News

Nintendo sent me a whole new Wii with a new one-year warranty. They paid for the service and shipping, and covered the taxes. That was a very nice gesture from them, especially considering that the Wii malfunctioned a month or so after its original warranty had expired. I didn't ask them for anything; just sent an e-mail indicating that I was an unhappy customer. They assured me that the issue was not the result of a design defect, but I won't be leaving the thing on standby anymore, just in case it melts again. It was funny that the replacement system came with an insert that told me to re-synchronise my controllers and mentioned that they had updated the system software for my convenience... Except that they hadn't updated my system software ;)

Anyway, I sold my 867MHz Power Mac, and am close to selling the 800MHz one as well. If all goes well, I'll have made my $300 investment back, which ain't bad when you consider that $300 got me three Power Macs and I'll get to keep the best one. Speaking of the best one, a friend came through with two 512MB sticks of PC133 RAM, so my dual 1GHz G4 is now maxed-out at 1.5GB of RAM :)

I want to write more about Brütal Legend, but I've yet to collect my thoughts on the subject. Rest assured that it is a spectacular original game and well worth anyone's time. I've completed 100% of the single-player game since my last post, and have been participating at the Double Fine forums, so expect more here on the subject in the coming week.

Upon finishing Brütal Legend, I popped Psychonauts into my 360 and was promptly sucked right back into that world for the better part of an afternoon; there's a reason it's one of my favourite games of all time. There is an annoying bug with the 360's backwards compatibility with the game though; when you pause, the main character's texture colour scheme gets all messed-up, and the only way to fix it is to quit to the game's menu and load your last checkpoint. Not a game-breaker, but definitely annoying. I wonder if the "XBOX Originals" version on XBOX Live does the same...

Playing Psychonauts got me all nostalgic, so I dug up my copies of Beyond Good & Evil (Windows, XBOX, GameCube) and did some research in hopes of figuring out which is the penultimate version. Apparently the GC port is rarest, and missing some language options and concept art, but was supposedly the lead platform during development. The XBOX version has shorter loading times and the best graphics of any console, whereas the Windows port can be even quicker and smoother, but may have some annoying bugs and DRM... So which do I keep?

Finally, I'm almost finished The Darkness on XBOX 360, and I'm pretty disappointed. This game has solid source material, a well-written script performed by quality voice actors, and some truly unique gameplay mechanics... But it's all so disjointed that the experience ultimately falls flat. Much of the music is horribly out of place (some of sounds more like something from a fantasy game than an FPS featuring a violent anti-hero prowling the streets of modern-day New York), the Darkness powers are poorly managed (why can't I use them all at once? The colour scheme suggests that this may have been the case at some point in development), the free-roaming aspect and side-missions are unambitious and ultimately unnecessary (effectively breaking any narrative flow), and major plot points are either poorly-explained or glossed-over completely... Seriously, the fact that the protagonist has creepy, bloodthirsty monsters protruding from his body is really only noticed by one other main character, and even then, only in passing; the big transformation scene when the Darkness first manifests itself just kinda happens and is promptly forgotten; key scenes in your character's internal struggle are left to chance instead of logic (wander around until you find something you can interact with)... I could go on, but you get the idea. The Darkness isn't a broken game, and it's pretty enjoyable at times, but I just can't get over the fact that it could've been so much better... Ditch the free-roaming aspect and tell me a good story.