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Gaming: Sony PSP and TV-out; I mean, glorious uber-nerding near the TV like an 8-year-old.
Thu, 06 Nov 2008

I've always been a fan of 'tactile retro gaming' .. ie: using authentic controls if you can't have the actual device around. ie: As an emulation author you'd think I'd be all for the technology (and I am!), but I also collect arcade machines - the full cabinets - and home consoles. It is always "better" (in terms of game feal) on the real thing (and brutal on your space and room aesthetics), and then on emulation if you don't have access to the real beasties. The reason of course is more genuine controls and also some of the magic -- there is something to be said (and also said against) having to insert and flip over floppy disks on a C64 or Atari 800, and type on a nasty old keyboard that was actually made up from calculator keys (no joke there btw, check your Commodore history friends ;)

Consider also the 'knock' noise Q-bert makes when he falls off the maze; thats actually a physical knock made in the arcade cabinet, and it cannot be replicated in emulation _period._ Nor can you replicate the aging monitor and the cigarette burns on the cabinet. But I digress.

What I'm talking about today is plugging consoles, even modern ones like the Sony PSP, smack into your big screen high def fancy pants TV. Its not a genuine display, but it is certainly in the spirit of that -- how many of us sat on the floor far too close to our big 1970's CRT TVs playing with crummy old joysticks that hurt our little paws. Atari 2600, Colecovision, etc. Those are sitting-in-front-of-TV systems -- thats how they were designed. Its also a nerdy social thing, playing games in the family room on the TV, not up on your laptop in an office or bedroom.

And in these modern times, it means firing up Commodore Vic-20 BASIC on 47" of fracking television. YEAH

In my household we're woefully behind times in the entertainment arena, but finally just acquired a new TV. I mean one that is more than 20 inches, and less than that in years old. So I naturally plugged in a SuperGUN (a Super Nova in fact) to bring up Rolling Thunder (the actual arcade game board) on the TV.. AWESOME.

But for normal people, whats the easiest device to plug into a big fat TV? Sure, your XBox or the like, running old games. Nice. You do that, we don't have any modern consoles :)

I picked up the Sony PSP "component cables" (not the composite ones) and jacked my little handheld PSP into the TV. Being on cables and without remote controls means I'm sitting up there, near the TV, wired to it. Like the good old days. Big TV and me, face to face.

First up -- running my ST emu and Xenon 2 Megablast. OH YEAH. Then Dungeon Master and the mummy that scares your pants off in the dark. OH YEAH.

Next up -- VICE emulator in Vic-20 mode, and Cosmic Cruncher. Spiders of Mars. Omega Race.

And then something from this decade.. Wipeout Pure. Sweet racing action.

The only problem here is the PSP letterboxes games, so you don't get the full fullscreen action (for shame!) like the SuperGUN does. Next up I'll have to try the GP2x and see about getting my ST emu going full screen there. Sexy. Or get yourself an X-Arcade stick for your laptop, or use a STELLA-adapter to plug your 20 year old Atari joystick into your computer. Whatever it takes, man.

An hour of true transcendant geeking. Modern TV runs pretty hot and winter is coming -- plug that old small TV gear into your big hot TV and get your game on!

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Retro: Atari Jaguar console
Wed, 05 Nov 2008

Aside: My baby girl recently started speaking in 2-3 word sentences; last night when I tucked her into bed, she said "love you daddy." Another life achievement down, and well.. it just doesn't get much better than that one :)

Atari was a great company in so many ways, but I'll not go into that here. Their last real console release was the Atari Jaguar around the same time as the Sony Playstation (original), and we all know who won that race. Truly it was no competition.. the Jag was a cool platform, but it really could not compete with these more 3D oriented machines. And a lot of its software was _terrible_ (and that is being kind.) Still, it maintained Atari's playful feal with some games being very original, and always feeling like the designer was not so much a corporation but a drinking buddy. To me as a retro collector, an Atar fan, retrogamer and coder .. the Jag was always a like-hate relationship.

I mean, it had Dragon's Lair on CD. *heart*

But it also had Kasumi Ninja, which is not even as good as Custer's Revenge if you catch my drift.

Anyway, through my various moves I've dragged my poor Jaguar around, but today I've sold it off. A fine seeming lad picked it up and sounds like he'll have some fun with it, for which I'm glad. I mean -- we retro guys go through a phase of wanting to collect it all but in practice we just rarely have the space and eventually have to specialize. But more .. I like to get things into a good home, and if I'm not going to fire up this classy little beast, ever, might as well move it on along to someone who will. A museum piece kept in the dark is worthless.. a museum piece on display is worthy. So I'll miss this little machine, this indestructable black box (none of this red-ring BS in old hardware!) .. but on the other hand, my home will be forever clean of Kasumi Ninja.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / retro ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Spectating Nethack
Mon, 03 Nov 2008

I'm a closet Nethack nerd.

Nethack is a very complex and interesting dungeon-romp game, generally played out entirely in text (though various ports and lookalikes exist with simple or even very fancy graphical frontends exist.) This isn't a text adventure in the Infocom sense, but a top-down "Diabloesque" game (for more modern people, or a Temple of Apshai but actually fun game for old schoolers like me ;) Anyway suffice to say that it has such depth that very modern games barely scratch its surface (though they of course excel in other aspects, don't get me wrong.) So nethack (and many other Hack descendants such as Dwarf Fortress, Angband and so on) are worth playing even today.

This comes up because the 10th annual Nethack tournament is underway right now. One of those few times I can point at someone else and cry "Nerd!"

Anyway, I stumbled across this frightening and yet mega-awesome tidbit:

telnet nethack.alt.org

By which I mean in a Unix-like environemnt, just do that; in Windows, you can run a DOS-like shell and do that or use some shmancy telnet client. Anyway, telnet lets you essentially visit text displays on some other machine, usually for working on a server.. but in this case, it lets you play, or like some sick ASCII voyeur, watch someone else play Nethack.

You can of course download and play Nethack locally, but this lets you goof off without bothering to download it. But the main attraction to me.. is to watch someone, usually a far better player than me, play nethack. That is just downright nifty. I want spectator modes in newer games too, but this is really darned neat. Just can't wait for someone to scratch Elbereth into the floor with a cockatrice head and see what happens.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Infocom sales by title, graphed
Tue, 21 Oct 2008

The number of units sold to customer ('sell through') in todays gaming industry is very different by orders of magnitude to the good old days when Lord British was hawking Ultima and Akalabeth in ziplock bags. But there were a few brave souls who carved out their niche in the fledgling indutry, and those like Electronic Arts who would survive to this day. Without going into that whole discussion however, we might be curious how some of these moderately successful companies did. Enter Infocom, pioneer of the adventure game and the text adventure (and database if you want to go that far). How did they do?

Mighty Jason Scott of textfiles has stumbled across some data, so take a peak at this graph:


See here for the Flickr page

For when the inevitable happens and the image vanishes .. from 1981-1986 Zork 1 sold 379,000 units, and HHGttG sold 254,000. Later games like Ballyhoo only sold 24,000 but even that is quite a respectible sell through for the time period.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Warhammer Online Beta after 2 hours
Tue, 09 Sep 2008

Used to be gamers meant PC gamers. And PC games had Boss Keys, since a lot of people didn't have computers at home and played games at work, and needed to hit a key that would pretend to be Excel^h^h^h^h^hVisicalc real fast. Then later games had a Boss Key just for fun. And now they don't at all (sniff), and now people play games on PCs and consoles. But apparently mostly consoles, unless its Civilization, a FPS shooter, or .. MMORPGs. And with 10-odd million or more World of Warcraft players PC gaming will never die. So instead the question becomes - with each new MMORPG fantasy game, will it take over, or be another roadbump for the almighty WoW?

Will this be Failhammer Online? or Winhammer? Can Warhammer Online, Age of Reckoning ("WAR") survive?

I was going to write up a one para summary for some friends, but then it turned into this monstrosity and so I'm posting it. Sorry :)

NOTE: : My play was very low level, and in beta; the higher level PVP with city-capturing and so on sounds really great, but I didn't touch any of that. The lower levels are more mundane.. so read on.

The next WoW expansion is due in just a month or two, and simply nothing will be displacing that game anytime soon; its just too big. Well, until the next Blizzard game comes out, right? So with them showing no mercy on the marketplace, any new games had better stand on their own at launch -- a tough feet against something thats been around and under constant development for half a decade. (Witness Age of Conan, which simply seemed like a beta they wanted to charge monthly for. These games are hard to make.)

Now, before I get started, let me just say .. as an old timer table top gamer, I know that Warcraft rips off Warhammer in feel and art, and I know that Warcraft was even going to be a Warhammer game way back in the day. So yes to those fanboys, I get it, WAR looks like WoW, but its really the other way around. So I won't talk about that. And Blizzard better not, since they stole their gameplay from Everquest, and their art from Warhammer. What they did do, was evolve the gameplay, and refine it down to be the best and most addicting parts of that gameplay.

Anyway, I played the open beta WAR for a couple hours last night, and thought I'd lay down some impressions.

It will beg comparison to WoW at every opportunity, since it feels and plays like WoW. WoW adopted much of Everquests gameplay, and WAR adopts much of WoWs; economicly it can't be a bad thing, but it is a tired old convention. Auto-attack and 1-2-3-win. But fine, it certainly makes it easy on new players, and makes it very eay for WoW players to move to WAR -- you're 'at home' pretty quickly.

So let me say right off -- WAR, after 2 hours, seems to be about 80% WoW, with innovation at the end of each thread. ie: You can look at world PVE, mission PVE, world PVP, PVP minigames, and so on.. in each area they've done similar to WoW, but then improved on the formula; tried to involve the players more, and make it more about the ongoing war, and tie things together more. I think this is not a half bad strategy.

For an about-to-launch MMORPG, this looks pretty pollished. Most every other game in this field has launched terribly with crashes, people unable to log in and bugsbugsbugs.. and we'll see with WAR - but if the Beta is anything to go by, it looks pretty solid; they're building a foundation using proven ideas, and adding some really good stuff, and throwing it out there. Better than starting on some really rickety buggy mess (I'm looking at you Conan.)

But you better like auto-attack, and 1-2-3-win gameplay!

Population

As a PVP-interested player, I naturally went to Horde in WoW. I love Lord of the Rings of _course_, and even sine good old high fantasy novel tripe. But theres just no way I can take anything seriosuly as a goofy floppy eared elf. This isn't Civilization or Sim city; when I go into a game with "war" in the title, I want to tear. it. up. and wreck some opponents. So when you start in on World of Warcraft, and you firts mission is to murder 10 ducks, it rather scrubs the brunt off. Anyway, I just wanted to note that in WoW the servers as I understand it are 60-70% Alliance (humans/elves/dwarves/etc) and 30-40% Horde (orcs, tauren, trolls, undead, that sort.) At least my server was. (And for the high and mighty, in WoW lore the alliance is not all good, and the horde is generally fighting the good fight, not a bunch of evil mugs.)

So I found it a little odd that in WAR Beta (note the BETA), the populations seemed skewed to Destruction; the Chaos side was really heavy and the elves and so on were much fewer. Perhaps this will flip when it goes fully public and LEgolas37 can sign up, but we'll see.

I generaly like when there is an overall high population, and I'm on the low population side of it; it gives you the common underdog-wants-to-win feel, but it also means when you go hunting there will be lots of opponents (and usually clumps of them that outnumber your hunting party); it also means for PVP minigames you queue up and get into a game fast; the larger side sometimes has to wait, since there are fewer opponents to get into a match.

I still can't play the Order side, its just not me; so I can only hope all those LEgolases will fill in, so I have someone to beat up.

Orcapult

So I created a Greenskin Shaman (damage and healing combination) and ran around for a minute; it is obvious that even for the PVE (player versus environment.. the AI computer monsters) they are trying to keep the "at war" feal of it all; your missions are usually things that, although the same structure as WoW, at least are war oriented. Fetch the weapons, take them to buddyboy. Theres also PVP missions, right off, and thats huge. Anyway, I ran around for a few minutes to see what things looked like, and found catapults.. always a good sign; when I activated one, I found out it was an Orcapult, and it fired my character way up and over and onto an 'enemy' wall where the Stuff was Going On. It was PVE stuff mind you, but thats a great way to start a game, as a level 1 newbie. Running round, shot through the air, and into the action. Nice. Of course I was confused now, didn't know where I was or barely how to play, and surrounded by enemies... but the UI is like WoW, so I was able to take them down pretty easily.

A note on zones; you start, as in WoW, in a zone where you can turn on or off that you can be attacked by other real (enemy) players. ie: By default you cannot be PVP killed (ganked!). Naturally I turned the "please gank me" flag on right away. Bring it! So the newbie area is optional PVP, and some areas are always PVP. And some quests will take you from optional PVP to always PVP and require you to nail the enemy, if you take those quests. Slick. But if you're not a PVP person, you'll be fine I think.

Questing, leveling, experience.. PVE, or PVP? Achievements?

In WoW, you will do your levelling in PVE -- either world quests, or dungeon quests and romps. Classic, refined and addicive.. but tired and nolonger new. Thats fine, classic makes it always good.. but you can burn out on this stuff. And for me, I like to PVP (player versus player) a lot more than hunt down squirrels to kill. It is important to have choices, and in WAR they've done a great job of it.

You have the usual PVE world quests; you also have Tome quests, which are like achievements (the Tome itself is like a help guide, with details about everything you've seen or done or have to do, and logging things you've completed and so on.) You have hybrid quests where you do world quest things, but also have to engage the PVP enemy; you have PVE "public quests" which are like scripted events that repeat in certain areas of the map, so as you stumble across them you get swept up in a mini-boss event with everyone else (and NPCs) in the area. And you have PVP ("RVR", realm versus realm) quests and achievements.

Its rather a lot to take in when you first sign it, but after walking around it sinks in. What they've managed is to offer a PVE levelling system, a PVP levelling system, and a hybrid; you can mix and match. From what I've read, you can level up from start to finish all the way on PVP if you like, or you can PVE it, or whatever. Nice.

From my limited experience, it seems to have potential. Note than my character is very low level so I've only just barely scratched the surface, and I know things get bigger as you level up. The PVP at low level is essentially capture several flags and hold them material, but later it gets bigger and better. Thats okay.

I mean, I did a couple PVE quests right off, since those quest-givers were obvious and right there; go kill 2 of this, collect 2 of that, and go meet this other fella; okay, but I'm sort of bored of that.. did that a few years ago with WoW. But as I wandered around I got some small experience from opening up new areas.. cool; I got some experience for doing a few quests and actions - achievements; cool; wandered into an area and it turned out to be a public quest, and got to do a multi-wave mini-boss event, with experience all along the way. Cool! And lastly, I stumbled across the battle-master who signed me up to the PVP minigame for newbies; and there too was experience, when you kill players, or support others doing so; achievements came up as I got a series of critical hits in a row or did this or thats. And big big experience form the PVP minigame. I mean, it was by far the most experience that my character picked up, and I got a couple levels there. From a few 'battlegrounds' in WoW speak.

Nice. Thats what I'm talking about.

Naturally I didn't try crafting or auctioning on the market or anything else; was only a couple hours. But from what I can see..

It's a lot like WoW; thats a let down on the one hand, but it does make it 'easy' to start into

They've added a lot that makes the EQ/WoW formula better. Theres more action faster, you can get into the 'war' easily, and the PVP minigames are right there. Theres a little world PVP if you dig for it right away, but that comes a bit later.

Overall I think they really have a chance with this one. I'm just not sure if I'm ready for another auto-attack game, but I'm definately going to give it a shot.

n008 - forgive me ;)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / pc / mmorpg ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Techradar interviews me about homebrew and commercial game development on the upcoming GP2X Wiz
Thu, 04 Sep 2008

Short news piece
Full interview

Looks like a number of things were editted out (which is fine, I ramble a lot), but I had hoped one comment would slip through; I'll paste it verbatim here. (Maybe down the road I will paste the whole of the interview, but this is for them so they can have it for awhile before I post anything.) 

# 5. A lot of people would suggest
# that the GP2X:Wiz will once again be a console very popular with those
# who use emulators or pirate games, and won't actually be interested in
# a dedicated software base. How would you respond to such a statement?

        I must nit on your question; I wouldn't suggest that previous GPH
machines have been popular with those who pirate games; emulation and
homebrew yes, but piracy of published GP titles has always been _Very_
frowned upon in the community; mentioning it will get you banned from the
various websites, and discussing even how to crack the DRM on GP32 cards
was a hushhush secret affair so the 'newbs' wouldn't catch wind of it. I
expect the same for Wiz games -- with such a tight community the publc is
protective of their developers, and knows they and GPH live or die on the
economy of it all.

        If you're suggesting emulation itself thrives on pirating games
then I can only say that they are not one and the same -- ask me another
day if you'd like my essay on it but suffice to say you can enjoy
emulation to a large extent very much without breaking any laws.

        Anyway, ranting aside --

Youch, looks like my fear for this came to life - the piece got picked up (which is good) on other sites and affiliates, but for some the spirit got lost; when boiling down many of the words it has gotten turned into a "Jeff thinks its a failure" piece. That isn't what I had intended at all - its a homebrew machine - its not going to take on the PSP and probably isn't meant to. they're working up for that fight, but this isn't the time. Its like saying a bicycle isn't going to take on a car... we know that. Its fine and it doesn't suggest bicycles suck. *sigh* See, I did say.. 

        The Wiz will be enormously popular for emulation and homebrew
fans, and I expect people will buy a title or two of commercialware if it
is priced well, and is priced to the quality. Prices have been climbing in
gaming arenas, but as we can see with Apple's iTunes App Store .. keeping
prices modest can really boost the numbers.  Now, remember there are
multiple sides to economics -- on the one, you want to make people smile,
and enjoy your title, and keeping prices low does that.. and gets the
title out to more hands for more smiles. But accountants will be quick to
point out that if you half the price and sell 2.5 the quantity, you still
are ahead.. so karma, and profits. The trick is finding the balance.

        So I do believe there is a market, but I don't expect its a huge
one.

        I've never seen statistics for sales for the previous GPH
machines, but from the forums we do see people buying the games; and if no
one bought any, Play Asia and so on wouldn't have kept stocking them
right?

Another piece that got cut out; I know its a really lame analogy, but its my lame analogy. I've used it in a dozen interviews over the years, and it always gets cut. They know it sucks, but damnit, my quest on earth is to have someone publish my lame analogies :) 

        For a decade I've been telling people my theory -- if you go to
the supermarket and look in the butter aisle you'll see a dozen brands of
butter; sure, most people buy the top 3 brands, but theres room for a
dozen. Getting into the top tier is exponentially hard, but getting on the
shelf at all.. thats doable; hard, but doable. Theres no shame in being
#10 out of a hundred products, as #10 gets on the shelf. Some might call
it bottom feeding, but those of us working our tails to the bone 80 hours
a week like starving musicians - just to get onto the tiniest edge of a
shelf against the big guys.. we call it survival, fighting the good fight.

        This is how Quake mod teams suddenly end up being game developers
themselves; ten years of bottom feeding and finally getting their break.

        GPH was a nobody with the GP32, and they're getting more known
with their increased Linux support on the GP2X series; they're still a
nobody, but they're less a nobody. Slashdot posts about them now, but
thats a logn way from pretending Sony will take notice. (I don't know how
big a name they are in Korea. Perhaps I am woefully unaware!)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming ] [link] [Comments]

PSP: Why 'mod' (reflash with customer/hacked firmware) your PSP?
Tue, 15 Jul 2008

This comes up on occasion, so I thought I might put a reply here rather than in private; doubly so since I've always pushed for folks to consider ethical and legal implications of their actions and have probably ranted on it before. (ie: As software developers, I believe we must be careful to do the Right Thing, since the implications of our work could cause much aggravation or annoyance. This is why it should always default to 'No' to the question 'Do you wish to format your hard drive?' More, it comes up with increasing frequency in todays busy business world and sometimes we have to stand up for the user and consumer, right?)

Anyway, for purposes of this discussion, 'modding' refers to simply reflashing your PSP game consoles firmware.. something Sony will ask you to do all the time, as they publish updates. The trick is, you can reflash it with Sony's official firmwares, or the more questionable firmware 'mods' you can download online.

First.. why would you do it, knowing there is some risk you might do it wrong and 'brick' (kill) your device?

(Note that nowadays there is little risk; even if 'bricked', you can usually unbrick your device trivially.)

There are more things as well, but that should cover why most people do it. I'm not going to go into how, as it can be easy or a right pain depending on your skill set, if you know someone who has done it, and so on. Ask me if you want some instruction and maybe I can sort it out for you but in general I worked out some methods for myself and do that. I don't really follow 'the scene' as it takes a lot of time, and 3/4 of the sceners are idiot kiddies :) (This is one thing I've commented on before.. when you get into some of these things for all the right reasons, you still have to be mindful that others are less kocher than yourself, like going to a seedier hotel.)

Anyway, all the above is just sillyness.. I really only wanted to pass a few notes to a friend, which would be:

So all this verbiage above serves merely to confuse anyone reading. But there you go.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Retro: EAMON, one of the earliest CRPGs
Fri, 11 Jul 2008

The term CRPG refers to Computer-based Role Playing Games, such as the current Oblivion, but tracing back through Eye of the Beholder and back to Temple of Apshai and so on. The earliest examples were more text based due to their mainframe origins, and later the slow transmission rates of modems. Enter EAMON .. I've not done any history lookups here but its going back to the Apple 2 days, and I experienced it on the almighty Atari ST .. so back around 1987 or so I'd guess I fiddled with the system.

As fans of "Choose Your Own Adventure" style books (Steve Jackson ftw!), my brother was an aspiring adventure author at the time, putting together little adventure novellas on pads of paper. (You number each page, and at the end of a given page you have options that give you page numbers to turn to should you take that action. The pages are randomized to make it hard to guess where a given series of actoins may lead. Ultimately there are numerous plot endings, but usually more than a few times your character gets killed along the way, forcing you to re-start. Fun stuff.) I remember going through the Public Domain archives of local groups, and through BBS file listings all over the province (racking up huge bills all the time through long distnace charges), trying to find (well, to be honest, pirated games) some adventure authoring tools for him. There were a few systems, including EAMON, but they were just too complicated for us. Still, I remember playing a few EAMON games.

Well, t'other day I stumbled across EAMON Deluxe, a port of the EAMON system to DOS a decade back. The beauty of this is that you can still run it today on your modern PC (and hopefully someday he'll release the source so that it can be brought to Mac, Linux and so forth.) You could always fire up an emulator (Atari ST, Apple 2, C64 and so on) and play the games there but this makes things pretty easy.

Further, the lad has pulled all the many EAMON adventures together into a big archive, including user supplied reviews of the adventures. Now, I should note that EAMON was not a game.. it was a system, supplied with a few simple text adventure games. But the author supplied tools to make your own adventures and many did.. so there are literally hundreds of additional goofy little text adventures. (These are of different style than the pure "IF" Interactive Fiction games I've gone on about before; those are pure adventure games with no dice rolling, no skills per se and include such classics as Zork or Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. EAMON is one of the first CRPGs, in that you play a character who increases in powers and gold and gear and so on over playtime, and also is a less lofty academic pursuit; the EAMON gamelets are not novellas in adventure form, but early examples of kill-and-loot games.) Fun for short bursts, which hits a certain spot in my heart.

One facet of the system I admire is this .. you have a character and you pick an adventure to play through; the character persists between adventure gamelets.. so while you might be in a fantasy gamelet (the majority) one time, the next could be sci-fi. The EAMON system defines the system, and suggests certain damage levels.. so while a new player might have 20 hit points before dieing, a slight damage hit is 1 damage, while a heavier stroke is 2 or 3 points, say. So you take your character including gear game to game and grow him over the lifespan, regardless of the actual adventure the character is in.

That is pretty ahead of its time.

Anyway, if you want to try a quck text hack and slash game, that plays and feels like a light text adventure, and definately hardcore retro.. EAMON could be just the thing.

I may just have to look around for some source.. porting this to a handheld could rock my socks :)

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / retro ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Age of Conan MMORPG
Fri, 27 Jun 2008

Updated end of month; see below

(Aside, I'm working on a new, extra crappy simple blogging system. Fun stuff for a couple hours.)

World of Warcraft pretty much took over the "MMORPG" (multiplayer life-destroying role playing games) market, with millions of players (literally.) Thankfully other companies have attempted to get into the market as well, with most being destroyed in the process.. but competition is good. Funcom's Age of Conan is the new darling on the block, the one that will possibly dent WoW a trifle (not likely can anything dethrone WoW besides apathy which will come in time, but if any game is to get on the radar it will be AoC, or perhaps the upcoming Warhammer Online.)

AoC does a number of things right, and a whole lot of things wrong.. but in this particular market that is more the norm; the UI needs work, there are lots of bugs, etc and so on but it will evolve over time, if the players give it that much rope.. and with the voume of units sold (already a million IIRC) then it should have the momentum to carry on for awhile. Good.. competition is good, and they at least are innovating in a few ways (not many, but a few.. enough to keep things fun. Good job Funcom!)

See more ...

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Gaming: When given a moment.. what to do?
Mon, 21 Jan 2008

I must admit that I've always been a gamer wannabe. I mean, as a kid growing up I was heavy into tabletop wargames: board games like Risk, Axis and Allies and Supremacy and so on, or wargames such as Battletech. Even throw in some AD&D and Rolemaster for good measure, to help establish my geek cred. Later as I got more into coding the real game began.. well, to be creating games, and far too many BBSes, and games for BBSes.

I pretty much skipped the Super Nintendo and Genesis years and didn't really game much except for a few classics on the Atari ST and early PC... Phantasie, Sim City, Civilization, and Wizardry.. but really, as Tuxedo was heard to say so many moons ago.. "the only real game you need is gcc." (Nerd in-joke of the year.) I'd extend that to be any compiler I could buy or steal, since I was basicly hooked like a junkie on honey. And any SSI or Westwood Associates game. Anyway, I'll stop ubergeeking any second now.

The last few years I've definately indulged here and there, but as always basicly spent most of my time coding.. business applications, backends, middleware, and of course handhelds and games. I've always said I'm a great fan of gaming in the same way a football fan is a fan of that sport. Read the news, follow whats going on, and eat a lot of popcorn, occasionally playing the real thing and getting creamed by the pros.

So I buy lots of games, play them for a night or two, and move onto the next thing.. more coding, or something. Anyway. I like to want to play games but never did actually played them much.. just perpetually had a long list of 'if I only had a few more minutes I'd fire that up and relax.'

Nowadays, I desparately need to relax a little :) But when I do get a few minutes, or even an hour or two (expecting to be interupted a few times therein).. a bit of panic happens. What to do now? A year ago I had my evenings planned.. but now.. uh, what? I'm not used to this 'free time' thing I've heard about..

Other beings are human and chose this moment to watch pay per view movies with their spouse; I try, but sometimes I've just got the itch.. the need to hunt my prey on the battlefield. I should've watched Spiderman 3 with my wife the other night, but I just had to kill some elves. *shrug* Sometimes I'm only half human.

Anyway, that all said .. I still don't have very much time, but the baby does sleep a little bit now (only till 11 or 12, so as to keep us up all night but mercifully she's decided we're allowed to catch a bit of TV before we pretend to retire for the night.) So I've been spending some late night time (theres a lot of that) trying to sort out .. if I was to game, for an hour or two, or maybe just 10 minutes, what should I play?

As a huge retro fan, thats a tough question since its across the breadth of gaming, and not just the last year like most normal schmucks. But at least for this discussion we can narrow to halfway recent titles as I've already installed some retro on my devices.. Dungeon Master 1 and 2, Eye of the Beholder series, Phantasie 2 and 3, Wizardry 7 and 8. I'm good on that count.

For very short matches I can pull out a handheld (as a handheld dev, I have a bunch) so I can fire up Field Commander or Jeanne d'Arc on the PSP, or maybe Ratchet and Clank or something. I'd like to copy over some Battlestar Galactica, or Dr. Who, or My Name is Earl (despite the scientology ties) or this new Terminator TV series. So handhelds and short bursts are covered. This then leaves thoughts for if I have more than a few minutes..

Strategy games; going back to my wargaming youth, I've been a LONG term fan of the Civilization series (such as Civ IV) and other similar games.. Galactic Civilization II (not related to just-Civ) is very good. Going back a few years, the Panzer General or Master of Magic games all good too. Lots of good strategy games out there. (I don't count RTS' like Starcraft strategy at all, but they're good in their own way.. just too fast for these bones nowadays :) I really want to keep my Civ IV love going, but I think I cannot stomach the long games .. when each match takes 10 or 20 hours, thats just more than I can afford.. it'd take me months for each match.

Action; Over the year I did manage to squeeze in a couple must-plays such as Portal and Halflife 2's expansion packs. At 5-6 hours each they only took me a couple months to handle each one (*sigh*), but great times. As such maybe I should keep going into Team Fortress 2 or Call of Duty 4.. fantastic looking and playing, and lots of action. Pretty tempting there, but definately need a good block of time (by which I mean an hour or two) for these. Definately on the table still. Maybe Thief III .. stealth games usually let you hide your character and screw off in real life for awhile so thats pretty handy nowadays, and really.. stealth games are not about the action, but about the puzzling -- action is just one of the tools where the player manipulates the world to a useful state. Good times.

I've got a UMPC now through one of my dev channels .. a small PC. Not a PDA per se, since it doesn't run a custom OS like PDAs do.. it runs honest to god full OSes, so can run old games. Not modern ones, but games up through a few years ago might run on it, and still be portable and quiet.. so much so as to be playable while holding a sleeping baby. Win! So this brings in the 3+ year old games... not retro per se, but getting there. Perhaps I need to look into Icewind Dale, try to finish Baldurs Gate, or fire up Neverwinter Nights. Or maybe MAX, Mechanized Assault and Explore. Hmm... so many options.

I'll figure something out. But as you can see.. its more about the choices than the playing. Thats my curse. Why play when you can code, or think about playing?

Course, even just installing a game onto a UMPC (with no optical drive), and running it without its protection freaking out, is a chore. Thats a game, too.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / life ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Console sales up through end of December 2007.. whose winning?
Mon, 21 Jan 2008

It can sometimes be hard to find the information, so I thought I'd copy it here, from my ruthless needs. Swiped from Kotaku.

2007 Total Hardware Sales

Lifetime-To-Date Total Hardware Sales

I think the PSP Slim has that line a lot, but it always sounded like the platform was a fail; in reality, if the DS is flying off the shelves like hotcakes, and the PSP is more than half of DS sales, its by definition doing 'okay.' But with Wii sales as they seem to be doing, watch out XBox 360!

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / statistics ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Valve's _Portal_ in review
Mon, 15 Oct 2007

Portal has the potential. Like chocolate. It knows things. Sadly, this latest title from mighty Valve of Halflife fame, is only scratching a surface where lay many itches in waiting.

(Portal is I think available only in The Orange Box, a collection including the aforementioned Halflife 2 title and so forth, plus Team Fortress 2, and all at a very compelling price. Sure, you have to bend over for the Steam system to violate your machine, but fine.. games downloading in background direct to your spinal column, is oft worth the discomfort. Or you can buy the XBox 360 version.)

Anyway, Portal is probably unique among games (how rare is that?) since it is really a puzzle game implemented within a first person shooter. Doubleplusgood. The central puzzle is that your avatar, standing at the front of some strange room, must be brought to an exit at the other end.. where 'end' is defined as somewhere else in the 3d-space instead of being opposite you. What sets this apart is the method of control the player imposes over his world is via a portal gun - a device that lets the player place two circular entrances into a wormhole into the world. Think of it like this -- placing a portal on a wall beside you and also down the hall on the floor means you could then walk into the wall and end up walking up and out of the floor by the by. Momentum is maintained, so if you jump through the wall on an angle, you'll fly out of the floor at that angle relative to the portals position on the floor. Neat. And immediately usable, as if a new limb on your body.

Suffice to say this simple mechanism is really compelling. I found myself looking at a long corridor to walk down and thinking immediately 'hell with this' .. drop a portal on one wall and a wall at the end, step through and turn around and keep going, instantly saving a few seconds of treading about. A tool like this you would simply make use of in every day life should it turn up. Second nature.

Naturally, the game puzzles are more complex than than that -- you'll find yourself dodging gun turrets (or dropping them through floors), falling onto floors several stories down so that you can vault high over some obstacle, or climbing around strange 3d rooms laid out like a jenga tower, not in any sensible square like we use. Its fantastic. Sometimes reactions must be quick as you'll be placing portals just in time to capture and repoing something, then flinging yourself through the air to an exit and so forth, but its all good. If something seems really hard and out of place, you're probably doing it the hard way. Without revealing anything, a few times I found msyelf up against somethign seemingly twitchy and hard, then realizing I could totally circumvent it via some clever placement of portals. The imagination reels with options, but Valve has very carefully constrained the levels so you can't be done them in mere seconds.. no, you must use strategy, delicious delicious strategy.

The problem is that Portal is really short. 19 levels, where the first 10 are really just two minute trainers to get you used to travelling in this erratic way. So really, we're talking about 9 or 10 actual levels, each relatively unique, that you can complete in 5 or 10 minutes. So in total, a couple hours gameplay. Still, considering this is one small part of a cheap pacakge its worth the money.. but its a steak dinner without the potatos -- you are left wanting.

I commend Valve for their usual high quality; each main level presents a new theme, and they exploit it in that session and move on. Most games would flog each theme for dozens of levels each. But in this one case, I would _love_ to see more.. even of the same. Just a few more levels without waiting for the modding community. With how short the game is, one can only assume Valve was really just being lazy.. rather assuming the modders would make their content for them rather than meeting half way. In this day and age it is difficult to go the right distance .. to provide enough content to be good, without going too far and delaying indefinately or spending too much and all that. But this is enough to make one mad.

I mean really.. if I can complete the game over a couple of very short sessions, it means someone with normal human free time could knock it off in one evening. Thats pretty sad for a title with such huge potential.

The Orange Box is excellent value, and all the games therein are fantastic.. but don't be lazy, GabeValve. Where'd those years of development go? There must be dozens of half baked levels lieing around.. you going to troll them out over months? bleh. I suppose with how little free time I have this is nice in a way.. a game I can finish! But 99% of the rest of the world expendable time.

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Arcade: One time, when I was in band camp..
Thu, 17 May 2007

This memory came up in IRC, so I thought I would record it here for the longer term.

Back when I was a fairly motivated coin-operated-machine collector, I knew a lot of folks either in the industry (bar owners, arcade operators, etc) or other collectors. It can be a strange hobby since you're either a leach trying for the cheapest price at an auction or lording over a destitute and bankrupt former-bar-owner. That or driving all over the countryside looking in shitty shops with rusty Coca Cola signs for filthy machines featuring silver ownership stickers with phone numbers you can call^h^h^h^hharass. Or bumping into 12 year olds whose cool old Dad had given him a rare Joust 2 machine worth thousands but finding out the kid painted black over the artwork and put a copy-board of Street Fighter 2 in. Anyway, thats another story, but suffice to say you call and bug people enough, and eventually you find some cool old codger with a 20 year old junked motorhome half buried in his backyard, stuffed to the brim with PCB-gold.

This one old fellah I used to bump into regularly at the local coin-op auction had a whole farm of treasures; he claimed to have hung around with The Beatles back in the day, and sure had a party bus buried in his backyard stuffed with one armed bandits and other awesome junk. His whole house was decked with classy gadgetry, but that too is another story.

My tunnel vision, after side-stepping his muddy guard dogs, focused clearly on his Barn. An entire barn stuffed with arcade cabinets and gear from when he ran a route and collected from the auctions over a decade or two. GOLD. The entire main floor were just cabs, as he was fond of removing the PCB (the game gutts) or collecting original cabs and putting PCBs into them. These weren't "generic cabs" but "deds" (dedicated cabs). (A Pacman machine had a Pacman cabinet, where as many later games were just generic cabinets with the decals laid on.) There was no space to walk, and everything was covered with a sheen of dust, and you could smell the .. musty barnyard odours everywhere. It was awesome, like Indiana Jones laying eyes on the gold idol. Wtih so little space, to get around one climbed up atop the machines and worked slowly across by hopping machine to machine, and as anyone whose every been to an arcade can remind you -- the tops are not flat. I distinctly recall loosing my footing and nearly falling through between a swift (?) of Star Trek (a classy vector game IIRC) cabinets.

Anyway, we worked our way across the mosaic of cabinets until reaching a wooden ladder for climing up to the open second floor, where a hill of PCBs (the game brains) lied piled atop each other willy nilly. Being a geek I tend to keep my work area orderly, and my electronics far too clean. (Ask anyone with greasy palms who goes near my PDAs and game consoles..) Seeing a stack of hundreds of PCBs just lieing around in the open air hurts the soul. After taking it all in, with rays of light piercing through holes in the wooden ceiling, I noticed a distinct pile aside the others, all neatly in a tower. They were just Atari vector PCBs (which are unmistakable to any who've seen them.) A stack of some 20 or 30 of them. Now, I mention all of this since it is burned ito my mind -- if you can see your way, lit by holes in the ceiling, you already know that the rain has been in. All of these PCBs were seeping a nice rusty puddle and surely most were ruined.

Brutal.

Anyway, he did have mounds of cool stuff that functioned, so I had picked up a dozen various game PCBs for my collection; he even somehow foisted a box of unknown boards on me so I could rip out the chips and find out which games they were. (Like fingerprint reading from the code on the chips.) Fine. He wasn't cheap either since he knew collectors were interested in this stuff, but he gave me an alright bulk deal.

The reason I write all of this is here; I don't recall if this event was the same day or another day, as I did drop by a couple of times total, but nomatter. This one occasion, he (call him Bob, since that was his name) asked, friendly-like -- "Any particlar game you've been looking for and not found? I've probably got it..."

So, says I, "Quartet." Its not really rare, but its certainly uncommon and over all the thousands of boards I'd seen I've never encountered one in the wild.

Bob, without even breaking eye contact (this is how I remember it ;), reaches over to his right into a set of slots on the wall (a customized PCB breeding area I'm sure) and draws out a mint condition Quartet 2 game PCB.

It was gorramned Kreskin.

The best, the absolute best, was the shit eating grin he had. Knowing I'd just driven an hour into the farmland boons and cralwed around a filthy barn, and he had a game he knew I'd searched for on and off for a couple years. He thought he had it.

Well, fuck him I thought; I had a game he'd been looking for a couple years for too, and it was dirt common and he didn't know that. Asshole wasn't going to give me a reacharound that day.

But for a minute, he thought he was The King.

But I was the sandwhich.

Later, he showed me where he got rid of the machines deemed to be of no use.. no value for resale, or too much trouble to fix or move. He'd fire them. He was more businessman than collector, like I, so it hurt.

We were negotiating the value and price of the things I'd picked from his Unibomber-like stockpiles. He had the advantage, for while I was the greasy sammich of his destruction, he was the guy with a Space Duel cabinet on fire, burning away behind him while I merely looked on over his shoulder.

That was my #2 game, that I'd always wanted.

Asshole.

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Gaming: Where are the old school RPGs?
Sun, 06 May 2007

The baby is keeping us pretty busy so not so many posts of late, but I just have to squeeze this one in. Got five hours of sleep last night (not bad!) but taking a break from baby laundry and vacuuming to listen in on the new Rush album ('Snakes and Arrows') so I've got a moment to type. I've got the late-night shift and hate to sleep in bite-sized chunks so just stay up through two or through a.m. then go for a good coma before work. During that a.m. shift if the baby is sleeping nicely I can usually catch a bit of low volume TV but occasionally my brain is functional enough to debug my new game a little bit, or better still.. play a game. Rare pleasures indeed! This is where the PSP and such has turned in handy.. instant on and off.

Anyway, I find myself looking for a good single player old-school RPG. I've mentioned before there being at least two schools of this sort of game -- Japanese style (or J-RPG) and Everyone Else style. I'm not so into J-RPGs where you're walking a predetermined story and have overworld versus tactical turn based isometric combat. I'm a dungeon crawler. To this very day I miss Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Wizardry, you name it. Back in the day there were dozens of RPGs at any given moment.

Not that long ago we had a lot of great titles .. Baldur's Gate, heck even Wizardry 8 and the Might and Magic games. The latest Elder Scrolls game - Oblivion - looked like a recent game to scratch the dungeon romping stat-managing equipment gathering itch, but alas it puts too high a demand on my meagre machine (during real time combat, even with Oldblivion mod) for me to much get into it. There are the Neverwinter Nights games as well I suppose, so there are a couple of notable RPG entries of late. I suppose Thief III needs mentioning; not an RPG per se, but you do get to sneak around in first person stealing wallets from the unwary. Not bad.

I worry the MMORPG industry is really hurting the solo RPG one; not all of us have time (anymore ;) for such games that are designed to require real investments of life (thousands of hours very literally), yet they do have crazy stat management and gathering going on, appealing to our gamer inner core. You just can't solo a dungeon therein.

Anyway, I suppose I've half defeated my question but something is missing. No more Ultima? No more Wizardry with Sir-Tech long gone under. No more Eye of the Beholder. I refuse to see the truth, that the days of manually clicking on inventory slots in your solo backpack are gone. I like crawling through a dank dungeon, looking for secret buttons to open passage sinto the lairs of Crom-only-knows-what seeking better lootz. I want The Sword of Fargoal Undieing Firestrength to grant my Strength +10 damnit.

Given a two year old laptop, any good RPGs out there? (Yes as a retro nutjob, I know very well I can run games from just a few years ago, to a couple decades back. Now while PC gaming is down (and on a rebirth in my humble opinion!), we still have Civilization and Galactic Civilization waving the strategy flags; Dawn of War and Warhammer and good ol' Command and Conquer for RTS.)

Anyway, I'm just rambling away; sorry about that.. not nearly enough sleep the last little while :) (And I know I know, we should get a Wii and/or XBox 360 for our game fixes. Too bad, we're cheap :)

So if you can .. riddle me this -- where are the old school RPGs?

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / pc ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords
Sun, 25 Mar 2007

Normally I'd open up a review with a haiku, but I'm pretty beat right now. Permit me to be brief and provide the Pulp-free version of a blog entry.

Yes yes, I'm taking some time to write up something, and also admitting that while caring for this amazing baby, I've found a few minutes here or there to play a game. Not much, but a little :) Permit my sleep-dep to ramble, and don't mind the total lack of structure please :)

Puzzle Quest is a new game for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS; it combines some elements of classic RPG's with a popular puzzle game in a smorgesbord of 2D fun. Interestingly, it works. There are really two or three kinds of RPGs .. the Japanese style (J-RPG) with its emphasis on story and console flavoring, and all the others where you have stats, item databases, and dungeon romping without a plot. Mixing with these formulas tends to annoy the faithful.. but this cuncoction is pretty darned slick. Peanut butter and chocolate.

RPG-wise its fairly simple -- you're a hero, you have to walk around an 'over world' doing quests. Standard issue. A dude in one city (blotch on the map) tells you to kill some monster in some other place (another blotch), so you wander on over and do your business. Theres a fair number of other things you can do to keep things interesting - shop for gear, build a castle, add a dungeon to your castle to capture folks to torture skills out of, and other such things. All is presented with a simple UI to get to the point, rather than hinder you with a lot of effort. Now, a lot of us play RPGs for all the effort but thats not what Puzzle Quest is about -- its a boiled down RPG for the sake of propelling you from encounter to encounter, and to provide a framework for spells and gear and such to make sense. Its like a boardgame version of an RPG, when you move your chit around picking up interesting abilities and gear, then go woop some ass. You don't go into any 3D-dungeons or the like.

Combat and research and such are all performed through variants of one puzzle game. Folks will be most familiar with it as Bejewelled, but that game certainly isn't the origin of that puzzle style. Anyway, while in those games the goal is simply to clear the board by matching alike pieces, in Puzzle Quest there is infinite depth built atop this base. Matching coloured gems removes them from the board and gives your character mana with which spells can be cast. Clear red gems to get red (fire) mana for instance. Clearing other items causes direct damage to the enemy, or gives you cash, or experience for levelling up. As you level up you get new abilities (depending on your class), and all this mana is used to fire off spells. For instance.. match 3 skulls to cause some damage directly to the enemy, or collect some (say) red and green mana and fire off an attack spell or effect.

The Warrior class for instance has abilities that turn this mana into direct attacks usually, or influence the board to effect it; ie: One ability clears a small region of the board (the squares around the target square), which can be handy so you can wait for a certain board layout and whammo it rather than working piece by piece. The Druid class is more healing oriented than direct damage, so spends its time manipulating the board, delaying the enemies moves, or healing itself. Where a Druid plods along doing slower damage to the enemy, or messing up his attacks, the Warrior is all about trying to pounce on the skull-blocks or do damage spells. Less survival in weird encounters, but everything moves along quickly. Fights are longer for the healer, but more 'under control' so gameplay feels different. Theres some depth to it .. not just the same thing over and over a la Bejewelled.. here you're working towards building sufficient mana types to fire off a spell or combo, while looking ahead to poach the pieces the enemy might need. Set yourself up with a multi-move set of combos, or work on building experience and gold for levelling up instead of going right for the enemy throat. Enemies vary in ability -- a spider can 'web' your character so you lose some turns, while a thief might steal some of your gold or do surprise attacks. All these many things occur on the game board. Cool stuff.

All in all, you're spending 90% of your time playing a Bejewelled-like game that works within the questing and adventuring framework familiar to J-RPGs. Nothing too serious, but pretty darned entertaining. Lots of cool items to buy and things to do.

And since each match is quick (5-20mins), you can play in the middle of the night between bouts of crying. Baby crying I mean. Usually, anyway ;)

I like it. I like serious RPGs usually, but I've not the time to read the back of the box of one these days. This hits the RPG and puzzle fetish in weird yet satisfyingly kinky ways.

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Gaming: When did it change?
Sat, 17 Feb 2007

You see, I post one article and out pops another. Funny how that is. The rants are on people!

A thought pops into my head: A lot of games you finish (be it at the end or just when you've had enough) with relief, while others you genuinely enjoy or miss upon completion. A hearty 'wtf' to the former.

When Half Life 2 came out I thought I'd pick it up as I'd ignored much of the genre before that. A few weeks later when I emerged from the bleery eyed depths, terribly afraid of zombies and head-suckers, I was pretty spent. Good times.

RPGs are famous for 'the grind', and frankly its not an RPG to me unless you need to level up, spend time in (non-meaningless) dungeons and obsess over item statistics. I'm happy with this, and demand it, but the pacing must be ever so carefully managed lest it turn boring or tedious. As long as they play out like Dungeon Master or Wizardry, I'm golden.

I know the "MMO"s out there (for non-gamers, think Everquest, the marriage ruiner of the early 2000's) are basicly just cesspools of life destroying grind. They charge by the month, like a magazine, so they just want you to hang around. They reward grinders, people who spend serious time to get anywhere. After all, shouldn't people who play 800 hours a month win.. win more than sensible humans? A complex question that, but the answer is -- as long as they pay. (Its not about winning you see, its about keeping you around grinding - sure you get the good parts every once in awhile, like a Pavlovian experiment. In between, you get to grind away like a job at the laundromat.) These games are fun (if they weren't, lives would not be destroyed. We all know everything worth doing is worth destroying a life over, right?), but they cross over -- when you hit the wall and break away, are you more relieved than anything?

Metal Gear Solid would be a good game, were it not for the thirty-seven gajillion Cut-Scenes of Intense Boredom +5. Final Fantasy too .. too. And don't think esteemed franchises such as Gran Turismo are immune from this vinegar ... what were they thinking when introduced concepts whereby the player has to earn his licenses to get anywhere good? For that matter, easter eggs in games are awesome.. but this recent trend requiring you to clear a game in certain speeds or certain completions to 'unlock' the extras.....

Theres a lot of really great computer and console gaming going on, but go talk to Eugene Jarvis of Robotron game. Or Sid Meiers of Civilization. Get to the good parts, the interesting parts fast. We don't need to be all powerful up front, but we want to be immersed, we want to see the meat before the sun sets. We want to play, and go out for drinks afterwards. Sure, we might want to be able to play 160 hours a month like a full time job, but we do not want you to build that mechanic right in. And, one last thing -- didn't button mashing go out of vogue with Street Fighter and Everquest? I'm looking at you Blizzard.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psychology ] [link] [Comments]

PSP: I just want to know -- wheres the mecha?!
Wed, 22 Nov 2006

Usually I try to have something vaguely amusing (to me ;), informative, remotely useful, or at least personal to say. But today, this time I just want to ask something. As someone who played electronic games and video games in the 80s and 90s:

Wheres the Wing Commander equivilent? I mean, don't people still want to fly a small space-faring fighter against large capital ships? Think Star Wars and running down the trench with enemy fighters on your tail, turrets lobbing heavy munitions youe way -- fun! Descent? (Well, I could finish porting it..) Those of us from the golden 80s watched "The Last Starfighter" and we want to shoot something down. Hell, make it a Starblazer's tie-in for the retro-anime crowd.

In the same grain, we played Battletech on the tabletop and watched Robotech on the tube, and endless reems of anime mecha - giant robots, beam weaponry, machine guns, stomping enemy buildings and the almighty Death From Above jumpjets.. we need the rebirth of Mechwarrior. Bring it.

[ Category: / entertainment / gaming / psp ] [link] [Comments]

Gaming: A good time for PSP gamers
Tue, 07 Nov 2006

So much geekery to talk about of late, and yet so little time. Apologies to any non-gamers who may be reading ;) Another quick entry scrawled out on the poor phone!

With the initial launch of the PSP few classy titles were presented -- Lumines and Wipeout:Pure were excellent for day-zero releases but mostly there were lackluster titles. In the following months not many platform-making titles became available, though some good and not-so-good games strolled leisurely out to the poolside. Grand Theft Auto made a nice splash, and it was nice to have SOCOM and Katamari finger-crampers but oldie titles like Lemmings only helped to keep the flailing nostrils at the waters surface. Everyone was anticipating the big-named titles to dive in .. the titles people would line up for. Sony was busy stabbing themselves in the back, neck, cranium and lowly pereneum at every opportunity, but the PSP division struggled to show some glimmer of the companies past.. when they were respected.

I would hazard to say that these months leading up to Christmas are what PSP gamers have been waiting for. Some great titles are on the shelves right now, and more to come.

I should make an effort to mini-review the titles I have -- without having too too many games I do have some doozies; Field Commander is still a great little time waster for the tactical wargamer, and I've already reviewed Ghosts and Goblins. Fine games. Mercury and others will have to wait.. But without getting to proper reviews let met give you a couple synopsis, on the off chance it'll help with your Christmas shopping. (Can you believe malls have their decorations up already?)

Recent releases

Killzone: Liberation -- I've only fiddled with a friends hot-off-the receiving-truck, but it looks to be excellent so I'll be picking it up the second I see one on the shelf over at EBGames. Not a first person game like the home console brand, but an isometric-perspective smooth motion run-and-shooter. Good looking artwork, some strategy elements, some puzzle solving. Winner.

Dungeon Siege -- listed as just being sent from the factories and in-store soon, I'll be keeping my eyes open. Too many titles, not enough free time to open them, or money to buy them :)

Ace Combat X: Skies of Deception -- a combat non-sim oriented flight-sim. I don't recall modern fighters carrying a payload of 40 air-to-air missiles, but thats not what this title is about. Air to air dogfights, ground missions and stealth under the radar .. classy flight-sim fun without the bother of watching the cockpit controls. Really just a distant cousin to arcade pseudo-3d shooters, but fun all the same. Sometimes I really really really love a very accurate flight-sim that includes a 3" thick manual (I'm looking at you Falcon 4.0!), but with life only giving you 10 minute chunks of time here or there, you take what you can handle, and Ace Combat is pretty darned entertaining.

Snoopy Vs The Red Baron -- yes, I was amazed as well, that I'd even look at such a title; but after checking the previews at the big game websites (IGN and Gamespot etc), I thought I'd check it out; like Ace Combat, but in a cartoony cute way and set with WW1 aircraft; chasing the baron around with Woodstock (the bird!) powered missiles and shooting at ground-targets like drilling-machines trying to knock over the rootbeer factory.. great rediculous fun!

Medal of Honor: Heroes -- first person shooters are hard to pull off with a handheld.. trust me, I mucked around when porting Quake to PDAs enough to know. Medal of Honor does pretty well here.. best so far on the PSP really. Analog stick to move, and using the right-side 'd-pad' buttons to point your head (turn, look up, etc) works pretty well, while using the triggers for firing. There are many options to play with but thats the default configuration. Anyway, after only playing the first mission I'm looking forward to tossing some grenades and sniping or blasting through the trenches. (Apologies to real veterans for using such terminology.. I'm in a hurry here :) Still, I'm a little ashamed to talk about a war themed action 3D shooter right before Remembrance Day.)

Star Trek: Tactical Assault -- I wish this was more in depth like Star Fleet Battles (the tabletop wargame), but I think it will be an arcade shooter. Still, its set in Kirks time, which warms my spirit.

Worms -- probably a so-so title but I always enjoyed the simple play of the Worms (and Snails clones on PDAs) games. Like Solitaire or Bejewelled, these are simple but very playable classics. Not tried it yet, but its on the shelf already.

There are a few others too.. X-Men, Marvel Heroes, Battlezone, Lumines II, Capcom Classics, Taito Remix, SOCOM II, Eragon, Metal Slug Anthology..

Good times.

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Gaming: How Warcraft killed role-playing games.
Sun, 29 Oct 2006

While I'm not really in the mood for gaming right now, I do have issues of Retro Gamer arriving every few weeks and forming a pile, ever reminding me I'm a fan of the industry :) To the left, even mentioning in a blog title that beloved Blizzard could do wrong will likely get me lynched, so we'll see how it goes. To the other, people will mention that with Blizzard shipping the World of Warcraft expansion late (after Christmas) they're returning a holiday back to the addicts and letting other titles have a chance -- but I still think they've damaged the PC gaming ecology as a whole (just as GWAR damaged hairspray sales in California.) Oh, if you don't know what WoW is, no worries .. just go watch the South Park episode about it -- utterly accurate.

See more ...

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Gaming: One word - Civgasm
Wed, 25 Oct 2006

As my browser (Firefox 2.0 ftw!) is wont to do, it toddled over to Penny Arcade. Now, like any sane adult, my eyes instantly blanked out that area of the screen normally reserved for advertising .. but in that brief 1-hertz of time my cranium told my click-finger to stop in no uncertain terms - and I read the advert. Pause. I clicked the link, like a mouse reaching for the cheese, and and read the text like a 10 year old seeing How To Make Pipe Bombs for the very first time. While the product appears not to include Civilization IV expansions or the very recent Civ City, this single package - Civilization: Chronicles - like the Rush album of the same namesake - includes nearly everything of importance.

Thats all I'm going to say; I'm still in shock. I can only hope my wife takes the proximity-to-Christmas seriously.

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