Enosh's Blog - 2old2play

Mirror's Edge - Beaten

I don’t generally like to say a game is beaten, I perfer to say completed or finished. Much like you don’t generally beat a book or movie.

I’ve beaten Mirror’s Edge.

Maybe it’s because I’m getting older, thus the mentality of a punishingly difficult game no longer appeals to me, maybe it’s that I played through without guns that made it harder. The last three chapters (of 10) were just unforgivably hard.

I am still interested in the story and the fundamentals of the game play. I’ll probably pick up what ever sequel comes for the game, but I do hope that DICE has learned and makes a game that doesn’t punish the player next time around.

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Sony and Nintendo E3 press briefings

I have to admit, I don’t own a Wii or a PS3 and I’m not inclined to get either, (though Monkey Island on WiiWare might change that). As such I didn’t really follow either press event closely this year, certainly didn’t try to catch a live stream in any case.

Nintendo

Nintendo is a little more interesting to me. Like many older gamers I have a soft spot for Nintendo gently lined with childhood memories. While I didn’t grow up with an NES or SNES I did have a GameBoy and remember fondly playing NES when visiting other friends and family. (not to mention pirateware C64 ports of NES games).

I also own a DS, though beyond Brain Age and Mario there’s not been a lot there that I’ve really wanted to play.

This year’s Nintendo conference was much more interesting than last. They did a MUCH better job of mixing things to appeal to the Wii’s base, such as Wii Fit 2 and Wii Heart Monitor with things that appeal to long time gamers such as New Super Mario and Metroid.

Still, even though Nintendo offered more for the life long gamer, they still seem like they’re playing to an almost completely different market than Sony and Microsoft are.

Sony

I actually have a strong dislike of Sony at this point, starting with their community management around Everquest and festering over the years in other product encounters. So Sony’s presser is more interesting to me from the standpoint of watching the leader fail than it is for genuine excitement for their products.

To that end the Sony “Waggle Wand”™ is highly amusing. While Microsoft’s Natal project seems to take the idea of motion control and iterate on it in an innovative way, Sony’s solution leaves the impression that it wants to be a Wiimote but not infringe on Nintendo’s patents.

On the software side Sony, much like Microsoft, had more of what their fans love to show off. Where Microsoft had Halo, Forza, Rock Band and Crackdown Sony had Metal Gear, Grand Turismo, God of War and Final Fantasy.

Perhaps it was because Sony’s press conference was second, but it left me with a real sense of “me too!” instead of anything really new and interesting.

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Mirror's Edge - Final Thoughts

I don�t know if I�m going to finish this game. Chapter 7 was a kick in the bag in terms of difficulty. Chapter 8 picks right up and starts t-bagging you while you�re down. I�m actually really glad I bought in late and picked this game up for half price because at $60 I would have probably wanted to return it.

Chapter 8 starts with two sections of roof running that require you to exactly follow the line planned flawlessly and with perfect timing in order to evade a group of police runners. These are impossible to fight and disarm. I�m too old to be dealing with a game that is as unforgiving difficult anymore. Mirrors edge is fun when you�re running through the environment, but DICE kept adding more and more combat elements to the game to the point where it�s just not fun anymore.

Maybe I should go pay some neighbor kid $5 to finish the game for me so I can get my achievements.

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Microsoft E3 Press Briefing 2009

Work at home days can be a lot of fun. While banging through some SAP training materials I had the chance to watch the live stream of the Microsoft E3 press briefing. This year, the G4 video feed (from justin.tv) seemed to work reasonably well after the first few minutes of the briefing.

Anyway here's some of my highlights:

Modern Warfare 2 - Looks awesome, at least for the single player game. I did enjoy the original Modern Warfare single player quite a bit so I�ll have this one on the stack of �games to get eventually�.
Joy Ride - free, looks potentially fun, at least for those family game nights when I get the clan from across the country together to play.
Left 4 Dead 2 - zOMG! I love playing the original Left 4 Dead, even though I don�t often get the chance. Might be too soon for a sequel already but I�m still inclined to buy it.
Splinter Cell: Conviction � Looks really cool, interesting story set up. That said I�ve never played the other Splinter Cell games so I don�t have that much interest in this one. I�ll probably pass, there is neither time nor money to play everything.
Forza 3 � Wow this looks like a great racing game. I�ve only really dabbled in Forza 2, having picked it up used at Blockbuster for $7 a while ago. Still I�m surprised to see burnout style deformation and acrobatics from a game with real cars and physics. Very cool.
Halo � I�m going to buy Halo:ODST the day it comes out, the same is true for Halo:Reach. I didn�t get to watch either portion of the presser though as I was needed elsewhere. Both kids and work have the impeccable timing of needing my attention during the part of the conference I really wanted to see.
Metal Gear Solid � So the rumors are partially true. Not at all surprised. MGS is not my kind of game really, but as an Xbox fan it�s great to see it come to the platform. The same can be said for FFXIII
Social Networking � I don�t tweet, I don�t have a Facebook account (yet) and I�ve never used Last.FM but both seem to be the realization of Sony�s �console as a living room computer� vision. Seems like Microsoft blocked them with the Xbox, knocked them down with the Xbox 360, then curb stomped them with the Natal project.
Natal / Motion Control � This just looks cool. Definitely better suited to living room and big screen play, but I�ll buy one and see how well it works with my desk and 24� monitor rig.

All told, the press conference did what it was supposed to, left me wanting to spend a bunch of my money. The only thing that it didn�t do was leave me wanting to buy a Zune HD for the port-o-gaming. Maybe xYz is next year�s big project.

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Mirror�s Edge � Second Impression

Well into chapter 7 now, but not quite done with the game. I have to agree with the assessment of others on the forums, blogs and enthusiast press and say that there are parts of the game that are just flat out ball bustlingly hard.

I’ve not yet tried the gun play, as I’m working towards the achievement for finishing a play through without firing a gun, but the game is definitely at its best when Faith is running through the environment at speed, and still pretty good when you slow down to figure out the next step in the path. Where things fall apart is combat.

Every time the game forces you to fight your way out of a situation I find that I’m restarting 10, 15, 20 times before I get the timing of my disarms down perfectly.

Still, the good parts are out weighing the frustrating so far. You have to go in knowing that the game gets positively HARD.

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ZuneHD

image sourge: Engadget.com

By now I’m sure everyone has see the pictures and the press release. I’m also sure that I’m not the only person excited about this device. It almost makes me regret purchasing an HTC Fuze this spring (though there’s enough in the smart phone pipeline to make me second guess that purchase).

Rumors up to this point indicated that there would be games, including XBLA games run on a device referred to as xYz. While this may or may not be that rumored mobile convergence device the Microsoft press release did mention: “At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next week, attendees will see firsthand how Zune integrates into Xbox LIVE to create a game-changing entertainment experience.” While I don’t really expect this will mean Microsoft is jumping into the mobile games space, I do hope that is the case.

The Zune HD as a media device is a compelling purchase. The Zune HD as xYz the XBLA player or portable gaming device is a pre-order and buy on it’s street date device for me.

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Mirror's Edge - First Impressions

Back in November I had both Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space on my list of games I wanted to buy and play. Money isn’t unlimited and only now did I finally get around to adding Mirror’s Edge to my collection.

I’ve finished the first three levels so far and I really like the game. Without going into the story, the game play itself switches between simple platform puzzles and speeding through the environment.

The game feels borderline too fast, much like Half Life 2. Though while Half Life 2 is just a little bit too fast and gives me slight motion sickness, Mirror’s Edge falls on the other side of my tolerance for first person games and does not cause me any issue.

I’ll discuss the game more when I complete it. I’m definitely digging playing a first person game that minimizes combat and emphasizes speeding through the environment.

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Fable 2 - Sacrifice

I have a habit of staying up way too late when I get close to the end of a game. Last night was no exception, so at 2am I found myself finally getting a chance to put a round into Lucian and completing the main story arc of Fable 2.

I�m not going to even attempt to mask or hide spoilers. The game has been out around 6 months so I�m actually quite late to finishing it. I do recommend the game. Although it�s not perfect it�s a good fun play though and worth your money to purchase.

Honestly, at the end, as soon as I noticed I could FINALLY attach Lucian I didn�t wait a second before trying. I have no idea how long he would have monologued at the end had I allowed it. The only reason he got a word in edgewise is because I defaulted to trying to hit him with the sword but found I needed to shoot him instead. That was an appropriate and satisfying way to enact revenge since he did shoot me. Twice.

Actually being as familiar with the language of games, I�m not that put off by the fact he tried to kill me, twice. I�m kind of used to it. But killing off the main character�s sister, wife, kids and dog is just cold.

Which brings me to the interesting point. Being that there is an achievement tied to the action you take after enacting your revenge, I wonder what the first play through break down would be. If I was truly myself, in that situation I have to admit I would have no hesitation but to take �the good of the few� and would not be able to sleep at night if I accepted �the good of the one�. Yet in the role of �Sparrow� and playing through the entire game as a paragon of virtue I went with �the good of the many�.

I was actually rather attached to my characters virtual family, at least in part because it mirrored my own real family in form and make up. It took a fair bit of consideration before I chose to �stay in character�. I even considered possible differences in gamer score to be honest. I�m definitely going to have to play through again and make some difference choices, some day. There�s still plenty I want to do in the game world that remains from the first play through though.

Still, it feels good to �save the world�, especially when the developers have gone to such lengths to give the world a feeling of age and history. The games I keep coming back to are the ones where the game world feels old, and feels like there are millennia of history to discovery. Halo, Mass Effect, Asheron�s Call, Bioshock, all have that feeling to them. Fable is really no different in that regard.

One last thing. I appreciate the subtle set up for a sequel. After fighting long and hard to seek revenge and stop Lucian from using the spire, in the end I feel like I was used to help Theresa take possession of the spire for herself. She definitely did not appear as though she was entirely benevolent at the end� �The spire is mine, be gone!� indeed.

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A failure to compete

Some would say that competition is that which makes America great. When competition is missing, prices rise, innovation and improvement cease, companies get rich and consumers are left holding the bag. At these times, the government generally steps in and uses it’s anti-trust powers to plant the seeds of competition if collusion or market position has left a monopoly.

But what happens when there is the guise of competition? What if you have a duopoly?

Where I live I have two “choices” for internet service, Time-Warner (nee Adelphia) cable and Windstream (nee Alltel) DSL. One might think that two companies providing the same service would be in direct competition with one another, and thus would drive lower prices, better products and service. Right?

I’ve used cable internet since I bought my house almost 5 years ago. The performance has been ok, with occasional speed upgrades and price increases. Service has never been what I paid for speed wise but it was worlds faster than the 1.5Mbps DSL I could have gotten instead.

Recently the latencies have gone through the roof, especially in the evening peak hours. They make watching streaming videos on the 360 difficult, viewing my friends list painful and playing games impossible without frequent periods of lag or disconnections. This combined with Time-Warner’s recent promise to screw their customers gave me both the technical and commercial justification to revisit DSL.

Much to my surprise and pleasure, Windstream said they could provide 6Mbps service unbundled for a reasonable price. Thus I went ahead and placed an order for new service. The tech that came to do the install was nice and competent but informed me that the signal from the central office to my house was only strong enough to provide 3Mbps service. I was willing to accept this as 3Mbps down was still comparable to the 4-6Mbps I’ve come to expect from Time-Warner during peak hours.

So I spent the better part of the day trying to get the modem activated, only to find that the signal to noise ratio was too low, so I had a second tech come out and trouble shoot the line and was informed that the signal was right on the cusp of handling 3Mbps so the best they could really deliver was 1.5Mbit.

Needless to say I’m back to Time-Warner, stuck until Windstream upgrades their equipment. I feel trapped, Windstream isn’t even token competition for Time-Warner. Thus I feel like I have no recourse against Time-Warner raising my prices, providing lousy product or bad customer service. It’s like it’s 1980 again and AT&T is the phone god.

Man I miss playing Left 4 Dead in the evening…

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That new console smell...

I spend a lot of time playing Xbox 360 games. Not as much as some people, but enough that I really detest the downtime of sending my console in for repair. Since the 65nm (jasper) boards started showing up in stores in November I�ve been waiting for the right combination of trade in value and available cash to replace my first generation xenon based unit.

Friday everything lined up just right, and between the standard ($80) trade-in value, the promotional ($25) bonus in this week�s GameStop ad and a gift card from filling out opinion surveys ($25). Out the door with tax it was $85 for a quieter piece of mind and a new controller. Definitely worth it to me, especially since it also opens the door to switching from VGA to HDMI at a later time. Once that happens I can think about hooking up my old Xbox, a Wii or any other SDTV device to a VGA converter and feed it into my rig.

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My son reminds me, it's time to secure my XBL account

My children are smart, they've known how to turn my Xbox on for themselves for a while. My daughter doesn't usually bother any more since she'd rather play games with daddy than try to do it herself but my son, at age 1, loves him some Rock Band 2 and has no qualms against trying to get his fix for himself.

Since I have my Xbox automatically sign in to my live profile and sign into windows live messenger it's starting to become a common occurrence to get kicked off line in Trillian and have to log back in. Kind of a handy way to tell if the kids are playing around with the Xbox while I'm at work. Today though my son has put me on notice that I need to lock the account or just take the MU with the profile on it to work in the morning as he managed to grab the controller, turn on my Xbox, browse to the marketplace and RENT wall-e with the last couple of hundred points on my account. Not only that but he would have had to select the SD version since my hard drive lacks the space to download the HD version of the movie at the moment.

I'm proud of my son, I really am Now I've got to figure out how I want to secure my profile. I'll probably just copy all the game saves on my MU back to the hard drive and leave the profile on the MU then pull it when I'm not home. That'll keep this from happening again.

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Goodbye EGM and 1up.com

The news itself is being posted all over the internet now that Ziff-Davis has sold 1up, fired almost all of the staff (or seen them leave as a result of the sale and mass layoff) and closed down the print version of EGM. Joystiq, MTV Multiplayer, Kotaku and others have the details down.

I have to say that, while I didn’t spend a lot of time at the site itself unless I was looking for some specific information on a game (way too add heavy) I’m really going to miss the podcasts and print version of EGM. Call me old school but I still enjoy leafing through a paper mag when I’m sitting around the house or on the can. The podcasts had become an invaluable part of my daily commute and house hold chores. From the sound of it UGO bought the domain name and maybe the existing content but didn’t give a lick for what really made that sight special.

Now I’m going to have to spend more time listening to Code Monkey and DSmooth on the 2old2type podcast instead…

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Dead Space Finale

I can sum up Dead Space two ways. From a game play perspective it was the most stressful and frustratingly difficult game I've played and enjoyed.

It seemed that every level had at least one room that was ment as a meat grinder, a place to let you "enjoy" some of the more vicious death animations the game had to offer. On the hardest difficulty, the game was brutally, unforgivably hard. Walking around the Ishimura was a constant exercise in stress unless back tracking through an area just recently cleared to get back to a company store to buy more ammo. I suppose that was the point though. The game play was intense with something lethal potentially waiting around every turn.

From a game play perspective I really with the plasma cutter ammunition wasn't so limited. The scarcity of munitions, at least up to the last level, really did add a signifigant level of stress to the game play, but there were several times, especially early, that I ran out of rounds for even the most basic weapon. On hard, melee kills did not happen.

Mechanically, other than the painful difficulty in places, my main problem was the pattern based, shoot the glowing thing, boss fights. They were hard until I realized that there was a fixed pattern of movements to go through to get past the fight. Very similar to the end boss in Beyond Good and Evil, except not quite as unforgiving to breaks in the pattern.

From a story stand point, I think the game's writters did an excellent job of mixing one part "Alien", one part X-Files and one part Scientology. The tention of the protagonist, separated from his crew mates, exploring a dark, dessolate ship and uncovering the secrets of a cult built on the lies of it's founder and the distrust of a government cover up. It's good good stuff. The game and the one animated comic posted to XBLM make me want to find both the comic and the movie and enjoy more of this world.

I can also see a great deal of potential for expaning the game either with or without the existing protagonist. There is definitely a lot more that could be explored in the game world. That said the game itself does stand alone as a satisfyingly complete story. If you don't want to pay full price for 12 hours of game play, at least rent it. Keep in mind that there are quite a few achivements that are waiting for a second play through.

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Dead Space Progress

This fall I’ve allowed myself 3 new games before Christmas, Gears of War, Left 4 Dead and Dead Space. Left 4 Dead is easily my favorite of the bunch so far but I’ll blog about that another time.

I thought that the weeks between Dead Space and Gears would have been enough time to get through the game until I got to chapter 5. My second trip through medic has stymied me. There’s one room that frustrated me to the point that I put the game down for a couple weeks and went and played through Gears of War instead. I must have died in the same room to the same set of monsters 20-25 times before I gave up.

So last night I had an opportunity to play a “daddy friendly game” as my children call them. My son was taking a bath, my daughter was asleep early thanks to a failure to nap. I’ve already finished Gears single player once through and didn’t feel like hitting it again, there were few people online so Gears multiplayer and Left 4 Dead were out. So I figured I’d try and see if I could blast my way through the Ishimura Clinic again.

Previously I had looked up mycheats.com to see if there was just some trick I was missing. Sadly there wasn’t any trick to the room, just skill required. Still last night I managed to blast my way through it on the third try. Woot! There is something to be said for putting something frustrating down in order to let the white hot animal rage abate to the point where you can actual deal with it

So there’s still plenty of game left to work through. I’ll probably start nibbling away at it when I’m unable to find or dedicate time for multiplayer matches. I’ll write more on the game when I’m finished as always but if you’re in the market for a creepy, scary, sci-fi single player game I would highly recommend dead space.

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Same serial number, obviously a "new" board

My Xbox 360 has returned to me courtesy of the nice driver from UPS. Same serial number, same manufacture date on the label, but I’m thinking it has a brand new system board as the unit, which previously had NXE was reset back to the old blade interface. I’m guessing all they did was pop open the chassis, replace the board with a spare and reprogram the ROM with the original serial number. I’m oddly okay with that

14 days from first hint of issue to retuned unit. I’m left to wonder how many months this unit will last. The first was 23 months the second was 11.

Anyone want to start a pool on the service life of this unit? I'm still thinking of trading in for a jasper, but I missed out on GameStop's recent bonus by a day. I'm taking that as a sign that I should wait, at least a little bit.

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