Virtual Adept

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.

I read over on YouNEWB.com there would be 110 new PSP games before year end. WOW. Just. Wow.

Also Sony has once again denied rumors of a PSP price cut. If there really will be that many new games, like an average of 9 per week from now until New Years, then they probably have no need to cut prices. With that many games surely there will be a lot of new PSP buyers who find something that makes them want to slap down a couple of Benjamins for probably the slickest handheld on the market.

I love my Nintendo DS, but the PSP feels more like playing a regular console, except it’s in your hands. If only it didn’t have that slow UMD for crappy load times. Oh well, the “sleep mode” is a godsend so no big deal. Go get a PSP, it owns!

Now I got to go research what all of these games are, I’m going to have to narrow down that number a great deal.

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Wow, is this a blast back to the past. I played Lemmings on the PC back when it came out for the PC in the 90’s. This is a classic puzzle game. You have these Lemmings, little green haired dudes that will gleefully follow the leader to their death if you don’t use the Lemming’s special functions to make a safe path from them to the level exit. You will have many obstacles, many of them deadly to the Lemmings, and the goal is to get a certain percentage of Lemmings as dictated by the level goals to the safety of the level exit. This is basically a remake with slightly improved graphics over the original, plus some 36 bonus levels never before seen, and a level editor and the ability to download new levels from a web site and share you levels with other PSP users. I haven’t tried sharing levels. I did play with the level editor for a bit and it’s pretty easy to use. I completed 29 or so of the Lemmings Original levels, and about 12 or 15 of the new ones. So far it’s pretty fun, although it’s getting pretty difficult now, and I may need to get some hints soon. I’d rate this at least a B+ so far.

Just saw the list of games to be released this week over on Joystiq. Their full list is amazing, there’s going to be over 20 games released this week. Here is just a sample, the ones I might actually be interested in:

• Baten Kaitos Origins (GCN) - this is a must have for me.
• Mario vs Donkey Kong 2: March of the Minis (DS) - will wait on reviews but this looks great.
• Just Cause (PC, Xbox, PS2, 360) - liked the demo for this for 360, might try the PC ver.
• Mage Knight: Apocalypse (PC) - I’m mainly interested in this so i can get the cool dragon pack-in.
• DEFCON (PC) - this is from the makers of Darwinia. Might be good, I’ll wait and see though.
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (PS2) - this is a must have for me.
• Caesar IV (PC) - will look at reviews.
• ParaWorld (PC) - will look at reviews.

I am really getting behind on my RPGs, There are now like 6 or 7 out for the PS2 that I haven’t aquired yet. I am kind of obsessive about collecting all of them so I will probably be dishing out some dosh soon. But on the downside, I really wanted to save my money to get a Wii in November.

 

This long winded titled RPG called Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion for the PSP has been taking up a bunch of my portable gaming time lately. Developed by Japanese RPG developer Falcom, apparently this game is actually the third in a series of games that started on another platform. However, knowledge of anything from previous games is not required at all. Legend of Heroes is a story based RPG with a turn-based combat system. The graphics are kind of old school 2D top down view with very well drawn artwork and some nice 3D special effects for spell effects and such. The water effects look very nice and other environmental effects, but the overall graphical feel is somewhat retro. This is actually part of the game’s charm.

You play as a young man named Avin who was seperated from his sister at a young age when an evil wizard broke into the church where they were raised and tried to capture her. They were seperated during the fighting and Avin as taken away to be raised by a sage in a small village. After he grew older, the sage died and entrusted Avin with a quest to deliver a sacred artifact to another sage in another village. Avin met another young boy Miles and the two became good friends as they grew up together in the small village. Miles decided to go along with Avin on his quest. And so the two young men set out to find Avin’s sister, and along the way they had many adventures.

The combat system used in Legend of Heroes is a turn-based system where you select what you want each member of your party to do and then the action occurs in an order determined by each combatant’s speed rating. Movement and placement on the map is actually important, because for melee attacks you must be able to move within range of your target or you can’t hit them, and for spells you must be able to get within the spell’s range or area of effect for them to work. You kind of have to do a little guesswork there because you pick what you want to target at the beginning of the turn, but they are not guaranteed to be in the same place when that character’s turn actually comes up during the fighting. This gives the game a bit of strategy in choosing what targets you want to attack.

In addition to normal attacks with normal weapons like Avin’s swords or Miles’ boomerang, you can use spells. Avin knows black magic and Miles knows white magic, which is about what you’d expect. Black magic is more for offense and white is more for defense and healing. There are other types of magic too. You will meet one character early on who can do something called spirit magic which lets her bring forth elemental spirits who can attack all enemies at once. In addition to spells, which use magic points, you also have skills, which are kind of like spells or more like unique character-based powers, but these skills do not cost any magic points to use. Then there is also something called “deadly”, and that is a massive deadly attack that does a great deal of damage and is customized for each character. You can only use deadly when your deadly meter is full, and it gets full by doing regular attacks on enemies, each regular attack adding a bit to the meter until it eventually fills up. Knowing when to save and when to use your deadly attack is an important strategy.

The story so far after about 6 or 7 hours is very well developed. The characters actually feel more realistic than the typical kiddie type characters you get in most RPGs. Yes, you are playing a young man, Avin, but the characters do just feel more realistic in many ways. For example, the methods of speech used by the characters just seems more grown up and less contrived as you might expect in other Japanese console RPGs. The plot itself is actually pretty deep and it involves quite a bit of politics and deception, so it’s less childish in many ways than a lot of other RPGs I have played. This has drawn me further into the game world and keeps me wanting to play more of it.

I will report more about the story and any flaws I happen to find in the game as I play further. If I had to rate the game today I’d probably give it a A, it’s really entertaining so far.

We went on a little vacation to Salado, Texas, which is why I didn’t update for the last few days. The trip was pretty fun. I got to play my PSP quite a bit. Got even further in Burnout Legends, which is awesome and I posted a review of that already.

I also played quite a bit of Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion. This game is completely awesome, I can’t begin to say how cool it is. It takes some time commitment to get into it, because the game doesn’t really even get started until after almost an hour of cutscenes and minimal interactive scenes. But the characters are alive, and much deeper than in most RPGs, and the story is realistic and not crazy like some RPGs get. At least, so far, that is. I am about 5 hours in and am really enjoying it. Combat system is turn-based, and you have a lot of cool options for combat.

 Finally, last night I spent a couple of hours goofing off in Saint’s Row. That game is great too, it’s a sandbox with tons of fun stuff to do. I also never thought I’d prefer the console controller to the PC for GTA style games but Saint’s Row is a dream to control the vehicles. On foot part could be a bit better but it’s still very doable.

 

One of the best games I have found so far for the Playstation Portable is Burnout Legends, a racing game developed by Criterion Games, published by Electronic Arts. While I don’t really like EA, at all, I do love the Burnout games (which, btw, EA bought into). Burnout Legends feels a lot like Burnout 3 Takedown for the PS2, but it’s all in the palm of your hand.

Controls for Burnout Legends are pretty solid. You use the thumb stick to steer, and you gas with X and brake with [] and turn on boost with the right shoulder button. You fill up your boost meter by doing dangerous things, like smashing into or performing a “takedown” on your opponents, near-misses with other vehicles, drifting, powerslides, and driving against oncoming traffic. Boost makes you go really fast, and is important for being able to catch up when you fall behind and to more easily takedown opponents.

There are a bunch of different game modes and when you are doing the World Tour you will need to earn medals in all of them to progress to the next levels. You start off limited to compact cars, then when you complete enough objectives in that you can move up to muscle cars, etc. The faster the cars are, the harder it gets because you have less time to react to what’s going on. 

One of the modes you will play is Race mode, which is a straight up race where you just try to be the first one across the finish line (by any means necessary, so takedown your opponents whenever possible). There is also Pursuit, which places you in a cop car and you have to takedown a difficult-to-stop bad guy. There is a mode called Road Rage where you have a set limited time and you have to do as many takedowns as you can in the time available. There is also a mode called Burning Lap where you have to do a lap around the “track” and make it under a set time limit. In Face-Off mode you race against a single opponent and if you win you keep that car model. Eliminator mode is like Race except that after every lap the last place racer is eliminated from the race.

Crash mode is what sets the Burnout series apart from every other racer. In this mode, your object is to cause a spectacular crash involving as many vehicles as possible and wracking up as much collateral damage as you possibly can. You will be given a car and shown a little glimpse of the road ahead and then you will drive and try to cause as much mayhem as possible. Along your short drive you will pick up as many bonuses as you can by running over little icons. Crash mode is a really cool addition to the game and is one of the most fun aspects of Legends.

What keeps you playing Burnout is that every time you do an event you earn points, and the more you wrack up, the more cars you unlock. Also doing as many takedowns as you can helps you earn more cars also. And some events just unlocked new cars, new tracks, new events, etc. Every time you earn a medal you are unlocking something new, and this keeps you wanting to play more and more.

So, what about negatives? Well, I’ve found that pursuit mode is insanely hard compared to the other modes, so I hate those missions. The handling is pretty difficult at times, there are certain tracks that just seem almost impossible to do well on because the AI cars seem to be able to navigate them with ease while I crash almost regularly. I’m sure this is just a matter of me needing more practice. I haven’t tried the multiplayer yet because I don’t have a wifi connection at home, but hopefully I can test that sometime.

Production values in this game are great. The graphics are amazing for a portable, by far the best graphics of any portable game I’ve played except possibly Daxter and Syphon Filter. They look almost as good as Burnout 3 Takedown on the PS2. The sound is killer, it has a great soundtrack with lots of good tunes and the engine and crashing sounds are spot on. 

If you like racing games or even if you are just a casual racing game fan like me, you need to get this game if you have a PSP, it’s just that simple. My rating: A+, Must Buy!

I had been hesitant to get one of these newfangled PSP’s every since the initial launch because I thought that $250 was too much to spend on a portable gaming device. Now, things are different. Now there are plenty of exclusive games I can only play on the PSP, to make it worth my while to justify a purchase. Plus, I didn’t have to splash out any cash, I was able to procure a PSP via trade for an extra Xbox 360 I had received from doing one of those “free offers” sites. In fact, I got a nice, excellent condition used PSP and ten (10) games for it. Schweeeet.

Here are the games I snagged, and my tentative grade on F to A scale, based on pretty limited gameplay time so far.

Daxter - A+
Burnout Legends - A+
Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror - A
Mega Man Powered Up - A
Mega Man Maverick Hunter X - B
Street Fighter Alpha 3 MAX - B-
Wipeout Pure - B-
Ridge Racer - C
Field Commander (haven’t tried it yet, it was sealed, didn’t want to devalue it)
Frantix (just haven’t had time yet)

I also picked up PoPoLoCrois, an RPG, but haven’t had time to play much yet so no rating.

I have rented:
Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light - B+ (an RPG)
Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion (no rating yet)

What do I think about this device? Well, it’s far too precious to actually use as a portable gaming device.

Actually I have used it a few times on the bus ride to and from work and it does very well. The screen is amazing, absolutely mesmerizing. Sound is fantastic as well with my earphones, heck even without earphones the built in speakers aren’t too shabby compared to say the Nintendo DS. But the buttons on the right side are a bit too far apart from each other, and it is awkward to try and use the D-pad AND the analog nubby in any games that make you use both (thinking of Syphon Filter here). I haven’t gotten used to the shoulder buttons yet either but in time I’m sure I will.

How does it compare to the Nintendo DS? Well, the DS is still more fun overall I think. I have a ton of DS games and the touch screen just adds a lot to the gaming experience, plus stuff like the microphone and being able to hold in in different ways is innovative. But there is no doubt that the PSP is a much beefier system, and capable of doing a lot more graphically, and not to mention the UMD format allows PSP developers to put more frills in like voice acting and FMV movies.

Load times, on the other hand, are non-existant on the DS but plague just about every single game I have on the PSP. While 5-10 seconds of load time doesn’t seem like much to bitch about, when you have that over and over and over in games, it can get pretty irritating once you realize you’re spending a considerable percentage of your precious play time staring at a progress bar.

Overall I do not regret my “purchase” of the PSP, I think I will definitely enjoy it especially for all the great RPGs that are out now and more on the way. Some of the games are really amazing, such as Daxter which could easily be mistaken for a PS2 platformer, or Syphon Filter, which has all the complexity and flash of the series, or Burnout Legends which I could easily mistake for Burnout 3 Takedown on the PS2 if I weren’t paying close attention. Here’s hoping that more games of that nature come to the platform.

I’m thinking of trying some homebrew if I can do it without downgrading my firmware. I heard there’s some new hax out. I’d like to run an SNES emu on here, that would own.

Sony’s big E3 Press Conference was today, watched it live via GameSpot. Several big pieces of news were announced today:

1. Sony’s new online service will feature micropayments ala Microsoft’s Live Marketplace.

2. Sony is launching the PS3 on November 17 with two versions: a 20gb HD version for $499, and a 60gb HD version for $599.

Edit: 20GB model MAY not have HDMI, wifi, or a memory card slot. Read the spec sheet carefully, it looks like the HD may not be the only difference.

3. Sony’s new controller looks exactly like their existing Dual Shock controllers for PS2, except these have some kind of gyro-sensor in them so that you can turn, rotate, tilt, lift, etc and the controller can sense these movements. Basically they are ripping off Nintendo’s Revolution/Wii controller here.

4. Final Fantasy XIII will be a Playstation 3 title and looks AMAZING!

Most of the game footage they showed was obviously pre-rendered cinematics, or at the very least, in-game cinematics but not actual gameplay footage. One demo, however, showed some very impressive actual-gameplay footage, called Resistance: Fall of Man. Basically it looks like a very well done first person shooter. Excellent graphics and the gameplay looked solid, but nothing terribly innovative from what I could tell.

The Playstation Portable, aka PSP looks really nice. Played with one in Best Buy today. Almost bought it (for more details see my Live Journal page). Anways, I didn’t get it. But if this were $180ish I’d be so there. $250 is a lot to drop on a portable device. I know it does more than just play games but to do much more than games with it right now you ALSO need to drop another $50-$100 on a decent size Memory Stick. Lets say I spend $100 on a big 512mb Memory Stick, well now I got a $350 MP3 player that only has 512mb of memory. Bleh. Or it can watch movies (either using the proprietary disc format or using your PC to convert DVD’s to MP4 format and uploading them via USB to the Memory Stick). But still, $350 is a lot for a device that holds so little media. And the 1gb memory sticks are like $150 ish. You can get a 20gb iPod for what $300? Sure it won’t play games. But it is a much better song device. I guess I don’t know. If they made 4gb or bigger Memory Sticks that were $150 or so, I might be tempted. Maybe in the future that will be a reality, the prices on stuff like that is always falling.