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31 Aug 07
I hate fighting meaningless battles. I suppose that sounds odd since I love games with battles, and they don't technically mean anything. But to me, gaming battles are fun and a nice escape. That gives them meaning. That's not what I'm talking about. Lately, I've been fighting with my computer.
It turns out I had two problems. The difficulty came in the fact that gave the same symptoms. My internet connection was intermittent. That's bad when you're trying to upload media and content to the site. I also had a couple of spam posters attacking the site which didn't add anything to my mood.
One problem was simple, but out of my control. I had Roadrunner for a long time as my ISP. Then Time Warner and Comcast terminated some joint agreement, and Houston was turned over to Comcast. In general it hasn't been bad. They are working on tweaking some of the internet connections. Strangely they seemed to be blocking some of the public DNS servers. I guess they want you to use theirs. That'd be fine if they never go down. Needless to say, they've been going down recently. Mostly it's been for short periods of time. It's still frustrating.
Comcast has also been doing some maintenance that has resulted in brief outages. That also wouldn't be so bad, but about half of them have required cycling the cable modem to get back online. Since you don't know when it's coming back up, that can be frustrating.
The second problem turned out to be more insidious. There was a patch to my firewall last week. It didn't seem to cause any problems. Then a few days later, my internet would drop after any period of use. It was particularly odd since it would only lock up after using the internet. The computer could be on for a while and everything would be fine. Then I'd start using the internet and about twenty minutes later it would drop. It was very annoying. At first, the only thing that worked was a reboot. Then I realized since that was the only computer going down on those occasions, it had to be something on that rig. After scanning for viruses and spyware turned up nothing, I tried disabling the firewall. Boom, instant internet.
That turned out to be the final straw. I considered a reinstall from the latest version, but then I started thinking about how much I've fought that firewall. It crippled my lan connectivity until I turned off most of the safe zone features. It hated Steam for some reason (something about the update server switching). I've had problems with various games and programs. Eventually I uninstalled and decided to try Vista's built in firewall. So far, I've had less headaches. We'll see if that changes.
What really galls me is that I love the features in that firewall. It had a privacy protection system, a pop up blocker that could selectively block ads from questionable sites and a ton of options that could let me use only the features I liked. Unfortunately, I was eventually disabling the whole system just to get my computer to work. In fact, the whole system seems to run faster now. We'll see if there's any exposure risk. It's supposed to be better than the XP firewall, and I'm still behind the hardware router. We'll see.
Jason
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15 Aug 07
I played the Bioshock demo on the Xbox 360 yesterday. It did exactly what a demo should do. It made me excited to play the game and want to play it now. I've played plenty of demos recently that haven't done that. Beautiful Katamari was short and felt like more of the same (though not bad for people who didn't play the first games). Stranglehold looked great and played like an action movie, but I felt pretty satisfied after playing it and didn't really want more. Dynasty Warriors: Gundam was more fun than I was expecting, but the combat still felt too limited and repetitive to generate enough interest. Shadowrun had some very neat ideas, but I don't like bunny hopping in normal shooters. Adding in teleporting, gliding and other magic made me feel lost and slow not empowered. Heavenly Sword was so short that I didn't get a good feel for the game. I did replay it a few times and began to understand some of the depth of the combat system, but I'm not counting the days until it's released. I actually played The Darkness demo on both the PS3 and the Xbox 360, but that was mostly to compare the two. I thought the PS3 version looked a little better. I might pick it up as a bargain bin game. That's probably not the response they were looking for. Eternal Sonata looked gorgeous, but I was bored before I finished the demo. I won't even mention the mess that was the Def Jam: Icon demo.
Clearly publishers need to look at the Bioshock demo to see how it's done. It went through the first part of the game (perhaps slightly condensed?). It went through my plane crash, the discovery of the lighthouse/entrance to Rapture. Then I got to play a bit through a restaurant and theater area. The first thing I noticed was how beautiful the game was. Sure, I've seen Unreal tech before. Gears of War is stunning at times. Bioshock combines a more beautiful and striking art style with the lighting and models to create an amazing atmosphere. You can see the beauty and the pride and decay all at the same time. Also impressive is the sense of water around you all the time.
The game controls very well on the 360. Normally, I prefer shooters on the PC. It really feels like the 360 was the lead platform for development though. The controls are spot on. Objects have weight. Enemies can move fast but the aiming keeps right with them. I never felt like I was fighting the controls.
The sound was great as well. It was System Shock 2 great. From the voices and chatter to the weapons and, of course, the water, you felt like you were there. The triggering of a distant alarm set off your nerves. Even with the small sample, the voice acting was top notch. The splicers sounded like part human monsters while the (presumed) humans sounded like real people dealing with extraordinary events.
The demo was pretty short. It was probably less than thirty minutes. I only saw three weapons, two powers, a handful of enemies and two security systems. I really felt I had a taste of the game though. The hacking wasn't too hard. The different enemies moved and reacted individually. It felt like stepping into another world.
If the AI works as promised and encounters play out dynamically based on your timing, actions and plans, this could be a great game for story telling. The movie at the end had some nice power demonstrations, telekinetically moving traps, freezing and shattering enemies, modifying weapons and turning enemies against each other. Even if it played very linear and traditionally like a shooter, it would be worth playing for the tight controls and great production values. If it truly opens up, it could be a classic in the making.
Jason
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10 Aug 07
I have plenty of things I want to write about, but tonight I'm just going with what's on my mind. I received a review copy of Persona 3. It's a console RPG for the Playstation 2. It's a Japanese game localized by Atlus. I say localized, but I should say translated. The story takes place in a Japanese high school. To me that's about as foreign as ancient Greece. Since the story is just translated, it keeps that odd foreign vibe going that actually adds to the game.
The weird thing about Persona 3 is that it was a game I was planning to skip. It sounded interesting and psychological, but it had some very disturbing imagery that turned me off. In short, to a casual observer, it appears the characters in the game are committing suicide to defeat their demons. In fact, Penny Arcade put up a comic to that effect. The fact that they are doing something different doesn't lessen the impact of seeing it.
I can't pretend to be indifferent about suicidal imagery. I had a friend in high school who killed himself. We weren't close friends. We belonged to the same circle of friends. We knew each other and talked to each other. I knew his parent's divorce was upsetting him but I was blind sided by his suicide. I couldn't even go to his funeral because I couldn't admit to myself that I was his friend when I had no idea of the pain he was experiencing. With time and perspective, I'm able to correct that and say I was his friend but didn't know him as well as I should have. I was shaken up at the time. Even now, years and years later it still doesn't seem entirely real.
It's hard for me to judge Persona 3 then. In the game the characters are using gun shaped devices called evokers to summon their Persona into battle. They do this by pointing them at their heads and pulling the trigger. Then some shards of light fly through their heads and out the other side. Then the Persona appears and attacks the enemy or casts its spell. While physical attacks are part of the game, you'll see the summoning animation several times per battle.
The core narrative of the game fights against that imagery. These kids are fighting to protect people from apathy and darkness by fighting the shadows themselves. A key part of the game involves building friendships and social networks that both help you learn about what's going on in the neighborhood and help strengthen your character in combat. The gameplay foundations of time management, social networking and the battle system are rock solid and quite enjoyable. There's also a collect 'em all mechanic with Persona cards and combining cards.
In fact, if the imagery doesn't bother you, I would recommend the game to anyone looking for a good JRPG. Perhaps the story will unfold to explain the need for such imagery. Then I could give it a whole hearted recommendation. If not, perhaps it's just lost in the translation, but it seems to be pushing an envelope that doesn't need to be pushed.
Jason
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8 Aug 07
I'm just going to chalk up these last few weeks as bad luck or bad karma working itself out. Few of the problems were very big, but there seemed to be no end. I think I'm back now and will try to get things sorted out. It doesn't look like I missed too much. If you see anything I missed, let me know.
While I sort through all the information, I only have a couple of quick things for you. Gamers with Jobs has a nice write up on the new Civ IV expansion. It certainly makes it sound like a must buy. That's convenient since Circuit City has it on sale this week for $15. It's sold out online so you'll have to check you local store.
There was one email I wanted to pass on. Apparently, Will Wright spoke at TED. From the TED conference,
"In a friendly, high-speed presentation, Will Wright demos his newest game, Spore, which promises to dazzle users even more than his previous masterpieces. Here Wright encourages users to create not households, as in The Sims, or cities, as in SimCity, but the entire universe, from single-celled life forms to galactic physics. While guiding us through his mesmerizing beta, Wright shares his thoughts on Montessori schools, Darwinian theory and long-term thinking, emphasizing, throughout, that Spore is not so much a game as an opportunity for discovery -- "an imagination amplifier.""
Here's the link to the talk. Enjoy.
Jason
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23 Jul 07
So where have I been? Well, there have been two things. One is a head injury involving a toddler, a plastic dinosaur egg and a big headache (best not to ask). The other is my new PS3. Yes, I took the Amazon deal on the last day before it expired. Overall, I'm pretty pleased. I have a lot of thoughts on the PS3, but I'm going to hold off on most of them. Partly because I don't want the glow to make things look better than they are, but also there's a new system update coming out soon that will add some features and hopefully herald the Heavenly Sword demo.
One thing that has impressed me was the integration of Folding at Home. It's right there in the network section. Basically, it's just a link but putting it in the OS means that a much higher percentage of people will try it out. It can be set up to start automatically after a set idle period. So while you are downloading the huge demos and movies to your hard drive, Folding can get some work out of your idle cell processor.
In case you're not familiar with Folding, check out the link above. In brief, it's a distributed computing model that simulates protein folding that can shed light on diseases, give insights on nanoconstruction and the self construction of proteins themselves.
It's easy to see why Sony is interested in it. Not only do they get good PR for helping out research that can help mankind, but it happens to be the type of computing that the cell is crazy good at. I should note there are different Folding clients that do different types of work. Obviously the PS3 client is tailored to the cell. But if you look at the current stats, the PS3's are doing 452 of the 722 total TFLOPS of computing. Even if it doesn't mean the PS3 contributions are more important than any others, it does show that the cell and the PS3 have plenty of practical power under the hood. Now they just need to translate that into some games.
Jason
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