Virtual Adept

Is RRODed a word? For those not in the know, RROD = Red Ring of Death, which is what happens when your Xbox 360 refuses to work properly and instead displays 3 blinking red lights. Fortunately there is a three year free replacement policy for this condition and I have registered online at Xbox.com to get a box sent to me which I will place my 360 in and ship off to wherever they fix these things and hopefully in the next few weeks I will get my 360 back (or preferably a newer one with the HDMI connector) and then be back in gaming biz. But for now I will have to console myself with the great Playstation 3 and the overrated Wii. And I was just getting into Lost Odyssey too.

My latest reviews at Game Chronicles:

Alpha Prime, first person shooter for PC.

Conan, action beat-em-up for PS3 (it has a 360 ver also).

My Spanish Coach - learn to speak Spanish on the DS.

My French Coach - learn to speak French on the DS.

My Word Coach - learn to speak English better (bigger vocabulary) on the Wii. Also on the DS.

Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa - the latest adventure for the comedic duo, for PC.

I wrote a review of the horror first-person shooter Clive Barker’s Jericho for Playstation 3 for the web site GameChronicles a couple of weeks ago, forgot to mention it but now I did so go read it and let me know if you liked the review or not. There should be a review of Conan coming up pretty soon also.

Someone had asked on a web board for advice about which next-gen console to buy, and this was my response.
Firstly, I’ll say I own all 3 consoles and each one has its strengths and weaknesses and I do not regret buying any of them. I will also state that I am a medium-core type gamer - I don’t have the time to play to consider myself “hardcore” but I have a lot of disposable income so I buy quite a few games and at least get to play part of them before the next big game comes along, so I have quite a bit of play time on a large variety of games. I’ve also been gaming forever (since the Atari Pong).

Right now if you do not have HD-TV then you do not need either the Xbox 360 or the PS3. Those systems only show their main strength which is really awesome high-def graphics on a HD-TV (and preferably a bigger one, like 40″+). If you’re still on standard def and can’t afford a new TV, then by all means, the Wii is the best system to own right now hand’s down. Stick with PS2 and/or Xbox original until you can upgrade your TV for more traditional type games.

Besides, the Wii plays all GameCube games so there’s a lot of traditional-control games there you may not have gotten to if you didn’t have a cube. The Wii does support progressive-scan 480p if you get the component cables for it, so in that mode the graphics look pretty decent on games where they take the time to code to the Wii’s hardware (versus a cheap PS2-port, which unfortunately is what Wii is getting a lot of).

As far as game library, the Xbox 360 has by far the best selection for someone who is a more “traditional” gamer. They are kind of weak in the “platformer” genre (like Jak, Ratchet, and/or Mario) but most other genres are fairly well covered. On multi-platform games the 360 version is usually superior, because the graphics are going to be either the best or just slightly under what the PS3’s are, but with 360’s excellent Xbox Live online service there is usually a lot of extended features only available on the 360. Additionally, the 360 has been around for 2 years instead of just 1 and has built up a library of quite a few excellent exclusive titles you can’t get on any other console. Games like Bioshock, Blue Dragon, Gears of War, Eternal Sonata, Halo 3, etc.

With an installed base of over 10 million users (not counting the thousands of units no doubt sold recently with Halo 3’s release), its the 2nd largest (and only 2nd by a thin margin) and a platform that a lot of developers world wide are promising to release games for. Microsoft has done a good job of “stealing” a lot of developers that had been PS2 exclusive during the last generation to now write games for the 360. It’s no longer a gaming industry dominated by Sony - it’s a much more level playing field now so the PS3 is not going to get as many exclusives as the PS2 did, and multi-platform games will be much more common.

Now, on to the Wii.. this platform is a heck of a lot of fun for “party” based multiplayer. If you have a lot of friends who like to come over or a family who likes to play games together, this platform is seriously a lot of fun and a great bargain compared to the other contenders. Even the free pack-in game Wii Sports can be hours and hours of hilarious multi-player goodness. The controls may seem somewhat gimmicky at first, but as you play the Wii more and more they become rather intuitive.

The Will is set up to have a really good fall season. They have some really top notch games coming out soon and the game’s library will start to finally make a console purchase seem very worthwhile. The top games for this system are Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a fantastic action/adventure game, and Metroid Prime 3, a top notch first person shooter with a unique control style that works very well, Super Paper Mario, a classic RPG/platformer game with a really neat mechanic of switching back and forth from 2D world to 3D world, and a lot of other games that are definitely worth a rent if not a purchase which can be a lot of fun as well (especially for multiplayer). So, while the 360 does have probably more A+ titles than the Wii does, the Wii probably has enough to keep you entertained especially if you happen to be a fan of Nintendo-style games.

And as for the PS3, well there’s Resistance Fall of Man which looks and controls great (first person shooter), there’s Heavenly Sword, which is essentially a souped-up God of War style game with awesome sound and graphics, and … not a whole lot else. If you never played Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox then the Ninja Gaiden Sigma remake for the PS3 is definitely worth playing. There’s also Virtua Fighter 5, but the 360 version is going to have enhanced graphics and online play modes that the PS3 lacks. But one thing the PS3 has going for it is that the hardware is rock solid great, and the Blu-Ray drive is fantastic if you like to watch movies. We’ve been using the PS3 mostly as a Blu-Ray player and switched our Netflix over to renting BD’s instead of DVD’s, and we’re really enjoying it. Like I said before, this platform is essentially only justifiable if you have a HD-TV, especially considering it’s high price tag relative to the other systems. I figure the PS3 is going to really start getting some must-have exclusive titles around late 2008 and will really be worth a look then (especially if they get a price drop too).

One final thing about the PS3 - the 60gb model they are slowly selling out of is the only model that has full (99%) backwards compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games (because it has the PS2 chips built into it). Once the 60gbs are gone (and they are no longer being produced) then you will be stuck with one of the newer models which only has limited backwards compatibility via software emulation (about 55% as of this post). The only reason I decided to go buy a PS3 now instead of waiting until more games came out for it was that I have a really large library of PS1 and PS2 games and wanted to be able to play them on the PS3, because it up converts the graphics for those games into high-def resolutions (720p or 1080p). Eventually Sony may get their software emulation working better but I felt it was worthwhile to get the ones that had the old PS2 chips in them for full hardware compatibility mode. If backwards compatibility is a serious concern for you, then I highly recommend getting the 60gb model now before they sell out.

Figured I haven’t written about gaming in a while so I would post up what’s going on.

I already wrote about my new custom firmware PSP which still rocks. I have been playing the old Sega Genesis game Shadowrun on it quite a bit and love how well the emulation works both in terms of interface and speed. Being able to use save-states to save / load anytime makes things much nicer for this otherwise potentially frustrating game (insta-kills are not too uncommon in the early game so being able to save often is a huge plus).
I figured out what was going on with my Wii - I had a messed up wii-mote. It sort of works but not 100%. But I guess I’ll keep it for use in multi-player tho I might want to leave it for the 3rd or 4th stick of last resort type thing. Played quite a bit of Red Steel with the new remote and it is pretty fun. I am stuck now in a puzzle where I can’t figure out how to get out of a room so I may need to look at a walkthru soon. Still need to finish Zelda and now Metroid Prime 3 is out so that’s another potential time-waster on the near horizon for me (it’s in my GF que). Wii Sports is awesome in multiplayer. But mostly my Wii has just kind of gathered dust, it’s my least used console of my this-gen ones.

The PS3 is actually quite fantastic. Mainly because the BD player rocks. We’ve been renting BD (Blu-Ray Disc) movies from Netflix lately. The quality of the picture is amazing. Just need to update my sound system so I can get that True-HD surround sound stuff. But anyway it looks great. And Resistance is pretty fun, I went ahead and did “buy-it” on GFly for that. I also picked up Untold Legends for it and downloaded Tekken 5 for it. I hope to rent Warhawks next I think. The Darkness looks pretty sweet on PS3 also, maybe better than the Xbox 360 version, but I am so used to the 360’s controller I may keep all my FPS games on that platform (except the PS3 exclusives like Resistance). It’s kind of sad the most of the better games for PS3 seem to be multi-platform and most of the great exclusives promised at E3 2005 have still not seen the light of day.

As for Xbox 360, I have been playing the crap out of it lately, with Bioshock, probably the best single-player FPS ever made, or at least as good as Half-Life 2 which was my previous favorite FPS. The graphics and sound is amazing in Bioshock and the story and setting are very cool. Gameplay has a lot of different options for letting you choose how to play also. Overall Bioshock is a great spiritual successor to the greatness that was System Shock.

Another great 360 game I’ve been spending time with is Blue Dragon, which is the long anticipated Japanese style RPG by the team at Mistwalker which worked on a lot of the Final Fantasy games. The game does really nothing new whatsoever, but it captures the classic JRPG style so well and is done with such amazing visuals and sound that it is a must play for long-time fans of the genre.

Spent a little time PC gaming but not much, mainly just keeping my WoW characters from losing stuff from their inboxes and I did play a few hours of Advent Rising which was actually better than I figured it would have been but still obviously not a great game. I guess it isn’t a complete waste of time but with so many A+ titles to play I doubt I will finish it. My PC is too long in the tooth for new FPS titles, as Bioshock’s demo has proven to me. I doubt it will be able to handle Crysis either. So I figure I can either just stick to console gaming for a while or upgrade, and most likely the first choice, considering how few PC exclusives are out and fewer still worth bothering about. As long as it will still run Hellgate London I probably won’t bother with an upgrade.

We need some rain. Been dry for a couple of weeks, and hot as hell. Our AC is barely keeping the house temp in the high 70’s. Ugh. It rained a little last night so maybe my yard will be okay for a few more days.

I recently acquired a new Playstation Portable with custom firmware. This new firmware allows me to run emulators on the PSP. So far, I have emulators installed for NES, SNES, Genesis,  TurboGrafix16, and Game Boy Advance. Most of the games run very well on it that I’ve tried. There’s not really anything cooler than running Super Mario World on a Sony handheld, is there?

So far I’ve just been dicking around with this, and have not spent a lot of time on any game, but it’s fun to go back and look at the old school from time to time. I may try to go back and finish Chrono Trigger on it, which I got around 2/3 done on SNES back in 98 or 99 or so (still have my cart but not sure I want to hook up the SNES ;p).

Still having a lot of fun in World of Warcraft. My main on the new horde server (Thunderhorn) is a troll priest (43) named Rez. Last night our server was down for maintenance so I played with PS3 instead.

On PS3 I was playing around with the demo for The Darkness. Seems like a pretty innovative first person shooter. I really dug it, may have to snag this game but I probably should try the demo on 360 too to see which platform I like it better on.

My Wii isn’t working right but I haven’t had a chance to mess with it to see if it’s something I’m doing wrong or if it’s broken. Either way I’m not happy about it.

What the hell is wrong with Nintendo? Go Nintendo Has just published a list of features in the upcoming Wii game Mario Party 8. And… where the hell is internet play?! WTF Nintendo?! This is a game screaming out for internet play. You guys just suck. Seriously. Why does Nintendo make the same damn mistakes over and over again? Oh, well, guess I’ll have to go with Fuzion Frenzy 2 for my online party-game needs.

Sony’s supposedly 100% fully backwards compatible Playstation 3 is actually somewhat short of that mark. The BBC is reporting that at least 200 or so games from Sony’s previous systems are not fully compatible with the PS3. While this is still quite a bit better compatibility than the Xbox 360 is with the original Xbox, it does show the difference between how Microsoft handles the press and Sony. Microsoft just comes out and says which games work, assuming that none do, while Sony lies that they are 100% compatible and then leaves it up to the gamers to find which games won’t work after the launch. Now, presumably Sony has a plan for making all of these glitches go away, but as for now, you may have trouble with some of the most popular games on the platforms such as:SOCOM series
Final Fantasy Anthology, Origins, Chronicles, XIII, IX, XI
Guitar Hero controller not working
Need for Speed series
Metal Gear Solid series
DDR games mats not compatible
Burnout 3 Takedown
Devil May Cry series
Onimusha series
ICO
Chrono Cross

Sony has an online database where you can check the status of your older games here. However, many gamers are reporting that that database is not entirely accurate. With the vast number of titles to check, it’s actually no big surprise that the database is not complete yet.

So the latest news for Xbox 360 is that you can spend your hard earned money to download videos in standard or high definition. How much? Well, it sounds like movies will cost between 320 and 480 marketplace points, which is between $4 and $6. But most of the content that they’ve announced so far is TV show episodes, and I don’t know the pricing for that yet. I think that’s a bit crazy high. Supposedly HD movies will take up between 4 and 6 gb of your hard drive space. Considering that the 360 only allows 12gb for the user to begin with, I can see where this is going to be a very tight fit. Hopefully MS will come to their senses soon and announce a larger HDD upgrade for the 360. We need it. Bad.

Update: Sony had this to say about the new 360 video downloads (via Kotaku):

PLAYSTATION 3’s content is designed for everyone to enjoy right out of the box, no matter which configuration you purchase. We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn’t buy the top of the line system. Both PLAYSTATION 3 versions available on November 17 include hard drives for downloading content.

That’s all well and good, Sony, but for $400 I can get HD downloadable content on my 360, either in the form of a 360 core + HD addon, or a 360 premium, and the cheapest I could do that (if I could do that) on the PS3 is $500. So solly, loo looooze!!! What idiots. No, Sony, you’re not “shutting anyone out” (/sarcasm). Assholes. As if I could even buy a PS3 before sometime next year. Sony, you need to just learn when to sit down and STFU.

I think I may have already mentioned this before, but in case I didn’t, Rockstar’s latest controversial and most excellently fun video game for the Playstation 2 called Bully, about a wayward boy in a prep school, allows the main character you play to engage in kissing of other boys. Now Joystiq is reporting that the mainstream press has finally gotten wind of this, and of course, it is generating lots of controversy. The ESRB has already stated that they knew about this when they gave the game its “T” for Teen rating. The Joystiq writer makes a good point that Rockstar played this fantastically - it’s a highly controversial topic that is sure to generate sales, but anyone who publicly comes out against it ends up looking like a douche. Of course, our favorite lawyer, Jack Thompson, has already made himself look like a douche.

Wow, EA, euphemistically known to the world as “Electronic Arts,” have sunk to an all time low lately. First, in case you missed it, BattleField 2142 for the PC has spyware in it. You should stop whatever you are doing right now and go sign the online petition boycotting EA for this. Gamers can not sit on their hands on this one, otherwise gaming as we know it on the PC is forever ruined. I love the burnout games, but I’m not buying another EA game until they remove this spyware and apologize for it. Oh man, I would have been soooo pissed if I’d pre-ordered BF2142 only to find it was spyware infested.

In other news, on Xbox Live Marketplace, EA games are starting to charge you for the cheat codes normally built into games for free for, oh, I don’t know, the last two point five decades I would say. EA has changed Godfather for the Xbox 360 to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Now if you want to be able to get money cheats or item cheats, instead of some code to enter, you have to buy them for real money on XBLA. Wee! So now EA just needs to make sure the difficulty is made hard enough to bump up those XBLM cheat sales, dontchaknow! Casual gamer shmasual gamer, EA wants to get PAID, digg.

At this point I would honestly not be too surprised to read that the execs at EA eat young children with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Sony continues to remove features that were promised for the PS3. The latest casualty is there will be nothing equivalent to Xbox Live Achievements on Sony’s online network. Everything points to a rushed launch for the PS3. It’s not like I’ll get one until 2007 or 2008 anyway, but I think it’s kind of sad.