Starcraft II Diaries (Part 2) published.
Posted on March 24, 2010 at 9:51 am.
This morning the second installment of my series on Starcraft II beta is published by the Adrenaline Vault. In this episode I cover the new battle.net.
Unlike the first one it comes not just with screenshots, but also with an 8 minute HD video of a Terran vs. Terran game from start to finish. I even added commentary so you know what's going on there.
Go read it at over at the Adrenaline Vault.
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Checking out the PS3.
Posted on March 21, 2010 at 12:45 am.
I'm a PC purist. Have been for a long, long time. The only console I ever owned was Sega Genesis, and it wasn't all that impressive. (Right now I own a Wii, but that's a whole other story - it's junk, I got it for free, I never use it, and I plan to give it away.)
In any event I see a whole slew of problems with consoles, and I write about it often. Usually on various forums, and in other conversations.
Well, currently one of my friends is out of the country, and he let me borrow his Sony PlayStation 3. He also preloaded some demos for me to check out, and gave me his copies of Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain to play.
So far I only went through the demos, here are my impressions:
1) Magic Carpet
A flight simulator game from 1996. I hated it on the PC back in the day, and I hate it now.
2) Echocrome
A very neat puzzler, which I did enjoy playing. One problem was the controls. I find it difficult to use the PS3 controller for precise movements. Keyboard and mouse work much better. Overall though I'd be interested in playing this past the demo.
3) Little Big Planet
A cute platformer, but nothing special in my opinion. Looks pretty good, but I really don't have any desire to continue with it after having beaten the demo.
4) God of War 3
I've never played the two previous installments and don't know the back-story but you get to beat up monsters, gods, and really big monsters. Cool! This game looks very pretty, and I think I'd play more of it just to see what weird things you can kill. However, it's too linear - you pretty much move along the set path, and the controls are ever so bothersome. Towards the end of the demo there is a sequence where you fly up through a shaft of some sort, all while having to avoid various obstacles and debris. I must have attempted in 20 times before I got through. Once again, it made me really wish for my keyboard and mouse combo.
5) Brutal Legend
I read about this game long before it came out, and was actually very interested. Then I found out it wasn't gonna be on PC. Boooooo! Well, now I got to try it and have mixed feelings. On one hand it's absolutely awesome, heavy metal theme and all. The humor is funny, the dialog is well written, the graphics are beautiful, the art direction - awesome. On the other, the camera controls are plain stupid, I couldn't see where I was going half the time (especially during the worm fight) and, my pet peeve, the controls overall are inadequate in my opinion.
So, this being my first experience with a PS3, I cannot honestly say that I'm completely unimpressed. The visuals looked better than I anticipated, although still not as good as those on my PC. The games seem very linear, but not bad. PC games have problems too, so it's ok.
Some of my main issues still remain unanswered though:
a) Games are too expensive.
b) The system is useless for everything else.
c) The system is not portable at all.
d) The controls are sheer horror.
e) Does not support resolutions higher than 1920x1080.
f) Have to play in front of my TV in the living room, not my office as I prefer.
To be fair, "f" is not an issue for me since my super awesome and expensive monitor has an HDMI connection, but still, most people's shitty monitors do not.
All together, I am not willing to write PS3 off as a useless piece of junk, but I am not quite ready to have it (or something like it) take the place of my main gaming system.
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CoolerMaster HAF 932.
Posted on March 19, 2010 at 1:17 pm.
Last night I built (or rather migrated) my system to a new case.
I planned to build a whole new computer next summer, including the case, but I RMAed my motherboard, so I figured that since I have to take everything apart anyway, may as well get a new case now.
My old case was an NZXT Nemesis, which I won in an Avault giveaway years ago. It housed my "Legendary Gaming Rig" since 2007. Realistically the only reason I still have it is because it was free. Otherwise it's not such a great case.
My new one is a CoolerMaster HAF 932, which I got for $140 (+tax) at Microcenter. It is humongous, has a lot of convenient features, and basically does everything I want it to do. It also looks very good with its imposing military/industrial style.
In any event, everything went smoothly, aside from a RAID desynchronization scare, but that got resolved. Also Windows 7 wanted to re-activate, and since I only have the code for the downloadable version, not my DVD (either misplaced it or was never sent it) I had to quickly call Microsoft.
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I refuse a free copy of C&C4.
Posted on March 19, 2010 at 12:50 pm.
I refused to review Command and Conquer 4.
That is despite the fact that I was initially pretty excited over it. I also refuse to buy it, and so will not play it at all.
The reason for this is that the assholes at EA, decided to follow suit of the assholes at Ubisoft and included that same DRM with this game.
In case you haven't heard, this DRM requires you to be online when you play. Yes, even single player. Fuck them. Don't buy their shit. They must be punished for this.
P.S. - Nothing against Kane or Joseph D. Kucan. That picture was just the first one I found.
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Our daily bread.
Posted on March 14, 2010 at 3:30 pm.
I just did my food shopping for the week, and figured it'd be educational to take a picture of all that stuff.
Here's what I eat.
Total bill: $78.
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Movie - Gandhi.
Posted on March 9, 2010 at 11:05 pm.
I had to watch Richard Attenborough's 1982 film Gandhi for a class I'm taking. In regards to cinematography and historical accuracy, yes the movie is reasonably well made and accurate. As it stands, the central issue of this film, as is the case with most Gandi-related media, is the ability to achieve justice via peaceful means. The gist of the story is known to all, one Gandhi, preaches non-violence and passive resistance, and in doing so liberates his homeland of India from the horrible and oppressive British rule. Rejoice, ye, free-loving people of the world, your salvation be at hand. All hail Saint Mahatma, and so on and so forth. The movie of course goes into more detail and paints Gandhi as a real person, not just a heavenly being.
Unfortunately, the message of this film is a logical fallacy, namely a red herring. More specifically it is an appeal to emotion, as opposed to an appeal to reason. The movie uses the natural human desire for and appreciation of justice, the western tendency to side with the underdog, and graphical depictions of violence as well as serene imagery to force the viewer to take sides that are not necessarily well argued for. This is not to say that the movie twists any truths, or turns the events upside down. However, it does use every trick in the book, including, once again, logical fallacies, to prevent the audience from critically evaluating the events.
What is worse, the movie reinforces an already prevalent idea, which also happens to be very much false, that all conflicts can be solved via non-violent means. People who firmly believe that, usually find themselves at the receiving end of various implements used to project force. It is also usually a surprise for them. Because of this it would have been better if the film actually took care to accurately explain the political and social situation in India at the time, and tried to show Gandhi not as a saint, but instead as a clever and shrewd politician, who knew exactly what he could and could not do.
Specifically, it would serve well to make clear that Gandhi's resistance was only possible against the British - a noble and law-abiding nation, that produced and adhered by the concept of fair game. Men who saw it fit to keep firing into defenseless crowd were few and far between, and condemned by their own. On the other hand, should Gandhi have attempted the same tactics against the Russians (who murdered millions of their own people and kept 10% of their population in concentration camps at the time) or the Belgians (whose ghastly colonial cruelty is unsurpassed to this day,) the results would have been different.
Gandhi along with his associates would have simply been slaughtered. Anyone not content with that would have been slaughtered as well. India is a very large country with a lot of people. Belgians, Russians, and others would think nothing of purging a few millions to keep the rest in check. The genius of Gandhi was in realizing how he can manipulate the most civilized nation on Earth. Particularly of note is the fact that when it came to negotiations between Hindus and Moslems, Gandhi was nowhere near his usual effectiveness. He himself considered the separation of India and Pakistan a dramatic failure. In that he was correct.
None of this is to say that Gandhi was not a brilliant statesman. None of this is to belittle his achievements. While it is highly questionable whether the British rule was bad for India, everyone can sympathize with the desire for independence. Still, Gandhi's role is not very well shown for what it really was. His true achievements go unsung as far as this film is concerned. What the audience is shown, is yet another "obscurity to greatness to martyrdom" epic, which is hardly at all about Gandhi. Replace India with a fantasy kingdom, and no meaning will be lost. The true meaning and story is not shown, however.
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Dark Void.
Posted on March 6, 2010 at 12:43 pm.
As a member of Club SLI, I got a free copy of Dark Void, a game where you get to fly with a jet pack in an alternative universe.
At first I was excited.
Then I installed it.
Turns out you get what you pay for (who would have guessed?) Dark Void is crap and nearly unplayable. The controls are messed up, there is no obvious way to make the game run in full screen, etc.
I already uninstalled it, erased the installation files, and do not intend to ever come back to it.
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AblePlanet's NC300B Headphones review published.
Posted on March 3, 2010 at 10:50 pm.
Something a bit unusual today - a hardware review. The Adrenaline Vault published my review of AblePlanet's True Fidelity NC300B headphones with Linx Audio technology. Read it here.
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King Graham micro-article published.
Posted on March 3, 2010 at 10:37 am.
My previous post, the one about the bastards at Activision killing the fan-made King's Quest sequel, is republished by the Adrenaline Vault today. It's not really an article, more of a news post, but I just wanted to make note of it here.
Update:
This article was also published by the Examiner on 3/03/2010. You can see it here.
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King Graham murdered by Activision.
Posted on March 2, 2010 at 2:20 pm.
The Silver Lining, a fan-made sequel to Sierra's classic King's Quest saga, has been shut down by Activision/Blizzard the new owners if this IP. There was a similar setback in 2005, when Vivendi Universal sent a Cease & Desist letter to the developers. At that time, however, thousands of people wrote to Vivendy asking to grant a fan-license to the game, and after a while the company agreed. The game was not allowed to call itself King's Quest anymore, but the development was permitted to go on. It took the team a while to recover from this loss of stride, but as of late it looked like the first episode was about to be released.
Meanwhile, Activision/Blizzard came to own the rights to King's Quest. Instead of allowing development to continue, they decided that the project is to be killed. Not only did they force The Silver Lining's site to be taken down along with all artwork, information, demo, etc. they also insisted that all of the forums are killed as well. Nearly ten years of discussions (some non KQ-related) are now gone.
Good-bye King Graham. Who would have known that one of the most beloved gaming characters of all time would end his life at the tip of some greedy corporate suit's pen.
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"90% of PC gamers are pirates." - Derek Smart
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