Gee, thanks...

Remember this computer? That client contacted me the other day looking to upgrade. We went with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium and a 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSD; the two Raptors became a RAID 0 scratch disk.

All was working beautifully until he plugged-in his LaCie 526; Windows wouldn't let him set it above 1280x720. Restarting, installing LaCie's monitor drivers, and even forcing the native resolution wouldn't work... I had him double-check every driver, setting, and OSD option, but we couldn't figure it out. I suspected Windows was treating the monitor as a TV, and instructed him to check the EDID setting while I was on the phone with him, but he couldn't find it.

I had him contact LaCie, and they promptly responded with a horribly written e-mail instructing him to contact Microsoft and download some nondescript patch for Windows 7 (yeah, just "download a patch to fix the issue") and let them know if he found a solution.

So I did some more reading and noticed that the EDID setting only appears if the monitor is receiving a digital signal. Since the client couldn't find the setting, I'm guessing the monitor was defaulting to DVI-A. I had him force it to DVI-D in the OSD, the EDID setting appeared, and when he changed it appropriately, Windows allowed the monitor's native 1920x1200 resolution.

LaCie should've been aware of such a possibility, especially for a customer who bought a $1500+ monitor.

Ys, Ys, Ys... And a Birthday

Ys VI is pretty good, but is a definite step backward in just about every regard after playing Ys Seven... And it really shows how little work Konami put into the PSP port when immediately followed by Ys III; it's easy to forget that they're running on the same engine! Ys III is very slick, and the gameplay mechanics keep things moving briskly. I don't think I've ever played an action RPG so fast-paced... I like it. A lot.

I bought a copy of the Sonic Adventure 2 Birthday Pack for Dreamcast, today... It's a pretty sweet package, plus I didn't own a copy of Sonic Adventure 2.

Oh, and the Bulletstorm demo's been sitting on my PS3 (Silver XBL at the moment) since it came out... No time to play :(

Not the band...

I scored a complete copy of Dragon Force for Saturn (well, the warranty card and foam insert are missing) for $100. While I've long been aware of it as one of the more sought-after games for that console, the game never really appealed to me; I've rarely made the time to explore real-time strategy titles outside of the Shining Force series and Blizzard's entries in the genre. Upon starting Dragon Force with minimal preparation, I quickly discovered it isn't a traditional strategy game. There's this interesting hybridisation of slow-moving kingdom politics and super-fast-paced RTS battles. After about ten successful skirmishes and a handful of set-pieces, I decided that I should probably read the relatively thick game manual and start over... And I'm really looking forward to it :)

Oh, and I finished God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta and I'm at the final battle in Ys VI; both are solid titles and worth your time. Ventureland in Epic Mickey was lots of fun, but it's still only a shining moment in an otherwise disappointing game.

Almost done...

Picked-up 3D Dot Game Heroes, Flower, Noby Noby Boy, WipEout HD, and Yakuza 3 for PS3; can't think of many more that I'm itching to grab.

As for the general PS3 gaming experience so far, Flower is sublime, God Of War III is exactly what I expected (gorgeous, entertaining, and kinda pointless), the MotorStorm games are great fun, Noby Noby Boy is oddly endearing, and Uncharted is really engaging albeit rough around the edges (I hear the sequel fixes a lot of that).

I snagged a few demos as well: Hot Shots Golf: Out Of Bounds is solid, The Killzone 2 demo is nothing special, and the PixelJunk games were huge disappointments (I was really looking forward to Eden and Shooter).

I haven't done a proper tally yet, but the selection of PS3-exclusive titles feels kinda weak for a current-generation system; the XBOX 360 and the Wii really seem to be a step ahead. Don't get me wrong though; the PS3 is still an impressive console and worth owning, especially if you don't have a 360 ;)

Reflow

PS3 is fixed... Was still full of dust, even after the blasting I initially administered. Lessons learned: Open your PS3 when cleaning it, and become familiar with cooling-system activity.

$80 and an hour wait for a cleaning and reflow with a 60-day warranty seems reasonable.

I hope this lasts.

YLOD

For context, I spent a good five minutes or so blasting the system with compressed air before I even plugged it in last week, and I keep the console (like all of my consoles) on a hard surface in a well-ventilated area; I have a launch 360 in the same unit.

Anyway, I updated to 3.55, dissociated the console from previous owner's PSN account, formatted the HDD, registered on PSN, downloaded and installed some demos, streamed some TV, played a bunch of Uncharted, then YLOD... I'm guessing it didn't like that much continuous use :( When I unhooked everything to have a closer look, the system had literally coughed-up some massive dust bunnies while the fan was going; I had to tweeze them out through the vents. I removed the hard drive to see if it was at the root of issue (apparently HDD errors can also cause YLODs), but it won't even boot to the 'no hard drive' error screen... And my Uncharted disc is still in there.

I'm gonna take the thing to a particular local shop 'cause they have one of these; they supposedly charge ~$80. There're DIY fixes, but this isn't one I want to fuck around with.

Otherwise, it was a pretty swell week otherwise; Flower is a sublime game!

Library

Found each of the following PS3 titles (not "Greatest Hits") for under $20...

• Folklore
• Heavenly Sword
• inFamous
• Lair
• Motorstorm
• Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time
• Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
• Uncharted

My PS3 blacklog is probably about on par with that of every other console I own :)

I also happened upon copies of Full Throttle (PC) and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (Jaguar).

URNot(red)E

Got the 60GB hardware-backward-compatible PS3 with two SIXAXIS controllers, a Wireless Keypad, two charging cables, and the following games:

• Assassin's Creed II
• Bionic Commando*
• Bioshock
• Bioshock 2
• Buzz! Quiz World (with four buzzers)
• Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
• Dark Void*
• Demon's Souls*
• Dragon Age: Origins
• God Of War Collection
• God Of War III
• Golden Axe: Beast Rider*
• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Heavy Rain
• LittleBigPlanet
• ModNation Racers
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe
• Motorstorm: Pacific Rift
• The Orange Box
• Red Dead Redemption
• Street Fighter IV
• Unreal Tournament III

(* = factory sealed)

I'll be flipping most of the games since I either already have them on another platform, would rather play them on Windows, or have little interest in keeping them... Demon Souls, the God Of War games, Heavy Rain, LittleBigPlanet, ModNation Racers, MotorStorm, and Red Dead Redemption will likely be the only ones to make the cut.

I'd like to remove the system from the previous owner's PSN account before reformatting, but I can't connect to PSN unless I install the 3.55 system update (3.50 is currently installed). I'm hesitant to install the update after hearing all the horror stories about it neutering the optical drive and causing instabilities with previously-installed software... I'd hate to have to pay an extra $100+ just to get a refurbished model that lacks the hardware for which I specifically bought this model :(

Once again, not quite a month :)

So, Epic Mickey... I was talking about how the freedom of choice between countless solutions to the challenges of each area is overwhelming, and when the quests and platforming sections are good, oh man are they ever good! Unfortunately, the quests and platforming sections aren't always good... Actually, they're often downright boring and uninspired. Seriously, a lot of the content seems like it was just phoned-in, and has made me consider quitting the game altogether on more than one occasion. What keeps me going are the hints at something interesting down the line; those moments when everything just clicks and the bigger picture comes into focus pique my curiosity, and I end-up playing for another hour... At which point I've again grown tired of the vapid fetch quests and half-baked jumping puzzles and corridors.

I'm still not done Ys 6, though I am about to begin the endgame, point-of-no-return section. Y'see, my PSP's been somewhat neglected since I picked-up my new smartphone ;) It's a Motorola XT720 running Android 2.1, and while it's not exactly top-of-the-line or bleeding-edge stuff, it's still awfully swell.

On a bittersweet note, after nearly eight impressive years, my trusty Athlon XP 3200+ system is finally being retired (i.e. my parents are getting it, albeit somewhat stripped-down from its former glory), and I've built something new out of a fine selection of free parts... The result?

• Athlon 64 3500+
  
• ASUS A8V Deluxe
  
• 3GB DDR400 RAM (dual channel)
  
• 512MB AGP8X Radeon X1950 Pro
  
• SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS
  
• 80GB + 320GB SATA HDDs
  
• DVD+/-RW
  
• DVD-ROM
  
• Windows XP Pro x64
  

...And it's all in a slick-looking Cooler Master Centurion case!

One last thing: Looks like I'm getting a hardware-backwards-compatible 60GB PS3 with ~20 games from a buddy of mine! Sweet :)

Not quite a month...

Sorry for my recent absence... Work, music, and a particularly nice girl all contributed.

I did find the time to make all kinds of progress in Ys 6, and while it's been a lot of fun, I can't wait to finish it and get into Ys 3; same engine, but supremely optimised with a properly fleshed-out narrative... Mmm. Ghost Of Sparta'll fit in there somewhere, I'm sure.

I also tracked-down a copy of and got started on Fragile Dreams on Wii, and man, is that a ever a beautiful and lonely game! I'd've spent much more time with it if I hadn't gotten a sweet deal on a new copy of Epic Mickey :) Basically, I paid a premium to get the latter title new, so I'm gonna make sure I get my money's worth and play it ASAP. Anyway, I'm a few hours in, and I'm loving it! Yeah, Epic Mickey's reminiscent of the oversaturated third-person mascot-driven platformer genre from previous console generations, but it's just so slick; great graphics, tight controls, a neat gimmick (create the world around you with paint, or destroy it with paint-thinner), and a genuinely interesting take on familiar characters. The cutscenes feel out of place, the camera can be mildly frustrating at times, and there are secret warps that can make following the narrative feel very stilted, but all of that good and bad isn't what's really important.

So yeah, we have a nostalgic 3D platformer that may seem a little rough around the edges... Who cares? Well, you should. It's old news that Warren Spector (Deus Ex) headed-up the development of this game, we've known about the infusion of his trademark branching, morality-based gameplay almost since the project was first announced, and the game certainly looks dark and foreboding, but only once you begin to experience the repercussions of your many actions will you understand the feeling I'm about to describe. Every area has numerous solutions, and they're not all black and white decisions between good and bad. Sure, you can play the game with a focus on altruism and paint, or be more self-serving and paint-thinner your way through the world, but there are also a lot of gray-area alternatives and seemingly extraneous paths throughout, and that's where things get interesting. Here's an example: I had already solved an area in various ways, and noticed a couple of gears I hadn't seen before. The gears were clearly susceptible to my paint-thinner, so I erased one, and then the other, and then something broke and a gremlin I had befriended earlier started yelling at me. Apparently, I had just undone all of the hard work he'd performed for me behind the scenes. I promptly re-painted the gears, but it was too late; the damage had been done, and there was no going back! I was just being irresponsible with my destructive powers, and the game surprised me with real repercussions. I honestly felt kinda bad! What's great about Epic Mickey is that these situations become more morally challenging and complex as the game progresses. I'm nowhere near the end yet, and I really can't wait to see what's next :)

Oh, and Shank got really repetitive as I slogged through it... I'll finish it some day.

As for work, blah! Bandwidth issues (looking into fancy multi-WAN routers), planning for a new server and server software, moving our main database offsite and migrating to a remote client setup, planning a major anti-virus upgrade after our previous solution started taking-down computers with 40GB (or smaller) hard drives, re-imaging computer labs over the holidays, updating and expanding our BlackBerry server, and much, much more. I need a real vacation.

It Has Begun!

I haven't had much time for games the past week or so, but I did take a look at next week's release list - Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood, Donkey Kong Country Returns, NBA Jam, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, Sonic Colors - and it's clear that the holiday buying season is upon us!

Prometheus

Tracked-down God of War: Ghost of Sparta and Ys: The Oath in Felghana for PSP (the latter was particularly elusive), as well as Silent Hill 2 for XBOX... But I've yet to actually play any of them.

I'm still grinding though Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, and it's a fun grind that's never too long and monotonous. It's interesting to observe how the characters, weapons, and enemies are balanced; how certain areas are off-limits simply because your character may not yet be strong enough to deal any damage to the enemies there. That approach makes the world feel a little more organic and open, but sometimes it almost backfires... Like when I had to grind the same room over and over just to be able to deal any significant damage to a particular boss enemy, and when I discovered that I was able to jump ahead to one particular area and hurt certain enemies that yielded huge amounts of experience points and currency. What's impressive about those exploits is that they still feel organic in the context of the game. Retreating from a powerful enemy or carefully tiptoeing around an area you aren't supposed to see yet doesn't pull you out of the experience, especially since it still doesn't make the game easy; just less punishing ;)

P.S. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX looks totally sweet...

Yeesh...

Ys: The Ark of Napishtim (Ys 6) is a hell of a lot harder than Ys Seven; it also appears to be much shorter, as I'm already about half-way through the game; it's also plagued by annoying load times and inconsistent framerates; it's also really fun despite all of that! The PSP version of Ys: The Oath in Felghana (Ys 3) is released today (alongside God Of War: Ghost Of Sparta!), so that should keep me satisfied on this alternative action-RPG bender :)

63 and 1/3

I bought a copy of ClayFighter: Sculptor's Cut for Nintendo 64 today... $30 even, at a flea market; it's usually ~$50 + shipping on eBay :) Not a great game, but certainly a rarity as it was a rental-only Blockbuster-exclusive title.

Oh, fuck off!

I thought I was being all subversive in the wake of Bioshock 2's canceled PC DLC by buying a used copy for 360 today... Only to get home and read this.

In better news, I finished Ys Seven, and it was great; I highly recommend it despite the cheesy translation. I also picked-up dirt-cheap copies of Sly Cooper and TimeSplitters for PS2. I'd been meaning to try those games for a while now...

Professional

I traded-in my Canadian ColecoVision Expansion Module #1 and snagged a first-generation Atari 7800 ProSystem (the one with the never-leveraged-and-subsequently-covered-over-in-later-hardware-revisions expansion port) last night, along with Asteroids, Ballblazer, Food Fight, and Ms. Pac-Man... No Ninja Golf yet, but it will be mine.

I'm thoroughly impressed with the system from a design standpoint versus its contemporaries, and the advantages are especially apparent with Ballblazer... Seriously, watch this video. Food Fight and Ms. Pac-Man are great arcade ports, and Asteroids is a unique raster-based interpretation of the vector-based arcade original. The 2600 backwards compatibility of the whole thing is a nice bonus, but those stock controllers're kinda whack.

Anyway, I finished Costume Quest, and it was signature Double Fine goodness, complete with familiar tropes and nods to fans throughout the game. It's a simplistic RPG in the same vein as Penny Arcade Adventures; the concept is genius, the presentation is golden, and the short length of the adventure feels just right. It's pretty repetitive, but it never feels like a chore. I highly recommend it.

Christmas in October!

Seriously, yo... The Writer DLC for Alan Wake was a nice little package, Sonic 4 is a great update to the 2D Sonic games, Costume Quest is ridiculously fun (though the text is a little hard to read), and Super Meat Boy is just... I don't even know... Play it! As an added bonus, Super Meat Boy was released on sale and because I bought all of the aforementioned games on XBLA in October, I'm supposedly getting 800 MS points credited to my account next month!

Oh, and I'm really tempted to pick-up an Atari 7800 and track down a copy of Ninja Golf... How I didn't notice that game until yesterday baffles me.

Progress

I just can't wrap my head around the Dead Rising games... They're good, visceral fun, but I hate the save system.

Anyway, I can't wait for Costume Quest and I'm eager to get into the new Alan Wake DLC. I've finished Halo: Reach (solid game, great production values, nothing particularly special though), Scott Pilgrim (amazing experience), and The Secret Of Monkey Island Special Edition (pretty, funny, and satisfying; albeit with some fundamental design flaws), and I'm almost done with Shank (looks great, getting repetitive). S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky is notably arduous and only vaguely interesting so far, but I loved the first game, so I'll stick with it for now.

Really tempted to just pick-up Enslaved... Spear Of Destiny is keeping me busy for the time being though :)

Penguins, Earthworms, and Monkeys

Well, shit.

Anyway, I found copies of Surf's Up and NHL 10 for XBOX 360 and together they cost me ~$10; that's a huge value for two totally sweet games! I also snagged Darkwatch for XBOX as well as a complete copy of Earthworm Jim 2 for SEGA Saturn to replace my disc-only copy. Ooh, and I got in on that $10 Left 4 Dead & Left 4 Dead 2 bundle on Steam!

I've been sick and busy all week, so I've yet to complete the last few missions of Halo: Reach, but I did find the time to install S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky and continue along in The Secret Of Monkey Island.

...And now, demos. Enslaved is totally sweet. Quantum Theory is weak. Vanquish has potential. Hydrophobia is interesting.

Back In Action

It's so nice to have a kick-ass computer again... I played through the single-player campaign in Modern Warfare 2, and it was totally sweet; great set-pieces and high production values deliver a fantastic solo game, so there really is something there for everyone.

I've since moved on to Halo: Reach, and it's really solid so far; I'm about 1/3 through a solo campaign. I'm still working through Ys Seven as well, and still having lots of fun there.

Recent acquisitions include Ivy The Kiwi and Resident Evil 4 (gonna give it another try) for Wii, and I finally found a reasonably-priced (though sun-faded) copy of Earthbound for SNES along with a reproduction cartridge of Earthbound Zero for NES... Yeah, I'll find the time for Fable II, Metroid Prime 3, and Yakuza 2 at some point, I'm sure ;)

Resolution

Steam was running in Compatibility Mode on my Windows 7 machine... I'm not sure why. I put a stop to that, though I had to edit the registry to do so.

Performance on that same machine had become sluggish and choppy, and the cause turned-out to be the ASUS-provided drivers for my ASUS PCE-13N wireless network card; I've since installed Ralink drivers, as the card is built around a Ralink RT2790T chipset. All runs smoothly now.

Still regarding the same machine, I never could get all three sticks of RAM running together stably at 2000MHz, despite an extensive discussion with a G.SKILL technician. They offered to allow me to RMA the whole kit (2000MHz, 9-9-9-24-1N) for something a little more tame (1600MHz, 7-7-7-21-2N), but I tested the current kit at both 7-7-7-21-2N and 9-9-9-24-1N at 1600MHz, and the performance difference was negligible; I'm talking a latency difference of ~3ns (61ns vs. 64ns) and a bandwith difference of ~20MB/s (67.66GB/s vs. 67.68GB/s). Given that the RMA process would leave me without a functioning computer for a few weeks and neuter my upgrade path, all for a trivial speed increase, I think I'll be keeping the 2000MHz RAM and running it at lower frequencies.

So all is now well, and I am at peace :)

Escaping The Mouse

Alan Wake (and "The Signal" DLC) was great! Remedy has done a pretty good job of keeping things fresh and interesting; the gameplay never became tedious, and the story kept me guessing... I haven't been able to bring myself to complete a survival horror game since Resident Evil 2, and I couldn't put Alan Wake down until it was complete. Well done!

Anyway, I've been away for the past week... Wrapped-up most of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World: The Game before I left, and it was glorious. Buy it. It's cheap, nostalgic, epic, visceral, and fulfilling. The movie's pretty awesome too, as are the graphic novels... Yeah, I'm a fan, and it has nothing to do with the fact that the whole thing takes place in my actual neighbourhood or that my band has played the same venues featured in the books/movie/game ;)

Shank's up next for me, but I'm suffering from the stuttering cinematic issue that's been going around; I've yet to fire-up the game to see if there's a patch.

I brought Ys Seven along while I was away, and it's pretty sweet. Good graphics and music, standard story, engaging gameplay, and awesome boss battles that are genuinely challenging. I never did finish the first three games on TurboGrafx CD, decided to abandon all hope of doing so once the PSP remakes were announced, and have yet to try Ys VI on PSP... But it's supposedly the same formula each time, so I figured this'd be as good a place to start as any. It was a toss-up between Ys Seven, Lunar Silver Star Harmony, and Persona 3 Portable... As well as a bunch of other quality PSP RPGs I've yet to explore.

Moving on, remember that RAM issue I was having with my new computer? G.SKILL approved my RMA request and I got a stick of RAM in the mail last week... But there was no correspondence once I sent the faulty module away, or paperwork shipped back with it. The module they sent back doesn't work either, so I'm wondering if they just returned the old one (it would only fail under specific conditions, which I outlined in the RMA request) or the replacement is faulty as well. Grrr. In the meantime, I'm running at DDR3-1600 speeds :|

For myself.

I bought a complete copy of Air Zonk for TurboGrafx-16 for myself for my birthday on Wednesday :)

Yup.

The Best-Looking Upcoming 2D Games

Legacy

I picked-up copies of Soul Reaver for Dreamcast and Soul Reaver 2 for PS2... For convenience's sake, I guess. Also snagged a copy of Rabbids Go Home for Wii 'cause it was cheap; haven't played it yet.

I did, however, sit down with Limbo on XBLA, and if I hadn't gotten sick over the weekend, I would've finished it in one sitting; sweet game, slick presentation, powerful imagery.

Kinda wishing Prince Of Persia was over already so that I could focus on Alan Wake... Not that Prince Of Persia is bad, but it's all feeling very repetitive and I'm only a little over half-way though the game.

Anyway, a friend recently came to me with a need for a motherboard, CPU, RAM, video card, PSU, and case with a strict budget of $600 before tax... Here's what I suggested:

• Gigabyte GA-P55-USB3
• Intel Core i5 750
• OCZ DDR3 1600MHz Gold Edition Low Voltage 4GB (2x2048MB)
• Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5670 1GB
• Cooler Master Elite 350 Mid Tower Case w/350W PS

More Than Nostalgia

Just got Wonder Boy III for SEGA Master System and AMOK for DOS/Windows... I'd never played the former, and now I'm wishing I had; it's so very much better than the second Wonder Boy/first Monster World game! I can't wait to take the time to really get into this one. As for AMOK, it was a favourite of mine back in the day, but I never could find the PC version. I snagged the Saturn version not too long ago, but playing it at 800x600 in 16-bit colour with a keyboard is the way to do it; even considering that I had to dust-off my Windows 98 SE machine (300MHz Pentium II, 196MB of PC66 RAM, and a 32MB AGP ATi Rage Fury) to get it running :) Both games hold-up incredibly well today!

3D Glasses!

I watched Coraline in 3D on Blu-Ray... The effect was pretty cool, but the colours sucked.

Anyway, I also picked-up a pair of SegaScope 3-D glasses along with Blade Eagle 3-D, Maze Hunter 3-D, Missile Defense 3-D, Poseidon Wars 3-D, and Zaxxon 3-D. The first adaptor card I got (used to connect the glasses to the system) was faulty, but the second one worked fine. The effect is novel and the games're pretty creative, but I did notice a few issues. The most glaring problem I ran into was with Blade Eagle 3-D, where there appeared to be two ship sprites when your ship descends; it looked like a focus issue, though I suppose it may be intentional... Which would be weird. Anyway, moving on, when I play light-gun games I tend to close one eye to help my aim, but doing so in Missile Defense 3-D negates the 3D effect. Regardless, I'm pretty impressed with the technology, and the games aren't bad. Now to track-down the three remaining 3D titles...

Epic

Picked-up a complete copy of Mickey Mania for SEGA CD... That game is really pretty :)

Awake

I snagged a copy of Alan Wake for $50 yesterday (it's still hovering around $70 at most stores), and put Prince Of Persia on hold while I checked-out the first chapter. So far, so good; Alan Wake may just be a survival-horror game that I can stand! I haven't completed a survival-horror game since Resident Evil 2...

Oh, and after winning the first seven games of the first round of the playoffs in NHL 07, the game declared my team to be the Stanley Cup champions... And then the first round continued with two more games. Ergh.

Going Back

I really dug the first Kirby game when it was released on Game Boy, but didn't really follow the series beyond that. I've been collecting the major Kirby games since, but really only got back into them today, when there was a huge blackout in my area. I ploughed through Dream Land, and am well into Dream Land 2... Only eight or so more Kirby titles to go! :)

Oh, and I defeated the boss in Wario Land: Shake-It! Then, in true Wario fashion, a bunch of secret levels were made available. I'll get back to them some day, I'm sure. Everyone who complained that the game was too short clearly didn't bother with all of the challenges and secret levels. Shake It! is definitely a worthwhile Wii investment.

Finally, I borrowed Way Of The Warrior and DOOM for 3DO from a friend after he found his Goldstar 3DO in his basement. Way Of The Warrior is every bit as ridiculous as I remember hearing it was back when it first came out, and also exceedingly difficult to play. It does have some really nice touches (graphics, music, secrets), and after doing some research on the title, I uncovered what looks to be an impressively deep fighting game... But I'm not quite ready to dedicate that much time to it just yet. DOOM, on the other hand, is just as awful as I'd heard. The 3DO port is barely playable, and the only redeeming qualities are the killer CD soundtrack and the ability to strafe using the shoulder buttons. Avoid.

Oldschool Heat

I'm having a lot of fun with Atari Karts on Jaguar. I often see it described as a Super Mario Kart clone, but it really is a very different game. While they are both kart racers, Nintendo's offering demands a balance of driving and combat whereas Atari Karts focuses almost exclusively on the former. Bonuses and hazards in Atari Karts affect your own kart (speed, handling, tires, etc...); the only offensive pick-up in the game reverses your opponent's steering, and is exclusive to multiplayer races.

I've also read numerous complaints about Atari Karts' graphics, but I suspect that many critics forget just how blocky the graphics in Mario Kart are. Atari Karts runs at a much higher resolution than the Super Nintendo game, and features some clever scaling tricks to achieve hills and jumps throughout many of its tracks. Another misguided complaint I've often seen is that the Jaguar game is too easy, but races become genuinely challenging by the mid-point of the race season... Perhaps those critics didn't play for very long ;)

There are some legitimate issues with Atari Karts (like the unnatural bumper-car physics, and how some obstacles are flat on the track and can blend-in to the road), but all of them are minor and don't significantly detract from the fun to be had. Quite simply, Atari Karts is a driver's kart racer with a gentle learning curve and some of the most impressive sprite-scaling graphics of its generation.

---

I bought BIT.TRIP RUNNER on WiiWare, and it's a great combination of delightfully frustrating gameplay, catchy and interactive music, and fantastic '80s-inspired visuals. Get it.

I've also finally taken the time to explore the free Windows version of Cave Story, and it's sublime; I'll definitely be grabbing the WiiWare remake and really digging into this one.

Oh, and Sin & Punishment: Star Successor is really good too! It's a new twist on the shoot-'em-up genre from Treasure; that right there should be enough to sell you on it.

Before I move on from the Wii, I should note that I've made it to the final battle of Wario Land: Shake It!, and it's... Annoying. It's not actually that bad, but it's definitely gonna take some practice.

Finally, do you remember when I thought my PC was overheating because of the weather, and so I took the side off my case? Turns-out it was actually the increased voltage required to get my DDR3-2000 RAM running at 2000MHz that was affecting my CPU. I've been messaging back and forth with a technician from the RAM manufacturer, but we've had no luck yet... In the meantime, all is stable at DDR3-1600 speeds.

Busy Again

My XBOX 360 doesn't seem to be displaying blue fuzz anymore; I kept the newer Jaguar (and power adapter, and controllers) once I was informed that the warranty sticker on the older one wasn't an Atari sticker, and once I discovered that neither of the consoles had the analog-input circuit; and I traded the old Jaguar and extra games for copies of Sin & Punishment: Star Successor and Super Castlevania IV... Though I haven't had time to play either of them.

128-bit?

I bought a second Atari Jaguar. This one's in better condition, cosmetically, than my first one; it's a later model (higher serial number, smaller power adapter), and doesn't have a warranty sticker like the first one. This second system came with two controllers, an RF switch, and loose copies of Atari Karts, Evolution: Dino Dudes, Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Tempest 2000, and Val D'Isere Skiing & Snowboarding.

I'll keep Atari Karts for sure, but I'm not sure which of the consoles, controllers, and power adapters to hang on to, and which to sell.

Fuzzy

My XBOX 360 started displaying blue visual artifacts while playing Braid... The issue was still apparent when I popped-in SSF4. It wasn't a particularly hot day or anything and visual artifacts are a common symptom in overheating GPUs, so I'm guessing that my console is on its last legs. Some may recall that I got this 360 near the end of December 2006; that means that in three days, this system will be 3.5 years old... Or exactly six months out of warranty. So do I play it until it dies? Pay to get it repaired? Trade it toward a used replacement? Splurge and grab a new 360 S? Then again, I played Price Of Persia for a while without issue after the fact, so perhaps it's not quite over yet.

NHL 07's playoff situation is getting more frustrating by the day. Six-game suspensions for too many game misconducts after one playoff game? Disappearing simmed games? I give up. I really hope that NHL 11 is coming to PSP; I will buy it as soon as it's available.

Thirteenth? Sixteenth?

Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars is the 13th game in the "Vs." series, right? I guess if we're counting both versions of the original Card Fighters' Clash games, the "Pro" version of Capcom Vs. SNK, and the "Cross Generation of Heroes" version of Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, it becomes the 16th...

Anyway, I took the time to get familiar with it this past weekend, and I'm loving it! Great graphics, plays beautifully with an arcade stick, the music is far less annoying than what we got in Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, and the gameplay mechanics feel genuinely fresh. I'm especially impressed at the versatility of the controls; how it's not terribly overwhelming for newcomers to the genre, but deep enough to keep more serious players interested. By the way, I'm sticking with Casshan and Batsu as my team at the moment.

Es... Three Of Them.

Rayman Origins is the real show-stealer at this point; that thing looks awesome.

Otherwise, I think Nintendo's had the most impressive showing overall. Goldeneye 007 seems confused (Daniel Craig?) and Donkey Kong Country Returns feels like a step backward after Jungle Beat, yet both still look like a hell of a lot of fun. Kirby's Epic Yarn is amazing in terms of its visual presentation and gameplay design, 3DS has me genuinely excited, and Epic Mickey is looking much better than I expected after seeing those early screenshots. The new Metroid, Zelda, and Kid Icarus games are all intriguing, but haven't really gripped me like the others.

I've seen some pretty impressive stuff from all companies (for example, I'm really digging the look of Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow), but Rayman and that tidal wave of Nintendo goodness is just drowning out all the Halos and Killzones...

Oh, and I can't seem to get past the first round of the playoffs in NHL 07 on PSP. I've now beaten Florida six times (something like 5-2, 10-1, 3-1, 8-1, 3-0, 3-0), but it keeps making me play them. If I sim to the end of the series, it doesn't start the next one. Grrr...

Playoffs

The playoffs in NHL 07 on PSP seem to be broken... The game crashed consistently when trying to start the first round (I saved manually, simulated the first game, then re-loaded the save to get around that), the calendar doesn't seem to track games properly (my 10-1 game two win over Florida seems to have disappeared from the record books), and there doesn't seem to be any way to check playoff stats. Not fun.

Profit

I found Final Fantasy Tactics, Front Mission 3, Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo, and Xenogears for PlayStation (all complete, non-Greatest Hits) for ~$40 at a used record store, bought them, and then walked down the street and got ~$80 for them at a used game store.

I've also recently picked-up Prince Of Persia (360); The Conduit, Punch-Out!!, and Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom (Wii); Kirby 64 (N64); Uniracers (SNES); Aoi Blink, Barunba, Rabio Lepus Special, and Ryūkyū (PCE); as well as Ninja Gaiden II and III (NES). I also snagged an Hori Fighting Stick Wii and a Turbo Booster for my TurboGrafx-16.

Now then, to follow-up on my last post, Tomb Raider: Underworld is easily one of the best of the series, and I highly recommend playing through Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld. There're issues with these games, and those issues are even more apparent after great titles like Assassin's Creed raised the standard of the genre, but these modern Tomb Raiders are still very entertaining. Regarding Anniversary, while it is a remake, it serves as a reminder of past events that are important to recall when playing Underworld... I didn't finish Anniversary, so I had to read the Wikipedia entry on the Underworld plot to make sense of some parts :)

F.E.A.R. 2 really feels like more of the same from the first game, but rendered with MUCH nicer graphics and presented with a few new gameplay elements. I loved the first one and I really enjoyed this sequel, but it just didn't blow me away this time. Worth your time if you're a fan or if you've never played any part of the series before, but not exactly groundbreaking.

Prince Of Persia is visually gorgeous and an intriguing change of pace for the series. It feels more deliberate than the three previous games; more akin to the original in terms of control and pacing. The exposition is a little awkward at first, but I hear it gets better as the game progresses... Unfortunately, I don't think they'll suddenly re-cast the voice actors and tone down the ham-fisted clichés. Considering that you can get this one for $15 now, I'll gladly overlook the cheesiness and backtracking... At $60, however, I would've been much more disappointed.

So very tired...

Tomb Raider: Underworld was pretty sweet, but not without its faults; F.E.A.R. 2 was really good despite feeling like more of the same from the first game; Prince Of Persia (2008) is off to a solid start, but I'm already noticing potentially big annoyances; Tales Of Monkey Island has been great throughout.

I'll go into more detail when I'm not half asleep.

Oops...

I was apparently supposed to finish Tomb Raider: Anniversary in order for Tomb Raider: Underworld to make much sense...

Wrong Address

I bought a SEGA lot off craigslist last week. The guy gave me the wrong address and didn't provide a phone number, but that's another story...

I picked-up a model 2 SEGA CD with all three (yes, three) EMF shields and the extender for model 1 Genesises, two non-TMSS "High Definition Graphics" model 1 Genesises (that's the very first release; there were at least seven different model 1 Genesis releases), two model 1 Genesis power adapters, two six-button controllers (one first-party, one third-party), a blue Konami Justifier lightgun, 18 Genesis games, 18 SEGA CD games, some empty cases, a Nintendo R/F switch, and a coat hanger for $70. Judging by eBay prices, the lot was worth $300+ :)

I kept the SEGA CD, the EMF shields, one of the power adapters, the Justifier, and the first-party six-button controller; Android Assault, Rise Of The Dragon (box release in a jewel case), and Robo-Aleste for SEGA CD; Eternal Champions and Shadowrun for Genesis, and a bunch of the SEGA CD jewel cases... And sold the rest for $100. I'm pretty happy that I essentially got paid $30 to keep a few hundred dollars worth of stuff :)

I also picked-up official SEGA CD and Saturn back-up cartridges, and am holding-off on Alan Wake until I get through some more of this gaming backlog.

Oh, and I finished Hero 3 in Half-Minute Hero and am about half-way through Tomb Raider: Underworld.

Three Seconds.

My SEGA CDX can't read the copy of The Adventures Of Batman & Robin that I picked-up the other day... Which is unfortunate, because it seems to run just fine in emulators and on other SEGA CDs. Hell, I even copied the CD, and the burned copy runs just fine in my CDX! The disc looks immaculate, so I'm guessing that my CDX is the problem :(

I haven't had any further issues with Super Street Fighter IV disc read errors since my last post though, so that's a plus.

Stoked for Alan Wake, and planning on looking into ModNation Racers on PSP. Speaking of PSP, I'm on Hero 3 in Half-Minute Hero, and it's a fantastically frustrating good time. The Evil Lord, Princess, and Knight games are fun and add real value to the package, but the the Hero games are where it's at. That game is a system-selling killer app for the PSP.

Red

I picked-up Super Street Fighter IV for XBOX 360 yesterday, and upon inserting the disc, I was greeted with one red light on my console. I managed to get the game running, but then got disc read errors about half-way through a single-player tournament. Tried it on my brother's Elite, and didn't run into any issues... Grrr.

Tomb Raider: Underworld still has my interest, but holy crap! The camera and controls are so ragged and jumpy... I don't remember Legend being that bad.

True

Tomb Raider: Underworld looks great, but the camera's mostly crap, the controls are pretty awful, and the exposition is poorly developed... Surprisingly, it's pretty fun so far, despite all of its shortcomings.

Oh, and taking the side panel off my computer seems to have fixed the crashing issue; damned humidity.

P.S. Crysis Wars on the highest visual settings, while still pretty impressive, isn't as impressive as I remembered.

Hot

Turned-out the random crashes were due to my new PC overheating... The weather around here has gotten a lot warmer recently, and diagnostics are showing no faults or damage; so it's time to look into new cooling solutions.

Anyway, Prototype is good, but definitely not great. The ending was kinda whack, but maybe I just missed the point.

I played through Episode 2 of Tales Of Monkey Island today, and Tomb Raider: Underworld is downloading from Steam as I type this...

Prototypical

Prototype has randomly crashed three times during the final few missions... While that would be frustrating with just about any game, the fact that this one has become exceedingly boring and I'm only finishing it because I've already come this far makes matters much worse.

I think I'm still having fun...

...But I do seem to be hijacking a lot of tanks in Prototype.

Prototype

Prototype is pretty cool. While it doesn't feel as fluid as Crackdown and it's very reminiscent of its spiritual predecessor, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Prototype still has a lot of good stuff to offer. The gameplay is nicely varied, the atmosphere is suitably gritty, and the story is vaguely intriguing so far (I'm about 1/3rd through)... It has managed to hold my attention.

Moving along...

Bioshock 2 got better toward the end; mostly because the characters developed at a quicker pace and the plot advanced accordingly. I was a little disappointed that a few things were hinted at but not explored at any real depth (e.g. your character's origins), and I ended-up in the same position I found myself at the end of the first game; overstocked and overpowered, ignoring 75% of my inventory, and rarely feeling particularly challenged. A very satisfying game overall, I'm still in love with the setting, though the scenario could use a bit of work. The first Bioshock is a must-play; the second one isn't quite as awesome.

So now I'm on to Prototype...

Bioshock 2 is unnecessary

I'm about half-way through Bioshock 2, and I'm feeling pretty bored and apathetic. It's like the first game, but less interesting because we've done it all before. There're new characters that I don't care about (except when I wonder why they're still in Rapture some ten years after it went to shit), new gameplay aspects that I don't enjoy (defend things against waves of idiots), and some pretty serious pacing issues (the story hasn't progressed in some time; just sayin')... Essentially, I feel like I'm grinding through something very pretty that I've already finished. It's an engaging and satisfying game, but it's just not doing anything special.

Prototype and F.E.A.R. 2 are up next.

Sudden Savant?

I accidentally finished Arkham Asylum. I sat down to put in an hour or so, and ended-up ploughing through to the end before I knew it. I dig the Bioshock-esque atmosphere and I love the character presentations, but I felt the story was a little rushed; a little too convenient at times... Fantastic concept though. Similarly, the voice-actors, while top-notch, were occasionally left to struggle with some pretty awfully clichéd lines. The final battle was just ridiculous and disappointing, but it's still a killer game, worth every penny spent on it and every minute spent with it, right on par with Assassin's Creed II... But I think I had more fun with Brütal Legend last year.

Within two days of spending some quality time with Street Fighter IV, I was able to finish the game on the hardest difficulty setting without using any continues... So I fired-up Super Street Fighter II Turbo to see if I'd somehow become a Street Fighter savant. I had not; SSF2T kicked my ass in short order.

Anyway, I bought a complete copy of Alien vs Predator for Jaguar (needed the box and overlays) and Street Fighter Alpha Anthology for PS2 (only way to get SFA2 Gold), and I'm back into NHL 07 on PSP in a big way thanks to AronVad's new (and very impressive) roster update over at the GameFAQs forum.

Anticipation

I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum and Street Fighter IV on the new PC, and they're both pretty amazing, despite both being out for quite a while now.

While Arkham Asylum is gorgeous, fluid, and just downright impressive, it's all a little overwhelming; I'm 20% in and just feeling a little lost... I'm sure it'll coalesce as the narrative progresses.

Street Fighter IV made sense right away, but now that I've taken the time to learn its new mechanics (so I'm not playing it like SSF2T anymore), I'm a lot more comfortable competing against other people. I've unlocked every character but Seth, and while Ken's still my go-to guy, I'm really liking Abel and I'm curious to see how Makoto (my other SF3 character) shapes-up when SSF4 is released.

Oh, and my FireWire Solo causes my USB controller to stop working when waking from sleep mode on the new PC :(

Assembly

Three builds in the past week:

1. 2.4GHz "Prescott" Pentium 4 on an ECS PM800-M2 with 1GB of 400MHz DDR RAM.
2. Core i7 930 on an ASUS P6X58D Premium with 6GB of 2000MHz DDR3 RAM.
3. 2.53GHz Pentium 4 "B" on an ASUS P4T533-C with 1GB of PC800 RDRAM.

I built the Prescott machine out of some parts of my own and parts that a client insisted were broken; it works, but the CPU fan is ridiculously noisy; it'll be used to power a basic surveillance system. The i7 is my new personal machine, and it's ridiculously fast. The motherboard has one of those nifty Linux-based virtual machines for instant-on access to the Internet 'n such, but it boots Windows almost as quickly, so there isn't much point to it once you get over the novelty. The Rambus machine is a nice surprise that I pieced-together out of spare parts from various broken machines I had lying around. That one's going to a friend of mine whose desktop died - bad sectors, burst capacitors.

Jeebus!

This thing is fast!

QTE FTW

Finished God Of War II. It was a lot of fun with just the right amount of challenge, though a little too cheesy at times. My only real complaint is with the quick-time event button cues; single button presses and stick motions are indicated in the centre of the screen, but repeated presses or motions are indicated on the bottom-left of the screen. That inconsistency made the final battle awfully annoying...

Anyway, I've decided on the rest of the parts for my new computer:

• 60GB OCZ Vertex SATA 3.0Gb/s SSD
• 1TB Seagate 7200.12 SATA 3.0Gb/s HDD w/32MB cache
• Plextor PX-880SA 24x DVD+/-RW
• Antec TP-650 PSU

30 Seconds

Okay, seriously, Half-Minute Hero is amazing, and I can't put it down... It's a great blend of RPG, critical thinking, and self-referential humour that keeps me coming back for more. I've only played the Hero mode so far, and while I should be bored of it by now (~50% complete), it mixes things up just enough to keep me grinding away. The quest-specific sub-challenges are great incentives that significantly add to the replay value.

Anyway, I bought some more of my new PC today:

• Intel Core i7 930
• ASUS P6X58D Premium
• 6GB (3x2GB) 2000MHz DDR3
• Sapphire Radeon HD 5850

Fun!

PSP

Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines didn't provide the revelatory backstory I'd hoped for. While it is a solid title and certainly impressive on the PSP, the played-it-safe nature of the plot really devalues it in the series. I should also mention that the sidequests are essentially optional, as you can power-up your character quite effectively along the way by simply completing the main quest and ignoring everything else. This strictly-optional nature of the sidequests may be a response to the negative reaction that they received in the first game, but because they now offer so little added-value to the experience, they become trivial and provide no compelling reason to complete them; especially since the PSP controls aren't nearly as tight as the console games in the series. I wonder if the DS Assassin's Creed titles are any better...

Anyway, I snagged a few more PSP games the other day:

• Age Of Zombies - Amazingly good, almost entirely on account of its hilarious context for otherwise classic gameplay.
• Echoshift - I never did finish Echochrome, but I had a lot of fun with it and this one seems like a nice addition to the series.
• Everyday Shooter - Pretty cool, not as tight as the hype had led me to believe, but definitely worth checking out.
• flOw - Always loved this one, and it's very pretty on the PSP.
• Half-Minute Hero - Great concept, charming presentation, nothing else quite like it... Definitely worth your time.
• Lunar: Silver Star Harmony - Cheesy voice acting, but a real slick update to the classic game... That I've still yet to finish in any incarnation.
• Patapon 2 - I love the Patapon games because they're so engrossing, beautiful, and endearing, but I always feel overwhelmed by the depth they offer and never seem to get very far with them... I'll change that one day.

Not sure where I left-off...

...but I've since picked-up Deadly Premonition for XBOX 360, Metal Slug XX for PSP, Confidential Mission for Dreamcast, D for 3DO, NBA Jam TE for Jaguar, and Ys Book I & II for Turbo Grafx CD; I ended-up passing on Violent Soldier.

Oh, and from that Lynx lot, I kept Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Electrocop, Gates Of Zendocon, KLAX, Pac-Land, RoadBlasters, Todd's Adventures In Slime World, and Zarlor Mercenary.

Lynx II, Part II

I snagged a Lynx II, power adapter, and 15 games off a local buy & sell for $60. The system has some dead rows on the screen, and I already had or didn't want many of the games, but I should be able to make back most of my investment by trading-in what's left.

The games (all loose) were: Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (surprisingly good!), Chip's Challenge (flat cart; I'll keep my original ridged copy), Electrocop (impressive game, albeit hard to keep track of what's going on; includes an awesome selection of mini-games), Gates Of Zendocon (ridged cart; decent, though primitive-looking shmup), Gauntlet, KLAX, Pac-Land, RoadBlasters, Robotron 2084 (good conversion, but the control scheme is sorely lacking), Rygar, Todd's Adventures In Slime World (love this game), Ultimate Chess Challenge, Xenophobe, Xybots, and Zarlor Mercenary.

Holy Busy!

Latest acquisitions: Gate Of Thunder for TurboGrafx CD (Bonk's Adventure, Bonk's Revenge, and Bomberman are also included on the CD). I also have Final Soldier, Lords Of Thunder, Super Star Soldier, and Violent Soldier on hold. I picked-up Command & Conquer: Renegade and Diablo: Hellfire on Windows, and they're still great fun after all those years :)

I've also gotten back into Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines on PSP. Playing through Assassin's Creed II and seeing some of the flashbacks really tied the PSP game's storyline into the overall mythos of the series, and I'm feeling much more connected to what's happening. Yes, the graphics and voice acting are a step down from the main entries in the series; and yes the areas are smaller, the population is less dense, and the assassinations are less complex; but it's still pretty impressive to see, given the hardware. Without the story integration, it'd ultimately be a mundane exercise, but alongside the revelations of Assassin's Creed II, it really draws you in quite effectively.

Speaking of Assassin's Creed, I purchased Sequence 13: Bonfire Of The Vanities from XBOX Live after seeing the ad for it on the welcome screen. Unfortunately, it wasn't until after I'd purchased that content that I checked-out the XBL marketplace and saw the Bonfire Of The Vanities & Secret Locations option. Having already purchased the advertised version that didn't include the secret locations, there was no way for me to get those secret locations without buying the more complete package (essentially re-buying Sequence 13). I felt misled, so I called Microsoft's customer support. Long story short, the third person to whom I was connected ended-up deflecting my questions with circular logic, telling me they'd really like to help me and that they could, but that they weren't going to. Then they wished me a great day! I assured them that I would not have one. Sequence 13 was fine, and totally worth $4, by the way.

Finally, I'd like to bitch about Epson's nozzle cleaning process on my Stylus Photo R300 printer. Because two of the six ink cartridges (cyan and magenta) were low on ink, Epson's software would not allow me to perform a nozzle cleaning. I had to replace the two low-running cartridges (even though they were not empty, and I was only trying to print in black) just to clean the black nozzle. That's not cool, Epson.

Beyond

I finished Beyond Oasis on Genesis last night, and it was still great after all those years! I'd made it pretty far in the game when I was younger, but can't remember completing it. I wrapped things up pretty quickly (about four-and-a-half hours), at a relatively low rank (48) with only a little over 1000 kills, and 32 of 60 gems... So I guess I have some treasure-hunting to do. The game was enjoyable throughout, if a bit easy, but definitely an original take on a genre dominated by Zelda and full of copycats.

I've since started The Legend Of Oasis on Saturn, and I'm having mixed reactions... The graphics are gorgeous at a higher resolution than the original, there are more frames of animation, a much bigger colour palette, the addition of scaling sprites, and a new CD audio soundtrack. Consider some new key characters and core gameplay elements (like a much less forgiving save system and a revamped weapons configuration), and one might think that this game is a solid evolution of the winning original formula... But the writing is just awful, and the combat is neutered. Sure, it's a similar basic story and many of the same attacks return from the first game, but it all just feels so phoned-in. There's no character or cohesion, and it's glaringly apparent in the lack of any fluidity in combat. Another major change that I'm not too fond of is the lack of any real inventory, so health- and magic-replenishing items are used when touched rather than manually picked-up and managed in anticipation of more difficult areas. You can also only carry either one health or magic potion at a time; meaning you can have either your health or magic refill automatically upon depletion... But because the new system no longer allows you to pick things up, if you have a health potion and accidentally touch a magic potion, your health potion is lost forever. Then there're the tutorial obelisks scattered throughout the land; it would be nice if they didn't wait until the second dungeon to explain fundamental game mechanics that have been changed since the original, especially when those concepts are key to unlocking other new fundamental game mechanics that were only available in the first dungeon. Spending time backtracking in a game with a limited save system is something I only barely tolerate from the Metroid series... I don't like it here either. Perhaps these new design choices will make sense down the road, but I'm just not having the same fun I had with the first game.

On the computer front, I'm inching ever closer to purchasing a Core i7 920-based system; especially with the recent release of Bioshock 2. The novelty of owning a top-of-the-line QuickSilver 2002 Mac as kinda worn-off, but it did allow me to spend some quality time with Mac OS X... So now I'm thinking that a vanilla Mac mini (2.26GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM, 160GB HDD) alongside my forthcoming Windows 7 machine might be a solid idea.

Better Than Expected

In addition to Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast, I also snagged Robo-Squash for Lynx, Skullmonkeys for PlayStation, OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for XBOX, Starfox Assault for GameCube, and an XBOX 360 Chatpad.

I also set-up a free, centralised, web content filtering system using OpenDNS, Freeproxy, and custom GPOs... That was pretty cool :)

An Oasis

The Adventure of Link is incredibly frustrating and Majora's Mask is particularly confusing, so I re-started Beyond Oasis last night and got about half-way through... I love it; I should've done this ages ago!

Also, I'm gonna pick-up Turbo Sub and Xybots for Lynx, Splatterhouse 2 for Genesis, and The King Of Fighters: Dream Match 1999 for Dreamcast after work today.

Feline Naming Conventions

I bought an Atari Lynx II, an official Atari power adapter, Blue Lightning, Chip's Challenge, and Gauntlet: The Third Encounter.

I'd been hoping to pick-up RoadBlasters, Slime World, and Toki, but the place I'd seen them before had sold them since... I'm considering Battle Wheels, Hydra, Robo-Squash, Turbo Sub, and Xybots.

Radical

ODST was rad. $70 rad? No, but then I'm not really into the multiplayer aspect of it all, and ODST surely offers a wealth of multiplayer value for the Halo 3 experience. It is, however, a very enjoyable single-player campaign that shows us some new versatility within the Halo universe; would be nice as a $20~$30 product for those of us not particularly interested in multiplayer, or those of us who have already purchased much of the multiplayer content included. The save system still sucks, but re-playing the first few levels wasn't the end of the world.

I think I've given-up on my current attempt at completing Majora's Mask... I'm tempted to restart the game on Wii (The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition) with a walkthrough for heart pieces and the Bomber's Notebook stuff. I've already re-started The Adventure Of Link on NES.

Expansions

The new Assassin's Creed II downloadable content, Battle of Forli, was pretty cool. Nothing special, pretty short, and it didn't really add to the story (some barely-developed characters show-up and manage to outsmart the group of assassins that just saved the world!?); but $4 for an hour's worth of new content and some added replayablity ain't bad. I was a little upset that my character didn't continue with the sword I had at the end of the game (or any sword for that matter), but I managed. It was also weird that Ezio's facial hair seemed to come and go... Whoops ;) Regardless of its faults, I lok forward to the next installment of DLC.

Halo 3 ODST is really good though. Instead of being a supreme badass following an epic story arc, you get to be relatively insignificant in a much more humble setting, all while feeling lost and lonely in a very real way; that's some impressive storytelling. I do not appreciate, however, the fact that after finishing about half of the game and choosing to save and quit from the hub level, my progress was not saved. Sure, I could revisit the missions I'd unlocked, but I couldn't continue my progress... Which meant that I had to re-play one of the previous missions and then manually choose the next one from the hub map. What's even better is that I'll have to re-play the other three missions in order to actually finish the game! Yeah, that's just amazing; I'm so stoked for that. Ugh.

Aw, nuts...

Oh, Google Chrome version 4.0.249.78, I'd love to use you as my default web browser on my Windows 7 workstation, but you keep randomly overlapping the taskbar (it remains inaccessible even if I "restore down" your window!) and seem to have issues with various Facebook pages when other browsers don't :( I would've gone back to Internet Explorer 8, but Firefox 3.6's speed increase kinda made the decision for me.

But wait, there's more!

Traded my NFR copy of Gex for 3DO, along with Metroid Prime 1 and 2 for GameCube, and Sonic Heroes and Sonic Mega Collection Plus (both "Platinum Family Hits") for XBOX toward complete copies of Gex and Out Of This World for 3DO, as well as Fight For Life for Jaguar, and Axelay and Michael Jordan: Chaos In The Windy City for SNES.

...But I didn't stop there.

No, I went ahead and bought an Hori EX2 arcade stick (PC-compatible) and Fracture for my XBOX 360, as well as Star Fox Adventures for GameCube and NHL Stanley Cup for SNES - that last one was only $2.

Anyway, I've been thinking about how much I'd like an updated NHL game for PSP. As much fun as I'm having with NHL 07 after installing and tweaking fan-made roster updates and settings to make it more realistic, it'd be really nice to see a more streamlined menu system, better AI, and some bug-fixes.

Aside from being slow and unresponsive, is it really necessary to ask me if I want to use the autosave system every time, then warn me that i'm using the autosave system every time, then load the intro movie every time, then select game modes, leagues, loading options, a game file, and then confirm that it has loaded... EVERY TIME!? That's no less than eight painfully sluggish button presses before I can even look at the actual game menu! Why not just let me set the autosave options once, then have the system remember them? Why not have a load option on the main menu? Seems so obvious... The sluggish menu also makes tweaking rosters and lines unduly arduous, though that may be intentional to keep people buying yearly official updates... Except there haven't been any official updates in four years.

Better AI and bug-fixes would just make the whole experience a lot more fun; no more players who run away from a loose puck in the open, goalies who don't cover the short side with reasonable consistency, disappearing players, lightspeed passes flying around the rink, checks that literally send players soaring across the ice, and the list goes on... I'm not asking for a lot, am I? Even a port of the latest PS2 update with some tweaks to make it play a little more like the 360/PS3 version would do.

Oh Yeah!

Totally forgot to mention that I played through a whole bunch of XBOX 360 demos!

Dante's Inferno was kinda meh. Solid graphics, silly exposition, derivative gameplay... Nothing really wrong with it, I guess.

Dark Void was pretty cool... Until I wasn't using my jetpack anymore. I did appreciate that I was allowed to use my jetpack in a cramped hallway, promptly fly into a wall, and die upon impact. Maybe once it hits the bargain bin...

And I finally dipped into the indie game pool and checked-out I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1. It was fun for a few minutes, and then it got very weird. Arkedo Series - 03 PIXEL! was very interesting; I love the aesthetic, but the gameplay was a little dry. Leave Home was just plain cool.

I don't know what came over me...

I stumbled across a new copy of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, so I bought it. I also bought Saints Row 2 (new for 360, $25) and de Blob (new, $19), and I'm looking for OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast... I didn't get around to buying it after seeing it everywhere for years, and now it's suddenly nowhere to be found! Regardless, I've now officially spent too much money on games this month :(

What have I done!?

I bought Night Trap for SEGA CD 32X today.

I'm not sure what I should be more ashamed of; that I bought a copy of Night Trap on any system, or that I now have all five SEGA CD 32X games.

Discontinued

I bought Metroid Prime Trilogy for Wii because it started disappearing around town once Nintendo announced they'd stopped making it. I also noticed copies of New Super Mario Bros. Wii in white cases while I was out, and mistakenly assumed that's what the new shipment looked like; turns out they were just display copies, but I had already informed some friends in the retail end of things that new shipments were in white plastic... Oops.

I also snagged complete copies of Afro Samurai and Halo 3 ODST for 360 together for $50. Considering that ODST is still going for $65 used in most places, I think I did alright.

Life's getting busy again, and I wish I at least had the time to finish-up Wario Land: Shake It!... I also wish I could choose between Intel's Core i7 860 and 920. The 5-series platform (860) seems to be heading more so toward the mainstream market while the X-series platform (920) seems to be heading toward an increasingly multi-core market... I just can't decide.

Alternatives

New acquisitions: Golvellius for Master System (way better looking than the NES Zelda games, much more ecclectic in terms of gameplay, and fricking hard!) and Street Fighter II' Champion Edition for PC Engine (just because it's amazing to see such a great port that no one thought possible). Still looking for Golden Axe Warrior and considering Zillion II for Master System.

Different

Things I don't like about my QuickSilver 2002 Power Mac G4:

• Can't play HD Flash video.
• I don't like Finder as much as Windows' Start Menu.
• Mac OS X's default keyboard shortcuts mostly suck.
• There still isn't a maximise button, is there?

Things I do like about my QuickSilver 2002 PowerMac G4:

• Everything else.

So I guess I could become a full-fledged Mac user with a Windows PC for specific tasks (gaming and Windows service, mostly); all I'd really have to do is adust to the Mac OS X workflow and buy a more powerful machine... Except I haven't really cared all that much for any Mac case designs since the iMac G4s and the QuickSilvers.

Ergh

Eternal Darkness gets better, and restarting actually made the first third of the game much more enjoyable, as I had a better idea of what the hell I was doing... Though this phenomenon casts an unflattering light on how the game establishes itself. Essentially, we have a unique game with an interesting presentation that leaves you hanging when it comes to gameplay and story. Once you slog through the first few chapters, things don't make much more sense, but they do get more manageable and thus far more entertaining. I've got three chapters to go, and I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm playing a disjointed but clever Resident Evil clone with super powerful melee weapons. None of these obseravtions sound particularly flattering, but I'm actually having fun and I can see why so many people felt this game was underappreciated in its day.

I also sat down with Majora's Mask last night and got to the boss of Great Bay Temple... Only to realise that I was woefully unprepared to defeat him. Thanks to the timed nature of the game, it looks like I'll have to redo the entire dungeon after hunting-down masks, jars, fairies, and heart pieces elsewhere in the game. I really hate wasting time like that.

And finally, a local video game shop is relocating, so I stopped by their old place over the weekend and came away with Pitall II for 2600 and Berzerk (w/overlay) for Vectrex. They'd just recieved a Jaguar CD, but it was suppoesdly already spoken for :\

Brilliant.

Eternal Darkness has no checkpoints or auto-save feature, and doesn't bother to prompt you to save your progress. I was just about finished the fourth chapter (about a third of the way through the game) when I was killed unexpectedly and forced to start the entire game over... That's not fun. I think I'm gonna go play something else instead.

Mano-a-mano

I finished Assassin's Creed II with most of the achievements, and it was great! Right up there with Brütal Legend as a serious game-of-the-year contender, as far as I'm concerned. I have a few complaints, but don't let them dissuade you from checking this game out. First, teaching the player a relatively tricky new technique during a timed mission that cannot be restarted while surrounded by numerous platforms that are likely to interfere with that technique is bad design; thankfully, that mission is optional. Second (and this one contains some big spoilers), whoever wrote the dialogue for the scenes surrounding your fistfight with the Pope (yes, a fistfight with the Pope!) should be fired. We went from intriguing and beautiful science fiction/history/conspiracy story to big dumb action movie for one of this epic game's pivotal scenes, and it just felt so very wrong; it didn't completely ruin the experience for me, but it certainly was disappointing.

I've started playing Eternal Darkness, and after the first two chapters, I'm wondering what all of the hype is about. The dialogue is painful, the story is barely cohesive so far, and combat is pretty frustrating... Maybe it gets better later.

I've been on a bit of a Klonoa binge lately. Since picking-up the Wii remake of the original PlayStation game, I've tracked-down the PS2 sequel, as well as the two Game Boy Advance releases. These are beautiful games, and reminiscent of Ristar in terms of gameplay.

Ooh, and I got to play with a PSX DVR the other day! A local shop got one in, but wants $500 for it :(

I'd love to see something like Broadcom's Crystal HD chip as an add-in card for older computers (especially my Power Mac G4). The ability to play HD Flash videos would make just about every computer from 2000 on capable of functioning as a solid day-to-day workstation.

Speaking of old computers, I got Soul Reaver running on Windows 7, but it stutters so badly that it's pretty much unplayable. Now I'm debating whether I should shell-out for the Dreamcast version instead of having to hook-up my Windows 98 SE machine to play it...

Gadetry

Windows 7 Gadgets (and possibly Windows Vista Gadgets as well) are broken. I like to put the default analogue clock, calendar, weather, and CPU meter (and somtimes a newsfeed) on there, but they're nothing I can't do without. While the only issues I ever had in Vista were with online feeds not synching, the weather gadget in 7 stopped working, and so all gadgets stopped working. When I tried to open the gadget menu to remove the weather gadget, it tried to open the gadgets first, which, since they weren't working, would cause the entire gadget engine to crash. I had to remove the wetaher gadget's folder from the Program Files folder to even access the gadget setup menu, so I just turned them all off and left it at that... Until today, when the weather gadget was suddently back, all by itself. Rather than bring them all back, I've opted to keep them all off.

My little brother surprised me with Assassin's Creed II and Modern Warfare 2 for XBOX 360 for Chirstmas, and so all else (including sleep) has been put on hold while I plough through Assassin's Creed II. Three gaming sessions in, and the end is in sight; I'm about two thirds through the story proper, and I've finished the majority of the side missions and collectible treasure hunts. The storytelling in this sequel is still a little off in terms of pacing and dialogue, but the gameplay is much more streamlined than it was in the first game. All of the repetitive missions that a lot of people complained about in Assassin's Creed are now completely optional, and the story progresses much more cohesively. If you're like me and enjoyed completing every last (seemingly meaningless) mission in the first game, don't worry; you can still do that here, and then some... Yeah, the amount of stuff to do is overwhelming, to say the least. Hunting down treasure chests, eagle feathers, statuettes, codex pages, and glyphs, solving brain-teasers, buying art, designing our outfit, reading about the places you've visited, checking out vistas, or just bombing around... You often don't need to go anywhere near the main story for hours. I'm loving the game so far, and I think just about anyone can find something fun to do in there.

Ooh, and I bought the Eidos Collector Pack (Batman: Arkham Asylum, Deus Ex 1 and 2, Hitman 1 to 3, Just Cause, Kane And Lynch, Mini Ninjas, Thief: Deadly Shadows, Tomb Raider: Legend and Underworld, and eight more Eidos games) and the Telltale Everything Pack (every Bone, Sam & Max, Strong Bad, Tales Of Monkey Island, and Wallace & Gromit game by Telltale) on Steam for $100... Individually, all of those games would cost over $450... I love holiday sales :)

Can't remember...

...I know I picked something else up since my last post, but I can't remeber what it is.

Wait, I did find Tiger Woods '10 for Wii (sans MotionPlus) for $29, and that was pretty sweet; there was something else though... I'll hafta get back to you on that.

Anyway, I finished Shadow Complex, and it was really good. The game was a little on the easy side and the dialogue was horrible (though the actors struggle through it admirably), but everything else was top-shelf stuff. Gorgeous graphics, visceral gameplay, plenty to explore, room for creative problem-solving, and compelling reasons to go back and find what you may have missed.

I then took some time to get into Muramasa, and quickly realised just how similar it is to Odin Sphere... But with a far less overwhelming inventory/forge/whatever, and with an amazingly fluid combat system. After the Bayonetta demo (which, like Devil May Cry, was very pretty but played very much not to my liking), Muramasa was a nice reminder that the hack-'n-slash/beat-'em-up genre hasn't completely left me behind in the '90s ;)

Before I got too far into Muramasa, I set aside an evening to finish LostWinds 2. I cannot stress enough just how amazing this series is. These two games, at only $10 each, are reason enough to get a Wii; they employ the Wii's controllers in a way so intuitive that I almost never paused to marvel at how well it worked; the graphics are beautiful; the music is hypnotic and suitably mysterious; the gameplay offers a challenging, but not overwhelming mix of puzzle-solving and platforming; and everything is bursting with character, from the animations and lighting to the musical cues and journal entries. The second game adds a great selection of new obstacles along with new tools to overcome them, and really feels like a new game instead of just another episode in the series. My only complaint is with the time between releases, and that's more of a compliment than anything else.

More Stuff

I bought two original NES controllers, Mario Pinball Land (GBA), Phantasy Star Online III (GC), and GRID (360) today for $27.

I also picked-up Jet Grind Radio (GBA) and Soul Reaver (PC) the other day, but forgot how old Soul Reaver was... It won't run on anything newer than Windows 9x :( There're unofficial patches to get it running on XP, but they're pre-SP3 and IE8, and don't seem to work. I've read that it works on Vista, so that or Windows 7 may be worth a try.

...Menacing?

I was buying a DVD the other day, and saw a new copy of Deadly Creatures for Wii for $20... And then a new copy of Elebits for $15... And then the cashier told me that it was buy-two-get-one-free, so I picked-up SEGA Rally Revo for XBOX 360. Now then, if only I could find the time to play them :( Still chipping away at Shadow Complex, then the priorities are LostWinds 2, Muramasa, Eternal Darkness, Wario Land: Shake It!... And it just doesn't stop.

I also bought a complete copy of Terminator 2: The Arcade Game for Genesis and dusted off my Menacer... That was fun :)

Splurge

Teddy Boy and Zillion for SMS; Mike Tyson's Punch-Out and Journey to Silius for NES; Chakan and Panic On Funkotron for Genesis; Jurassic Park, Killer Instinct, Super Punch-Out, and Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES; as well as NBA Showtime, the "Sonic bundle" pack-in of Sonic Adventure with the Sonic Adventure 2 demo, and a second copy of Soul Calibur for Dreamcast.

Bullets

Recent Purchases:

• Samurai Shodown Anthology (Wii) (No SSVS!? Boo!)
• Sonic Gems Collection (GC) (It was $5)
• Gauntlet Legends (DC) (It was cheap, and I had credit to spend)
• Space Channel 5 (DC) (My copy was in a sorry state; traded it in)

Current Windows 7 dilemma:

• Ardour (Linux; FireWire Solo relegated to acting as a pre-amp)
• Cubase (Industry standard, good personal experience so far)
• Sonar (Supposedly great product and hardware support; 64-bit)
• Pro Tools (...But 8 still doesn't officially support Windows 7)

Cleaning-up.

I finally sold the second Power Mac G4. I ended-up dropping the price to $100 from $125, but that ain't too bad; essentially, this means that I got my dual 1GHz Power Mac for $25 :)

I ragequit NHL 07 again... This time I was up 2-1 with just minutes left in the game when the same passing issue showed-up. My player was in the neutral zone, and instead of passing to the forward at the opposing blue line, he made another backward pass, this time to an opposing player who scored on the ensuing rush.

Anyway, I recently picked-up Draconus and Zombie Revenge for Dreamcast, Mr. Bones for Saturn, and Thunder Force III for Genesis. I plan to get Darius Gaiden for Saturn this evening.

7

The new workstation at work only came with the 32-bit version of Windows 7 Professional, but my 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate disc arrived the other day, so I tried to install the latter using the product key from the former... No dice; SKUs don't match :(

I did get Windows 7 Ultimate installed on my trusty old Athlon XP 3200+ machine though, and it runs wonderfully :) There were only two issues, one was easily solved (had to manually set the WLAN service to "automatic"), and the other involves patience (Pro Tools 7.4 doesn't work with Windows 7). Because of the Pro Tools issue, I'm strongly considering going back to Vista for the time being.

My time with Windows 7, on the whole, has been swell. In terms of superficial everyday use, it's Vista with a streamlined taskbar (sporting some nifty new features) and a few different settings windows, and that's just fine with me.

Ragequit

I've gotten back into NHL 07 on PSP (with the latest roster update), and my Leafs are kicking ass; something like 15-2-0. That record and the player stats aren't out of line with some of the other teams though (e.g. Pittsburgh is 9-2-1), so I don't feel too bad about how well things have gone so far. I did, however, quit toward the end of the third period of a recent game against Buffalo. I was down 3-1, and the game had been so one-sided that it was ridiculous. Buffalo players we're literally diving to create penalties (the replays didn't help their case), and the refs were falling for it. Until mid-way through the third period, PIMs were something like five to one in their favour, and all three of their goals came on the powerplay. The last straw was when one of my players passed the puck slightly backward to his left, at my goalie, who promptly spun around and put the puck in his own net... The problem was that I was trying to pass to a player at the blue line. Not cool.

Not bad, not bad...

New workstation at work: Dell Vostro 220s

• Core 2 Duo E7500 (2.93GHz, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 Cache) CPU
• 3GB 800MHz DDR2 RAM
• Intel G45 Chipset
• Intel GMA X4500 HD GPU
• Dell E2010H (20" widescreen) LCD
• Windows 7 Professional 32-Bit

...Definitely an upgrade from what I had before :)

Points

Got me some XBOX Live points and grabbed Shadow Complex along with a bunch of Foo Fighters and Nirvana songs for Rock Band. Shadow Complex is a sweet Metroid clone, but I fear it may be a little short; one solid afternoon of play, and it looks like I'm already half-way done.

I finished The Darkness the other day; my opinions of the game have not changed since my last post.

Next is prolly gonna be LostWinds: Winter Of the Melodias, or Wario Land: Shake It!

Oh, and my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate is in the mail :)

News

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bedtime

Brütal Legend was fantastic. I'll write more when it isn't 6:00am :)

Trades

I traded Panzer Dragoon, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic CD, Sonic R, Street Fighter Alpha, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Virtua Fighter 2, and Virtual On (all for PC), as well as Crash Bandicoot (PSX "Greatest Hits") and Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (XBOX) toward Super Pitfall (NES), SonSon II (PC Engine), Crash Bandicoot (PSX, not "Greatest Hits"), Pitfall 3D: Beyond The Jungle (PSX), Fable The Lost Chapters (XBOX, not "Best Of Platinum Hits"), Pitfall: The Lost Expedition (XBOX), Klonoa (Wii), Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (Wii), Muramasa: the Demon Blade (Wii), Fable II Limited Collector's Edition (360), and King Of Fighters XII (360).

Oh, and I may be getting somewhere with Nintendo on this overheating Wii issue... Stay tuned.

Brütally Honest

Brütal Legend kicks ass. I love the story, the acting, the graphics, the cameos, the controls, the varied gameplay, the exploration... It feels like the natural evolution of Tim Schafer's work; from cutting-edge point-and-click adventure games; to Grim Fandango, which incorporated a more action-oriented control scheme into the adventure genre; to Psychonauts, which masterfully meshed the adventure and action genres together like no other before it; to Brütal Legend, which further expands upon adventure/action hybrid ideas with an open strategy element akin to games like Sacrifice and Overlord.

The major gripes I've heard so far have had to do with pop-in and inconsistent frame rates, navigation ('I need a mini-map', 'the waypoints may lead me into an obstacle'), and genre confusion ('you got your half-assed RTS effort in my adventure game')... But any pop-in or stuttering I've run into so far has been negligible and in no way makes anything unplayable, navigation is pretty straightforward (if you get lost, the map screen is very helpful; but like Psychonauts, exploration is a huge part of the fun to be had here), and the RTS elements are an intriguing addition to what is still primarily an action game. It seems to me like a lot of people were caught off-guard (myself included) by the heavy RTS infusion to the single-player game, as previews would have us believe that such aspects were more of a multiplayer thing... The resulting backlash seems to be one of confused criticism.

I do have some legitimate complaints though. Scene transitions can be abrupt, and trivial yet funny voice clips can get cut-off, never to be heard again. Certain aspects of the game (minor plot points, new skills, new types of enemies, stuff like that) are not fully explained, though their uses and meanings aren't exactly esoteric, so it's not the end of the world. Finally, things seem a bit easy... For example, I lost all of my men to an unexpected and unexplained environmental effect during a battle and was killed shortly thereafter, but not before reaching a checkpoint. When I respawned, I was at the checkpoint with a full complement of men; men who most certainly did not survive to reach that checkpoint with me... Regardless, Brütal Legend seems like a game worth spending some quality time with in order to savour its unique nuances and creative ideas; the rewards far outweigh any issues you may run into along the way.

So, Need For Speed ProStreet on PSP, eh? Yeah, good times. Great graphics, genuinely fun sim gameplay, lots to do, plenty of replay value... And asshole AI that has no qualms about sending you into a spin, as well as a broken garage system that doesn't let you sell old cars or get money back for downgrading... Unless I'm missing something there? Still one of the best racers on the platform, no question about it. I wonder why it seems to have been so overlooked by the press...

Finally, the e-mail server at work went down over night, and now I'm fixing it and developing a new storage strategy to better utilise our limited storage resources... Wheee!

$2!

I tracked down a copy of Brütal Legend after work yesterday (the used record store had two copies left; everywhere else in the area was sold out), but didn't get a chance to play it until this morning... Since I had to go into work, I've only played through the intro and have yet to hit the RTS aspect of the game that supposedly throws the quality of the whole experience into question...

I also noticed copies of Shining Force II (Genesis) and Super Off Road (SNES) ~$2 each at that same used record store, so I grabbed them as well. Super Off Road needed a cleaning, but I didn't notice that until I'd already tested it and popped ActRaiser back in... At which point ActRaiser wouldn't start properly, and then erased my saved progress. I only had like two more levels to go! D'ah well, I guess that just clears my schedule up a bit for Brütal Legend :)

I finally got around to sitting down with Gran Turismo and MotorStorm: Arctic Edge on PSP, and was promptly confused. Just about everyone's been talking about how pretty Gran Turismo is and how ugly MotorStorm is, and I think they got it backwards. GT runs at an amazingly high frame rate, but it ain't the prettiest game on the platform; Need For Speed: ProStreet looks way better. MotorStorm looks pretty great too, so I'm just kinda scratching my head here... Anyway, GT's a hardcore sim that takes a lot of practice to master. MotorStorm is big, dumb, visceral fun that's great in short bursts, but gets kinda repetitive if you try to do it all at once. ProStreet (quickly becoming one of my favourite racers on the PSP) is somewhere in the middle, but definitely more toward the sim side of the spectrum.

The Saga Continues

I got the other G4s cleaned-up and ready for sale, but I'm not gonna post them 'til I max-out the RAM in the dual 1GHz machine and redistribute the leftovers. I found two new low-density 512MB sticks on craigslist for $40, but they don't seem to like Macs, or at least QuickSilvers :\ I'm gonna see about swapping at one of the local surplus stores...

On a happier note, I'm pretty comfortable with the following selection of Mac software:

• Connect360
• Flip4Mac WMV
• NTFS-3G
• Perian
• Rember
• Safari
• StuffIt Expander
• Toast
• Transmission

...I think that pretty much covers my needs.

Anyway, I read a post on a message board about an old Sonic clone from Data East on the Genesis called High Seas Havoc. I don't think I'd ever heard of it before then, but it looked promising, so I checked out a nearby shop and they had a loose copy for cheap. Good times :)

My ship has come in!

I got the dual-1GHz QuickSilver 2002! $160 on craigslist! The case is a little banged-up, but otherwise, it's been great so far! I'm gonna see about selling the other two, and maybe swapping the case from one...

Anyway, on to the better news! I received the following in the mail today:

• BC Racers (32X)
• Blackthorne (32X)
• Primal Rage (32X)
• Star Trek Starfleet Academy (32X)
• T-Mek (32X)
• Toughman Contest (32X)
• Pitfall (Jaguar)
• White Men Can't Jump (Jaguar)
• Cool Cool Jam (NGPC)
• Gals Fighters (NGPC)
• Puzzle Link 2 (NGPC)
• Actraiser 2 (SNES)
• Blitz w/overlay (Vectrex)
• Cosmic Chasm w/overlay (Vectrex)
• Solar Quest (Vectrex)
• Starhawk w/overlay (Vectrex)

Can't wait to sit down with all of it... And now I only need Night Trap, Spider-Man: Web Of Fire, World Series Baseball, and WWF Wrestlemania to complete my domestic 32X collection... Such a nerd :)

Jinx

If all goes well, I'll have a dual-1GHz QuickSilver 2002, with 1GB of RAM, a GeForce4 MX, an 80GB HDD, a Super Drive, and an original Apple mouse and keyboard by the end of the day... I had been considering an upgrade card from Newer Technology or Sonnet (1.6GHz~2.0GHz, single or dual G4 CPUs starting at $200 US), but this will do just fine.

While I'm here, I guess I'll mention that I'm almost done ActRaiser, and I picked up NHL 09 and NBA Street: Homecourt for 360 (less than $20 for the pair), as well as PO'ed for 3DO... Good times :) Oh, and I enjoyed the Wet demo. Not enough to make me drop $60~$70 on the game, but enough to keep an eye out for it in the bargain bins.

So very, very stoked...

I sat down with the Brütal Legend, Forza Motorsport 3, and NHL 10 demos last night, and oh man...

NHL 10 seems pretty swell, but I think I need to spend a good few hours with it before I'm really comfortable with all of the control options. I didn't notice anything particularly game-changing over previous iterations though, and the Leafs haven't convinced to spend $60 this season... Yet :) I hear NHL 2K10 is is a much more comparable product this year, so I'll be giving that a shot as well.

Forza 3 is gorgeous, and it felt totally intuitive. I'm really tempted to pick this one up, even though I still have plenty left to do in Forza 2.

Brütal Legend though, oh man... It sucked me in immediately. The writing is the key, and it was spot-on hilarious right from the beginning. The graphics are better than I expected, and the gameplay, while a little too God Of War-esque for my liking, was varied enough to keep me riveted. I will buy this game upon its release next week.

Is there really a need?

I've been trying to figure out which PSP Need For Speed game is the best...

Underground: Rivals is a pure arcade racer; Most Wanted: 5-1-0 adds police; Carbon: Own The City adds a really lame narrative, teammates, and an open city to drive through; ProStreet throws everything previous out the window and makes a really impressive sim that is particularly challenging and looks gorgeous; Undercover is an hideous atrocity; Shift is like Rivals except that it doesn't occur exclusively at night and has some decent weather effects that significantly affect the gameplay.

So which is the best? I dunno. Aside from Undercover, they're all pretty solid. ProStreet is the most impressive of the bunch, but is it worth our time now that Gran Turismo is available? Rivals and Shift offer a lot of fun, but with games like Ridge Racer and MotorStorm out there, do they offer anything unique aside from the tuning aspect? It seems like 5-1-0 and Carbon are the two that really carve a solid niche for themselves, but even then, they have a lot in common with the PSP Burnout games.

Personally, I've had the most fun with ProStreet, with Shift/Rivals and 5-1-0/Carbon taking second or third, depending on whether I want to race mindlessly or race mindlessly with the police.

Moving on, I now have Leopard installed on my Mac, and while it feels a little sluggish compared to Tiger in the visual effects department, it's running really well. I can't wait 'til I find more RAM and a better video card for this thing; the best I can find right now for a reasonable price is a 64MB GeForce4 MX...

Son Of FrankenMac

I got the leftovers pieced together, and now my unexpected second Power Mac G4 is in business... Albeit with a noisy CPU fan and a damaged speaker. Anyway, it's running Mac OS X 10.4.11 on an 800MHz G4 (no L3 cache) with 320MB of RAM, a 16MB AGP ATi Rage 128 Pro, a 30GB Maxtor HDD, and a CD-RW drive. Not sure what to do with this one yet...