He's back!

I picked up Clive Barker's Jericho (been waiting for this since Undying!) the other day and I'm a few hours into it now. Things didn't look too promising at the outset, as I was treated to a poorly narrated video that showed nothing of importance... Seemed kinda pointless. I was then presented with a nicely pre-rendered and well acted video showing my Jericho team checking things out and getting into a firefight... Still, it seemed kind of out of place after the first video, especially since this second video was released as a teaser online some time ago. Next was the menu... The same boring menu from the demo. Ergh... My hopes were falling fast, so I tweaked the video options and started a new game... THANK THE HEAVENS, IT'S GOOD! Everything I was subjected to in the two aforementioned lacklustre videos is conveyed much more effectively through game-engine cinematics and during actual gameplay. They really should have just cut the pre-rendered crap out and prettied up the menu.

Anway, the graphics are very pretty (especially the blur effects), and the extended intro levels really do a much better job of walking players through the command menus, control scheme, and each different character than the demo did. Also, there are some pretty expansive areas here. I'm just getting into the game proper, so I haven't had to get creative with each character yet, but some of the team dynamics have already come into play (like ordering the team with the healer character to hold back while ordering the other team to engage exploding enemies in a narrow passageway). Also, the game is really holding my attention as the story unfolds around me... Don't let the ineffective demo and shoddy intro videos fool you, this is playing like a really solid title so far. I'll let you know if it starts to suck ;)

I also grabbed the Crysis demo and played through that. It feels like Far Cry but with some new ways to approach each area thanks to your character's 'nano-suit' abilities... This is a good thing, as I quite enjoyed Far Cry :) The Crysis demo was pretty well done in terms of setting up the story, introducing players to new gameplay mechanics, and hinting at what's to come; the cliffhanger ending is a nice touch. What bugs me is the game's performance on my system. I know I don't have the latest 64-bit dual-core CPU or a DirectX 10 GPU, but my system's no slouch either. I can run games like Jericho and BioShock almost at the highest settings, but this game requires me dropping things to the lowest at 800x600, and the audio is still spotty then. I've done some research into the subject, and Vista seems to be the culprit... Hopefully they fix that by the time the final product hits, because it looks absolutely gorgeous at the highest settings.

"This is the remix!"

It's out! It's here! I have it! AT LONG LAST!!! Castlvania: The Dracula X Chronicles, the very reason I purchased a PSP, has finally arrived, and it is gorgeous! By far one of the best 2D platformers anywhere, and easily one of the best Castlevania games ever released. Play this game!

An then, finally, some Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix screens and video! Now then, if only I didn't have to play it with the excruciatingly bad d-pads on the 360 and PS3 controllers :( Why is it so hard to make a d-pad like those found on the Genesis 6-button or the Japanese Saturn controllers?

Grrr...

So I'm thinking of restarting my season in NHL08... While the amount of goals the AI scores on its own net is unsettling, and while 6-3-0-3 isn't a bad record, it turns out that I'd been hitting the wrong button for speed bursts all along... I always wondered why my defenders would start skating backwards when chasing down an iced puck. I know I've blow a few leads that way, and it certainly is frustrating :\

Speaking of NHL08, remember how I said all but the most mindless games would be put on hold while I tackled Panzer Dragoon Saga? Yeah, well, all I've been playing are the mindless games... Hot Shots Golf on PSP, Marvel Ultimate Alliance on 360, and NHL08 on Windows :)

"...And I may just keep things this way for a while yet."

...Or I may not. After making my last post, I noticed that Opera didn't seem to play very nicely with Blogger, or iGoogle for that matter. So it's back to Firefox (2.0.0.6) on PC-BSD for me. Still very much enjoying the OS, with Flash 7's incompatibility with some sites being the only real issue I'm running into with everyday use.

The other white meat...

Took care of two computer jobs yesterday: A Vista tutorial and an OS X tutorial. I'm really glad I adopted Vista when I did and that my last regular job involved working alongside Macs, or else I would've been far less effecticve yesterday. Now then, if only people would start asking me to set up and show them around Linux :)

Speaking of which, I had my fun with Ubuntu 7.10 and was thinking of installing the latest 'daily' build of Debian, when I noticed that another open source operating system had recently released a new version. PC-BSD 1.4 was released on September 24th, and of the major updates (things like FreeBSD 6-STABLE, Xorg 7.2, KDE 3.5.7), three really helped to make the set up process much more enjoyable. Bundling Compiz-Fusion 0.5.2, support for Flash 7 in native BSD browsers, and official nVidia drivers (while controversial because of their immaturity, superficiality, and proprietary nature) goes a long way towards providing a complete and relatively painless desktop experience; that is what PC-BSD is going for, right? Really though, personally, I'm just glad to see OSS doing all the pretty things (right 'out of the box') that Apple and Microsoft are doing :)

I did, however, run into two bugs worth noting while setting up this new release. First, the same show-stopping issue between my SoundBlaster Live! and the bundled EMU10K1 driver that I had with 1.3 (freezing during start-up) still exists, but booting in safe mode and downloading the .pbi driver package from pcbsd.org still fixes that. Second, both of the bundled ATi drivers worked fine with my Radeon 8500 until I tried to enable Compiz Fusion. Using that window manager would cause all of the window borders to disappear (supposedly a driver bug, affecting only certain models), effectively negating all novelty of the fancy visual effects and killing a lot of interface functionality. Since I had no newer ATi-based video cards lying around, I swapped the 128MB Radeon out for a 64MB GeForce3 Ti200 and switched over to one of the bundled proprietary nVidia drivers (with the greatest of ease, I might add!), and all has been well and good since. In fact, I'm currently posting this from PC-BSD 1.4 using Opera 9.23... And I may just keep things this way for a while yet.

A Roadie!

Check out this trailer for Brutal Legend :) Oh, and this one for Street Fighter IV! And how about the new Bionic Commando? Looks pretty spiffy to me!

Finished Episode Two, had a lot of fun, can't wait for Episode Three... I really hope they're a little quicker getting that one out.

Unreal Tournament 3 feels like another Unreal Tournament game, and that's not a bad thing! Very pretty, and I'm sure there're all kinds of nuances 'n such that the hardcore fans are digging... But I'm too much of a casual fan to get into any of that here.

In a wonderful display of human error, I accidentally deleted a bunch of pictures from my recent trip to Iceland (luckily I'd already uploaded the best of that bunch to online photo albums), as well as a bunch of saved games. Since I don't really feel like starting Need For Speed Most Wanted all over again, this seemed like a good opportunity to move on to Carbon. It's been fun so far, but I think I like Most Wanted better.

I also started a season in NHL 08, and my Leafs are 4-1-0-1; it would seem my suspicions of rubber-band gameplay were incorrect.

Ubuntu 7.10 is out. I grabbed it before the rush, early this morning, and the Compiz effects are pretty nifty, though they're not perfect (on my Radeon 8500, anyway; fast 'n smooth, but a few artifacts in the corners now and again). The only gripe I have with it is with the initial rush on repositories; simple package downloads like Flash are taking ages or outright failing. Perhaps that's just local to the Canadian servers, but still...

Finally, two recent service jobs I took... The first involved a malfunctioning laptop. The girl just bought a new one, but kept trying to boot-up the old one. Turns out her hard drive was failing, and I can't imagine her tinkering was prolonging its life any. I was able to get her most important data backed-up, but it involved going through folder by folder. Fun times, let me tell you! The second involved integrating a new tower into a home network. This addition involved mixing parts between four computers to make the best possible combinations. I sat down with the guy and made a list of things to do, so once we got that settled, things seemed okay. I ended-up taking two towers (that he'd pieced together) back with me to perform a couple of clean Windows XP installations. One, a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 B, went pretty smoothly once I got the wires out of the case fan :\ The other, a 3.46GHz Celeron D 360, was a whole different story. The Windows installation kept crashing while configuring the network, so I pulled out the second NIC he'd installed, and that fixed that. Then Windows would crash every time I installed the video card drivers (256MB AGP8X GeForce 6200), but worked fine with the latest drivers for the integrated video. Then I realized that the SCSI card he'd installed wasn't running the SCSI BIOS after POST, and the SoundBlaster Live! Platinum wasn't detecting... Upon closer inspection, he had not properly seated ANY of the four add-in cards he'd installed in the system! So much wasted time, but all is working well now.

Oh, and the 'safely remove' system tray issue is back on my Vista machine... Grrr...

!!!

Tim Schafer and Jack Black, together at last!

In other news, I'm thoroughly enjoying Half-Life 2 Episode Two and Team Fortress 2, PGR4 seems pretty solid, NHL2K8's new control scheme is indeed painful, and I just finished installing the new Unreal Tournament 3 Beta Demo.

Portal!

I bought The Orange Box today, and played through Portal tonight. Fucking amazing. Easily one of the best games I have ever played, it mixes challenging logic/physics puzzles with twitch first person shooter controls while managing to weave a story full of truly disturbing horror, laugh-out-loud comedy, and nods to fans throughout. Definitely pick this one up!

Almost forgot...

More XBOX 360 demo impressions!

Bladestorm: Haven't played too many games quite like this one... Feels like a combination of Dynasty Warriors (same publisher)/Ninety-Nine Nights and Full Spectrum Warrior. I don't much care for it, but you might...

Conan: Looks like Heavenly Sword, which is probably why it feels like a God Of War rip-off ;) I'm all for formulaic games if they can get it right, but this one just didn't do it for me. The graphics were a little unpolished (but still very nice), the dialogue was only passable, and the controls felt far too floaty.

Looney Tunes Acme Arsenal: Maybe I missed the point, but it just felt really, really boring to me...

The Simpsons: Not bad! Seems like there's some potential for fun here. The free-roaming reminded me a bit of Crackdown.

Project Gotham Racing 4 and NHL 2K8 are downloading now...

Quick update...

So I haven't gotten too far in Panzer Dragoon Saga yet... No, Lost Planet didn't distract me; that's actually been pretty boring. I've really just been completely sucked-in by Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee on PSP. I'd never played a Hot Shots Golf game before, and now I'm upset that I took so long to do so! Oh yeah, and I got past that boss battle in Daxter that was giving me a hard time. Also, M33 Team is Dark_AleX?

Anyway, I also picked-up The Orange Box today, so it looks like Panzer Dragoon Saga's gonna be on hold a little longer :) The funny thing is that I had to go to five different stores (Future Shop, Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and two EB Games) before I found it... And It's not that it was sold-out; the first four stores had no evidence of it ever existing on their shelves... Weird.

Ooh, and as for that safely removing devices via the system tray issue I mentioned, well, I fixed it... By re-installing Vista again :\ I checked out the usual knowledge bases and forums, but no luck.

Vegemite!

There's a tube of Vegemite sitting on my desk... It was a gift, and I have yet to open it.

Anyway, I finished BioShock today, and I'm impressed. The graphics are great, the art style is truly awesome, "big daddies" are really cool, etc... You've probably gleaned at least that much from elsewhere online. What really stuck in my mind by the end was the truly dynamic gameplay coupled with a wonderfully intriguing storyline. The story grabbed me immediately with the introduction's voice-over, and having played previous "Shock" games, I was expecting some interesting twists and turns. The morally ambiguous choices the story presents players with don't really affect the gameplay mechanics as much as they do how players feel about their role. As the game progresses, you'll have plenty of cash, weaponry, tools, and a wide array of biological modifications regardless of the choices you make. At first this glut of powerups bothered me, but then I realized that it actually gave me freedom. Instead of specializing in hacking and setting traps or stealth or raw firepower and being locked into that style for the whole game, you're free to employ any combination of approaches simply by tweaking your loadout. Yeah, that seems like a lazy kind of way for the developers to go about it, but in a game so morally charged, that freedom really helps bring out the player's true motivations. There's a great big sandbox to play in, but the developers have managed to squeeze it into a pretty linear narrative; the results are truly engaging.

So, now that that's out of the way, (and after reading this) I'm finally sitting down and playing through Panzer Dragoon Saga on my Saturn. Everything else is on hold, save for mindless games (Lost Planet) and portables (Hot Shots Golf).

Speaking of Hot Shots Golf, that's where I've been spending most of my PSP time since I've been stuck on a boss in Daxter and am still slowly progressing through Crush.

On a completely unrelated note, I decided to move on from Adobe Audition (not fully Vista compatible, kinda clunky, not exactly industry standard, etc...). I was going to give Pro Tools (M-Powered) a shot, but it's not Vista compatible until the next version... Same goes for Cubase. Ableton, however, plays just fine with Vista, so I'm giving that a go. Sure, it's overkill for what I do, but it works, and it certainly is pretty :)

Ooh, and I did a Vista re-install not too long ago after an annoying video card driver debacle. Mostly my fault, but not worth the trouble of fixing manually. Anyway, since the clean installation, I can no longer safely remove devices by left-clicking on the system tray icon. Right-clicking to bring up the menu or doing it from Windows Explorer works fine, but not left-clicking the system tray icon. Erg. Also, since AVG's scanning engine doesn't play nice with Vista and the number of false-positives got annoying, I've switched to Avira's AntiVir... Seems to do the trick without breaking anything.