The Weekend Post

Now I'm going to use my blog in the more traditional sense. That is to just witter about what is happening in my life; well really to just talk about what a fantastic weekend I had.

I went to two fantastic dance events. Red Hot and Blue on Friday and a Ceroc Tea Dance on Sunday. Maybe it's the music, people or atmosphere at Red Hot and Blue but it felt like a bit of a weekender at home. It was lovely; I guess my only complaint was that we arrived quite late so I didn't get to enjoy it quite as much as I liked. The tea dance was also great; there were those few key dances that just made it wonderful.

We had my brother and sister over on Saturday night for Ultra-Boggle Extreme. It was meant to be an extended Boggle game but we didn't really play that much of it; maybe a good thing given how ridiculously good my sister is at that game. It was lovely to socialise with them though.

Other than that I finally got around to watching some of the Unreal Tournament III video tutorials (they came with Collectors Edition which I bought for these videos; otherwise I would have bought it on Steam).They were great; I wish I had these the first time I was working with the Unreal engine; it would have made my life much easier. Anyway; even though I haven't actually played Unreal Tournament III beyond one quick single player match I've very much enjoyed building a few levels with it (they aren't multiplayer balanced, more just playing with the editor).

Since I'm now on talking about games I also played some Halo 3; a bit of single player and my first multiplayer game. I've heard great things about the Halo 3 multiplayer and I thought I'd finally check it out. The great things are completely accurate; you start up the matchmaking and it has a Starter Playlist which takes you to a simple deathmatch game. It managed to match make me with three people; two of which had also never played it before and another who had played it six times and lost five. Maybe you can attribute that to the number of people playing Halo 3 but the ability to actually find other people, in a couple of minutes, who have a workable ping and have only just started is a real testament to the game.

What I'm Playing

Did I not say, earlier in the year, that I wouldn't post a What I've Been Playing? Well due to lack of any other blogging here I figured that maybe this post is something I might finish (it still took me days to get around to posting it).

I've been playing Company of Heroes and Burnout Paradise both of which, mostly, on multiplayer. Burnout Paradise's multiplayer component is great; it's really a great model on which others should base how to get into a multiplayer game. I'm looking forward to one of their forthcoming patches that include a lot of the stuff that is great fun in the singleplayer to multiplayer. The recent Company of Heroes patch includes team matchmaking (which seems to work ok) and the stability seems to be much improved with is great.

I played a bit of Kingdom Hearts 2 last night. I know it is upscaled on the PS3 (last time I played it was on the PS2) but… that game looks fantastic. Seriously the art style is fantastic, the character animation is great. It seems such a shame that new PS3 owners (with no backwards compatibility) won't be able to enjoy games like that.

I also bought Prey when it was going real cheap on Steam. I never really enjoyed the demo (I think I might have played it on the 360 so that might have had something to do with it) but I've been playing the full game and I've been really enjoying it. It pre-dates Portal in the use of a portal like system; though, in complete contrast to Portal, you don't have any control of the portal system. The portals are used by your enemies and the game world to send you around places. It also uses things like different gravity (including some that you control) and gravity walkways to send challenges at you in all sorts of strange angles. It also has this interesting art style which consists of a mixture of alien technology and organic material (which is unpleasant at times); since the aliens have teleported chunks of the Earth then there is also a blend of the familiar. Maybe it was the low expectations I had when starting this game but I've been impressed so far; I shan't go into any more as Shamus Young, over at Twenty Sided, did a much more in-depth look at it.

Checkpoint Features

Rant time! I got Lost Odyssey on Monday and I'm still at the very early stages. Anyway I encountered the second boss fight (if you count the big, weird looking flame thrower, masher tank thing as the first). This boss is some big bird creature (not actually Big Bird from Sesame Street; though that would be interesting). You get to it by going up a mountain side finally hitting the top and cresting the hill into a long cutscene. The cutscene throws you straight into a boss fight.

The boss fight, for me, pretty much went you've got to be kidding me while it proceeded to rip my characters into tiny little bits. I had previously seen a save point before the boss which you can't reach due to triggering a cutscene before you get to it. I wondered, with baited breath, if it would make me do the whole mountain again. Thankfully the game designers had thought of this and put an respawn point just before the boss; yeay! sensible game designers. I tried a few more times; each time the bird showing me that immortal is really a relative thing and that my character, who apparently has lived 10,000 years up until now, is as fragile as the next guy. So I thought Why not go back down the hill and do some level grinding rather than hit the cutscene? So I did; after many pointless battles making my way down the hill I went and healed up in some conveniently placed empty cabin before saving and making the trek back up the hill again.

Once again my characters stood on top of a hill. Thankfully I discovered a way to skip the cutscene so I skipped past that to fight the BoD. I got further but it still kicked my not-so-immortal immortal ass. The Game Over words hauntingly appeared before the dialogue for Retry/I Can't Be Bothered Any more came up. I hit Retry and… was put back to my little cabin. Maybe the playtesters were just better than me but surely someone went the same direction as me back down the hill and many fights later? Maybe I wouldn't be so annoyed with the checkpoint logic not being set up to allow for it being invoked again if it wasn't for the fact that I can see a save point when I go into the cutscene. I got annoyed with the prospect of climbing the hill again (after doing some more of the grind) so I gave up for now.

I wonder if this has a place in Ernest Adams No Twinkie Database?

The thing is, some games, like Call of Duty 4 do such a good job of checkpoints that you don't even pay attention to things like saving. Unfortunately for these games the designers getting it right means that no one really even notices what a great job they do. It's only the games that frustrate you that you notice how bad it can be.

Blogging For Blogging Sake

Well, I haven't been very good at keeping this blog up-to-date really have I? I recently thought about posting a What I've Been Playing but then I figured Who really cares? so I didn't bother. It's not like I'm going to go back and read it to remember the good ol' days when I finished Mass Effect or such. I sometimes think I've got insightful stuff to talk about about a game but then I can never be bothered typing that rather than just play another game.

I've also thought about writing about dancing but again stating I've been really enjoying dancing at this or that event probably doesn't interest many of my few readers anyway.

Therefore I'm somewhat at a loss what to write about. In an attempt to give some focus to both myself and this blog I've considered writing development notes on my current game project. I've pondered doing this in a sort of Rolf Harris Can you tell what it is yet sort of style where I focus more on the little picture rather than the big one. I hope I actually get around to starting this, perhaps it might be interesting. Umm... to someone.

Other than that I've written a few more scripts and mods and I'm actually hoping to release a few of those this year. I've got a couple of ideas for other things I'd like to do this year and, with any luck, I'll actually get around to those too. I'm hoping that it will be an interesting if fairly infrequent posting this year so for those of you that visit the site every so often just use a feed reader already :D.

Oh and: Happy 2008 everyone!

Stranglehold

So with the much delayed release of the PS3 version of Stranglehold I got the Collector's Edition sent from the USA. After having some issues with the delivery company giving one of the two parcels to the wrong address (and they would have given the other one, the one with the game in to the wrong address too had it not been for the fact that the person didn't pay the customs duty tax) I got the parcel and could play the game. I've been really enjoying it, it's not the best game ever made but if you wanted the gun play from Feng Shui (or I guess HK action films which it is based on) in a computer game this seems like a good place to find it. I'm a bit disappointed with them stating the game is in 1080i on the back (though that might be the movie) as it isn't and my PS3 doesn't seem to like doing 720p correctly on the HDMI->DVI link. I'm also disappointed that the movie can't be played unless you start it in the game (though I knew you couldn't play it on a standard Blu-Ray player) mainly becuase it lacks the great controls the PS3 has. It also is the dubbed version with no other language or subtitle options.

Saying that it was still worth the wait (rather than just getting the XBox 360 version) for Hard Boiled. It's still, IMOHO, the best Hong Kong action film I've ever seen.

Stuff

Anyway I'm still failing to blog. I've got half a write up of a weekender in September (which was awesome) and such to finish, at the rate I'm going I'll have another one to write about as well. To add to that it has taken nearly a week to actually post this rather than have it in draft.

I've been busy playing games; notably The Orange Box and Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts though with a bit of Civilization IV thrown in for good measure and trying to finish my second Neverwinter Nights module which is going fine but still needs quite a bit more done.

After The Orange Box was released I stopped playing Team Fortress 2 and moved to Portal first instead. It's short but it's really, really, good fun. I love the sense of humour in the game, done mostly through the voices (it's amazing how something like a turret can seem silly just by adding some dialogue to it) and the ending was delightful. Some really strong scriptwriting, which is strange for a puzzle game. Though I haven't finished Half Life 2: Episode 2 it reminded me of what fantastic pacing Valve stick in their products. The diversity of game given its basic first person roots really shows off the designers skills. One minute you'll be driving around at breakneck speeds and the next you'll be holed up in a house trying to fight of a force of Combine, or trying to craw through a trench to avoid turrets. A lot of the fights seem really re-playable too with lots of choices about trying to out-manoeuvring you opponents (or get in a car and try and run them down). I noticed that Zero Punctuation covered this, his take is awesome.

I've had some really good matches on Company of Heroes as well. The two new armies have been really interesting to play with. I love the Panzer Elite, their fast play is a different style to the entrenching that I probably did more in the original but it works really well. What didn't seem to be working well was Relic Online servers that seemed to be having issues getting anyone logged in, it was funny to see the game names move to something expressing annoyance at that fact though. It really annoys me that they don't have any sort of direct IP connect or other fall back. Will they still be supporting this game in 10 years? I was, a fair while ago, playing Total Annihilation (which has only recently be crowned by Relic's games for me). Their online lobby is long gone, if it hadn't been for direct IP stuff we'd have been screwed. It's good to provide people with backup in the event that your service isn't working.

Other random news that I was reading was Halo 3 being blamed for slow month at the cinemas. Halo 3 was predicted at around 3 million sales over the first 12 days in the US. With a population around 300 million this accounts for around 1% of the population that might be staying at home instead. Are you sure the reason people aren't going to the cinema is because there isn't anything worth watching on at the moment? (Speaking of which after I failed to post this I watched Resident Evil: Extinction... humm).

It's Been A While...

So it's been a while since I've posted, I've put a few things into draft but I just never get the time to finish them. I'll try harder :D.

Anyway I was going to post some drivel about how great Team Fortress 2 and how awesome other games are is but I'm going to post some other drivel instead about the new PS3

So a new PS3 model is out. This one is cheaper, which is great. What's awful about it, though, is the lack of any backwards compatibility with the PS2. Apparently it no longer works due to the removal of the Graphics Synthesizer, the final PS2 hardware component in the PS3. This is bad for me because it means that Sony will probably take focus away from their backwards compatibility which means less titles will be ported. This is bad for new consumers as there is a great range of PS2 titles that they won't be able to play on their new console. This is terrible for Sony because they've lost the plot. Seriously if they don't see the PS2 as a potential in road to the PS3 then they've been so consumed by their own hype about the next generation that they can't even see the fact that the Wii is destroying them in terms of market share. I had a plan a while back to give my mother my PS2 for her birthday and buy a couple of the casual games she might enjoy on it. I'm sure my parents, with the HDTV they have might be looking for a Blu-Ray player at some stage. The PS3 would be a great all around upgrade option from the PS2 except now it isn't. The PS2 has a huge install base, why the hell are they throwing that away?

I found the quote:

The new model is no longer backwards compatible with PlayStation®2 titles, reflecting both the reduced emphasis placed on this feature amongst later purchasers of PS3, as well as the availability of a more extensive line-up of PS3 specific titles

fascinating since I got my PS3 in July and most of the things I've been playing on it is PS2 games. Maybe it's that September bunch that are all about the new games but for me throwing away the extensive back catalogue of games that's on the PS2, along with the general confusion surrounding the different PS3 models (3 with varying levels of backwards compatibility in the US) makes me think that Sony aren't really sure what direction they are going in. Whether they can put in complete software emulation for the new breed I don't know, they certainly don't claim they have any plans to.

Update: Actually Edge's online thingy managed to chase this up:

The sheer numbers of PS2 titles available, together with the increased complexity of using a software only solution for each and every title means that to ensure accurate software emulation for the majority would be technically challenging, time consuming and costly.

Obviously they've done the number crunching and felt any increased sales of PS2 games aren't worth their while; or any PS2 to PS3 cross-sales aren't worth pursuing. It's a shame as there are still a few PS2 games I've got on a to buy list and the fact that they are discontinuing the lines that have the ability to play them means if I do need to get another PS3 then I'd be screwed.