• Wednesday, December 28th, 2005
Wow, I can’t believe it’s so long since I last posted here, although I have been so busy over the last few weeks. I’ve been largely away from the internet for a few days but have managed to fit in much relaxing and catching up on sleep. ^_^
Much of the time before Christmas was spent either at work or driving people places. I never thought I’d drive so much in such a short space of time. Lots of Christmas parties too. Christmas day itself was nice, lots of food and good times with family. Everyone seemed to like their presents. My brother’s family recently got a MiniDV video camera and recorded a whole pile of stuff on Christmas day so I’ve been helping them learn to use it with their computer. I must say, it’s frustrating trying to do this stuff on a Windows box. They needed to add a Firewire card into their computer (since even today this is not a standard feature on x86 motherboards) because even though the camera supports USB, the DV standard will only work over Firewire (true for all good video cameras AFAIK). Then it seems all the free software that came with their camera, their VIVO video card and some other packages that came with gear I bought, are entirely useless for even the most basic video work. They wanted to put their Christmas movie recoded on their camera onto a DVD. No editing or anything, just a basic cleanup and burn. Maybe I’m crazy for thinking this but that should be easy. In the end they gave up and I took the camera back to my place. Plugged it into my G5 Mac with the video camera firewire cable Apple supplied with my machine. Fired up iMovie and pulled the video in. Ran the file through the freeware JES Deinterlacer which cleaned up the picture significantly. Lastly, I fired up iDVD, created a menu using some cut and paste clips from the complete movie file and burnt the disc. This is still more steps than I’d like but at least all this stuff came out of the box on my Mac.
I was given a Nintendo DS so I’ve been spending some time with that. It came with Mario Kart and I added Project Rub and Advance Wars DS which I found cheap in sales. Advance Wars DS is a really great game. There’s a few minor issues with the touch screen interface and the graphics could be better but the gameplay is brilliant. I’ve been playing through the campaign mode and it really is addictive. Overall use of the touch screen is appropriate for this game but it still could do with some refinement, hopefully they sort this out in the inevitable sequel. I’d give it an 8/10 if I had to pick a rating.
Project Rub is interesting. It’s like a collection of mini games combined with a subtle dating sim. It’s all very gimicky but it’s still amusing in small doses. It makes liberal use of the touch screen, almost too much even. Quite a cool concept game though, it will be interesting to see what it evolves into. I’d go for a 6/10 on this one.
Mario Kart isn’t as good as I’d have thought. This is getting reviews of 9/10 and 10/10 all over the place. My nephew made the comment “It’s like a budget version of Wacky Racers on Dreamcast”. Now that isn’t really a fair comment since the genre was inspired by Mario Kart well before Wacky Racers was even thought of, but in essence it hints at the truth since this game is just so bland. Everything is bland…the music, the graphics, the gameplay. Those people rating this with 9/10 and 10/10 should be given a PSP and a copy of Wipeoout Pure so they can see how a game like this should actually play. From what I can see, if people put their platform biases aside, this will only appeal to those who still like the Nintendo characters (I’m personally sick to death of them), have a fondness for Mario Kart in general (as it is a port of an old classic) or are into DS multiplayer stuff. I’d personally give it a 2/10 but if you fit into one of the categories I just mentioned then it will appeal much more to you.
Staying with the gaming topic, Tycho of Penny Arcade fame made this comment the other day regarding the direction of the Final Fantasy series. “..the wheels are completely off the fucking franchise. They don’t have any idea what they did to create it, and then they let people who didn’t understand it to begin with interpret it poorly. Their teenaged fumblings have destroyed it. “. As much as I hate to say it, I agree with him completely.
Current Mood: 
groggy
Current Music: The Go! Team - Bottle Rocket - Thunder, Lightning, Strike
• Monday, December 12th, 2005
I’m glad to see the back of this weekend, it was just too busy and took too much out of me. I don’t think I managed more than five hours sleep since Friday and with all the running around and other situations I’m now both physically tired and emotionally drained on top of that. Other than that, I guess you could call it a great weekend with parties, birthdays and a wedding. 
It was good to see many friends I had not met for a long time and meet some nice new people as well! I certainly hope for the best for the happy couple too! 
On a side note, there are people it seems I will just never understand and it’s not for any lack of empathy on my part. I guess that’s what you get for refusing to let people walk all over you. *sigh*
Current Mood: tired
• Thursday, December 08th, 2005
I’ve been rather down for a while but just really haven’t felt like going into it here and still don’t really. No one thing in particular. The last few days have been cool though and today is good. I’ll just leave it at that.
Looks like I’m going to be pretty busy over the next couple of weeks with all sorts of events on, both family-related and not. It’s to be expected really at this time of year but this one is looking more packed than usual. Kind of glad I booked in that extra week of holiday in January to recover.
Picked up quite a number of CDs over the last bit of time, some new stuff, some imports but many from bargain bins, etc. Some of it has been damn good but it’s kind of overwhelming to post reviews of everything. I’ve been playing my iPod on it’s “smart” random play recently to try and get a decent scatter sample of some of it, it feels very much like a targetted radio station where you have more control. It definitely makes for some enjoyable listening that way. When something catches my ear, I’ll check out the album and start rating songs after a few listens. Already got some new favourites here. I’ve also got about 3 CDs on the way from overseas I’m really looking forward to. I definitely plan to do the odd review of some of the better ones in the near future.
Oh, and for the benefit of any record companies who might stumble on to this, I’ve been keeping track of both what I’ve bought and what I haven’t bought. I have decided not to buy exactly 27 CDs this year after seeing they were copy controlled. I honestly don’t remember if all of them were full price or not, but assuming NZ$29.95 per disc (which is cheaper than many places here), you’ve lost approximately NZ$808.65 of sales from me this year so far and that’s with the Christmas season barely started. Man, it sucks to be you…imagine if other people are doing this too.
Current Mood: 
cheerful
Current Music: Utada Hikaru - Dorama - Distance
• Monday, December 05th, 2005
Well, I wasn’t planning to talk about games again for a while but with “Magna Carta” for PS2 arriving in the mail the other day and “Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories” for the PSP coming out which I also picked up, it’s kind of hard not to. Honestly I haven’t been playing much GTA but it’s pretty much what I expected. It looks just like any of the 3D GTAs on PS2 and plays like them. Someone looking for something new isn’t going to find it here but it still deserves credit for being the first game of this type to be brought onto a handheld without compromising playability or graphics. I won’t talk about it any more considering how little I’ve played it but I will say I was rather amused reading the “news” story in the manual about how Liberty City has to ban motorbikes because they are so dangerous (GTA3 set a few years later in this city has no motorbikes) and they reference a sucessful ban of bicycles in Vice City a few years earlier (GTA:VC had motorbikes but no push bikes). I love it when game companies make up stuff such as this to explain earlier timelines.
As I mentioned, I also picked up the PS2 RPG, Magna Carta. Libbybun originally got me interested in this title by showing me the great art and character designs and the thought of a whole game based around this with a gripping story appealled greatly. So far I’m just over 10 hours into the game (Apparently it’s about 50 hours of gameplay total) and I’m enjoying it a lot. There are a few things that annoy me a little about the game, the first being the rather long loading times in places. It doesn’t bother me too much but on the odd occasion it’s long enough to be a pain. My only real complaint otherwise is with the battle system. It works based on real time button pressing and by doing moves you deplete different kinds of chi in the surrounding area. When the kind of chi you need to do a move runs out, you need to switch styles/characters (that can use a different kind of chi) or you just can’t attack at all. In certain fights you may end up being unable to attack for 2-3 turns (it isn’t really turn based but this is the easiest way to describe the moments when you are allowed to attack) due to lack of chi. The actual real time button pressing seems to work reasonably well once you get used to it but the other modes can be rather frustrating. Specifically combo mode. In this mode, you have to do your normal three button presses at speed in real-time but then you need to follow it up with a second group of 12 button presses in perfect timing. If you pull it off, your character will do a very powerful attack. If you stuff up a single press, your character will do nothing whatsoever except drain chi and loose time. So far, I have attempted combos around 50 times in game and have only sucessfully managed to execute two. I suspect I may get better at it with practise but so far I’ve seen little sign of it. The english voice acting is passable, the music is appropriate. The story and overall look and feel is where this game really excels though. I really like the character designs but I already knew that. The story really has me interested too. I honestly have trouble making myself stop and that’s really what a good game is all about.
Current Mood: 
okay
Current Music: Mc Hawking - The Mighty Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Rhyme
• Tuesday, November 29th, 2005
I had to visit my optometrist again yesterday. Don’t think I’ve mentioned it here before but I’ve been having eye trouble for a little while now. Nothing too serious but apparently my eyes have been having allergic reactions due to pollen or something and I’ve been told not to wear contact lenses from sometime in October. I say apparently because my eyes largely have felt fine all through this. So far, I’ve been back there a good half dozen times. I can’t say it bothers me too much though, with the optometrist I go to, all visits after the first are free for a year and my optician is a lovely woman who is totally drop dead georgeous and has a dreamy irish accent. Still not clearing up yet, it seems I have to go back again early next year. Oh woe is me…
As may be apparent from my recent posts I’ve been on a bit of a gaming binge recently. I am a little bored with it right now but I will say, Lionhead’s “The Movies” is quite a bit of fun. With the US release of the Xbox 360 there’s a lot of articles doing the rounds with all the usual tired old conclusions. Sony seems to be getting the brunt of it, some of that being fallout from their whole rootkit debacle. One this morning though stressed how games these days are lacking compared to those of yesteryear and started reminicing about the Atari 2600. It seems to be a popular opinion to have these days but I really think many are looking back at these oldies through rose coloured glasses. For every “Jet Set Willy” there were twenty “Howard the Duck”s. For every “Street Fighter” there were twenty “Pitfighters” (and even most SF ports were unplayable trash). There was arguably more artistic integrity back in the day simply because you didn’t need to be a huge games house to make a game but that doesn’t mean all games were made this way or that they were even good. QA and playtesting are actually good things and make games better. It’s not a graphics vs gameplay thing either, the control on the vast majority of games on the old 8-bit systems was a nightmare only made worse by shoddy and inacurate controllers.
Don’t get me wrong, I like a number of old games but it just seems that people forget even in those old golden days of gaming the ratio of good games to bad games was not very good. Even the ones that were good do not play as well under close examination as our memories tell us they did.
I managed to catch some more anime last weekend. Watched the first disc of Maburaho and caught some more Tenjho Tenge. Maburaho is pretty much what I expected, a blatant harem show. The characters and basic premise seem somewhat interesting although the samurai girl Rin is just too much of a poser with a one dimensional personality and just plain comes across as annoying. Hopefully they fix that. I wouldn’t call it a wonderful show based on what I’ve seen so far but the story caught my interest enough so that I’d like to see some more. Tenjho Tenge seems to be picking up pace now (I’ve seen up to episode 8). The characters are developing nicely and the fights so far have been interesting, well paced and varied. None of this let’s-drag-a-fight-out-for-five-episodes crap. Yes, there’s a cheese factor involved but I don’t think it’s possible to make a fighting anime without it. I can definitely see this is not something everyone will enjoy but to anyone who’s liked things like Rurouni Kenshin or the even more cheesy Naruto, Ikkitousen or Dragonball Z, this will be an apealling show I expect. The cheese factor is probably amplified by about five times if you watch the dub. Not that you’d catch me doing that on this show…
Current Mood: calm
Current Music: user - .^.^.^% - Symphony #2 For Dot Matrix Printers
• Thursday, November 24th, 2005
I’ve been keeping an eye on all the Xbox 360 happenings in the last few days. The NZ release date was announced the other day as March 2nd 2006. This seems like a big delay but looking at the US online retailers this morning, they appear to have all sold out of their initial stock of consoles and don’t expect any more until….wait for it….March 2nd 2006. I don’t know about anyone else but that was where my cynical side kicked in. I was considering importing one of these things but at this point it seems it was little more than a dummy release just to excite the market place. Short of dropping $2000 to $4000 on one of the massively overpriced Trademe/eBay auctions nobody is getting one of these this year. I think I’ll just preorder one locally so I can get one in March.
It’s been a while since I last talked about anime. Some may have thought I’d lost interest in it with it being so long since I last made a HAC meeting but weekdays just don’t really work that well for me. I’ve got a few of non-HAC friends who are into it and most weekends I manage some viewing with somebody. Of late I’ve been watching Midori Days and Elfen Lied both of which I’m throughly enjoying along with one of the guys from work. I don’t really see where Elfen Lied is going which appeals to me although I do enjoy throwing around acusations of it being a harem show everytime a new female character is introduced. Midori Days just cracks me up. It’s not particularly original in many ways and it’s full of cliches but it’s put made well and some how manages to bring it all together into something that feels new and enjoyable. It is mildy frustrating to me as named the way it is and based on how the show is set out, Midori is going to get the guy in the end, but the unlucky but much more real Ayase is so much more appealing. Overall though this show is a nice surprise as I didn’t go into it with high expectations. On the future viewing list? More of these two shows plus I’ll be checking out Maburaho, more Full Metal Panic FUMOFFU, more Tenjho Tenge, more Naruto and more Samurai Champloo.
I’ve recently been sampling a couple of PSP games while waiting for the much delayed Liberty City Stories to come out (Knowing people in games stores is fun, hehe)…
Starwars Battlefront 2: OMG, how can they make a game so boring? Horrible control and nothing but graphics going for it. This is just plain horrible. Even with the loading times removed, it still wouldn’t last five minutes in my PSP. I certainly wouldn’t recommend anyone buy this unless they are hardcore Star Wars fans.
Lord of the Rings Tactics: It’s an interesting puzzle game really, and seems like a kind of fun way to kill some time. It doesn’t seem to have any real depth so I guess it will only appeal to those that like the characters from the movies but the leveling system seems to add a little potential lastability. Not my kind of thing really, I might play it for more than five minutes but there’s nothing that would draw me back to it. This might be worth buying to people that like LOTR and enjoy puzzle games.
Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06: All in all it’s a pretty good golf game but there’s nothing revolutionary here. It’s certainly not going to draw you in if you hate golf games. If you were going to get a golf game for PSP I’d personally rate Everybody’s Golf higher just because it’s more arcade style fun but this is still a very solid game and is certainly the more authentic of the two. It even has some unintended hillarity with the facial expressions of the CG Tiger Woods which is always a bonus in my book. I’d say it’s definitely worth buying to golf game fans that consider Everybody’s Golf “too unrealistic”.
Current Mood: relaxed
Current Music: Sarah McLeod - Ava - Beauty was a Tiger
• Monday, November 21st, 2005
So…the Final Fantasy XII demo that’s just started doing the rounds…I’m honestly shocked. All I can think is, “What a load of bollocks!” Yes, the intro movie and other cut scenes look very pretty. Yes, the story looks like it should be better than FFX (not that it would be hard). Yes, the character designs look rather nice. The gameplay and control though is where it all just falls apart. These two apects of the game are both so amazingly terrible that I had trouble finding the desire to finish the demo. I persevered on the premise that surely it could not really be as bad as it seemed…but no, I was wrong.
It almost feels like they’re trying to make it play like a massively multiplayer online game, you control one character and the other two on the party just do whatever the hell they feel like. You can take control and override their braindead actions but doing so is just tedious and a quick way to die in active mode. On top of that it has the worst camera management I’ve seen in the past 10 years. Now I know this is just a demo but the whole purpose of releasing a demo is to make us want to buy the game. Short of major changes I’m going nowhere near this stinker. What scares me is that these are the people publishing Grandia 3.
On the good side, the former Central Park Interactive of Hamilton now has “Games Plus” logos all over it and stock pouring in. They’ve still got the old sign up at the front but I assume that will be gone very soon. Considering they were the only dedicated games store in the center of town this is a very welcome development.
Current Mood: 
annoyed
Current Music: Antony and the Johnsons - Hope there's Someone - I'm a Bird Now
• Friday, November 18th, 2005
I’ve been checking out the early Xbox 360 reviews for a few days now. Most of the launch titles seem rather average but there’s one or two very good games that will sell very well to people who are not me and actually like those genres. Overall the hardware seems very good with the exception of the absolutely massive power supply. The hard drive is especially interesting since it seems to be a totally standard laptop drive opening the possibility that it may be very easy to upgrade. Kameo looks like a game I could be into. Dead or Alive 4 is already a given, looks like the best upgrade to the series since the original DOA2 came out although I might pick up DOA Ultimate as well once they get that running on their emulator. Very impressed to hear the 360 has a VGA port. The memories of the Dreamcast that brings back is almost enough to bring a tear to the eye.
I have played and beat F.E.A.R on PC somewhere between my blog updates. Not really scary but it was rather fun for a first person shooter. Fighting squads rather than being part of them made it fun. Nothing quite like leaping over a table in slow motion only to hear a member of an enemy squad shout out in their deep slown-down voices “Oh fuck, he’s here!” and then moments later “We can’t stop him, we need re-enforcements!”. No bosses in the game at all…makes for a nice change. I won’t give away anything in the ending but I was satisfied. It may annoy many of the usual FPS fans though. I’m not planning to touch Civilization 4 again until they patch it, too many bugs. @_@ Not played WoW in ages either.
A lot has been made of the Sony “rootkit” fiasco over the last few days which involves some of their copy controlled music CDs essentially patching the listener’s computer making it possible to hide certain files from users or other software such as virus checkers. There’s already one virus out exploiting this hole. There’s lots of talk of people boycotting Sony and claiming they are the latest “big evil” in the tech industry. In contrast, I’m very happy about what Sony has done. Essentially they’ve put this out there giving the consumer the chance finally to come out and say “This isn’t acceptable” so limits can be put in place. It also raises awareness of how bad these CDs can be. The fact this rootkit seems to have security flaws, violates the GPL and highlights the still blatant lack of proper security in Windows is just icing on the cake as far as I’m concerned. Thanks Sony, I’ll buy an extra PS2/PSP game from you guys sometime. It’s the least I can do.
Current Mood: Cruising
Current Music: Fiona Apple - Get Him Back - Extraordinary Machine
• Sunday, November 13th, 2005
Well, it seems my plans of updating again soon never got anywhere. Things have just been crazy for me and to be honest, I don’t really know what to make of it all (That seems to be a recurring problem). We’ve got relatives staying right now and I’m pretty much driving them everywhere and doing things with them and online very little.
My family is Scottish and to my grandfather, whiskey is the only drink worth getting excited about. With him staying here, I picked up a bottle of Glenfiddich Ancient Reserve 18 Year Old and have been sampling it with him tonight. It’s second only to their 30 year old variety that I tried staying with him in Wellington earlier this year. Definitely not an excuse for a booze up, such whiskey is to be treated with a healthy dose of respect and enjoyed in small yet flavoursome amounts. Very, very nice and I’m glad to have a bottle of something this good. I’ve been keen to try Glenmorangie 18 for a while as well but nowhere seems to sell that. :-/
I’d been pondering for a while whether or not I should get a Xbox 360. I’d already decided not to get Oblivion for this platform but there are some interesting games scheduled for release on it and a non-Intel platform is appealing. This would not be as an alternative to a PS3 but as a complimentary machine, I currently think PS3 will win the generation and if I had to pick one machine that’s where I’d go but for now, I’ve decided I will pick up the 360. As to the Nintendo Revolution? Well, we know next to nothing about it but Nintendo need to do a lot more than talk about making good games, the same tired old franchises don’t cut it and IMHO haven’t for a long time. I may be crucified for saying this but I’d rather have a rejuvenated SEGA over anything Nintendo seems capable of producing these days. That said, the Nintendo DS does seem to be building up a more and more interesting library with each month. With some more time and a redesign of their ergonomics they might pull me in on that one yet.
I actually stood yesterday at the spot where I broke my leg about a year and a half ago. It may sound like an odd thing to consider of significance but with the spiraling negative effect the event had on my life it really did feel somewhat eerie. I’ve never been a believer of fate or the supernatural per-se (not that I’d consider myself a sceptic either though) but I can only describe the feeling while being there as a bad vibe. Maybe it’s just me putting that feeling onto the place, but I’m not normally one for such tomfoolery. I’m far too bloody minded about things to let it affect me in any way but I still find this feeling intriguing.
Current Mood: 
weird
Current Music: Armand Van Helden - U don't know me - 2 Future 4 U
• Sunday, October 30th, 2005
A number of times now I’ve planned to post here but I’ve barely had a spare moment since getting back from Auckland last Tuesday. Lost to say about various topics really but I won’t have time for all that tonight. I had thought I’d manage it this weekend but I’ve been having problems with my internet connection. I’ve been using an all-in-one US Robotics 9106 ADSL modem/router/4-port switch/firewall/802.11g access point for many months now but recently as my usage patterns have changed the unit would crash about once every half hour and speeds have been rather abysmal too. It turned out that other people have this problem with the USR9106 too and there is no firmware upgrade or option I can change that would fix it. So I’ve now replaced it with a D-Link DGL-4300 gigabit/802.11g box paired with a standalone D-Link DSL-502T ADSL router (There is no single box solution that would improve things). So far I’m impressed. Speeds are better, the number of simultaneous connections is better and of course with the gigabit switch, my gigabit enabled computers are flying. Oh, and these units don’t crash no matter what I throw at them. Good stuff! ^_^ I’m especially impressed with the DGL-4300, it’s one of D-Link’s gaming routers with a nice black case lined with pretty blue LEDs and it just exudes performance with all the traffic shaping options.
Anyhow, I need to get to sleep. Been working most of the night… @_@
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: The Offspring - Come out and Play - Smash
