Rispon Avenue

It seemed so recent that the DSi hit our stores, and already we’re being hit with a new update to Nintendo’s handheld.

Oh I’ll get it, don’t get me wrong. I know that ol’ Ninty knows that, too, but I can’t pass up a better DS, but at what point should Nintendo bite the bullet and just work a little longer and release a brand new handheld? And… Hang on, I need to address something here, and it needs an entire paragraph of it’s own…

Ahem.

What the hell is with ‘i’ everything? Bloody iTunes and they’re stinking repugnant camel case. Yes, that’s what it’s really called, because it’s stupidly humped – no, I don’t think camels are stupid or that their humps are stupid, I just really hate crappy grammar – and all up and down. Since iTunes made it huge, every bloody thing has an ‘i’ in there somewhere! It’s ridiculous and inane!

Okay, back to Nintendo’s DSi XL. Okay so I’m still wondering about this. There have been three updates to the original DS already, DS Lite, DSi, and now the DSi XL, and now the DSi and the DSi XL are supposed to be sold together, that you’ve got the choice between the two. Does it seem to anyone else that Nintendo is now becoming not only the kings of shovel-ware but inventing shovel-hardware? Because that’s what it seems like to me!

The DSi XL will ship in the US at the end of this month, in burgundy and bronze, and is going to retail over there for US$189.99 whilst here it’s going to be £159.99 and Australians are looking at AU$349.00 and Europe is looking at €159.99. Anyone in the know about current currency conversion will know that the console is much cheaper in the US than here, cheaper than it is even in Japan. Also, the DS is not region specific, so if you’ve got a friend who can ship you one from the states it’d cost you less than buying it here when it comes out!

After that, I need a bath. Damn Nintendo, stop being so damn greedy!

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The game ships in around a fortnight, and already they’ve caused some uproar amongst their fans.

Fans of the series are eagerly snapping up any piece of info they can about the soon to be released Final Fantasy XIII, but not everything they’ve read has sat well with them. On the game’s official website, one of the creators has talked about the linearity of the first half of the game, saying that it’s largely story-driven and you don’t get to run around exploring until you’re in the second half. It’s an attempt to get players invested in the story and very familiar with the new game mechanics.

I’ll say right now that I’m no stranger to having a go at a game before I’ve played it. I panned the crap out of Fable 3 just the other day, but I’m a little less inclined to do that with the Final Fantasy series. One major difference is that the Final Fantasy series has really established itself, there have been no failures in the series so far, no games that just weren’t up to par, though sure, some people favour certain iterations over others, but none of the games have been bad or poor.

Okay so what am I thinking about this? Well, one of the major issues that fans are angry about – I’m speaking based on comments on sites like IGN – is that there aren’t any towns to explore, and whilst I understand that, those extra towns just wouldn’t fit in with this story line. The first half of the game takes place in Cocoon, a paradise city built for humans that floats in sky above the planet Pulse. Now, the people of Cocoon don’t visit the surface of the planet, ever. Heck, most of them have never even seen it! So how would it make sense to have extra towns for people to explore?

Well, you could argue that the story could have been structured differently so that there were towns to explore, but I think that if you’ve got a good story, go with it. Changing things like this could be the inspiration the creators needed to make an especially good Final Fantasy game.

Another issue many are having with this particular Final Fantasy is the linearity, the fact that players are driven by storyline for the first half of the game before they’re given free reign. Now, I can understand that that’s a long time, but on the other hand Japanese RPGs are usually like this to some extent, you’re guided for longer, but the story line is usually quite in depth, so it’s worth it. I do like that it will give players a long time to get used to the new Paradigm mechanic, but mostly I am just trusting in the franchise at this point on this particular point, and I’m fine with that, Square Enix has earned it.

Oh, and how funny is it that we are now up the thirteenth ‘Final Fantasy? :D

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Considering I’ve been playing the game for close to a fortnight, I thought I should put my thoughts down on the game.

Where to start… Okay so after I finished the first Mass Effect, I waited a day before starting the next one. Upon starting I could see straight away that there were indeed massive improvements to the graphics, which was nice. The game opened up with a scene of the Normandy being destroyed by some unidentified massive space craft that looked half like a rock, and Shepard being ’spaced’ and dying.

Great start! Then a group from Cerberus – yeah, remember that crazy black ops group? – picks you up and fixes you better than you were before! Yay! But then you’ve got to run around with a group of Cerberus people for pretty much the rest of the game, and deal with the irritating ‘Illusive Man’ – voiced by Martin Sheen, and seems to be an homage to ‘The Smoking Man’ of X-Files fame – to figure out why whole colonies of humans have gone missing.

You get only two of your previous crew members, Tali and Garrus, though Joker is still your pilot. You do, however, get a bunch of new people to run around with, many of whom are irritating in one way or another. Miranda is your link to Cerberus, and comes off as mean and frosty, though you can make her less so by completing her ‘loyalty mission’. Then there’s Jacob, who’s strangely brusque with you considering you’re his commanding officer. You get a very strong biotic named Jack who’s kind of insane – understandably so – but who is also very rude and foul mouthed. You get a Salarian doctor named Mordin, who’s actually pretty funny, and a Krogan named Grunt, who I like quite a bit, even if he’s violent as all heck. Samara is quite nice, an Asari Justicar, so at least she’s fighting the good fight. Thane is a Drell assassin, and in spite of his profession, is a stand up guy. Haven’t gotten to know Legion all that much yet, but it’s interesting having a Geth on board. Then there’s Zaeed, a human bounty hunter, who’s an irritating old ass, in my opinion.

You’re no longer with the Alliance, who’ve tried to say that all your warnings about the Reapers where silliness, and that really it was just the Geth and Saren that were the issue, and you’re on a bigger, better Normandy supplied by Cerberus.

Personally I am enjoying this game more, but the storyline is far, far less appealing than the previous game. I don’t really dig fighting on the side of Cerberus, especially with the Illusive Man being all creepy and ‘end justifying any means’ kind of thing. I personally think he’s some remnant from the Protheans, perhaps an AI or some such, but either way, I don’t like him and I don’t like working for him.

I’m also irritated by the new HUD, and think that it would actually be, oh, I don’t know, a good thing to be able to see your damn health and shields bars!

Yeah, mixed feelings on this one. I liked a heck of a lot about the first game, and I am enjoying the sequel a lot, but I am not as happy with the over-all game as I was with the first one.

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There are times when I wonder if Mr Peter Molyneux suffers from delusions of grandeur, and in reading the preview on IGN for Fable III, I’m reminded of my concern for the man’s mental state.

To me, the only thing that the Fable franchise really had going for it was that it was an RPG on the Xbox 360, which doesn’t have a heck of a lot of games in that genre. There are more and more coming out, which is fantastic, and I seriously can’t wait to play Final Fantasy XIII, but when Fable first appeared, it was definitely part of a limited group of not-completely-crap RPGs.

So, where is Fable III going now? Well, it places the Hero in the throne of Albion at about half way through the game, and from there you’ve got to make the big decisions, and supposedly feel the weight of all those who are counting on you. Molyneaux actually said in an interview with IGN that this would allow gamers to know how Barack Obama felt when he received criticism for not closing Guantanamo Bay as he had intended to do. Let me just reiterate that. Fable III will make players feel the weight of their in-game decisions, as strongly as the U.S. President feels the weight of his. Are you kidding me Mr Molyneux? Are you alright? Do you need to lie down, take a cup of tea? Perhaps a cold compress could help you with those delusions of grandeur!

The HUD is completely gone from the game, there’s no health bar, in fact Molyneaux swore during the interview about why they would need an ‘****ing’ heath bar. There are no more augments or levelling up in the game, rather your weapons will get larger with more use – how daft is that! – and the power of them will be based in some way on your Gamer Point score. Yep, how utterly ridiculous. Your weapons will also change depending on what you use them for. Cut down a slew of innocents and your sword will constantly drip blood. Fight the good fight and it’ll start to glow.

All in all this game sounds like a complete and total train wreck that I’m very happy to not play. If you care to read more about it, here’s a link to the IGN article.

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I suppose that rainy day has already happened, but I wasn’t personally too affected by the whole thing, but I’m saving like a squirrel in Autumn just in case it does come closer to home.

It’s a good idea to have some sort of financial protection in place at the moment, because in spite of the initial onslaught of the financial crisis being past, the lingering effects will remain for quite some time. I’ve also made very, very sure that all my insurance premiums are up to date and the best that I can get in terms of cost and cover.

I hate investigating which premium would be best for my SO and I, but I did put in the effort whilst I was recovering from the swine flu – body was still weak but my mind was fine and very bored – to work it all out and I even picked up a mortgage life insurance cover plan, because being that sick just made me want to be safe rather than sorry if anything untoward should happen. Sure it’s morbid as hell, but I’d rather my SO not have to worry about losing our home should anything happen to me. Having what turned out to be a critical illness made me think heavily about all of this, and I’m glad it’s all taken care of now!

If you’re home insurance is coming up for renewal, it’s really not a bad idea to consider some reviews on the subject, because honestly the best way to figure out if any institution is a good one is to take it straight from the mouths who’ve bought from them/dealt with them, not who’ve worked for them! I found a good comparison site in the ‘money supermarket’ and though their name is quite silly, it’s nice to have that much information at hand on the same site.

I prefer to do all my financial planning myself, it seems somehow counter productive to have someone else do it, and pay them for it!

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It’s amazing, but Tekken 6 really does suck. I really tried to like it, but I just couldn’t.

So, wow. Just wow. How hard can this game possibly lose? I’ve played the Tekken series for a long time now, I think I first began on Tekken 2, then owned 3, and 4, though I don’t think I played the fifth version. I really enjoyed those games, so very, very much. My SO and I bonded whilst playing Tekken 3 on the PS One; ahh, fond memories. That was a good decade ago, and now here we are with a sad, sad, version of a much loved series.

Tekken, for those who’ve managed to not hear of the game, is a fighting game which came out in ‘94 as an arcade game, but then was moved over the the Playstation for the next four iterations, and then finally was ported to the Xbox 360 for Tekken 6 as well as the Playstation 3. It’s been one of the best fighting games for the past fifteen years, and I was sure that it would continue to be so. However, the sixth sequel is just… just awful.

Okay so I played it for two days, on and off, so I gave it a fair chance. My SO and I happily placed the disc into the 360 and started the game up. We knew the music was going to be less than great because of the IGN review, and they also mentioned the lack-lustre sound effects. We said we could deal with that and away we went.

We picked some of our favourite characters straight up, and it was nice to see so many characters available for use straight away. I fought as Bryan Fury, and my SO fought as Ling Xiaoyu. Okay, here we were, and yeah, the music wasn’t great, but I could deal with that. My SO absolutely hated the poor fight sound effects, saying she never felt like she landed a proper attack because the sounds were so muted.

The controls of the game were poor to say the least. I’m a good fighter, but it felt like the only way to play this game was to button mash, and then we actually tried the single-player modes; up until this point, we’d only been fighting each other.

So I tried arcade mode, hoping to unlock more content. I got to the third fight and was then faced with ‘*Oops*’ the bear. A blue version of Kuma with gold wrist braces and paw-pads. This ridiculously difficult opponent took me thirteen attempts to beat, in spite of being able to get through every other arcade/single-player mode in a fighting game pretty straight forwardly in the past. There was no learning curve, the AI went from complete dunce that will allow you to throw them over and over, to nigh-on unstoppable knows every attack in the catalogue kind of opponent in only three rounds. I mean, what the hell’s with that?

Then we tried the ‘Scenario’ mode as a cursory glance online suggested this was the way to unlock content. It was terrible. A strange strolling along a path fight were you were stuck with an annoying android who’s trying to explain the abstract defunct story-line. I couldn’t stand this style, it was very unintuitive.

Combine all of this with some seriously ugly character models and the worst fractured storyline you could imagine, we ended up taking it back and trading it for Soul Calibur IV. Sheesh.

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My copy of Mass Effect 2 is sitting sealed and ready to go on my shelf there, neatly hidden amongst the other games – which I keep in alphabetical order – but there it shall stay until I’ve finished Mass Effect 1!

I went and found it the day after release, all nicely sealed and ready to be played, but I want to go into the game with a full file intact. For most games that wouldn’t matter. I mean, if I hadn’t finished Gears of War 1 and just wanted to play the second game, that wouldn’t be an issue. I’d just read through the storyline on a website somewhere and set to.

But in Mass Effect 2 you can actually import your character from the first game. Now, you don’t go in at the same level, or even have to play as the same class, but what does go in is a record of all the choices you’ve made in the first game. Did you resolve this issue peacefully, or did you become violent, did you try to help these people, or ignore their problem. All these choices will affect how the characters in Mass Effect 2 react to you, which is an aspect of the game I’m highly anticipating.

So now I just have to really get stuck into the first game. I’m a moderate way in, gotten my specialization and running around the galaxy saving everyone’s ass. That’s always fun. Who doesn’t want to be the hero of the entire universe?

Still enjoying the game, and I have to say, it is a lot more enjoyable to play on the 360 than it was on the PC. The control system on the 360 is a lot more intuitive, and the game is so much less buggy. I’ve just realised that I’d not downloaded the two add-ons, so I’m currently getting those cracking.

More on Mass Effect once I’ve finished the first game and embarking on the second!

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None of the current gen consoles are perfect – though the 360 is the best of them – but the Wii is one that I won’t be buying.

Now, I know I’m going to anger quite a few Nintendo fans here, but I’m going ahead with this anyway. I’ve extremely fond memories of the SNES, which is still one of my all time favourite consoles, I mean, Super Mario Bros. 3 was one of the best games of all time, there’s no doubt about that! But the Wii, the latest console from Nintendo, just falls dramatically short from where the other current gen consoles are sitting.

Okay so let’s talk tech here, there’s no doubting that the Wii is by far the weakest system of the 7th generation in gaming. Both the 360 and the PS3 support far better graphics, processing, and memory capabilities, and whilst I can understand the Wii was aiming at a different audience, there’s still issues with charging that much for a console that is as limited as the Wii is.

I’ve used the console, and sure it’s fun for a while, but another thing that really, really, and is the clincher as to why I won’t purchase the Wii, is the complete lack of quality gaming on the console. You’ve got about four good games on the entire platform, and yet the game library for the Wii is enourmous, with around 600 titles, but just over 37% of those have been reviewed at or below 60… See where I’m going with this?

Nintendo should learn from what happened with Atari. Crappy games for the Atari flooded the market, and it sent the console under, yet for some reason, the unenlightened are still purchasing this shovelware for the Wii, and there’s tons and tons to be had. There are probably four good titles on this console, but I’ll not be paying the price of the console just to have a go at Mario Galaxy 2, and I don’t like party titles, so all the other Mario titles for the Wii hold absolutely no interest.

So please, Nintendo, please bring us a console in the next generation that’s worthy of the money we spend on it, don’t put out a whole heap of ultra crap games, and stop with the gimmick gaming!

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It was a nice surprise to find that the one game I’d not heard of in my 360 bundle was actually a very fun game to play.

Pure is an ATV racer, yep, those four wheel motorcycle things. Surprisingly, a game based on racing these things is actually very fun. You’ve got three different race types, Race, what it sounds like, which is three laps around a fairly long course. Sprint, five laps around a very short course, and then Freestyle, which is where you’ve got a full tank of fuel, and you race for as long as you can whilst performing tricks which will extend the fuel you have allowing you to pull off more tricks for even greater points.

You get to build your own ATV with parts provided, changing colour and other aesthetic options, and choosing parts based on which attributes they give bonuses to so you can build bikes for specific types of events. There is a heck of a lot of customisation here, especially as you play the game further and unlock more and more parts for you to use as well as level ups for specific types of parts.

I hadn’t heard of this game prior to looking up what the Elite was currently bundled with, but after watching the video review on IGN I thought it looked like fun, but playing it is more fun than I’d expected after seeing the review. It’s fast paced, the music is good and suits the game, and the over the top stunts are magnificent to watch. It’s a great pick up and play game, which gives you a good adrenaline boost.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that the graphics for this game are really very good. You can get up to some roaring speeds around some of the race tracks, but there’s no screen tare or pop in or anything like that. It’s incredibly clear and the tracks are detailed and very pretty. I was surprised that so much effort had gone into things like trees on the sides of the tracks, or boats in the distance on water, which was rendered extremely well, by the way. If you’ve got the chance, this is a great game to have on hand for short to medium length of bursts of play.

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It’s got a lot of issues which cause a great amount of irritation, but I played it for at least three days before putting another game in the 360.

So I went and picked up the 360 Elite last Monday, and I’m really enjoying the console. When I had the original 360, I had a regular television and the AV cable hook-up, but since then I’ve picked up a great LCD TV and have the 360 hooked up with an HDMI cable, and it looks fabulous. So nice to see the console put out a quality HD visual.

I picked up the Elite with a bundle which included the games Pure and Lego Batman, and then your pick of two others. I chose Assassin’s Creed – knowing it’s not great but wanting to play it before playing the sequal – and Mass Effect as I’d never had a real chance to fully play it because it was too buggy to bother with on my PC when it first came out, and then it’d never install on my PC again afterwards and I’m very much looking forward to the sequel.

I played the first Fable, and it was alright, so I decided that along with the bundle, I’d pick up a copy of Fable 2 as well. This was actually a lot of running around as my local games store didn’t have a sealed copy so I had to run around and find it at a store that did, but not before I’d ordered it through that original store and two days had passed and then they told me that their warehouse wouldn’t let them get any more in as they already had stock in the store. Anyway, I got a hold of the game.

I played it a lot for the first three days of having it and I just had to get that bloody disk out of the 360 because I just could not stand the ridiculousness of Molyneux’s writing for one second longer. Let me just say oh. my. god. What the hell was that guy ‘thinking’!? First off, your sister dies in the opening act, which, alright, you can take that as part of good writing, if it were good writing. Next you’re running around doing what some strange woman who saved you tells you to do, without telling you why. Then you have to save another ‘hero’ like yourself, who also just happens to lose a family member and that’s how this hero joins your fight.

Next up you have to travel to this ridiculous spire where you’re stuck for the next TEN YEARS getting the next hero. After you’re back from that, gotten another hero who tries to have you killed – after stealing your youth – you finally get to have a go at the bastard who killed your sister – who was at the spire the entire time you were there but you never tried to kill whilst you where there – only to find that he’s now also gone and killed your wife and children and your dog – who’s at least twenty years old at this point but still spry – and after you kill that moron, you get to use the stupid spire to make a wish, you can wish to bring your own family back, but it’s not the most ‘pure or good’ option you can take, that’s bring back all the thousands of people who died trying to re-build the spire who never actually were a part of the game world, nor do they turn up in it after you make that wish.

Oh and if you do bring back your family, you do get your dog back, and your sister is revived as well, though you never get to see her again anyway.

Believe me when I say this, this game includes some of the worst writing I’ve ever read. Molyneax is actually trying to upset the player, he’s even said that he wanted to ‘make a game that would have gamers crying’ in interviews before the game came out. He’s obviously greatly in love with his own ideas, and the game is incredibly narrow, irritating, poorly written, and frustrating to play.

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Time now for the last of my gaming history pieces, which is good really because I’ve got other things to blog about!

Well right off the bat you’ve got the release of the Playstation 2 in 2000. This was a huge deal, sold really well, and made DVDs more accessible than ever before for your average household, as the price was better than pretty much any good DVD player out at the time. ‘01 saw the release of both the GameCubeand the Xbox, with Xbox Live launching a year later. In the next few years there were major buy-outs and take over bids, with Microsoft buying Rare, and EA trying to buy out Ubisoft.

The seventh generation of gaming consoles was birthed with the release of the Xbox 360 in ‘05 whilst the Wii and Playstation 3 launched about a year later. The next two years saw dominance by Wii over the gaming market, outselling their rival consoles, but it seems apparent to me that that’s largely due to the reduced price of console and games from Nintendo because of it’s lesser technology.

IGN had the view point that the 00’s made the gaming industry, but it really seems to me that that had already happened in the 90’s, a view which many gamers agree with. The consoles in this seventh generation all seemed to have big issues, whereas the previous generation of the 90’s seemed to have less issues in spite of their lesser capabilities.

So, wrapping up my review of gamer history… It’s amazing to think that we’ve got high definition, motion sensors, and online capabilities, when we came from code being developed on mainframes the size of a room and 8-bit cartridges. I think that gaming is slowly finding it’s footing with entertainment mediums like film and television, and will continue to do so. I’m also hoping that with the visuals of games becoming more and more advanced, so too with story lines and plots development. I think the only thing lacking in gaming is high quality writing on a consistent basis.

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Getting ever closer to modern day gaming with this instalment; the 90’s

The 90’s is an era of growing up in my mind, as that was what I was doing throughout that decade, and so was gaming. At the dawn of the 90’s, gamers were still using 8-bit games with 16-bit pixels. Those graphics aren’t completely terrible, heck, I’d play Legend of Zelda right now if I could find an emulator that didn’t make a very annoying sound every time I moved Link. However the 90’s saw an amazing transition from the NES era of gaming through to the Nintendo 64, the Playstation, and SEGA’s Dreamcast. The 90’s ushered gamers from the cartridge era into the compact disc, and all the data that could be stored on it!

In ‘90 and ‘91 Super Mario Bros. 3 and Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past came out on the SNES respectively, two games which made the console what it was in my mind. Those are still games that I’d happily play today, though I may get bored after a short while and go play something else, but that’s largely because I’ve played both those games so much in the past.

‘95 saw the very first E3 in LA, which has helped enormously to establish gaming as a separate entity from ‘electronics’ at large. ‘95 was also the year which saw the Playstation hit North America, the very first gaming console to use CDs instead of cartridges. The next year the Nintendo 64 shipped with Super Mario 64, one of the best games of all time and a pure joy for gamers to try out with a brand new console. The Playstation was the first console to employ both the analogue and digital controls, however it’s widely acknowledged that Nintendo implemented it better with a more comfortable controller. I’m always amazed that Sony still uses the same damn controller, considering it’s not particularly comfortable.

In ‘98 Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time shipped, much to my happiness. That was a wonderful game, and also in the same year Half Life shipped for the PC, another fantastic game.

Whilst the debate still rages – mostly by idiots if you ask me – as to the validity of games as a worthy entertainment medium, and not something that will ‘make the children violent’ the 90’s was when this debate was most fierce. I think because there wasn’t the evidence that we have now that there’s no correlation, just a whole bunch of overreacting ninnies. However it was also the decade where gaming really did establish itself as more than ‘toys for children’, so it’s a very interesting decade in gaming.

Oh, and Superman 64 was the worst game of the entire decade.

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The 80’s was a very awesome time for gaming, for many reasons, so now I’ll talk about those that stand out in my mind.

The 80’s saw a very mixed bag for the gaming industry. From the boom of the 70’s, the very beginning of the 80’s seemed set for gaming to remain a huge phenomenon. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong are remembered very fondly today, and were gaming sensations, and the very first time we saw Mario!

However, in ‘83 and ‘84 the gaming industry in the US blew itself to pieces, because there were so many poor quality games being put out for too many different consoles that gamers just gave in and stopped buying. This was before there were serious hardcore gamers like there are today, and also before there was the kind of information or access to information that we have today. There wasn’t a dozen sites on the net to tell you what to expect with a game, or three different magazines for each console and the PC waiting near the supermarket check out to give you that same info. No, this was when gamers had to figure it out for themselves, mostly.

So, what happened to turn gaming ’round? NINTENDO!!! The Japanese company Nintendo took a chance in ‘85 and shipped the Nintendo Entertainment System – NES – to America with the first Super Mario Bros., and behold, the gaming industry took off again! Two years later saw the very first emergence of Link and Zelda, one of my all time favourite game series.

In ‘88 SEGA released the Master System, which whilst being pretty groovy and actually being more powerful than the NES, but even with a few really good games, it couldn’t compete with the runaway success of Nintendo’s console and handheld.

I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’ve just read about Atari’s Swordquest contest, and I have to say, it would be pretty awesome to see something like that run today!

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IGN put up a series of articles recently about gaming through the past few decades, so I thought I’d write about it here because I found it an educational read.

The first of the articles outlines the birth of modern video gaming. Most gamers are probably aware that gaming really kicked off in the 70’s with coin operated machines, primarily, with Pong which came out in 1972. Though Pong is often remembered as the original computer game, it was actually very similar to a game which had been released by Ralph Baer who created the Magnavox Odyssey home console, along with a Pong-like game only a few months before Pong hit the market.

In ‘71, Nolan Bushnell created the very first consumer video game, called Computer Space. Apparently the game was overly complex and somewhat abstract, which unfortunately meant that the game flopped, but hey, it was the first cab off the rank and that’s rather important.

There were games that kicked off entire genres in the 70’s, such as simulator games with Lemonade Stand in ‘73. There were also some of the most important advances in computer gaming in this decade. Gaming consoles for the home were first introduced in the 70’s, the Magnavox Odyssey, then a few years later the Fairchild F, and then the one that really made an imprint, the Atari Video Computer System was released in ‘77 for a hefty $US200.

During the 70’s there was at least one arcade game in every pub or gaming room, though towards the end of the decade they weren’t finding the popularity that they had once had.

What amazes me is that from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s, the advances in home gaming were astronomical. The earliest computer games were built on mainframes the size of a room, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop. To look at that mainframe, and then the Atari 2600 in ‘77 which just plugged right on in to your television… well that’s just awesome in the eyes of this avid gamer.

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Odd story, no doubt about that, but one that bares reading by all gamers, in my opinion.

So, I’ll give a brief run down of what is in this news story here that I found via a link on the Penny Arcade news section. Basically, there was once a little drug dealer from America, who was arrested on dealing many types of drugs. This little drug dealer decided that, when the arrest warrant went out for him in 2007, he’d rather not go to court and maybe prison, so decided to skip the country.

This little drug dealer had had friends in his home town, somewhere in Howard County, and he had told them that he liked to play WoW. When the sheriff from that good ol’ county started asking those friends about the little drug dealer, they informed him of his predilection for that stupid game, well, they thought why not send a missive from the king – read, a subpoena – to the caretakers of the land of Warcraft. The sheriff waited and waited, for three or four months, before a wad of scrolls was sent back to him. A package of information about that little drug dealer, what his billing address was, his favourite server, and his character’s names. Funnily enough, he played as a Shaman, not terribly dissimilar from is apothecarish tendencies in real life.

Okay now I’ll drop that pathetically fractured story-teller style and deal with the rest of it. So, after they got all this information from Blizzard, sheriffs at the Howard County used the information to figure out that their quarry had gone to Canada and then enlisted the aid of the Canadian Mounted Police, who picked up the dealer and shipped him back to the states.

This is something that’s not been done before, but it’s very interesting. Personally, I think that everything that was done was completely above board, completely reasonable, and if some scum bag drug dealer get to go to prison as a result, then booyah!

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It’s hard to say if the game is not so good, or just massively over hyped, but either way, I’m less than thrilled with the game.

It took quite a while before I actually bought and played the game after it was released back in October, in fact, I’d only played it from around mid November, so there was quite a lot of reviews out there at that point, though I didn’t really take much of a look at them, because I was still down with H1N1 and game reviews didn’t seem very important right then.

Anyway, IGN US gave the game 8.7 whilst IGN AU gave it 8.5 but the metacritic score was actually 80, so in terms of IGN that would be an 8.0. I have to say, though, that even that score is, I think, somewhat overrated. Some sites rated the game as low as 50 (5.0) even though they did have good things to say about it.

The game’s controls are more than a little irritating, no, they are completely frustrating. There is no room for fine movements, you’re either running that little fellow full tilt across the screen, or jumping over the exact spot you want the little blighter to stand on, over and freaking over. It’s really annoying. Also, the range of items in the game is dramatically less than I had thought there was going to be with what developers had said about the game prior to release.

It’s also VERY annoying to type something in, and only have the last part of the word count. For instance, I wanted sleeping gas, so I input it, and rather than telling me that this item too wasn’t available, they gave me a little bit of gas. Hmmm, lame 5th Cell, lame.

Another thing that really bothered me about this game was that it was just way too easy. Ridiculously so in most cases. The only thing that made this game difficult was the poor controls, and that’s not a good thing, that’s a very bad thing.

Scribblenauts was touted as visionary, an extremely new and creative game, however as I played it I felt like I’d done it before. It’s like Crayon Delux but with cartoon visuals and pre-made items instead of being able to draw your own. So if you’ve thought about getting Scribblenauts, save your money and buy Crayon Delux for your PC. You’ll have more fun, more money in your pocket, and won’t want to snarl in frustration at the horrible controls.

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Nah, this isn’t a post on ghost hunting, but rather on the new Zelda game, Spirit Tracks, which I’ve been playing for the last week or so.

I know, I know, I’ve got at least one rant around here somewhere about being annoyed with the upcoming Zelda game, that a train felt very limited compared to the boat seen in previous games, and yeah, I’d still prefer something else, but I’m actually enjoying the game nonetheless.

Okay so lets see, where to start… I know that some are frustrated that the controls remained the same and that you still have to control Link via the stylus, and I can see why, but apart from the occasional time where you only want to move a very small amount, I don’t mind the stylus controls. I like being able to tap items rather than have to run up to them and press ‘A’ and also like the sword control, so it doesn’t bother me really.

The story line is good old Zelda style; it’s nice to see that even though their ideas might not be my favourite, they still have the ‘Zelda’ knack of making the game enjoyable. Running around with Princess Zelda makes for a nice change from seeing her for a total of five minutes in the entire game, though she is a ghost the company is still refreshing. It’s a little reminiscent of Twilight Princess in that regard, I suppose. The dungeons are good but they are a little easy. I’d not needed to use either a potion or the ‘Song of Healing’ until the boss fight in the Snow Temple, so I do feel like the difficulty could stand to go up a bit.

The train rides are… well… irritating at times. They can be very tedious, unless you decide you’re going to treat it like the journey is as worthy as getting to the destination. Perhaps that’s an English thing, I’m not sure, but I do find that I have to have a certain mental approach to getting from place to place, lest I find myself becoming frustrated very quickly.

I like that Beedle is running around in a hot air balloon in this iteration, I’d thought he’d be on a train as well, though I can see that being a problem. I can’t stand the stupid ‘bad’ trains that run around in certain areas, purely because you never get the chance to fully blow them up with your cannon. All you can do is slow them down, and if they hit you, you go back to where you began your journey, and VERY irritating occurrence!

All in all it’s still a fun Zelda game, however I think the IGN rating on the gameis a tad fanboyish , it’s a really fun game, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure if it deserves a 9.3 rating, perhaps a 9.0 would be more fitting? It’s hard to decide because the game really is extremely fun! I mean sure, it’s not that challenging, but it’s no slouch, either. It’s a super fun game and I’m going to stop blabbing about it here and go play the damn thing!

Oh, and I’m going to just say it here and now, I’m hoping there will be a third instalment in this DS series of Zelda games in which we get to travel around in a hot air balloon like Beedle, or perhaps an air ship.

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In a manner of speaking, anyway. I’m referring to a new piece of technology which allows people to interface with a computer or game via headset.

Okay, okay, so the whole thing seems like a bit of a pie-in-the-sky pipe-dream, but it’s interesting as a future possibility. Basically, a company called Emotiv has created something called the EPOC, which is a headset with sensors that pick up facial movements, emotions, and thoughts, and allows you to control certain applications without the use of a keyboard or mouse. Pretty impressive, eh? They’ve got their own software to help you use the EPOC in lieu of a keyboard, by translating movements or thoughts into certain key-commands or combinations.

Basically, this seems like a very expensive, and largely useless, toy. It’s hard to imagine this being used for gaming, or even general computer use. Whilst it would be awesome to have certain abilities in games triggered by thought, eliminating issues like not enough hot-bar space – yes I’m referring to you, Dragon Age – this gadget seems to… how do I put this… be sold as a lot more than it really is.

During one of the demos, they show that emotion can effect colour and music… I’m sorry, but if I’m upset by my game, frustrated at a particularly difficult encounter for instance, the last bloody thing I want is my gamma brought so far down that not only am I fighting for my life, I’m fighting to see. Of course, this would make me angry, which would probably cause a grand crescendo in the music, just the thing a frustrated, gamma blinded, angry gamer needs! See my dripping sarcasm there? That’s inhibited by my choice to keep this blog profanity free; keep that in mind.

Another demo showed someone using blinks and smiles set up to turn a little side-module, a laser. What if you just wanted to blink, or something made you smile? This who apparatus seems fraught with issue after issue, and apart from a few neat tricks, seems completely useless, and most assuredly not worth the US$299 that it’s retailing at, though of course you have to buy online from the Emotiv sight, too.

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Dragon Age: Origins is a really awesome new RPG that I’ve been playing quite a bit for the last week.

During the lead up to this game, I was trepidatious, I thought, I don’t want to get too into the idea of this game and be disappointed by it, but after playing it, I’m hooked, and all my fears have been put to rest.

Okay where to start… character creation is pretty good, it’s not the most in-depth I’ve used, but it’s a damn sight better than many out there. The character models can be made to look pretty good, though the elves take a bit of work to get to look anything other than horrid. The dwarves look awesome, too. I’ve played through the human noble intro, and both the dwarven noble and commoner intros, and they are both quite good, too. I’ve gotten a moderate way into the game, and it’s really very fun.

I’ve noticed a few of the voice actors from Baldur’s Gate II in this game, and that’s honestly what this game reminds me of. It’s like the Baldur’s Gate II of modern gaming, and I’m thoroughly happy and impressed by that. This is a game where the storyline is one that you actually care about, and the level of detail in history and back-story is just fantastic. Along the way you will get many a ‘codex’ which are the medium through which you learn about the history of the families, lands, and religion, of the people you’re fighting to save from an evil horde of ‘Darkspawn’. The game is very, very bloody, but there’s also a sense of humour to it so it isn’t too dark, but this is certainly not a game for children.

So far I’ve preferred going a noble human, and my normal party consists of my Mabari War Hound, a very large, aggressive, yet lovable dog, Alistair, and Leliana. This is working at the moment, though I’m not adverse to shifting party members around when needed.

The game runs smoothly, and has crashed on me three times in a week, which for a newly released game that’s alright. The voice acting is actually very good, with some big names in there, such as Kate Mulgrew and Tim Curry.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the game. It plays well, reads well, sounds good, looks good, and above all, is really very, very enjoyable! My SO hasn’t been playing it herself, but has really enjoyed watching it whilst I play. She’s going to play it as an elven mage, so that should be good to watch, too. She wants me to play as much as I like to play, because it’s enjoyable to view, too.

I think that’s enough for now, but suffice to say, if you play RPGs at all, and you’ve an alright PC, an XBOX 360, or a PS3, pick up this game! I downloaded mine off Steam and it’s been very good that way, and you pay less overhead, too, which is nice.

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Never! Well, for the first week of being struck with H1N1 I wasn’t much use in front of a computer, or doing much of anything, really, but after the mid-point of week two I was feeling well enough to swathe myself in blankets and sit in front of my computer for short periods of time, and luckily this coincided with the release of an awesome RPG.

Before I go into any of the gaming stuff, in fact, that will get it’s own post next up, as I think it ought to get more than a one paragraph mention! So this entry into my neglected blog shall be a re-cap of what has been going on…

Let’s see, let’s see. Well the weather has obviously been turning cooler and cooler outside, though to be honest I’ve not gone outside for weeks. October is sort of a mucousy haze which is hard to recall with any clarity. H1N1 hit me, I started to get over it, and as you can see from the quietness spreading over my blog once again, I was pushing to get well too soon, and ended up back in bed for four days straight. I’m usually a very healthy person, I rarely get sick and when I do I get over it very quickly, so it was really very shocking to be hit so hard by this swine flu thing.

I’ve done little actual work for the past I don’t know how long, but I’d been working so much up to that point that I’m not really behind all that much, and my bosses are all very understanding of my illness and really don’t want me to push it and end up not working till the new year or something drastic.

I’ve not been paying attention to much of anything outside of my house. It’s fun! I’m like a hermit! All the things I usually keep tabs on, upcoming games, mortgage news and outlooks, finance markets and all that. I peered down my street today when I ventured outside to pick up my post – first time I’ve been outside in a very long time – and I noticed that not one of the houses on my street are selling, but three homes have sale of house signs up! Wow, the market might be looking up? I don’t know.

Anyway, I’m going to go onto a fresh new post so I can talk about an awesome new game I’ve been playing.

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