"They say she's the same, but she's not the same..."

I really don't like it when developers release different versions of the "same" game on multiple platforms. More often than not, at least one version stands-out from its other-platformed bretheren, and not in an encouraging way. I hate the idea that one might unknowingly buy the shitty version, be denied the better version because they don't own the right platform, or have to play two different games to get the full experience. Prime examples include Need For Speed, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit 2, and Splinter Cell Double Agent.

The original Need For Speed was a relatively (to its contemporaries) reality-based racing game on the 3DO and PC. The PSOne and Saturn versions were altered to make them more arcade-like, but retained the exact same name and cover art. Misleading? Uhm, yeah. Hot Pursuit 2 was developed primarily as a PS2 title, and it turned out to be a fantastic one on that platform. It was not, however, quite as fantastic on the PC, XBOX, or GameCube. An entirely different development team made a very different game for the other platforms, which is sad because the PS2 version was so much better. Finally, Double Agent on the 360 is a completely different experience on the XBOX 360 than it is on the XBOX/PS2/GC (I'm not sure about the PC version). The older consoles offer a more fleshed-out storyline, entirely different co-op and competitive multiplayer, and only night missions. Weird, eh?

Anyway, on a brighter note, Clive Barker's back!!! Clive Barker's Undying is easily one of my favourite video games. Period. So the news that he's working on a new project called Jericho has made me quite happy :)

Grrr...

NHL2K7 does not remove injured players until after the game is over. Perhaps this is common knowledge for hockey video game enthusiasts, but I'm a few years out of the loop and somewhat surprised (though it does make sense when one considers such factors as player-specific stats, textures, and audio clips being loaded per game rather than manipulated in real-time). Also, I no longer trust my XBOX; it crashed with another dirty/damaged disc error as I was saving my profile, and corrupted the file in the process. I lost all of my settings and achievements... Luckily, the season data is stored in a separate file. Since I'd rather not risk my season data or (potentially?) the integrity of my hard drive, nor would I enjoy resorting to saving everything twice (once to a memory card, just in case), a new XBOX is in order.

On a brighter note, I'd had my fun with Windows Vista RC2, so I replaced it with Ubuntu 6.10. It was very nice, very fast, and seemed to do everything right... So where's the fun in that? :) I'm back on Debian (3.1 rev3) here, and I think I'll keep it this way for a while. The "Desktop Environment" option in tasksel does what I need without too much bloat, and all I had to do afterwards was add Gaim and BitTorrent, edit XFree86 to allow higher resolutions, and set-up a static IP. Anyway, here're a couple of interesting things I've discovered over the past couple of days: The "ati" driver that comes with most Linux distributions performs a hell of a lot better with my Radeon 8500 than the final ATi-distributed "fglrx" driver that supported it, and the full ISO image of Debian 3.1 rev3 didn't seem to include "Desktop Environment" in tasksel. Annoying, eh? Yeah, I swapped the Radeon 8500 (AGP4x) from my Athlon XP 2200+ machine (AGP8x board) for the GeForce 6200 (AGP8x) in this one (AGP4x board).

One more thing, about the CD/DVD suites: GEAR PRO is very nice, but I've still got a few small gripes. I did, however, remember one suite that I'd forgotten about before: SlySoft's "Clone" products. It's been a while since I've used them, but I remember good things. More on this next time...

If I may...

Allow me to bitch for a moment.

Nero. Yeah, the CD/DVD creation suite. Remember when it was good? When it wasn't horribly bloated, infectious, and broken? Yeah, me too... Man, those were good days. What used to be a full-featured, clean, and very effective piece of software now tries to do everything at once, integrate itself into Windows, and quite simply doesn't work on many systems. I could've dealt with the bloat and the integration because I was able to cut them out and focus on the core application, but then my audio CDs started acting-up. If it wasn't skipping tracks (even when previewed in Nero, before being written to CD; this was fixed by manually reverting to an older mp3pro.dll), it was including huge chunks of silence at the ends of certain tracks (no other application had this issue, using the same source material). So I started looking into my alternatives. Roxio? Still bitter from their past pieces of trash; they've got some explaining to do :) Alcohol? Nice, but does some really strange things to the registry, and doesn't do audio anyway. CDBurnerXP Pro? Definitely a favourite, but doesn't support DAO burning on a number of newer drives, and still has some annoying bugs (reporting that the disc is full before anything has been added; having to force it to burn). Cheetah? Now we're getting warmer, but the feature set is a little sparse. Well, I'm currently trying GEAR PRO, as it looks like the product with most comparable feature set to Nero (the good one). I'll keep you posted about how it goes. Oh, and don't bother suggesting iTunes for burning audio CDs; the ones it burns are always really touchy and seem to randomly skip.

Next on the block is NHL2K7. I was off to a great start (3-0-0) with my Leafs, but then came Florida. The first time I played them, as my goalie was holding the puck to freeze it, one of their players poke-checked him well after play had stopped (but just before the whistle), took the puck, and scored while my goalie just kinda stood there... Obviously, Raycroft was as shocked as I was. So I reloaded my season and restarted the Florida game. This time, play was stopped, Bouwmeester suffered a major injury and was to be out for a few days... And then somehow scored on me later in the game!? I won in a shootout, but still, what the hell? Oh, and just to add insult to injury, at one point Jokinen skated from beside the net, around Raycroft, and scored. Here's the thing: RAYCROFT DIDN'T MOVE! HE JUST STOOD THERE AT THE SIDE OF THE NET!?!?!? Seriously, I'm starting to have doubts about this game... Maybe the dev team were Panthers fans.

If I were to build a computer today...

Every now and again I get to wondering what I'd buy if I were to do a major system upgrade right then and there. This time, I've decided to share:

65W AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ ($300)
ASUS M2R32-MVP ($180)
256MB ATi Radeon 1900 GT or XT ($270 vs $310)

...And the rest would probably remain pretty close to what I've already got. The 4600+ has similar performance to a Core 2 Duo 6400 for about the same price, so there's no need to jump on the Intel bandwagon there. The M2R32-MVP is based on ATi's Xpress 3200 chipset and offers fast and reliable performance, right up there with any Intel- or nVidia-based board. The video cards, while lagging ever so slightly behind comparable nVidia products in terms of FPS, offer a higher overall image quality. Also, if I ever want to try a CrossFire setup, the ATi-based motherboard will come in handy, but that's just even more wishful thinking. Besides, this setup keeps in line with the recent AMD-ATi buyout :)

Otherwise, I'd just keep what I have and buy a Mac Mini to play with; it'd cost about the same.

P.S. I love the spell-checker in Firefox 2.0!

So long, productivity!

Surprise!

I'm right pissed-off...

Silly me, I bought a game on a whim while out with a friend today. The details of this shopping trip aren't important, but rest assured, I want my money back. Unfortunately, there are generally no returns on opened software, plus my friend had the receipt... and threw it out. Fuck.

The game in question is Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition for Windows, and boy, did QA fuck-up on this one. The price was right (under $20), the packaging was nice, the game installed without issue (barring the fact that it came on five CDs), and things looked really sharp at 1152x864; better than they ever did on the game's native PS2 platform.

Here's the problem: The controls are painful. No, they quite literally hurt one's body. The game automatically maps the player movement to the right analog stick. Yes, the one on the right, which is, in fact, the wrong analog stick. Oh, and no, there's no way to change it. I did some research on the issue, and it is apparently not uncommon at all. It's so not uncommon that either Capcom or Ubisoft (I'm not sure which, as I can't find it on either company's site) quietly released a patch that addresses this, as well as other issues. Unfortunately, the patch still doesn't support a number of popular controllers from major manufacturers, including my XBOX 360 controller. So my options are to either map the keyboard movement keys to the left analog stick using third-party software, or play with the keyboard. The latter would seem to be the simplest solution, but a fast-paced brawler simply does not translate well to a keyboard. Apparently there are other issues of crashes, slowdown, and missing effects... Wheee!!!

I really wish I'd checked-out the reviews for the PC version before buying it, but I just figured that since the PS2 version was so universally loved, I couldn't lose! Maybe I can get a good trade-in value or something... Guh.

I only have time for a quickie...

IE7's out. I like it. Give it a try if you're on Windows XP or 2003. Hey, did anyone notice that the IE7 version number in XP (7.0.5730.11) is earlier than the one in Vista RC2 (7.0.5744.16384)? Exciting, no? No, not really.

I was doing some shopping for a friend's upcoming baby shower, and made a few stops while I was out. I came home with a McDonald's Cripsy Chicken Sandwich (had a coupon for a free large sandwich; decided to try the most expensive thing they had), a humidifier (for the babies; she's having twins), The Warriors (XBOX; it was cheap), and DooM 64. The sandwich was okay, the humidifer was on the registry, The Warriors doesn't like my XBOX (what else is new), and DooM 64 is a whole lot of fun. It would be nice if DooM 64 saved your control and brightness settings (you thought DooM 3 was dark? Hell, they don't even give you a flashlight in this one!), but it's a minor annoyance.

Before I go, a quick update on my Zelda progress: I finished Ocarina Of Time the other day, and it was a lot of fun. Not as much fun as I've ever had with a game, or even a Zelda game (Link's Awakening is still my favourite), but definitely a solid title worth anyone's time. I'm now getting into Majora's Mask. If the introductory chapter is any indication, this is definitely going to be my kind of video game. For anyone who hasn't played the game, the entire story takes place over three days, and time passes pretty quickly; the time travel aspects of the previous Zelda game return in Majora's Mask, however, so things promise to be interesting. It seems as though the more original gameplay aspects of Ocarina Of Time (music, masks, time) have been streamlined and augmented to have a greater effect on the core gameplay and not just the plot and sidequests. What really stands-out above all else, though, is the presentation. This game requires the N64 RAM expansion, but doesn't just toss in more and higher-quality textures to the same old game engine; instead, we're treated to some really creative cinematography, characterization, visual effects, and sounds. The result of this more ambitious approach is a very effective visual and aural storytelling component of the game. They're all ultimately little things, as the game still remains true to the Zelda franchise, but they definitely make a very welcome difference. So, I still need to pick up Ages, Seasons, Minish Cap, and Wind Waker, as well as replay Zelda and Link (I'm thinking the GBA re-issues), but I'm making progress ;) By the time I'm done with those, Wii, Twilight Princess, and Phantom Hourglass should all be readily available.

Sorry...

...Can't talk; busy with Yakuza, Zelda, Katamari, and the Guitar Hero II demo.

What? IE7 and Firefox 2.0? Google and YouTube? Responsibility? Real life in general? Bah, it can wait...

Volcanoless?

Decided I'd had my fun with Vista RC1 Update, and finally got around to snagging a copy of SymphonyOS. SymphonyOS is a Linux distribution based on Debian with touches of Mozilla that aims to streamline the whole desktop computing experience. From the Orchestra development environment, through the Mezzo desktop environment (very cool; check it out), to the OneClick package installation "store", the result (still in BETA at this point) is very promising for general Linux desktop computing. I had no problems with the bootable CD version of the OS, but I couldn't get it to install properly on my hard drive. Luckily, Vista RC2 was released shortly thereafter, so I put Symphony and any associated frustrations on hold. RC2 (Build 5744) doesn't seem particularly different from RC1 Update (Build 5728); still runs just fine, looks very pretty, and Internet Explorer 7 has the same rendering issues (specifically with Google sites and Slashdot). I assume that the onus of driver support at this point is on the hardware manufacturers, so we'll see if Creative and SiS decide to let me use my existing hardware in Vista.

I've got a few service contracts in progress at the moment, but not enough time to get into them all at the moment, so I'll save that for my next update.

Oh, and I picked-up a 10dBi directional wireless antenna today... The wireless signal on my main machine is much more consistent now.

On the video game front, I picked-up the two N64 Zelda games (Ocarina Of Time, Majora's Mask) along with the RAM upgrade cart for a pretty reasonable price. I'd been meaning to do this for years now, but with the prices they were going for coupled with what I already had on my plate, the whole endeavour just didn't make sense. I also happened across a sealed copy of the original Katamari Damacy for PS2 for under $30... Had to pick that up :)

Hosed! :)

My time spent with Linux seems to go in cycles... I grab either a new version of something I'm familiar with or try a new distro, figure out how to get things running smoothly, then worry about the niceties (browser plug-ins, DVD playback, CD burning, etc...), then focus on smooth 3D gaming. After that goal is achieved, I tend to start over or revert to some form of Windows for a while. I gave-up on Ubuntu 6.06 last night, after it mangled a basic data burn to a CD-RW. It worked fine sometimes, and came-out unreadable others... Not good enough to keep me interested any longer (plus Flash for Linux is still stuck at version 7), but good enough to prompt me to hose-down the system and install Build 5728 ("RC1 Update") of Windows Vista.

I haven't noticed any huge differences since BETA 2, but then I haven't spent much quality time with either release. I did discover a few new things by installing Vista on my P4 2.4B system though: Vista doesn't (yet?) support SoundBlaster Live!s or SiS products particularly well. The SB Live! is simply unrecognized and unsupported, and the onboard AC'97 audio hardware, while recognized and supported, produces no sound and seems to make the system crawl; SiS' website offers no Vista software. So, no audio! Wheee! Also, the 256MB AGP 4x (8x bottlenecked by mobo) GeForce 6200 gets a performance rating of only 2.2 for "Desktop performance for Windows Aero", which is strange, since it gets a score of 3.0 for "3D business and gaming graphics performance". It's sad when your video card can run something like UT2004 without effort, but can't handle your OS's GUI ;) Okay, no, that's not true; the card can handle Vista's "Aero" GUI just fine, but the new performance rating system rates your system by its lowest-scoring component... Kinda sucks when your entire system's rating is brought down so low just because there're faster cards out there; or at least that seems to be the case when you consider the adequate performance of my current setup.

I Need A New XBOX

I wanted to start this season off right, so I did my research and checked-out what the sports companies have to offer in terms of hockey games this year (the last hockey game I played was NHL2003 on my PC). It looks like EA neutered all but the XBOX360 release of NHL07, and they're charging nearly twice the price of the competition on current-gen systems. Considering these two important factors along with the fact that 2K Games' offerings have been getting slightly higher reviews, the logical choice was (at a mere $20 CDN) NHL 2K7 for XBOX.

I've been having an absolute blast with it for the most part (I could live without the over-reliance on one-timers), but my Thomson-drive XBOX isn't cooperating with the disc. It's kind of annoying to have an awesome game and unlock some of the tougher acheivements just to have the game crash with a dirty disc error before it can save your progress... *sigh*