• 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
