Archive for the 'Games' Category

I mentioned previously that I’ve acquired an XBox 360. I’ve been having a blast with it, and I plan on putting together a little overview of my experiences to date. But for now I’ll talk briefly about one game in particular, Gears of War.

Gears of War is one of the run-away success stories on the XBox 360. Over 4 million copies have been sold so far, and everyone seems to think it’s fantastic. So what is all the fuss about? GoW is not a revolutionary game: at its core, it’s a first person shooter of the oldest traditions. It has a shallow “aliens invade Earth/bad-ass commando type with a big gun saves the day” story, tons of action, vast arrays of monsters to fight, and plenty of weapons to play with. But it isn’t all the same….

The biggest differences in terms of game play versus GoW and, say, Quake or Doom, can be summed up in two different catch phrases: “run and gun” versus “drop and pop”. Run and gun is what you do in Quake or Doom: run around, rocket jump, bunny hop, and generally behave like you are jumped up on crack or something in an effort to avoid being hit by your opponent. Drop and pop is what you do in Gears of War: dive behind cover, pop up and shoot, then jump/dive to the next bit of cover. You can also poke around corners and blind fire your weapon if you want to maximize your use of cover. It’s different, and personally I prefer this approach.

The remainder of what makes Gears of War stand out can be be boiled down to production quality. The sound, the textures, and the graphical details are first rate. The control scheme is easy to learn but tough to master, with an innovative “action reload” mechanic that makes putting bullets in your gun interesting in itself. I liked my “squad” of computer-controlled buddies: often, they were actually helpful and required essentially zero handholding. Similarly, monster AI seemed first-rate, although a couple of glitches now and then, with monsters getting “stuck” or the like, marred the perfection.

In summary, I’d rate Gears of War as between an 8.5 and 9 out of 10 on the “Kelly” scale. The biggest frustration in the entire game, and what (for me) probably reduced my overall happiness the most, was the very end scene. Killing that final monster took me a couple dozen tries and several hours…not as much fun as frustration. Since talking about the final battle would be a spoiler, I’ll hedge things a bit by forcing you to click a link if you don’t mind spoiling the ending. If you want to know how I finally got past the last monster, see this strategy video.

I’ve posted before before about the fact that I can’t play Second Life since I upgraded to Vista. I was pretty certain that the problem related to the ATI video drivers. ATI added OpenGL support in the 7.1 release of the drivers and updated that support in the 7.2 release, but Second Life still doesn’t work.  I haven’t been logging into SL recently: I decided to cut back and focus more on other things, but I would like to be able to log in once in a while…and the lack of support for Vista and ATI has been a major inhibitor.

Linden Lab has announced that the problem has been isolated, and that ATI will be correcting the defect in the next (7.3) release of their drivers. Apparently this update is expected by the end of March/beginning of April.  I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’m optimistic: I’ll post here on my blog once the drivers are released and I’ve tested them.

I have a somewhat mixed history with regards to console games.  Looking back in history, I believe the first console I had was some kind of pong-type thing…back in the days before console games had cartridges, so about 1977…30 years ago.  Yowsa, I’m old!  The first console I had that I have a clear memory of was a Colecovision: I had Donkey Kong, plus some kind of adventure game where your “character” was a little ball with a bow going through a 2D maze.  After that I went through a succession of Sega systems, culminating in a Sega Genesis “portable”.  That was about when online PC games started showing up (1996), which somewhat coincidentally was the last time I played a console game for about a decade.

A bit over a year ago my interest was piqued by a game on the XBox.  The price had dropped due to the then-future release of the XBox 360, and so I bought a console.   I enjoyed it, but after about three months I pretty much stopped playing games on the machine.  I discovered one main problem with this: the same TV I wanted to use for gaming was primarily used by Irene for watching TV.   I tried sneaking in a bit of playing time when Irene was out of the house, but ultimate it didn’t work out.

I decided a couple of months ago that I’d like to build myself a dedicated station for playing console games.  I’m talking here about XBox/Playstation/etc type games, and by “station” I mean deskspace, display, speakers and so forth.  I re-organized my office a few weeks ago to create the space for it, and I’ve been buying the components to assemble it during the past week.  Here is what it looks like now:

The monitor and speaker system are sort of a bit “super-sized”.  The display is a 32″ HDTV LCD set, which has HDMI and composite HDTV inputs.  I initially planned on getting a 26″ display, but…the prices kept coming down.  Instead of saving money, I bought a bigger display.  Does this surprise you?  I didn’t think so. 

The speakers…well, that’s entirely my fault.  I bought a nice little set of speakers, Logitech X-340 “5.1″ speakers.  Unfortunately, they weren’t really surround sound speakers unless you were hooking them up to a PC: connected to a console, they were stereo speakers with “fake” surround using what Logitechcalls “matrix mode”.   This just wouldn’t do, since the XBox 360 supports true 5.1 surround sound using optical audio connectors.  I took the X-340 set back to Best Buy and came home with a set of Z-5500 speakers that *do* support optical audio connections and full 5.1 surround.  The sub-woofer in this set is about the size of a small refrigerator…or at least three cats.  Perhaps a bit of overkill?  Nah…

For the curious, I’ve added my XBox 360 gamer tag to the right navigation of my blog here.  You can see what I’ve been playing recently, and how many achievement points (whatever those are) I have.

I played a great game of “Make the Game work with Vista” earlier this week.  It was fun!  I give it an 8 out of 10.  How is the game itself?  I’ll tell you in a few days…

The game in question here is Gothic 3 by Aspyr.  I collected answers to most of the problems I encountered in the game publisher’s community technical forums (see link below).  In an effort to help out folks who might be wanting to install and play this game on Windows Vista (64 bit version in my case), I’ve collected here the things I found necessary/important to make it work:

• Install the Vista version of the tages copy protection tool:  Gothic 3 uses a copy protection scheme called TAGES.  Unfortunately, the drivers for this included with the DVD do not work with Vista (they fail to install).  This means when you try to play the game, you’ll get a dialog saying to “insert the game DVD” even though it is already in your drive.  The fix: go to the TAGES site and download/install the updated Vista compatible drivers.   You can read about the problem here, and get the drivers directly from TAGES here. 
• Update to the current/latest version of Gothic 3: Although this might not strictly be necessary (the American version of the game already includes most of the critical patches), it is higly recommended.  The current version (as of March 7, 2007) is Version 1.12, and is available on the Gothic 3 website. 
• Delete/rename the Gothic3 font (Gothic3.ttf):  This is critical, it seems, at least with ATI video cards.  If you leave this font file (found at [game install dir]/Gothic3.ttf; C:\Program Files (x86)\Aspyr\Gothic III in my default case), the game will play at about one frame per second.  That is, it will be totally unplayable.  You can read about the problem here.  Note that, contrary to what the link says, it isn’t necessary to overwrite/replace the file- you can rename it or delete it, and Gothic 3 will use a default font.    Yes, I find it very odd that a font can reduce framerate to one frame per second, but…it did for me, and others as well it seems

I found the publisher’s (JoWooD) Gothic 3 technical support  forums to be very helpful.  I’d recommend browsing the rest of their Gothic 3 forums for gameplay hints and tips and the like as well.  A good post to start with is the collection of hints and tips links from the Gameplay forum. 

As for the game (Gothic 3) itself: it’s an open-ended single player RPG.  If you liked Oblivion, you will probably find things to like in Gothic 3.  The graphics aren’t quite as rich, but this far I’d say the gameplay is comparably enjoyable.  I might right a more complete review later…

I have been spending some time playing Sigil’s Vanguard lately. It is important to note that I’ve only played my character to about 15th level (and three characters during final beta to about 10th level). A well-rounded review of the game would, in my opinion, require playing at least two or three different classes to mid-levels, and at least one character to nearly maximum level. Since I will likely never do either of these things, I am not going to give an in-depth review here. Instead, these are just some preliminary opinions based on a couple dozen hours of play time.

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I’m not a big fan of Southpark.  I find its “humour” to generally be too crude for my tastes. But every once in a while I catch an episode, and now and then it’s funny without diving too deeply into toilet humour.

One of the most recent episodes has the kids of Southpark discovering World of Warcraft.  It had me laughing quite a bit, and I’ve found an online copy of it if you want to check it out yourself.  Be warned, it does have at least one scene that goes ‘way over the “my god that’s disgusting” line, but for the most part its just funny.

Okay, so I’ve had a few too many “Second Life” posts lately. I’ll do my best to make this the last one for at least a few days.

The other day I bought my land- yesterday I put the finishing touches on my house.

I like the “rustic” look as opposed to the modern appearance many favour. The house itself is something I purchased at a shop.

I’ve also been working on the interior…

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In real life, I own a home. Well, actually, the bank owns most of it. But in Second Life, I now actually own a piece of property.

This is a view from 30 metres or so in the air- my view of the ocean is not so good at ground level, but I like the area. I didn’t pick this area using a great deal of logic- I was looking for land, flying around looking at lots, and in the game saw me flying by and called me over. Jessica spent about an hour chatting with me about land ownership. She invited me into her home and let me wander around to get some ideas regarding how many primatives (”prims“) a lot of a certain size can support. She also pointed me in the direction of some lots a friend of hers was selling. I decided to buy my property more or less based on a snap decision.

So why own virtual land? One reason- if you want a place to “put” your stuff in Second Life so other people can see it, you want land. Every object consists of primatives, and land is what is required for those primitives. Another reason, and the main one for me, is that its “neat” or “fun”: sort of like having a virtual house construction kit. You can change the topology of the land you buy, construct your house (which you can buy in prebuilt modules if you like), and then you get to furnish the place. I spent four or five hours just assembling my house- I’ll have pictures of that later, once I figure out how to get that pesky tree out of my living room

There is a lot of buzz in the on-line community lately about a “game” called Second Life. And not just amongst traditional gamers- there are folks within many big companies that are experimenting with this world which relies almost entirely on user created content. What’s the big deal?

I “get” the concept behind Second Life. Firstly, in essence it’s like a big playground. There are some basic physical laws, but no real “game”- instead, users can create their own content. Objects like a table, a chair…or even a pair of ears or a new face…heck, even an entire new body for their character to wear: all of these things can be created by any user. Objects a user creates can have scripted behaviors- a table could have a fold out extension, or those ears I mentioned could wiggle. Even more intriguing, an objects behavior could be based on something outside the game: virtual weather in an area could be based on real-world weather reports, for example- or a soccer ball could move based on telemetry from a real-world soccer ball.

Secondly, anything a user creates in Second Life is “theirs”. Unlike other games like EverQuest or World of Warcraft, anything new a user creates actually “belongs” to them, not to the folks who run Second Life. The user can copy, buy, or sell items as much as they want. Add to this the fact that in game money (Lindon dollars, or L$) can be bought for real world money via an official money exchange. So…if you are artistic, you could create a new painting for someone to hang on a wall in their virtual Second Life house (assuming they have a house…that costs money too), and you could earn a real-world living from it. Basically everything is for sale. People have bought Second Life “land”, subdivided it, and sold it out at a real world profit. Thousands of dollars of profit, actually.

What kinds of things can players make? Anything, really- cars, planes, helicoptors, horses. Houses, stadiums, entire islands. A mouth, an ear, different eyes, or sex organs. A tattoo, or a different hair style, or a dance animation. A completely new player avatar…it doesn’t have to be remotely humanoid- one I saw was a butterfly. A networkable vendor kiosk complete with financial management and automatic emails to the owner of sales status, or a security system complete with “repulsion fields” that can be attached to a home.
All of this is interesting enough, but is it a game? The game itself is free to download: you pay a subscription fee ($9.95 a month) if you want to own land, which at least to start is probably beyond most people. So I downloaded it and tried it out. My opinions? Well, I can see how people could get addicted to Second Life, even though I can’t really detect a “game” here in the traditional sense. Anyone who comes to Second Life expecting to go out and slay some monsters or something is in for a rude shock.

So what did I do in Second Life? Here’s a brief list:

• First, I went through an orientation that told me how to walk around and change my appearance

• I made an avatar that sort of looks like me: dumpy looking, skinny with a pot-belly, red hair. I couldn’t get the face quite right

• The clothing I’m wearing in the picture above came later: the default clothing you get is basically a pair of blue jeans and a white T-Shirt
• While experimenting with my appearance, I discovered that the method for changing your appearance is not only very flexible, but that you can have multiple appearance “packages”, including body shape, physical attachments, and scripted behaviors…and just drag and drop to switch between them
• then I “teleported” into the main part of the game world; I found a car dealership which offered to give me a free test drive. I spent five minutes driving around a car that really couldn’t be said to be much more than a dressed up roller skate: fun, but its not a simulator
• I wandered around near the car dealership, and stumbled through some private homes- some had “security systems” that kicked me away. Those that let me in varied in terms of furnishings and details radically
• I talked to another player who’s name indicated she was a “Trainer” from something called TeaZers University…at the time, I had no idea what this was, but I’ve later learned that TeaZers is a fairly well respected educational community within the game…I have no idea how or why this exists, but apparently they even pay their instructors. Anyway, this young lady gave me some guidance (including a landmark so I could find the University) while I admired her ears…yes, her ears. She was a normal human avatar, except for a pair of “cat” ears that were swivelling and and wiggling realistically- scripted objects attached to a person
• I wandered some more and found a shop selling complete new avatars- critter avatars (wolfs, felines, etc). I liked what I saw, so I made note of where the place was- they also had “freebies”- the T-Shirt I’m wearing in the above picture, which has an advertisement for their shop on the back
• Off I went to check out the location of TeaZers University- I found a bunch of people (instructors) playing with different body modifications and outfits, and also received some more free items- the pants and boots I’m wearing in the above picture plus many other odds and ends

Netting it out…I still really don’t know if Second Life would keep me interested over any really extended period. A lot would depend on the social network that you build in the game, and I’m generally anti-social. Another thing that might keep me interested would be if I got involved in creating things…but from what I’ve seen, this market is flooded with highly talented people with lots of spare time. Making something purely for my own amusement would become boring after a while, and I lack the artistic talent to make the visually appealing things people would want to buy.

Second Life is an intriguing place. It’s not for your “average” gamer…I’d say its more appealing for people who might like the Sims, or who want a graphical chat program they can customize. People who partake of more free-form MUDs and MUCKs would likely find much to appreciate here. And, from the large selection of “functional” sexual body parts and animations that can be acquired, I’d say Second Life would appeal to people who enjoy pixellated sex.

But then I’ve barely even skimmed the surface- I’m sure there are much greater depths to be found in Second Life. I know some schools are using the “restricted” (PG/teen) areas for on-line education. I could also see businesses using Second Life for informal presentations for the same reason they have streaming videos of conferences: it “personalizes” things. Thus far it seems like whatever it is Second Life offers has attracted enough participants to make it sustainable, and that in itself is intriguing.

Oblivion has been and continues to be a fascinating game for me.  I know full well that some people claim to have completed the main quest in as little as a couple of days, but I’m now up to over 70 hours of play time…and I’m still not finished. 

The main quest isn’t hard and, in fact, it’s arguable that its easier to complete if you do it quickly.  Oblivion “scales” your foes as your character goes up in level- so if you work on a quest when you are level 5 your opponents will all be around the same level as you.  If you wait until you are 20th level, your opponents will have “kept up”…and although this may sound like the challenge is the same, the powers (spells, items, and so forth) at higher levels are (in my opinion) more challenging
to deal with. 

So how is the game keeping me busy?  Well, I’ll give a few examples, including my most significant accomplishment to date…

***** WARNING *** SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW *** WARNING *****

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