Game Journal

Yes, Claude...

2010-12-24T00:32:00.004-05:00

DATE: 12/24/10
LAST MISSION PASSED: END OF THE LINE

Fifty hours and twenty minutes later... Thank heavens. Decent ending. Very nerve wracking in the Revolver-Ocelot-tells-you-it's-been-a-long-time-since-you've-saved way. Had some pretty serious fps slowdown with the fire, however.

The bottom line is that you know it's a pretty good game when you keep working on it (apparently every Xmas break) for five years.

EDIT: Hey, look, who knew? Available on the Mac since Nov 12th of this year!

Braid: Done

2010-09-05T03:15:00.006-04:00

Well, the ending disappoints. But did it have any other choice?

I should say the epilogue disappoints. The twist in the final level was exceptional. A great game overall. I just feel the build up was largely wasted, and, if, the wikipedia is accurate, Blow admits as much: "[Blow] said that the central idea is "something big and subtle and resists being looked at directly."" Well, you win, Mr. Blow. Though the interp that you're a buddy of Hideo Kojima (and are reusing the lesson from MGS) seems to work. Why is it that creative game programmers gravitate towards an anti-nuclear tack? Is it that both were, in some ways, enabled by computers? (Is that accurate?)

Anyhow, done. Enjoyable. Addictive. About the right length. Very creative. Somewhat disappointing ending.

Braid

2010-09-04T20:16:00.005-04:00

I believe the two games I've played the most recently are Braid and Portal, both very similar in gameplay. Neither seem to care much about time (?), and both are essentially series of extended brainteasers. I wonder what it means for complicated games that both of these have been exceptionally popular.

Braid is wonderful. I finished the first three worlds in a single sitting, and finished up four in spare time today. Where Portal has the tongue-in-cheek Skinner box environment, Braid seems, strangely enough, to have a more serious, complete plot. I'm somehow exceptionally invested at this point in finding out if there's a princess and what happened to Tim. I'm not sure I'll stay as engaged, but the painting, music, context in the pre-level books, and even the house and starry night all play perfectly.

I'm not sure I liked the overly overt Donkey Kong homage, though the Super Mario Bros tributes have, overall, been well done. I'm looking forward to finishing. I've only had one occasion so far (in Finicky Follower or whatever it is when the key follows you rather than lets you take it) where I've figured out the trick, but had the solution play out incorrectly. That is, I figured out how to get the key where I needed it, but somehow managed to make it fall by grabbing it too early, yet still left of the ladder (which should make sense to those who have played, but not too much for those who haven't). It, intuitively to me at least, should have worked where I made it all happen. I wasted 20-30 minutes looking for another answer before giving it another shot. Poof.

Compared to other games, that's still an excellent ratio.

Pac Man Vs. -- GC/Wii

2010-06-17T18:20:00.003-04:00

Pac Man Vs. is every bit as fun on the Wii as it was playing with Matt's fam on the Cube. It's a very clever set-up, and I wish more consoles took advantage of screens like the Game Boy's this way. That's all.

MacHalf-Life 2

2010-05-28T07:53:00.003-04:00

Welp, Half Life 2 has finally made its way to the Mac, and the Orange Box is on sale (if you sell out to Steam) for $21. It runs very well on my MacBook (late 09) but, well, makes me as sick as a dog. Who gets seasick. Who we should imagine on a transatlantic cruise. Not good.

There's some POV hack dealio that I should try, and maybe if I use an external monitor it'll be better, but so far so bad. Interesting to see that there's a Slashdot article on the motion sickness and HL2.

The game isn't much yet. Very Orwellian with little imagination so far. I'm not real hip on having gotten the "Subservient" achievement. Even after taking the can back out of the trash can and tossing it into the guard's chest (and running around Benny Hill style afterwards), it won't go away. /sigh

The more things change: Halo is what Quake was

2010-05-03T21:08:00.000-04:00

From What to Expect From Halo: Reach Beta (Wired.com):

In another new match type, called Headhunter, the goal is to pick up skulls that are dropped when you kill another player, then haul them back to an ever-shifting drop zone. If you’re hit on the way there, you drop any skulls you had on you — including your own. Mobility is key if you want to make it back to the waypoint without getting decapitated.

Bizarre. I started playing this mod over a decade ago.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: First Play

2009-11-08T11:02:00.005-05:00

Since I don't have the time to play WoW regularly now, I thought I'd give DDO a shot. Feels a little like my first experience with EverQuest, from the somewhat uninspired game design (have you seen the text random NPC tavern dwellers spit out in DDO? "Don't bother me," or, "She said WHAT?" over and over? Seriously, put a little C into the NPC, please) to the slightly green tinge I have when I'm done playing. Yes, it's an engine that gets me seasick.

The game itself is okay so far. I ran through the n00b dungeon/solo experience. It was okay. Everyone in the starting city has a weapon with the same special effect -- flames dancing off of it -- as everyone else. Not surprising in that everyone's carrying around weapons that were rewards from their first question chain, but that every weapon has flames, from Great Axes to Rapiers (do I capitalize those?) smacks of the same issue of underplanning and undercustomizing the uninspired tavern replies also evidence.

Still, there's just enough to the game that I think I'll give it at least another few shots. Game mechanics are just like WoW (quest givers with icons over their head, actionbar tied to numbers, etc), but it might be fun to get all nostalgic and run some D&D again. The free play also seems relatively well done so far. Two races, drow and some wacky machination race, have to be purchased, but otherwise no intrusion from the parts of the game that cost dough on my experience so far. It serves as a very extended trial, I suppose, and there's got to be a serious market for gamers like me, that might play once or twice a month and don't want to shell out a subscription fee. Microtransactions will be much more likely to grab my dollar until I have time to chose to sell out again -- at which point I'll have another option in my head (DDO) to add to WoW that I wouldn't've had before.

Where'd my flames go?

2008-12-26T09:33:00.003-05:00

For Xmas, I got time to play more GTA3:SA. Grabbed my Broadway from the garage, but the flame paint was gone! Wack. Also ran into the basketball save bug where saving in Mad Dogg's mansion makes all the basketballs in the game disappear. Aggravating. I've been running a number of the asset missions, as up until now I'd only gotten the Roboi Food Mart and Vendant (sp?) Meadows airstrip. Found out I needed to finish driving school to buy Wang's Cars (har har), so did that in an hour or so. Had left it without finishing earlier, as the tasks are pretty tedious. Now have Wangs, the Valet, Meadows, and Roboi. Also finally shelled out for high respect clothes.

Was surprised to see a decent amount of character development happen within a non-required mission set. That's either bad design for minimalist gamers like me, or a good reward for completists. I'm coming down on the bad design side; it was only boredom and luck that had me start these missions back up, and the bonding between Caesar and CJ and the development of Kindle (CJ's sister) is pretty important context for the last few missions I'm running.

One part of the game that I was upset I didn't take advantage of fully before moving on was the gang war "minigame". I'm happy to see the game ends with it, give or take, as you grab your brother out of prison and start taking back the neighborhood. Like I just mentioned, doing the Wang's Cars missions helps set up a Sweet vs. Kindle, hood vs. escapism tension in the proverbial plot. Sorta fortuitous that I came back to those missions now (about two real-life years after playing San Fiero the first time).

GTA:SA remains the best alternative to my WoW addiction, as I can play for a week without shelling out for a month. Wish I had a ready platform for GTA4 when I finish, but neither of my computers quite make the minimum cut.

MGS4: Finished

2008-07-06T01:06:00.001-04:00

Final score:

MGS4 Notes

2008-06-28T13:59:00.002-04:00

These could be spoilers. You've been warned.

If I'm going to play a Brother's Keeper mission, and said brother at one point tries not to get in trouble, but later goes out of his way to get in trouble for no apparent reason, then I hate it. Seriously.
Also, if said brother follows a space-filling curve when there are obviously better paths that he should be able to see with his own eyes, then I hate it.
Too many sick people at the end of Act 3/beginning of Act 4. What the heck?
I don't think this is just poor translation, but the conversations are even more stilted than ever. Not one bit of this sounds like two people having a conversation. It sounds like two people reading lines. Spontaneity is zero.
Partitioning the game into 4+ acts has really broken the game into pieces that make it feel like a series of set pieces instead of a continuous adventure. At this point, MGS3 is winning.
Is this just the culmination of the gameplay ideas (when you do play, it is at least entertaining) across a patchwork of pieces that Kojima felt were needed to tie the whole sprawling story up with a bow? That is, because it wants to be the end, it has no choice but to go from place to place to make it coherent ... and fails to be as coherent as the previous games precisely for that reason.

Asus XG Station Approaches Availability - Tom's Hardware

2008-05-14T09:26:00.000-04:00

This, from January 13th of this year:

Announced around a year ago, Asus' external graphics enclosure is nearly production ready, according to company sources.

The XG Station houses a single or double-slot PCI-Express x16 graphics card, using a notebook's Express Card interface to provide x1 bandwidth. This allows an included (unspecified model) mainstream graphics card to exceed Intel's 965GM performance by over 6.7 times, according to Asus.

Crimminy, release it already. I'm not to the point that I need it; I doubt I will for some time with my tower sitting at home with the same slot. But man, this is a cool piece of hardware. If you game with a laptop, this would extend its gaming life by a year or three, albeit in a somewhat clunky fashion [as you need an external monitor]. Still, sounds great for home gaming, and if you got a socketed processor on the motherboard, would nearly eliminate my ~~need~~ desire for a tower.

Rock Band (PS2): Da Wife Loves Drums

2008-05-12T11:18:00.002-04:00

Got Rock Band for the PS2 yesterday evening. Once she got the hang of it, Rebecca was very keen on the drums.

Which is good, because the song list doesn't appeal to her vocally -- about half the songs neither of us know, and nearly all the songs are hard rock sung by growly men. So the original scheme -- Rock Band as Guitar Hero for me and simultaneously Karaoke Revolution for her -- isn't working out. Maybe by the time the second Track Pack comes out the PS2, they'll have Blondie and the B-52's on there.

But the drums she likes. Although the foot pedal is still tricky. Tricky to get comfortable, tricky to figure out how to work effectively, and then just tricky. She would really like the "easy" difficulty to not include the foot pedal, so she could get comfortable with the other stuff first.

It certainly seems like "easy" guitar is much easier than "easy" drums. As established in Guitar Hero, "easy" for guitar means it only uses the first three fret keys. I don't have crazy fingers, but on "easy" I effortlessly stay at the top of the fan meter. It seems that "easy" drums means using the blue drum is rare or nonexistent, but red, yellow, green, and orange foot pedal are generally all represented. Some "Act I" tracks use the foot pedal barely at all, but others use it nonstop. Some more tutorials on drums, or an easier-than-easy level, seem warranted.

Another "feature" of the drums is that they're loud. That is, Rebecca can't really hear the music or drums from the game over the noise of her slappin' the skins. (The obvious answer for this is to crank up the volume, but it's notable that I can hear it just fine and she can't.) The guitar strumbar was redesigned for quietness, so having the drums so noisy is a little weird. I don't remember practice pads being so loud, but then again, I played trumpet. (Better put quotes around "played".)

Of course, _I_ want to get headphones hooked up to the audio out so Rebecca'll look like a real studio drummer. But that's just me.

Despite these issues, Rock Band does indeed rock. The drums open up the gameplay to a broader range of players, and the cooperative feel is electric. If the song list were also more accessible to the Karaoke crowd, it could be even better. I know the downloadable songs of the current-gen versions ameliorate this somewhat, but even those feature only a handful of female vocalists and barely any pop, none from this decade.

Okami (PS2): First 12 hrs

2008-05-12T11:09:00.002-04:00

Innovative and with an artistic style all its own, but the user interface sometimes disrupts an otherwise excellent game. Dialogue can sometimes be "clicked through" to hurry it up, but often not. Painting challenges punish the player for losing by suffering through the long lead-up sequence again. And no, you can't get out of the challenge entirely -- once you're in the "Konohana Shuffle" challenge, the only ways out are to succeed or power off. (Note: this is the sort of poor interface problem that might be overlooked by a reviewer -- so far, Okami is fairly easy, and if you don't screw up one of these challenges, you'll never see how annoying it is.) "Helpful hints" from the dino-buddy are sometimes timed so poorly as to be laughable -- suggesting you practice with a new weapon, for example, when immediately thereafter you are forced into the most challenging battle thus far with no opportunity for such practice. (This guy is called Waka, and he is by far the most annoying Tao master I have ever met, fictionally or otherwise. And I suffered through Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street.)

Nevertheless, the style is distinctive, the play mechanic is unique, and the emphasis is on exploration and discovery, not twitch skills or resource management. If you're a fan of Ico, this is a very different game that I think will equally appeal to you.

MMORPG Extraplayinganza

2008-04-12T14:50:00.003-04:00

One month of UO two years after one month of UO years after years of UO:
I believe the guy writing The Worst Ninja has things down pretty well. He's approaching UO for the first time, making all the too-contrived conventions appear that much more obviously. Here's a quote from my favorite part of his descriptions of his 14-day trial.

[The bank, where long-time players discard items they can't fit in their bank box on the ground] is a treasure trove. Armour, weapons, magic talismans, mysterious keys and, best of all, a complete, joyously humiliating jester outfit, which I duly don and prance about in for the benefit of my silent patrons. And then, there it is. Thank you, thank you, thank you, kind strangers. An axe. A huge, magic axe, several orders of magnitude more powerful than my geeky claws. I don’t care about its magic, though. This could be a one-of-a-kind ancient elven heirloom for all I care. All I care is that it can chop down bloody trees. At last, I can be the ninja-jester-lumberjack I’d always dreamt of becoming.

The picture of the guy's worth a look.

It is much easier to kill things now. Mobs drop lots more magical loot than before as well. Kingdom Reborn's interface would be much nicer if the sys reqs weren't so high and it didn't crash my box at least once an hour. I did enjoy the special moves you can pull off in combat, which is also a new feature, but this is still no game for the soloer with so many more enjoyable options out there. The majority of the interface still stinks, and for the first time I can ever remember I wasn't able to retrieve my corpse in time and lost some gear. No big deal, but I was upset to see that the stuff I'd dropped on the ground was still there though my adventuring gear disappeared with my body.

Oh well. I like that it's still around.

EVE Online

14 day trial wasn't bad. The game looks great, that's for sure, and they're able to pull off the simulation-first goal of UO very well. For instance, you will almost certainly be buying all your new gear via contracts with other players. When I bought a new ship, it was player made. This is good -- a true economy. I'm sure there are drains somewhere, but for the most part it appears to be about as closed a economic loop as you can get. I've also read a number of interviews with EVE folk that show that their push was to build a good, persistent, impressive simulation rather than just the tired cartoon that is WoW (which I'll still be playing soon).

My only gripe is that fighting seems to be pretty much a big dice-roll fest. I'd rather have Elite-like dogfights, and those aren't found here. You control your ship with the mouse, afaict, making it move to points, or you select targets and orbit (including combat) or get within x meters and stop. There's no real evasive action, though until you learn to target sans mouse, it sure feels like there is.

Even with the older client, it's a gorgeous game. Really, it is. That I enjoyed quite a bit. If I was going to play two MMORPGs at a time, this would be a great change of pace from UO/CoH/WoW. It's very tempting, but the complete lack of twitch play turns me off.

City of Heroes

There's a certain type of game engine that makes me puke. This is one. I get green playing it. In my first shot, I didn't interact with other players much at all, ran through some very boring missions (not unlike ones "real" heroes in comic books do, but without the character development/exploration), and ran away from some of the tougher two-bit street crooks between mission goals. The engine is very dated, with 2-D textures on walls, eg. Reminds me of Tek Wars, another game that made me puke, and, yes, Perfect Dark (yet another pukefest when someone actually commented that I looked green after playing on the floor for a few hours). But the reminder wasn't just the queasiness, but the tech in the engine. Tired engine, bland missions, and large headaches means they likely won't be getting my dough. I'd like to play more to give it a longer chance, but my personal, physical reaction will probably nix that.

Malas in UO remind you of anywhere?

2008-03-15T17:53:00.000-04:00

Boy this sure looks familiar.

It's a land introduced by the Age of Shadows expansion to UO that has continents floating in stars, breaking up into tiny piece, not at all unlike what happened in the Burning Crusade expansion for WoW.

God of War: Chains of Olympus Update #1

2008-03-07T23:29:00.003-05:00

I just finished off the Basilisk, first real boss of the game. So far, so good. The controls do get very natural, and even dodging isn't horrible although it does require a slightly higher level of concentration than it did on the PS2.

This game should have been distributed on the PlayStation Store. The win for Sony would be (a) big name game on the store and (b) sell more memory stick hardware. Seriously, that would have been a huge hit.

Graphics are beautiful. There is a bit of glitchiness when you sleep the PSP, mostly in the sound, but that's mostly understandable.

Going to play this on the HDTV in a bit with the PSP-2000 component cable. Hoping to see how well it looks on the "big" screen.

PS3 God of War can't get here soon enough.

UO:KR -- What's old is, well, still old.

2008-03-03T01:08:00.007-05:00

I guess it's fun that they kept Thopas around, but Ultima Online's new Kingdom Reborn update brings me right back to where I was when I was playing on a 333 MHz AMD K6. My Core 2 feels insanely sluggish and, in a grand irony, I'm only able to access those same portions of the UO world I was able to access a decade ago; there are *no*, count 'em, *no* new expansions built into the fancy new interface.

I just installed UO: Second Age again. Hopefully the old 2D client will be a little snappier. EA claimed it'd make the 2D clients obsolete/incompatible once 80% of the users went to KR. Hopefully they're keeping track of the number that switch to KR and back. Of course with the delay the expansion slated for summer 2007 has undergone, I don't see many major changes happening any time soon even if everyone had made the switch.

There are some nice additions to the new client, like a tool bar stolen straight from WoW [which I'm sure stole it from someone else], a quest log [ditto], and a world map with tons of spoilers, like dungeon locations. Was annoying that my house got nabbed by someone. Logging in had the unfortunate effect of popping me out in the middle of nowhere, mobs aggro'd.

In any event, here are the proverbial proofs of life.

... and, of course, your Resource Monitor on Vista + Kingdom Reborn. Memory-a-Plenty it ain't.

EDIT: You know, honestly, I feel pretty badly about my tone here. There is something neat (special?) about hearing that "You've entered Britain, here's the happy music" music that's hard to beat. It reminds me of when UO's Britain was bustling with players who weren't in UO for "character advancement" and were more interested in creating an enjoyable simulation, a MUSH even. It used to be that the fanciest armor was player-made, and people were proud to show off color-matching sets that could only be made by craftsmen intent enough to find, mine, or trade for a rainbow of ingots, and that's just one example. Players used to be proud to have made an item well enough that their name was inscribed onto it, and when you saw the person who'd made your gear in Britain, you'd give a quick bow.

That MUSH feel is likely gone from UO now, I think, and was certainly gone from Britain when I was there tonight, where I only saw two other characters during my quick visit when I used to see scores. Still, the potential UO had and, I suppose, has is incredible. It was, initially, a wonderfully designed game. Perhaps if they'd let me into the new expansion material without shelling out $30, which I'm more than a little loath to do, I'd know if it continues to be as wonderfully developed. I've got my doubts, and today's (yesterday's?) UO players are partially to blame. It's so much easier to run from one NPC with a question mark over their head to the next with a bright yellow "!" before teaming up with warlocks played by 13 year-old boys for hours to run through dungeons so linear they might as well have been set up by [the 32X's] Admiral Ackbar. *sigh* Ye olde halcyon times of yore.

Super Mario Galaxy

2008-02-23T00:32:00.006-05:00

I received this game for my birthday and with it I have ventured into Super Mario's world for the first time since SMB3. After playing for about 90 minutes, I am still getting used to the awkward Katamari-like controls. Also, it took me a while to realize that I could shoot stars at enemies, since I wasn't actively pointing the WiiMote at the screen. The spin attack is neat, but I want more range. I am not a fan of Princess Peach, so I like the addition of Rosalina, who bears a slight resemblance to Namine from Kingdom Hearts II. Finally, I am looking forward to being able to control the camera. Except for the very beginning of the game, the player is unable to rotate the camera, which is especially frustrating when Mario is standing on the bottom of a planet.

Guitar Hero II PS2: FImp

2007-12-26T22:06:00.000-05:00

Finished up the Medium difficulty. Did get booed off of the stage once in the next to last set list, otherwise ran straight through. The Free Bird encore was cute... about five yes/no screens wondering if I really wanted to play it. UFO animation was a little out there, though.

One thing I don't get about the game is why someone would pour so many hours into the game instead of learning to play guitar. I mean, the medium difficulty was enjoyable and didn't require, for me, any practice time, but I get the feeling the more difficult levels will, as would getting five stars in every Medium song. Having played just enough drums, piano, and bass to know what that time wasted would get one on a "real" instrument, I have to question why I'd put in the time. Sure, the rewards for the first few hours are much greater than the first few hours on a traditional instrument, but how long before the returns are much lower than the additional investment?

Past that, however, there were times when playing felt awfully close to how jamming on the guitar should feel, scare quoting the "should" there. It's well done. I'll complain that the graphics are absolutely wasted on anyone, as I doubt they have time to watch. The songs aren't always exactly favorites. Looking forward to Rock Band.

Aside: Did try Frets on Fire, which would seem to have the potential to be the first OSS game worth a rat's behind... okay, beyond say FreeCiv, the Privateer port, Marathon updates, we'll add angband for Matt, a few built off of ids' engines, and perhaps a few others. Still, if done right, FoF would be a really nice addition, potentially the sort of game that would help sell Linux on the consumer desktop. Unf. it takes over 500 megs of memory, which on my poor box with Vista and only a gig means no go. I tried twice. Oh well. Time to hook the tower back up, I guess.

UDF #4

2007-11-27T23:40:00.000-05:00

My basic complaints so far:

1. "Waves" of bad guys. Lame. Given how organic the environment of the game feels, there needs to be a less obvious way of introducing bad guys.

2. The movement when jumping/climbing a la Tomb Raider needs to be just a hair more smooth. They've got some decent environments to work in, that don't look entirely contrived with ledges and whatnot, but there needs to be a little smoothing out of the diagonal jumps.

3. Don't be afraid to let people explore some dead ends or provide more than one path through the environment. Vines are all over this jungle, but only a few are climbable. Let the others be climbable, but lead nowhere. Or let them lead to other parts of the environment but be essentially useless. Something.

Finally caught up with Elena, the female sidekick. The game is much more interesting with her around. And I have a nemesis in the game now too. That's also helpful.

There is also a Smith & Wesson that is awesome. Single shot kills like in Resident Evil.

UDF #3

2007-11-27T00:15:00.000-05:00

Much more combat tonight, well-mixed with climbing and jumping around the jungle and later in a fort. The story has slowed down, mostly because there is a lot of action while Drake catches up with his female sidekick. Hopefully things will get more lively when the two are together.

This isn't Tomb Raider. So far, there really aren't any ways to explore an area and puzzle out how to get from point A to point B. There is always only one way forward, and you can find very tiny niches to explore along the way, but that's it. Tomb Raider would at least throw you into a big room that acts as a hub and you explore different areas from there, possibly in an order of your choosing.

New weapons: RPG and an Uzi. Liked the Uzi. RPG go boom, but loooong reloads.

Spectacular scenery.

One thing that's a little weak about the jumping and climbing is that when you're scaling a wall there really is only a direction and a button push to go where you want to go. There isn't any timing, except when you get onto a breaking ledge. There isn't any figuring out which ledge to go to, since there is always only one direction forward and one back.

I'd like for level designers to feel a bit more free to put in some dead ends or means to make the climbing challenging. Here, I think the right thing to do would be to copy MGS2 and have Drake be limited in how long he could hold on by his fingers. That pressure would make the climbing sections a lot more tense, I think. If not that, then something.

If Tomb Raider went for the killing, you should see this game. I got a reward in the game for 30 headshots. Since I'm usually firing like mad, you can imagine that 30 headshots only happens after a hundred guys or more have died. Oh, and I got a 50-kills-without-dying reward, so that gives another measure of how many generic bad guys have died at my hand. I know it's not feasible to record 30 different actors doing bad guy voices, but would it hurt to use some modest modulation on 2 or 3 actors to make those voices sound slightly different every now and then? That way when I hear "I'm going to get you, airplane man!" for the 20th time, it doesn't sound like the previous 19 times...

UDF #2

2007-11-25T22:06:00.001-05:00

I just finished a fairly long section of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. I'm more impressed than ever before.

- The animation really is top-notch.
- The next Tomb Raider team better be taking some good notes. Drake is smoother than Lara in her last two games, and he's doing many of the same moves.
- As a side note, Drake is scripted kind of like Lara, but so far I haven't feel constrained by it. That is, I haven't found a situation where I wanted to do something natural and the scripting (i.e. magic) kept me from doing it. I think this really is a bit closer to the simulation than Tomb Raider Legend and Anniversary were.
- Game starts with gunplay, but then I played for probably a good hour without a single shot being necessary (except one or two places where you can use it for a puzzle). Lots of exploring.
- I can't tell if I think the little hidden treasures along the way are a bad idea or not. It does take me out of character because I don't press ahead with the story's implied urgency...instead I loiter around and look for special stuff. I think I'm going to stop doing that and enjoy the story.
- Speaking of the story, it's great. And the dialogue and characters are entertaining.

"I'm in the captain's quarters [in a ruined ship]. And the captain's still here."
"What does that mean?"
"He's dead. And it looks like he was ripped to shreds. A bad way to go."
"That's too bad. [brief pause] Check his wallet!"

- Got a bit of the ol' Tomb Raider vertigo while playing. Very happy.
- Playing the demo made me a good combatant in the game. I'm suspicious that I'd've not liked the game so much had I not practiced so much on the demo. (I beat it four times, twice on hard.)
- That said, once you get the gunplay down, it really does become quite enjoyable. You think about where and how you're going to use cover, reloading on the run to save time, switching between your two weapons (nice touch...you can only take your pistol and one of shotgun or AK-47) as the situation warrants. No other 3D third-person action game with guns has been this fun for me. (God of War is great, but doesn't use guns.)

Feeling like GOTY. We'll see if it keeps up.

UDF #1

2007-11-20T23:05:00.001-05:00

I just started Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for PS3.

- Really, really good looking. Immersion is relatively easy because of that.
- Characterization is awesome. Conversations are more natural than most game dialogue. I love the actor for Nathan Drake (main char).
- The woman playing Elena is good too, and they've made a woman who's attractive without looking like a model. Good job. I still would have preferred a brunette.
- There appears to be a fraction of a second lag between audio and video. Not distracting while in the game, but during longer cut scenes, can take my attention away.
- Not a whole lot new in terms of interaction. Lots of stuff familiar from Tomb Raider Legend and Tomb Raider Anniversary.
- Main interactions other than climbing/jumping are push/pull and shoot.
- Did find one hidden treasure. Woohoo for me. Only 59 more to go.
- Summary of story: Found Sir F. Drake's "coffin" which had a secret diary. Shows location of El Dorado. Attacked by pirates and escaped when Sully rescued us in his plane. Ditched Elena and headed off with Sully to find El Dorado. Made it into a deep underground temple/tomb and found where El Dorado, a solid gold statue and not a city, used to be.

Good stuff so far. Not much gunplay at all, which I like. Won't mind some shooting occasionally if plenty of TR-like stuff.

Xbox360: NCAA 2008

2007-07-31T17:55:00.000-04:00

If the distinction hadn't already existed between "evolutionary" and "revolutionary," it would have to have been made based on my experience playing NCAA 2008 football on the Xbox360. Why would I pay hundreds to play on this instead of the PS2 again? Yuck.

The change between EA football options available on the N64 and PS1 compared to the games on the PS2 was an impressive one, scary ghoul-eyes excepted. Can't say we've taken another leap like that since then.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 10

2007-07-05T22:15:00.000-04:00

Obelisk of Khamoon

This was a real let-down after the previous level.
This level was pretty much all movement puzzles and no thinking puzzles.
Some of the puzzles are really quite bad. There is one involving three crushing walls, one after another, with balancing posts in the middle of each. So Lara has to jump from post to post while avoiding the crushing walls. If Lara has to rebalance herself on one of the posts (using the triangle button) she can still make it through, but if it happens twice over the course of the three posts, then you're screwed. The game screwed me over time after time. I don't mind losing for poor skills, but the rebalancing appeared completely random. I hate dying for the random number generator's sake.
The obelisk itself was pretty unimpressive. I remember being completely floored by the one in the original game, and this one was lame. I think it's a size thing. (I'll refrain from comments about what an obelisk might symbolize).
The enemies were really just cannon fodder. I offed most of them easily from a distance.
The spinning blade traps are horrible in this game. If you're going to copy Prince of Persia (the modern games), then at least give Lara enough ability to avoid those traps as easily as the Prince does.
I'm now onto the Sphinx level. Let's hope it's better.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 9

2007-06-26T22:26:00.000-04:00

Temple of Khamoon

Quite possibly the best level yet.
Part of the joy here was that I aced it -- every artifact and relic, on my own.
This is one movement puzzle after another, which made it very intense.
Despite following the original level's outline fairly closely, the puzzles felt very different. This is where Lara's new movements helped push the game beyond the original in an essential way.
I'm fairly certain that the block/key puzzle at the end was snatched from the beginning of the old Obelisk of Khamoon level. It will be interesting to see if anything else has changed in the next level.
Biggest letdown: ambushes by cats all over the place. These suck.
The first pressure-sensitive retracting floor is pretty annoying. I will need to look up how others dealt with it.
If the levels can stick to this standard of quality, then the final half of the game should be gold.
Thinking back to the original, it also had a ramping up, but I'd say that most of that was the deviousness of the puzzles -- which I equated with quality back then. The standard is a bit higher now: puzzles must be good and the level must look coherent while doing it.
I think the coherence is why (as noted last night) the Cistern and Tomb of Tihocan were combined. It would have taken some serious reworking to make it all flow in a natural way. That they didn't want to put in that effort perhaps says something about how this game was made.

Next up: Obelisk of Khamoon. The game has me hooked now -- I may be in for sleepless nights of playing, as I experienced with TR1 so many years ago.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 8

2007-06-25T22:56:00.000-04:00

Palace Midas

As before, there are three bars of lead which must be converted to gold, each with its own puzzle room.
Puzzle Room 1 is a block/movement puzzle. It took a while to figure this out because all the columns appeared to move down when I stepped on the first one. Later, I got the hang of it because the columns were only going down as I stepped on them -- and the columns you hang from never go down. Or something.
More than once I missed a jump/catch that seemed close enough that the game's "good magic" should have made it happen.
Regardless, not an exciting room.
Puzzle Room 2 is like the breaking column and sandpile puzzle from the first game, with added rope use. Pretty run of the mill and uneventful.
Puzzle Room 3 is a water/fire column puzzle which is much, much improved from the first game. You might recall that this was three (or four?) flame columns in the first game that required very tight timing of runs, jumps, and catches. This would have been trivial to complete with Lara's new moves and timing wouldn't have mattered.
The new puzzle involves a much larger room, more types of movement puzzles, and a few infuriating places where I'm not sure Lara can get by unscathed.
Regardless, I count this as distinct improvement over the original, perhaps even a bit too baroque.
Lara can still turn to gold. Glad that still made it.
I did not find this new version of Palace Midas to have the charm of the original. The original actually felt larger and more interesting, if I'm remembering everything correctly

Tomb of Tihocan (and Cistern)

So Cistern from the original gets folded into Tomb of Tihocan. I'm not sure I agree with that design choice. I hope I'll learn something about the decision to make the change if I play through with commentary turned on.
The puzzles here really are a bit more three dimensional. The main room is essentially a cube with niches along the walls and some platforms in the open space in the middle, all of which must be navigated at some point.
The real 3D part is realizing that you need to move a floating platform from one place to another and then to another and this requires different water levels in the room. It is similar to the puzzle in the Posiedon Room from St. Francis Folly.
While not mind-busting, it is a welcome innovation over the usual push-a-block-open-a-door puzzle.
Tihocan's tomb itself is pretty spare.
The showdown with Pierre was only two QTE moves. Weak.
Also, Lara's now been relieved of killing Pierre. I am a bit alarmed at that move.
Perhaps it is ironic that after all these years of talking about Lara being a mass murderer (see: Tomb Raider II, III) I don't like that she doesn't kill someone. But I think this could be an important point: Lara from TR1 was a more complicated figure precisely because she appeared a bit mercenary at times. She killed Pierre both because she had to (he was trying to kill her) and out of pride. Now he just gets trampled looking like a fool.
She's become a less interesting character because she's doing what she's doing to prove that her dad wasn't crazy, to complete the quest he left unfinished. You'll pardon me if I find that a bit trite. I think a case could be made that the backstory was more interesting in, of all things, Angel of Darkness. In that respect, I think that Core understood the original Lara and Crystal Dynamics has now rewritten her.
It's not just that Angel of Darkness is being ignored -- the story's being rewritten to make it less likely to ever be accepted as canon. The Lara in AoD simply seems like a different person from the Lara in TRA. At least, that's where I think this is headed.
Flashback cut scene explaining a bit about the Scion and its history was less impressive than the original. I think CD is faltering on capturing some of the drama of the original.

Addendum: I just watched a speedrun of the original Tomb of Tihocan to see what it was like. I can see someone saying "this was just a mess of puzzles", let's cut right to the chase. On the other hand, I think it is a pretty good precursor for the kind of devious puzzles that the followed in Egypt and Atlantis. If they fundamentally changed the puzzles in the upcoming levels, then that lead-in isn't necessary any more, I suppose. I'll know more soon.

That finishes the Greek levels. I'm now at the Egypt levels. Some of the most dramatic parts of the original are at hand, but we'll see if the remade versions work as well.

PC: Video card price watch

2007-06-24T12:46:00.000-04:00

(original, 6/4)

Newegg.com - SAPPHIRE 100166L Radeon X1650XT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail: $114.99

Well, better than integrated graphics, I guess. WoW occasionally reported framerates of 2 (yes, two frames per second -- while flying into Shattrath City) on the Mac Mini-in-law. Haven't yet measured on the integrated graphics white box, but I could use an upgrade.

Update 6/24: Since this post, the card has gotten a $20 rebate, making it $94.99, then hit $149.99 for a while, $129.99 with rebate on the last day that rebate was valid, and is now $104.99, $84.99 with the new rebate offer. Wacky.

Unless I talk myself into an 8500 GT now, I'm getting it. Hope I don't need DX10 soon.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 7

2007-06-14T11:31:00.000-04:00

Colosseum

This was much better than St. Francis Folly, I believe.
I did not think much of the combat, however. I should have played that a bit smarter.
Key problem I'm having in combat: I keep using the D-pad instead of the left analog stick during the scripted moments. Yuck.
The puzzles weren't terribly devious and the contrived room structure from the original is gone completely. What remains is believable and interesting.
I got some new guns here, sneakily hidden in a little niche. Always enjoyable when the careful snooping I do pays off.
The level is huge feeling, being mostly a shell with lots of interesting points on the inside surface of the shell. It's memorable because it's so open and visible, tempting you with ledges and nooks you can see, but not access immediately.

Now on to Palace Midas, which will have to happen a few days from now.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 6b

2007-06-13T16:01:00.000-04:00

St. Francis Folly

I finished the Damocles Room. I probably spent around 2h in total time getting through it. That's far longer and I don't think I'm completely to blame.
Ok, here's what I figured out: Lara can jump backward away from a wall when using her grapple. That was what I wanted to do, but couldn't get her to do.
The answer is to read the manual. As far as I've seen this was never explained in the game. and I have the tutorial text on, so I hope I would have seen it.
In the manual, it explains that you can first let go of the grapple (i.e. let go of the square button) and then push the left analog joystick in the direction you want Lara to jump while pressing X, the jump button.
Even knowing this, it's tricky to get the timing right.
I blame the designers. If you don't make me learn a move that's (a) not obvious and (b) required to exit a room, then it's your fault, not mine.
That said, I did try to come up with a novel approach that I was disappointed wouldn't work. Since Lara's new cool move (other than the one I didn't know about with the grapple!) is standing on top of poles, I figured I might be able to jump across the tops of the sword hilts that were buried in the ground around the room. They were nearly tall enough for Lara to possibly get somewhere new, but I didn't find any way to get on top of them. She can nearly get on top of them and if the game were going to use its magic to help her out, I think it would have.
The balancing on top of poles is a new and interesting move for Lara -- except when there are poles around and the designers don't want to you balancing on them!
Poseidon Room - This was perhaps my favorite of the new rooms, but was one of my least favorite in the original. It requires true three dimensional thinking (although the third dimension is really limited to only two or three discrete values instead of a continuum) and is downright soothing.
How does the classic St. Francis Folly compare to the new? I think I like the old one, but I'm having trouble separating my nostalgia from my reasoning there. The old puzzle rooms were more contrived, for sure, but also somewhat more focused. Just like I didn't care for the new Qualopec tomb, I didn't come away as impressed as I'd hoped.
That said, there are some good points here. The four doors each having to be handled (mostly) differently is a nice touch. Except for the Damocles puzzle, everything was very straightforward, but not necessarily easy.
And the game brought back some of that "I have to be careful or I'll have thrown away a lot of good work" feeling that I had in the original. Mostly this stems from being in a huge vertical chamber with ledges all over and a fatal fall only inches away.

I'm at the Colosseum now, which is an exciting prospect. I am reasonably hopeful.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 6

2007-06-12T00:45:00.001-04:00

St. Francis Folly

I made my way to the third room in this level. Required figuring out how to push some boxes embedded in the room's wall, which ended up being a reasonably nice mini-puzzle.
Damocles Room - Swords everywhere. As with the original, you trip the puzzle by taking the item you came for, and then have to work your way out.
Much harder than the original -- lots of different elements come together here: dodging swords, pulling levers, dodging sword blades up out of the floor, climbing poles, and apparently swinging from your grapple cord.
I'll admit I'm stuck right now. I've gotten across to a place where I can use the grapple, but I don't see what that gets me. I've tried a few crazy things, but nothing is moving me forward.
I'll look at this again tomorrow.

According to the manual, you have to set the game difficulty at the beginning. It gives no indication what changes with difficulty levels. Nice job, guys.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 5

2007-06-11T06:04:00.001-04:00

St. Francis Folly:

Did the original level also not have an apostrophe somewhere in the name?
The beginning is ok, I suppose. Got mauled a bit on the way to the movement puzzle. I'm still using the pistols, as is my habit. I should probably look into the shotgun since it used to make big animals go down in one or two shots.
Maybe I'm the only one, but I found the "push around a huge globe" puzzles to be more frustrating than rewarding in Legend. Not really feeling the fun here either.
Shooting jewels = keys? Yuck. I hope they didn't screw up Palace Midas like this.
Never did figure out how to open the gate to the secret in the first area. I have some ideas now, but will have to replay it later.
The main room with its huge central column has been mostly straightforward. I'm still working on how to access the last two rooms, but haven't been completely stymied anywhere.
Hephaestus room - This is the old Thor room with its electric orb and giant hammer. The puzzle is not that elaborate. The magic disco floor is really kind of annoying, but passable. The hammer bit was amazingly easy.
The trickiest part was getting out, but I figured the trick out by just standing and looking at what was happening instead of actually attempting to go through the door. That might be a point in favor of the game there -- observing and thinking wins the day.
I was amused when I pulled the switch and the door fell down instead of opening. Cute, but I hope it only happens once.
Atlas room - Ok, I admit I didn't see the *ahem* the first time and got squished. Instead I tried to jump under the trap the other direction, thinking this might be a place where leaping into apparent danger would pay off. Wrong. When I did go the right direction, so to speak, I still got squished but saw where I should have been on the way down to my death.
Also found a secret, which was barely concealed at all. Guys, it is not much of a secret when it glows and the glow shows through obstacles.
I've unlocked the Damocles room but haven't accessed it.
The movement up and down the column and along the walls has been quite reasonable, I think. I've gotten the nasty twist in my stomach when I've almost fallen off a ledge or let Lara stray too far in a jump. That's precisely the sense of danger I wanted to feel, and the checkpoints are just about far enough to make falling a deterrent to letting Lara die capriciously. I think they could be a bit less numerous, but that's just me, I suppose.
They could have fewer checkpoints as a way to change difficulty. I wonder if I'll ever read the manual to see what it says about difficulty levels?

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 4

2007-06-09T21:27:00.000-04:00

Tomb of Qualopec (part 2)

The old breaking-floor-in-front-of-switch puzzle.
The aforementioned puzzle was actually very poorly designed, and I can't imagine why they let it slide. Here's the deal: you have to pull a box out of a dark, hidden hole and use that to jump to a ledge and then to a pole and a second pole. That's easy enough, except that I missed the dark, hidden hole the first time and just wanted to jump to the second pole which is actually low enough and close enough to a ledge to make it look like Lara could get to it. In fact -- and here's the stupid part -- Lara's body passes through the bottom of the pole if you jump for it! It totally looks like you should be able to grab it, but because the game knows you shouldn't be able to get it from there, she won't even do her grab animation. That's a clue, see? You can't get her to grab, so that tells you you're doing the wrong thing.
Heck, she can almost touch the ledge you get to from the box too, if you jump from the right place. But, of course, the game knows you can't do that without the box, it doesn't even let you try.
I did like the part about getting the second pillar free in the main room of this level. I figured out where I should go by using my guns to verify that a particular part of the room could move. Then it was a matter of figuring out that I could make a particular leap from a ledge that seemed unintuitive. Past that it was easy.
I did get to use the guns to shoot another rope, but I was disappointed that the game throws up a big red "YOU CAN SHOOT THIS!" targeting icon, just in case I hadn't figured it out.
I chose normal difficulty -- perhaps these hints wouldn't have been there had I chosen hard? I'd hate to restart now. I think Legends allowed you to change difficulty mid-game, so I might bump it up and see what's different. Or maybe I could read a FAQ to see if it's explained somewhere. Or the manual...crap, I should have already checked to see if the manual explains the difficulty levels.
Larson is another interactive cut scene. The button presses are, no lie, like 20% of the screen. I realize that the "take bullets like crazy" of the battles in the first game would be kind of unrealistic now, but I don't think this was the solution. I liked them in God of War, and they seemed better done there -- here they just bog the game down needlessly.
I left one raptor alive. He was down in a pit when I was exiting part of the level and the game allowed me to bypass him without killing him.

St. Francis Folly

Just watched the opening cut scenes, so no gameplay here yet.
The remake of the skyscraper cut scene was ok. I liked the reading of the old manuscript in the original to Pierre's narration.
Lara picks up a can Pierre threw on the ground, calls him a litterbug, and then throws the can back on the ground. There's even a trash can in the background, I think. Intentionally funny?

I've been thinking of how to explain the difference between the original and this game, in particular the controls.

Original = pure physics simulation.
Remake = physics + assistant/preventive magic.

To elaborate...

The original had a very rigid set of fundamental rules, like the laws of physics. Lara could jump certain distances, catch in certain circumstances, and could even bend her trajectory a tiny bit while in the air. The levels were constructed carefully so that everything was set up for you to play through approaching the rules in a straighforward way, but if you found a way to exploit the extreme cases of the controls to get somewhere quicker or in a different way, the game didn't stand in your way. It was, quite literally, a simulation.

This game (and Tomb Raider: Legend, whose engine it uses) is also a set of physics rules but it adds a level of magic on top of that set of rules. The magic comes in two types: assistance and prevention. The assistant magic makes certain moves possible that might otherwise be dodgy, just by the physics. So if Lara needs to make a jump along a wall from the end of a ledge, this magic comes out and makes the jump possible. On the other hand, as in the description of the broken third puzzle in Tomb of Qualopec, the preventive magic gets in the way of the physics of the situation and just makes certain movements and actions impossible. So whereas I can make Lara jump far enough that her polygonal model intersects the pole I will eventually need to climb on, since I didn't jump from the place the designers wanted me to, the magic says "no way" and Lara passes maddeningly through the pole.

That's my analogy for now.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 3

2007-06-08T22:49:00.000-04:00

Lost Valley:

T-Rex did not come back...at least on this level.
Found one secret, pretty well hidden.
The exit to this level was pretty tricky. Slide to a slide to a swinging bar. I don't think that kind of sophistication was required until the much later levels in the original.
Was thinking about scripting. Pretty annoyed that the "Lara must grab because she's slipping!" events often seem to happen in the same place. Maybe it's just my luck.
The end to this level was pretty weak. Why did I knock that little ladder down to give me a swing bar near the entrance to the dino cave? It doesn't help me unless I am backtracking somehow?
The lost valley itself seemed to have fewer places to find secrets, but then I didn't find them all. The original seemed more intricate, probably because it had more places you didn't have to go.
Running along the ledges at the top of the level brought back some of that unnecessarily vertiginous feeling of the original. That's good and gives me hope for the later levels where you have to climb large vertical chambers.

Tomb of Qualopec:

The boulder in the trap at the beginning disappears. They stayed around in the original. Seems weak...boulders disappear just like corpses?
Looks like I have my pick of which puzzle to do to start with.
Far too many arrow traps and poles to stand on. The pole standing is just dumb.
The swinging blades are back! That bodes well for slick trap arrangements later on.
I did a pretty long sequence of movements without error -- perhaps I'm acclimating to the controls.
I actually hit L1 to try to rewind time, as if I were playing Prince of Persia: Sands of Time. Sure would like to have that feature here, even though it doesn't make sense.
The raptor out of nowhere scared the crap out of me, but I should have remembered they were on this level too.
The one puzzle I did solve here was pretty different from any puzzle in the original. Good job, although very easy.
I just realized that the pushable platforms used in the main room are similar to the sliding pillars in the original game which were activated by switches. Now Lara pushes them instead of having them move by magic. I can agree with that change.
Will finish this level tomorrow.

There is one part where Lara pretty needlessly has to crawl through an opening and you look at her well-rounded butt. Gratuitous?

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 2

2007-06-07T23:15:00.000-04:00

The Lost Valley (part 1)

First really big level. Good stuff so far. Originally, I was a bit disappointed.
It's stupid to have "shoot this glowing thing to change the environment" mechanic. A real innovation would be allowing me to do that to any rope and wood structure, but then that would require them to think about what they're doing.
I am pleased to see that there is some flexibility in how you maneuver through the level. There is a place where you can swing from a rope to a platform and then climb up to the gear and then get to a switch. Or you can do what I did and see a way to use the swing rope to get to the switch directly and then backtrack to get the gear.
I DO NOT CONTROL LARA. That is, when playing TR1 you can make Lara go into her grab animation, jump animation, etc. at any time. In this game you can't make her do the grab animation unless the game realizes you're in a place where that animation makes sense. I liked the other way better, and this just emphasizes how scripted they've really made this game. Despite having a little flexibility as noted in the last bullet point, there is really just one way through the level that they intend you to take to do everything you need to do.
We'll see when we get to the next level, the Tomb of Quoalopec (or whatever it is) whether the game really allows you to solve any of the various puzzle rooms independently of each other. If they must be done in sequence somehow, then that goes to just what I hate -- tightly scripted game.
The T-Rex starts with a scripted interactive cut scene. I did not like it. I liked it better then the T-Rex was something you could move around and continue to solve the level despite his interference.
He wasn't a boss before, he was just a big animal who happened to live in that level. Now he's a boss who must be confronted. I don't think I like that change.
He also didn't look like he died for sure when I killed him -- I suspect before I leave this level I'll have to deal with him again. That's a really tired, lame device that we don't need in movies and surely don't need in games.
I'll finish this level tomorrow.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary Update 1

2007-06-07T00:05:00.001-04:00

Caves:

Mostly learning the moves. Remember to turn off autograb, i.e. turn on manual grab.
Frustrated with the aiming system. I see why people wish Lara could step backward instead of turning around and running away.
Amused at finding items precisely where they were in the original.
Not amused at how R2 walk works -- I want insurance like you got with walk button in the original. That is, walk mode means you can't actually walk into danger, like a ledge or a sliding incline. In this game, walk mode just means you move slowly and if you go to a ledge you can hang on, then it lets you fall and catch. Bad design choice.
I'm not impressed with the precision of the controls. Tank-like controls are still the winner.
The game obviously helps Lara's jumps in some situations. It's not horribly distracting, but it does take away some of the "I wonder if she can make this jump" reckoning that I did in the original. That is, you learn what the system can do because it acts predictably and make choices based on that experience. Here, if a ledge is obviously a ledge you go to next, then you can be sure that the game will help you get there, even if it looks a little ridiculous. I spotted this getting to the first secret of the game and have seen it elsewhere since.

City of Vilcabamba

I don't think I ever realized how stupid that name sounds when you say it out loud.
This appears to be missing the part with the bear and pool of water in the original -- I'd hoped that part would make it in, because it was the first swinging blade trap.
Hate the bears. Hate the adrenaline dodge. Stupid, stupid.
Lara can balance on top of tall, thin objects? Stupid and slightly lewd.
The swimming is not as fun as the original. I think swimming is a section that calls out for tank-like controls, as much as people hate that. It's just easier to understand for some reason.
On the whole this seemed shorter than the original.

Graphics

I don't know what people are kvetching about. The game looks just fine in 480p widescreen.
I haven't felt that aliasing as bad, nor that the texture work is poor.
I think I spotted one bad seam in the hour I played.
People complaining about "it's not 60fps" need to shut up. It's fine.

Sound/Music

Atmospheric sounds are good.
The howling of wolves in the distance is a nice touch.
Music seems to follow the lead of the original game. So far, so good.

I'm now at the Lost Valley. I'm saving that for tomorrow night. I've heard disappointing things about the T-Rex encounter.

Wii Sports: Mental Models and Bowling

2007-04-28T14:04:00.000-04:00

Played about 12 frames' worth of Wii Sports Bowling. Alan Cooper, a UI design consultant that become fairly well-known for his book About Face back in 95, talks about how software UI should conform to a user's "mental model" rather than a programmer's "implementation model". An Atari 2600 joystick has eight easily understood states, and the understanding that it's give or take limited to two players on the screen at once helped ensure many of the first few 2600 games looked very similar to one another. Programming games that match the restrictions of the hardware is, of course, to limit the gamer's experience to the implementation model.

The Wiimote seems to do a very good job conforming to my mental model. Without reading any instructions, I was able to pick up the controller and place some pretty interesting spins on the bowling ball, just as I'd wanted.

The results weren't always even as good as I bowl IRL, but did a great job overall. I'm impressed, and see why the Wii is getting good reviews and having even better sales. If I find $750 lying in the street marked specifically for buying a console, I'd get the Wii at this point and bank the balance for another console later.

Theme Park DS

2007-04-01T23:02:00.000-04:00

I always enjoyed Theme Park, whether it was the original DOS version, the Genesis version, or even the Atari Jaguar version. Now that it's on the Nintendo DS, I'm enjoying it all over again.

Main complaints:

I recall making time run really slowly in the original. Maybe I've got it confused with Roller Coaster Tycoon. Regardless, I'd've appreciated at least one slower game speed. As it is, I research and lay out the park and suddenly two years have gone by.
Sometimes the interface needlessly puts two things you can tap with the stylus too close together. For example, when trying to adjust the research budgets down, I end up having to tap the up arrow and cycle back through to the lower digits instead of being able to tap the down arrow. The down arrow doesn't respond because it's too close to the menu bar at the bottom.
Not updated enough with the stylus. I should be able to move back and forth in time to see stats by dragging the stylus on the readouts. I should be able to highlight an area and delete everything in that area instead of one square at a time. Etc.

Otherwise, very nice port. After I work my way up to full simulation mode, perhaps I'll have more to report.

DJ Max Portable 2 Demo

2007-04-01T22:59:00.000-04:00

I'd always wondered why people were ga-ga over DJ Portable Max for the PSP. Now that there's a demo of DJ Portable Max 2, I was able to try it for myself.

What kind of masochists play this garbage? It's like sight reading at double time for a custom-made piano keyboard. I can imagine that once you put in the days figuring it out, you feel godlike in your mastery, but I've got better things to do.

Monster Hunter Freedom

2007-04-01T22:41:00.000-04:00

I picked up Monster Hunter Freedom for the PSP recently. I like the premise: hunt huge fantasy animals. I don't like the implementation.

Reading pages and pages of in-game info
Jumping through little hoops to get to the real game
Wandering from tiny are to tiny area, loading for too long between them

What I hate most is that despite having "freedom" in the name, the game itself is anything but free wandering (at least where I am now). I'd have preferred the "throw the player in the big bad world, let him figure it out" approach of the GTA series. But perhaps that's just too ambitious for the PSP...

WoW: Playing like a girl

2007-03-25T19:58:00.000-04:00

WOW Insider recently blogged a study titled, "New Daedalus data: girls heal and play elves, kids play Horde."

Dang it. I apparently play WoW like a girl.

(Okay, no, not exactly. When I heal, I do it because that's how druids get into groups most easily -- and even then I'd prefer to Panzerkin/off-tank than keep everyone's health up. And I've also heard that people tend to either make their avatars look as much like their "real world" appearance as possible or create a complete fantasy, and there are only so many tall, relatively skinny, random facial-hair having races to choose from.

Still, interesting to see that I have to defend my fairly undeliberative initial choices instead of realizing that I'd picked a normalized gender & age role race/class combo.)

WoW: 60

2007-03-02T00:54:00.000-05:00

Here, just three days short of two years (including a six month break), endeth the lesson. Woohoo!

WoW: Armory

2007-02-28T20:08:00.000-05:00

Buggy as get-out right now, but I'm looking forward to this new Armory shindig from Blizzard that should make looking at characters and their gear a bit easier. Will also be neat to check through popular guilds to see what kinds of gear their members have.

If it helps me sell some leather online, I'm all game.

WoW: Goodwill

2007-02-08T17:45:00.000-05:00

I've already talked about the virtual ghetto. Too strong an image, surely, but I'll stick with it for now.

I recently made level 58 in WoW, which is the level you need to be to get from legacy land to Outland, the new parts of the world accessible only with the WoW expansion, The Burning Crusade (TBC, as if you hadn't heard).

I've not got the expansion, but I have noticed that the items TBC players are all but throwing away when they do run back by Ironforge and my guild are incredibly good. I've recently gotten both an amulet (for free) that kicked the pants off of everything I've owned and a staff that increased my all-important "damage per second" rating by about two-thirds for a lower price than the guy could have gotten selling it to a vendor/NPC.

The key point is that both items are from Outland and both require level 58, obviously targeting a floor that coincides with the entry price for TBC. I'm not sure, if this hunch turns out right, that Blizzard considered the effect of TBC on those who don't upgrade. If so, I'd expect less of a quantum jump in the amount and power of these now lower-level items.

As a counterexample, right before scrounging up 5g for the staff, I spent 15g as part of a quest to get a key to Scholomance, a major dungeon in the "old" version. The conventional reason to pay so much to gain access to the dungeon is that it's an excellent place to find great equipment. Well, now the hand-me-downs from TBC gamers are beating the socks off of Scholomance gear, removing a good deal of the incentive to run the dungeon. I asked a buddy who has TBC how the equipment was, and he concurred with my assessment without any prompting. There's no reason to hang around in any place but Outland other than nostalgia, a few now much easier to kill bosses, or, well, that you haven't spent $40 to keep playing.

I have seen some places where monster drops (what you get when you kill them) seem to have changed considerably, and perhaps Blizzard plans to overhaul the dungeons in the old world. Until then, however, the divide between John Edward's Two Azeroths seems to be increasing.

WoW: Gold worth $25?

2007-02-02T17:05:00.000-05:00

I wonder if guides like this one are worth the time I'd lose from my life learning this info by trial and error or living on the WoW forms and websites.

I often get the feeling that I'm not a "serious enough" WoW player. Heck, my level 57 druid was down to less than 8 silver this week at one point. At times I think guides like the one above, assuming (and this could be a huge mistake) they're well-written, are much like buying characters off of eBay or using a leveling service. If you come across this information in a guide, you're not really part of the community.

Still, I'm not sure I want to spend the amount of my life that it'd take to figure out the good stuff on my own. Seriously, look at all the armor sets that I'm supposed to know about. I don't even know where half the instances are for the "tier 0" druid armor set, much less have I joined a guild that goes there on a regular basis.

Oh well. It's hard to be a full community member when you're only half-committed.

Black: Second major level

2007-01-25T10:24:00.000-05:00

I finished the second major level, some name I couldn't pronounce, in Criterion's "gun porn" game Black. A few notes:

It's fun to be back in the shooter groove again. I don't like all shooters all the time, but I do enjoy it reasonably often and I've not had nearly enough lately.
The swelling, orchestral music during the breaks between firefights is really quite good. I am not sure it's developed any themes that have been repeated yet, but I've not heard music this good in a game since Metal Gear Solid 3.
Clever or stupid: You cannot interact with the environment except through violence. Seriously, there is no way to open a door short of blowing it open. You don't have a generic action button that interacts with the environment for buttons, doors, items, etc. It's not even like the auto-open-close doors in Quake. You can run up against special items (secondary objectives like collected enemy paperwork) but that's it.
Despite its attempts to mask it with a story, this is really just distilled violence. I almost wonder whether it might not have been more interesting to simply make "Robotron with guns and RPGs" where enemies come in waves and you simply have to knock them down. Something akin to the continuous-attack mode (can't remember name) in Max Payne 2. Get rid of the wandering around giant environments and concentrate the violence just a bit more until it's just continuous shooting, reloading, upping your health.
I do wonder if there is any game which pushes the PlayStation 2 much harder than this one. I played 49 minutes through a large, sprawling environment that started in a detailed, hilly woods and ran through caves, through a station border crossing with trucks and towers and buildings, through a tunnel, more woods, across a fortified bridge, and ultimately onto a farm, complete with silos and outbuildings. Other than before the level began, there were no visible load times. Models and textures looked sharp, without being at a low screen resolution to compensate, and there are even special effects like a sepia/black-and-white effect when you get seriously wounded and need health packs.
Ambient sound is wonderful. Occasional breezes blow around you and aren't important to the game but do help with the immersion. Helicopters can be heard somewhere overhead, but never seem to come close enough to the action to be seen. And, of course, stuff blows up with solid-sounding explosions.
This game has, perhaps, the most satisfying RPG I've ever fired. Beautiful to watch.
More later.

WoW: With real hardware

2007-01-24T21:18:00.000-05:00

Threw down some clams at the local LAN bar today to play WoW with some "real" hardware. Nice. WoW was my first LAN bar experience nearly two years ago, and I can still remember having nearly the same experience I did playing Quake with video acceleration the first time with my Voodoo 2. Going from an iBook that's having a tough time with WoW to a real tower makes it seem like you've nearly a new game.

Now I've got a Windows tower, but wondered what the 256 meg NVidia 6800GT (and AMD 64 3800+, fwiw) would do for me over my 3000+ and Radeon X200. Handled WoW well in 1600x1200 with everything maxed out in the video section. Smooth movement, with one texture glitch and no other problems in 80 minutes of play.

Strangely, though now that I think about it, likely in no small degree because I tend to just solo around, now in Winterspring, the extra hardware was really only useful while travelling. When I was griffing from zone to zone, things were especially good looking, with lots of eye candy. When I was searching for new mobs to smack, I enjoyed seeing relatively impressive landscapes. Pretty cool.

When I'm grinding, though, I'm not paying much attention to the way things look. Heck, I could barely see the furblogs or yeti while I pounded on them. For soloing, the hardware is a bit wasted outside of the large cities and wide open scenes.

I did enjoy being able to see farther and find more paths around spawn points, but that was about it. The headphones were awfully nice too.

Oh well, next time I hope to dig up some next gen console game to play during my paid time. About time I went next-next gen. Perhaps I'll hit a particuarly rough instance soon and drop back by for my WoW tower lease, but the problem with playing on the Aussie server is that my buds aren't usually on before, um, 1pm by the Aussie clock, which is US LAN bar closing time!

WoW // UO?

2007-01-18T11:39:00.000-05:00

I got in some more time with my expansionless WoW account. Still fun, even though I'm mostly grinding now to up my reputation level with a faction that sells leatherworking recipes I could use. Only about 1000 more heavy leathers to go. Then I'm off to collect coal. FUN.

Nothing much to report. Load screens have changed. Druids have a new talent tree, and I got to spend my talent points more efficiently, I think. The new Force of Nature spell is k3w1.

Best addition to the UI, if it is an addition, is that reputation can be displayed like experience points in a slowly filling bar at the bottom of your screen. I'd always thought of reputation as a sort of post-60 leveling routine, which this even more clearly demonstrates.

One interesting spin is that several trainers for getting skills above old caps are, of course, only in Outlands, the new, expansion-only area. This might not seem like a huge deal, but there are some places in my expansionless zones where training could be helpful. Some "bosses" in dungeons are skinnable, for instance, and up until this point required max skinning plus particular magic items that upped your skinning skill beyond the standard max. These items were pretty rare drops, and highly coveted (there are two such knives in particular; here's one with a link to the other).

Now most anyone with the expansion can drop into the legacy dungeons and skin those beast without the rare items. Expansionless folk? Kept in a virtual economic prison, with just a little overlap between the virtual and the real.

Now for the Ultima Online parallel -- When UO started throwing in expansions, the old worlds very quickly started clearing out. Ole Britannia (or whatever the capital is) went from bustling urban center to a ghost town.

That's happening in WoW. Ironforge is nearly empty... auction houses, banks, city square, all nearly empty on my server. I couldn't tell if my "new video card" was providing much better performance or if there simply wasn't anything to render! (Overall, things are much smoother, enough that I want the PCIx card that much more.)

This should concern Blizzard. They need to ensure that expansions are backwards compatible, not so much that I can go to the new lands, nor even that I should be provided access to the new trainers, but players with expansions should continue to flow through old hotspots (possibly with new buildings in cities accessible only if you have the expansions, etc) so that the communities at least do not give the so perfectly cleaved.

I'll probably cg on that some year.

WoW: Wagon jumping

2007-01-17T20:09:00.000-05:00

Fell off the wagon today. I'm a 465 meg download away from ~~playing~~ more updating. Until then, I will pretend to be very productive in order to convince myself I'm not, in essence, killing myself by playing.

See what the end of a perfectly awful NFL season does to one?

Update, 9:29pm EST: Now I'm only a 492 meg download away from ~~playing~~ more updating.
Update, 10:25pm EST: Now I'm only a 159 meg download away from ~~playing~~ more updating.
Update, 11:01pm EST: Now I'm only a 2.82 meg download away from ~~playing~~ queuing.
Update, 11:04pm EST: Now I'm number 238 in the queue to jump into Proudmoore. The excitment's mounting, eh? *sigh*

Madden 2007: More Mexico City Cougars

2007-01-10T23:08:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm far enough in that I believe the Cougar selection wasn't planned. That is, the game just randomly rolled up a new mascot and color scheme and moved Houston. The players have grey uniforms, and the stadium is not the one where the NFL has played exhibition games in Mexico, afaict. I *think* that one was open-air.

Regardless, here are some shots of the game in action. A neat "feature," but not nearly as well thought-out as I'd hoped. If they'd really fleshed out the Mexico City team with the gen-u-wine stadium, less than clip-art-esque mascot, unembarrasing colors, etc, then I'd have had to give them some sort of award. We're not so lucky.

Madden 2007: Mexico City Cougars?

2007-01-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

I just won my second Superbowl in Madden 2007's franchise mode, and during the offseason the Houston Texans relocated to Mexico City and became the Cougars! I've got some screengrabs I'll put up of the offseason move in a bit. Looking forward to playing a game with the team to see what the stadium and uniforms (the mascot is a light purple cougar head; not real NFL-ish) look like.

Strangely I don't get anything coming up when I Google 'madden "mexico city cougars"', so perhaps this even borders on news.

Still, I gotta believe somebody's played two franchise seasons and seen it happen. What the heck? Perhaps I'm Googling poorly?

Okay, Matt, okay, I've forced the WinPC box back online, and here are the NEWS BREAKING SHOTS!!!

Update: I did find mention of the Mexico City Piranhas in Madden 2k5 at Football-Freaks.com, which it sounds like the game initiated.

The NFL is rumored to be considering putting a team there, though now relocating one back into L.A. is the more popular rumor.

ToEE: Barely started

2007-01-07T13:39:00.000-05:00

After a few more games of Madden 2007, I finally pulled out Temple of Elemental Evil for my PC, which I'd purchased on the cheap several years ago. Realizing it was notoriously buggy out of the box, I updated quickly.

Welp, it's AD&D all right. What else can I say? Worst problem is that it seems to take much longer than I remember to digitally virtually search a town for "NPC Who Lets You Continue the Game" than a similar legacy reality virtual search with a human Dungeon Master.

Magic Missiles look cool, but the fact that I can't, at any moment, choose to take the party outside to sleep and rememorize spells drives me crazy. The Phantasmagoria-like search with the mouse for hot-spots is pretty clunky as well. And how do I know where to search for hidden doors? It's much easier to tell your DM, "My elf is going to check for secret doors while they open the chest and heal," than to click for movement, click through the menu system for searching closely, and repeat 30 times.

So the quick first impression is that AD&D doesn't remediate so well to the computer in ToEE. I've enjoyed some AD&D ports before that weren't nearly so full of interesting eye-candy, but in ToEE's drive to completely duplicate the AD&D environment (oxymoronic, I know), they've only served to frustrate this old-school player.

GTA3: Catalina-in'

2007-01-04T19:42:00.001-05:00

I've been playing GTA3 (the "first" one) for years now, every so often coming back to try and finish the final mission again. Today I gave up, and decided perhaps I really should collect more than 10 hidden packages and stock up at the hideout for the final mission. So far, getting past it without is impossible.

I really don't care to get games to 100% completion. I'm a narrativist. I want to see the story through, but nothing more. If I find a few secrets accidentally, great, but I'm not going to feel bad when the game's done and I missed some.

GTA3 isn't letting me do that. Instead of getting to the satisfaction of watching the last cut scene, again and again I'm blocked out for not having finished the game. Then today, after collecting six or so more packages, I find a rampage icon and give that a shot, never having done so before. Bad idea. Wasted by the rufbo-patented putting the pin back into the grenade. *sigh*

Oh well. If the new screen didn't get me seasick playing, I'd probably try again. As is, I'll wait another few months (my last save gave is from 2003) and try again.

Final Fantasy III DS: 2 hours in

2007-01-02T21:03:00.000-05:00

Ok, this game is bizarre. I spent the better part of 2 hours levelling up enough to take on a Djinn boss. After that, it kicked me to a cut scene with this crystal who gave me its powers. But along the way...the game showed a series of production credits. Like the guy who was responsible for the battle system. Guh?

Tacky at best.

But now, after two hours...I can specialize into different classes (called jobs). Woohoo. I wonder how long this game is intended to last.

Final Fantasy III DS: Starting up

2006-12-30T22:38:00.000-05:00

I've just started playing my first Final Fantasy game since I played an hour or two of the original Final Fantasy on my NES in the mid-1990s.

Let me get this straight: There's a curse on a town, so I need a mythril ring. So I go to the kingdom where such a ring can be found and they're cursed too...and need a mythril ring. So I go off to some cave to find the mythril ring...

This sounds stupid.
So far, decent use of stylus. The screen could give bigger clues to what's going on, but otherwise, decent.
The artwork is a little jarring. There are these nice hand-drawn portraits of the characters but then when playing the characters are deformed cartoons? Yuck.
The constant music is...ok. If it changes up enough, I can deal, but if it is the same stuff for hours and hours... Let's just say I hope there's a way to turn it down or off.
Nice to have a story-driven game to play, at the very least. Every Extend Extra is engrossing, but a storyline is fun in its own way.
Are there town maps? I haven't gotten it figured out yet, but I didn't see an obvious town/building map system yet.

That's it for now. I've got maybe 40 minutes logged in the game.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

2006-12-14T21:16:00.000-05:00

After 12 hours of gameplay:

I have completed my first boss fight, Python. It was the first time I felt constrained by the inability to carry more items. I needed to be able to carry the Mk22 along with Rations, TNT (which the games makes you keep), and I thought Thermal Goggles and maybe Med Kits. I did not carry Med Kits because I thought that I would need the goggles. I now believe the goggles are a waste of time. The good news is that Python is predictable and can be defeated with patience and perseverance. Once defeated, Python joined Snake's band of merry men and women.

Also, I have become a believer in the CQC techniques. I dabbled with these very little in MGS3, but have become hooked on them in this game. There is something gratifying about sneaking up behind an enemy to choke (to knockout), hold-up, or interrogate him or her. While the silenced Mk22 is still the quickest and easiest way to take out an enemy, your team members do not have the Mk22 and so it is nice to have other options.

I have confirmed that Snake and his team members do not improve their skills. However, stamina and life improve as the team's Med Unit level increases.

Other notes:

Still no insight into why Big Boss is here other than the fact that he had to be for the game to take place.
One team member can capture at least four enemies at once. Just drag them all to the box containing the member who will capture them and off they go.
Roy Campbell is worthless. He sits back and plays the role of the coach up in the booth, while all of the team members are down on the field. This is not like the other MGS games where it is a one-man mission. If I have a team of people, why can't Roy be one of them? It would be nice to get to use him in a mission or two.
The Tech Unit continues to develop more toys for Big Boss, unfortunately they don't know when to stop. I now have thermal goggles (10 pairs), mine detectors (10), night-vision goggles (6), Spetnaz knives (3), and probably 8 of the next item. The good news is that at some point, stealth camoflauge (8 suits hopefully) is a possibility.

Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops

2006-12-10T16:14:00.000-05:00

After about 5 hours, here are some observations:

-The graphics bear a strong resemblance to Metal Gear Acid and the cut scenes are done in a comic book format akin to the Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel.
-The controls feel intuitive and sufficient, despite the lack of the second set of shoulder buttons like PS1 & PS2 games.
-The days of carrying every weapon and enough ammo for a small unit of soldiers is over. Each character can only carry four items total. This includes weapons and non-weapons.
-The team component is a nice addition. Each character is moved one-at-a-time, while the others are hiding in convenient cardboard boxes. I have had two problems with my team that I will highlight a little later.
-I appreciate the fact that like past MGS incarnations, killing is not rewarded. You are rewarded for knocking people out and recruiting them (and the abilities they possess) for your team.
-The radar is made up of two concentric circles. A little arrow in the inner circle is the character you are controlling and the edge of that circle moves in waves as you make noise. In the same respect the outer circle moves in waves to show noises around you. Colored areas of red or blue indicate the field of vision/hearing of the enemy. It is easy to use and a nice transition between nothing and the Soliton system.

A couple of my frustrations/complaints:

-Why is Big Boss here in the first place? At the beginning of the three previous MGS games, I knew (or at least thought I did) why Solid Snake, Raiden, and Naked Snake were used. In this game, like Solid Snake in the Metal Gear Acid games, Big Boss seems to have come down with a case of amnesia and has little idea where he is and why he is there. This storytelling shortcut disappointed me in Metal Gear Acid 2 (and possibly in Metal Gear Acid, although I can't remember) and now in MGS:PO. I can only hope that this is cleared up later.
-As for the team mode, you can use members of your team to blend in with the enemy, but it appears that there are moments when team scientists are okay around some enemy scientists, but not others. The same is true of enemy soldiers. There seems to be no rhyme or reason. This does not include the times when an enemy scientist screams at one of my soldiers.
-Also, Big Boss and his team members need to eat more Wheaties in the mornings, because stamina has been an issue on more than one occasion.

Things I hope for:

-Recruited team members skills improve the more you use them. I think this is true, but I have not put it to the test to make sure.
-Improved stamina!

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence Finished

2006-12-10T01:26:00.000-05:00

Some going notes:

I got the bad Jill ending. Something about not going back for Barry? I'll have to read the FAQs more carefully. Might be worth another quick play through sometime to see how it all shakes out.
The bad thing about the bad ending is that you don't get the final countdown and battle with Tyrant. Boo.
On the other hand, unlike the Castlevania endings, I at least get the hint here that I should have played differently.
I can appreciate the way the stylus was integrated into the game. Yet, much of that integration boils down to "glorified keypad entry". That's a shame.
There are obvious places where, had they really tried, the developers could have integrated the stylus in a more natural way. Take the mixing of chemicals for V-JOLT. Make a little drag-and-drop table with vials of chemicals and what have you. Or how about making the "master of unlocking" able to use a lockpick in some doors. Surely people get paid to think up interesting things like this.
Regardless, I loved the game. It was awfully enjoyable to see the Rebirth (remixed) version and I think this is precisely how you should revisit a classic. Add some (good) new stuff and file down some of the rough edges (like door transitions).
It would be interesting to know how someone who hasn't played Resident Evil ever views this game, after playing to completion. Regrettably, I can't be that person.

Great game. Thanks, Ruffin.

Resident Evil DS

2006-12-02T14:43:00.000-05:00

Two points to remember later:

Valve wheel in guard house is terrible. My inclination was to use the stylus to touch the wheel and turn it. After dying twice, I read the FAQs and got nothing until I saw one that said something like "grab the outer edge of the wheel". So I touched the stylus outside the circumference of the wheel and the wheel moved. Problem solved. Awful, awful, awful design.
Despite that miscue, the reason a port of a PSOne game to the DS works for me is that they actually used the new hardware to make the game better. Not just the gimmicks, like the knife fights and the interaction with puzzles via the stylus. The game loads much faster (yay cartridge!) and they didn't force you to watch the door animations (I'm now skipping them out of habit) and the map on the second screen has been terribly helpful.

The real problem is that they didn't go far enough. The inventory screen should be drag-and-drop, but isn't. I should be able to tap the screen to pick up items that are visible (and sparkling to catch the eye). I would even argue that, after you've explored rooms, you should be able to tap out a path of rooms on the map (which would mean moving it temporarily to the bottom screen) and have the game zip me to my destination. If the game wants to give me a random zombie knife fight encounter along the way, that's fine by me. Just cut out some of the time necessary to get from one side of the mansion to the other.

Overall, I'm loving this game. Both this and Elite Beat Agents are sucking up my free time.

Resident Evil: DS

2006-11-24T00:18:00.000-05:00

Ruffin threw two Nintendo DS games my way, Elite Beat Agents and Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. I'll write about EBA later.

The whole FMV intro is there, including cheesy character introductions. The black & white video looks pretty bad in spots, with one of the shades actually being a bit pinkish instead of a shade of gray. I believe the original PSOne game had the same misspelling of "bizarre" in the newspaper headline that's shown, a nice touch. Still isn't the full, uncut Japanese intro, however, since some of the gore is missing.
The top screen is constantly a map when you're running around. It becomes a second part of the inventory screen otherwise.
The use of the stylus is clumsy, a point made painfully obvious when swapping out with games like Zoo Keeper and Elite Beat Agents that are 100% stylus-based. Going from stylus to buttons and back for things like inventory management is definitely a bit awkward.
One DS-specific addition is the knife-slashing minigame that I'm guessing comes up occasionally. You walk into a room and get a first-person view of zombies coming up at you. You tap the screen to slash with your knife and fend the enemies off. The first time I did this, I got bit twice. The second time, after I let myself die against the window-smashing dogs, I didn't get bit at all and appeared to get an ammo clip as a reward.
You can skip door animations, which is a nice touch. I find myself watching them out of habit.
By default the blood is green. I switched it to red in the options menu. You'd think an M-rated game could use red blood without that kind of joke.
The stereo audio reflects the action. You can hear the sound panning as you move from one side of the room to the other, relative to the current camera angle.

So far, impressive port. I'd really dig Resident Evil 2 put into this form, but I fear it'd have to be two, or more, cards to do it justice.

Bit Generations: And all that jazz

2006-11-23T20:23:00.000-05:00

Matt dropped off some loaner Bit Generation titles to go with the Sound Voyager that'd already gotten some play time, and I'm happy to say that this is the first time I've had a set of Game Boy batteries die mid-game (though the game when they died was, admittedly, Golden Axe, it was the Bit Generation titles and a little SpongeBob that set them up for the killin').

Colors stinks, if only because I can't tell what pushing the button's supposed to do with the color of the tiles.

Digidrive is similar, but here I don't even have the slightest clue what's going on. Matt's suggested on cg that one look up instructions. Sounds like a good idea. [Update: Now that I've visited GameFaqs and read Matt's comment, I've got a score of 1148m. Not too bad. Fairly addictive, but my impression of Bit Generations so far is that the games are nearly intuitive enough that instructions aren't necessary. Perhaps not the case here -- this one plays more like a conventional game with relatively simplistic (but very good) graphics. Now the Modern color scheme choices? :^P<####]

Orbital is quite a bit of fun, and is apparently quite fun to watch as well (I've had a few heads over my shoulder). I've already commented on my enjoyment of Sound Voyager, and mentioned to Matt that Voyager really needs a Game Boy Advance player on a Game Cube hooked up to a nice stereo system to really be appreciated. Orbital might benefit from the big screen as well, pixelated graphics or no. These games really are more about gameplay than visuals, though I can't, as we'll see below, stop thinking about how Voyager has really turned the conventional GBA game tropes (that's a bit reduntant, eh?) on their heads.

Sound Voyager is still far and away my favorite. I've played through the run of Sound Slaloms, and have now added a Sound Drive (iirc), Sound Chase, and Sound Cock (you chase a chicken) -- and a great number of Sound Catchers, up through the end of the middle tong of the level selection fork. Very original, and very sharp even with the minimalistic interface. If you like gaming, this is the cart to get from the Bit Generations series. Experimental, fun, challenging (challenging enough I often get frustrated enough to wish I weren't playing, until I finish the level), and a great overall game experience.

This is not to say that Orbital doesn't provide similar, micro-free-time-killing game play (just a touch more time required than WarioWare levels, though the Bit Generations games are, obviously, much tighter than anything you'll find in WW, by design), but Orbital is addictive more on the level of This Planet Sucks for the Atari 2600 than something that makes you rethink the way games should be created.

So who has links to Colors and Digidrive instructions?! ;^)

Civ IV

2006-11-04T15:47:00.000-05:00

Welp, I played through 51 out of 100 turns worth of the Civ IV tutorial that is part of the demo, and let me tell you this: It's incredible. In no way is this game inferior to the original Civilization running on my Mac LC emulator in black and white. It's got settlers, warriors, irrigation, mines, roads, shields, gold, science vs. wealth trade-offs, multiple civilizations just beyond "the fog of war", barbarians, the whole slew!

If I'd never played any other version of Civilization before this one, well, WOW. The game's incredible.

Ace Combat X: Mission 5A

2006-11-01T22:30:00.000-05:00

I had to defend some ground troops in this mission. I figured out that destroying the bridges appeared to help slow down enemy ground forces but I think I ignored too many of the enemy planes and choppers. So, I ended the mission with only 25% of the friendly troops remaining.

I think I could have done better, but I was frustrated with the mission and was happy to move on.

Incidentally, it's really quite neat to fly through some canyons, take out a bridge with a missile, have it fall out of your way as you zip by, and note the enemy tank that was on the bridge also falling to its doom. Not huge drama, but fun.

Ace Combat X: Mission 6A

2006-10-29T21:23:00.000-05:00

I believe that missions 4, 5, and 6 can be done in any order and that I have done 4A and 6A.

In mission 6A, you attack the Gleipnir, the opposing enemy army's flying fortress superweapon, which has energy weapons that can disintegrate entire fleets of ships, and it has stealth camouflage. After it nukes some of your ships, you track it down and destroy its ability to cloak. Then you must destroy its defenses, guns on the wings, and the SWBMs. These SWBMs are some sort of ballistic missile that destroys all enemies above the Gleipnir. It fires them periodically after you destroy its camouflage ability, and if you are above the Gleipnir when they detonate, you are instantly destroyed.

The key to this mission is maintaining proper altitude. You cannot attack the Gleipnir consistently from below when it can cloak and is using its energy weapon, since anything below it is disintegrated. You must hit-and-run from above when you attack the SWBMs, since you have to be below it when those missions detonate.

After several milk runs (as the commander called them in Steel Talons on the Lynx), this was a really challenging mission. What distresses me right now is that I can't tell, as with the first mission, whether I could have reduced the casualties on my side or not. The first Gleipnir attack on friendly ships during a mission could potentially be prevented if you could get into position quickly enough to destroy the camouflage. I don't think I can do that with my current aircraft, but perhaps I'm just not good enough either.

Ace Combat X: Missions 1 - 4A

2006-10-29T00:14:00.000-04:00

Did this game's voiceovers really start with "Um..."? Talk about informal.

First four missions of Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception on the PSP are easy, easy. I've got difficulty set to "Normal" and I'm cruising through. If it doesn't actually get difficult, I may have to play through on a higher setting just to get see what the creators change to make the game challenging.

First mission is pretty ho-hum: defend the base. You've got a set of enemy bombers to stop, and if I understood correctly, the bombers decide to bomb a civilian target on their way to their intended target, your base. Pretty nasty. I can't tell if I could have stopped the bombing of the civilians by being faster or whether it was simply destined to happen.

Second mission has you playing offense, attacking a supply base for the enemy. Lots of stationary ground targets, and no surprises.

Third mission has you destroying ships coming into a port. The voiceover during the briefing is hilariously badly dubbed. The targets are all "landing ships" but apparently something changed after the briefing was recorded and they pasted in the same voice actor saying "landing ships" where there used to be some other word. I think I could have done a better job of splicing the audio. Regardless, the ships never got close to the port, and I cruised to another victory.

Fourth mission presents a branching path. There are three stops possible along the way to a fourth main waypoint in the mission structure. From what I can tell, you can choose to do one, two, or three of the interim missions, although some of the path may depend on which mission you do first. I chose to keep enemy land forces from entering tunnels leading to the port I'd just defended from a sea attack. Almost no challenge here, and I'd bought a new plane with special air-to-ground weaponry that made it almost like point-and-click warfare.

Once again, as in Ace Combat 04, we have parallel storylines. There is a reporter writing about the war and the fighter pilot you play (who also happens to be written about by the reporter). There is some string music reminiscent of Ace Combat 04 as well, although not as good. The hand-drawn art during the cut scenes also reminds me of Ace Combat 04.

Like all Ace Combat games, the "war is bad" message is hammered time and time again.

WoW: Confirmed Addict

2006-09-15T21:19:00.000-04:00

All it takes is a silly map and a talent and spell preview that doesn't even include my character's class yet, and I'm dying to plunk down $12 a month to get my 56 up to level 60 before the addition is released. (For some reason, I've never felt compelled to play up an alt to some insane level. I'm an addict, but apparently can't handle my WoW as well as some others, which is to say I'm a lightweight, in drinking terms.)

I'm still trying to fend off my desire to play (no thanks to Matt, would-be enabler) until I "have time," whatever that means, but I am, I believe, at best "in recovery" (again, in drinking terms) when it comes to WoW. Why I want to play glorified Ultima Online where I can't even sell my items for real money, I have no idea. "Cut wood. Make bows. Sell bows. Buy gear. Get pkilled. Repeat." Better than smoking crack, I guess, though the statement plays both ways.

Angband: Engagement ring

2006-09-12T21:11:00.000-04:00

I'm back to playing Angband. Goodbye life. Funniest moment so far:

In your pack: an Engagement Ring of Stupidity (-1) {cursed} (l)

GTA:SA Waste of a good Ryde

2006-09-07T02:02:00.000-04:00

I've been continuing to try out my "new" video card setup, and GTA:SA is reaping some impressive gains just like Madden. If you have a Radeon Xpress motherboard and are using the integrated graphics for gaming, please, please, for the love of all that Chris Farley felt was holy, ensure you've got good, paired RAM for the hypermemory. Even better, buy a video card, fool. Me included.

So in GTA:SA, I've just wasted Ryder. It was not satisfying in any fashion. With most games doing such a poor job of building characters to begin with, trying to get you to care about characters for which you haven't an investment at all, it's a real shame when a series usually quite good with narrative considerations cheeses out like this. You've run missions with and for Ryder. CJ has joked with him. Ryder's from CJ's neighborhood. He's a turncoat. This is decent character development for both Ryder and CJ. Don't make the final showdown about as interesting as the random goons that get tossed at you at the end of any other mission.

I hope they do a better job with Big Smoke and Wuzzy/Cesar/anyone else that turns "bad".

In other news, I think Toreno (sp) is voiced by James Wood. Regardless, the voice acting there isn't half bad, and is Emmy winning good by Resident Evil standards. I'm impressed with the new land that's opened up so far, like entering a new territory in WoW, and the news radio with Big Smoke doing a public service annoucement about drugs is right humorous. Though San Fiero's missions seemed to hit just below average expectations, Toreno's two missions I've done so far have, in large part b/c of the plot development in the cut scenes, been interesting. I hope the game continues the improvement.

Idiot.

2006-09-04T18:07:00.000-04:00

Oh, screw it, I started this using not-quite-done-with-undergrad reviewer style with a history of my system, how RAM from Newegg didn't work twice, RMAs, quick trips to Circuit City. Who cares?

There's something fancy in my mobo's chipset that can get the integrated video to talk to onboard RAM really fast, if the RAM you install is good, dual channel stuff. I had inserted dual-channel Mushkin without ever removing the cheapy Kingston single 512 stick I'd stuck in a long time back. Leave cheap RAM in your Xpress 200 chipset mobo for a year and you'll never see the integrated video do its thing. I recently gave away the cheapy stick to someone stuck with a Dell Dimension 2400 and 128 megs for WinXP. I'm so gallant, but this is getting us close to crappy reviewer style again.

Edit: Just in case you couldn't deduce the breath of idiocy, my line of reasoning was, "Well, the good memory's in there in its own dual-channel slots. The video chip will see it and know to do its scratchwork there, not on the crappy RAM, which it'll surely ignore. [and get this...] I don't need to check by removing it." I kept that mindset through crappy play for months, b/c the play with the extra Mushkin RAM was slightly better than it was with just the crappy RAM. ID E. AUGHT.

Does integrated video still stink? Sure, I guess so, though it's still very much at the right price. Does it stink as bad when it finally gets to use its fancy memory jive (hypermedia?)? Not nearly. Though I would still council any would-be system builder to go buy the cheapest thing Alienware has to offer (wait; they've got nothing under $819 now. What gives?), giving you an SLI board and a dedicated GeForce card, my latest "upgrade" is still a great tide me over. Madden is *very* fast, relatively speaking, now that little single Kingston's gone. I can actually see the kick meter and make extra points now, and I'll put off the new card purchase a while longer yet.

The interface in Madden is still the worst I've ever seen for a game, but the game is much, much, MUCH more playable now that I've taken RAM out.

Black: Levels are huge

2006-08-30T00:13:00.000-04:00

Man, the level I just worked on in Black feels absolutely huge. I know they're probably recycling things like tree models and ground textures like mad, but what an impressive illusion of a huge space.

Also, throwing me into a forest without any sort of map is interesting, I suppose. Disorienting, especially since the number of instantly recognizeable landmarks is very low.

Dulling of senses as closer to death is a neat effect. Sort of like Max Payne but in reverse.

Also, the nifty depth of field effect when you reload reminds me of how 3dfx said their T-buffer effects were the wave of the future. They were right, but a bit too early.

I felt like destroying something beautiful

2006-08-29T00:15:00.000-04:00

So it turns out you can get a reasonably priced copy of EA's shooter Black from eBay if you are patient. Hooray for the internets.

One thing I'll say for all that money EA put into Black: It has the best looking and sounding introduction and menus I've seen. The guns and ammo dancing in the background of the menus are flashy and crisp while the orchestral score evokes the requisite action movie energy. Too bad they felt compelled to go with real actors for the storytelling, because it just doesn't fit the shiny polish everywhere else.

Of course Black isn't about the story. It's obviously about nonstop shooting and explosions and randomly shouting enemies and allies. After the first level, I think I can say that in this respect it succeeds. Simultaneously it makes all the other PlayStation 2 programmers look like a slovenly pack of rank amateurs.

Not everything was perfect. As reported elsewhere, it takes dozens of bullets to take out some enemies, which really drags some battles out needlessly. Worse still, this Action Quake 2 veteran is frustrated that head shots are not instant kills. If I can manage decent aim, I should be rewarded for doing so, for crying out loud. Despite the first level being a bit short, there are over a dozen objectives and how and where they are achieved is confusing at best. Along with the above, I have some of my usual crusty old gamer complaints: no freaking subtitles and the controller configuration can't be accessed while playing a level.

Since Black is supposed to be short, I'm going to try to burn through it quickly. If I'm lucky I'll have a final word in a few days.

Civilization 1 (Mac): Thousands of colors to play with none

2006-08-13T12:22:00.000-04:00

Note to self: If you don't have the color data for Civ 1 on the Mac and try to play in 256 colors, you will see the opening scene in color, but the game will then blow up. If you try to open a game in 256, your Mac will freeze. Same with 256 shades of grey.

If you try to play in thousands of colors, somehow Civ is now smart enough to sense you don't have the color data and will play in black and white.

This, by the way, is a worst case for a machine with 1 meg of VRAM and a monitor that will display resolutions aboves 800x600.

GTA3 (PS2): I'm supposed to be seeing this?

2006-08-08T20:48:00.000-04:00

I played some GTA3 again today as a break. Just a few minutes -- I'm short only The Exchange in the plot side of the game, and if I ever finish it, I'll call it done. Now that I've stopped trying to drive all the way through the mission, I believe I may have better luck.

One piece of bad news for me was how fast the game seemed to move. That is, the framerate is a heck of a lot better and smoother than it is on my Radeon X200 integrated graphics box playing GTA:SA. Sure, there are some differences, like I've got models with quite a bit more polys in SA and the cars don't disappear on the horizon nearly as quickly, but it's no wonder I'm having such a time in some missions. Scratch that -- less during missions that simply when I'm driving around or trying to dance. Things really are slideshowing on the WinPC for me.

Oh well. PC Gamer Magazine had a review for what essentially is a single-slot NVidia SLI card for just $600. What a deal! Would only double the amount of dough I've sunk into the rig.

It was nice to remember who Catalina is on GTA3. A neat little continuation there from SA into GTA3. Ha, CJ's missin' nuttin'.

NCAA07 (PS2): Flies in the ointment

2006-07-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

1.) Is there any reason the home scoreboard operator wants to show my play selection on the big screen to tens of thousands, including the opposing team, throughout the game?
2.) I'm a little tired of the game starting up and showing the same university's mascot (not my team's) for a split second before swapping to my team's.
3.) Along the same lines, and much like Matt's, "They must have thought it was good enough," comment about TR:L (PSP), I usually see the players magically beam out every extra point. That is, the game shows me the players lining up to kick, but they're the normal offensive guys. Then *WHAM*, they all are magically replaced by the kick team in front of my eyes.

I can see these things, EA Sports. It looks sorry.

NCAA07 (PS2): FImp

2006-07-25T11:08:00.000-04:00

Rented NCAA07 last night and played a bit. Bottom line: Yay, updated rosters.

Improvements:
* Onside kickoff interface is finally different than the regular kickoff. Congrats, EA. Got that one on the nose.

* Better skills test to determine how good your "Race for the Heisman" virtual self will be (though I believe the name for RftH has changed). The reception drill and kick return drills were very good.

* GPA added to replacement to "Race for the Heisman".

What's a GPA doing in a video game? This year you pick a major, can visit with a tutor, and have to prepare for midterms. There are "easy" majors, like NCAA mascots, "medium", and "hard" ones, like English, apparently. The difficult questions so far have been ones like, "Which sentence uses assonance?" (really not a horrible question for high schoolers) and...

Which author wrote in the "Roaring 20s"?

A. Plato
B. Walt Whitman
C. F. Scott Fitzgerald
D. Edgar Allen Poe

Um, whew. Close one. Nearly picked Plato.

Regardless, putting the "student" back into "student athelete", even virtual ones, is appreciated by this player.

Shortcomings:

* What happened to my EA Sports Bio? This many years into playing on the same system (ie, PS2) , you'd think they'd continue to capitalize on my extended patronige. Why? I want them to be able to pull a few things from there, like my favorite teams, my approximate chosen appearance for my avatar, and, most of all, what level of game I need for it to stay challenging. By this time, I should be jumping into the game without having to track down "Classic controller setup", "All-Star" skill level, my name's Dudey Dude, etc. This should be part of an online feature with next gen.

And even if they don't grab these values from Bio, the game should figure out from my performance at the opening skills test that I've played before. Up the level, please.

* Instructions for the 40 yard dash weren't real clear. The pause before "Ready" much less "Ready. [crickets] Set..." was much too long. I figured I was supposed to start running. Fault!

* Absolute speed still kills absolutely. My Dudey Dude got a fair number of points to allocate to his stats from the RftH skills tests, and I immediately sunk as many as I needed for a Speed of 99. Dudey's Acceleration is 62, by the way, so he gathers speed like a train, not a Yamaha. My first game, Dudey has 527 all-purpose yards and 11 TDs, and that was just over half the points. Sure, the opponent was creampuff, but give me a break. See also my complaint about the underuse of the Bio.

* Same money plays. Options, for example, still kill easily with enough speed. And once you option a few times, well, play-action your way to another TD. (First game won 115-0. See above complaint. See Bio complaint about skill level selection.)

* I don't know why, but I've been returning kicks for TD like mad with the new kick return camera angle.

That's enough for now. Many new bits are a wash. The "3rd person view" on kicks has yet to pay off, but it's a neat angle. Use for D-line selections too, please, EA! New kicking setup (aside from onsides) is a wash. The "unique playbook" for each school is nice, but not a real big improvement. I wish they'd do with playbooks what they do for RftH and either test or ask me what kind of coach I am, and adjust plays accordingly if I don't wish to use the default.

Not a bad update, but simply that so far.

GTA:SA: Building Character

2006-07-24T11:24:00.001-04:00

The Badlands were bad, forcing me to drive all over creation in a decidedly non-gangster and non-gansta' setting performing tedious missions so that I could finally "legally" enter the next city. The beginning of San Fierro wasn't much better, with CJ, his sister (Kendra?), her boyfriend, a gang leader named Cesar (sic, iirc), and a pot-headed fellow called The Truth (voiced by Peter Fonda, no less) getting toegether a bunch of extremely nerdy WASPs to renovate a long-abandoned garage into a wonderful business.

Sounds to me more like the pilot of a horrible sitcom than GTA.

Many of the missions here aren't too interesting either, especially that Zip's RC shop crap. I hated the GTA:VC (iirc) mission with the exploding helicopters, and something similar is back. Quelle horror, indeed.

But the game remains interesting for one reason. Make that two. They're Catalina in the Badlands and Wuzy/Woozie in San Fierro. Both are well developed, relatively speaking, characters with character. Wuzy's the blind guy who runs into walls walking in places he's surely visited scores of times, yet can beat CJ in video games and shoot with dead-eye accuracy. Though some of the lines are forced, tired, and none too funny ("Wuzy, you know I'm black, right?"), Wuzy himself is a well-voiced, if not riot, at least enjoyable fellow.

Too bad my Wuzy missions are toast. Strange how a couple of decent cut scenes can make what's otherwise a pretty tired set of gameplay conventions still worth playing.

Now if someone will just donate an old 7800GT to my box, I'll be in business...

Tomb Raider: Legend - Finished, random thoughts

2006-07-22T11:20:00.000-04:00

Finished the last two levels, Nepal and Bolivia (redux).

Scaling some of the parts of the mountains in Nepal was fun. On the other hand, the area is full of breaking ledges and platforms, which is maddening when the controls are wonky.
I really, really hate the Dragon's Lair gameplay that God of War seems to have inflicted on cut scene action sequences. In TR:L the main problem is that the timing for the button presses is a little tighter than I think it needed to be and there is some confusion over what particular icons mean. The first time I saw an up arrow icon during one of these sequences, I thought it was a triangle button. Nope. After reloading I tried pressing up ... on the D-pad. Nope. Figured I was timing it wrong, so tried those two again. Two more reloads and I try up on the analog nub. Yep, that was it. Other than triangle looking like up arrow icon, I don't see why up on the D-pad shouldn't be acceptable.
Worth playing the game to see the story. I like that the history of Lara's family is explored, and I thought the explanation for the big "event" in Lara's childhood was well-done.
Not so keen on the cliffhanger, but I can accept it.
On the other hand, the development of Lara's ruthlessness was exciting at the end. It was pretty thrilling (and gutsy on the part of the developers) to have her get uncontrollably furious, beat the crap out of her enemy, and then demand information by punctuating every word of her demand with a gunshot near the enemy's head. I won't give away what she's saying, but I thought it was impressive.
I am less impressed by the characterization of Lara's foes. Rutland was weak to begin with, and the development of Amanda was limited to one background story and then lots of spittled sneers. I don't have any good ideas on how better they could have handled it, but those enemies just aren't as interesting as they should be.
Broken door, obviously breakable. Why does an artifact need to be used to break it? I have grenades, you know. Allow me some options. Stupid limitations.
The magnetic grapple aiming truly needs work. If Lara is between two metal boxes, one in front of her and one behind, the metal grapple should not shoot out of her hand and connect to the one behind her. This is the same problem as the boss battle I described earlier.
This game is probably fantastic on a system where you can use a second stick to control the camera and the analog controls aren't so touchy. I hope they work on that before the sequel and Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary.

Try to hammer things into a review on CG later.

Tomb Raider: Legend - Dragon boss, controls getting worse, sound glitchy

2006-07-20T23:44:00.000-04:00

Good heavens, this game needed a good bit more polish before it was released. In a year or so, I might pick up the PS2 version for comparison, but I can see why the PSP version has rated so much lower than the other versions.

This is going to be a rant in my final summary, but I need to get it out right now. There is a dragon boss that is defeated by using the environment. When the dragon is in one of four places, you activate one of four switches to tag him. The problem is that the only place to access two of the switches is glitchy in the following way: activating the tool which targets the switch from the only point of access will automatically go to one of the switches but not the other. Worse still, even if you carefully aim at the difficult switch, the tool will miss most of the time. Since everything is on a time limit, you end up screwing up, dying, etc.

That's not all. As you use each switch successfully, it is half destroyed. So, the strategy seems simple: use the easy switch first, then use the difficult switch since the easy one is destroyed. The problem is that the game still targets the useless switch even after it is destroyed!

Screwing up the controls was bad enough. Screwing them up so bad that a boss battle becomes pure luck is inexcusable.
On this same level I hit a sound glitch that caused a sound to repeat over and over even after I was very far away from its source. Only option was to save, exit to title screen, and reload the game. Awful.
In this level the secret items to collect are crosses. Turns out you can target at least one of them with the magnetic grapple instead of actually reaching it in person. Very nice extension of the grapple idea.
This level was second closest I've seen to grand, vertiginous views, like with Colosseum and St. Francis' Folly in original game. Still not great, and I bet it's better with system where you can control camera more easily.
I don't think I figured out all the block/movement/fire puzzles correctly, but muddled through anyway. Nice that having just half of it done and an extra health pack is good enough. Flexibility is good.
Cut scenes after this level are good for characterization of Lara and her personal motivations. Redeeming father's rep and re-examining her mother's death seem to be well done, without being hamfisted.

That's it. Now on to Nepal.

Tomb Raider: Legend - Dresses up switch-pulling with Tesla device

2006-07-16T19:48:00.000-04:00

I just finished a level in Tomb Raider: Legend set in a lost Russian research lab. The environment was interesting, since it appeared to offer some exploration that was secondary to the primary path from beginning to end. I hope to give it another go later to look for some secrets I missed.

That aside, the gimmick for the level is some sort of Tesla device (like a giant turret) which can move metal objects at a distance, not unlike what I've seen done with some device in Half-life 2. The interface is awkward and using the device is not terribly intuitive. The motive for powering it up in the first place, a not insignificant quest of its own, is not clear until afterward. The seeming aimlessness is frustrating, and the eventual use of the device is to ... move a metal object from one side of the room to another to set up a run-jump-catch to cross from one platform to another. It isn't particularly hard, but it is mindless object shuffling.

The boss level boils down to this formula: activate four switches, then activate four more switches, then use the grapple to grab a prize. The first four switches have to be activated by hand, and they turn on the Tesla device in the room. Then you use the Tesla device to activate the other four. It's the worst kind of dressing up of switch-door gameplay: add some completely contrived artifice between you and the switch to make it seem more sophisticated while at the same time making the mindless switch flipping more difficult.

It isn't interesting and it isn't rewarding. While Tomb Raider: Legend might have learned some tricks from Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time on how to make an adventurer navigate a 3D world, it has none of the feeling of a job well done that I felt when the Prince solved a puzzle. If you're going to rip-off ideas, at least rip-off all the good ones, not just some of them.

Q1:TF Like a fine wine, not that I'd know

2006-07-15T17:30:00.000-04:00

Played a little more Team Fortress online. No, the *real* version, using the Fruitz-of-Dojo (careful; partial nudity. No, seriously.) update for the Mac. Had a really hard time tracking down maps, and finally gave in and dl'd them straight from the servers.

2fort5 and variants are still quite enjoyable. There was a 2fort5beta or some such that had grates over the moat entryways that I assume were triggered somewhere else. If there was some way to make it a team deal to get out, where someone had to pull a trigger near your flag, or some such, yet had a switch outside for people coming in, it's an advance. Otherwise, it's the sort of, "I've played this map and you haven't; enjoy the frags," I generally dislike, as it was otherwise the same map.

Well6 has not gotten all that much better. I usually do well on that map (lots of *BLAM* at close range there; I'm also really only good with the two-barrel shotgun in Action Quake, waiting around corners), but am not horribly impressed.

Game dynamics can't be beat. The class that's most impressive is the Spy, I believe. In large games, it's amazing how easily a spy can slip past players, even if the spy is not holding the right gun for the class they're pretending to be, a clear give-away. TF is just [barely] good enough that you don't have to have traditional fps skills to contribute, and that's something I really haven't seen in other fps online games, medic possibly a partial exception (but boring to play. And I'm a resto druid in another life).

Quake even still looks pretty good. I should try out the new, updated models and textures for the game. At TF speed, much faster than my overly cautious single-player play, all you really notice is that the missile launcher and buildings are a little blocky, both of which could be fixed. The explosions are still pretty nice (bullets a little blocky), movement fluid, and game quite enjoyable.

And to think it's essentially all free. A few models and textures are recycled from Quake, but replace those and it's a brand new game. I imagine they're in the Quake demo. ;^) Play it, fool.

GTA:SA: Partial Forgiveness

2006-07-07T14:21:00.000-04:00

Okay, the Catalina missions almost make up for the horribly boring, misplaced genre of the Badlands. Almost. And not because they're enjoyable missions themselves. Heck, they're essentially training missions. "Here's how to use satchel charges!" She is, however, a memorable (if horribly flawed, etc etc) character.

GTA:SA: Assets

2006-06-25T20:21:00.000-04:00

Gave the Roboi's Food Mart delivery mission a shot last night. First three are pretty easily doable, but I flubbed the fourth. Half-way through, however, while pedaling slow-a-ly up a hill, I started thinking to myself that GTA's developers can't possibly be so dense as not to have added a "pedal harder, fool" command to the otherwise pretty neat bike controls. My first guess was to Track & Field the "go forward" button. Success; CJ was Lancing it up the hill.

Did I miss that in the initial on-screen directions?

In other news, I finished up Burning Desire. Couldn't throw those cocktails worth a crud, though. Ended up tossing them nearly pointblank and running to the Cluckin' Chicken twice. Pretty sorry, but it worked. Figured out a trajectory that worked for the last two, and it was a breeze.

Saving Denise was another matter. All that fire & smoke pretty much brought my Radeon Xpress integrated graphics to a crawl. Feeeuhn times.

Also did the Doberman mission. A fairly enjoyable addition to GTA that makes it much more Civ or RTS like, almost Sim City-esque. Getting the asset dollars is better than a kick in the face too. Might have to go roll up on another block later, yo.

I did notice when I started playing recently that I (as CJ) was a bit bored and wondered what there was to pick between to do. On the way out of the Ganton house, I remember thinking to myself as I glanced at the TV, "Man, I don't want to play those dumb video games. Maybe I can jack a car and go run some robbery missions or drop off some more Roboi packages." Unf. a somewhat sick feeling when those are your conditioned "recreational" responses.

I also noticed that the Roboi deliveries are, sadly, pretty true to life. I used to work downtown in a relatively urban area, and remember seeing from the second floor window a number of bike runs from the local convenience store down the just as convenient one-way streets (advantageous as cops only come from one direction, and come slowly. Makes the lookouts' jobs easier). For the bikers, on the way out there was usually a brown bag in the drink holder; on the way back, nothing. The bike made a number of runs each morning. Lots of, um, thirsty people willing to pay for the delivery of their coke, ur, Coke there. Kinda scary.

GTA:SA: Thanks for the memory.

2006-06-23T12:46:00.000-04:00

As I've cg'd, I broke back out GTA:SA. When I left it nearly a year ago, there were two storylines where I was having trouble completing the current missions. Though I'm sure taking a break help me return "fresh", I was surprised when I finished them both in successive nights of relatively quick gaming.

What changed? I'm pretty sure I had the dual action gamepad last year, almost positive. The rest of the machine's the same. I did, however, add two gigs of memory to the box this year to help with some programming tasks that got mem intensive. I wonder if that did the trick.

Akumajo Dracula XX: Stage 6

2006-05-09T01:09:00.000-04:00

I completed stage 6, and I'm starting stage 7. To get to stage 7, use this password:

HAW
FFH
AWF

H = heart
A = axe
W = holy water
F = flame

Dracula XX: Stage 4'

2006-05-04T00:51:00.000-04:00

Fell through the bottom of Stage 3 and into Stage 4', which is an underground level. Beat it on my second run through.

Password:
WWW
WAH
FHH

W = holy water
A = axe
H = heart
F = flame

Dracula XX: Stage 2

2006-05-03T23:47:00.000-04:00

Finished Stage 2 on a single life, which is a big thing for me. I'm not out to be the best player ever, obviously, but it's always nice when we live up to a certain decent standard.

This was the bat boss. Took it out easily with the cross subweapon.

Password:
FWW
FWH
FWW

F = flame
W = holy water
H = heart

Dracula XX: Stage 1

2006-05-03T01:08:00.000-04:00

Played (again) through the first stage of Dracula XX (Castlevania XX) on the SNES tonight. Here's my password for starting next time.

Password:
HAA
AAW
AWW

A = axe
H = heart
W = holy water

Odama: Level 11

2006-04-16T16:09:00.000-04:00

The last level's another boss level, and is a bit taxing to work through. Like the Spider Temple level, there's multiple "boards" here, except there's four, and they're actually open on the sides. Any shot that makes it over the slight invisible hill between the boards will send the ball over there, and this time the screen does *not* automatially scroll to follow it, so I was forced to constantly fumble with the C-stick to chase the ball.

In the center of the playfield, at the top of all the boards, is the enemy fortress, and perched atop it is the gigantic final boss. (Why are the enemy generals in this game so freaking huge?) The fortress has four doorways, one for each table. One of them has a red "X" in front of it, and that's the Bell Team's destination. It seems that all you have to do is get the bell there to win, but this time I made sure to kill the boss before I did it. (It was just worth an extra ball, like the other times.)

The Bell Team will automatically go after that X whenever it can, but when it gets close to the fortress the boss will hop down and kick the bell onto one of the other tables! The Bell will usually end up near the flippers on that side of the board, but since all the enemy troops will have congregated at the bell's old location, you probably won't lose the game as a result.

To kill the boss, again, you just need to hit him with the ball and rally on him with your men to inflict damage. Multiple rallys inflict damage faster, and it helps if you can knock him down again as he gets back up. Two hits are usually required to send him to his feet, but the boss is so huge that he's not hard to target, and ringing the bell can also stun him. What's harder is keeping the ball near him, since he can easily travel between boards in his pursuit of the bell, and it's distressingly common to accidently flip the ball onto the wrong board. It helps if you can learn to control the ball with the flippers on the side tables (which are still operable and visible) without having to move the screen there.

The coolest thing about this level is the bonus stage. It's through the door on the "home" table, and you can go there right from the start by launching the ball into the door. The narrator expresses disbelief as you find yourself in modern Kyoto, outside Nintendo headquarters! You can then use the ball to knock over houses and buildings, and store up troops for the fight.

Time back on the battlefield is frozen while you're there, and you can come back any time you like just by going through the right door. There is no timer here either, nor is there a Bell or any troops to worry about. You're free to spend as long as you want using the permanently-green ball to convert citizens into troops for your army. (They say things like "Where am I going?" and "Yay! I'm a soldier now!" as you scoop them up.) The flippers are spaced kind of far apart, but it's nothin that can't be overcome by abusing the table tilt, and there still aren't any outlanes.

The quickest way to get troops here is to shoot the ball up the highway ramp on the far right of the screen (it requires a shot off the very tip of the left flipper), then as the ball comes around, it passes by an upper flipper that can be used to capture people passing by and coming out of the Nintendo building. If you miss the ball, you can tilt the table back to the left to try again so long as the train tracks below are still intact. It's easy to accidently crush soldiers in the battle with the boss, so it's probably best to get as many troops as you can, to help keep up morale with reinforcements. One nice touch: the citizens you capture in Kyoto sometimes show up in the battle wearing their modern clothes.

So what happens when you get the Bell through the last gate? You get a fairly cool ending, and what sounds like it could almost pass for a James Bond credits song, and it opens up Free Play mode, allowing access to any of the levels at any time. Unfortunately, to start a new "for real" game, you have to abandon the Free Play option, which sucks.

Odama: Levels 7-10

2006-04-15T02:08:00.000-04:00

Level 7: The first of four very interesting levels. This is a second boss fight, this time without a build-up before the main event. After a couple of levels that I blazed through, the difficulty has returned here. The boss likes to dump out a huge bucket of water that will flood the battlefield in front of the gate, washing away (and sometimes drowning) friend and foe alike. Once you get it out of your head that you have to kill him, however, this is actually not too difficult a level I'd say, since the gate is right there. You just need to knock him off his perch (by setting up ramp shots by having your men move some rocks into position) then Press your men through the door. If this boss is like the first, then defeating him is worth an extra ball, but you get one extra ball per 100 seconds left on the timer upon exiting. Consider that the boss takes damage slowly, so that it's almost certain you'll need more than 100 seconds to kill him, and you'll probably take fewer casualties that way too.

Level 8: Technically another boss level, but the interesting thing about it is the unique setup for the playfield. There's three "tables" here, each taking up one third of the surface of a 360-degree mountain. You can rotate the mountain to see each table with the C-stick, but the view scrolls automatically when you shoot the ball through one of the side-ramps that connect them.

There are essentially three fronts. The main one, with the Bell, is the one you start on, and there's a gate halfway up that's too small for the ball to pass through that blocks most shots to the upper mountain here. The other sides have no such gate, but less going on. Each of those sides has a statue that you need to Rally your men to in order to move them higher on the mountain. Each statue requires three Rallys-worth of men to move it, and once it's in motion, it in effect becomes an additional Bell Team, causing the game to be lost if the enemy forces it beyond its corresponding set of flippers. I think you can rally additional men to the statue to help defend it, and of course you can also use rice balls to distract the foe. The statue does NOT stun enemy troops when struck with the ball, but it's also somewhat likely that the men won't even be challenge as they get the statue in place if you send the teams out to it right as the battle begins (you can select and target the statues with Rallys even if they're not visible on screen).

There are also some ramps that go up and over the mountain, which provide an additional way to get the ball from one board to another, as well as allowing you a chance to send the ball through enemy ranks, or even strike the bell if it's lucky enough to be in the way. But the true importance of the ramps is a little obscure.

The level summary before play begins explains that getting the statues into place creates a pair of walls that block off some of the ramps, but you have to read the level's description in the MANUAL, or be really observant, to discover that the walls are actually controlled by the flippers. No lie, it took me quite a few attempts on the stage before I discovered this.

Even if you know about them, it's not obvious that the importance of the walls is, so I'll spill the beans: when both flippers are held down, the walls seal off the upper parts of the ramps into a closed loop. The idea is to launch the ball into one of the ramps but release the flipper button to allow the ball up, then while the ball is in the loop area, quickly press and hold BOTH flippers.

So what's the result of this? Did you ever play one of the two real-world High Speed pinball tables, where there's a special loop elevated above the playfield that magnets keep sending the ball through faster and faster? It's just like that, except somehow the act here summons a pillar of light and purifies a temple in the process. It's quite, quite awesome.

Once that's done the gate opens and, although it summons a spider monster to roam the mountain, instead of attacking I chose to utter a few insistent Press Forwards and cleared the level.

Level 9:
Now we're getting to the cool boards. Both levels 9 and 10 are forced-scroll areas, where the flippers are travelling through a large map following the movements of your Bell Team. Level 9 is cool for quite a few reasons. It's set in a town with dozens of buildings, and smashing them to bits with the ball is entertaining in a way I haven't experienced since the days of Blast Corps back on the N64. It's true, smashing up the huts and such on this level somehow feels exactly like destroying things in that game. It's quite entertaining.

Some buildings contain troops. Some of them, for an ill-explored reason since you're deep in enemy territory, are *friendly* troops that immediately run out and accompany your bell team. This seems to be the only way, in the entire game, to gain additional men without converting enemy soldiers by hitting them with a green Odama. Most buildings, however, contain enemy soldiers, and they'll run out to harass your army if you haven't destroyed their building ahead of time.

THe setup of the level requires some additional explanation. The town itself is actually quite cramped, and there are multiple paths through it. When your guys reach an important juncture, they'll stop and ask which way to go, which you answer by saying Left or Right into the microphone. That will be the road the Bell Team travels down, so that will be the way the flippers go. Also travelling with them is a pair of of ghost walls, which simply prevent the ball from falling offscreen anywhere other than between the flippers.

This is one of the most interesting stages, since the multiple paths present several different ways to play it. Power-ups are very common here, and it's sometimes a good idea to let the ball get stuck in the middle of a bunch of buildings and shake the table around to smash them up and collect the frequent hearts and orbs that appear.

Unfortunately, the cavalry make a comeback on this level, and they show up frequently. The board tends to be so busy that it's very easy to not even see them before they're practically through the flippers. The ball tends to be caught up crumpling buildings much of the time, so this is not necessarily a unavoidable drain, but it does tend to make this level a ball sink. This is the deadliest level I've seen in the game by a wide margin.

Other neat things here: there are actual cows on the board! I don't know if this is just a whimsy or a homage to classic Bally/Williams pinball. I imagine it's probably the former, but it's just too cool to ignore the possibility of the latter. The black Odama can show up again here if you take the right-hand path at the initial fork, as that route contains a couple of *evil bells*, scattered amongst the buildings. THey aren't mobile like your bell is, and can be smashed by hitting them on the side where the supports are instead of striking metal, but if you do ring one it stuns your own troops just as hitting the Ninten Bell stuns the enemy, and it also gives the ball that black aura from Level 4. You can dismiss it the same way though, just hit the ball with a flipper and it's back to normal.

Level 10:
A fairly challenging stage, and another journey although one without choices. This is a long hike down a fortified road, and although the clock starts out at 800 seconds you'll probably still have to rush to get through in time.

In this level, the flippers are again mobile, but they're just part of a static bottom portion of the screen that moves upward as the Bell Team advances. As you continue, enemy troops attack constantly, and there are also plenty of enemy fire archers who attack from scaffolds that need to be knocked down with the Odama. There are also some other unusual obstacles here, including catapults, a slot-machine-like gimmick, and a hand attacked to a building that likes to pick up the Bell and throw it back a screen length or so. The best way past the hand seems to be either to get the screen to scroll up far enough that you can smack its building with the ball, or to March Left and try to evade it that way, although the team has a saddening habit of working themselves back into reach.

Despite the gimmicks, this is arguably the "purest" level. For much of it, it's just your flippers, the Odama, and the red and black armies going at it. Power-up bestowing buildings are in very short supply here. Pray, when you smash one, that it won't be a barrel, as hourglasses (because every second counts on this level), hearts and orbs (to give you more reserves) are all greatly needed items here..

Troops are in short supply on this stage because of the limited supply of items to turn the ball green, and the frequent Advance and Press Forward commands needed to make headway will take a serious toll on morale, morale that is difficult to replenish because you run out of reinforcements rapidly. One thing I discovered: if you have a good shot that squishes many enemy soldiers on one hit, very frequently the game will drop a heart right in the middle of the slaughter. Those hearts are what make survival here possible. This is *the* level to test how good you are at crushing the enemy while leaving your guys unflattened and further harming their morale, and it often helps to abuse the table tilt and aim bank shots off the side walls to get the ball around your army, typically standing in the way.

About halfway through, your men will suddenly remark something about hot springs. What they're referring to is a semi-hidden rally objective that they'll just be passing by at that moment. By sending a team there, you can view a humorous scene and replenish your army's morale to maximum, at the cost of, I think, 50 seconds of time. It's usually a good idea to go for it if morale is low, since you can make up the time with the extra Press Forwards and Charges it allows you. They won't rally there if their morale is already in the red however, and if you have to have your troops rally on a rice ball to gain the morale to go to the hot springs, then it may not be worth it.

I have to say that I'm greatly enjoying the game at this point. The levels show such a great variety of play, often containing gimmicks that show up in that one level only, like the path-choosing aspects of Level 9. There's only one level to go at this point, and it's the one with the bonus stage in modern Japan....

Odama: After Six Levels

2006-04-13T18:14:00.000-04:00

Odama is a very interesting game.

It seriously wants to be the best damn feudal Japanese military pinball game in the world. There is a tremendous amount of charm there, from the faux-historical opening to the clever way they refer to the Path of "Ninten-Do," or the Way of Heavenly Duty, to how the narrator refers to you as "me liege," uses the system time and date clock to make remarks about how long it's been since you last played (a sly reference to Yoot's previous game Seaman, in which the commenting was done by Leonard Nimoy!). The narrator starts out each battle upbeat, then as you replay it over and over, and OVER, again, trying to win, gradually becomes more desparing, eventually remarking that Nintendo players tend to be a bit too fanatical(!), and that playing too much could be bad for the eyes.

Also charming is the reactions of your soldiers, who in addition to having to defeat a far superior, seemingly-inexhaustiable force, also have to do it while dodging a gigantic pinball tearing across the battlefield.

The game itself works like this:
Each battle starts you off with the number of troops, rice balls, cavalry troops and extra balls left over from the last batter. At the start of the game, you have a smal number of troops and rice balls, no cavalry, and only one ball, so defeat comes swiftly if you're clumsy with the flippers.

About those flippers. There's two at the bottom of the playfield, operated by sumo wrestlers. Between them stands your general, who will slay any troops of cavalry who try to attack the flippers, but at the cost of paralyzing them for varying armounts of time. Ordinary troops freeze them for a second or two at most, but cavalry getting by can render them inoperable for up to ten seconds. While the flippers are frozen you ALSO cannot tilt the board, so unless you just sent the ball off on a trip to the far side of the field, you've probably just lost it.

Starting from between the flippers and slowly making its way across the battlefield is your army's totem, the Ninten Bell, also carried aloft by sumo. Usually your troops form a perimeter just in advance of it. The Bell cannot be destroyed, but it can be forced back by the enemy army. If it is forced beween your flippers you lose the battle and the narrator expresses his dismay yet again. If it makes it through a gate somewhere on the playfield then the battle is won, but usually the gate is heavily guarded. Hitting the Bell (not one of its bearers) with the ball causes it to ring, stunning enemy troops depending on how far they are from the bell and how hard it was struck.

The rest of the playfield contains objects that, more or less, fulfill the roles of traditional pinball obstacles, but all (except for buttons, which look out of place) depicted realistically as features on a battlefield. The "plunger" is a cannon (and is aimable), targets are huts and houses, gates are actual gates, and so on. Some of the huts leave swiftly-vanishing powerups, either green orbs, hearts, barrels, extra balls, or hourglasses, which I'll get to later.

A few leave important objects like keys or scrolls. Keys, pulleys, and so on are objectives that you order your men to carry and do things with. Scrolls give you new voice commands, that you deliver to your troops by holding the X button and speaking into the included microphone. An interesting thing about it is that you start out with absolutely no possible commands to give, and only acquire them as you collect scrolls. If you finish a level without getting a certain scroll, then you end up doing without that command, it seems for the rest of the game. Some of the commands are hard to get, but worth it: the "flank and destroy" command seems to be the only way I've seen so far your guys can actually *kill* opposing troops. Voice recognition is generally excellent, although in the heat of a battle, it typically becomes harder for the game to recognize one's increasingly-frantic voice.

Every level (of eleven), in the best pinball tradition, contains at least one major gimmick. Frequently they are floodgates that can be smacked with the ball to open or close it. Ball control is fairly important, since unlike traditional pinball where there are usually no "bad" targets (just better places to shoot), a wayward ball here can strand your guys behind a torrent of raging water, or even drown them in an instant.

Unlike traditional pinball, the only "score" you seem to receive during the game is the amount of time you have left upon finishing a board: you get one extra ball for every 100 seconds on the clock upon exiting.

Of the game objects, perhaps the most valuable (besides extra balls) are the orbs that turn your ball a glowing green. While green, your troops are *immune* to getting crushed by the ball (they won't even dodge out of the way), and any enemy troops struck, instead of being killed, are added to your reserves! This seems to be the ONLY way to gain more troops, and besides that sometimes your men must walk between the flippers and important shots, so keeping the ball green as long as possible is important. Every orb collected extends, not replaces, the green time. Getting a heart causes the Bell to glow, and hitting a glowing Bell with the ball also gets it into "heavenly" state. It seems that you can stack hearts on the Bell, redeeming them for ever more green-time once it's finally hit.

Another item, the Rice Balls (obtained by collecting barrels), isn't explained by the game very well. After you launch the ball, the cannon is still active and is controlled by the control stick. In addition to tilting the board, the stick also moves an aiming cursor (not to be confused with the Rally cursor!), and pressing A will launch a rice ball at that location. Any enemy troops near a rice ball will drop what they're doing and run for it, exclaiming things like "Free stuff!" and "Why fight when I can eat?" At the beginning of a battle, when typically your bell carriers are undefended against a sea of foes, a rice ball is a potent aid. Unfortunately, you can only have one rice ball onscreen at once, and while it's there you won't even see the aiming cursor.

A problem with the game is that it throws the player into the thick of battle without much hand-holding. The first level is fairly simple, but the game soom becomes quite difficult. The thing about it is, it ultimately seems less difficult with practice (a mark of a well-designed game, in my opinion), but there is a lot to learn and there's no real tutorial to teach it to you.

It is absolutely essential that the player read the manual, otherwise several important controls will be neglected by him. For example, the 'B' button is how you send captured cavalry onto the field to fight for you, but more importantly the Control Pad is how you select different targets for your troops to rally to, and ultimately capture. Without that piece of information finishing some levels is impossible, but nowhere does the game reveal this control on-screen.

There's still more to learn! Your troops also have morale, and if it's low they won't obey your orders! You lose it when things are going badly or you accidently crush troops with the ball, and you get it back by sending in reinforcements and telling your men to Rally on a rice ball.

One thing that caught me for several levels before I got used to it: at the end of a level, when your bell is right in front of the gate but has to get through the sea of enemy troops that typically stands between you and victory, you must use the Press Forward command, acquired fro the second scroll on Level One, to get through. You'll know when it's worked because your men will chime in "Press Forward!" and the target box around the bell will get several arrows in front of it. It seems that Press Forward will allow the bell carriers and your troops to move forward for a few seconds regardless of enemy troops, although they seem to take a hit in numbers and morale in the process. To actually win a level, you usually have to use Press Forward several times in a row to keep them going. I dare you to avoid adding little insults to the end of your frantic, repeated "Press Forwards" as your men muddle around inches away from victory as the clock counts down the last few seconds.

Here are the levels I've seen so far, as best as I can remember them, along with the number of times I failed it:
Level 1: A simple field with a river running horizontally through. Hitting the floodgate stops and starts the water. Neither side's troops can cross the water, but your bell carriers can make it through. Water doesn't stop the ball at all. You typically want the water stopped here, since if it's going before your troops cross they can't advance, if it's going after they're across then reinforcements cannot join them, and if it's going while they're across... well, then they're fish food. The time limit is quite short here, but there's no rigamarole to go through other than the river so it's not a big problem.
Commands acquired: Advance, Fall Back, March Left, March Right, Press Forward.
Times failed before first victory: About two.

Level 2: I forget much of this level (the horror of Level 4 washed memory of some of the details from my head), but I do remember this is the first level with cavalry in it. The arrival of cavalry is heralded by the sound of loud galloping, and soon by from seven to ten horsemen stampeding down the screen towards your general. Stopping them from reaching their goal is a dire imperative, since the more that make it through, the longer your flippers will be locked. Even one making it by, however, will take them out for a good few seconds. They're difficult to dissuade (although I don't think impossible) with Rice Balls, so hitting them with the ball is the only good defense. Unfortunately, that also means the ball has to be near the flippers, so if they do make it by there will probably be an immediate drain. Crushing all the cavalry, however, will makes a great bowling pin noise and leaves behind an Extra Ball (which, unfortunately, quickly vanishes). Better yet, hitting them with a green Odama adds them to your troops. Unfortunately I haven't had much opportunity to play around with friendly horsemen, so I can't say much about them.

This level also contains a ramp with a scroll on it, "Flank and Destroy." In open areas where you outnumber your foe, this can be an effective way to wipe out large numbers of foes at once. It's a bit hard to reach, but well worth it to collect! Easier to get is the essential Rally command, which is used in conjunction with the control pad to give your men objectives to accomplish.
Commands: Rally, Flank and Destroy.
Times failed: about five.

Level 3: There's also cavalry here, and they're much more of a problem this time and will probably require several attempts. Even worse, there's three rivers to cross, and each has a different way across. The first one is stopped by hitting a floodgate with the Odama, the second one you have to first hit a hut with the ball, leaving a pulley, then have your men Rally on the pully and move it to its gate (then you can use the essential "Close the Gate" command to stop the water), and the third is forded by having your men rally on a ladder. Between all the rivers, and the ease of accidently hitting the first floodgate, it's easy to get your men trapped away from reinforcements here.

An optional scroll found here, Charge, seems like it should be useful but I've yet to get much use out of it.
Commands gained: Close the Gate, Open the Gate, Charge
Times failed: about fifteen (damn cavalry)

Level 4: The bane of my existence. First off, if you don't carry many men with you through the gate (I only brought 29) you'll have a tough time of things.

This level is notable for many reasons. The first of which is a pair of enemy flippers(!), which cause the ball to glow black when they hit it. You can dispel the evil aura by simply hitting the ball with your own flippers, but until that happens, enemy troops are immune to the ball! More importantly, the black glow will instantly cancel any green glow, making it difficult to bolster your forces. My strategy was to fire strong shots at the walls that would bounce across the playfield, tearing sideways through the enemy lines. You can capture the flippers with only a few men each, by having them rally to them. This not only stops the black glow from happening, but also allows you to control that flipper, which is important since the upper playfield is where the real action is.

There's an extensive set of fortifications up there, consisting of stone walls and fire-bombing towers, that prove deadly to any of your troops that get near, so it's a good idea to avoid having your men advance too far until you've knocked them all apart with the ball. Possibly the most satisfying thing I've seen in the game so far is when you get the ball between the stone wall and the towers, causing it to rapidly smash back and forth between them like a Breakout ball. Eventually all the walls and towers will fall apart at once, revealing the gate and a boss.

The boss is a gigantic enemy soldier (a general, supposedly). You don't have to kill him (done by knocking him down with the Odama then telling your men to rally on him), but you get an extra ball if you do it. It is possible to waste several games trying this however, so my suggestion is to just Press Forward through the gate.

In the previous levels, you could sometimes get through with only occaisional Press Forwards, but the doors are positively swarming with troops this time, so you're gonna have to command them over and over to get them by.
Commands gained: none.
Times failed: At least thirty. I had a real bad time with this one.

Level 5: Compared to the last two, this one was a cinch, and I finished it on my first try. You have another floodgate to close (although the river is vertical this time) and a complex playfield. No cavalry here, thank god. Orbs are common. So long as you get your guys to Rally to the right places, and can make the shot to the upper-left area while it's green to decimate opposition without taking casualties yourself, and this one's easy.
Commands gained: none.
Times failed: Zero.

Level 6: Another one-attempt victory, even though it looks formidable indeed. The key here is to have your men rally can capture catapults, to keep them out of the hands of your enemy. It's very easy to smash your own troops with the ball here as the path to the gate is vertical and entrenched, so don't try to "help" with your ball unless it's green.
Commands gained: none.
Times failed: Zero.

Level 7: I haven't played it yet, but it seems to be a boss level....

Shadow of the Colossus - 14

2006-04-12T23:56:00.000-04:00

Only two to go. Colossus 14 wasn't such a big deal, since the main idea isn't unlike at least one other colossus. I thought the whole setup was a bit unforgiving: if you get caught in a corner one time, you're basically starting all over again.

I'm kind of thinking that 12 would have been a better number of colossi. I'll count the ones I thought were worthwhile when I'm done, and I'm betting I can think of 4 to eliminate.

The key will be, does the story depend on there being 16? I doubt it, but I'll find out in the next day or so.

Shadow of the Colossus - 12 & 13

2006-04-08T00:53:00.000-04:00

Colossus 12 is not obvious, nor is it really very fun. I'd have cut this one. I used the back of the colossus to climb up, but he's a rather swift joker at times, so it took a while to actually snag his back this way. Any other ways?

Colossus 13, on the other hand, was totally obvious and extremely fun.

Let me put it this way: if you've read Dune by Frank Herbert and, like me, dreamed of what it must be like to ride a sandworm, then this is better. It's like catching and riding a flying sandworm. It's just that cool.

After Colossus 12 there is a short cut scene. Six riders on horses appear to be coming toward the shrine, but are still a little bit away. Five horses are black and one is white. A close-up of the guy on the white horse shows he's wearing a mask (reminds me of the masks on the little guys in Princess Mononoke) and says that it isn't far to go.

Shadow of the Colossus - 10 & 11

2006-04-07T23:05:00.000-04:00

Colossus 10 frustrated me for one reason: I figured out its weak spot, hit it with the appropriate weapon, and it didn't react. I have no idea why, but I'm fairly sure that I hit it dead on and didn't get the required reaction. That made me give up and try something else for a while before trying to hit that spot again. It worked the second time, and soon the beast was dead.

For what it's worth, the real hint for Colossus 10 is in the text after "Thy next foe is..." before you start. Read carefully.

Colossus 11 was fun. I was pretty pleased with myself for guessing the right approach early on, but I used the wrong "fall". Once I tried the other direction, it was cake.

Now on to Colossus 12.

Shadow of the Colossus - 9

2006-04-01T00:09:00.000-05:00

Before I forget: after Colossus 8 there is a short video showing the girl I'm trying to bring back to life sitting up as if she's alive again. This is probably a dream. The video format is odd: it looks like an old movie or TV tape with skips and scratches.

Colossus 9 is the only one that's killed me three times. How are you supposed to dodge his lasers? Figuring out the trick wasn't hard, as soon as I ran away for a bit and noticed the "special" features of the land. This is one of the few times I've used the light from the sword to find the weak points.

Once you put all the pieces together for this guy, it's awfully logical.

Shadow of the Colossus - 6, 7, & 8

2006-03-30T22:12:00.000-05:00

I'm halfway through Shadow of the Colossus and it's going well. Regarding the three colossi:

Colossus 6 is interesting because the key is a typical videogame strategy that finally makes sense: you find a strategic position from which to strike, and choose to attack when the boss makes itself vulnerable.
Colossus 7 is very straightforward, but the trick is getting a grip in the first place. I don't know how you're expected to grab ahold, but I just swam around trying to judge where it would surface.
Colossus 8 took me a while, but eventually I remembered the first rule of bosses: if it glows it must be important. Once I made that connection, and realized why the arena was so tall, it all fell into place. Here it makes sense to exploit the fact that the game is very lenient on the player when falling from great heights.

Can it keep the battles interesting through another 8 colossi? I hope so.

What I find facinating is that the game does not make the colossus weak spots difficult to find. Rather, the goal is to overcome the size differential and then strike the obvious weak spots. That combination of stalking, hiding, and daring strikes is what makes the game work.

It's like hunting, which I'll daresay I enjoy in this case.

As for the story, there still isn't much.

Finally, I'm a little tired of trying to find my way around some obstacles. I spent too long trying to get to Colossus 8, driving my horse the whole way around a mountain barrier before realizing that I needed to go inside the one doorway. Why didn't I see the doorway to start with? The game points the camera too low to see it, if you're close to the mountain.

Shadow of the Colossus - 5

2006-03-28T15:19:00.000-05:00

Very nearly the best colossus. It's one of those where you say "I bet I could..." and then the game lets you.

On the other hand, it took me several tries to land the final strike. I didn't enjoy that as much.

I like that the game offers to save before the cut-scene that shows after each battle, but before the return to the temple. That means you always get instructions every time you start up again.

Shadow of the Colossus - 3 & 4

2006-03-28T00:25:00.000-05:00

Two more colossi down. Observations:

White birds same number as defeated colossi.
Black cords emanating from defeated colossi reminiscent of phantoms from Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within. Is that a Japanese thing?
Appears that I absorb the black from the colossus and take it back to the temple. Then it becomes one of the black figures standing near me when I awaken.
Found lizards for the first time. Shot one with an arrow, tail came off. Couldn't figure out how to catch it, but that's ok, since I'd rather not kill it now.
Colossus 3 was easy to defeat once I noticed the main feature on the plain around me.
Colossus 4 required me to think of the colossus as if it were thinking about how to find me. Also, think like an ant and treat it as the anteater.
A little disappointed that it's not more than "find path to top, hack, hack, hack, get new colossus".
Music is enjoyable.
Sense of scale is breathtaking on Colossus 3. Brilliant.

That's all.

Shadow of the Colossus - 1 & 2

2006-03-26T00:07:00.000-05:00

I started Shadow of the Colossus tonight, courtesy of cgm. What a potent mixture of images. I downed two colossi.

I feel like the guy who shot King Kong off the top of the Empire State Building, or perhaps a guy who took out a huge blue whale with a gatling harpoon gun. On the other hand, these creatures aren't falling just out of superior firepower, but simply by virtue of being lumbering beasts with glowing Achilles heels, so to speak. I can reason my way to the weak spot, thrust the sword a few times, and the effects are devastating and awesome.

As with the demo, I do not like killing without a good reason. I'm trying to bring this girl back from the dead: fair enough, but I hope it's fleshed out a bit. Additionally, I'm suspicious of proverbial deal with the devil. Maybe I'm just cynical.

Finally, I miss MGS3. I want to be able to choose a nonviolent path. I realize in the context of some games (e.g. Hitman) this doesn't make sense, but you get my drift. There is no obvious reason for this dude in SotC to be killing majestic giants who appear to harm no one if not provoked.

Now, for random thoughts:

Dark shadowy creatures who are closely related with stone figures lined up in a big hall. Sounds like Ico.
It isn't just the colossi who give a grand sense of scale -- the whole seamless world is pretty flipping huge
Having the god, i.e. disembodied booming voice from above, mimicking King James Bible talk with "art", "thou", and the random "-st" suffix is pretty sad form. I'd rather it just have been straight.
Framerate issues I heard about, do not bother me. What bothers me more is aliasing and texture crawl. Makes me want to claw my eyes out.
Music appears to be well-integrated. I liked the dramatic entrance of the second colossus and the heightened energy of the music.
Tutorial is a bit haphazard. I think I missed some instructions, like how to pull up on a ledge. (Tap triangle, I think.)
I long for a way to get a distance view. Am I missing how to do that? Violent as it sounds, I'd like a good view of me putting the finishing blow to a colossus.

Phoenix Wright: General

2006-03-25T05:32:00.000-05:00

1. It's not so much a "lawyer game" as a work of interactive fiction.
2. It's not so much a work of interactive fiction as a series of canned sequences with decisions interspersed between them, along with a basic cross-examination play mechanic that is the real "game" here.

To clarify:

Each case, except for the first which is more a tutorial than anything else, consists of three "days." Each day contains a Detective Phase, where you roam the crime scene and other important locations, examine the surroundings looking for clues, talk to witnesses, the cops and other people, and present them items from your inventory for them to comment on. These are basically all the things you can do, and there seems to be no way to lose this section.

After that there's a Courtroom Phase. The prosecution calls witnesses to the stand, they give a testimony, and you then get to "cross-examine" the witness. This means their testamony is shown in a message window that you can flip forward and back through, one page at a time. On a given page you most often choose to Press the witness, which may supply a new fact, piece of evidence, change the testimony, or do nothing except give you a bit of (sometimes funny) text that's unimportant to the case. Usually you want to press on every page. There is a place where pressing can anger the judge, and the occaisional witness actually has no new info to provide (in that case, flipping past the last page, instead of starting the testimony from the beginning, will advance the story).

Another thing you can do is Present a piece of evidence that contradicts something the witness has said. That is ultimately your job in this game: to carefully read the story, compare it to the descriptions (and sometimes photographs) of the pieces of evidence in your inventory, and present the right piece on the right page. Unlike merely pressing a witness, if you choose the wrong page or the wrong piece of evidence you will anger the judge and take a penalty point as a consequence. You begin each day of the trial with five points, and lose one for presenting incorrect evidence, for answering a decision question wrong (occaisionally getting these wrong will lose the trial I think), or in a very small number of other situations (the first day of the fourth case has a place like that, just to warn you).

Generally, all the really meaningful things you can do are presenting evidence, answering questions, and once in a while identifying an important spot on a photograph. I'm on the second day of the fourth (of five) cases, and word is the last case contains some gameplay modifications, so this may be subject to change later.

The cases themselves are generally well-written. The final solution to each case is generally not spelled out for you ahead of time, so although the game is really very linear, you do have to do some actual thinking to proceed through the story.

One gripe I have is that the game really goes overboard sometimes in trying to disguise its basic nature. There are quite a few places where a case is all but lost, but then something lucky happens to give you another chance. Note that this is part of the story, there was really nothing you could have done to avoid the situation. In particular, in the fourth case there's actually a spot where the judge declares your defendant guilty, complete with the condemning Big Black Letters Of Failure on the screen, and it looks like the game is over, the screen fades to black -- and THEN a new witness shows up, and the judge takes it all back. Again, it seems like this situation is unavoidable. I can understand the gimmick value in doing this, I suppose, but there are too many games I've played where if it looks like I've lost I'll hit the reset button and go try it again, so I'm a bit annoyed at the designer's clever little trick.

Prince of Persia: Revelations - Cont'd

2006-03-19T19:24:00.000-05:00

I've spent several more hours with this game. The story is that I'm trying to get an audience with the Empress of some island (where the Sands of Time originated?) to change my fate.

Basically I've been chasing the first boss, the woman with a pair of buttocks like a lurid grey peach.
In the last encounter, lurid grey peach was trying to knock some hot chick in red off a platform.
"It's true! The enemy of my enemy is my friend!" This is how the Prince decides to save the hot chick in red from lurid grey peach. Not very thoughtful, is he?
I don't think I've seen speech synchronized with video a single time yet. This is beta software.
Fighting continues to be a disjointed mess. It is neither pleasing nor exciting.
When battles are ridiculously bad, having to repeat them over and over just makes them worse.
The camera needs some work.
In particular, when looking over the shoulder the camera is angled down so sharply that you can't see far enough in front of you. This makes long runs through trap-laden hallways more difficult than it needs to be.
Further, there are several places where the camera made me think I was lined up for a jump, and I wasn't. Switching to the distant view actually put me out of sight, which doesn't help in any way.
Random load times break up the game's flow even more.

This game is terrible.