 "treasures" (counting PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, PS1, SNES, N64, and DS) were such titles as Halo 2, NARC, Sudeki, Tekken 5, SOCOM 3, and Super Mario Strikers. Some were new, but most came from a B2G1F sale at Game-World (ie, Gamestop/EB World). Those always suck me in. Oddly enough, none came from Fry's this time. I think they (and other retailers) are dealing with how to manage game sales this year. They don't want to discount all the new titles for the Wii and PS3, but putting games on sale for consoles that are on their last marketable legs is a dubious proposition. There were some pretty good 360 game sales, but I didn't get lucky with Amazon. Oh well.

As the new year approaches and my collection reaches critical mass (can too many PS2 games really cause a black hole to form?) I'm thinking about a resolution to get some of these games played. I first thought about doing a "Classic Games" year where I play a new (to me) Triple A title every month. So like I'd do FFVII in January, RE4 in October, that sort of thing. However, that only gets me going on 12 titles, albeit they are the cream of the crop. Now I'm thinking about a game a week. Mind you, I'm not talking about completing it in a week, just getting it to the point of being able to white dot it. If I have a plan (ie, a list of games to work on ahead of time), it might help. I'd start on Monday and finish by Sunday, with a blog post wrap up that next Monday of what I thought of the game. This would take me through at least 52 games. Not a bad start on doing something with all those little boxes of alternate worlds.

Oh, quick FFXI update. We are at 62, have done our 65 level cap quest and are having a ton of fun doing Besieged. Also, on games, I've been playing a bit of RLH over the weekend. Sticky controls but the game is not bad. Great cast of actors that got to do voices. Classic Xbox still rocks! Stamp mania continues on the DS!

"Whatcha been playin?"

2006-10-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've actually gotten some new game play in this week. What a shocker!

In my previous post, I talked about the new Star Trek Encounters game I was going to try. At $14.99 I can't say I was too optimistic but the screenshots made it look really good. Plus who wouldn't want to pilot around a Star Trek spaceship blasting at Borg, Klingons, etc. I wrote up a quicky review on Gamespot (which I will add to this blog at some point) and I'll summarize the experience here. Basically I was impressed with this little title. It had the feel of a budget game but unlike many budget games it didn't suck. It was ambitious of them to configure a 3D space combat game on the PS2 controller and they used every button available. You "fly" with the left stick, aim your weapons with the right, balance your power reserves with the D pad, switch weapons with the symbol buttons, fire with the right shoulder buttons, and move up and down in space with the left shoulder buttons. The result is awkward at first, but I got used to it (slowly). Graphics look very cool and the ships are right out of the TV series (including one called Star Trek: Sentinel?). Audio is nice - good effects sounds and even some narration by William Shatner (odd they didn't hype him on the cover art). On the downside, the game forces you to play through each episode sequentially, unlocking the next only if you succeed. And you can't save part way through a mission. The missions are broken down into short objectives, but with 7 or so per mission (felt like more) it would be nice to be able to save without getting to the end. At least if you die you only have to restart from the objective. I have a feeling that I'll have some problems getting very far in this one, but I'll try.

One game I'm quickly feeling will be a major time-sink is Club House Games for the DS. Just your basic card/board/pub games but you can play wireless with other players. Being a very old PC internet gamer, this shouldn't be any great shakes to me, but the fact of having a system in the palm of my hand that is playing backgammon with someone in Germany still amazes me. And the games themselves are really good. I've played bowling (yes, bowling) on it as well as mahjong and I think I would have been happy with this collection even without the WiFi.

I've just started playing a little bit of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Blue Rescue Team (whew!). From the reviews I've seen, this is a fairly old game model that was used and then the Pokemon franchise was dropped on top of it. The good news is it is new to me. :) Cute so far, but haven't done much more than the introduction. (My DS is getting alot of use these days.)

Also been keeping up the FFXI-ing. Our merry band of misfits has gotten up to level 59 in our main jobs thanks to some VT bats in King R's Tomb. We also scored 2 more Astral rings (yes!) in some very close BCNM 20 battles. One is getting sold and the other is Morbo's. He's so happy he'd cry if he wasn't such a tough Galka-boy.

Unbiased review coming and pre-order goodies

2006-10-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

In a sure to be interesting experiment, I'm going to try a game tonight that I haven't read a review for - and it could be a real turkey (oh well, so much for unbiased lol).

The game in question is "Star Trek Encounters". All I've seen so far (and from what I can tell pretty much all of what everyone else has seen) is some rather good looking (dare I say stunning) screenshots of various Star Trek ships in (gorgeous) space. This is billed as a ship to ship shooter using vessels from the whole lineage of Trek. Not something that's really been tried before, but something that all of us who grew up with models of the ships have dreamed about. (I actually had a paper minatures game calle Starfleet Battles that this reminds me of.) Most of the other ST games have been adventure or academy/ship sims that seemed to put more emphasis on getting series stars than having good gameplay. The only shooter aspect of a Star Trek game I can remember was the ridiculous dogfight type portion of the very early 25th anniversary game. I'm hoping it won't be like that.

Now, I haven't seen any reviews for STE and I bought it today at Best Buy for the low (low, low) price of $14.99. And that's only $5 off it's MSRP. So, how can a game that has such wonderful visuals be so cheap? Most cheap games tend to be really crap. But, as I haven't been tainted by any of the game site reviews out there, I can approach my experience without any preconceptions...except that cheap games are usually crappy lol. Seriously, I'm all for this game being a winner and a bargain.

While at BB, I also did my second pre-order in as many days. Why, you ask? Have I lost my budget conscious mind? No, I just want the extras. For Destroy All Humans 2, I got the demo disk, and today I got the Gutair Hero II t-shirt for $5.00. No big deal if I don't get the game - I'll take a game shirt for 5 bucks. As for DAH2, I'll just get my deposit back after the game comes out.

Guitar Hero

2006-10-05T16:10:00.000-07:00

I own Guitar Hero, but admit I haven't really gotten into it yet (well, it's still in the original box, for almost a year old now). But I do need to get something off my chest.

I've tried it a couple of times in the store demos (Fry's has it setup in a cable tie shut PS2) and to be honest I feel a little silly playing it. Now, I'll probably get fried for this by some sector of the readers out there, but here it is:

To all the people out there who think Guitar Hero is dumb, just remember - any video game consists of you holding a controller and pressing buttons in response to some graphics on a TV screen. Does GH teach you to play a guitar? No, but Call of Duty 2 doesn't teach you how to fight a house to house battle with a submachine gun either.

One thing is certain - GH is a very big deal in the gaming world. And by big deal, I mean a game that is as unique and enviable as major games like Tetris, Pokemon, and Doom. We all know what happens to games like this...they get the shit copied out of them. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, it's pretty obvious by all the press it's getting, but the clincher was one day when I saw a line of people waiting to play the game at Fry's. I can't remember the last time I saw any game that half a dozen teenagers waited to play (and in a neat orderly line too!)

Happy 10th, N64!

2006-09-29T13:36:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago today, the Nintendo 64 debuted in the US. In some ways it's hard to believe it's only been 10 years - a decade is a short time to go from birth to near obscurity.

I think my first time seeing a N64 was in Toys R Us around Xmas '96 shopping for presents. There were a lot of kids around the display/demo cases. I remember seeing Mario 64 and being pretty impressed. But, I knew that a big expense like a new game system was out of the question. Just the system and a game would have been nearly $300.

So I waited until the price came down. My opportunity came when the Jungle Green model was released with DK64. I vaguely remember it being around $150 and that came with a coupon for a banana colored controller by mail. I also thought it was too cool being made of clear green plastic - it and all other consoles were usually black or grey.

I never minded that the N64 only used cartridges. Being a longtime user of the SNES, I was more at home with a cartridge based system. You never had to worry about load times or scratched discs. And the controller worked great for FPS games - something the Playstation was never able to really support either in hardware or by controller. Unfortunately, the rest of the industry wasn't as open minded. The N64 faded too soon and took with it much of Nintendo's glory. A few weeks before this writing, I was in a Gamestop store and I heard a child ask her mother what those things were in a display basket. She replied that they were what old video game systems used. The basket held N64 cartridges.

Some of my favorite N64 memories:

Mario Kart 64 - my choice for Best Mario Kart game because of the really large courses
Zelda: Orcarina of Time - an amazing adventure that I really wanted to finish, but the "review all your enemies" battles at the end wore me out
Turok 2 - a great dinosaur FPS that was only hampered by a silly system by which level checkpoints really didn't do shit
Duke Nukem Zero Hour - a time traveling Duke Nukem game that was so addictive I finally had to sell it so I would stop playing it
Space Station Silicon Valley - a game as bizzare as it title sounded
DK64 - great platformer that I wish I had had the time to explore more of
Goldeneye - great (but by current standards, dated) FPS that I played until it started to repeat levels
Beetle Adventure Racing - I had a ton of fun racing this one!
Pokemon Snap - I don't think I'll ever play another game as unique as this one was
Shadowman - the first game I ever heard swearing in and it came with the best round lens sunglasses I've ever owned

Over the years I've thinned my collection a little and picked up some ones I either missed or wish I hadn't sold (like Majora's Mask). I was also able to get a backup system with controller at one point for about the price of a new controller, and got the Pikachu edition too. While our daughter is the only one in the family who still plays it regularly, I still like popping in a cart every once in awhile. Not having to wait for a game to load from disc is still nice. I suspect that I'll do some N64 gaming tonight myself and remember back to a time when consoles weren't sold to push a new media format or online service. Back then, it was only about the games.

A Thursday update....because I missed it on Monday

2006-08-03T08:24:00.000-07:00

General nits and bits:

"Finished" Hamtaro for the 3rd time last weekend. After getting all the Ham-chat words, I got an extended credits ending (more like the real credits). I've never seen a game with so many sequential endings!

Gave Polarium another chance after talking with my friend from work and it's not too bad. Sort of a cross between Othello and Tetris.

Started playing GTA:SA in little pieces. The game is everything you'd want from a truly "M" rated game. But as it has all the violence and language of a R rated movie, I think you should be able to have just as much sex and nudity that you can have in a R rated movie too. Stupid ESRB! I do wonder when a game like this gets made on the next (or even next) generation console, if the level of realism would get to a point that the comedic aspects of the violence (face it, everyone looks like cartoon characters and the blood is just red puddles) would be lost. This is a dark, serious game and the comic-relief of the unintended "accidents" is one of the only things keeping it from just being another gangsta shoot-em up movie.

Now that Ham-Ham is out of my GBA, I've started FFIV. Only problem with these FF ports is that the games were designed for a full TV screen while running on the PS. Pretty small sprites.

Oh, and I found out why gamers don't miss cartridge games...dirty contacts! I've gotten a few old N64 games off eBay and without my old SNES cleaning kit I'd be sending several back.

Ham-Ham Wrap Party

2006-07-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

I stayed up late last night to fulfill my goal of the week - to finish Hamtaro's Ham-Ham Heartbreak! And with the exception of a couple of minor items I did.

I'm not sure what drove me to finish this game. Part was the really cute hamsters, part was the little ham-chat moves they did, but mostly it was a fun story to follow that never got so hard as to be frustrating. I knew that if I just kept coming back that I'd be able to complete it and that isn't something that I feel about most games.

(*** SPOILER ALERT! ***)

I did think it was odd that the game "ended" (in the sense that the credits rolled) before the game was really done. While I had beaten Spat (who turned into a Harmony look-alike lol), not all the Ham-hams were happy. One was still in the Spat Tower locked room! When I did get the final couple together (tip: have 2 glass beads by the end), I was treated to a quick glimpse of each of the couples I had helped. That little wrap-up summary and Harmony's "blessing" on the last couple (Hamtaro and Bijou)...well, let's just say that sad things aren't the only reason for tears. Kudos to the design team! And how do they come up with such sweet music for game endings?!?!

Thank you, Hamtaro, for a truly memorable experience! I'm looking forward to the next one (coming sometime late this year?) and I think I'll have to revisit the original GBC game.

Monday update...since I was out on Friday

2006-07-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

Actually got through a few games this week.

FFXI and DSII continue. We got the Tele-Yoaht and Tele-Dem scrolls this week as well as a bit of leveling. While fairly easy, DSII is proving to be a very enjoyable game. There's more strategy involved during battles than DS - you can't all just bunch up and whack stuff till it dies. If you don't retreat when necessary, your party members lie in a pile and are killed again as soon as they stand up. Only downside is that our levels are under what all the special rooms require. Shows us what our levels would be if we were playing single player (but it wouldn't be much fun).

Hamster madness continues.

Played 3 Xbox racing games over the weekend. Two of them are going up on eBay this week - Forza Motorsports and Toca Race Driving 2. They should just put "Steering Wheel Required" on the boxes. I wasn't able to stay on the track for half a lap with these using the standard controller. I've played HOURS of Burnout games on this same controller on the Xbox and haven't had anywhere near the kind of problems I had with these. However, I was very pleasantly suprized to see how good NFS:HP2 is. Either they copied Burnout or vice-versa. Only difference is NFS isn't about crashing, it's about getting away from the cops. One thing I don't understand is why they didn't use the Xbox controller's triggers. Must have been a direct PS2 port.

Got to play a couple of hours of Stubbs the Zombie. I really enjoyed eating the brains of hapless civilians and police, turning them into my army of the dead, but I couldn't help feeling like the game wasn't quite finished. There were a few points where scenes changed a little too abruptly, making me think they were planning some kind of boss battle or something and didn't have the time or money to do it. But I'm not complaining - it was alot of fun!

Tried Polarium on DS and it's joining the racing games in looking for a new home. Why would someone make a game for a system with 2 color screens that only uses black and white tiles? And this is the first game that I've played that I couldn't understand what the tutorial was trying to teach me! (Update: After talking to a friend at work who has played it, I'm going to give it another try. Might as well - isn't work spit on eBay. :P )

Lastly, I just made (barely), my goal of getting F.E.A.R. installed and tried out this week. Great game - and it looks really good on my new flat screen. ;) Only drawback of games like this is that since I played the demo, I'll have to replay those same areas during the first part of the game. Oh, well.

Next weeks goal: Finish Ham-Ham Heartbreak!

Another Friday update....1 month plus later

2006-07-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

I didn't mean for these posts to be so far apart, but shortly after the last post I had a fairly life-changing event happen and am just now getting back to a new kind of normal. I'll write about that in my other blog after I add the keyword "diabetes" to my profile. :P

As for what I played this week, one thing hasn't changed...still playing that damn hamster game! I got badly stuck this week and had to resort to an FAQ. Who knew you needed to ram other hamsters to get important info? I must be getting close to done. There's only one area I haven't opened up and my meter is nearly full. Then I think I'll start a shorter game...like Pokemon!

Also played the opening bit to the original SiN (that still sounds wierd). I remember (and still have) the game when it came out. I think I stopped playing it because a) it ran like crap on my computer, and b) I kept killing the civy's.

Just got my second DS today - the first one was returned due to a stuck pixel on the top screen. This one will get checked this evening for any problems. Got it with a TMNT game which I didn't particularly care about, but it was only $10.

Haven't updated my "games purchased" page for weeks (same reason as above) but I don't think I really need it anymore. Basically I wanted to see what my buying habits were and it pretty much boils down to 3-4 games a week. Some weeks I go nuts and others I don't get any. Instead I've been working on a master list of all my games. I've come really close (and sometimes beyond close) to getting games I already have. This way I have something to check. I've even added stuff like on Xbox games if they are compatible with the 360. Kinda cool.

Project for next week: Get F.E.A.R. installed and play some.

Friday Update aka What I played this week

2006-06-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

To keep this blog going, I'm going to make Friday's my "What did I play this week" entry.

FFXI - Worked on getting the SAM up to 30 so we can do a BCNM 30.

Hamtaro's Hamham Heartbreak - I'm really stuck on this game...and in a good way. It doesn't get repitious or too hard and the animations are sooooo cute. (Can't believe I just said that :P )

SiN Episode #1 - Not overly thrilled with this one. I hate that it's part of Steam (very slow to start up if there is an update). I'm still having a bitch of a time doing WASD keyboarding. I got lost in a few places trying to figure out what to do (like trying to open a chainlink fence door that just moved back and forth). And it has some really annoying load times. Frankly, I think I got it because it was on sale for only $14.99 and it included the original SiN game which I remember trying to play back in the early 3D days. Since it's supposed to be short, I might end up finishing it, but so far it's just another shooter with fairly pretty graphics.

I will buy a Xbox 360 when....(Update #1)

2006-05-22T14:11:00.000-07:00

1. It has gone through at least 1 price cut.

2. There are at least 12 titles with an MSRP of $20.

3. I have white spotted (ie, played) at least half of the Xbox, PS2, and Gamecube games in my collection (not counting ones that were bought just for Sarah or duplicates). (Update #1: Did a rough count of my games and this number is around 90. Sheesh! Why is it so easy to get so many games so quickly!)

E3 2006 Wrap up

2006-05-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

I know I didn't actually go to E3, but I've been following the podcasts and web sites and here are a few of my end of E3 observations (from the sidelines, anyway):

Sony was probably the biggest loser of the show. The PS3 is too expensive to create enough of a market base to support big game development. The controller is a dissapointment due to the lack of rumble and the tacked on motion control. Most of their games aren't going to make launch and Blue-Ray isn't enough of a reason for people to get this system. And why the hell did they have two different versions if everyone thought that Microsoft shouldn't have done it? True they had some pretty good looking exclusive games, but none of them were worth $700+ to play.
Nintendo is still waiting for the ship to stop rocking. While the controller wasn't a disaster, it wasn't universally accepted as a good thing. Add to that the so-so graphics and unless it makes it on price point alone, Ninny might still just as well stay in the handheld market. I have a feeling that once the Wiivolution gets into peoples homes, lots of problems are going to crop up with that sensor strip and the controller.
Microsoft is, I'm surprized to say, the show's big winner IMHO. They gained the advantage of having their system price look cheaper (compared to the PS3) and they have more high quality games in the pipeline since the hardware has been out there for awhile already. Before E3 I had no intention of getting a 360. Now, I have to say that I will get one either this Xmas or beginning of next year depending on price cuts and system changes (the cooler CPU). Certainly the 360 controller has always been a desireable feature and the Xbox Live is getting better (ie, offline downloads of demos). With the inevitable death of in-magazine CD/DVD's, this will be the way to get them.
Prediction: E3 '07 will be a veritable ORGY of games! Noone will be talking hardware as it will already be released and it will be way too soon to be looking at a new platform. That just leaves lots and lots of next gen games to make our eyeballs bleed with pleasure! (Oh, and I also expect that MGS4 will still not be released.)

E3 Inspired Blog - #3

2006-05-10T15:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the systems are out and now they are talking games. I have to admit the Wii games are looking more and more attractive because of what the controller can do (well, when it works correctly). Seeing games like Fable 2 and other 360 titles makes me think that either I will need a 360 at some point, or an upgraded computer (if they also put them on PC - which I think we will see alot more of until these systems build up a large user base). The DS line-up is also enforcing my decision to get a DS Lite in June. More Pokemon titles! Looks like there will be some more good Cube games - nice to see it isn't dead yet. As for PSP titles, I can only hope they follow in the footsteps of GTA:LCS and bring them out on PS2. With a 100 million unit base, you'd think it would be a no brainer, but Sony may have some real trouble keeping the PSP going. UMD's are going the way of Beta and at $200 it's still a very pricy unit.

E3 Inspired Blog - #2

2006-05-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

After the latest news, I think I'll start writing their name $ony.

So, PS3 is going to be $600 (I don't even count the cheap one - it's the same bad idea that Microsoft had). That's twice the original price of the PS2 and a huge investment for a gamer. I balked at the thought of the 360 being $400. How long is it going to be before the PS3 drops down to something reasonable? 2 or 3 years? And how are they going to get enough of a customer base to justify games being made for it? (Not enough boxes in homes means not enough units of games sold in the stores.) And they wimped out on the controller. Motion sensitive but no rumble and it looks just like the old PS2/PS1 controller?

But there are suckers all over the place. I was at Gamestop today and three people (2 in the store and one on the phone) asked if they were taking pre-orders yet! More money than brains, I guess.

E3 Inspired Blog - #1

2006-05-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

With the net humming with E3 news in every shape and form (yeah, podcasts!), I've gotten the bug to blog again. During this week I'll try to post once a day even though I'm not actually at E3 myself. (I'm actually within driving distance of the event, but am not one of the chosen ones who get to attend.)

As for next gen consoles, I have no love for the 360. I think Microsoft rushed it out the door and cut the legs of the original Xbox too soon. On top of that, most of the good games are on PC as well, so why drop $400+ to get one? (Ok, it might be different if you have a sweet HD-TV setup, but I is not one of them.) But I am losing something because of the 360...mainly advertising for sale games. Every 360 game ad, is one less for the PS2, Cube, GBA, and Xbox. Very unfair.

I am looking forward to the PS3 even though I doubt I'll be able to get one at launch. Price and availability (and my own cheapness) will more than likely make it a canidate for Birthday Present 2007 (or maybe even Xmas 2007 - yikes!).

As for the Wii.... /sigh .... I love Nintendo. I really do. But WTF were they thinking? Was no one in the board room of the Western persuasion when the decision to call it Wii was made? I guess if it's cheap (in comparison to 360 and PS3) it will get enough of a user base to survive its silly name. Favorite jab: "The Nintendo Wii. Urine in the game now!"

Trend I want to see die: Downloadable games. First they screw us out of maps and game aids. Then they take away paper manuals. Now we won't even get our own copies of a game? BS meter is pegged, folks.

Rez High

2006-04-13T16:19:00.000-07:00

I've never spent more than about $15 on a used game before (why pay alot if it's not new?), but the other day I dropped nearly $40 to get a game I never thought I'd see at Gamestop - Rez. This cult classic has been in very short supply until recently. I have no idea why there are so many on eBay now unless a whole batch was dug up in the desert next to the ET landfill.

I've always been curious about this game, but the screen captures always made me feel the game was rather primitive in its graphics. I figured I could always return it under their 7 day policy, making this more of a rent than a purchase. After playing it once I couldn't even imagine returning it! It's an amazing experience of light, music, and rythm that I wish every PS2 owner could have. (Oddly enough, OPM just put the demo on their DVD this month.) It actually made me think of Case's runs in cyberspace from Neuromancer. After my first run, I just sat and stared at the screen.

DS vs PSP vs ? (Update #1)

2006-03-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to decide if I need another handheld gaming system. My choices are either a PSP (which just dropped in price) or a DS Lite (which isn't for sale yet). This is what I'm weighing:

PSP
----
Pro: It's not another Nintendo; UMD movies; Some good games; Wireless net browsing; Putting stuff on Memory Sticks; Larger screen
Con: Will I really watch a UMD movie? (It would help if they had director commentaries); Not very many good games; Small screen wireless browsing doesn't work very well (or at least not on my PDA); GTA:LCS will be out on PS2 soon

DS Lite
-------
Pro: Some good games out there; Cheaper than PSP; Plays GBA games; Is brighter even then new GBA; Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon games
Con: Touch screen; Nin still hasn't really figured out if it's in the game or not in regards to videos; Sort of feels like just another Gameboy

Well, the debate goes on. I'll have to get serious when the DS Lite is actually released over here.

Update #1
----------

Out of all my posts, this one has actually resulted in responses (one I accepted, the other I didn't). As for who "won", I will be getting a DS Lite in June. It has better games (I think) and, while I will admit the PSP is a good unit, some of it's lesser features (load times, battery life, etc) make me less interested.

Journey into Oblivion

2006-03-22T14:32:00.000-08:00

This is my first attempt at a running account of a single game experience. (It's also my second attempt at making a blog entry today - don't ask. :P) I've been looking forward to TES4:Oblivion for a couple of years now and yesterday was finally able to get my hands on it thanks to a Fry's special price of $37.99. For me that's a lot to spend on a game - I'm normally a cheap bastard who waits for the games to drop in price. But patience be damned!

Picking the box up in the store I was a little disappointed that it came in only a standard box - the type you just empty and toss. I much prefer the plastic case type box some of the other companies are using. I couldn't help but think that the release push had mandated these flimsy boxes as the only choice the marketing department had. Oh well. At least they only tried selling a PC-DVD version.

Opening the box at home produced another small wave of disappointment. While the manual and map looked ok (maybe a little too small and shiny for an RPG game), the disc came in nothing more remarkable than a paper sleeve. There was an insert advertising the mobile edition of the game which, bearing in mind the steep system reqs the game has, made me laugh. Yep, your desktop system might not be able to run Oblivion, but you can run it on your mobile phone! What I didn't see surprised me even more - no CD key! Very strange in these days of anti-piracy paranoia. I had expected something even if it wasn't as restrictive as HL2's online reg system.

As time was a little short, I was mainly interested in just getting the game installed. Game installs these days can take hours so I knew this was no small task. When I put the disc in, I was first greeted with an ATI install screen. WTF? A couple of retries showed that it wasn't an error. Apparently, this game first checks your graphics driver environment and if you have ATI Catalyst Control Center it will replace it with ATI Control Panel. This is before ANYTHING about Oblivion comes up on your screen. I checked the disc's root directory for a README that might explain this but didn't find one. As aborting the uninstall/install of the ATI software caused the whole install to stop, I didn't have much choice but let it have it's way with my system.

After the ATI stuff, the game install started and I have to say looked pretty cool (menus looked like parchment and were very simple). It took about 45 minutes (I think) to do the whole install. At the end, it asked if I wanted to put an icon on my desktop and....if I wanted to read the README file. Oh well. What I saw in the README, btw, was lots of stuff about how to turn off various graphics features to speed up your game. Given my borderline system, this might not bode well.

Tonight - I actually will try to run the game! Stay tuned!

** Update #1 **
-----------------
Well, it runs without crashing (so far, anyway) which is more than I can say for most of the people on the Oblivion forums. It didn't think much of my P4 2.3ghz and Radeon 9800Pro, starting me off with a 640x480 resolution and most of the graphics features turned off. First thing I did was to defiantly bump it up to 800x600. Take that!

Opening sequence had beautiful music...and Patrick Stewart!

I created a character using the character creator program which makes some of the homeliest humans outside of a Neanderthal tribe. It also lets you choose from a whole host of species which I find a little odd. If you are fated to be in this adventure, how can you not be a specific character? It's one thing if you are entering a world like FFXI as just another citizen, but here you have a role to play. Probably just picking nits. Anyway, the humans or Imperials are still ugly - especially the women. My first character is named Harry, but I'll probably make a new one with a better name.

My next problem was one of control. Basically, I had none. The game won't recognize the right thumb stick on my gamepad and trying to use the keyboard blows. Left shift for run?? Yes I can change these, but I'd rather use a game controller. So, today I bought a Xbox 360 controller and a device from Fry's that let's you put an Xbox controller on your PC. If I can get one of these to work, I'm in business and I'll show those rats that I know how to wield a dead captain's katana.

** Update #2 **
----------------
Ok, nothing's working now. The Xbox controller adapter was a disaster (the hub was recognized but not the controller) and the 360 controller didn't work any better than the Logitech (ie, not right thumbstick). Worse, the drivers for the 360 unit basically locked up after I ran the configuration utility. BTW, what the heck is a Z-axis on a gamepad?

The forums are going nuts with people having all kinds of problems, mostly video related but I saw a couple of people who had the same problem as me. I really think my best bet is to hold off trying to play this anymore until Bethesda releases a patch. Lots of other stuff I can do in the meantime.

** Update #3 **
----------------
Not being able to just ignore the game, I decided to keep trying to get the controller working over the weekend. And after finding a post on the forums, actually did get the controller to work like it was supposed to (turned out it was a change to the joystick sensitivity parameters in the .INI file - who knew?). HOWEVER, all is not perfect yet. Since the game still requires you to use the mouse on menus, you have to keep switching between the gamepad and mouse. This is leaving me to think I will go back to the old numeric keypad I have and see if that works better. At least I figured out a good name for my character - Bryne.

** Update #4 **
----------------
Last night I started playing Oblivion for real. Turns out the keyboard and mouse method works pretty well. I still need to work out a few details (like how to swap between ranged and melee weapons), but I think Bryne is on his way.

** Update #5 **
----------------
Played some more last night. Just exploring more of the underground area you start in, but I did kill my first zombie! Using magic on rats is fun, but after our recent home issues, fighting rats makes me a little jumpy. The weapon swapping thing works well, but I wish I could sell some of this extra stuff and lighten my load.

Gun-gasm!

2006-03-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

I almost never get a game when it is only a day old, but Black was an exception (Oblivion will probably be too, but that's later in the month lol). Made by the same crash-happy folks of Burnout lore, Black is as advertised - gun porn! The manual could be a single page describing what the buttons on the controller do and even that you can figure out fairly quickly. It is a game devoid (I'm happy to say) of subtlety. The room you start the first mission in has a closed door. I must have spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to open the door. Aside from getting familiar with the controls, I wasn't able to budge it - so I shot it with the shotgun. Oh, that's how you do it! Well, duh! Black is for folks whose favorite movie scenes are the lobby scene from Matrix, the camp attack in Predator, and all the stuff in Navy SEALS that doesn't involve Michael Bein's love interest. I particularlly like the fact that cover can be shot away, although the grenades could have been done a bit better - I can't figure out how to throw them any distance. I managed to get through the first level on Easy on my first try, but it was touch and go a few times. This is just as it should be. I recently tried a demo of something called Ubersoldier, but the game didn't let me get out of the first room without dying. That pretty much killed any interest I had in it. I want to do max damage in a FPS and see plenty of carnage - but not of my character! I'm glad I didn't wait for this one to go any farther on sale.

By the Numbers (previously Updates)

2006-01-11T15:57:00.000-08:00

Not so much here on the blog as on my Video Game Purchases web page. For some reason I felt the need to add totals for games by platform, total number of games purchased since I started it and a weekly tally of purchases - in case this might shed some light on by buying habits, I suppose. I even have an average number of games purchased per week (which for me is always Monday to Sunday). In a possible validation of the theory that any examination of a phenomenon will affect the characteristics of the phenomenon itself, I just happened to go to Gamestop today not completely ignorant of the fact that this week's total of purchased games was still zero and bought 4 more PS2 games.

I love it when I'm right :)

2006-01-06T14:09:00.000-08:00

I read today that GTA:LCS is coming to the PS2....just like I predicted it would. Following the corporate plan that exclusivity has an expiration date, I knew that Sony would want more mileage out of the development costs incurred making LCS. It does surprise me a little that they announced so soon, but I guess the Xmas bubble has burst and whatever business the title could create for PSP sales is mostly over. Either way, it will make a fun game to play without having to get one of those pricey toys.

Traded some sleep last night for time on RE:2 for the cube. I have to agree with the critics who blasted Ninny for releasing it without the kind of update treatment #1 got. The graphics really suck for a cube game. But I have to say it handles better and runs quicker than it's PS1 parent.

Idea for next blog: Finishing games.

What lies ahead....

2006-01-03T11:49:00.000-08:00

Well, my Retirement 11 day demo ran out so it's back to work time. (Excellent program, btw. Can't wait for the full version!)

Much FFXI gaming over the break, but only a little console time. I did play some of Obscure (aka Resident Evil 90210) and it was both entertaining and dissapointing. Good graphics and decent control scheme, but there were a couple of times where not being able to move the camera made finding things almost impossible - like the gate out of the first area! I liked the partner style of gameplay, but to say this is a co-op play game is a ripoff. All they did was allow another player to drive around a slave character. No fun at all. However, as a single player game it worked out quite well. I also liked that when a character died, he (or she) stayed dead. You never know who's going to make it through. And the other characters would mourn at the places where their friends fell in battle. Sort of like Sims grief.

This is going to be an interesting year, videogame-wise. The old guard will be replaced with new systems. Microsoft has already stopped production of any MS games for the Xbox, and one has to wonder about the Cube. With the release of the Revolution, will Nin keep making games for a platform that is already struggling? I don't expect PS2 games to go away anytime soon - too many consoles out there to cater to. And eventually stores have to cut back on one platform or another or run out of display space. Target's have expanded their game area, but it's still only a couple of aisles. Walmart will have to make the most changes and as they are #1 in retail sales, that means alot.

And what will I end up buying? At this point, I have no interest in a 360 (too buggy, not any games I can't play on the PC, no interest in the online features, etc). The Revolution will probably be fairly cheap and if they have good backwards support that will be a plus. I am looking forward to a PS3 as I think it will be the powerhouse of the three. I have a feeling that in the end MS will regret having gone first in the console wars.

Time will tell and 2006 has begun.

Demo Reviews

2005-12-07T12:42:00.000-08:00

Yeah, I know, I shouldn't judge a whole game by just a demo, but these are hectic times and it's not always an option to play through a whole game - and some demos show us that some games aren't even worth playing through the whole demo.

Few games in recent memory have caused me to take a mental double take as this one did. Up till now, all the Bond games have been either generic agents or modern incarnations, but here we have a return to the very roots of the series. I couldn't see how a movie that was contemporary for most of today's kids' grandparents could even be contemplated as the basis for a game. Add to that the use of Sean Connery himself for the voice and appearance (one can't really see him having much of a clue what videogames are like), plus the completely altered political structure of that time and now (Russia was the Big Bad Guy then), and the mind boggles. Then I see screenshots of James running around with a whole array of automatic weapons. This was not the "From Russia with Love" I remember (ok, I haven't seen it for awhile, but still). The demo really surprised me - I actually liked it. Sean doesn't sound like the dapper young gent of the 60's and I'm a little uncomfortable with running JB around in a half-crouch with a SMG, but it's a decent run-and-gun that will be in my collection when it hits around $20.

The demo of this proved almost impossible to control and an insult to the movie. It took place in the building lobby that Neo and Trinity shoot up - one of the best parts of the movie and a modern day movie-clip classic. Once I finally got rid of the goons and figured I would go up to save Morpheus, more goons walk out of the elevator. Ok, kill them with random button mashing. Then another set come out, this time with shields. WTF? If this type of artificial gameplay extension is what the developers think gamers want, they are way off the mark (with me anyway). Also, the draw of this game is supposed to be a different ending to the trilogy than the movies. Why??? Just so we have another confusing story to deal with? This one will never show up on my shelves, even if it drops to ten bucks.

Not much different here than the last game - just rolling up bunches of junk. I still have the original game (mainly because it is so original). But I don't really "get" the game. So I probably won't get this one either.

I didn't really "demo" this game, but I did play it for a few minutes at a Target. I might as well have been playing the Disney soccer game. There was very little Mario in this. I think they needed to make it from the perspective of Mario himself as in Mario 64. Sure it wouldn't be a real footy game, but who needs another soccer game where you see everything from the sidelines again?

Of bits and bytes

2005-12-02T12:43:00.000-08:00

Just some random updates:

For some reason, Ninny has stopped shipping the DDR:Mario Mix sets. (Glad I got one early even if Sarah doesn't find it very interesting yet.) Something about problems getting the pads made. Not too much of a surprise to me as I thought they were being generous to sell the game and pad for a "mere" $49. They are going for $100+ on eBay currently. Be interesting to see if they drop it altogether or start up again with a newly manufactured pad.

360 mania continues with no new consoles available until the middle or so of this month. I've seen a couple of columns that actually talk more about the impact on Xbox than the improvement of the 360. Microsoft has created a bit of a tar baby here - Xbox's won't be blown out for discount prices, but the 360's are too expensive for alot of people and aren't fully backward compatible. I think that this will all work in Sony's favor and the new super console will be PS3.

Ninny maybe headed for problems too. A report I read stated that developers who got their hands on early dev kits likened the graphics for the Revolution to those of the Gamecube. This also doesn't surprise me - the Revolution unit is too small to provide adequate cooling for CPU, graphics and memory if they are going to be pushing the performance envelope. Of course, what do you expect from a company that is competing with itself on 3 different handheld gaming units at the same time.

Games just keep stacking up. Damn these holiday sales! (Ok, not really. Plenty of room for more games.) I just can't see adding another platform to my collection anytime soon. With the sparkling new SP, I have 4 major systems to buy games for. A DS and/or an Xbox 360 is not in my near or mid-future buying plans. Back when videogames were new (ie, Atari 2600 days), the thought of buying games and not playing them within hours of getting them home would have been unthinkable. But those were simpler days.

Going to try putting a "skin" on one of my Gamecubes. Fry's was selling the skins from Pokemon XD for $0.99 and I couldn't resist. With all the luck I used to have putting stickers on toys, I don't have much faith in it coming out looking anything but crap, but for a buck I'll try. Pics to be posted here if it isn't a total disaster.

Dis'sing the DS and a Holiday Weekend in Vana'diel

2005-11-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

Even though this is the week of the new DS Mario Kart bundle release, I don't know if I will be picking one up. As much style as this version has, the unit still has many of the same problems that caused me to sell the first one I purchased. It's large, heavy, and awkward to hold if you are using the stylus. Also, the games for it still aren't that interesting. True, Mario Kart looks good and the online feature sounds cool, but where are the RPG and adventure games? Only one RPG (Luna) and a few so-so adventure games. When I sold my first DS, I was sad to lose the backlit screen for GBA games, but with the new SP I don't need it. Plus I think the SP screen is even brighter than the DS was. So, never say never, but it looks like I will let Mario Kart drive on by. I've still got a stack of GBA games to play.

In other news, this was the first holiday weekend that I truly enjoyed more in the virtual world than the real one. Our hearty trio ran all over Vana'diel to complete quests, defeat nefarious monsters, and open up new jobs to train in. We have proven that a balanced 3 person party can kick major ass and pick up more than enough points to keep leveling. A run like this makes all thoughts of trying a different MMORPG fade like morning mist. Long live the NeverwinterKnights!

Xbox 360 Day

2005-11-22T14:34:00.000-08:00

Yup, it finally came out. I saw lines at Best Buy and Fry's this morning, and the Circuit City I went to at lunch said they had people lining up last night, but only had 16 units to sell this morning. Most are probably going up on eBay where they are selling for as much as $3,000 according to some reports. So stupid.

I am looking forward to getting the Mario Kart DS system next week. Plus, who knows what kind of craziness is going to go on over the T-Day weekend sales. In the meantime, I'm thinking of a retro-gaming period. Still have a few SNES and N64 games I haven't played, along with some Playstation ones. Kind of wish I still had a Dreamcast. ;)

Monday Updates

2005-11-21T09:46:00.000-08:00

More new games added to The Collection. Finally got the new Fable game. Microsoft really confused a lot of people, especially Target employees.

Going to put a white dot on Red Dead Revolver. I think I have to agree with the review that said they tried to do too much in one game. I mean, if it's a shooting adventure game, just let me run around and shoot! Before the third save point, I had to learn to shoot, use cover, special aim, and do a show down. And the transitions between modes was pretty abrubt. That and a few other problems sort of takes the fun out of the game. I'll keep it around in case I ever get a chance to wade farther in, but for now it's time to move on, pardner.

Xbox 360 comes out tomorrow (or tonight if you do the midnight thing). I can't believe people are dropping that kind of money. You could buy a PS2, Xbox, and a Gamecube for the price of the $399 package. And the games are aren't all that impressive. Oh well.

Stuff to get tomorrow. May have to get the King Kong game as it comes with a free movie ticket (that's $7.00 right there). The Aeon Flux set at Circuit City comes with a Liquid TV disc that I must have. Shop till you drop!

Bad bad bad bad

2005-11-16T10:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I think I shouldn't always believe reviews. Afterall, everyone's tastes are different and what one person thinks sucks rocks could be a favorite of someone else. On the other hand, some things are just universally bad. Like liver. And the game Minority Report.

This title (which will be returned to Gamestop later this week) could have been at least a playable game, but what I read in the reviews turned out to be true. They took the premise of the movie (which wasn't a bad one at that) and tried to make a game of it. They didn't get licenses for the actors and decided to make it a "fighting" game. The result is a game with decent graphics that has you punching and kicking anyone who gets in your way (guards, robots, glass) in order to open doors to continue chasing a potential killer. In a word, yuck! If you had been able to sneak and/or use weapons (even the bad guys got to use bats...or rolling pins - it was hard to tell), I think I would have kept it. We're only talking about $7 here. Good thing Gamestop has a liberal return policy.

Catching up...

2005-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

Haven't had as much time to scribble lately so I'm a little behind in my blogging.

First of all, I just want to put in that this blog is mainly here for me to drone on about videogames without boring the few friends I still have. And maybe to have something to look back on as the years roll by (and boy do they ever!).

Second, a quick clarification on the "white dot" system. I wanted to start it because the idea of buying things for a hobby and not using them (something I always do too much of) seems like such a waste. At least if I get an hour or so out of a game I buy, I feel like that money went for something enjoyable - other than the thrill of the purchase. Yeah, it's sad but I do actually enjoy buying stuff - well, most of the time. When I'm not feeling guilty about spending money I don't have.

Third, I guess I can put half a dot on Red Dead Revolver. I started it over the weekend and it's not bad. I haven't gotten beyond the first save point (and it was a quick one). Little tutorial, a quick battle and then the save. With Gun out, I thought I would play a different wild west shooter game until it came down in price. But I don't feel I can really put a full dot on it yet. I could easily (and probably will) replay the intro.

(Ok, no more numbering...)

Games coming out left and right this time of year, along with a whole new console in a week. Xbox 360 will have only 10 console-exclusive titles at launch, store quantities are going to be less than anticipated, and it's already looking that it will be a bust in Japan. My guess is that most systems will be bought to sell on eBay or as glamour Xmas presents.

Played a demo of Call of Duty 2 last night. These games serve two purposes for me - to remind me that war is a fucking waste of human life and that I would have lasted about 5 minutes in a real WWII firefight. My war would have gone something along the lines of hop off the truck, run up the road, and hope that I only sustained a serious enough wound to send me back home with a Purple Heart medal, but not bad enough to kill me. Oh, and hope the wound doesn't get infected either.

Well, that should do for today.

White Dot for Project: Snowblind

2005-11-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

I love videogames. I REALLY love videogames. And I buy videogames. LOTS of videogames. Maybe it's the way they are packaged. The older games came in cleverly designed cardboard boxes with little compartments for the cartridges. Newer games come in seductive DVD cases that stack well or can stand up like little books. For whatever the reason, I can't keep from getting more - and on a weekly basis. I figure the last system that I played all the games I got for it was either the Atari 2600 or (possibly) the Dreamcast (only because I didn't have very many games for it). I know I have some unopened SNES games and I think one or two for the N64. As for the big 3, forget it. With around 70+ for each system, it's no contest. So, in an effort to make me feel that I'm not totally wasting my money, I've started to mark games that I have played. I don't have to finish the game, but I do have to at least get a feel for the game. More than a demo and more than just watching the intro. Basically play it to the point of finding out what makes it unique and far enough into the game that I wouldn't want to lose my progress and start over. When I get to this stage, I put a white dot sticker on the spine of the game. Then when I look at my collection, I can easily see how many I've really played. Or see how many games I should play before buying more. (As if!) (The one thing it doesn't take into consideration is that some games I've played all the way through - like D&D Heroes and Cursed, for example - were sold off. And I think there were a few turkeys I got rid of after trying them and hating how they played. It does skew the count toward more unplayed then played, but I think it's still a good system. At some point I'm going to add GBA games to the "Dot System" too.)

Last night I was able to tag one more - Project: Snowblind for the PS2. I got a pleasant surprise from this one. I was expecting just a mindless FPS, but it had more story and setting than most. You play a U.N.-style peace-keeping soldier in the middle of what is becoming an Asian civil war set in 2065. Unlike most "peace-keepers" you get to kick alot of ass. After trying to hold a Chinese temple against enemy soldiers, futuristic double-rotor rocket firing heilo's, and ED209-like robots, you get seriously injuried and find yourself being "a candidate" for a new procedure - Project: Snowblind. (ED209 wasn't the only thing they stole from Robocop.) Neat touch: during the cut-scenes you can look around with the thumbstick, making it seem much less "canned". You then go out on more missions as this Halo-esque super soldier. So it borrows from a number of other games and movies - at least you get the feeling from the little touches (NPC chatter and computer cinematography, for example) that this wasn't just thrown together to make a buck. Hard to say how much more I'll play of it as the first mission out of the "garage" is kicking my ass so far. :P

P.S. The $900 B&N bundle is up to #2 on their best seller list, second only to SW:BF2.

Game Boy Joy

2005-11-08T12:42:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to add a few words here about how much I'd like to thank Nintendo for finally getting the Game Boy right. I've owned every version they have made (except the Micro) and up til this latest one, the gorgeous backlit SP, I really thought someone should have sued the crap out of Ninny for false advertising. The first Advance was so dark, you had to play it in full daylight to see the screen. I got rid of games because I couldn't play them - like Tomb Raider when I wasn't sure if Lara was jumping over a pit or in the shadow of a platform. You would think it would be misrepresentation to have the back of every game's box show a screen shot that was impossible to obtain with the existing hardware. The original frontlit SP was an improvement and the DS was even better - except a) it wasn't a Game Boy, and b) it was too damn heavy to use. When I heard about the Micro I was really planning on getting one because they said it was going to have a backlit screen. I wasn't thrilled that it was going to be a smaller screen, however. (I remember suggesting to a Nin-rep once that they should make a bundle for the over 40 crowd - a Game Boy with a pair of reading glasses.) Then I find out Nin is making a new SP with the same kind of backlit screen! No hype, no advertising, just a new box, new colors and the same $79 price. Not that they wanted to make a big deal about it - they were basically undercutting their own new product. It costs $20 less, has a bigger screen, and plays all old Game Boy games. So, I sold my old SP, bought the new one, and it's been portable gaming bliss ever since. WTG, Nintendo!

Cha-ching!

2005-11-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

Got an email from B&N today advertising their Xbox bundle - full package console, 4 games, extra faceplate, and a couple of other goodies for $899! And it was #3 on their Best Seller's list! If you want next day delivery, and who wouldn't considering only the truly desperate will be preordering it, you are up to a few bucks shy of $1000. To play 4 games, 2 of which have been released on other platforms. Go figure.

Xbox 360 Bits

2005-11-01T15:51:00.000-08:00

Just a little update to keep this fresh:

21 days (ie, 3 weeks) till the big Xbox 360 release and all is not well in Gatesville. Walmart had to disconnect their demo systems because the wireless function of the consoles was messing up the PA systems in the stores. Consoles have been determined that they won't be using HD-DVD's but will be able to play HD-DVD movies. And in a blow to anyone chomping at the bit to play the only RPG for the console at launch time, Oblivion has been postponed till a post-Xmas date in 2006. Prediction: being the nature of complicated RPG's, I say it's going to slip further. (Yeah, I know, not really sticking my neck out on that one.)

Land of Stubbs the Zombie

2005-10-26T13:54:00.000-07:00

Three recent and farily unrelated events conspired to really mess things up in this dimension. They were the DVD release of the "Land of the Dead" movie, the upcoming release of the "Land of the Dead" video game, and the recent release of a game called "Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse". How are all these related by anything but rotting flesh? By the fact that the existence of the third caused the creation of the second (which was mandated by the creation of the first) to suck like a Hoover on overload. Let me explain....

I recently saw "Land of the Dead" and must say I rather enjoyed it. Not as classic as "Night" or "Dawn", but much more enjoyable than "Day". Around the same time I tried a demo of "Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green", your typical game-from-movie tie-in. Aside from being a fairly crappy FPS, I couldn't get over the basic problem that any game that is supposed to be in the "Night/Dawn/Day/Land of the Dead" world has to exist under the fundamental rule that one bite will turn you into a zombie! The FPS game's fundamental rule is you take damage from 100% (or more) down to 0% until you are dead. I'm sorry, but you can't fit these two rules into the same game.

Where I think the developer's missed the target is in forgetting who the "star" of the movie was. It wasn't the easily infected warm blooded humes, it was the crafty thinking head zombie (credited as Big Daddy btw). A game where you play this central character, this Martin Luther King Jr for the recently deceased and animated, would make for some unique gameplay. In the movie alone, he solved problems, armed his followers, and dispatched (or converted) those that oppressed his, uh, people.

However, as (bad) luck would have it, it was around this same time that the "Stubbs" game was planned for release. Being that the game was touted for months ahead of time, it was widely known that one of the primary goals of the game was to build you own army of zombies by eating the brains of the living. Having two games release at nearly the same time that had the player be a zombie just would not have flown at the corporate level.

So, in the end, we are stuck with a mediocre FPS movie-tie-in and a good (but very short) action game. I wonder how sales of "Land of the Dead: Big Daddy" are doing in that other dimension.

Neverwinter ever again?

2005-10-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Just got the December 2005 issue of PC Gamer yesterday (yeah, I don't know why they print them like that either), and the cover story was about Neverwinter Nights 2. Being a veteran of many a D&D battle as part of an awesome trio, fighting our way through Baldur's Gate I & II, Icewind Dale I & II, their expansions, and then NWN, any news about the next installment had me doing something I almost never do - actually read an article in a magazine. :P Unfortunately, I think they got the name of the game wrong. If what I read doesn't change drastically, it should be called "Fable Nights". Here is a quote that sums up my dissapointment:

"Because Obsidian (the game's developer) is focusing so completely on Neverwinter Nights 2's story-driven single-player experience, multiplayer was brought up almost as an afterthought."

Yup, the main thrust of NWN2 will be a single-player adventure, complete with character growth and NPC's for hire. The article goes on to say that there will be a multi-player mode, but it will be based around the DM style - no mention of the non-DM style of play.

While I appreciate that the rich history of adventure gaming was built on single-player games, I can't help but think the legacy of Black Isle's games is fading faster than the popularity of Zip drives.