Lets see; it's a download manager and it launches by default 'at start'. It is listening for external network connections (what, is it peer to peer over my 3g datamodem?). Apparently, this is to support 'updates or patches' to the software I've purchased.
And then, to emphasize how important it is (apparently it is vital for my life and the functioning of the world) it puts an icon on the desktop (low resolution, not befitting Vista) loudly declaring what it.
pricks. You are not that important. Really. Get over yourselves.
Oh my god. That is completely and utterly insane. Apparently you can only install/activate Mass Effect three times on a machine before you need to contact EA to get more of them. Typically, I'm not a big installer/reinstaller, but this is in-f***ing sane.
Oooooooh, and don't point at the EULA and say 'Haha!'. Nobody reads them, and there's a very good chance that it's not enforcable due to the fact that it's not been signed and witnessed. Computers do not witnesses make. You can fake everything.
Defeating the laughing octopus this time round was significantly easier, simply due to knowing all the patterns already. I do like the leaking the color out of the scene effect that is used at certain sections. Very artsy and very well done.
Then I played for at least an hour after that and remembered to save.
Why can't these folks auto-save upon zone transitions (like half-life 2). I was saving every time I could simply to be on the safe side.
Two nights ago I got past the Laughing Octopus boss battle in MGS4. Last night I fired up the game and guess what? It had me right at the start of the battle again.
Aargh! That's just infuriating. I gave up on the game for the night at that. Just not in the mood. Maybe on Sunday when I return from the Kingdom.
Kojima seems to have a big on for the Octopus :)
And when you get to the end of the first act there's another 3 minute hard-drive install while the game chastises you for staying up too late. Nice of it to do that.
I Don't know. It seems kind of slow to start. I must be rusty in these kinds of games. On the plus side, Mass Effect for the PC is fine, once you remove the film grain visual effect it actually looks quite nice.
Ok, I ponied up a wodge of cash for a ps3 and a few games (and paid the tax for a few movies too). I got Uncharted:Drake's Fortune and Assassins Creed (grammar note: this is a creed that covers all Assassins, so I think the apostrophe should come after the s).
Well, Uncharted is just fun. I'm still a newbie to controller based gaming, but over all, I am impressed. The puzzles and combat just seem to work well; mind you I'd be hard pressed to find that many mercs on any one island. You would need to pay them a hell of a lot of money to stay once they start getting killed with any degree of regularity. Reality aside, it just works as a game. The visuals are great and the game play is well paced and just combines to give us a good experience
Not so Assassins Creed. Booooring is probably the best expression for it. Boring in the same way that performing the same, repetitive missions time and time again gets really damned boring. You get to the city, save the person in distress and then sneak in in the company of a bunch of monks. That's the only way in. Then once you get in you have to perform a minimal set of a handful of styles of missions in order to get to the real mission.
You can go everywhere.... so bloody what, it doesn't help in the complete absence of variety in the missions.
The visuals are great... No, they're good, put a few more pixels on Outcast and it would probably beat Assassins Creed hands down.
For a company like Ubisoft who have produced an excellent run of 3D games in the Prince of Persia series (which got boring, but made up for it in the puzzles) I am stunned that they could produce such a band title. I'm left wondering if they were just scared to produce something that had a bit of excitement in it due to the fact that they set it in a contentious time period (which even then is a huge cop-out, god how I have another rant stored about that).
Oh for another Beyond Good And Evil, Damn, that game is a milestone that needs to be shown to people as an example of how to make a game that reaches out to the player.
Steam is a great idea. You get to download your games and you can play anywhere that you can log in to steam. The problem is that the prices of the games are a bit on the high side. For example today Eidos have announced a load of their games are now on steam. Hitman: blood money is $35.95. It's cheaper to walk into your local game store and get it there.
For some reason the re-release on steam pumps the price up over what you can get in the stores. And then it stays there. You get the occasional reduction in price, but overall the price of each game remains reasonably static for it's life on the system. Which is frustrating.
Apparently the PS3 has this new thing called 'home'. It's basically second life for all those people who bought a PS3. Or there, or something equally as silly. The benefit of it is that sony don't have to program for every GPU on the planet - they only need to get it working for the PS3 and they're golden. Everyone on the site has at least one thing in common, and they don't need to congratulate each other again and again. Based on the sweet graphics, I'm presuming that just about everything on it is small-c configurable, rather than big-c configurable (involving lots of downloading).
I got a copy of Supreme Commander last night, even though I was worried it was not going to work on the computee; having seen several reviews complaining about the performance. Mind you, I'm playing Company of Heroes at 1920x1200 resolution, so I was not expecting a slowdown. The screen adjusts itself to give you the best view of the play area. It seems to have been designed to scale quite well - as opposed to some other games. So far, I spent about an hour and a half playing it and it does have a lot of the feel of Total Annihilation about it - you end up with a lot of vehicles to control very early on in the game, and you lose a lot as you try to keep the weak against air units covered by the weak against ground units. Move forward in fits and starts and send out scouts to see what's over the horizon. Fun for all the military strategists in the family, especially the history teachers. It really feels like directing armies versus directing small numbers of units. Well planning on attending the great engagement ring reveal party tonight, so I won't be playing this... that is unless I start playing early in the morning when you should expect a rant of tired segueing into something completely surreal. Just like all my other entries (well, not all of them; primarily the ones that have taken place after the hours of midnight and post alcohol enjoyment.) Remember kids '[]' are brackets, '{}' are braces and '()' are parentheses, so mind the parenthetical expressions in your sentences. Note, that I don't generally consider '<>' as any of the above family; I just consider them annoying...
I was looking for a case for the UMDs for the PSP. Could not find one anywhere unless I bought a complete hard-shell case for the box. I got back to the house and there was a small present from Sony - a case for holding 5 UMD's. What a nice Christmas present, it put a smile on my face (and another on my case as I don't have to carry around all those UMD boxes.
Finally deactivated that fracking red mercury bomb. For the last mission I decided that all bets were off for all the other characters in the game - really should not have done that as it sent my stats into the floor. Prior to this mission it was practically 100% intact bad guys, for some places. Well, leaving the boat blow up doesn't count, does it?
It's an interesting one. I seem to be less capable of commanding troops in Company of Heroes than other games. The problem stems, I think from the feeling I have that the troops in CofH are real people, I empathize with them when I see them being cut to ribbons by machine guns. I hate it when my snipers get shot, and I get angry when a tank runs my men over.
Then we have Warhammer 40k, Dawn of War. I have no compunctions to sending wave after wave of troops at the opposition, slowly eroding their numbers until I can actually wipe them out. Entire squads get wiped out and I just send more in. I just don't have the same connection to them.
Strange that, and it's only a computer game.
I have a set of hand written pages of the next 20-30 features to implement/changes to make to pocketcity in order to make it 1. better and 2. more easy to port. One of the things I'm planning on doing is moving the water pipes underground. This will change things quite a bit.
I'm considering getting a new laptop (again) and I've reached the point where the hardware that's available is reaching what I want. It needs dual-core processor; I'm not getting another uni-processor machine again. Acer have dual core centrino models, with a decent graphics card. The only problems are the DVD drive and the video card. It's a DVD-RAM drive. It won't region free! it's the same problem as the Ferraris. I don't want to re-code all the non region-2 discs I have. That would be a pain in the ass. The video card isn't supported in Linux either, which is another annoyance. I hope that ATI release a driver for the X1000 family soon.
Alternatives are Alienware and their Aurora m7700, which has an athlon processor. Has a more supported graphics card, but it's about twice as expensive as the Acer. Then there's the Widow PC laptop. Still the price tag problem.
Until I get a new laptop, I'll have to be happy with the one I have. It's an early generation centrino, so I've only got a/b wireless, and an integrated GPU. It works well for what I'm doing (programming, watching movies, occasional game).
Shame that Dell haven't caught up on dual core for the gaming laptop.
I didn't know about the electronic disruptor until the last level. I'll have to replay it now that I know about it, to see how much of a difference it makes.
I download the european version of the patch. Bleugh, another 200MB download. I apply the patch and now the game no longer works as it claims the game DVD is incorrect. Piece of s**t. There's no way to unpatch the program so I uninstall it to reinstall it. I forgot to have the game manual handy. Hunt the install key.
Could it be that having Splinter Cell and F.E.A.R. installed on the computer at the same time could be causing problems? Or was it an incorrect patch, as it worked before I applied the patch.
Annoying, I'll just have to stick to playing Splinter Cell until I'm finished it.
I wandered into the store yesterday and they have sold out of Xboxes. Now they have a sign up telling people that they can pay for the box now, and expect it in mid January. Well, I would just love to see the face of some snotty little kid on Christmas day, expecitng and Xbox and getting a card saying: 'iou in mid January'.
Liver liver on the wall, who's the swollenest of them all.
I'm wondering if my friend 'Tipp got his Xbox 360 today. I certainly didn't get one. I'll just saunter down to the nearest toy shop and see if they have one. If they do, then maybe I'll get it, or maybe not. I don't really have the time to invest in games at the moment.
I got myself a new phone, It's really really shiny. It's a Sony Ericsson V800, which of course means that it's a vodafone item (I wonder how many company names can I drop in a single post). I have already downloaded one game for it - worms, and will probably download quite a few more. They make for a good diversion on the train into the office, or when I'm just idling. The thing that I've a bit of a complaint about is that the games are €5 each, which can add up. I should write a few games myself, or adapt some of the openly available linux games that are sitting around (they're C, and you really really need to use java for games on the phones for the most compatibility).
It makes for an interesting challenge - could I convert an aspect of pocketcity into a phone-based one, mind you I need to get the damned game past the alpha level. I've been so busy in the office over the last year that I've not had much time to work on it. I'm getting complaints from developers who would be interested in doing more development on it. I'm not stopping them - hell I've given them full read/write CVS access to the source, but since I've given them access to it, I've not seen one commit to the source. I feel all left out as if I'm the only person working on this.
Well I'm glad that I've got to the end of half-life 2. maybe now I won't be hearing the troubled breathing of combine troops any time it gets quiet.
Well it's early in the morning and I feel I've made some progress in half life 2, so I may as well get some sleep. Nothing too taxing in the difficulty so far - a few traps a nasty helicopter. I like the way the starting animation for the game is dependent in where you've progressed to during the game - if it was static then it wouldn't be as good.
Half life 2 and it won't install. It turns out that if you don't want to install Counterstrike:Source you can't install half life 2 AAAAAARGH!
I just love the retro look of 
It's fun. I can't believe that one of the mad scientists has a headcrab as a pet Talking about silly. They've really taken out all the stops in this one. And in case you're wondering; No I was not up until 4am playing the damned game.
