I recently downloaded and played-through demos for The Bigs, Blue Dragon, The Darkness, and Stuntman: Ignition on XBOX 360. The Bigs didn't really resonate with me, as I was hoping for something more along the lines of NBA Jam or NFL Blitz; what I found didn't feel terribly different from MLB 2K7. Blue Dragon felt like a solid RPG with pretty graphics and a fun approach to combat, but it didn't really grab me... Then again, the demo offered little in the way of plot. The darkness was good visceral fun with really nice graphics and some cool twists to FPS gameplay; the level of immersion was right up there with the best of the genre. Stuntman is very pretty, a lot of fun, and just the right kind of frustrating; it didn't feel quite as impressive as the videos I'd seen online, but it's a good buy if the price is right. I also grabbed Juiced 2 and Project Sylpheed, but haven't spent any time with them yet...
On PSP, I've finished LocoRoco and Puzzle Quest, and both are must-buys. LocoRoco really is unlike anything you've played before and features amazingly endearing characters and music. Puzzle Quest, whether you own a PSP or a Nintendo DS is a fantastic RPG/puzzle game that'll keep anyone entertained for weeks, and constantly coming back for more. I've since moved-on to finishing Daxter and Crush, but I also picked-up the recent PSP re-release of the PSOne classic PaRappa The Rapper! I've been waiting for years to play that game, and it completely lived-up to my expectations. It's short (only six songs) and silly, but holy crap are the songs catchy! I just picked-up the soundtracks to both PaRappa 1 and 2 :)
Recent computer fixes have consisted of replacing a blown PSU (smoke 'n everything, apparently!), spending hours recovering digital photos from a SATA laptop hard drive sporting a corrupt filesystem, a bad power connector on another laptop, and a bad power adapter on yet another. Luckily, that last laptop is still under warranty.
Ooh, and my RAM upgrades arrived last week! My main system now has 2GB of DDR400 RAM running in dual-channel mode, my second system has 1GB, and the rest will be distributed throughout the family's desktops (currently running in 1GB and 512MB configurations).
Monday, July 23, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Cooool!
I just heard about MenuetOS, and it sounds pretty awesome... It's a new OS developed from scratch, written entirely in assembly language! If this thing is functional enough online, it could knock-out Debian as my alternative OS of choice. Not only would it be faster, but it would have the whole 'security through obscurity' thing down pat.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Updates!
My main computer's fine and everything's back up and running on Windows XP there, the 2GB of RAM has shipped and should be here early in the week, and I decided to replace Debian with PC-BSD on my second machine for the time being.
Installation of PC-BSD was a breeze, but I did run into one problem upon the first boot. The system would freeze just after loading the drivers for my PCI SoundBlaster Live! card. I was able to get things going in "safe mode", and I noticed that it was also trying to load drivers for my motherboard's integrated audio chip even though it was disabled in the BIOS. I enabled the onboard audio and reinstalled the OS, and it installed no sound drivers. Sweet :\ So I grabbed the SoundBlaster drivers from the PC-BSD website, re-disabled onboard audio in the BIOS, and now everything's peachy. I'm using Opera to browse the web and, well, that's about it, but it's pretty nice! KDE is about the same as I remembered it and still not my preferred GUI, but it's pretty and functional. PC-BSD's package system, while not quite as self-contained as those found in some other OS offerings, is still pretty slick and really easy to use; of the Linux/BSD distros I've played with, it's probably most akin to Slackware's system. The only real gripe I have so far is that Flash 7 seems to be a little sketchy, and in this YouTube world, that just makes things slightly more annoying :)
Also, XBOX 360's backwards compatibility has been updated again! They fixed Jet Set Radio Future and SEGA GT 2002, and now I can play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Project Gotham Racing 1 and 2! Wheee! :)
Installation of PC-BSD was a breeze, but I did run into one problem upon the first boot. The system would freeze just after loading the drivers for my PCI SoundBlaster Live! card. I was able to get things going in "safe mode", and I noticed that it was also trying to load drivers for my motherboard's integrated audio chip even though it was disabled in the BIOS. I enabled the onboard audio and reinstalled the OS, and it installed no sound drivers. Sweet :\ So I grabbed the SoundBlaster drivers from the PC-BSD website, re-disabled onboard audio in the BIOS, and now everything's peachy. I'm using Opera to browse the web and, well, that's about it, but it's pretty nice! KDE is about the same as I remembered it and still not my preferred GUI, but it's pretty and functional. PC-BSD's package system, while not quite as self-contained as those found in some other OS offerings, is still pretty slick and really easy to use; of the Linux/BSD distros I've played with, it's probably most akin to Slackware's system. The only real gripe I have so far is that Flash 7 seems to be a little sketchy, and in this YouTube world, that just makes things slightly more annoying :)
Also, XBOX 360's backwards compatibility has been updated again! They fixed Jet Set Radio Future and SEGA GT 2002, and now I can play Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Project Gotham Racing 1 and 2! Wheee! :)
Monday, July 09, 2007
Well, shit...
Windows XP seems to have died on my main machine, and I'm not sure I want to activate Vista on the second hard drive... A repair installation of XP didn't work, so my current plan is to grab a Linux distro and back-up my data that way; seems like a good excuse to try something new. I was thinking of going with Ubuntu 7.04, as it has been a while since I've installed Ubunutu. I guess I could go with another big one like Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, or whatever, but they're not really grabbing my attention. Gentoo might be interesting, but I'm not in the mood for that kind of potential frustration right now :) Perhaps I should look into PC-BSD... Anyway, the data seems to be intact, so I'm happy.
I also noticed some cheap 1GB sticks of DDR400 (various brands) at some local stores the other day (~$55 each), but they were all sold-out when I got there today. The cheapest they had was a 2GB OCZ dual channel kit for $149.99. I ended-up ordering two 1GB sticks of Crucial RAM online for $54.99 each; we'll see if they actually have them in stock or not :\
I finished Black (on my XBOX 360) this morning. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, and certainly recommend picking it up, especially since it can now be found for as little as $9.99 used. It's not the longest game, the story isn't particularly important, the AI isn't the brightest, and there's no multiplayer, but it's still great fun and worth a couple of plays through. Next up is Grabbed By The Ghoulies...
I also noticed some cheap 1GB sticks of DDR400 (various brands) at some local stores the other day (~$55 each), but they were all sold-out when I got there today. The cheapest they had was a 2GB OCZ dual channel kit for $149.99. I ended-up ordering two 1GB sticks of Crucial RAM online for $54.99 each; we'll see if they actually have them in stock or not :\
I finished Black (on my XBOX 360) this morning. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, and certainly recommend picking it up, especially since it can now be found for as little as $9.99 used. It's not the longest game, the story isn't particularly important, the AI isn't the brightest, and there's no multiplayer, but it's still great fun and worth a couple of plays through. Next up is Grabbed By The Ghoulies...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Progress...
Since my last post, I've picked-up a few more Game Gear, PSP, Dreamcast, and Windows games.
The Game Gear acquisitions entailed browsing the local independent specialty shops, and included Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter Animation, and Super Smash TV. The Sonic games are all solid, Shinobi is akin to the corresponding Genesis titles of the same era, Virtua Fighter's kinda dull, and Smash TV is an atrocity... But then I should've suspected that. Smash TV is a classic franchise, due largely in part to its control scheme (two independent directional controls, one for movement and one for attack). For whatever reason, the Game Gear's lack of buttons didn't register with me when I bought the game. Ergh.
On PSP, I've just-about finished Puzzle Quest (did everything but searching for runes/forging weapons) and LocoRoco, so something new is in order. Daxter and Crush are on deck, but I picked-up Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Trading Card Game. Ultimate Alliance is kind of boring so far and I haven't spent much quality time with the card game, but it's safe to say that neither has thrilled me.
As a nice follow-up to scoring NHL 2K2 for Dreamcast, I came across Tennis 2K2 just a few days later! This game is the best in its genre for the generation, and has been ported to the PS2 and PSP... And it was only $4.99! I suspect that the price may have been so low because the disc was kind of dodgy, but upon closer inspection, there was just some gunk on one section of the surface; so a quick wipe later, all was well.
On Windows, I've gotten back into Tomb Raider Anniversary, and I'm loving it. Croft Manor, specifically, is a wonderful gaming experience, and really sets an example for what I think episodic gaming should be like. I also snagged a copy of Overlord, and it's too much fun :) The mouse is a little weird (especially for "sweeping") after being introduced to the game on XBOX 360, but it's probably the better controller in the long run. The gameplay does seem to get a little stale after extended play sessions, but the graphics, writing, and pick-up gameplay is top-notch. This is the kind of title that should keep me wholly entertained for at least a couple of weeks of casual play.
The Game Gear acquisitions entailed browsing the local independent specialty shops, and included Sonic The Hedgehog, Sonic Chaos, Shinobi, Virtua Fighter Animation, and Super Smash TV. The Sonic games are all solid, Shinobi is akin to the corresponding Genesis titles of the same era, Virtua Fighter's kinda dull, and Smash TV is an atrocity... But then I should've suspected that. Smash TV is a classic franchise, due largely in part to its control scheme (two independent directional controls, one for movement and one for attack). For whatever reason, the Game Gear's lack of buttons didn't register with me when I bought the game. Ergh.
On PSP, I've just-about finished Puzzle Quest (did everything but searching for runes/forging weapons) and LocoRoco, so something new is in order. Daxter and Crush are on deck, but I picked-up Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Marvel Trading Card Game. Ultimate Alliance is kind of boring so far and I haven't spent much quality time with the card game, but it's safe to say that neither has thrilled me.
As a nice follow-up to scoring NHL 2K2 for Dreamcast, I came across Tennis 2K2 just a few days later! This game is the best in its genre for the generation, and has been ported to the PS2 and PSP... And it was only $4.99! I suspect that the price may have been so low because the disc was kind of dodgy, but upon closer inspection, there was just some gunk on one section of the surface; so a quick wipe later, all was well.
On Windows, I've gotten back into Tomb Raider Anniversary, and I'm loving it. Croft Manor, specifically, is a wonderful gaming experience, and really sets an example for what I think episodic gaming should be like. I also snagged a copy of Overlord, and it's too much fun :) The mouse is a little weird (especially for "sweeping") after being introduced to the game on XBOX 360, but it's probably the better controller in the long run. The gameplay does seem to get a little stale after extended play sessions, but the graphics, writing, and pick-up gameplay is top-notch. This is the kind of title that should keep me wholly entertained for at least a couple of weeks of casual play.
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