I don’t really know why but I’ve been seriously gaming of late. Makes a real change as I really haven’t played much all year. This time it’s been the new “Axis and Allies” real time strategy game. It has some really nice ideas like grouping units into regiments and having new units come in to replace dead units in the regiment as long as the regiment has a supply chain. That aspect works really well and can really make for some strategic warfare with retreating units and reinforcements. On the down side, it has annoying unit limits and many of the games I’ve played so far have turned into stalemates with groups of 5-6 regiments running across the map and losing to and equal strength enemy which then run across to the other side of the map to get killed themselves. This process can repeat many times. The only way that seems to break out of this cycle is to hammer enemy supply centers while maintaining enough regiments in reserve to finish the job when the first lot die. It’s not a bad game, if anything I rate it quite highly for a RTS, but these problems are the same as many a RTS game. As to the World War 2 feel of the game, it’s okay. Not really accurate or anything but the generals and field marshals spouting propaganda as you issue commands is kind of cool. Seems very fixed to history though so there’s no playing out what if’s such as Germany not going to war with the Soviet Union, etc. I guess what I’d really like to see a slightly simplified copy of the engine from “Hearts of Iron” but with RTS style skirmishes kind of like the “Total War” series. Add in a good manual (slaps the makers of “Hearts of Iron”) and we could have a winner. Played a little “Railroad Tycoon 3″ in the last day or two as well. Not much to say about it really. It’s a slightly simplified version of “Railroad Tycoon 2″ with better graphics. To me it really plays almost the same. Not a bad thing since I liked RT2 a lot but I would have thought there was something more they’d add or change.

Did quite a bit of web browsing on my phone today. It really does work rather well. Some things like online comics aren’t so easy to view, but most web pages are perfectly readable. First time I actually looked at this site too and it looks great on there. Still can’t really get an instant messenger to work properly but I’m sure I’ll find a way eventually. I’m still finding out the off whizbang feature here or there. Also finally managed to find a copy of Sidplay for PocketPC. I really miss those old Commodore 64 tunes sometimes. I guess I’m especially glad for this at the moment with the drought of decent new CD releases.

Been pretty busy of late but I’ve not be doing much worth metioning. I played quite a lot more Half Life 1 and a little Half Life 2. To be totally honest I’ve found both mind-numbingly boring to this point and don’t intend to touch either for a while. Greatest game ever….yeah right. Not really much sign of a story yet either. Maybe buying them was a stupid idea afterall, I really should have known better and just trusted my intuition. Still not found a way to make them playable offline either, the “run in offline mode” setting just doesn’t work for me. It gives an unable to connect error and bombs out even after selecting that. I plan to re-install the whole machine to see if I can fix this.

A lot of people online and in stores of late have said to me that this method of distribution and playing games is the future of gaming but I’m really beginning to wonder if these people are living in reality. The subscription model hasn’t taken off for music or movies, why should games be any different? People aren’t stupid (generally) and I really don’t think they will put up with this mediocrity. The technology will certainly need to make significant strides before it makes it from the PC gaming niche into the mainstream games market of the consoles…if it even makes it at all.

Saw an iPod Photo for the first time yesterday. It was only the 40GB model so I wasn’t tempted, I’m holding out for the 60GB one. Definitely a bit of a jump from the previous versions. Slightly thicker but not much difference in weight which surprised me considering the talk online. The user interface is really fast, much faster than my 3G model. Wouldn’t use one for photos myself but the interface for them is very quick and functional. Everything is a bit more MacOS X-like with the colour screen, it’s all aqua-fied progress bars and widgets. Like it much better myself.

Had a good talk with people in the Apple store too. Seems business is good and apparently they’re getting quite a lot of Linux converts. Hamilton seems to have quite a strong Linux user presence so that may be part of the reason but I must admit I was still a little surprised by this as many Linux users seem very against anything not fully open source. Still probably the first non-Microsoft platform for most of them though I guess so how much depth lies in their feelings is a bit of an unknown factor. Us old school Commodore/Atari/Apple users have tended to become a bit more pragmatic over time.

Think I’m almost done playing with my new phone, but I found some useful bits of software to throw on there that I’d certainly recommend for Pocket PC users. XCPUScaler lets you overclock XSCALE processors like the one in my phone. I took it up from 400Mhz to 530Mhz and now it’s fast enough to emulate the SNES version of Final Fantasy 6 with music turned on without any lag! Woohoo! Definitely feels much faster overall. I’d have though 400MHZ would be fast enough but just that little extra makes all the difference. For those wary of overclocking, you can also slow down the processor to save battery. Another good package is Pocket Plus. It does a number of things but the best ones IMHO are the enhancements to Pocket IE. It allows full screen mode and “save as” for a start. Much nicer to use!

Lots of games talk around work today (being Friday and all). Even those who own Xboxes don’t want to buy Halo 2 and it seems Half Life 2 is all but ruined by the copy protection system. I will freely admit I disliked Halo 1, even when I saw movies before the release I wondered what all the fuss was about. A few weeks ago I was standing in our local games store watching two guys play a game. At the time I didn’t know what the game was. I thought the graphics looked rather dull, bad texture compression and overall the game just looked like a dull fps. It was then I asked what it was. The reply came “Oh, it’s Halo 2″. I must admit I was rather shocked, I really had intended that when I saw it I would be impartial and take the game on it’s merit. I honestly had no idea this was what I’d been watching. After that though I had to think, nope this just isn’t something I’d be interested in. Seems I’m not alone. I don’t know what Halo fans think of it, it may be a real progression from the last game but I guess I still just don’t get it.

I must admit, I was somewhat taken in by the Half Life 2 hype. Certainly the reviews were very positive. Even the talk on Penny Arcade implyed that it was really something special. I was not a fan of the original Half Life though but everything seemed to indicate that this was really worth picking up. The whole online verification thing though just took any thoughts I had of that right out of my head. I have a Windows machine these days specifically for playing games but it does not and will not ever be connected to the internet. I really can’t be bothered messing around with virus scanners and firewalls for a games machine so this thing is never going online. Hell, I don’t even let it connect to the LAN. One of the guys from work bought a copy. He said it took an hour to install (high spec pc) and even when he had it up and running it still needed the CD inserted. This is common for games, I know, but the whole point of Steam and the online verification is to check that the install is a legal copy. Why still require the CD? Add to that the well publicised problems with Steam and I’m glad I’m skipping this one. Good as it may be, it’s still just another FPS.