Published by Si at 30 July, 2008
in Games.
Behold, the insightful musings of Bajo, in his latest blog post.
If anything, E3 made me realise how very very small Australia is compared to the rest of the world. I guess this is why we have to pay a bit more than the US .. and suffer some awful pings… but our industry is growing, and the types of people turning into gamers is changing… . more ages and genders of humans are becoming gamers… this can only be a good thing in helping our industry grow here. If there was one thing that more developers at E3 said to us more than anything else, is that NOW is a good time to get into the games industry – it’s strong, it’s growing, it’s changing and finding it’s feet through chaos, commercial pressures and the artistic needs of some great minds who just want to make great games.
I don’t care how small we are, it still doesn’t justify the price fixing on Wii points.
Published by Si at 9 July, 2008
in Games.
So I bought that Brawl game everyone’s talking about. I used the Gamecube controller. I tried the Wiimote/chuck setup but with these intense games (MK is another one) my left hand very quickly starts to ache from holding the Nunchuck like I am trying to strangle a small animal.
Single player adventure mode is absolutely awesome. Clever cut scenes that make the characters look like they are ready to kick some serious butt. Strangely it feels like I’m playing Final Fantasy again. Great way to have some fun while getting to know the different characters.
Now online multiplayer… I tried the quick brawl feature to “play anyone, anywhere” and to say I was disappointed would be the understatement of the year. I don’t know how this game’s hosted (server or P2P) but the brawl was UNPLAYABLE. It would lag every second for about half a second. And the worst part: you can’t exit even using the Home button. So it was hard reset time. VERY POOR. Let’s hope this is fixed somehow or at least the friend battles are lag-free otherwise there will be A LOT of Aussie Brawlers who are gonna want Nintendo to suffer. And I mean suffer on the scale of Microsoft Antitrust suffering.
UPDATE: From a quick glance at some forums, it may be that Nintendo’s servers can’t keep up with the demand. Found some more info from Nintendo, limited in usefulness as it is.
Published by Si at 3 July, 2008
in Games.
…and Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 and Beautiful Katamari and Bioshock and Ninja Gaiden II (assuming I like Ninja Gaiden I).
In what we can only assume is an effort to steal sales away from Nintendo, Microsoft have dramatically reduced the price of their Xbox 360 console. RRP is now $349 with some retailers such as Big W selling for as low as $279.
However, an Xbox 360 hardware refresh is rumoured for sometime in 2008/2009. But this latest price drop makes me care alot less about that.
So… Should I get one?
UPDATE: I just found out its the Arcade version, with no hard drive. And apparently you need a hard drive to play original Xbox games, and they’re about $60-80. Not a huge problem since I can always play the games on my Original Xbox.
Published by Si at 9 June, 2008
in Games.
I can now play Tyrian on my Wii. My life is complete. It doesn’t get any better than this, folks… Well, it could be better if I could actually save my game >_< Oh yeah, and getting out of OpenTyrian requires a Wii hard-reset 9 times out of 10 but come on, it's Tyrian people, TYRIAN! Arcade mode is actually quite fun. And hard. I forgot how hard this game is.
I used the Twilight Hack to install the Wii Homebrew Channel (HBC), and it worked first go, like an absolute charm. I remembered to back up my Zelda savegame first, and will restore that soon. Once HBC is loaded you really have no need for the Twilight Hack again.
There are some pretty neato apps for the Wii so far, but most only use the “fake Gamecube” inside the Wii, which means this really isn’t worth doing unless you have a GameCube controller. ScummVM uses the Wiimote which is impressive. There are also emulators for just about every Nintendo console before the Gamecube, so I ask: Why aren’t Nintendo jumping up and down? It’s obviously a huge threat to the Virtual Console. Maybe VC sales are just a tiny fraction of their income though so they don’t care?
But there’s still one thing missing and that’s DVD playback. My good ol’ Panasonic DVD player has recently carked it. I loved it to bits because it was region-free out of the box, and I have a lot of non-R4 DVDs. There is still no .elf DVD app that can be loaded with HBC, but Wii Miidia looks quite promising. I’ll be waiting for an official release, though; I’m happy to give everyone else the chance to brick their Wiis using the betas.
If anyone wants to borrow my copy of Zelda to get this going, let me know.
Published by Si at 25 May, 2008
in Games.
Wii Ware launched in Australia & Europe the other day, so I thought I’d give it a go. There weren’t many games, so I got the cheapest one, “Star Soldier R” which is a vertical scrolling shooter. The visuals are awesome. The music is awesome. The controls are OK but not great. I’d like to be able to move the ship with the nunchuck joystick while holding A on the Wiimote for shoot. But instead you have to use the Z button and my hand gets sore. But the game seems pretty short and I was expecting something more for my 12 bucks, like some levels and ship customisation etc. When are they releasing Tyrian on the virtual console dammit!?
Published by Si at 28 April, 2008
in Games.
Mario Kart Wii arrived so don’t expect any blog posts for several weeks. Well, maybe there will be the odd one about how AWESOME it is. That is, assuming that it is in fact awesome. I am thinking that it probably is awesome because Nintendo are awesome and their previous Mario Kart games are awesome. Will the wheel be awesome? Have I said awesome enough yet? Oh right, I almost forgot. Not only do I predict it will be awesome, but it will be awesomesauce. Made fresh with buckets of awesomeples from the awesomest awesomeple tree in awesometown.
Awesome.
Update: My Mario Kart Friend Code: 1848-2086-6755
Published by Si at 15 April, 2008
in Games and Net.
Then Desktop Tower Defense is the game for you. Get your quick fix of tower defense goodness with this awesome flash game. My personal best is 5203. I was only able to get this by designing the maze on grid paper before hand. After that game, I realised you can click on “send next level” and get bonus points instead of just waiting for the next wave of creeps. The game is highly addictive so to say that it’s a “quick fix” may be somewhat misleading.
Published by Si at 12 April, 2008
in Games.
I took some old Xbox games to EB Games and asked what they would give me for a trade-in. These were the games:
Forza Motorsport
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee
Half-Life 2
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
EB Games offer for all games = $31
Needless to say, this is a pretty pathetic offer. I thought I would try eBay.
Fable: The Lost Chapters ($26.03)
Forza Motorsport ($4.71)
Oddworld: Munch’s Oddysee ($8.93)
Total for selling on eBay (minus fees) = $39.67
If anyone wants the 2 games that didn’t sell, email me.
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