Sunday, May 04, 2008
Grand Theft Auto IV.They've been working on it for how long?
It's been a while.
So how is it that with such an extended development period that they can finally release the game with a critical bug?
I'd read reports of freezing a couple of days before I bought the game, and hoped I wouldn't be one of the 37% (allegedly) who suffer with the freezing problem.
On installing, it played just fine, and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Next day, I loaded it up, got past the intro screen, onto the game save loading screen and.... nothing. It just sat there with the "loading" text blinking away at me, doing nothing at all.
Reboot... reload.... nothing. "Loading"
Bollox!!!
So, I googled possible fixes, knowing othere people had suffered the same kind of trouble.
The most common suggested fix was to delete the game, and all related data from the PS3's hard drive, and reinstall. So, I gave it a try.
It worked.... for about 30 seconds, and then froze mid-game.
BOLLOX!!!!!
I googled a bit more, for other suggestions, and finally found one that worked.
The solution is simple, but absolutely unacceptable, when one of the major selling points is online multiplayer mode.
The fix?
Log out of the online Playstation Network.
DOH!!!
So now single player, offline mode works just fine, but there's no way to play online.
Oy! Rockstar!!! Get your act together!!!
I can understand this kind of crap happening on PCs, where there is such varied hardware, and the number of possible configurations are endless... but we're talking about a console, for goodness sake, where there is only a very limited variation in hardware.
Steve 9:49 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, April 21, 2008
After a couple of weeks playing the game, and after reading several reviews online and in magazines, I believe it's time I brought you my very own review of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue.I may do something similar for Mario Kart Wii in the near future...or I may not. We'll see how things pan out.
Labels: consoles, games, gran turismo, PS3
Steve 2:14 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Gran Turismo 5 Prologue is out now for PS3.I've been playing it a bit tonight, being off work with a bitch of a virus.
It's mostly pretty familiar stuff, just with prettier graphics... but for one big bonus... online multi-player.
Here's a very poor quality video clip I shot this evening of me playing online.
My apologies for the burp near the start... I was drinking coke. Also apologies for the poor lighting and bad focus... my good camera has a flat battery, and the one I used just doesn't like recording tv footage.
Labels: consoles, games, gran turismo, PS3
Steve 4:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The big project has taken a sideline already. There's a surprise.A more enjoyable and easier distraction has captured my attention for the moment.
I have a video on YouTube of my retro games and consoles collection, and a few people have asked if I would upload videos of the games I have for my many machines.
Well... this is something of a mammoth task, but today, I made a start. I figure I can embed the video footage on my website, making the whole computer collection section more interesting.
Anyway, rather than embed the vids here, if you're at all interested, go take a peek at the clips on my youtube videos page.
Steve 9:32 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Gaming, gaming and more gaming.Call Of Duty 4 on PS3 was quite beautiful, and certain sections were fantastic to play, which makes the game sound like a very worthwhile buy, but.....
I completed it in one sitting!!!
This is *not* the way forward.
Crysis on PC is an equally wonderful game to watch, and to play, right up to the point when people start shooting, whereupon my pc slows to a crawl, or stops altogether.
Now I know the game requires a seriously kickarse pc to play it on maximum settings... and we're talking several thousand pounds worth of kit here. Seriously though, you'd have to be mad to lay out that much cash on a machine to play a game that really doesn't look any better than the PS3 will be doing in a year from now.
More than that, when a machine like mine (Pentium 4 3.2Ghz, 2 Gigs ram, Nvidia 79000 gfx card) can barely hold a decent framerate on the absolute minimum settings, you know all is not right in the world of realistic hardware expectations.
Back down to earth... well... kinda. Actually... not really at all, but anyway...
Geometry Wars: Galaxies on Nintendo DS is a truly wonderful piece of retro blasting.
Playing like a cross between Asteroids and Robotron, with a hint of Tempest in the visual styling.
You can play with the stylus, but I don't bother, preferring to stick to the buttons. I haven't tried the 2 player mode yet, though I'm sure it'll prove to be a laugh.
If you have a DS and are looking for some frantic, pick up and play, old school shooting, get this.
Going back to around Christmas... Mario Galaxy.... beautiful game, and quite enchanting to watch, but for some reason, I don't like playing it myself. I guess I never was a Mario fan. Certainly one of, if not *the* most immaginitive game I've ever seen though.
Ratchet and Clack.... I know, I know, everyone loves this game, but it just annoys the crap out of me. I've played it about twice, and doubt very much I'll bother playing it again.
Maybe it's finding myself in places where I just don't know what I'm supposd to be doing. Maybe it's the awkward aiming system. Maybe it's the fact that it's *so* pretty that I expect perfection, and so feel let down that it isn't. Whatever the case... I don't care to play games that leave me feeling annoyed.
Fave game of the moment?
Hah!
*STILL* Warhawk.
Labels: games
Steve 4:34 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, October 26, 2007
Time has been taken up between work, which had been becoming quite infuriating, up untill yesterday, when I confronted my supervisor with a particular grievance.... and Warhawk on PS3.Now I don't care to talk about work on here, as you never know who is reading, so... Warhawk.
Ever played Battlefield 2 on PC? Or know what it's about/like?
Same thing... only futuristic, and more fun.
For those who don't know, its an entirely online, multiplayer, team based, first person shootemup, featuring infantry, jeeps, tanks, turrets/gun emplacements, and Warhawks, which are vertical takeoff/landing jet fighters.
My initial experiences, having not even read the instructions were 'Jump into warhawk, take off, get shot down. Respawn, jump into warhawk, take off, get shot down... etc.'
After reading the instructions, I got my ratio to 1 kill per 2 deaths of my own. Not very impressive.
Last night I read several tactical advice webpages on the subject, and a brief half hour playing before work this afternoon yielded much better results. Maybe I just got lucky and found a bunch of rookies on the server, or maybe I'm just a little better than I was.
We'll see tomorrow.
Steve 4:48 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, October 14, 2007
So while we were out shopping in Doncaster this afternoon, I bought a 60Gig PS3, with Resistance: Fall Of Man, and Heavenly Sword bundled with it.The price of this pack has dropped from £425 to £350, and as the 60gig machine is backwardly compatible with the PS2, while the new £300 40gig machine (with no game) isn't... it seemed far and away the better pack to buy. Considering the 60gig backwardly compatible machine will be discontinued when stocks run out, it's something of a no-brainer to get this model.
So, what's it like then?
Well.... I started out playing Resistance: Fall Of Man, as 1st Person shootemups are something I'm familiar with, and first impressions were that given the display limitations of the tv I have it plgged into, it's on a par with good PC games of that genre.
Pretty good then.
Next I downloaded the free Gran Turismo HD demo thingie from the Sony site, and had a play on that. Visually breathtaking, it makes Test Drive Unlimited on my PC look a bit silly. It's not much of a game though... but then it's only supposed to be a taster.
So, Heavenly Sword then.
I left this one till last, coz to be honest, I figured it wasn't the kind of game I'd like... the duffer in the software bundle, if you like.
Duh!!!
How wrong could I be?
Up till now, the games have been impressive, but this... this is something else entirely.
This is the game to buy a PS3 for.
This is the game to show to you friends when they ask "So how much better than an X-Box360 is it then?"
This is the game to play when you just want to go "wow".... and keep going "wow", and not be able to turn the machine off, untill it's stupid o'clock in the morning, and you suddenly remember you have to be up for work.
Think you know what next gen gaming looks like?
If you haven't seen Heavenly Sword, you have no idea.
And remember... this is still the first generation of PS3 games. Remember how much better PS1 and PS2 games got over time.
5 years from now is really going to be something.
Steve 4:49 AM [+] (2) comments
Friday, October 12, 2007
It's been a while.So... umm... ok, I'm slightly less than sober, so excuse me if this turns into a daft ramble.
Big TV... no.... BIG TV... *B I G* TV...
Andrea bought a 42" plasma HD TV at a bargain price, and it arrived this week.
Did I say it's B I G?
Anyway....
I've been playing Test Drive Unlimited again, only this time, on the PC instead of the PSP.
Graphically, and dynamically, it's vastly superior to the PSP, but in terms of stability, it's terrible. Bugged to hell. I had to read several forums before I could figure how to stop it from crashing and corrupting my hard drive.
Now it's working properly though, I love it, but I wouldn't recommend buying it to anyone, simply because straight out of the box, it's just plain broken.
Hmmm....
Need more beer.
Other stuff.....
Work is work.
Planning on buying a PS3 failry soon. Maybe tomorrow... maybe after our trip to Blackpool in a couple of weeks. Depends on self control, or lack of.
Time spent in my cam chatroom at stupid o'clock for the past couple of nights has been fun.
Time spent messing around with facebook has been intersting. I like it far more than myspace. I keep my facebook page separate from all my other stuff, and don't publicise it on my websites, as it uses my real name. Look me up on there if you know what name to look for... though saying that, friend requests from people I'm not entirely familiar with will be completely ignored.
Labels: games
Steve 1:34 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, April 28, 2007
I've been spending quite a lot of time playing Test Drive Unlimited on my PSP.To be honest, if it weren't for the custom (hacked) firmwares from Dark_Alex, allowing me to play around with emulators and old PS1 games, I'd probably have pretty much abandoned the PSP by now. Something about the games for the Sony handheld just doesn't hit the spot... they're so... wooden.
Anyways... Test Drive Unlimited sorts that out quite effectively. The controls are still clunky, and the graphics... well... they lack detail compared with PS2, but the draw distance is excellent.
What works well though is the shear scope of the game. A whole Hawiian island to romp around on and behave like an idiot to your heart's content.
When you get bored with challenge races to win points, and money to buy new cars, you can just tear down whatever road you like, find some other human player, and either challenge them to a one on one race, or do like I and some others do... slam into them at full speed and then hoon around like a deranged gibbon on speed, just for the fun of it.
So, if you're a PSP owner, and you play Test Drive Unlimited online.... if you should find some maniac in a bright red Lambourghini Countach slamming into you, head on, at 200mph, check out their player name. Is it Benway68?
That'll be me then :D
Steve 7:12 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Having spent several days playing around with many of my newly retrieved from the loft consoles and computers, yesterday it was the turn of my Amiga 1200 tower system.Now there is a story behind this system, and it's quite a long one.
I originally bought the 1200 in 1993, and over the years, gradually expanded it, until its final configuration was was a tower based system with 68060 CPU, 32meg RAM, 5gig HD, CD re-writer, zorro II bus board, IOBlix comms card, Buddha and Catweasle card for HD and PC floppy compatibility.
You couldn't buy a machine like that in the shops, and compared to the Pentium based PCs that were around at the time, it was a real powerhouse.
I used the machine for graphics, music, word processing, games and the internet, on a daily basis, until 2000, when a catastrophic head crash killed the hard drive, and I discovered my OS backup CDs had been corrupted.
Having a pc sitting in the same room, I found I really couldn't be bothered to re-install the entire system from scratch, as with all the expansions involved, and messing around to make the CD drive work... it was just too much hassle. So it's just collected dust in the loft for the best part of 7 years.
So yesterday, I did what I couldn't be bothered to do 7 years ago, and reinstalled the entire Amiga OS 3.1, and grappled for many hours trying to figure out how to make the CD drive work.
The thing is, Amiga's of that time didn't have native CD support. When they were around, CD rom was still a very new technology, and so running one required additional drivers.
Now, finding the CD drivers wasn't the tricky bit.... what was hard was making the OS see the drive itself. The most common method of attaching a CD drive to an Amiga back then was to use a "SCSI Squirrel"... a pcmia card with a scsi interface. The 2nd most common method was to use an IDE interface. Naturally, I had to be flash and use the most powerful, and entirely uncommon method, and use a scsi interface that attached to my ultra expensive 68060 Blizzard accelerator card.
This was all well and good, back in the day, when I had the luxury of an instruction booklet. Do you think I still have the instructions today? I should coco.
After much googling, I didn't find the information I needed to get the job done, but I did see one or two snippets that jogged my memory.
What it came down to was installing the AmiCDFS CD file system... manually. The installer puts it onto your drive, but doesn't put the files in the places required. Thank god for readme's. Then I had to edit the CD mountfile. By default it thinks the CD drive is connected to "scsi.device"... in the case of my machine, I had to edit this to read "1230scsi.device".
Fingers crossed, one reboot, and it worked. Yay!
On the downside, it isn't just the scsi interface instructions that I'm missing. Turns out I no longer have the instructions to many of my games either. Now while that may not be catastrophic in terms of finding the game controls... it's a disaster when you consider that these instructions also contain the passwords used as copy protection by many of the games.
Bollocks!.
I guess when I get my finances sorted, I'll just buy the good ones again on ebay.
Fortunately though, I do have the manuals for two of my three absolute faves... Geoff Crammond's Formula One Grand Prix, and Knights Of The Sky.
Steve 5:27 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, March 30, 2007
Floor laying progresses... almost done, in fact. I just have to lay one stupidly small strip along the wall by the door.Next comes putting together a set of book shelves for displaying my computer and console collection... and dragging a bloody great sofa upstairs. That's gonna be fun... or something.
Speaking of my collection, I've just finished writing a piece on the Nintendo SNES, for the collection section of this site.
Steve 4:15 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, January 26, 2007
There is a god and his name is Dark_Alex.Some of you will know that some time back I began messing around with running homebrew and emulators on my PSP, using a thing called the eloader by Fanjita and Ditlew.
Well... that was a hack that made use of exploits to get past security features in the PSP firmware. It worked fairly well too.
Now, this chap called Dark_Alex has gone a huge step further. He's entirely hacked the firmware, and created a custom version of the latest firmware, while incorporating the ability of much earlier firmware.
What this means is, as well as being able to run all the latest commercial games, run all the emulators and homebrew I had already been using, I can now use the PS1 emulator that's built into the latest firmware.
More than that... the PS1 emulator in the standard Sony release only allows you to play the PS1 games that they drip feed to users, and which you have to pay for... even though you probably already own the original. So... the new custom firmware totally bypasses all the Sony bullshit, and with a little messing around with conversion utilities, allows you to play whatever PS1 games you like.
So I now have Gran Turismo 2 up and running on my PSP. Yay!!! :D
Truth is, I've been getting more and more pissed off at Sony, as the months have gone by.
I bought the PSP with the intention of playing Gran Turismo on it, but they've delayed it, and delayed it, and delayed it some more.
Then they release the PS1 emulator, but you can only play what they want you to play in it... and worse, you have to have a PS3 to do that.
Dumbasses.
So, no more waiting and no more being screwed. I can do all the things the PSP was actually designed to be able to do, but that Sony are too all controlling to let us do.
Labels: consoles, emulators, games, gran turismo
Steve 10:35 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, July 14, 2006
I seem to be developing some extremely nerdish tendencies. I mean... I was always a geek, but fell short of nerd.Why do I say this?
Ummm... I appear to have become hooked on The Elder Scrolls.
You can't get much more nerdy than swords and sorcery, but this game is so compelling, the world so huge, and the graphics so pretty.
In case you wondered, those screenshots are from the Xbox 360, and yes, the gfx on my PC *are* that good.
The only question now is, will I go all the way and start playing World Of Warcraft?
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Labels: games
Steve 1:46 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Y'know, it's absolutely shocking how little you can do when your abdominal muscles are being held together by what's basically a glorified elastoplast.Can't walk more than 30 yards. Can't lift even so much as a cat. Can't sweep the kitchen floor without collapsing in exhaustion, never mind even thinking about hoovering.
Wanna know the worst thing though? Have it done yourself and then try taking a dump!
Yeash!
A special mention for Andrea is required at this point.
Not only has she had to put up with me stressing for weeks before my op, then sat around all day at the surgical clinic while I was being operated on and in recovery... and then been there for me as I whine and wince like a wuss through my recovery... all of which must be extremely annoying things to put up with... she's done it with such good grace, and more than this, she's done much of it while injured herself. Somehow she managed to do something nasty to her knee/leg while sitting in the hospital waiting room, and is now largely incapacitated herself.
What a wonderful woman. I could almost believe she injured herself so I wouldnt feel like the only cripple in the house, but... she's not stupid like me, and deserves much sympathy.
In other, non-medical related news, I got myself a new graphics card recently, coz my old one was getting a bit creaky. The new one's pretty much as powerful a card as it's possible to get on an agp based motherboard. It's a Gainward 7800GS+ 512Meg, which surprisingly doesn't use the nVidia 7800 chip at all, but the 7900 one.
This little monster of a card was purchased solely to play one game... Battlefield 2.
Hooked? You bet!
The funny thing is, the way I came to get into the game in the first place. It was THIS spoof video.
I saw it, recognised similar behaviour from playing SOCOM, laughed my head off all night (no doubt annoying Andrea), and promptly went out to buy it at the soonest oportunity.
Anyways... it's very very addictive.
Labels: games, graphics cards, hernia, medical
Steve 4:38 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Yeah yeah, I know... no new site yet.The distractions and sidelines keep on piling up.
So the trip to York was awesome, and I should probably put photos on flickr, but I havent even got round to that yet.
Then yesterday I went to the hospital for this hernia, though it was only a consultation, not surgery yet.
It seems there's around a 3 month waiting list for surgery, which while it's nice as far as being mentally prepared is concerned, means we've had to cancel our holiday to devon. The chances are, the surgery would be scheduled either slap bang in the middle of the holiday, or just before it, and I don't wanna be several hundred miles away in the event of post surgery complications.
So the final distraction, predictably, is a game.
Tourist Trophy is, quite literally, Gran Turismo on motorbikes. All the same circuits... same graphics and physics engines, same game structure, same everything... just on motorbikes.
Is it good?
Oh hell yeah!
Is it easy to get into?
Well... you could never really just load up Gran Turismo, play it and be good... the same is doubly true of Tourist Trophy. You really have to practice to be remotely competative, but once you've got the swing of it, the level of satisfaction when you win a race is way up there.
I get the feeling Gran Turismo on PS3 is gonna be something along the lines of Gran Turismo 4 with bettwe graphics, combined with this.... as from what I've read, it includes bikes.
Very clever use of resources, making an entire standalone game out of what is effectively just extra stuff added onto an earlier game, to make a next gen game... if you get my meaning.
Labels: games, hernia, medical
Steve 3:17 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, April 27, 2006
So just how great is Andrea?To answer that question, you have to ask another question.
Just how great is a woman who not only tolerates her boyfriend's obsessions, but encourages them to the point of obtaining rare and exotic games systems, when he fails to obtain them himself?
The answer to this question is very *VERY* great :D
What on earth am I talking about?
*****THIS****
"And just what exactly is that?" I hear you ask.
It's a Nintendo Virtual Boy. Never sold in the UK, and a complete flop in America and Japan too, so.... rare as hens teeth, especially over here.
But that's not even what makes it so special.
It's 3D, and by that, I don't mean 3D like a playstation game, I mean like... actual depth perception... and vastly better than using silly coloured glasses.
It's odd, playing it, coz... it doesn't have colour gfx (it's shades of red and black), and it doesn't have 3D graphics in the traditional gaming sense. but the moment you play it, it makes absolute sense, and you wind up asking yourself why all games aren't like that.
So is it good?
It's absolutely bloody fantastic.
It's criminally insane that this thing wasn't a hit. It impresses like nothing else, even after 10 or so years since it was axed.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to play Mario Tennis like you've never seen it before.
Steve 9:50 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, March 31, 2006
Posts here being as erratic as they are these days, it's unlikely anyone would notice my absence over the coming week, but anyway...Regardless of it being *very* early in the year, Andrea and I are off on holiday.
We're going to split the journey into two, going as far as Milton Keynes tomorrow, where we'll stop off at the Broughton Hotel, and then on sunday we're off down to Brighton, where we're spending 5 days at the White Horse hotel in Rottingdean.
Expect a large influx of photos into my flickr album when we return.
In other news, I picked up Sega's OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast for PSP today.
It's very much like the reviews said it would be. Not a whole lot of depth, but VERY pretty, and great if you just want to pick up and play. I'd probably feel pretty ripped off if I'd bought this for PS2, but on PSP it makes perfect sense.
As an aside, I've been unable to make the internet play feature work so far. My guess would be that the game's so new (released here today), they haven't got the server set up properly yet.
We'll see. I hope they sort it, coz head to head games with real people would be a blast.
Update: I've found why I couldnt connect, and it was nothing to do with their server.
I had to set up port forwarding, to send the signal from the wireless router here to my psp.
So now I've played it online... what's it like?
Great fun, when it works.
It's a little unstable, and I couldn't find a game to join, so started my own. The moment I did, loads of people piled on board. Seems like people are either unsure of how to use the thing, or just plain mean with their bandwidth.
But still... much fun :D
Another update:
The stability issue I was worried about seems to have been a one off, as it's been rock solid since then.
People still don't seem to have got their heads around hosting games themselves, merely lurking and then jumping on board as soon as I host one.
However... now I've gotten used to how it all works, online play is *absolutely magnificent*
It'd be nice to be able to speak to the other players somehow, or have a forum, or *something*, as seeing nothing but a nickname and some very vague details is rather impersonal, but that's really the only gripe I have. Maybe I should set up a dedicated chatroom... but with no way to contact the players, they'd never know about it, unless they actively searched.
Steve 5:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, March 18, 2006
Games and an interview.First, the interview.
Andrea spotted an ad for a job, just by chance, that she thought would suit me perfectly. Can you believe they actually pay people to be chatroom moderators? I've been doing that for years, just for the fun of it.
So on friday, I made my way by bus to this little town I've never heard of, in the middle of I dunno where, to have an interview in a hotel lounge. Quite an odd experience, it must be said.
I dunno how I did, to be honest, but it certainly wasn't one of those excruciating interviews where you walk away feeling a complete arse.
Fingers crossed.
The games.
1: Black.
First person shootemup with lots of guns, lots of people to kill, lots of stuff to blow up, and very pretty graphics.
It looks absolutely awesome, and is brilliant fun to play.
But....
It's too short by far, and to compensate for that, to make the game last longer, they implement wholely unfair game save points. There are places where if you don't reach the end of the level before you turn off, the next time you play, you'll have to replay over an hour's worth.
That's just wrong, in my book.
2: Shadow Of The Colossus.
I've only been playing for a couple of hours, and having killed one colossus, am really enjoying it.
It's original in the extreme, it's breathtakingly beautiful, and it's bloody hard.
Also... and this is something you wouldn't expect.... when you finally manage to kill a colossus, it makes you feel quite sad. It's not like beating an end of level boss, so much as killing an innocent creature who's only sin was being big.
Most unusual.
So the PS3 is still around 8 months away, and the PS2 is by no means a dead format, but I do believe that these two titles will be the final top quality, triple A, 'must have' games for it.
If you don't buy many games, sticking only to absolute top quality titles... these should both be on your shopping list.
If you only want one game this year though... make it Legend Of The Colossus, simply coz you'll never see anything else quite like it.
Labels: games, interviews, work
Steve 8:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, February 13, 2006
More gaming.I've been playing F.E.A.R on the pc.
I'd read some rave reviews about it, though couldn't actually remember what it was they'd said was so good... but bought it anyway, coz I found it at a bargain price.
So... graphics? Nothing special. No better than Half Life 2, and not even close to Far Cry or Doom 3.
Scary? It's supposed to be, but in all honesty, it hasn't made me bat an eyelid yet.
Guns? Oh baby!!!
It's not that the guns are any bigger, fancier or cleverer than in any other game. It's the sound, and the way they handle. You really feel like you're shooting a gun.
AI?
Oh my, oh my!!!
You know how on some games, the bad guys are kinda predictable? They either do the same things all the time, or run away... or charge at you. Some behave a little more logically, as if they're actually displaying an ammount of thought, but then you realise they're limited... like they stay in a certain area, and never leave it.
What you'd never expect to happen is to go from an indoor scene... load up the next bit, which is an outside area, go through the doors, shoot at the bad guys... turn around and run back inside, and have them come in after you when you hide around the corner inside.
That's exactly what happened tonight. They came in after me, split into groups and cornered me.
Very, very impressive, and the best gaming shootouts I've ever had.
Still not scared yet though. Maybe that comes later.
Labels: games
Steve 2:38 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, February 11, 2006
So at around 1am this morning we nipped out to Tesco to do some grocery shopping... as you do.While we were there, I picked up a copy of Sega Classics Collection for PS2, at a bargain price.
Updated and original versions of Outrun, Space Harrier, Tant R and Bonanza Bros, Fantasy Zone, Golden Axe, Virtua Racing, Monaco GP and Columns.
Now, some of these are conversions of Megadrive or Master System games with somewhat updated graphics, some are straight conversions of arcade games, and some are updated versions of arcade games.
To be honest, I can't really be bothered to talk about each one individually, coz there's one that simply stands out head and shoulders above the rest... for me at least.
I never got to play Virtua Racing in the arcades, mainly coz it was so expensive, no arcades would buy it, but later on, I did have it for my Sega 32X/Megadrive... and much later on, on my Sega Saturn.
Now neither of these conversions were bad at all, but I could tell just from the pics in the magazines of the original that they really weren't that close a copy.
And on PS2?
Awesome.
Obviously, compared to modern racing games, this looks naff, but when you remember that this was created before 3D was the norm, that it runs at a rock solid 50fps, and was running on hardware designed by Lockhead Martin for military simulators which cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds per cabinet... you start to appreciate this exact copy that cost all of £15.
Labels: games
Steve 1:08 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, November 30, 2005
The second two retro games compilation cartridges for GBA arrived yesterday... finally!So, fave games turn out to be pretty much the ones I expected. Galaxians, Scramble, and Gyruss... but with the surprise addition of Galaga. I never played that one in the arcades, but am enjoying it loads now.
Disapointments? Pole Position is pretty sad when played with a pad instead of a wheel. None are truly terrible though, which is nice.
I almost have a pocket collection of everything I played in the arcades back in the 80s now, with just a few exceptions. Sooner or later I'll pick up Paperboy, Marble Madness, Space Invaders and Street Fighter II.
Sadly, 2 games I wont be able to get are among my very faves... Atari Star Wars, and I Robot. Ah well.
Labels: games
Steve 6:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Funny how the format a game is played on can affect how enjoyable it is.Now I've had the mame emulator on my computers for years, and copies of all my favourite 70s and 80s retro arcade games, and have always enjoyed them.
However, I've never been one to spend a lot of time playing them. 15 mins on each one was about the max.
So, this weekend I *bought* some retro games compilations from Amazon for my Game Boy Advance SP, the games being Asteroids, Battlezone, Centipede, Missile Command, Super Breakout and Tempest by Atari, and After Burner, Outrun, Super Hang On and Space Harrier by Sega....
And do you know what?
I enjoyed them *much* more on the handheld format than I ever did on my pc, though not as much as playing them in the arcades (you can't beat the rush of playing a game that costs you per go, especially when you're low on change).
Also, it should be noted that the sprite scaling on the Sega games was vastly superior to any I've seen on any other conversion or emulation.
Out of the entire collection, there are only 2 duff games, and that's not really the fault of the games themselves, so much as them not being suited to handheld controllers. Missile Command is next to useless without a trackball, and Afterburner... I dunno what was up with that, I just couldn't point my plane at the targets.
2 more compilations are currently winging their way to me, including Galaxians, and one of my all time faves, the brutally difficult Defender. Expect even more to be ordered in the near future too.
I dunno what it is, but handheld retro gaming really pushes my buttons.
Labels: games
Steve 1:25 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 01, 2005
Gaps between posts continue to be extended.Truth is, it's not just my blog that's being neglected, but the whole of what was my 'internet life'. That's what having a life in 'real life' does to you.
So, what've I been doing?
Games, college, day trips, more games.
Doom 3 on PC is a damned fine romp, it has to be said. Brainless, but great fun, and awesome graphics.
Mario Kart on GBA SP is even better than it was on SNES, though Andrea and I disagree on whether it's better than Mario Kart 64. I think it is. She has a GBA SP too, so we play it linked up, head to head.
College.... been on half term holiday. We Went to Skegness last thursday, which turned out to be a really nice day. Not too many people, great weather, huge looooooooooooong beach.
Labels: games
Steve 11:24 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, May 23, 2005
How cool.I found a program that maps keys on the keyboard to buttons on my joypad, so now I can play Radiant Silvergun in all it's glory, and not keep losing lives through difficulty in controlling the ship.
Now I just die through being crap, and the game being shockingly tough.
Having said that, I can see exactly why this game has such a legendary status on the Saturn, and commands such high priced for the Japanese only copies being sold on ebay.
When you consider that the Saturn is pretty much 10 year old technology, and was widely regarded as inferior to the Play Station, the graphics on this game are quite staggering, and the gameplay very innovative.
Best 2D shootemup ever?
Almost certainly.
Steve 7:26 PM [+] (0) comments
Hah!!!
Emulators are wonderful things.
For ages there were no usable Sega Saturn emulators, and for ages I had no way of playing Radiant Silvergun on my real Saturn without paying around £130 on ebay.
So this morning I found a fully functional Saturn emulator and then managed to make a downloaded copy of Radiant Silvergun work on it.
This isn't a perfect solution, as I'm restricted to using the keyboard to play the thing... far from ideal, but I dare say sooner or later they'll update the emulator to accept keyboard input.
Still... game collecting being what it is, one of these days I'll actually stump up the money to buy the game anyway.
Labels: consoles, emulators, games
Steve 5:57 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, May 02, 2005
It's been a pretty good weekend.On the 'eye front', the doctor gave me pretty much a free hand in deciding my own dosage of drops (which seems pretty irregular to me), so I kept it at 1 per hour till last night, and I'm dropping it to one every two hours from this morning.
That's a high dosage for such an extended period of time, but all the info I read says severe or persistant iritis should be treated aggresively, and that's exactly how I've treated it. Seems to be working so far.
So... fun stuff.
Andrea and I have been doing the retro gaming thing quite a bit lately. Lots of head to head games like Mario Kart on snes, Mario Kart 64 on N64, and more recently, head to head Tetris on 2 Gameboys.
It's kinda funny. Andrea manages to effectively slaughter me on Nintendo games, but then when we play on PS2, the tables are turned.
Labels: games, iritis, medical
Steve 8:21 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, March 27, 2005
My new lap time at the Nurburgring - 6:28.766 set in a Minolta Toyota 88C-VHaving gone round the circuit at that speed, I can honestly say that for Stefan Bellof to set an all time lap record of 6:11.3, *in the real world*, he must have been absolutely insane!!!
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 7:26 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Latest best time at the Nurburgring on GT4 - 7 mins 10 secs, set in a Jaguar XJ220.I'm currently slogging my way through endurance races in the Jag to earn enough cash to buy a proper GT car... expect times to drop considerably when I get one.
What's really surprising me about the game at the moment is, 24 hour endurance races really do last *24* hours. Yikes!
Good job there's an option that allows you to switch into management mode while the race is running, so the car drives itself. All you have to do is start and finish the race in manual control. Still... 24 hours is a bit extreme.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 2:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, March 17, 2005
It's been quite a stressy week. Seems everyone wants a piece of me and my time, when all I've wanted is to be left alone. Oh well.So last night I grabbed a few hours to myself, and completed the first race in the 1000 miles series on GT4.... 25 laps of the Nurburgring in a Ginetta on *hard tyres*, setting a best lap time of 8:41.335.
A very respectable time for such an old car on those tyres. Actually.... it's a bloody brilliant time, and I challenge anyone to beat it in the same machine any time soon.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 11:27 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, March 14, 2005
What a great weekend.On saturday we went for a bimble round Stony Stratford, for no particular reason, other than it's a nice place to go, and stopped into The Vaults Bar for a drink.
Andrea's not at all familiar with the finer points of Milton keynes, so what better place to start?
Next we ambled on over to Willen Lake, and stopped for munchies in the resteraunt by the lake. Not the cheapest place on earth, but otherwise unpretentious, and a very easy place to just drop into when you don't feel like cooking.
Sunday... more Gran Turismo sillyness. We nipped into town and I picked up a Speedster force feedback wheel.
I dunno. I'm not sure if I should've got the Logitch wheel or if I just suck with wheels, period. Either way... I find the game almost unplayable using the thing... and after losing around a minute and a half on my laptime at the Nurburgring, even after lots of practice and optimising the wheel settings, I've gone back to using the pad.
Playing this morning, I've gone back to complete some of the slower, less exciting races, and in doing so, won a 1964 Ginetta G4. This is a tiny little British sports car that initially only has around 90bhp, but weighs in at around 400kg, so it's very nippy. Just for fun though, I stuck a stage two turbo in the thing.
Hahahaha.
Absolutely mental. I highly recommend it, just for laughs.
Labels: games, gran turismo, Stony Stratford
Steve 1:07 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, March 11, 2005
My latest time at the Nurburgring - 7:26.695.Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 5:20 PM [+] (0) comments
Ok... just a little more GT3 Nurburgring stuff.
The real world outright lap record for the place is 6:11.3, set in qualifying by the late Stefan Bellof in a Porsche 956 Group C car. His race lap record was 6:25.91. He crashed out later in that race, and was killed 2 seasons later while attempting to overtake another car *around the outside* through Eau Rouge at Spa.
Mental!
Evo magazine have challenged readers to beat the GT3 time set by their man Richard Meaden, of 5:26.547 in a '92 Nissan R92CP Le mans race car.
My own personal best time so far is a miserable 7:50.718, set in an OPTION Stream Z '04. Basically a Nissan 350Z that been tuned to hell and back.
Expect this to drop over time, as I gain more experience and better cars... and expect updated times to be posted here.
That should give players of the game something to aim for :-)
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 1:17 PM [+] (0) comments
So, Gran Turismo 4 then eh?
Blimey.
My very first impression was one of annoyance. I transferred funds across from my GT3 game save, and bought a nice funky Caterham 7, and then went and did the first lisence tests before going on to race.
However... when it came to entering a race, the game informed me that I couldn't enter, as the Caterham was a specialist car. Hmm. Nice of them to tell me that before I bought it.
Not wanting to lose all that money by just selling the car for a fraction of what I'd paid for it, I promptly deleted the whole game save, and started again.
Arse.
Second attempt.
I picked up a Renault Clio V6 Mk2, and got stuck right in.
Now... I'll spare you all the details of everything that follwed and just tell you what it's like.
ABSOBLOODYLUTELY AMAZING!!!
Yes, the graphics are fantastic, and noticably improved over GT3, yes the car handling is equally fantastic and improved over GT3, yes there are 700 cars, which is vastly more than GT3, and yes, there are 50 tracks, which is again vastly more than GT3.....
But all of this is nothing, as there are only 2 words you need to know relating to this game...
Nurburgring Nordschleife!!!
Huge, ultra realistic, and utterly terrifying in the best possible way.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 8:23 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
Oh! Oh! Oh!Gran Turismo 4 is released here tomorrow.
Expect much game related waffle... or a complete absence of my presence, depending on just how engrossed I get.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 10:36 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, February 18, 2005
After a week of fairly frenzied.. umm.. activity, I'm taking a couple of days to catch up on 'me' time.I'm half way through season 2 of Babylon 5 now, and it's turning out to be quite excellent... and just as I'd been told, it's the storylines and characters that make it all hang together so well. The acting varies from fairly dreadful to really rather good in places, the sets are on the cheap and cheerful side, and the effects are showing their age... but the overall result is much greater than the sum of its parts. Good stuff.
Andrea demonstrated her skills at video gaming this week, taking the pad on Mario Kart 64 and showing she's no 'okay, I'll have a quick try' player. She fairly put my own abilities on that game to shame.
For me, this is very exciting, as I've been missing a competative playing partner for a long time. She's now honing her skills on Gran Turismo for a couple of weeks before challenging me to some serious racing. This being my absolute fave game ever, and something I pride myself in being very skilled at, I'm really looking forward to facing her on it.
Labels: games
Steve 11:06 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
After staying awake for waaaaay longer than my body found agreeable, I managed to flip from night to day mode in one night last night. Wasn't easy, but I did it.So today I got up at 5am(ish) and sat around till a reasonable hour to text Andrea.
I'm liking this very much. So we may be 100 and something miles apart, but there's something very nice about being able to have a chat in the morning over breakfast, as opposed to me being fast asleep till the middle of the afternoon.
So after chatting again on the phone while waiting for a bus, I nipped into town to pay the rent, and while in town I chanced upon a new toy... and a bit of a bargain too.
Now I've always liked the idea of handheld games consoles, but have never really been too grabbed by the usual Nintendo thing. So how chuffed was I when the retro gaming shop I often visit had a stock of brand new (though long discontinued) NeoGeo Colour Pocket consoles, boxed, with 6 games for £80?
It's retro, it's fairly exclusive, it's certainly different.... and best of all, among the 6 bundled games... it has Metal Slug. I've been a fan of the Metal Slug series of games since I started playing them on a NeoGeo emulator on my pc a couple of years ago.
Much fun.
I should look and see what the other games are (haven't even bothered to look, coz I've only been interested in Metal Slug)
Pac-Man, King Of The Fighters R2, Fatal Fury: First Contact, Neo Turf Masters and Samurai Showdown 2.
Not bad going for a bundled collection.
Labels: consoles, games, sleep
Steve 11:52 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, January 14, 2005
More crazy shit from this game.Police helicopter: "Hey, I can see my house from here"..."Would you shut up!"
"Stop taking pictures of women and shoot him!"
Then having evaded the helicopter, I jumped off a cliff into a lake, and my guy shouts "I hate gravity!"
In a hut at the bottom of the cliff, catching my breath, and a police 4x4 leaps off the cliff and lands on its roof outside the hut. The cops climb out and are coming for me when the 4x4 explodes and kills them.
The people who made this game are truly nuts.
Best game ever!!!
Labels: games
Steve 4:33 PM [+] (0) comments
I feel the need to waffle about GTA San Andreas, coz the game is rather amazing me.
Why amazed?
It's the depth of the world it creates.
For sure there are missions and objectives that need to be completed to actually beat the thing, but you can effectively choose to ignore these and just 'live' in the virtual world that's been created.
The environment itself is absolutely huge, taking quite some time to travel between the borders of just one of the three sections, even on/in a fast car or bike. If you choose to walk, it can take ages. The variety of scenery or setting is extremely varied too, from your local 'hood', to the local downtown area, the beach, business parks, docks and industrial areas, sleepy little farm communities, posh communities in the hills, urban cityscapes, you name it... it's in there. Each area being populated with the relevant kind of inhabitant... the oportunities for just messing around are vast.
Then there's the things you can do, like going shopping for clothes, tattoos, getting a haircut, going to the gym, entering lowrider competitions, being a pimp or vigilante.... not to mention doing burglaries or muggings, or just plain slaughtering opposing gangs in street warfare.
Oh yeah. One of my fave features is the 'radio'. Whenever you steal a car, it plays one of a number of radio stations, and if you don't like the chosen station, you can flick trhough to find one that suits you. Most are music based, but there's this one particular 'talk radio' station that I actually sat and listened to outside of 'my house' for an hour, before it looped and started over. Very *very* funny shows.
Hell, it'd be worth buying the game just to sit and listen to the radio.
Another really funny feature is the police helicopter.
If you go on a cop killing spree, which I've done on occasion, just for the hell of it, they call up a chopper to go after you. This in itself is no big deal... but what the guys in the chopper say to each other is hysterical.
"Shoot him!"... "I can't shoot him. I'm a pacifist. Scare him!"
"If I shoot him, do I get a medal?"... "You'll get two!"
The lines are funny enough, but the tone of voice has me rolling on the floor in stitches. Very very camp.
You can even have fun just wandering or driving around and watching what people do, and the daft things that happen.
There was this occasion when I was walking through a city area, and this cop went to cross the road and got ran over by a police car. Or the time I was cruising along the freeway and a Winnebago lost control for no apparent reason, went over the barrier and crashed in some wasteland. I went down to take a look, and watched the driver trying to get out of the burning wreck.. The thing blew up, sent him flying through the air, and he landed in a bloody mess.
Ohhh.... and the multi-car pile ups are just awesome.
I happened to crash in an area approaching an airport. Cars kept coming along and smashing into my car, and each other. Then my car blew up, and as the fire spread, all the others started blowing up too.... people running around, burning, screaming, dying etc. It looked like a war zone.
Brilliant! :-D
Labels: games
Steve 3:34 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Ah, video gaming heaven... kinda.Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
I'm finding this game so much fun, maybe coz it's just so wrong.
Political correctness? What's that?
Its kind of a pity The Getaway doesnt offer this kind of freedom. In that game, you had to complete all the missions before you could go free roaming, and then when you did, there wasn't much to do. But I preferred the real setting of Central London to the fictional american locations in San Andreas.
Ah well... time for some more meaningless violence and gratuitous bad language.
Fun fun fun :-D
Labels: games
Steve 5:04 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, December 12, 2004
So...er...
Finished Half Life 2. Some bits I didn't like, some bits I absolutely loved. Overall... good game, and worth every penny.
This phone continues to impress. It's still only on it's second charge. 7 days on standbye and two short calls, and its still 3/4 charged. How cool is that?
Anything else to report?
er...
umm...
I guess that's a no.
Stay tuned for our next exciting episode, blah blah blah....
Steve 6:08 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, December 09, 2004
I know it's a cliche, but the graphics on Half Life 2 really are so good, and it really does draw you in so much that I actually caught myself walking home from the shop yesterday thinking "Hmm, these graphics are good."Time to go get my head tested, or just get a life.
Oh dear. *Shakes head at self*
Labels: games
Steve 4:18 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, December 05, 2004
I have to say, I'm seriously impressed with the battery life of this new mobile phone.They quote a maximum life of 400 hours, which I take with a pinch of salt, and also say that it has to be charged and run flat several times before it it gives its maximum life.
So... it's still holding a quarter of it's first charge after almost 5 days on standbye, including one hour of talktime. Now that's no-where near the theoretical 16 days maximum, but hell... I'll take it.
In other news... if you can call it that... I've been playing Half Life 2. As one of the 'big three' first person shootemups released this year, and considering I was so impressed with Farcry, I figured I'd give it a look.
Tricky one this. I dont think the graphics are quite as pleasing as Farcry... not quite sure why... maybe it's the lack of jungle. I find some of the settings to be a bit restrictive. Gameplay-wise, tricky again. There's more puzzle solving involved which doesn't really float my boat, but there's also a more thought provoking use of weaponry.... more specifically, the gravity gun really makes you consider new possibilities in methods of killing zombies.
There's certainly a lot of variety in terms of settings and situations, and the characterisation of the people you encounter is very impressive... especially 'Dog'. This bloody great big attack robot that behaves like a labrador puppy.... cute.
Is it a good game? Absolutetly. Should you buy it? If you have a meaty enough computer and like first person shooters... most definitely. Is it as good as Farcry? Tricky.... from my perspective, I'm not enjoying it as much, but from a design point of view, it has more depth. I guess the definitive answer would be 'maybe'.
Steve 2:22 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Yesterday turned out to be quite interesting.I went into town, just to pay in a cheque and do a spot of window shopping. So I was stood in the 02 shop and after chatting with a sales assistant for a bit decided bugger it... I'd buy an XDAII. All was fine right up till the point she needed proof of signature. They don't accept the card I use, and I didn't have any of the other things they'd have accepted. Talk about stupid. For the sake of some dumb beurocratic red tape, I couldn't buy my widget, 02 lost out on a regular income from the data tarrif, and the shop lost out on the sale of a not altogether cheap piece of kit. Idiots.
In a rather poor mood, I wandered off to a games shop and picked up a copy of Half Life 2. (Bitch to install, but it looks great. Haven't spent much time on it yet.)
Anyway... that would've been it, but I figured I'd do my usual lap of the shopping centre before going home, and in doing so I walked past...er... into a gadget shop.
Oops.
For the past couple of weeks I've been looking at this Rio 5gig MP3 player... and walked away every single time. So I was stood in the gadget shop and looking over the MP3 players in there... some that I'd not seen before elsewhere... when this sales assistant who really knew his stuff approached me and proceeded to explain in great deal the finer points of various of the MP3 players. Now this was very refreshing, coz in Dixons, you're lucky if the assistants even know their own name, much less any technical details about the stuff they're trying to sell (though it actually seems they aren't trying to sell anything at all, they're that disinterested in serving the customers).
Anyway... after about 15 mins of listening to the guy, being given demos of each one, I looked at the guy, chuckled and said "Right... I need to go to the bank. I'll be back in 5 mins."
5 mins later I was £200 poorer and in possession of a very nice Creative Zen Touch 20gig MP3 player. I struggle getting my head around the fact that this tiny little thing has the same storage capacity as my laptop, but there it is.
So most of last night and this morning has been spent transferring most of my MP3 collection onto the thing, and then working my way through ripping much of my CD collection. It's heavy going and my eyes are killing me now... but boy is it worth it. Nearly 2 gigs, and 426 tunes done so far. The idea of having *all* my fave tunes to hand wherever I go is very appealing.
Labels: annoyed, gadgets, games, music, phones
Steve 11:48 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
What can I tell you?I'm feeling rather noisy at the mo. Got music blasting.
Yesterday was a movie day for me. Picked up DVDs of Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (no need to talk about them as I did that at length when I first saw them), and the directors cut of Dawn Of The Dead (the remake, not the original).
I wasn't expecting too much of 'D of the D', remakes being what they are, and the George Romero version being a classic... but y'know... it kicks arse.
Very very impressive. If you like 28 Days Later, you'll like this.
In retro(ish) gaming mode, I picked up a copy of Daytona USA 2001 for Dreamcast. After two pretty shoddy versions on the Saturn, and reports that this was waaaaay better, I had high hopes.
Well... yup.. it's at least arcade perfect, if not better, but y'know... I still don't like it. Maybe it's just rose tinted spectacles making me remeber the game as better than it was, or the lack of three friends in the seats next to me trying to run me off the road. Whatever it is... it left me cold.
Steve 1:52 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Hah!After I dunno how long trying, (I've had the game for several years... so it's quite a while) I beat the Tahiti Road time trial on Gran Turismo 3 by 5/1000ths of a second.
Now I like to think I'm pretty good at the game, so to only beat it by such a tiny margin after such a long time trying just shows how bloody tough the final couple of time trials are.
So all I have to do now is beat the Complex String circuit.
Yeah right!
At the moment I'm 10 secs a lap off the pace of the slowest fixed time, and 20 secs off the time needed to win... so this is gonna take some doing. Saying that... I've shaved 8 secs off the time I set an hour ago and there's several places I know I can go much faster if I can just get the technique right, so we'll see.
I just like the idea of completing GT3 100% before GT4 comes out in a month or so.
Update:
Shaved another 13 secs off my time... still looking for another 6 secs though.
I know I've got at least another 3 secs in me, but I dunno where I'm gonna find the other 3, coz I'm already on the ragged edge. I must be doing something wrong, but I dunno what... or where. I know where it's not though... I'm taking a 2nd gear series of bends in 4th... lol.
Labels: games, gran turismo
Steve 1:44 AM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, October 02, 2004
You'll be thrilled to know there will be no more Farcry blog entries.I just completed it.
Needless to say, I rather like the game, though the ending was something of an anti-climax.
Anyway... what next? Doom 3 perhaps? Dunno if I can be bothered with that one. From what I've read it's just Doom with very flashy graphics, and to be honest, I always found Doom to be a bit one dimensional in terms of gamneplay.
Labels: games
Steve 8:02 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
I know, I know, you don't wanna hear me prattling on even more about playing Farcry, but tough... coz I'm gonna :-PUp till now I'd rather gotten into the swing of the two main settings. You're either stalking through the jungle (I take a very stealthy approach, down in the grass hunting each enemy soldier individually) or working your way through bases and scientific research centres (these sections are very reminiscent of the film Aliens.)
So tonight I was rather caught by surprise and had to adapt my playing style accordingly.
There's this river you have to get down, and I tried for several hours to sneak along the banks on foot, but after several hours of getting shot to shit I tried a different approach.
I stole a gunboat and went storming down the river at top speed. Now this in itself is nothing special, but after a time there's a pontoon bridge placed across the river with machine guns covering it from multiple angles. Solution? Charge at it in the boat at full speed, and as you hit it, the boat takes off, but always explodes when it hits the water, so the trick is to jump out of the boat while it's in mid-air, land in the water, and then swim for your life underwater till you find cover.
Much fun, and quite refreshing.
In non-game realted news, I've been helping a friend (who's just bought a house) to decorate the place. It has to be said, I don't like painting at all, but for free beer and the oportunity to laugh when she gets paint all over her arse, it's been quite entertaining.
Anything else happening? Nope... not a sausage. Sleep, computer, slapping paint around. Any normal person would be bored senseless, but I'm rather loving it at the moment.
Labels: games
Steve 7:53 AM [+] (0) comments
Friday, September 24, 2004
I finally got to see my (well, a) doctor again today for a checkup after taking a course of antibiotics for epididimytus. I was a little concerned as I still get the odd niggling twinge, but he says it's nothing to worry about and that I'm absolutely fine.Good news indeed. I'll keep an eye on it though as lumps, bumps and unexpected things going on down there can't be ignored.
In other news... heh... game game game. I sat up till 10:30 this morning since around 5pm yesterday playing Farcry... almost non-stop. Addictive doesn't even begin to describe it.
It's one of those games where you keep telling youself "just one more go... 10 more mins... just so I can see what's round this corner, or over that hill." Then you get killed before you get round that corner or reach the other side of the hill, and so start again.
A word of advice. If you have to be up in the morning, have somewhere to go, or something important to do, do *not* start playing Farcry, coz there's absolutely no such thing as 'just a quick go' on this game.
Steve 6:37 PM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, September 23, 2004
So pretty much all of last night was spent playing Farcry, and I have to say, I'm hooked.First person shooters have always come a distant second for me in terms of games, as I've always been a driving game nut, and the only time I've every bothered with one on a pc was with Quake3 Arena, and like now, that was just to see if my laptop could actually handle it. Apart from that one game, I've always used consoles to get my shooting fix, playing stuff like Doom on 32X and Medal Of Honour on PS2.
So why has Farcry got me so excited? Well... apart from the graphics (screenshots here) the playability, in-game physics and AI are utterly amazing.
You can hop into viehicles like jeeps, buggies, boats, and most amuzingly, a hanglider, which is always a laugh, especially when they have onboard heavy machine guns. The entertainment to be had from sweeping round the shores of a little island in a powerboat and shooting hell out of everyone on the shore with a heavy machine gun is second to non. Also, you'll never feel quite as vulnerable as when you get fired on from a black hawk helicopter while dangling from a hang glider.
The physics? Well, apart from how things get flung around by explosions in a realistic manner, what I like most is how you can push things around. If you can move something in real life, you can move it here. This may sound like no big deal, but there are occasions when it can be very handy, and even amuzing. How about blocking a doorway with a table and boxes? Or better yet, rolling a load of oil drums down a hill into a group of oncoming baddies?
As for the AI... well, things have come a very long way since the likes of Doom, or even Quake3. The enemies are smart, and only predictable in that they do the things you or I would do in a given situation.
If you go charging into a place all guns blazing, they run for cover and then shoot hell out of you en mass, from behind cover. If you try sneaking in through dense jungle, they'll just stand around wasting time and chatting, till they spot you. Its when they spot you that things get interesting. They dont just all come charging at you from one direction... they'll outflank you, slowly surround you, and then move in for the kill. If you manage to survive, they'll bring in reinforcements by hellicopter.
Now all of those things by themselves are very impressive, but what really makes it all hang together so perfectly is the non-linear, freeform approach it takes.
Yes there are certain objectives that have to be achieved, but how you go about achieving those objectives is totally up to you.
A good example of this is a scene on an old aircraft carrier. There's a boat up on the top deck that you have to steal, but when you finally reach that deck, you find yourself fired on from several directions, and worse... there's a back hawk buzzing around shooting seven shades of shit out of you. Now you could run around ducking for cover and returning fire whenever you get the chance, but I found an easier method....
I dived back down the hatch I'd crawled out of and went back the way I'd come, trying to reach the chain gun mounted on the lower deck. The plan was to reach that gun and blow crap out of the chopper. Things didn't work out that way in the end.
I found a spot on a walkway where I had just enough cover to duck down as the hellicopter fired on me, and then the second he stopped firing, I stood up and fired on the gunner. Much to my amuzement, he fell out, and left a very satisfying red stain in the sea where he floated. On a later attempt at the same section, I fired on the engine area of the chopper and the whole thing went down. Now it's not often I get *really* excited by an event in a game, but if my neighbours were awake, god knows what they'd have though to hear me shout (rather loudly) "HAH!!!" out of the blue.
Quite simply, there's this element of things just making sense.
Back up on the top deck, there's this big gap that's been spanned by a couple of bridges, these being held up by thin chains. Now in the firefight those chains got hit, and broke... hence no more bridges. When I finally realised I had to cross that gap, I had to teeter across on an rusty old girder. Not very safe, it has to be said.
So on my next attempt (yeah, I died rather a lot on that aircraft carrier) I made a point not to shoot too near to the chains, and was able to get across the gap far more easilly. This proved to be a double edged sword though, for in making it easier for me to cross, it also left the baddies with a line of retreat to much more effective cover. Shoot the chains and blow the crap out of the guards, or leave them and have a tougher fight on your hands before you can get across? It's your choice.... and it's choices like that which make this game so compelling.
Best game ever made? I don't know, never having played Half-Life or Doom 3, but it's certainly the best first person shooter I've ever played. Not sure if it beats Gran Turismo 3 for best game. If I'm still playing it in 3 years, then yeah. We'll see.
Labels: games
Steve 5:44 PM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
I installed a new graphics card in my pc yesterday, since on board graphics are always a bit pants.The Sapphire Radeon 9600SE is dead easy to install and deffinitely faster than the on board chipset, but having read a few reviews since fitting it, I wish I'd read them before buying it. Obviously I've had nothing in the same price range to compare it with, but it would seem that it's actually something of a lame duck in terms of outright 3D performance.
I guess thats what happens when you just wander into PC World with the intent of buying a card without doing your reseacrh first
Still... no big deal really, since I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means. Most of the games I play are on emulators and the Namco System 22 and Sega Model 2 emulators I'm messing around with like it just fine.
Update:
Ok, sod all that. I don't care what the reviewers say about this card.... I just installed Farcry on my pc to give the card a good workout and it's absolutely breathtaking. So the graphics settings may all be on medium to get a fluid framerate, but when it looks this good, who cares? It does make me wonder just how good it'd look with everything on 'Very High' settings, but even so... I'm gobsmacked.
Labels: games, graphics cards
Steve 1:13 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, September 04, 2004
Back in the world of doing stuff for something to do.Not quite retro gaming, so much as recent but defunct gaming.
I picked up a Sega Dreamcast from the same store I got the Saturn from. Interesting contraption, and I can see why it failed to sell.
Sega seem to have concentrated so hard on getting good gfx that they totally forgot about ergonomics. They joypad has to be one of the most horribly uncomfortable controllers I've ever laid my hands on. After using a PS1 and PS2 pad for so long, this thing seems little more than a joke.
The games I picked up with it are an equally curious bunch.
Sega Rally 2: The gfx look great, untill it starts moving, and then you realise it has a worse framerate than Sega Rally on the Saturn, so while it's extremely pretty, it doesn't feel as nice to play.
Sega GT: This wants SO bad to be Gran Turismo, and I guess it isn't bad really... it just isn't Gran Turismo.
Ferrari 355 Challenge: Nice. It's Ferraris... what else can I say?
Crazy Taxi: Hehehehehehe.... yup, I like this a lot. Haven't laughed at a game so much in ages.
The thing I can't help noticing about these games is the overriding Japanese feel of the games... the same as on the Saturn. I dont know why Sega games come out that way, coz Sony are equally Japanese, but they feel entirely different. Maybe it's just Sega's arcade roots seeping into the games.
Steve 2:35 PM [+] (0) comments
Saturday, August 21, 2004
Welcome to geeksville, where the geeking geekiness never ceases to geek.Er... what?
Anyway.
More emulation tinkerings, so feel free to close your browser and read no further, coz it almost certainly won't interest you.
Back to the Amiga emulator today, coz I found a site with loads of adf format Amiga games, and better yet, I found a configuration on my emulator that'll actually run them.
What games did I grab? I know you really wanna know. (or not)
Battlechess, F1 GP, Hard Drinin', Hunter, Knights Of The Sky, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Lotus 2, Pinball Fantasies, Road Rash, Scorched Tanks, Stunt Car Racer, Vroom, and Epic.
And for a change, my concience is completely clear while downloading these, coz I bought all of them years ago and have the floppies in the loft.
It's rather interesting to play them again after such a long time, coz people say you remember such games with rose tinted spectacles, but to be honest, even though they all look shockingly dated, they're still great fun to play.
Sadly though, I can't find the game I really wanted... Jimmy White's Whirlwind Snooker.
Steve 3:02 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
More games.I'm sure no-one cares what I think about a bunch of ancient games for a defunct games console, but since this is my blog, I'm gonna waffle about them anyway.
Virtua Racing: Hmm. tricky. Low rez solid polygons with a very low viewpoint make it bloody hard to see where you're going, but there's a certain charm to this that's growing on me. Oddly though, I think I preferred this on Sega's 32X Genesis addon thingie.
Virtua Fighter: Classy. Nice control system, good graphics which compare well with beatemups from the same time period on the PS1. Pity I'm so crap at it.
Daytona USA (CCE): For something that's supposed to be an improved re-release to make up for the diabolical original version, this is pretty shoddy. The graphics are rough, the control system lacks any kind of feel, the car handling is primitive beyond belief. I loved this game in the arcades, spent a small fortune playing it, but this..... nah. Poor.
Sega Touring Car Championshp: If I dont miss my guess, this was supposed to be Sega's answer to Gran Turismo on PS1.
Hah! They're having a laugh.
Apart from only having 4 cars and seriously rough graphics, the cars are totally uncontrollable. Give it some power in a corner and the car's all over the place. It's not just bad... it's unplayable.
Now here's the thing. All of these games, and the ones I got yesterday are 3D, and the Saturn was never able to cut it against the PS1 at 3D games... but that's not what I bought it for.
What it's the absolute master at is 2D shootemups, maybe even surpassing the NeoGeo in that respect. Sadly by the time it was released over here, 2D games were passe and everyone wanted 3D, so most of the really good 2D stuff never got imported to the UK. Still... I'm keeping my eyes open, coz there's bound to be some classic game hiding in a bargain bin somewhere or other.
While I'm on the subject... that shop's gonna give my bank balance a real hammering if I'm not careful. When I went in there today, they'd just put a Philips CDI in the window (never a big hit, so it'll probably end up quite collectable) and the guy behind the counter informed me they had a Goldstar 3DO stashed away upstairs.
I was sorely tempted.
Labels: games
Steve 12:35 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, August 16, 2004
So I've been sat here for a few hours now playing these games... time to give some brief impressions.Klockwork Knight... pretty pants to be honest. This was a very early game and it shows. Bog standars platform affair with quasi 3D graphics tacked on. Doubt I'll be playing it much.
Sega Rally... well... it's Sega Rally. Lots of fun for a quick blast, easy to get to grips with, but very tight time limits, so you probably have to practice like mad to complete it, not that there's much there to complete, so boredom will probably set in before that happens.
Manx TT Superbikes.... hysterical. They take realism and throw it out of the window, and just tell you to go fast... go very very fast. Dont worry about hitting the buildings, it wont hurt. There's probably no more longevity in terms of vaiety than Sega Rally, but it's just so much fun riding like a lunatic, and the graphics have such a bright breezey feel to them, I think I'll keep coming back to this.
Christmas Nights.... Oh my. Whoever designed this game must have been doing some serious drugs. It reminds me of a cross between Sonic The Hedgehog in 3D crossed with Spyro The Dragon on acid. Very very surreal, and utterly charming, even though I dont have a clue what I'm doing most of the time.
Yup, much fun. I think I'll be going back to the shop tomorrow to see what else they have, coz with games this good, this cheap... I wanna grab as many as I possibly can.
Labels: games
Steve 11:14 PM [+] (0) comments
Ahhh... retro gaming heaven.
Regular readers (I think I have some) may recall not long ago I mentioned trying to run a Sega Saturn emulator on my laptop, and failing miserably. Well, a new retro gaming shop has opened in town... mostly PS1s, Dreamcasts and Nintendo 64s, but just on the offchance, I asked the guy behind the counter of he had any Saturns, and what do you know? They had one, stashed away in the back.
Better yet, it came with a copy of Christmas Nights which turns out to be very collectable as it was a fairly limited release.
Playing games on the machine is quite a peculiar experience. The graphics really do kinda suck, being like sub-standard PS1 gfx, but the gameplay... well... it's Sega, and while they may have a crappy reputation for abandoning their users with unsupported hardware, their games were always second to none (though nintendo may disagree).
So at the moment I have Christmas Nights, Sega Rally, Manx TT Superbike and Clockwork Knight... but with the Saturn games in that shop selling for between 99p and £2.99, you can be pretty sure I'll wind up buying everything they've got in pretty short order. Bet they don't get their hands on any copies of Radiant Silvergun any time soon though.
Steve 6:57 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, August 06, 2004
Mame is a peculiar emulator. Frustrating even.They keep 'improving' it, to make it closer and closer to the original arcade hardware it emulates, but each time they do, it seems to become slower, and less compatible with the game roms that are out there.
So technically they're right, as the roms only stop working coz they're not dumped or ripped in a truly authentic structure, or something, and need nothing but a simple redump, but when most of the roms you find on the web are for older versions of mame and you have to really hunt to find ones that work, these 'improvemnts' become nothing more than a pain in the arse.
On the plus side, I can now play R-Type, R-Type II and best of all, R-Type Leo. All classic and truly brilliant sideways scolling, totally mental, arcade shootemups.
Also on the emulator front... last week I downloaded a Sega Saturn emulator, something I've been waiting for for a long time. The Saturn being a very complex piece of hardware, it's taken a long time for any emulator to even 'claim' the ability to run commercial games software.
So, having got the emulator and OS rom file, it's taken around a week to find a game image I wanted to try on it... ie, not huge, and reputedly a decent game... in this case Radiant Silvergun, a legendary shootemup.
After much messing around converting the file into a useable format, guess what? It didn't run.
Bastard!
Think I'll give up on Saturn emulation for now. What with the size of the files, the complexities of file conversion and unreliablity of the emulator, it's just not worth the effort.
Back in the real world for a moment, *shudder* the trip to Derby is indeed on. My friend phoned me last night... waking me up in the process, and asked if I was still up for the trip. It was kinda funny, coz she was asking if I was gonna be up in the morning, and I said I was... so she (she knows me well) asked if that meant I was gonna be up coz I'd been up all night or if I was gonna get some sleep before then.
"I was sleeping... remember?"
I had to chuckle.
Great thunder storm last night... pity I slept through most of it. I was vaguely aware of some very loud crashes and booms very nearby as I drifted back to sleep, which made for some interesting dreams.
It must've been a good one, coz when I got up an hour or so ago, my laptop was off, meaning the power must've been out for a while. I never turn the laptop off unless I'm going out for some time.
Pity I missed it, but... sleep is good :-)
Steve 1:45 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, July 22, 2004
Ever played a video game that cheats?I don't mean being just unfairly difficult, but actually breaking the rules of the game to give itself an unfair advantage.
So there I am in a 70s bike series, pootling around on an ancient Suzuki air cooled 750 two stroke triple, and what does one of the computer riders have? Only a bloody 1981 Ducati 900SS.
I won the race anyway, coz I'm just that damned good (and dirty... I ran him into the barriers so he fell off), and next race he's only riding a 1986 Yamaha FZR 1000.
Bloody cheat!
Labels: games
Steve 2:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, July 19, 2004
Ahh... video game time.I've always had a soft spot for motorbikes. Used to ride them in my teens, albeit just small ones, but still. So when I spotted RS II Riding Spirits, a game that's supposed to be Gran Turismo on bikes, I figured I'd give ot a go.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Okay, it's not remotely as slick as Gran Turismo, and just like real bikes, if you don't know what you're doing, it's a bitch to keep the things pointing in the right direction, but even so... it's pretty good fun.
Labels: games
Steve 11:27 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Hahaha... oh my god, I'm driving like a complete twat!I've always been into driving games and consider myself something of a specialist at Gran Turismo. Having completed all of my PS2 games though, I was bored so nipped down to the local shop and picked up a copy of WRC Extreme II, since they had it pretty cheap there.
This is NOT how to drive... I'm all over the place. Hehehe... much fun.
Labels: games
Steve 8:48 PM [+] (0) comments
Monday, February 16, 2004
Not a bad day, all in all.My sister Dawn came round with Shannon, my niece, and after chatting and watching a video they wanted to see, I showed them the joys of The Getaway on PS2.
I guess it was a bit irresponsible of me to let an 8 year old see a game with such colourful language, but she seemed entirely unfazed by it and happily trundled round the streets of London at a nice sedate and safe pace, obeying all of the traffic lights and staying on the correct side of the road.
I couldn't help but laugh as when I had a quick blast, screaming down the middle of Oxford Street, smashing into assorted cars, Shannon looked at me, giggled and said "You're a bad man."
So later I went into town and finally got my bank to sort out this cheque they've been sitting on. It seems because I deposited two cheques of identical value in a short space of time, some bright spark or other noticed this and came to the conclusion that the second was a duplicate, and as such shouldn't be credited to my account.
Dumbass.
These people aren't paid to think, so why do they insist on trying?
Anyway, the money should finally be available by tomorrow morning, which is always a good thing.