Category Archives: Gaming

Film, Gaming

Pirates II – revisited

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Tom pointed out to me last night that a few people have been comparing Pirates II to ‘Empire Strikes Back’ – apparently it has exactly the same story structure – which, on initial discussions and reading, I can see. Mackenzie Crook and his parter in crime as R2 D2 and C3PO, I suspect the Black Pearl was the Millennium Falcon, Jack Sparrow as Hans, Norrington as Lando Calrissian etc… Makes a weird kind of sense.

Three things I wanted to say about it, though…

(1) I did not think ‘Why has the rum always gone’ was the best line. I thought ‘Hello, beastie’, was the funniest line in the film. Don’t ask me why, I probably couldn’t explain it.

(2) I maintain that it was a good film, in spite of everyone’s naysaying – didn’t mind the fact that it was long, loved the ridiculous and fantastic action sequences, coped with the convoluted plot.

(3) Am I the only one to see the massive parallels between these films and the brilliant Monkey Island games? [[Guybrush Threepwood]] and the dread pirate [[LeChuck]] had almost exactly the same counterpoint that Jack Sparrow and Barbossa have (the third film will be great).

Here’s a reminder for you, courtesy of YouTube.

Gaming, Technology

Xbox 360 price drop?

Might be an Amazon specific thing, but they’re doing a 14% discount on the core system, which suggests to me that MS are doing some discounting… either that or Amazon are taking a gamble that you’ll buy a bunch of full priced peripherals to support that.

In any case: stack £180 for an Xbox360 against £425 for a PS3, and factor in the additional 5 months headstart MS still have and what do you get…? Have Sony messed it up big time, this time?

I suspect that I might actually end up getting my first-ever Nintendo console (before I get the new MS/Sony ones) if they can get the WII to work, and give me a decent sports title and hack-and-slash game… we shall see!

Comics, Film, Gaming

Gaming update: Evil Dead – Regeneration and Marvel Nemesis

Having decided against the next gen consoles for a little while (at least until the Nintendo WII comes out, which might be the console to wean me of my Sony/MS dependence), and really, really being bored of wasting my life on Civ4, was looking for a new way to, erm, waste my life. And on browsing Amazon’s bargain basement, decided to pick up a couple of games that I knew were just going to be a useless waste of money at full price… but might prove entertaining with a twofer 15 quid deal.

Both are obviously based on film / comic franchises that I love. Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series (of which I’ve seen 1 and 3: Army of Darkness) is fully entertaining, and there’s something about Bruce Campbell’s ridiculous machismo that is hugely entertaining – and proves to be in the ludicrous cutscenes of the game. It’s like Duke Nukem meets… well, Evil Dead. Very, very funny – simple, addictive, button mashing game play, decent graphics and a plotline worth sawing your arm off for. So far, anyway – I’m only about 20 minutes in. Have a feeling its going to get repetitive quick, but for now…

And Marvel’s newest beat-em-up, after a long line of really, really awful games, is actually relatively entertaining. It, like MK: Shaolin Monks, turns the game into something more of a platform game and gives a nice bit of variety between characters. Of course, there’s no two-player cooperative mode (d’oh! – although haven’t tried on Xbox Live yet), and the combos seem limited, it is very true to Marvel so far and quite fun as a consequence.

In short, great diversions for a small investment. This pleases me.

Gaming, Technology

Xbox360

Played on one at The Hospital. Now have absolutely no desire to buy one until they sort out some decent titles. Bring on GTA4 & Halo 3 and I’ll think about it.

Few reasons.

    It’s good but its not that much better graphics-wise
    The library of games just isn’t good enough
    The ‘extras’ – media library, etc – are only useful if you don’t already have a solution for that (and if you have < 20 gb of music)

So; although it is a great console it just doesn’t make sense for me at its current price point.

Also: whilst I’m on the topic of gaming, RIP Magic the Gathering: Battlegrounds – a great game on on the original Xbox, it now has approximately zero players on Xbox live and has no further use as a game. :(

Gaming

Triumph

I had a game of Civ the other night, first one in ages – and absolutely trounced Turnip, which is always gratifying. I do need to switch games, though, if I’m going to progress on the novel (or even just on this blog).

That said, HOMMV is out, and I did quite like its predecessors. Crap.

NB: People who think that 8 meg broadband is ridiculous should try downloading the 700 meg HOMM V demo – its taken over an hour, even with my ridiculous DSL-link. FYI I’ve upgraded to DoubleSpeed from Bulldog (hoping for more than the advertised 16 meg), and will no doubt let you all know what kind of difference it makes when it kicks in next month.

Gaming, Technology

Xbox £360

I really want an Xbox 360. I mean, mostly because it’s new and fancy and I’d like to see what hi-def games look like on my plasma screen, but at least partly because I want to play the new Elder Scrolls game.

But: that’s probably the only game I want to play, and to get the kit I need to make my Xbox 360 useful as a console (Premium pack, second wireless controller, the Elder Scrolls game) I’d actually have to spend £360. Which is outrageous.

Sadly, with the PS3’s delay and rumoured pricing (apparently around £350 for the console alone, if rumours and misquotes can be believed, which, apparently, they can’t) — the price on the 360 is unlikely to drop for a while. So I guess I’ll hold tight – and see what they come up with. If they release Halo 3, then I may break, but odds are that will be delayed till November as well.

Damn my tendency to want instant gratification, and my lack of limitless funds…

Gaming, Technology

Web 2.1 (2)

Ok, so that last post was somewhat too “bloggy” – trying to be quippy & clever with limited substantiation. And this post will also be slightly unhelpful, as I’m slightly too tired to find the source links, and its been two weeks since I wrote the original post… but:

Ajax: a web technology that allows web applications to respond asynchronously, and thus look a bit more like traditional thick-client applications. Also means that sections of applications can load in real time – like map segments in Google maps.

Apply this to gaming, with high speed broadband, and you could have MMORPGs that load dynamically. Get yourself a thin-client machine with enough RAM and you could have some high performance computing, with only a limited rendering engine stored on disks. The reason that Nintendo came into this vision of the future is that their Revolution console will allow Abandonware to be downloaded to it – but as it doesn’t have a hard drive (copy protection), these old games will have to reside in some limited solid state flash memory or volatile RAM — possible for small, old games. But for photorealistic, cool, modern games? Something else would be needed…

So: is that what consoles will look like in the years to come? Games will be sold as rendering engines only, and live as they are updated dynamically off servers, delivered via ultra-fast, seeded P2P broadband networks?

Probably not. But I thought it was an interesting idea…

Gaming

“Civilisation ruined my life”

I finally understand this phrase, which was said to me often back in the mid 90’s. Having had my first run-in with Civ4 last night, I know why people told me they lost girlfriends/fiancés, stopped eating, played for days at a time, all because of this game (or rather, its predecessors). It is all-absorbing, intricate in detail, with a good chat/teaming system and resilience for those with unreliable net connections or a need to leave off a game to be resumed later.

Really gripping stuff. I’m determined not to play too much: too much time needed at the gym, and to get through my current reading pile.

Damn you Matt/Damo, for introducing me to this thing, and Amazon for selling it cheap!

Gaming, Media & Marketing, Technology

Sorry…

For rubbish posting once again.

I’ve become slightly addicted to a few things. Work, which continues to be entertaining, exciting, exchilarating and exhausting, hanging out with my girl, which is all the same (minus exhausting), and playing the entirely addictive DoTA, a video game Noel (aka cmorbutt) introduced me to a few months back. It sucks the life out of you.

Have also been on a few good walks lately (good to escape London) and am off to Edinburgh in a couple of weeks to celebrate my sister’s graduation with her (she done good!).

All good, really. Will try to be more regular, but its probably sensible not to make any promises…

Gaming, Media & Marketing

KKriegertastic

Check out this game! The graphics may not look amazing from this screenshot, but have a look on the main site and click on some of the full res ones!

What’s impressive is not the graphics per se, but the fact that the entire game package weighs in at just under 100KB, which, for the not technically inclined, is very, very small. I downloaded and ran the beta on my machine (an Athlon 2000XP, 512MB RAM, Geforce3), which was sadly too far below the minimum spec to be useful in any real way, but gave an indication of the game’s potential.

The game engine dynamically generates textures for the game, sucking up vast amounts of RAM but virtually no hard disk space. It’s a clever little algorithm.

Trés impressionant.

via James, creator of Mcfensive Google.

[Listening to: Mysterious Ways – U2 (04:03)]