Obligatory Holiday Post

My little brother bought me the Collector's Edition of Halo 3, and the DVD was still secure when I opened it. My boxing day excursion yielded Stuntman: Ignition for XBOX 360 and Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones for XBOX (the Windows version uses Star-Force copy protection... No thank you), both new for $10 a piece. I also picked up The Darkness for XBOX 360, new, for $20. God Of War II is on sale for $30, but I can't seem to find a copy in stock anywhere.

Anyway, the rest of my downtime during the holidays has been spent getting back into Final Fantasy on PSP, replaying System Shock 2 (focusing on psi and research skills; no hacking or weaponry), and playing around with my XBOX 360's new DivX and XviD support. To sum things up, Final Fantasy needs a map function or a compass or something, System Shock 2 is still fantastic (especially with the Rebirth and Shock Texture Upgrade Project mods installed), and streaming XviD videos from Windows Media Player 11 to my XBOX 360 is a wonderful thing :)

Thank you, BFG :)

While I'm assuming it's mostly on account of limited AGP stock, BFG really outdid themselves on my warranty replacement. The fried 128MB GeForce 6600 GT OC was replaced with a 256MB GeForce 7800 GS OC... That's about twice the power plus pixel shader 3.0 support ;)

Oh yeah...

...This write-up on Kane & Lynch has convinced me to give the Windows version of the game a try. I'd liked what I'd initially read and seen regarding the game, but the mediocre reviews and middling general consensus had me second guessing myself. Silly me, I should've known better! That blog post is just like something I'd write in defence of a game like Psychonauts or Jericho, so now my interest is piqued. I'll be back with more once I get into the thick of things :)

"I gotta believe!"

I finally found a copy of PaRappa The Rapper for PSOne! It set me back $20, but I didn't even look at the price before I said I'd take it :) I also grabbed a copy of The King Of Fighters XI, since it's the first 2D KoF game that I can't get for MVS. KoF XI originally ran on Atomiswave hardware, which is based on SEGA's NAOMI hardware, which is based on SEGA's Dreamcast hardware... So I think it's kind of odd that I can only get it for my PS2... But whatever, it feels like a pretty solid entry into the franchise as far as I've played, and at $20 new, fans will not be disappointed. In related news, Neo Geo Battle Coliseum, another Atomiswave to PS2 port, comes out this week! It's nice to see that 2D sprite based fighting games are still seeing some support :)

Moving on, I'm happy to report that I finally played a Wii yesterday. Yeah, I'd yet to do more than hold a Wiimote (and not use it) until yesterday, and it seems as though I have indeed been missing out on some good times. I wasn't wowed so far as to run out and search for system (I saw two at an EBGames a week or so ago), but I did have a lot of fun. I created a Mii, browsed the web, played every Wii Sports game, a few Wii Play games, and Excite Truck. I know, I didn't get into the blockbusters like Twilight Princess, Metroid Prime 3, or Super Mario Galaxy, but there's still plenty of time for that. From what I did play, I can see that the Wii offers a really solid and intuitive experience. I didn't think it was the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I can definitely see a Wii in my collection before too long.

Finally, I started a season on the hard difficulty level in NHL08... And inadvertently overwrote my previous season in the process. The first game was a 5-4 loss to Ottawa, which is a little more true to life (here in reality, Ottawa won 4-3 in OT). I'm sure you're all sure that I'll keep you updated on how things progress ;)

Did it have to be against the Habs!?

Loss number three in NHL08. 3-1 Montreal. This one was different though; their goalie wasn't invincible, they didn't get a lot of shots, their stars didn't shine, and my goalie was alright (though it said he was fatigued after the game)... But my defence was terrible (even though I'd have them set to protect the net or contain the puck, they often did nothing of the sort) and my offence was sloppy (I've never seen so many missed one-timers, misread passes, and forwards skating away from rebounds!). I'd like to meet with the designers and see if these kinds of breakdowns are part of the game or not :)

I'm a Slacker...

I think I've worked out all of the kinks and growing pains from my move to the Athlon XP 3200+ system. Windows XP gave me little issue, but PC-BSD 1.4.1.1 would reboot during start-up (even in safe mode) and Debian 4.0 testing releases would hang during package installation... So I decided to give Slackware another go with version 12.0. Installation was smooth, setting up the proprietary NVIDIA drivers was a breeze, configuring the mouse and monitor in X.Org was straightforward, and KDE 3.5's Control Center made tweaking a simple affair. Upgrading everything else using pkgtool was pretty intuitive (and similar to PC-BSD's PBI system), but a little less elegant than Debian's APT package manager. I'm glad I gave Slackware another chance and put a little more effort into it this time, as it's definitely now on my list of recommended distributions.

Elsewhere, I've finished Crysis, and I'm glad to be done with it. The final few levels were dull while still feeling rushed, the story arc reminded me too much of Halo, and really, they'd just lost me somewhere along the way and I didn't really care what happened... I just wanted to be done with it.

Finally, I remembered what I'd wanted to mention in my last post: Bell has apparently upgraded my neighbourhood to a fibre-optic network, so I'm no longer paying for a 3Mbps connection that's throttled to 1.5Mbps because of my location... I now get pretty consistent download rates up around 500kBps :) They say my service tier can go as high as 7Mbps, but I won't hold my breath.

Keepin' busy...

Made little more progress in Jak 3, stuck on annoying boss battle in Ratchet & Clank on PSP (it's one thing to make a battle hard, it's another to make you redo the five minutes of mindless glorified mini-games that lead up to the actual battle each time you die), unlocked some of the co-op-only songs in Guitar Hero III (Sabotage! Reptilia!), am now trudging through Crysis (gameplay is so monotonous! Time-based events with no timer are annoying!), the "Title Update" for Gears Of War made no discernible difference in terms of performance on my PC (the sporadic chunkiness is there regardless of visual settings), I'm having some good mindless fun with TimeShift (it's not a bad game, just a stupid one; still fun) and I lost another game on "Medium" in NHL08... This time was against Nashville, and Jason Arnott scored both goals (the second one coming in OT). Like the previous loss to NY, only star players did anything for the other team, and their goaltender was fantastic (Chris Mason saved 47 of 48!?)... I'm assuming some player stats are randomly decided by a dice roll of sorts before each game?

Picked-up a DFI NFII Ultra Infinity off craigslist to replace the dead ASUS A7N8X Deluxe. I paid a little too much for it ($75 CDN; I was hoping for around $50), but they seem to be hard to find and going fast when they do pop up. Anyway, I got it home and discovered that the integrated ethernet controller doesn't work and that it's super fickle about RAM configurations (so it's running 1GB instead of 1.5GB). Still, it seems to be solid, and I've got everything up and running well. During the rebuild, however, I discovered that the ASUS board also took out my GeForce 6600 GT... Luckily, BFG offers a lifetime warranty :) Got an RMA number over the phone from a very helpful tech, and we'll see what they send back. Here's the real kicker though... Earlier today, I realized that the computer I built for my mom is running an Athlon XP 2200+ on an MSI K7N2 Delta-L motherboard... Yeah, I had a 400MHz FSB-supporting nForce2-based board at my disposal the whole time :\ Still, it would've meant either getting her a replacement board that likely would've run around $50 anyway, or doing a lot of work to transfer her stuff to the 2.4GHz P4 (which I am now planning to sell) that I was replacing with the Athlon 3200+ system.

I know I had something else to say here, but it escapes me for the time being, and I have stuff to do...