Saturday, September 09, 2006

 

Please Visit the NEW Blog Site

I have moved the blog to a new domain. I'm also switching handles at this time to match my Xbox 360 GamerTag. Please visit the new blog: Virtuadept's Game Blog, which is the only content I have so far up on CasualGamer.Net (but that will become a lot more later on, with gaming news, reviews, and forums for gamers with lives, who don't have enough time to game. Thank you so much for continuing to visit and putting up with the switch. If you are reading this via RSS you are going to need to visit the new site to pick up the new feed links. The good news is the comments now have a feed of their own, and all the posts are now tagged with categories information.

I'm keeping this blog up long enough for people to get the news about the new blog site but I won't be updating it. Since all of the posts transfered over, eventually I'll delete this site.

Friday, September 08, 2006

 

Moving again.

I just registered my own domain and successfully transfered Knight Games to it, but I need to edit some stuff on it first before it is ready for prime time. I just wanted to post here to let my readers know that Knight Games is moving soon, and I will be holding off on posts until I get the move complete, which if I bust my ass might be this weekend or early next week.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

 

Dead Rising - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Recently got Dead Rising for the Xbox 360. This game is not based on Dawn of the Dead or any other George Romero zombie movies (wink wink, nudge nudge). The fact that you're in a shopping mall surrounded by zombies? Pure coincidence, honest.

First, the Good. The game has a decent interface that only takes 30 minutes or so to get used to. You can aim and shoot or attack in first person, or you can leave it in third person mode and just "shoot from the hip," which works very well for melee weapons but not so much firearms. Since ammo is scarce, you'll end up killing a lot of zombies with melee weapons. The story seems interesting, but honestly it's the same old cliche so nothing really new there. The graphics are decent but nothing stellar. This could probably have been an Xbox game as far as the graphics are concerned. Graphics kind of reminded me somewhat of State of Emergency but are better than that. The camera is a nice touch, being able to take cool pics to gain experience is a really good idea. Being able to pick up anything and everything in the mall and use it in some way is probably the biggest selling point for this game. Almost anything can be a weapon, and nearly everything else is usable in some way.

Now, the Bad. You get one save. One. Save. Save points can easily be a good 30-40 minutes in between each other. The missions are timed. You can run out of time overall and not be able to complete the game. For many people, this will be a deal killer.

And The Ugly - well, actually this is the "not so bad". Even though you only get one save, you can save on each memory device one time. So if you have a memory card and the HDD, you get two saves. Another not so bad is that when you die, you can chose to restart the game rather than restarting from the save point. I know, that sounds crazy. Well, you get to keep your stats. So lets say you make it to level 4 and die, you can restart the game at level 4 from the beginning, meaning you'll be able to do a lot more early on quicker and shaving a lot more minutes off that ever present time limit. Also, if the time runs out, you can still play the game, you just can't complete the story (at least, not in a positive way). You can still keep playing in order to rack up experience and levels which can be useful to you on your next play though. In fact, some of the achievements are clearly designed to be completed only by ignoring the main story and just playing free-form mode.

Bottom line, if you like zombies, get this game. It does not disappoint on the zombie-killing front in any way. Great at that, in fact. The restrictive save system seems like a burden at first, but since you keep your stats when you restart the game, it's not a game killer (for me anyway). There is a demo on Xbox Live that is kind of short but gives you a good idea of the freeform gameplay. Rating: A- (could have been A+ with full featured save system, ah well).

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

 

Playstation Portable Initial Impressions

I had been hesitant to get one of these newfangled PSP's every since the initial launch because I thought that $250 was too much to spend on a portable gaming device. Now, things are different. Now there are plenty of exclusive games I can only play on the PSP, to make it worth my while to justify a purchase. Plus, I didn't have to splash out any cash, I was able to procure a PSP via trade for an extra Xbox 360 I had received from doing one of those "free offers" sites. In fact, I got a nice, excellent condition used PSP and ten (10) games for it. Schweeeet.

Here are the games I snagged, and my tentative grade on F to A scale, based on pretty limited gameplay time so far.

Daxter - A+
Burnout Legends - A+
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror - A
Mega Man Powered Up - A
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X - B
Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX - B-
Wipeout Pure - B-
Ridge Racer - C
Field Commander (haven't tried it yet, it was sealed, didn't want to devalue it)
Frantix (just haven't had time yet)

I also picked up PoPoLoCrois, an RPG, but haven't had time to play much yet so no rating.

I have rented:
Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light - B+ (an RPG)
Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion (no rating yet)

What do I think about this device? Well, it's far too precious to actually use as a portable gaming device. :-P

Actually I have used it a few times on the bus ride to and from work and it does very well. The screen is amazing, absolutely mesmerizing. Sound is fantastic as well with my earphones, heck even without earphones the built in speakers aren't too shabby compared to say the Nintendo DS. But the buttons on the right side are a bit too far apart from each other, and it is awkward to try and use the D-pad AND the analog nubby in any games that make you use both (thinking of Syphon Filter here). I haven't gotten used to the shoulder buttons yet either but in time I'm sure I will.

How does it compare to the Nintendo DS? Well, the DS is still more fun overall I think. I have a ton of DS games and the touch screen just adds a lot to the gaming experience, plus stuff like the microphone and being able to hold in in different ways is innovative. But there is no doubt that the PSP is a much beefier system, and capable of doing a lot more graphically, and not to mention the UMD format allows PSP developers to put more frills in like voice acting and FMV movies.

Load times, on the other hand, are non-existant on the DS but plague just about every single game I have on the PSP. While 5-10 seconds of load time doesn't seem like much to bitch about, when you have that over and over and over in games, it can get pretty irritating once you realize you're spending a considerable percentage of your precious play time staring at a progress bar.

Overall I do not regret my "purchase" of the PSP, I think I will definitely enjoy it especially for all the great RPGs that are out now and more on the way. Some of the games are really amazing, such as Daxter which could easily be mistaken for a PS2 platformer, or Syphon Filter, which has all the complexity and flash of the series, or Burnout Legends which I could easily mistake for Burnout 3 Takedown on the PS2 if I weren't paying close attention. Here's hoping that more games of that nature come to the platform.

I'm thinking of trying some homebrew if I can do it without downgrading my firmware. I heard there's some new hax out. I'd like to run an SNES emu on here, that would own.

 

Xbox 360 Update

I have, as previously blogged, recently (June) gotten an Xbox 360. My library of games is slowly growing. Here are the titles I have so far, in the order that I aquired them. I also give each game a letter grade, A+ is best, F is worst.

Perfect Dark Zero - B+
Kameo: Elements of Power - A+
Tomb Raider Legend - A
Burnout Revenge - A+
Project Gotham Racing 3 - B+
Condemned: Criminal Origins - A-
Far Cry Instincts Predator - B+
Dead Rising - A-
Saint's Row - A+

Xbox Live Arcade:
Geometry Wars - A

I'll be posting mini-reviews of each game over time.

I have also rented the following games, but decided not to purchase:
Full Auto - C-
Battle for Middle Earth 2 - B- (decided to buy PC version)

 

Sony PS3 Delayed in Europe and Smaller Launch in Japan/USA

Sony set up us the bomb!

They are delaying their launch in Europe to March 2007! But wait! That's not all! Sony is also saying they will have fewer than 500k PS3 units for sale at launch in the USA and about the same in Japan, with as few as 2 million units produced before the end of 2006!

I imagine the fellas at Nintendo and Microsoft are laughing their asses off. Another Christmas with no PS3's in sight can only be good news for Sony's competition.

 

Long Time No Post

I haven't posted in a long while. I'm going to try to make an effort to post more often. I will just post shorter blurbs that are more snackable and easily digested.

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?