CelShady's Blog - 2old2play

The lost

Well, it has been quite some time since I checked in on the world of 2o2p. Well, not necessarily that long ago since I checked, just a while ago since I wrote something. Summer came and went with decent weather and motorcycling. I've been playing Bioshock, PGR4 and a couple of other titles - good times! I've also been playing the Hellgate: London beta and still am (EU servers), and it's quite the good times. I really hope the RTM of this game brings a solid consumer base with it, because it is really worth getting into - especially if you liked Diablo 1/2. Also got a pre-order for Assassin's Creed coming up, and, of course, on November 20th I will be submerged forever in the quagmire that is Mass Effect. It's quite possible I won't be able to mastarbait* after playing that game.

*Mastarbait == masurbate == loving

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LOTRO and stuff

So, I quit Vanguard due to the horrible problems I kept having with the client crashing and the grind nature of the game. Instead, I managed to get myself into the beta for LOTRO and I'm still playing as it went live yesterday (server: Elendilmir, main char: Eloras in case you play). It's quite fun so far and the quality is defintely very good for an MMO at launch. Since the open beta was capped at lvl 15, I've just now started exploring the content after that, but so far so good.

Also bought the Shivering Isles expansion for Obilvion and have been enjoying playing through part of the main story line. And, I've only got 4 achievments left in Crackdown, one of which is the Co-Op completion achievment. If you haven't gotten it yet, but would like to get it, hit me up (GT: Cel Shady). It's should be a fairly quick run through of all the time trials to get it. Then there's the 2 orb achievments... urgh, I guess I'll just have to print out maps and methodically go through and get everything. Maybe I can muster up the energy....

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Could have been dead...

.. for all the rest of the world knows. Sorry to disappoint, I am not. I was back in Europe for just over a month in dec/jan and then got damn busy at work so I kind of just laid off the games for a while (obsessively, that is). About a month ago Vanguard: Soh grabbed me and it hasn't let go yet. Oh, and I did manage to get some Crackdown played in the middle of all this. Rather entertaining game, I have to say. I still need to go back and level up the driving if I want to get any of those achievments, but I just can't see the point right now - jumping is what that game is all about! Anyways, good to see y'all are doing good. Heading out to see "300" in a bit. I have too high hopes, me thinks. We'll see.

/Peace!

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On Splinter Cells

SPOILER ALERT! If you haven't played Splinter Cell: Double Agent and don't want to know anything about it before you do, don't read any further.

I've been a huge fan of the Splinter Cell series since the first game came out, and it was with some anticipation I started playing the latest addition to the series (Double Agent) a month or so ago. Well, I finally got around to finishing it up last week, and I'm somewhat disappointed. The narrative style in the first half of the game didn't make any sense to me since there wasn't nearly enough of it to convey the story right. Also, the JBA HQ timed missions really didn't really do it for me. I appreciate the effort to try to innovate, but it's Splinter Cell, not "Sherlock Holmes: Searching for fingerprints in random places". I did enjoy the regular missions though, but because a large part of the game takes place in broad daylight (or close to it), it took away some of the patented I'm-Death-in-the-Dark feeling I've come to enjoy over the years. Also, the game has a lot less of the dark humor I find so entertaining. Overall, it just didn't feel like a proper Splinter Cell game. It's a 7/10 in my book.

Now, while watching the end credits, I came to realize that this game was made by the Ubisoft Shanghai team rather than the Montreal team (who made the original Splinter Cell and Chaos Theory), and that explains quite a bit. Just as in "Pandora Tomorrow" (also made by the Shanghai team), things that are just slightly off (e.g. less dark humor, reuse of textures/sounds). The good news is that the Montreal team is working on the 5th entry in the series (a 360 exclusive, I believe), and that gives me hope for a better experience next time around.

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How to save a Wii (from falling into someone elses hands)

After posting at 3:40am this morning, I did not go to bed as planned. I figured since I had waited in line for such a long time, I would at least hook it up and see the boot screen. Well, a half hour of config turned into playing Zelda until 7am. That game is really good! It uses the controllers in such a good way and it's fun and easy to pick up.

I really lucked out on getting a Wii. A friend of mine called me about 5:30pm yesterday and said that he'd spoken with Game Crazy in Redmond, and that they supposedly still had more units than people in line. I got in the car and drove over there, picking up my friend on the way. When we got to the store there was no line outside the store so we went in and asked what the deal was with camping for the Wii. The guy just said that if we got in line now, we'd be guaranteed one. Now, this Game Crazy is in the same place as the local Hollywood video (maybe they all are arranged like this?), and there's a doorway in the wall that lets you enter from the Hollywood video side, and this is where I saw a few people waiting in line. As we headed into Hollywood video, I realized that the line was slightly longer than I had thought at first. There were at least 70 people ahead of us when we found the end of the line. I was a bit unsure as to whether they would have that many units, but shortly thereafter one of the guys accommodating the camping (inside the Hollywood video store! No out in the cold for us) told us that this was the Nintendo official launch place locally and that they had 200 units and plenty of games to go around. Nintendo also had people on-site that had brought extra copies of Zelda, and they had a bunch of swag that they handed out every so often during the wait for midnight to roll around. The waiting around actually went a lot quicker than I thought, mainly because we had some cool people next to us that we ended up chatting with most of the evening.

Once the clock struck 12:00, the line compacted and then nothing happened for an hour. We didn't move a foot until just past 1am! We started to realize that this was going take quite a bit longer than the 1 hour or so we had guessed initially. Well, long story short, at 3:10am I walked out with a Wii system, an extra Wiimote and nunchuck, a classic controller and 5 games (Zelda, COD3, Excite Truck, Rayman Raving Rabbids and Trauma Center: Second Opinion). But it was worth the wait! While COD3 will probably never get any real play time on the system (I really just bought it because I was curious how an FPS would feel like with the controller), Zelda is definetly one of the better games I've played. The included Wii Sports disc contains quite a few fun party games as well, bowling being my current favorite. The rest of the games will have to wait until I've played a bit more Zelda.

All in all, the Game Crazy and Hollywood video people did an awesome job coordinating everything and they had plenty of people watching for people trying to cut in line and keep people already in line from trashing the place. They also got a guy in from a local deli that sold sandwiches and snacks at normal prices for the hungry. The Hollywood manager even walked around collecting trash at regular intervals and took orders for soda and snacks that he would then bring out to you so that you wouldn't have to leave your spot. Oh yeah, and the Game Crazy people did walk through the line a few times as it grew and made sure to let people that wouldn't be able to get a unit that evening know early enough so that they didn't have to hang around until midnight. A decent thing to do, thought. Much kudos to all of them.

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Wiitards unite!

I got a Wii!! It took 9 hours of waiting in line, but it's sitting here right next to me. The time is 3:40am here so I'm gonna head to bed now.

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Zunealicious

I admit it, I bought a Zune. I've been anythingbutipod.com since the beginning, and I'm happy to report that the Zune isn't falling short of my expectations. It does everything that my buddy's iPod does, and then adds a couple of things like wireless music sharing and a radio tuner. Not bad for a first try, I have to say. I also have a few friends who are part of the phase 2 beta, and I know that there are more good things coming in future updates to the firmware. 48 hours into it, I"m still not having my classic that-was-a-stupid-impulsive-buying-decision. Good on me. One thing I really like is the subscription type agreement they offer instead of the buy-only choice with iTunes. It allows for a nice try-before-you-buy, and the bitrate is 192kbps on your downloaded stuff, which doesn't sound half bad. Not that I would actually buy music online (I only buy CDs), unless they offered lossless quality. I'm such a whore for hifi. Even though I probably don't need it. Oh well, someone's gotta be the idiot so the rest of the world can feel good about themselves. I am proud to serve you all.

Final thought: If you, like me, have been looking for an iPod but never felt quite comfortable with the glossy little thing, buy a Zune. It's an iPod with a couple of more features, and the radio, incidently, is a nice one of those extras.

Update: No, I have not seen any podscasts, nor does the software appear to have any kind of support for RSS feeds. I've never had the podcast subscription stuff so I don't know what I'm missing, but it seems that that might be a downer if you're looking to switch from the iPod (the podcast subscription feature does seem kind of nice). Also, I've had zero problems with the device itself or the software crashing. Then again, I never have problems with bluescreens or any other real problems with Windows in general so I'm not entirely surprised. There seems to be some big irony around this thing... if you work in software development, you rarely run into problems with your own system, but everyone else's seems to fail all the time just so that you can be there and fix it. Odd indeed.

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Mr. Music

This really has nothing to do with gaming.... I'm big into music and I just found this fantastic band called "The Kooks." If you're digging modern indie/rock, do yourself a favor and check out their new album "Inside in/Inside out." Wicked stuff.

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EA and content on XBox Live

There's been a fair number of comments on EA's contribution on XBox Live rencently. You can now purchase unlocks for things that you could technically unlock by just playing the game long enough - be it a new golfer in TW07 or the best car in NFS: Carbon. People have been bitching about how EA's charging for free content, but you know what? If you're dumb enough to pay for it, so be it! I have no patience for people who complain about optional purchases. Fine, you may think that it's a retarded thing to do, but you cannot say that it's an unfair thing to do. If someone wants to pay for it, let them do it. And more power to anyone who can make money off of those people. Yes, if it were the case that you could only unlock the fastest car by buying it, I'd agree that that was a shitty thing to do, but when all they're doing is giving you the option to pay for not having to play through the game, that's up to the person with the money. It's kind of how people were bitching about the Bethesda deal with the horse armor. A) If you'd played the game at all, your horse couldn't die anyway (or rather, you'd have gotten the horse that couldn't die but would become unconscious only). B) The horse typically isn't involved in any of your fighting anyway. C) It's a single player game. Enough said. Bottom line: If someone wants to pay for horse armor, let them! Man, I get waaaay to emotionally involved in these things.

Anyway, if you're against it, stand your ground and present compelling arguments, dont bitch. If you're for it or simply don't care, good on ya, mate.

I should probably stop drinking beer now.

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That Gears of War game

Reviews are starting to drop and they all say it's a really good game. While I never really bought into the hype, I am glad I put down a preorder a couple of weeks ago because now it has me really excited. EB called me yesterday and said I'll be able to pick up the game Wednesday afternoon. I guess it'll be a quick lunch and then take the afternoon off. Oh yeah, and Guitar Hero 2 comes in the mail today as well. And then I have FIFA 07 and Final Fantasy XII lying around unopened... and I still need to finish Okami and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. So many games, so little time.

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Wii (I) don't want a PS3!

You don't know me and I don't know you. What you should know about me, however, is that I've bought every major console and gadget since I started making over 80K a year (quite a few years ago). What is really puzzling right now is that for the first time in my life, I don't really care about the new thing that's coming out - the PS3! I want a Wii more than most things in life, but I do not care about the PS3. What gives my son? I pre-ordered the PSP months in advance without one single game that I wanted to play in sight. The PS3 will have to wait, however.

In all honesty, I can tell you what bothers me about the PS3: there's nothing new about it. I'm a fairly technical guy who understands shader language to a degree, and I do understand 3D accelerators as a whole pretty well. The graphics chip in the 360 can actually produce, on paper, better graphics than the PS3 can. Ooooh, I must be a fanboy! Negative, it has nothing to do with that. It's just a fact. On paper.

Now, looking at the Cell(tm) processor, that's an interesting piece of engineering. In theory, that little baby can produce some pretty interesting things, especially with physics and AI (although, my prediction is that it'll be 2 generations of games before we'll really see any real results from that). It could also, in theory, do some interesting work in the graphics department (as a helper), but I'm not sure how fast the bus between video and main memory is (if they're separate). But, my truth is this: the PS3 will not produce anything we will not see on the XBox 360. Period. Sure, we could see slight differences in games in some details - physics, AI - but all in all, we're not going to be able to tell the difference. I also have to add that there are no launch games that interest me. It's either a game that I can already play on the 360 or it doesn't really seem that interesting period. Save for Lair.

Now, 12 months down the line when we're talking about FFXIII... well, I'll beat your nose bloody if you get in my way.

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Doom on Live Arcade today

Microsoft just announced at X06 in Barcelona that a port of Doom (hi res, I believe) is coming to Live Arcade today. The game supposedly has both coop and online deathmatch. Pretty sweet!

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To be or not to be

A friend of mine recently told me, "I really don't think of you as a gamer. I think you just play games because it entertains you." I might also add that this was not a joke on her part. Priceless!

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Use the fork, Luke

Is this thing on?

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