Goo!

So Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipce Of Darkness - Episode Two is out today, and World Of Goo is out on Greenhouse... I know what I'm buying when I get home :) Now, I know that I've bitched about Greenhouse in the past, but that was more about maintaining multiple accounts with differing rules across various platforms than it was about that service in particular. In fact, I prefer Greenhouse to any other digital distribution service. GameTap's subscription model doesn't sit well with me at all, Steam's requirement of a constant connection seems unreasonable to me, and XBOX Live's platform lock-in isn't exactly ideal (will my XBLA games be playable elsewhere in the future, or will I have to keep my 360 hooked up?). Greenhouse gives me a key, asks me to activate once, and that's it. Word up.

Crisis Core is fucking awesome. It's got a top-notch Japanese RPG story (a.k.a. drama was transformed into cheese during translation), gorgeous graphics, and way too much to do (a.k.a. grinding). Once I came to grips with the randomness of the DMW (which controls limit breaks, summons, and levelling) and really got into materia fusion, the scale of the game became much clearer. These design decisions would quite simply be idiotic on any other platform, but on a portable system, they lend themselves so well to a combination of casual and marathon play that one can't help but appreciate what the game's designers have accomplished. Crisis Core is right up there with LocoRoco, and The Dracula X Chronicles as a wonderfully sublime experience that is unique to the PSP.

Oh, and that new Linksys router... Yeah. It's strong enough that my 802.11g SMC PCI wireless card can maintain a weak connection without a range extender, but another computer that uses an 802.11g Linksys SpeedBooster PCI card can't detect a thing. The D-Link range extender that worked fine with the SMC and Asanté routers doesn't seem to fare so well with this Linksys router. Grrr. I don't really feel like spending $75 on a Linksys 802.11n adapter just to see if that makes a difference.

One last thing, I found a Neo Geo Pokcet link cable for under $20 today, so I picked that up... Now I just need to find another NGP to link to :)

Hindsight

The more I think about it, the more I think I should've gone with the WRT310N... I made a mistake in my pre-purchase research and didn't realise that the 310 is the refresh of the 300 (while I guess the model numbers should've tipped me off, I don't really trust model numbers ;) ). Like I mentioned in my last post, I much prefer the physical design of the 300 (specifically, the antennae), and the two models are internally similar in many ways, but I guess I just can't help but feel like I should've gone with the newer product. Bleh.

Yeah, I'm pretty much just trying to justify a slightly mis-informed $100 purchase to myself... :)

Anyway, Crisis Core is really grabbing hold of me. I'm nearing the halfway point of the game, and aside from the random levelling system, I don't have any real complaints. The fragmented story and mission structure definitely lack the scope I've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game, but it's perfectly suited to playing on the go; this is the kind of game you can pick up and play for 20 minutes on the subway, or get comfy and spend a few hours with at home.

Damn

Crysis: Warhead and Far Cry 2 don't run particularly well on my system when I turn the graphics options up to anything decent. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky does, but only if I turn the fancy lighting effects off. I'm looking to pick up a second guitar, and maybe a bass, and my router blew up last night... So building a mostly new PC (CPU, RAM, motherboard, and video card are gonna add up to ~$1000) isn't really an ideal prospect for me right now. I have enough older PC games and stuff on my consoles to keep me entertained for a while though, so no real rush.

Speaking of my PC, I noticed that various DMA functions had been turned off in the BIOS settings. I'm not sure when that happened, but perhaps that had something to do with the start-up issues. I also told Vista to stop powering down my hard drives after 20 mintues... And so the investigation continues.

So anyway, yeah, my router died. My trusty SMC 2804WBRP-G just quit on me... Well, okay, it was never particularly trusty, but it sure was pretty and did its job well enough for a number of years. I tried plugging it back in and it worked for a few more hours, but then it died again and all I could get out of it after that was a faint glimmer of green from the power LED. I'm currently using an Asanté FR3000-series router that was collecting dust at my place. Yup, a router with a two-port switch and 802.11b WiFi that uses a 16-bit PCMCIA wireless card as its antenna... Sweeet. Okay, so it's actually really solid, but streaming video doesn't work so well. I stopped by a few local shops on my lunch break today, and managed to snag the only Linksys WRT300N I could find in some 11 stores; either they really suck and nobody's stocking them, or they're far more in demand than the comparable D-Link products that seem to be plentiful everywhere. The one I found is a V1.1 model, so it's very similar to the 310 save for the physical design and the gigabit switch... The switch would've been some nice futureproofing (though not used any time soon), but I really don't dig the new design so much.

Crises

I started Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core and Crysis: Warhead yesterday. Crisis Core was surprisingly different from any other Final Fantasy game I've played, especially in terms of mission structure and combat systems... I'm not sure how I feel about it all just yet. It's not bad, but it feels a little scattered and hectic for a Final Fantasy game. Warhead, on the other hand, feels just about exactly the same as Crysis... And Crysis didn't exactly blow me away in terms of gameplay. Perhaps Far Cry 2 will hold my interest, or maybe S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky. Anyway, I'm still plodding through the marine campaign in AVP, and it's shaping up to be the most brutal keyhunt in FPS history :\

"VS"

I recently picked up copies of Super Mario RPG: Legend Of The Seven Stars for SNES, Capcom Vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro for Dreamcast (Japanese; only released for PSX in North America), and a Dreamcast-to-Neo Geo Pocket Color link cable. I got the link cable for only $5, but I wasn't completely sure of what it was, and neither was the clerk at the shop. I was pretty confident that I recognised the plug for the DC's serial port, and the cable's part number (NEOP22020) just about assured me that it was indeed a NGPC product. When I asked the clerk if that's what it might be though, he insisted that it wasn't, since he has a Dreamcast... So I bit my tongue and said I'd take it anyway. I got a little frustrated when I couldn't make Capcom Vs. SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 (the North American release) work with SNK Vs. Capcom: Match Of The Millennium, and documentation for that process was just about nonexistant online. Every erticle and forum post talked about what games could be linked, but not how to do it... The DC end of things seemed simple enough, but I scoured the NGPC's system settings, MOTM's set-up menu, records, minigames, and so on, and found nothing to get the other end of the process going. Of course, I didn't bother to explore the "VS MODE" menu, thinking that since it's a fighting game, it had something to do with multiplayer. Well, it does have something to do with multiplayer, but it also has something to with DC connections... I had to check out another shop on my lunch break to read the manual from their boxed copy of MOTM to figure that out :\

Here's the most complete list of linkable titles I could find.

Oh, and Utopia 1.3 doesn't seem to like booting certain just-purchaed, imported from Japan, Dreamcast games with the VGA box... But GameShark's CDX v3.3 does the trick nicely.

I finished God Of War: Chains Of Olympus yesterday. It was kind of short and very generous with save points, but it still felt like a full-blown console game! The graphics really are breathtaking, locales are varied, and the gameplay is straight out of the console God Of War titles. Definitely a showcase piece for the PSP,  God Of War is certainly worth playing; just don't expect something as epic as its bigger brothers on the PS2.

Anyway, in other news, a 125W AMD Phenom X4 9950 Black Edition is looking better and better each time I have to boot my PC twice before I can use it :\

I'll boot *your* log!

Computer's freezing during startup pretty regularly again, and of course it happens before any part of the boot process is logged... Grrr. I've since disabled any unused integrated peripherals (parallel ports, etc...) in the BIOS settings and knocked onboard USB down to 1.1 (the only USB device I use on it is a mouse anyway), so we'll see what that does.

Worst case scenario, I pick up a Phenom X4 9950, 4GB of RAM, an AMD 790FX-based motherboard, and a Radeon 4870 ;)

Copy Protection

I don't mind copy protection. Serial numbers, for example, are great! Sure, they're easy to crack, but they give you a great way to track (and ban) online players, limit new content and patches, etc... Steam is good for that, and would be perfect if only I didn't need to be connected to the Internet to play offline. It's when the copy protection becomes invasive, needlessly affects other aspects of the machine, and imposes arbitrary limitations on legitimate users that I take issue. Resource-stealing software that significantly affects performance as it runs in the background (see the Windows version of Assassin's Creed), drivers that disable legitimate devices because they resemble piracy techniques (Star-Force and SCSI/virtual drives), and limiting installs and user accounts per copy (Spore) are all techhniques so convoluted and counter-productive that they really aren't helping anyone... Save for shareholders who are otherwise detached from the industry, perhaps. These techniques generate bad press for publishers, embarassment for retailers, and frustrating experiences for legitimate users. Ironically, the only people who benefit are the hackers looking for a new challenge! Oh, and the pirates don't notice a difference, as they wait patiently for a crack, as per usual.

Can't get out that way...

The recent POST freeze may have just been me being impatient, or may have been a freak occurrence, but the Vista start-up freezes were pretty reproducible. They seemed to happen every time I powered-on the computer after a shut down, but never again once I'd kill the power. That behaviour supports the bad driver/software theory, as something may not be shutting down properly, so I started enabling boot logging at every start-up... Hasn't frozen since :\ Not that I'm unhappy that things seem to be working all of a sudden, but it would've been nice to find out what the hell was happening.

Oh, and I've updated my Virtual Boy mini-reviews.

Or maybe not...

Doesn't seem to be a hard drive issue that's freezing my Vista start-up. My next guess is driver/software related. Judging by the time it all started, I'm leaning towards ATi drivers, iTunes, or Avira's antivirus software... Or perhaps something related to Windows Update.

By the way, Wario Land: Shake It! (got it used for cheap) is gorgeous :)

Stuff 'n junk

I've been doing some data transfer work for a paralegal firm since last week, performed a BIOS upgrade on that beast of a Photoshop machine I built a few months back (seemed to be having some stability issues, and a new BIOS release claims to address those), and am suspecting a memory leak on the server at work... We're running Windows SBS 2003 with 4GB of RAM, and the "commit charge" starts around 3.5GB (which makes sense, given the running processes), but has been known to climb to over 5GB for no readily apparent reason and stay there until a restart. I just updated our database and mail software, so hopefully that helps.

My main PC is freezing either at POST or during Vista's startup sequence again... It's different than the last time though (happening at different points, seemingly more randomly). I'm currently suspecting something with the hard drive, so I'm gonna do a bit of hardware shuffling when I get a few hours to spare. I'm going to take the 80GB SATA drive from my Athlon 3200+ machine and make it the system drive in my 3.6GHz Pentium 4 machine. The current 320GB SATA2 drive in the P4 will go from two partitions (80GB for the system, the rest for data) to one big data drive, and the Athlon will get a 160GB IDE drive (currently unused) to go along with the 80GB IDE drive that'll be left in there.

I haven't taken much time to really sit down with any games lately, but I've finished the Alien campaign and am making my way through the Predator campaign in Alien Versus Predator on Jaguar. While I still feel that many aspects of the game are pretty dated, I'm uncovering more and more really good design ideas in there. I'm trying to remember if any of those unique facets of the gameplay returned for the two PC sequels... But I might have to dig them out and install them again to find out for sure. Each race plays a fundamentally different game in the Jaguar title, and not simply because they follow separate storylines or have varied arsenals. I'll write more once I've finished the game.

Once AvP is out of the way though, I'm not sure what to get into next... I think I've narrowed it down to Rayman on Jaguar; Jak 3 (really bored of it, but I've come so far that it'd be a shame to leave it unfinished), Yakuza 2, or God Of War II on PS2; Farenheit on PC; or Metroid Prime 2 on GameCube. Then again, I'd also really like to get going on Beyond Oasis (been a long time since I finished it) or Landstalker on Genesis and then their respective sequels, Legend Of Oasis (never quite finished it) or Dark Savior on Saturn.

I'm one step away from admitting that I have a problem...

I paid $70 for Nester's Funky Bowling for Virtual Boy yesterday when I stopped by a shop by work on my way home and happened to see it in the display case... Now I only need 3D Tetris, Jack Bros., and Waterworld. If and when I pay in excess of $100 for Waterworld, I expect an intervention ;)

I also picked up Super Metroid, Wario Land 4, and Super Star Wars today, but only because they were pretty cheap, and I can get more than I paid for them in trade-in value.

Also, I never quite grasped what was so special about LittleBigPlanet. Things started to coalesce when I saw that calculator thing the other day, but it was today's newspost at Penny Arcade that really brought eveything together. Now I'm genuinely excited... And I may even start to really get into multiplayer gaming with this.

"Speed... It's a freaky thing"

I lucked out and got Battletoads, Yoshi's Island, Need For Speed, and Return Fire! The Genesis version of Battletoads is way better looking than the NES version I remember so fondly... And is just as frickin' difficult! Damned "Turbo Tunnel" :\ Anyway, Yoshi's Island is still one of the best games on any system ever, but the 3D0 versions of Need For Speed and Return Fire have not aged quite so well. The 3D0 controller is atrocious for both games, Need For Speed's car textures are a real step down from the DOS version, and Return Fire's framerate is inconsistent at best. Oh, and I'd completely forgotten about your opponent in Need For Speed; he's unintentionally hilarious! In addition to being a prime example of some of the worst trends from the early '90s (hair, fashion, slang), he had to deliver some pretty ridiculous lines (such as the title of this post, and "you waxed my ass"). Regardless, they're still playable and ultimately enjoyable, so I managed to pick up four classic games today, and that makes me happy :)

I am weak...

I found copies of Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, and The Legend Of Zelda for NES for pretty good prices, so I picked those up. Later today, I hope to pick up Battletoads for Genesis and Yoshi's Island for SNES (prolly just jinxed my chances though), and I've got a line on some cheap copies of Need For Speed and Return Fire for 3D0.

There's also some new Deus Ex 3 info out today, and it reminded me of a conversation I had on a message board not too long ago regarding the upcoming game:

mistrmojo: Can't wait! Deus Ex 2 was a lot more fun than the original and hopefully this title will continue that tradition.

twicesliced: I really can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'm gonna agree with what you wrote anyway. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed both Deus Ex 1 and 2, I much preferred 2. All of the cries of "consolisation" are usually just based on superficial complaints from selfish dorks; there was a really dynamic gameplay experience based in a very solid world in Invisible War. 

If you wanna knock Deus Ex 2, give me better arguments than high system requirements (still looked great on low settings), smaller areas (but with way more character than the original), and unified ammo (it's sci fi kids; how about a little suspension of disbelief?).

BlackCat9: I'm entirely fine with the "console-ization" of Deus Ex 2. Honestly, I hardly noticed it, and I'd even say that the UI improvements were quite a bit better than DX1. But there were two things that made the game a let-down for me. 

First, I didn't find the world as believable as DX1. Because they pushed the timeline out further, it pushed the plausibility of it. The world of DX1 felt like a very real future to me. DX2 was an idea that was farther off and I didn't feel as connected to it. Because of that, I didn't feel like the things that happened mattered as much. 

The second issue, and the one that's really much larger, is that I also felt disappointed by the presentation of choice. Part of the marketing for the game was that they were going to make a game where you could choose how you wanted to play, but I felt like ultimately, that made it so that choices were presented in a very gameplay-oriented way. In DX1, scenes could unfold without ever telling you what the possible outcomes were. Rescuing Paul, helping the owner of the 'Ton with his daughter, stopping Ana from killing the NSF leader on the plane, letting the leader of the Illuminati die, these things were all choices that came about naturally from your interaction in the environment. I felt like, because there was so much emphasis on choice in DX2, all the choices had to boil down to a binary good or evil decision. Similarly, in combat, I felt like they had to balance every possible choice so much that there was never a big advantage in exploring different styles of play. The way choice was presented in Deus Ex, even at the ending, was more about the player's personality than the gameplay mechanics underneath, and that's something that no game has been able to do as well.

I love it when people really rise to the challenge and offer a well-supported argument.

Oh, and tearing down the final straightaway on Nürburgring Nordschleife in a Ford GT (in Forza Motorsport 2 on XBOX 360) is suprisingly exhilarating! :)

Oh wow...

Between Wario Land: Shake It!, MadWorld, Punchout!! Wii, Sin & Punishment 2, The Conduit, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, and the ability to play downloaded games directly from SD cards, I'm suddenly very excited about my Wii! Plus I still have to finish NiGHTS: Journey Of Dreams, Super Mario Galaxy, Metroid Prime 3, Zack & Wiki, and No More Heroes!