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.

Hyper!

Forgot to mention this earlier, but anyway, a friend called me this morning saying that I had to come over; that it was an emergency. I headed over as soon as I was free in the early afternoon to see what was up... Turns out he scored a revision 2 Hyper Neo Geo 64 arcade board and four games! He had it all hooked-up to his JAMMA cabinet, and while I didn't get to spend a whole lot of time there, Buriki-One is a really interesting fighting game (move back and forth with the A and B buttons; all attacks are performed with the joystick), Fatal Fury: Wild Ambition and Samurai Shodown 64 seemed like competent 3D translations of their 2D predecessors, and Samurai Shodown 64: Warriors Rage is a very stylish improvement over the first game. He got it all for ~$500... I'm very jealous.

In other news, my Microsoft software supplier contact got a replacement Office 2007 disc and product key shipped to me... But I think she shipped me the wrong one :\ The original order was for Office Enterprise 2007 (got the right disc, wrong product key), and the replacement sent is Office Professional Plus 2007. You can compare the differences here. While I don't actually use Groove or OneNote, it would be nice to get what I ordered...

Crashing The Bandicoot

Played the Crash Of The Titans demo on 360... I had really high hopes, but it didn't look as good as the screenshots I'd seen before, some of the effects were grainy, the gameplay wasn't nearly as fluid as the original PSOne games, and I found a lot of the camera angles to be awkward... Gabe seems to disagree with me, but I still play the original three, and didn't touch any of them after Warped. I also tried the FIFA 08 and Party Animals demos; they seem solid, likely enjoyable if your into those kinds of games.

I saw Marvel Ultimate Alliance Gold Edition for 360 for ~$30, so I picked that up the other day. I figured it was about to become a "Platinum Hit", so I wanted the original packaging. Unfortunately, I later read that the "Platinum Hit" version is to be called Marvel: Ultimate Alliance Enhanced. Damnit! That means it's prolly gonna have more cool characters that they'll try to get me to buy online... Ergh.

Picked-up Lost Planet for Windows now that I have a video card that can actually play it. It's very pretty, and it's fun despite being able to run past most of the enemies... I also grabbed the demo for Clive Barker's Jericho for Windows. It felt a little cheap, but I can't quite put my finger on why... Maybe it was the weak voice-over in the promo video, or the lacklustre menu, or the mindless AI... But it certainly is pretty, the gameplay holds a lot of potential, and if Undying is any indication, Clive Barker's touch is going to make this something special.

Oh, and here's a fun one: I can't seem to play DVDs in Windows Vista Business without resorting to some third party software. I was using nVidia PureVideo with my GeForce 6800, but Avivo for the Radeon X1950 Pro doesn't seem to do the trick. Perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but I don't think so... There don't seem to be any instructions or downloads on AMD/ATi's site. In Windows XP, I could just grab the ATi DVD Decoder, but that doesn't work with Vista... Any ideas?

Revolutionary

Played through the SEGA Rally Revo demo on XBOX 360 last night... It's a good game, very pretty, fluid controls, sports some unique features (dynamic ruts in the track!)... But it barely feels like a SEGA Rally game. I was able to place second and first in two three-lap races (unlike the checkpoint/stage races of the first two games in the series) on my first play-through. Just to make sure I hadn't become awesome at SEGA Rally since last playing, I popped SEGA Rally 2 into my Dreamcast, and then SEGA Rally into my Saturn... Nope, I still suck at them. Perhaps the Revo demo isn't fully indicative of the final product, but I'm a little disappointed that the franchise seems to have taken such a departure from its predecessors. Also, I think I still like DiRT a little better :)

Followed-up on that Microsoft Office 2007 product key today, and it seems that a replacement key was sent out about a month ago, but my contact with the supplier doesn't seem to have forwarded it to me... Wonderful :)

Finally, NHL 08 has me worried. Every game I've played so far has ended in either overtime or a shootout. The first few were tight, exciting games against evenly matched teams... Even though I did find myself having a few unlikely hero moments when I was behind. Then I took note of one game where I was playing a much weaker team and went-up 3-1 early in the game... They were able to tie things up in regulation, but both goals came during two very suspicious situations that saw my goalie wandering well out of his crease and staying there in high-pressure situations... And no, I wasn't controlling him. I'm afraid that NHL 08 is employing a system akin to NBA Jam's (and countless racing games') 'rubber band' scoring, where the team trailing is given an advantage to keep things exciting... Ugh.

Decisions and Finality

OpenOffice.org 2.3 is out. I've decided to use OOo in lieu of Microsoft Office 2007 due largely to the fact that my software supplier still hasn't provided me with a proper Microsoft product key. They did say they'd get back to me all those months ago, but then I haven't really followed-up :\ The dilemma I'm faced with now is that IBM has released Lotus Symphony Beta 1, and I am intrigued... More to come as the situation develops :)

Anyway, so, my brother really wanted to play BioShock, but his AGP Radeon X850 card didn't support the shader model version used in BioShock. He didn't feel like dropping $200+ on a stop-gap video card upgrade (opting rather to do a whole new build in the near future), so I gave him my GeForce 6800 and bought myself a 512MB AGP8X Sapphire Radeon X1950 Pro for $199.99 CDN; the best AGP card my contacts at AMD/ATi could get was an X1650... Ugh. Anyway, the new card's very nice, and everything runs quite well (including BioShock at full detail at 1024x768); it also overclocks from 580/702 (GPU/RAM) to 621/742 pretty well so far. Oh, and while I am aware that there are independent projects out there to bring SM2.0 support to BioShock, they don't seem to be completely perfect just yet. The main point here is that his is the end of an era though; my main box is now as upgraded as it'll ever be... thankfully, aside from lacking DirectX10+ hardware support, it definitely still has legs :)

NHL 08

Got a chance to play through a few exhibition games in NHL 08 on Windows, and while it's definitely a top-notch hockey game, I'm kinda disappointed with the graphics... It looks like PC users have been given a high-res port of the PS2 version :( It's not particularly ugly or anything, but it certainly is disappointing when the 360 version looks so much better. I'm still liking NHL 2K7 better...

Saving Money...

I finally got around to playing through the Project Sylpheed demo on my XBOX 360, and it was pretty sweet :) It's definitely worth going through the tutorials, and the game is as fast, frenetic, and pretty as any other good space shooter I can remember playing. There was some slowdown at one point, but overall it was enjoyable and intense; might pick it up if I see it on the cheap, but there didn't seem to be anything that made it a must-buy for me.

I also grabbed the Tony Hawk's Proving Ground demo, and it was a lot of fun as well. I've heard it being knocked for feeling like the original game with too many extras tacked-on, but I beg to differ. The new gameplay styles (aggressive "hardcore" skaters, creative and adventurous "riggers", and technique-oriented pros) are interesting albeit potentially unnecessary, but the new controls they incorporate into the game feel like things that should've always been there. Nail-The-Trick in Project 8 was a very welcome addition, and Proving Ground expands that further with Nail-The-Grab and Nail-The-Manual. The aggressive kick introduced by the hardcore skating style in the game is a feature I've been wanting since the beginning, and the free-roaming track-construction options the riggers bring seem to add a whole new game to the mix. I can see how the implementation of the riggers' track editor can pull players out of the game, but with some suspension-of-disbelief it can really add to the experience... Besides, would anyone really want to have a ramp-construction component in the game? Would it be fun to wait for an afternoon while your in-game persona put together a new rail? Nah, not so much. I don't think I'll be buying this one right away (still working on Project 8), but it does have enough interesting new stuff that I'll remember it down the road.

Oh, and apparently NHL 08 is the way to go over NHL2K8 this year on account of some poorly-implemented new controls on 2K Sports' part. Apparently, you can still play with the classic 2K control scheme, but I'll just stick to 2K7 on my original XBOX for that... That's $60 for either new game that I just don't really need to spend.

Oh hell YES!

"Rez HD Coming to XBL Arcade in Early 08"

Bloat!

I can't recall if I've mentioned this on here before, but why does iTunes install Apple Software Update even if, during the installation process, I explicitly indicate that I don't want to use Apple Software Update? Also, why does it install Apple Mobile Device Support when I don't have an iPhone? Hell, they're not even available in my country yet! I appreciate that they're easily removable, but I'd appreciate it even more if I could just opt-out of installing them altogether. Even if they were just passive programs, It'd bother me less because I could just not use them and all they'd do is take up some hard drive space, but they're both active services that take up hard drive space and (admittedly small amounts of) RAM! Grr.

I was sad to see Dark_AleX leave the PSP modification scene, especially since there had been a few official Sony firmware updates since his release of 3.40 OE. Thankfully, M33 Team has taken-up the reins. 3.52 M33-4 seems to work just fine, even on TA-082 hardware!

Happy Easter!

Google Earth is one of my favourite applications, and it just keeps getting better... The latest revelation being that it's a flight simulator!

Anyway, I've also been playing games like BioShock and Overlord on my PC, and while they're playable (even in Vista), they could stand to have a little more horsepower under the hood to smooth things out a touch. I was looking at a Radeon X1950 Pro (my best bet short of upgrading to a PCI-Express motherboard), but this news will keep me hanging on to that $200 a little longer; AGP GeForce 8-series and Radeon HD! :)

I'm working on an older P4 system (1.5GHz, 256MB RAM) for a client at the moment, and they could use a memory upgrade, but it's RDRAM... Stupid RDRAM.

A mildly disappoiting day...

I'm hearing good reviews of Dead Head Fred and Jeanne D'Arc on PSP... I plan to look into those. I've played through the new NHL 08, Tiger Woods 08, and TimeShift demos on the 360, and I'm kinda torn; they're all potentially great games but just seem to end up being solid and not really worth buying. NHL 08 has some fantastic graphics and unique gameplay, but the announcers are lame enough to make we wait to see what 2K Sports comes up with this year. Tiger Woods 08 feels like a really great golf game, but the graphics look pretty 'plasticky' and the controls (specifically putting) seem to have a relatively steep learning curve. Like NHL 08, this game has me waiting to see what the competition comes up with.

Moving on, TimeShift is really disappointing. I remember playing an early demo of this one in Windows a while back, before it was revamped for the 'next-gen' hadrware, and it seemed like a fun game that was coming along nicely. Now TimeShift seems like a fantastic game that has been oversimplified, borrows heavily from its competitors, and still isn't quite finished. Most notably, the time-shifting play mechanics are pretty much taken care of for you as your suit's computer automatically selects the best choice of slow, pause, or rewind unless you tell it otherwise, and that really affects the challenge and uniqueness of the game. There are a number of similarities to Half-Life (in the character interaction, scripted sequences, and story design), but then that's mostly just nit-picking on my part; I'd like to think the game does more to differentiate itself from the rest in the full product. Finally, the oddities: I noticed that one cool feature, the weapon grab (where you freeze time and steal an enemy's weapon right out of his hands) doesn't work very well if your ammo's full. The result of this bug(?) is the player finding himself wasting his time-shifting power only to have it run-out with an angry enemy at point blank range... Sweeet deal. At one point in the demo, there's a scripted event showing an enemy soldier executing someone. The game then suggested pressing a controller button to throw a grenade, but I thought that'd be kinda mean. Instead of blowing-up both the good guy and the bad guy, I decided to manually freeze time and take-out the enemy soldier. Well, I unloaded round after round into his frozen person, but it changed nothing and the scripted event continued as if nothing had happened once time un-froze. Consistency is important, kids. I'm still hoping the full game gets things right, because there is the potential for a hell of a lot of fun here.

So, I'm a Windows Vista Business man now. Nothing much is new since I last played with it, except that my FireWire Solo now works :) Adobe Audition 2.0 isn't compatible with the fancy Vista GUI, so Windows automatically downgrades itself to the Home Basic GUI, but that's not the end of the world. There are some real gripes I have though, like how Windows thinks the network connection is disconnected when it's just congested, or how there's no easy way to relocate the user folders (to another drive, for example). If I'm clogging the network with downloads on other computers, XP would keep going, albeit slowly; Vista, however, keeps disconnecting me, and that's especially annoying on Windows Live Messenger. Regarding user folders, in XP, one could simply change the target for the My Documents folder and voila, all is well. Vista's user folder structure is a little different though, and you can't easily move the whole user folder; only its subfolders :\

Sea Change?

I've been back from Iceland for a little while now, but I've also been exceedingly busy and barely gaming since then. I have managed, however, to play through all of the cool new demos on XBOX Live. Strangehold takes the Max Payne formula, transplants it into a Hong Kong action movie, and really brings it to the next level; I'm definitely looking forward to the final product. Skate is a more realistic take on professional skateboarding while still maintaining a great level of casual fun. Eternal Sonata is something I'm really looking forward to playing, as the graphics are gorgeous and the dynamics of the battle system are really refreshing after the last few RPGs I've been through. Beautiful Katamari didn't seem like anything particularly new, but then it was a pretty short demo. BioShock was beautiful, fantastically atmospheric, and just a whole lot of fun. There's no denying that it is essentially another System Shock game, but really, that's not a bad thing after so many years :) In the Arcade, neither Space Giraffe nor Street Trace: NYC really did anything for me; they're not bad, but I doubt I'll ever buy them... They are pretty though.

While I was out of the country, the vast majority of my time gaming was spent with Lumines and Final Fantasy on my PSP. Lumines is Lumines; if you haven't played it yet, you should; if it doesn't grab you at first, stick with it... It will. The Final Fantasy remake is really solid, and I was having a whole lot of fun with it... Until I ventured into the Earth Gift Shrine, an optional dungeon that was added to the DS and PSP remakes. Now, perhaps I just suck at RPGs, or perhaps I'm missing something obvious, but I'm in the final room, all of my characters are level 26 and well-equipped, and I can't defeat any of the enemies or find any exits aside from the ones behind the aforementioned enemies whom I cannot seem to defeat. FAQs haven't been much help, but then I'm trying to avoid them (I like finishing games on my own). The game hasn't been touched since returning to Canada.

Moving on, I think I may be installing Windows Vista on my main system in the next few days. With Microsoft's recent release of the Vista compatibility and performance updates (which together cover most of the updates announced for early-2008's SP1), M-Audio's release of a FireWire series driver for 32-bit versions of Vista, and the ability to disable driver signature checking for RivaTuner (was always an option, even when I was bitching about software overclocking in Vista in the past), things are starting to come together nicely... I'll be back with more on this soon.

*grumble*

Stranglehold and BioShock demos are out... And I'm in Iceland.

Hepping Boursdey!

I had a birthday the other day. Got Dead Rising for XBOX 360, Mortal Kombat Armageddon for XBOX, 300 on HD DVD, and a totally unexpected Canon PowerShot SD700 IS Digital ELPH with a 2GB SD card :)

Oh yeah!

I forgot to mention that I downloaded the Transformers demo the other day... And wow! What a pile! :) The graphics are alright (well, Bumblebee looks good, and the fancy lighting effects are decent; the enemies and environments, not so much), the controls when in robot form are passable, and uh... That's about it. The driving controls are loose and floaty to the point of hitting Alt+F4 (I believe that's Apple+Q for all you Mac users), the locked camera while driving is too low and supremely annoying, combat is terribly repetitive, the generic enemies look like giant cameras, and, worst of all, when checking the options menu to see how to transform, the command was linked to a function called "convert". CONVERT!? DON'T YOU MEAN, "TRANSFORM"!? SERIOUSLY, THE GAME IS CALLED TRANSFORMERS! These people couldn't've been that stupid... All they had to do to effectively realize a good game that fit their apparent design was rip-off Grand Theft Auto and Crackdown, and toss-in some giant transforming robots. I'm guessing development time constraints were the culprit here... Sad.

Anyway, on to happier things, has anyone been watching the video game retrospectives over on GameTrailers.com? They did one for Zelda last year, and are in the midst of Final Fantasy and Metroid retrospectives at the moment. It's a great bit of nostalgia if you're familiar with the series, and potentially an interesting history lesson if you're not. Episodes are 10~15 minutes each, and new ones are out each week. For the first time, I'm starting to see Web-based 'TV' as a viable entertainment option :) Five minute home movies with random release schedules just weren't doing it for me...

ENOS Lives, URNOTE... The "E" should be red :)

I finally got to spend some quality time with a PS3... Hooked-up to a 70" 1080p Sony rear-projection HDTV (via HDMI) and a 6.1 digital audio receiver :) The guy who owned the setup didn't have any full games, but he did have a bunch of demos (and I downloaded a few more while I was there). I played Blast Factor (kinda a lot like Geometry Wars; not necessarily a bad thing), Full Auto 2 (prettier and more full-featured than it's XBOX 360 predecessor), Gran Tourismo HD Concept (same old; very pretty), Heavenly Sword (God Of War, but less good!), MotorStorm (it opened with one of my favourite Nirvana songs, Breed :) ), Ninja Gaiden Sigma (like the XBOX game, but with more stuff and better lighting), Resistance (*yawn*), Ridge Racer 7 (it's Ridge Racer), and Virtua Tennis 3 (same as the 360 demo, but with more options and opponents). The menu system was the same as the PSP's, and everything was pretty solid and intuitive. The 60GB systems are available for $549 CDN at the moment, with add-on deals like MotorStorm for $20 or Enchanted Arms for $0.01, but I'm still in no rush to blow that kind of money... I wouldn't knock anyone for owning one though; Sony's got a solid platform with a lot of potential there; I could stand to have the install and load times a bit shorter though.

Moving on, I've been sick for the past week, and so I started a new career in Top Spin 2. This is the first time I've played it since it crashed during my first career tournament and saved my game with a loss recorded. Ergh. Well, I'm having a lot more fun this time, and the load times seem to be way more bearable (was there a software update?), and no more crashes. So far it's a lot of fun, if a touch easy, but still challenging enough to keep me interested. I just hope it's not like Virtua Tennis 3 (on PSP, anyway) where the opponents suddenly get frustratingly hard as you get to the upper rankings.

On an entirely unrelated note, when I last worked as a regular service technician, I was told about a data recovery company to refer certain desperate clients to. I'd heard stories of $400/hr bills, but never got any solid numbers back myself. Well, that corrupt filesystem I mentioned last time wasn't satisfied with the handful of digital camera images I'd managed to recover, so I sent him their way. He came back to me saying they had "good" news; that they could recover most of his stuff, and that it would be cheap! Only $850! :)

Demos 'n stuff...

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).

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.

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! :)

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...

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.

Paying Respects.

Today, I bought a SEGA Game Gear with Sonic 2, NHL 2K2 for Dreamcast, and Body Harvest for N64. The Game Gear was a decent price and an important piece of my childhood; it was the first mildly popular (albeit relatively expensive) colour portable. Seemingly unattainable some 15 years ago, it was nice to pick one up for a song today. NHL 2K2 was the last hockey title on the Dreamcast, and is easily one of the better hockey games of the DC/PS2/XBOX/GC generation. Body Harvest is a game that was developed by DMA Design around the same time as another popular DMA Design game titled Grand Theft Auto. What's interesting is that Body Harvest, while focusing on time travel and alien invasion, shares a lot of gameplay design cues with the GTA series, but does so in 3D some three years before GTA went 3D on the PS2.

I just thought it interesting that I picked-up three bits of video gaming history today :)

Memory's the first to go...

I completely forgot to mention something very important in my last post here. The event omitted is so momentous that it warrants its own post though, so it's cool.

My friend Tim gave me a Puzzle Bobble MVS cartridge.

I am going to repeat that...

My friend Tim GAVE me a PUZZLE BOBBLE MVS cartridge.

I'm at a loss for words... I can't even hope to possibly come anywhere near adequately conveying the amount of praise and recognition this act deserves. Some of you may know this game as Bust-A-Move, or are familiar with similar games such as Snood; the MVS version of Puzzle Bobble is where it's at though.

Now all I need is another AES controller :\

You can plant sheep!

I've been on the lookout for a copy of Spider-Man 2 for XBOX, as I keep hearing it's a pretty fun game (and entirely different from the not-so-awesome PC version). I figured since it was apparently a "Best of Platinum Hits" title, that it'd be cheap and plentiful... Sadly this was not the case, and I'd yet to see it in any store since around the time Spider-Man 3 came out. Well, I was out in a mall, killing some time the other day, and I stopped-off at an EB Games. They had a used copy in good condition for a little over $20... More than I wanted to spend, but I splurged. Then I saw Odin Sphere. $50 new. I splurged again. I need to learn some self-control :\ It's a good thing that they both turned-out to be pretty good games! I haven't spent a whole lot of time with either, but Spider-Man 2's freedom of exploration and Odin Sphere's unique gameplay really promise to be a lot of fun. I want to mention that Odin Sphere reminds me of Guardian Heroes on SEGA Saturn in terms of gameplay and Astal (also a Saturn game) in terms of graphics... Those are very prestigious comparisons, by the way :)

I also downloaded Prince Of Persia and Pac-Man C.E. from the XBOX Live Arcade, and I'm probably spending more time with them than anything else right now. It's nice to see old games updated the right way. These are definitely worth the money.

I've finished Season 1 of Sam & Max, and I'm satisfied. While some episodes were better than others, some puzzles were needlessly frustrating, and the episode formula was a little repetitive as the season progressed, it was still full of hilarious writing, great acting, and good old classic adventure gaming. You can buy episodes from Telltale's website, GameTap, and Steam, or you can buy season sets from Telltale or retail stores later this summer.

More on Vista...

Lessee... After a few days, Vista's still pretty cool, but here're the issues that are keeping me from making it my main OS:

• Software makers aren't yet up-to-date. Programs that are designed for Windows XP and earlier that require administrator privileges are annoying in Vista, as it asks you to "cancel" or "allow" every time you run them. In the majority of these cases, this is the fault of the software makers, not Vista. Many applications have caught-up (WinRAR, for example), but they're not all perfect yet.
• Software overclocking is supremely annoying. I use RivaTuner to unlock and overclock my GeForce 6800 video card. I suspect that this is the kind of application that requires administrator access, and that means "allowing" it every time I restart Vista. I hope someone finds a workaround soon.
• Some copy protection schemes and software modifications aren't Vista compatible, even though the games they rely upon are. This renders the game unplayable. Ugh.
• Hardware support. My ViewSonic monitor's drivers don't seem to install, despite following ViewSonic's instructions to the letter and trying a number of my own methods. Similarly, my M-Audio Firewire Solo is still unsupported. These are minor annoyances though, as I wouldn't mind keeping XP as a secondary OS for audio production anyway.

So we're getting there, but not quite yet.

Anyway, moving on, I downloaded the demos for Shadowrun, Tenchu Z, Vampire Rain, and Overlord from XBOX Live. Shadowrun seems fun and unique in the genre, but I'm not much of a fan of the genre so I didn't do much past the tutorial. Tenchu Z looks very promising, but I hope things (menu, controls, animations) get a bit more polished before its release. Vampire Rain is a really cool concept (a Splinter Cell-esque team taking-down Vampires!), but it's so shoddily put-together that it's just robbed of any real fun. Sneaking around was alright, but combat was so painfully awkward that I won't be touching it again. I haven't played Overlord yet, but I hear good things... Stay tuned!

What I've learned from a day with Vista...

Windows Vista serves me about as well as Linux does. It's really good for web browsing, instant messaging, multimedia playback, and general optical media burning. It just works out of the box after a little set-up (drivers, programs), it's relatively secure, and it supports most of my hardware. Also like Linux, it's not great for gaming at the moment, doesn't support certain specific optical disk image formats, and it doesn't support some of my more purpose-specific hardware. The only real issues I've had with it so far have been in the form of the odd skip in MP3 playback through Windows Media Player and having a bitch of a time getting the Boot Configuration Data store (Vista's boot.ini replacement) to work with my old XP installation (in the same computer, on a separate hard drive). So no real show-stoppers yet, and it seems like a solid every-day desktop computing platform... I also thought it was cute how Vista Business doesn't install the packed-in games by default :) I'm excited about Vista though, especially after learning more about what's actually new about it. Ars Technica has published the first two parts of their three-part in-depth look at Vista, and it's a good read that shows just how much promise Vista has.

I haven't spent much time with Office 2007 yet, but it sure does look pretty, and I like the new menu system... I'll be back with more once they send me an Office product key that actually works :\

Let the fun begin! ;)

My copies of Windows Vista Business and Microsoft Office 2007 Enterprise arrived!

I'm thinking I'll install them on my 3.6GHz P4 machine, as support is a little sketchy for the Radeon 8500 and SoundBlaster Live! in my 2.4GHz P4 Linux/XP dual-boot machine (which only has 512MB of RAM at the moment anyway). I won't be touching the current XP install on the faster machine, however, as support for games in Vista is still a touch sketchy and support for my M-Audio Firewire Solo in Vista is non-existent :) Luckily, I have this 160GB 7200RPM Western Digital IDE drive lying around that failed on someone else before, but tests-out fine now, so Vista should be a good way to test it more thoroughly. I'll keep you posted...

Convoluted!

So I haven't taken much time to play any games, though I did pick-up Tomb Raider Anniversary and Jade Empire Special Edition for Windows. I've been busy fixing people's computer problems all weekend, and I've got some stories and a new toy to show for it (well, those and some cash). First up is that 3.0GHz Pentium 4 I mentioned in my last post; It was hurting bad from the spyware and such, so I backed-up their important stuff and started fresh. Whoever built that thing must've been out cold, 'cause I was half asleep and noticed that the power fan was plugged into the chassis fan connector, the power LED was plugged-in as a two-pin connector instead of the three-pin connector the motherboard takes, and the RAM was installed in single-channel mode. I fixed those issues, installed a PCI fax modem, dusted everything, updated the BIOS, and from there it was smooth sailing. While I was delivering the finished product, I was offered one of these. I wasn't intimately familiar with the Dell Digital Audio Receiver, but I figured it was some sort of PC-to-stereo streaming apparatus, judging by the ethernet port on the back. Well, as it turns-out, I was right, but wasn't getting the whole story. You can actually use your home phone network to stream music to any room with a phone jack (or an ethernet hub/switch/router)! Pretty cool feature, but I'm currently using it in my bedroom (through an old router) to listen to my MP3s from my bed with a remote. It's a fun little toy, and was pretty expensive in its day (over $300 CDN after taxes!), so I'm happy to add it to my collection of random tech crap :) Now if only it ordered albums by track number instead of alphabetically :\ Making your own playlists using the device's interface is just a bitch.

The other stories are far less interesting. They involve troubleshooting one person's home network via text messages and installing a wireless router for another person. Wheee!

Stay tuned...

The revamped draft-saving function of Blogger doesn't seem to, y'know... Work :)

Anyway, I've picked-up the last three episodes of the first season of the new Sam & Max games, Unreal Championship 2 for XBOX ($5 new; Best Buy's marking-down their XBOX titles; looks awesome on the 360), as well as Burnout Dominator, Carol Vorderman's Sudoku, Chili Con Carnage, Crush, and MLB '07 The Show for PSP. They're all pretty much what one would expect from their pedigree; a solid racing game, a challenging puzzle game, a mindless yet fun action game, and a very pretty baseball sim. Then there's Crush... What a fucking cool concept... The gameplay, not the story. It's an action-puzzle game with a really cool twist that involves "crushing" the world from 3D to 2D and back again to overcome obstacles. It's difficult to adequately explain in a short space, but you'll get it immediately upon seeing it for yourself. Definitely worth looking-into that one.

I also just finished work on a horribly misconceived Pentium 4 2.4B system. Solid CPU on an Intel-based ASUS board, plenty of storage space (over 120GB), and a nice 17" Samsung LCD... But that's where the good news ends. I suspect the system started-out as a Pentium III-based box (judging by the Pentium III sticker on the front of the case), and was later subjected to a half-assed overhaul. They left Windows on the original 13GB 5400RPM drive and just slapped-in an arbitrarily partitioned 120GB 7200RPM drive (both Maxtor brand, both very noisy), and only installed 256MB of DDR RAM (8MB of which was shared with the integrated Intel 845 GPU). It was a mess, and Windows' integrity had been seriously compromised. I backed-up the important stuff, took out the 13GB HDD altogether, repartitioned the 120GB 40/80 for programs and data respectively, and installed another 256MB of RAM and a 128MB AGP4x Sapphire Radeon 8500LE. After getting a fresh Windows installation on there, things started crashing... Turns-out there were bad sectors galore on the 120GB. I tried "regenerating" the drive, but one (from the thousands found originally) bad sector popped-up again the next day. I wasn't sold on its reliability, so I got them a near-silent 160GB Seagate drive.

I'll be back with more once I finish the Sam & Max games (I'm really looking forward to Episode 5), and get to work on a 3.0GHz P4 system with 1GB of RAM that was brought to its knees by spyware.

"There are times when cake is not available, and instead we are destroyed. This is the deep poetry of the universe."

Why do I suddenly have the urge to spend in excess of $50 buying the same magazine five times?

Spluuurrrge!!!

It all started two days ago, while I was out wandering a mall to kill some time. It'd been a while since I'd had any significant amount of time to kill and a long time since I'd been in a mall, so I gave it a shot. I found myself in a Wal-Mart, watching some guy with a list of games dig through the new batch of $20 video game two-packs. Turned-out he was looking for a specific few that had trade-in values at EBGames of over $20 :) I ended-up stumbling across a copy of The Red Star for PS2 for $20. I've yet to see that game anywhere else for any price, so I'm glad I picked it up. This is a game that almost didn't get made, and it's sad to think so. It's an interesting new twist on the side-scrolling beat-'em-up genre (Final Fight, Streets Of Rage) with graphics and controls that are reminiscent of 2D shooters (R-Type, Ikaruga). The fact that it's based on a popular graphic novel just means there's even more to potentially enjoy. Definitely worth a look.

I found myself back out in the land of rampant consumerism yesterday to check back on a few good deals I'd seen the day before, and ended-up with Ninety-Nine Nights for XBOX 360, Mercenaries and Breakdown for XBOX (both backwards compatible on the 360), and Metal Slug Anthology and Killer 7 for PS2. These are just some titles I'd been meaning to pick-up if I ever saw them cheap, and the really nice thing was that none of them were over $20, save for Metal Slug which was $40 (regularly $45~$50). N3's kind of a boring game to actually play for more than 30 minutes at a time, but it is very pretty and has some beautiful cutscenes :) Mercenaries is just something I'd kept hearing good things about (Grand Theft Auto in a modern warfare setting), and it is a lot of fun. Breakdown, similarly, is another game I'd heard good things about, and they were right; boring graphics, convoluted controls (reminiscent of Trespasser, another game that aimed for realistic first-person immersion), yet wholly endearing gameplay that keeps you coming back for more. Metal Slug means I get to play Metal Slug 6 at home; that's all that really matters :) I'm not sure how I feel about the new backgrounds, but as long as it's better than 4 and at least as good as 5, I'm happy. Finally, Killer 7 is just weird. Very, very weird... And engrossing. I have no idea what's I'm doing or what's going on, and I barely understand the control system, but I get the feeling this is gonna be one of those games that's rewarding in the long run. Oh yeah, if you're on XBOX Live, download Aegis Wing! It's Free!

Ooh, I also picked-up The Fountain on HD DVD, and Firefly on DVD (it was $25; I had to). With the latest XBOX 360 HD DVD update, it's gonna be nice to be able to use my DTS decoder :)

Luckily, I found some work this past week that'll help pay for all of this! ;) I neglected to mention that the system upgrade I did last week only had one IDE controller but four IDE devices, so I picked-up a PCI IDE controller for them. Then I took a job that involved picking-out the best parts from three systems (300MHz Pentium II, 350MHz Pentium II, 500Mhz K6-2) and building the best possible system; he ended-up with the 350MHz PII, an Intel 440BX-based motherboard, 192MB of RAM, and a 32MB AGP TNT M64, all running Windows 2000 Pro. Finally, I did a clean installation of Windows XP on an AMD Athlon 3200+ system (nForce2 Ultra, 1GB DDR400, 128MB AGP8X BFG GeForce 6600GT OC); it was nice to work on a faster system again :)

...And I'm back!

I was off in the wilds of Northwestern British Columbia for a week, and while I did have Internet access at most times, I didn't have much to post here. My PSP kept me busy during my downtime on the trip (Puzzle Quest and Daxter, for the most part), and my IBM ThinkPad X22 running Debian 4.0 "testing" worked without a hitch. Stealing WiFi using the default network settings GUI wasn't particularly fun though.

Anyway, I've recently been devoting the majority of my console gaming time to Jak 3 on PS2, and I'm happy to say it's thankfully less like the misconceived Grand Theft Auto-inspired design of Jak II, and more linear like Jak And Daxter. I also downloaded the Monster Madness and Forza Motorsport 2 demos from XBOX Live; the former seemed a little shallow for what is supposed to be a full-fledged game, whereas the latter was a surprisingly deep and full-featured demo. I'm still a SEGA GT fan when it somes to more realistic racing games, but Forza 2 seems to be a very solid contender.

I performed a system rebuild (Athlon 1800+ to Athlon X2 3600+, new motherboard, RAM, video card, and power supply) and subsequent Windows XP repair installation on Wednesday. It was nice to get back into the swing of things now that my schedule has cleared-up, especially since everything went so smoothly.

Finally, I've been using Google Talk to make 'calls' to Australia, and I'm very impressed by the the quality and reliability. I couldn't get Windows Live Messenger's call function to work at all, though "voice clips" worked fine. Google Talk really strikes me as an instant messaging client that I'd like to use, but nobody else is ever online :\

Addiction

I picked-up Bust-A-Move for PSP... Should've known better. It's just so hard to put down.

Anyway, so I've compiled a bit of a shopping list:

• Odin Sphere
• Red Star
• Metal Slug Anthology
• God Of War II
  
• Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando
• Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal
  
• Sly Cooper
• Sly 2: Band Of Thieves
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves

No particular order, or rush to pick them up. Coincidentally, they're all for PS2.

Oh, and that Linux future hard drive business I was babbling about earlier? Yeah, it was referring to my Windows drive and is no longer forcing checks... So... Whatever :)

Explosion de Baies

As one might glean from my XBOX Live gamer card thingie over to the right of this page, I've recently picked-up Viva Pinata and Rockstar's Table Tennis; both solid games that I got new for about $20 each. Viva Pinata promises to be a lot of fun, especially considering the wonderful graphics. I realize that it's pretty much The Sims, but I find it far less annoying. Table Tennis is friggin' hard, but I suspect that I may just suck.

On the PSP front, I've been spending the majority of my time with it playing Daxter, LocoRoco, Puzzle Quest, and Virtua Tennis 3. Daxter's just plain gorgeous and plays a lot like the Jak And Daxter PS2 games, so I'm happy there. LocoRoco is easily one of the most stylish, original, and endearing games I've played in a long while, plus there're plenty of reasons to play levels over again. Puzzle Quest is basically a turn-based RPG with an expanded Bejeweled game for a battle system, and it works well. Finally, Virtua Tennis 3 is more Virtua Tennis, and as any good Dreamcast fan knows, that's a good thing.

Oh! Debian keeps telling me my hard drive was last mounted in the future and forcing a check at start-up... But all the clocks are checking-out fine. Any ideas?

Sooo excited!!!

New Clive Barker's Jericho media!!!

Oh, and here's a useful little utility: AoA Media's free audio extractor.

And finally, video game dorks everywhere, prepare to climax!

Strike while the iron's hot!

Just a heads-up; now is definitely the time to build...

• AMD Athlon 5200+ (89W Socket AM2) - $219.99
• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe Wireless Edition - $236.99
• 2x 1024MB PC6400 (800MHz) DDR2 - $171.99
• 256MB DDR3 PCIe BFG GeForce 8600GTS OC - $280.99

On a mostly unrelated note, I found Burnout Revenge for XBOX 360 for under $30; despite its new "Platinum Hit" status, nobody seems to be carrying it anymore. Given that Burnout Dominator is supposedly a completely different kind of experience (who wants to focus on dangerous driving instead of mindless destruction!? ;) ), it made sense to grab the best possible version of a fun game. I guess I'll trade-in my XBOX version, or give it to a friend.

Just because I have nothing better to do at the moment...

Fall 2007!? I could've sworn they were aiming for spring/summer... I can't wait that long :\

Also, how did I miss the PS2 release of the Metal Slug anthology!? It was released on March 26th, and apparently fixes the control issues of the Wii version and noticeably shortens the load-times of the PSP version. Sweeet... I finally get to play Metal Slug 6 :)

Oh, and expect some PSP mini-reviews on here in the near future.

Genius!

Exciting!

Java Runtime Environment 6.0 Update 1 crashes Iceweasel 2.0.0.3 on my Debian 4.0 "testing" machine... That is all.

Gah! They got me!

20 new games makes Brent a happy PSP owner :)
So far, I have:

• Bomberman
• Daxter
• Every Extend Extra
• Exit
• Killzone Liberation
• LocoRoco
• Lumines
• Lumines II
• Me And My Katamari
• Metal Gear Ac!d
• Metal Gear Ac!d 2
• Mind Quiz
  
• Pro Evolution Soccer 2007
• Puzzle Quest
• Ridge Racer
• Sonic Rivals
• Ultimate Ghosts 'n Goblins
• Virtua Tennis
• Virtua Tennis 3
• Wipeout Pure

...And they're all pretty awesome. Some are definitely better than others (Every Extend Extra, Killzone Liberation, and Sonic Rivals aren't without their flaws, while Daxter, Exit, LocoRoco, Puzzle Quest, and Ridge Racer have really shone so far), but for the most part, as a late-adopter of the platform, I couldn't be happier! Prices are low, the library is now pretty solid, and the extra features (audio, video, web, camera sync) make for a great value.

Well I'll be...

Remember that iMac I posted about, like two posts down? Sure you do :) Well, that little bugger tore a hole in my home network's MAC filter! My brother was over yesterday and tried to connect wirelessly with his Archos video player, and got in just fine... What the hell!? I went to check the router settings to see if I'd messed anything up as I had been updating the list of accepted MAC addresses for my PSP. Nope, all was well. I'm not sure of exactly what happened, but it turns-out that the iMac was never released from the MAC filter (even though I had deleted it) or the DHCP pool (I leave two IP addresses available with half-hour lease times for visitors that have been added to the MAC filter), and the Archos device was able to access the network without a hitch. I had to perform a soft-reset on the router to fix the issue. I don't know if this was because of the iMac, Mac OS 9, the SMC router, or the Archos device, but still... Interesting.

So the PSP is pretty sweet. Memory Stick Duos are expensive (the cheapest 4GB I've found is like $118 CDN), Mind Quiz, Loco Roco, Puzzle Quest, Lumines, and both Virtua Tennis games are all pretty great, the web browser and cell-phone-like text entry aren't that bad, and video playback is nice... But man, looking back at old prices, firmware, and software selection, I would've been pissed as an early adopter.

"My name..." "Starts with a D!" "...Is Razputin!"

Earlier today, I took advantage of a one-day sale at Zellers: Buy any Ubisoft or selected PSP game and get a PSP core system for $149.99. I picked Mind Quiz for $19.99, which I may just try to return for something else :) Oh, and I guess the PSP system I grabbed had been sitting on the shelf for some time, as the firmware revision was 2.60. Yeah, so now I can run *ahem* "homebrew" software on my PSP using the 1GB Memory Stick Duo my little brother had left over from when Rogers sent him a free 4GB Memory Stick Duo with his new cell phone ;) It's kinda funny seeing the PSP next to the Nomad on my desk...

Oh! While I was out, I stopped by an EBGames that was in the same mall, and they had a used copy of Psychonauts for XBOX!!! I couldn't resist, and playing it on my 360 is a joy. If anyone's curious, Game Shack at Yonge and Dundas still had a few new copies for Windows in stock the last time I was there, and the Sunrise Records in Erin Mills Town Centre had a few new copies for Windows for $4.97!

Fucking hell...

So I thought I'd be clever and make this post from the iMac I just finished working on... I was able to type the post and everything before the web browser decided to eat everything I'd written :\ Anyway, my friend was given an old iMac (Rev. A 233MHz G3, 96MB of RAM) and didn't even know if it worked, so I offered to have a look at it. A clean installation of Mac OS 9.2.2 later, and the thing was actually running alright! Unfortunately, the latest compatible version of a Mozilla-based web browser is 1.2.1 (from 2002), and the only OS 9 web browser that's still maintained is iCab. Neither is particularly awesome in conjunction with the new Blogger interface, it seems. Anyway, all said and done, the iMac is an almost-competent web browser, desktop publisher, and CD burning machine... With a dim display. It was a fun little learning experience (my first pre-OS X Apple installation) that kept me occupied this morning.

In other, much more exciting news, I bought a SEGA Nomad!!! Finally! I'd wanted one since they first came out, and I just happened to see one in a shop yesterday. It was a little over-priced and had a few minor scratches on it, but I didn't care; I had to have it. This acquisition inspired me to go and pick-up the over-priced SEGA CDX I saw at another shop a few weeks earlier, but when I got there it'd been sold... Prolly for the best ;) They did, however, have a whole new selection of Saturn accessories and games! I bought an analog controller (new, but not sealed, in box), Fighting Vipers, a mis-priced Virtua Cop 2 ($6.99 CDN!), Dark Savior (sequel to the Genesis sleeper hit Landstalker), and... EARTHWORM JIM 2!!! My love for the first two EWJ games runs deep, but I've always held-off on getting them in hopes of finding the best versions of each... Which would be EWJ Special Edition on SEGA CD and EWJ2 on Saturn. Well, that's one down.

Finally, I was just playing Texas Hold 'em on XBOX Live, and I was down a little over $100 when the table started to clear-out... Which was strange because one guy had just gone all-in with almost $1500. I'm confused... Were they being nice to me? Did I get disconnected? Regardless, my system saw me as the last player still at the table, so I got the pot :)

Nuclear fallout for the win!

Late last night (or early this morning), I finished the single-player campaign of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow Of Chernobyl. Immediately after the credits rolled, I started playing it again. Yeah, it's good :) Most of the reviews of it that I've read are pretty spot-on with their assessments; that the graphics are about on-par with Half-Life 2, the gameplay is most similar to Oblivion, and it's full of bugs. The graphics are indeed a little dated, but still look quite nice (especially with dynamic lighting enabled); the gameplay is more of an action-oriented FPS-with-RPG-elements than Oblivion's RPG-with-FPS-elements, but the similarities (mission structure, resource management, exploration) are undeniable; the bugs though... Oh man. While I didn't run-into any real show-stoppers, the ones I did see were glaringly bad. Everything from bodies disappearing before they hit the ground to infinite armour, the glitches were ever-present. They didn't, however, detract too much from the overall experience. The other common thread throughout the major reviews is their praise of the game's atmosphere; this game is immersive like few others, and so the bugs are ultimately excusable. Vast (though not as open as Oblivion's) landscapes and buildings to explore, plenty of side-missions to complete (or ignore), in-game politics to consider, a good variety of weapons and enemies, and an interesting (albeit somewhat perplexing) story with (I've heard) seven potential endings make for a particuarly good game.

I have only a few real gripes about the game, and they won't even affect most players anyway. First, as pretty as the dynamic lighting is, it kills my GPU (over-clocked AGP GeForce 6800). I can run the game with all settings at maximum using static lighting and it's very nice, but dynamic lighting brings it to its knees at anything over 1024x768 and "medium" detail settings. Second, a patch was released shortly after the game's release, and while it's nice to see so many issues addressed (and sad to see a broken game shipped), it was painful to learn that it breaks your saved games! Gah! Finally, there's the script. While the voice acting is superb, some of the bits of text are a little off... Like when the middle-aged Ukrainian guy refers to his "homies", and when the military commander calls an opposing force "the shit", and when your new armour is called "inefficient" when it's pretty safe to assume that they meant to write "efficient". Still, it's a rock-solid game that will draw you into its world, plus it's only $40.

Oh, and while I was out this afternoon, I noticed that Best Buy has Viva Pinata marked-down to $20! The two locations I checked were out of stock though :\ They did, however, have the Guitar Hero II XBOX 360 demo unit running. The graphics weren't a huge improvement over the PS2 version and the controller felt small and cheap; I was not impressed. Then I tripped (but didn't fall) over the cord connecting the controller to the demo unit, taking the 360 to the floor. The noises coming out of that thing didn't sound very healthy at all, but the salesperson was cool about it :)

Changes...

Just a quick one before I head out for the evening... I finally got around to playing with the default template of this space, as I'm sure you've noticed. This is the result of a first run-through of the default code, so I'll soon fix the rough edges near the top and continue to tweak the text colours.

Getting back to the usual stuff, I *shudder* traded-in some old PS2 and Windows games that I had lying around; various titles that were either given to me or I picked-up for about $10. As expected, the resale value of not-exactly-rare software still sucks, and I'm sure the mark-up will exceed 100%. I was, however, glad to finally be rid of them (stuff like Devil May Cry 3 for Windows and Tekken 4 for PS2), and used the store credit towards a new copy of the Devil May Cry 5th Anniversary Collection for PS2. This collection includes Devil May Cry, Devil May Cry 2, and Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition. As expected of any Capcom game, the translation sucks, the design is weird, and the controls are awkward, but the graphics are killer, the gameplay is rewarding, and it's generally a fun experience by the end... Or at least that's how things are shaping-up so far; I'm only about a quarter of the way through the first game :)

I was gonna make some crack about a mirage, but...

Beyond Oasis is apparently now available on the Wii Virtual Console service! If you've ever wondered where SEGA's answer to Zelda was, here it is! It was originally a Genesis game, and there is a sequel (Legend Of Oasis) for the Saturn. Both are spectacular games that definitely hold their own against the Zelda franchise. Definitely worth a download if you have a Wii.

Upon further review...

Shortly after my last post, I had another go at the first boss of Link and promptly kicked his ass on the first attempt. I'm still not sure why I had so much trouble before, but oh well, moving on... The game still hasn't done much to hold my attention, but it is nice to be making progress. My only real gripe at this point is having to start at the beginning of the game each time I load a saved game; repeating the journey to get back to where I left-off ad nauseam isn't exactly the most fun I've had in this title. I suspect this will get more bearable once I get the hammer from Death Mountain and open up some alternate routes, but still, not a great way to start a game.

That's what she said...

...Well, that was short. I finished The Minish Cap in about two days of solid play. It was fantastic and is possibly my new favourite of the series, but I want more. Sure, you can go back after finishing the game and find all sorts of new items and secrets, but without a grand purpose behind it all anymore, it's just not the same. The problem lies with the dungeons, and there are two possible fixes: Either have more of them (there are really only five), or make them longer. I found myself spending more time unlocking new dungeons than I did conquering them. Still, this is a great game that is definitely worth everyone's time. The new play mechanics (The Minish, kinstones, sword skills, etc...) were well-executed, and exploration was very organic. Perhaps I've just become accustomed to the grid-based play of Zelda, Link's Awakening, and the Oracle games, but exploration was never tedious and always fluid; it really helped to immerse me in the adventure. The game was also a touch on the easy side, but aside from that and the length, everything was done right. If you're a Zelda fan of any measure, you should definitely be picking this one up.

I've now gone back to finish The Adventure Of Link, and I'm still having a hell of a time getting settled-in. Perhaps it's just the first boss, who I find infuriatingly frustrating to beat, but I'm quickly getting a very bad taste in my mouth. That's a real shame after being so impressed the last three titles that I played in the series. Also, as you may have noticed from my XBOX Live gamer card on the right there, I picked-up Tony Hawk's Project 8 and King Kong for the 360. I stumbled upon both of them new and cheap at a usually over-priced and relatively sketchy shop on Yonge Street today. I already own the latter for Windows, but the StarForce copy protection irks me to no end, so I'm hesitant to install it; besides, the 360 version has much better graphics. Project 8 is just amazing. It's classic Tony Hawk (like, the first two in the series) with awesome graphics and some new gameplay innovations; "nail the trick" mode breathes a whole new life into the experience.

Tender!

I finished the Oracle games! Both Oracle Of Ages and Oracle Of Seasons were top-notch titles, and the linking features really tied the whole experience together nicely. The weapon, item, and ring transfers weren't tedious, and the way they handled the plot cross-over was clever. The final battle, only available after completing both cartridges, really made it all worth it. I definitely recommend giving these ones a go.

So now I'm on to the The Minish Cap, and it is spectacular. It features gorgeous graphics, classic gameplay with a few new twists, and some familiar touches from previous Zelda games in the sound and music. What really grabbed my attention, however, were the new interpretations of some of the traditional aspects of the franchise. From redesigned (yet still familiar) enemies to Link's hat, there's a lot to rediscover here, and it's definitely welcome as it breathes new life into the series. Oh, and I really like the way they handle the mine carts in this one :) The only complaint I have so far is that it seems as though this adventure is going to be a little short... I'm already nearing the half-way point of the game, and I just started playing it this morning :\ I'll keep you posted.

Curses!

Neither Castle Crashers nor Fable 2 will be available until some time in 2008, and that's only if things stay on schedule! Gah! Oh, and Casino Royale is only on Blu-Ray DVD! Also, while Rogers On Demand has The Illusionist in HD, The Prestige is only in standard definition! I hate my life.

Well, I am on the last dungeon in Oracle Of Ages, but then I also seem to have develpoed a bit of an addiction to Texas Hold 'em on XBOX Live, so that doesn't really help matters at all :\

So I was productive yesterday...

...I helped one friend order a new battery charger for her camera, fixed this guy's borked Windows installation (plus data back-up and PSU and GPU fan repair), got a friend's new laptop (some kind of Celeron D Toshiba running Vista Home Basic) and home wireless network (the interface for Bell's SpeedStream wireless modem/router combo is painful) running all spiffy, and set-up another friend's two new digital cable boxes... Now all they need is a new line to the house for a stronger signal; some channels are kinda chunky in one room :)

*fingers crossed*

Since finally getting this digital cable thing up and running, I've had the HD terminal freeze once, had it lose its signal twice, and lost various channels for seemingly random periods of time. I really hope it's just because of the weather we've been having lately and not another problem with the line or the terminal, and I especially hope this isn't indicative of Rogers' usual service :\

I bought a used copy of The Legend Of Zelda: The Minish Cap the other day; it was $10 cheaper than the cheapest new copy I could find. I'm about two-thirds of the way through Oracle Of Ages, and I can hardly wait to move-on to The Minish Cap; it's easily one of the prettiest things I've ever seen on a GBA.

Oh, and here's something potentially disturbing: A while back, Activision bought Red Octane and the Guitar Hero franchise, to be continued by Neversoft (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater). EA just announced that they're publishing Harmonix's next game... So, yeah, it looks like Guitar Hero won't be handled by its original developer anymore at all... I don't like the sound of that.

The Arcade

I downloaded some demos from the XBOX Live Arcade, and I'm a little torn; I enjoyed Robotron 2084 quite a bit, Time Pilot and Contra bring back some great Commodore 64 memories, and Smash TV would be a blast in mutliplayer... I'm leaning heavily towards Smash TV, but then I'm also considering just hanging-on to those 450 excess points and putting them towards Castle Crashers or Castlevania: SOTN when they come out... Or maybe DooM is the way to go. I mean, classic deathmatch! Gah! Stupid Microsoft and their money-grabbing trap! I walked right into it!

Damnit!

I went to exchange a defective keyboard today. The guy said they only do direct exchanges in the first 30 days from purchase, and after that, I have to deal with the manufacturer because it's refurbished. That's standard policy, so I left without fuss... But it was an OEM product, not a refurbished one, and it was only $10, so I'm not about to pay to ship it to Logitech when I could just buy another one for around the same price.

I also picked-up a 1250-point XBOX Live prepaid card while I was out, and bought Alien Hominid HD when I got home. I have 450 points left-over now... What should I get? Gauntlet? Contra? Uno? Many choices... I just can't decide. I noticed something funny though; 1250-point cards tend to cost around $20, I've seen 1400-point cards for $25~$30, and 2800-point cards for $40... Anyone else see the problem here? Yeah, the 1400-point card is actually the worst value in terms of points-per-dollar, even at $25. What the hell!? Crooks. I also picked-up Tony Hawk 2x, Wreckless, and Ninja Gaiden Black for XBOX for $35 altogether.

w00t!

Found one of these. More expensive than my two-composite-switch solution, but I'll get by...

In other news, the ice storm I mentioned in my last post knocked-out cable to the neighbourhood later that night, and service wasn't restored until earlier today. I'm willing to bet someone's messing with me ;)

Ooh, and I downloaded demos for Alien Hominid HD, NBA Street: Homecourt, and MLB 2K7 for XBOX 360. They're all very pretty, but I'll probably only be purchasing Alien Hominid... Followed by Castle Crashers (from the same developer), whenever they get around to releasing it :\

Respect.

Big ups to Mike, the cable guy, who really kicked-ass at his job today. He showed-up well within the appointed time frame, asked if I wanted him to take his boots off, made perfectly enjoyable small talk while still totally intimidating me (he was almost as tall as I am, but I was in a hoodie, baggy pants, and slippers whereas he was wearing winter outerwear, a tool belt, and a Harley-Davidson belt buckle), and then ran a whole new cable to my house from the telephone pole across the street in the middle of the crazy fucker of an ice storm that has been pummeling us all afternoon! He had me do some of the wiring inside the house because he couldn't feel his hands... But he stuck it out and got the job done, so I made sure to get his card. To tie things up neatly, I now have HDTV over digital cable, and analog cable is much cleaner with the new line. The problem was indeed the old line running to the house that was installed, I'm told, nearly 30 years ago! The guy said it was the two splitters, the amplifier, the coupler, and the surge protector causing the problem, but I tried it without all of those the other night, and it didn't help. So, the only loose end now is the component switch. I think the easiest route would be to pick-up two sub-$30 composite switches and use one for component video and the other for stereo audio.

I'm worried now though... My computers are all solid and still fast enough to keep me from upgrading to a whole new build, I have no service or consulting jobs lined-up in the foreseeable future, my home theatre setup is just about complete, and no video games are really holding my attention. I guess that leaves me to focus on university and my band... Weird. I'll try to find something to post here until things pick-up :)

Guh...

Two things:

Rogers has not yet resolved my cable issues. The HD terminal did show up a few days earlier (Friday the 23rd) than they said it would (Monday the 26th), but it was supposed to be here no later than 21st initially. Since it showed-up on the Friday and they had offered us a $6 per month discount plus some extra channels, we e-mailed to accept the offer. Unfortunately, nobody seems to work past 3pm Eastern time on Fridays at Rogers, so all digital channels were "Not Authorized" until Monday morning; that's when about ten channels appeared and the rest showed nothing but gray. We received an e-mail confirmation of our order later that day, assuring us all would be well within the next 24 hours. 24 hours later, nothing had changed, so I called their 24-hour repair service line. Turns-out that this address is the only one in the neighbourhood that was not returning a signal to the tech. Sweet. The tech was very personable and didn't treat me like a moron, but was unable to solve my problem. After trying another TV and a few different wiring possibilities, I had exhausted my options and so I made an appointment for a house-call tomorrow. Oh, and they said they were going to charge me for a partial month... Hah! Not if I have anything to say about it.

Next up is accessorizing. I looked-around for a DVI-D cable (for the HDTV terminal) and a three-input component switch (for my 360, XBOX, and PS2). I found DVI-D cables going for as much as $180 for 2m, but, of course, I went to the local independent computer store and got a 3m cable for $20.99 :) I didn't have nearly as much success with the switch though. Apparently nobody carries them. I did find one place that had a two-input switch for $120, but that's a little high for something that didn't meet my minimum requirements. So, it seems as though I'll either be ordering one online, buying a stereo composite switch (~$30) and doing audio separately, or building my own... Should be exciting regardless of what I choose to do :) In the interim, I splurged and bought a copy of Serenity on HD DVD. I would've picked-up Pitch Black and Army Of Darkness as well, but they were over $30 each!

It's official...

...Resident Evil 4 has been put on hold indefinitely. It's one thing to have challenging gameplay that forces players to use ammo and health items, effectively eliminating stockpiling and creating a very tense experience; it's a whole other story to have enemies that appear out of nowhere and stick you in the back with a pitchfork the second you turn your back! Seriously, the respawning enemies were bearable because they dropped plenty of ammo and money, but when I'm standing at the top of a hill with only one path leading towards me, that is clear as far as the eye can see, and I'm suddenly mauled to death by no less than two enemies just moments after turning away from said path, I can't be bothered. So far, Bully is much more entertaining.

Solid... Platinum?

Microsoft has announced the next round of XBOX 360 platinum hits:

• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat
• Burnout Revenge
• Call of Duty 2
• Dead or Alive 4
• Fight Night Round 3
• Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
• Top Spin 2
• Rockstar Games presents Table Tennis
  

Burnout and Fight Night are definitely tempting, and DoA4 and Table Tennis are pretty much sure-things. Sweet. Now if only Dead Rising, Lost Planet, and Crackdown were cheaper :)

Adventures in HDTV...

Let me start from the start...

So Rogers makes the Speed channel digital-only, replacing it with two classic movie channels. Ugh. I call to research my options, and am told that I'll need to pay an extra $6.98 per month for basic digital service and hardware rental plus $9.99 per month to get the sports package that includes the Speed channel. After checking the website and seeing that the information did not match-up, I made another call. This time I was told that I didn't need any additional packages, just the digital service, and so I opted for the HD terminal when I placed the order online. Everything seemed to go well until I received an e-mail saying my account information was incorrect and that I had ordered a PVR. I just forwarded what I had already sent them (since I checked and it was indeed correct) and assured them that I had not ordered a PVR, and they were happy. They even gave me a reference number. Well, here we are, three business days later, and no delivery. I called-back to see what's up, and I was told that despite my reference number, Rogers had no record of any transactions on my account. I assured the support guy that he had been wonderfully helpful, and then I threatened to cancel my service before hanging-up.

This really shouldn't be that complicated, should it?

Doot doot doot...

I haven't touched my N64 in forever, my 360 is getting more use as a DVD player than as a gaming system, and my Guitar Hero guitars have been collecting dust for a little while now. Why is this? Well, I really have no solid answer. I did sit down and finish Oracle Of Seasons and get started on Oracle Of Ages (see "zelda" to the right), and I've been trying my damnedest to get into Resident Evil 4 with little success, but that doesn't really explain what's going on. I performed a clean Windows XP installation on my audio/gaming computer, but that was just one evening. I've only taken-on one repair job over the past few weeks (data back-up on a failing hard drive), and that, again, was only one evening. This is strange...

Anyway, I feel should explain why I'm having such a hard time getting into Resident Evil 4. I really enjoyed the first game in the series, but never finished it. The same can be said for Nemesis and Code Veronica. I did finish RE2, and it was fantastic, but it was also a trying experience. I think the RE games previous to 4 have ingrained a sense of necessary resource management and performance perfection in me for the survival horror genre. If I take too many shots to kill an enemy, or miss a pick-up, or take too much damage, the ridiculously scarce resources of the previous games have made me paranoid that I won't be able to progress past a certain point on account of my inefficiency. Now, I'm learning that RE4 is much more forgiving in this department, but I still can't shake the urge to reload my last save and check walk-throughs every time I finish a scene. It's frustrating to say the least, and I'm finding myself more than a little tempted to move-on to Bully or Jak 3.

Once I was the king of Spain...

My older brother picked-up one of these, which reminded me of this, which had me considering spending a lot of money on something I didn't really need at all. I have a laptop and a portable MP3 player, so really, what would I use either of these for? Portable video? Instant-on web browsing? Gaming? Huh... Sounds like it'd be cheaper to just get a PSP (which I'm already planning to anyway). Sure, I sacrifice some of the nicer features like a touch-screen keyboard and the vast amounts of storage space, but I do get better games and save some cash. Meh, they're all just new toys at this point anyway :)

Oh, and hey, so I realized that XBOX Live accounts are per profile, not per system... Looking back after having this realization, I see that I was foolish to assume otherwise, logistically speaking. That doesn't change my mood though; I'm a little disappointed that I can't let my little brother play online without shelling-out another $60. I wonder if accounts are transferable; I won't have much time to play until the summer anyway.

Sneaky bastards...

The other day, my dad asked me why they were showing old movies on the "Speed" channel. Turns out the cable company decided to change their existing cable package and make that channel available only as an add-on for digital customers. Great. So the cable bill automatically goes up by another $4~7 per month for the digital service and equipment rental fees, plus another few bucks for that one channel. What a fuckin' racket. My dad said he called them to see what was up, and they said that because people were unhappy, they were waiving the hardware rental fee for the first year... Except that's their standard promotion anyway; it has nothing to do with unhappy customers. Jerks.

Speaking of jerks, it turns out Microsoft isn't quite so asinine about upgrading previous versions of Windows to Vista. There is a work-around to the upgrade path I mentioned a few posts back that does not require a previous installation in order to use an upgrade licence, and not only is Microsoft aware of it, but they don't plan on doing anything about it!

Speaking of erroneous past posts, I was wrong in my belief that the PS2 version of Resident Evil 4 supported progressive scan. I confused it with natively supporting a widescreen format that the GameCube version didn't. Just to double-check all of my PS2 games (not all have the "Progressive Scan" tag on the case), I headed over to Mobygames to see what their database had to say. What a great site :) Oh, and yeah, this means I've finished God Of War... It was fantastic!

Anyway, a couple of quick final notes: The music in Oracle Of Seasons is some of the best I've ever heard come out of a Game Boy, or any system. It's just well-written and really stands-out because of it. Also, as I was wandering around downtown Toronto yesterday, I stopped-in at Game Shack (just off Yonge and Dundas, Northwest block) and saw a copy of Psychonauts for Windows for $15. I brought it up to the counter, and the guy said he'd get me another one. Turns-out he has stacks(!) of factory-sealed copies of the Windows and PS2 ($20) versions of the game that he got from one of his suppliers! I asked him about the XBOX version, and he said he'd look into getting it. If you're ever in the neighbourhood, kids, pick one up!

Well that's annoying...

http://gaim.sourceforge.net/faq.php#q72

You know you're jealous...

Last night, a very attractive young woman came over to my house and played through Streets Of Rage 2 (Genesis) with me. Then we took turns playing Katamari Damacy (PS2), followed by some fierce Burnout: Revenge (XBOX) competition.

ABUH!?

Now this is enough to warrant the purchase of a PSP. No, seriously, this is like... Gah! I can't even put it into words! I'm getting this, a PSP, and then Loco Roco just for kicks :)

Ooohhh... Pretty.

So I got the XBOX 360 HD-DVD player earlier this evening, and I'm currently taking a break from watching King Kong on it. While it's very nice to get a pack-in, they could've picked something a little less... Drawn-out :) I've never seen the movie before, and while it does showcase the wonders of the HD generation quite nicely, I'm a little over half-way through it and ready to do just about anything else. Also, the Universal Media Remote uses IR (saves on batteries, I'm assuming), and part of my entertainment centre kinda blocks the IR receiver on the console... And no, I can't move it somewhere else (wiring). Ugh. Still, I have an HD-DVD player. Hooray!

I've also been informed that the 360 up-samples regular DVDs from 480p if you're using the VGA cable... Now, I'm pretty sure my TV only has DVI, but an adapter would do the trick, right? Hrmmm...

Anyway, that's about it. Wait, one more thing: I did renew my XBOX Live Gold account, and immediately downloaded the Crackdown demo. Holy shit, is this game fun! Power-ups are accelerated in the demo, and once one of your attributes hits level two, a 30-minute time limit begins, but I'm already hooked! The graphics are nothing special (it's built on RenderWare technology, so it's not ugly, but not super-awesome either), the story is trivial, and the cel-shading style just seems out of place, but the gameplay is gold! Think modern Grand Theft Auto with Deus Ex/Matrix-esque abilities. I could skip all the missions and just jump from rooftop to rooftop for hours, and if I got bored, I'd just throw some cars and trucks around with my bare hands :)

Asinine!

So Project: Snowblind is officially relegated to the back of the line. Interesting game, but it just wasn't doing it for me and the floaty mouse controls didn't help either. I've moved-on to F.E.A.R. Extraction Point, and, well, it's more of the same things that F.E.A.R. offered only not as tight in the presentation. That's not a terrible thing, but does leave something to be desired... It's still fun, so it'll do for now. I've polished-off episodes 1 and 2 of the new Sam & Max games, and I dug out my old copy of Sam & Max Hit The Road because I had so much fun! Yes, they're short and a little easy, but they're funny as hell and still challenging enough to keep you entertained for an hour or two.

On the consoles, God Of War is in full-swing, and I'm loving it. I'm almost finished, but that just means I get to Resident Evil 4 sooner :) I've reinstated the PS2 as my second progressive scan device (XBOX 360 is number one, and the original XBOX has been bumped down to s-video) because of my console gaming schedule. Speaking of progressive scan devices, my brother got back to me, and Microsoft is indeed sending me the XBOX 360 HD-DVD drive! That includes the remote and an HD-DVD copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong! I'm excited. Ooh, one more thing while I'm on the subject: The trial month of my XBOX Live Gold membership has lapsed. Don't worry, I'll be back in a couple of days, but I did notice that I have to wait a few days before being able to download the new Crackdown demo as a Silver member... Jerks.

Okay, so, Windows Vista is out. Whoop-dee-doo! I'm in no rush to pick it up (Debian 4.0 is fantastic), but I'm sure I will eventually. Anyway, after reading this, I'm just angry. Yeah, installing an upgrade copy of Vista Home Premium or below requires an installation of a previous version of Windows to be on the computer! Seriously, what the fuck!? That's just asinine, and asking for a whole hell of a lot of avoidable support calls. Ugh. So I will now definitely be avoiding any version of Vista below Business. I think that whenever I get around to upgrading my system (something multi-core, 64-bit), I'll just grab an OEM copy of Business and be done with it. What a headache.

Sorry, been busy...

Finished Kameo; that was fun. Very, very pretty, but nothing stupendous. Tried to get into Perfect Dark Zero, but it's just not doing it for me. It's also a very, very pretty game, but I can't find aiming settings that feel good, and some aspects of the game design just don't make a lot of sense. For example, certain parts are just needlessly frustrating, and restarting the whole mission (you can't use checkpoints if you want your stats to be recorded) isn't my idea of fun. I'll finish it eventually, but I think most of my attention will now shift towards my PS2 and God Of War, followed by either Bully or Resident Evil 4... And then maybe Jak 3; I think I'm gonna hold-off on Okami, Enchanted Arms, and Final Fantasy IX for a few months until I have some actual free time to devote to them.

Things have been pretty quiet on the PC gaming front for a while now, but that's mostly because Project: Snowblind is just kinda boring and I've hit a particularly frustrating point right near the end of Most Wanted. I think I just might give-up on the former and start something more interesting. For the time being, however, I picked-up the two new Sam & Max games! I'm only just starting Culture Shock, but so far, so good.

Anyway, moving on, Slackware 11 didn't do it for me. It was nice; most notably, LILO and Xfce were interesting changes. The installer was very helpful with its descriptions, and the whole process was relatively smooth. Perhaps I was just missing something in Xfce, but things seemed to be pretty terminal-oriented, and packages were handled differently. No real complaints though; it seems like a solid distribution of Linux and I can see why so many people like it. After spending some quality time as a slacker, I decided to bite the bullet and grab Debian 4.0 RC1. Oh man, is this ever an upgrade! The new GUI for the installer is slick, the new themes are gorgeous, the packages are much more up-to-date, and so far everything just works! I still had to edit the X.Org configuration file myself to add my monitor's refresh settings, and I installed Flash and Java manually, but everything's great! Flash 9 actually works really well on here too! All I use my Windows machines for now is gaming, audio production, and burning program-specific disc image files :)

Quickly now...

Flash 9 is out for Linux. It's still slower than 7, and sound is still sketchy with some popular distros. Debian 4 is taking forever to come out, so I'm downloading Slackware as I type this. Wheee!

Crimson Skies on XBOX is just as much fun as the PC version, but with better controls. Phantom Dust is pretty weird, but I haven't played much at all, so I'll get back to you on that. Ridge Racer 6 is too much fun for a $20 game; get it.

Ooh! I decided to forego the XBOX 360 chargers and battery packs for a 15-minute Duracell NiMH charger that included four 2400mAh AA NiMH batteries. It was about the same price as an MS quick-charge (two hour) kit and a second battery back.

Also, yes, it's true: I was in a Wal-Mart yesterday, and while the Wii was sold-out, at least two 60GB PS3s were sitting on the shelf.

Strange Days

Since my last post, I've finished Gears Of War on "Hardcore" and Guitar Hero II on "Hard". Just as everyone maintains, Gears Of War is a fantastic game with amazing graphics, satisfying and varied gameplay, as well as great replay value. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but all signs point to it kicking ass too. Now for the gripes: The narrative is spotty at best (I can follow the story, but a bit more exposition and character development would make things much more cohesive), and some of the checkpoints are annoyingly placed (watching the same cinematics and listening to the same radio banter over and over at some of the tougher parts is just unnecessary). I've read a lot of complaints about reptitive tasks (flanking troikas, dodging berserkers) in this game, but I found them to be used sparingly enough such that they didn't get stale by the time I was finished. I definitely recommend spending some real quality time with this title. Guitar Hero II is pretty much the first game with different songs, a little more polish, better multiplayer, and a few little tweaks to keep the gameplay interesting. It's a nice refresh to the series, and everyone should give it a go.

Next up is Kameo. I have half of the elementals already, and while it is pretty and entertaining, the game feels a little too easy. I'm still curious to see how the story unfolds, and the gameplay isn't boring... Just be aware that there doesn't seem to be much of a challenge here. That's actually how I felt after playing through the Ridge Racer 6 demo a few times: No challenge. Well, I found the game new for $17.99, and couldn't pass it up; seven races in, and I'm already finding a pretty good challenge in this one. The graphics are sharp, the music is amazing, and the racing style is simplistic without being too easy. For an arcade-style drifting racer, there's a decent amount of depth here. I should also mention that I downloaded every HD episode of Viva Pinata on XBOX Live (they were free). Funny stuff for a kids show. One last thing: I found Phantom Dust and Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge for $20 altogether on the way home tonight. I haven't played them yet, but I'm excited :)

Okay, now that that stuff's out of the way, I want to mention that I've had to replace no less than three bad hard drives for clients this week! For the volume of work that I do, that's unheard of. Data back-up has gone smoothly though, so nobody's too pissed-off. One of them was a Dell Inspiron 1150 and the guy is looking for an excuse to buy a new laptop, so I'm just going to send him a link to a site detailing the Canadian lawsuit against Dell regarding the quality issues surrounding that model before I go any further with the repairs. I also started repair work on a custom build, and upon poking around inside the chassis, I saw that my work was cut-out for me. It's a pretty nice Socket939 Athlon 64 3200+ SLI (6600GT) system, but the wiring job was atrocious and the the dust bunnies were taking over. Upon cleaning that mess, the system would not longer boot. The culprit turned-out to be one of the video cards going bad on me. Luckily, the guy had noticed video issues previously, so I was off the hook for a replacement.

Finally, I picked-up one of these, and I'm so glad that I did with all these bad hard drives recently. It's basicaly a universal (3.5" and 2.5" IDE, SATA) USB drive enclosure, but without the enclosure part... I guess that makes it a dongle. Whatever... For $29.99, I don't care what it's called.

Not too much to report...

Found me a free copy of The Legend Of Zelda Collector's Edition for GameCube; that was pretty cool, albeit slightly frustrating after hunting-down and paying for the N64 originals and GBA ports of all four games included on the disc. Then again, I still don't have a GameCube or a Wii, so whatever... I also picked-up Myst: Uru: Complete Chronicles for $10. I've only played the original single-player game in the package and it was amazing, so this was a nice addition to my collection. I haven't had much time to sit down and actually play many of my games though, so the 'to play' pile just keeps growing. I have made some progress in Oracle Of Seasons (see right), I'm into the third chapter of Gears Of War playing on "Hardcore", and I've pretty much finished Guitar Hero II on Hard, but it's slow-going.

I delivered that 667MHz Celeron system yesterday, performed a clean install on an Acer laptop, and replaced the hard drive on a Dell laptop. The frustrating thing with the Acer laptop was the wireless driver; Acer posts drivers for for two models (TravelMate 3630 and 2420, if I recall correctly) on the same page... The problem is that the wireless drivers they provide are for Atheros and Broadcomm devices. The TravelMate I was working on (2420 series) used an Intel wireless chipset. Similarly, the Dell Inspiron 8600 I was working on potentially used something like four different GPUs, ten different wireless chipsets, and four different modems... As much as I enjoy deciphering vendor and device IDs from the device manager, they really should make the process a little easier for those who may not have original documentation and refuse to use manufacturer's restore CDs :)