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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Shameless self-promotion time again - my review of Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call is up at Pixelsurgeon.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 20:34
Friday, October 14, 2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
I'm an idiot. Earlier on today, I realised that I've had access to a modified PS2 for about two years.
My brother bought himself a pre-modded PS2 some time ago (for the purpose of playing, ahem, 'backups'). It was always a bit temperamental, and when I tried running my US copy of Final Fantasy Tactics on it, I was met with a complete lack of success. So we presumed that the chip was fucked and, while it'd accept copies with a bit of a kick, didn't want to have anything to do with imported games.
Which was a daft conclusion to reach, now I come to think about it. At the very least, I should have bought the cheapest import PS2 game I could find and tried it out. But no - it didn'twork, that was that.
Then I stumbled across a thread on a board today that cleared it up. The chip in question only boots PS1 imports when you go through a process of booting, resetting and rebooting them. PS2 imports work without any such shenanigans.
And I think now of the games I could have been playing, the shitty PAL ports that there was no need for me to put up with, if only I'd known (said PS2 having been gathering dust for about eighteen of those twenty-four months, my brother deciding that he's not really into the whole console thing after all). I could have had the 'complete' versions of the Nippon Ichi games, with their options for English or Japanese vocal tracks. I could have had all those Japanese shoot 'em ups that'll never appear elsewhere officially.
I could have had Katamari Damancy. I could have had Magic Pengel.
Rather obviously, I soon will. The good thing about the length of time that it's taken me to realise that multi-region PS2 gaming is something that I could have been enjoying for months is that a lot of the games I've been salivating over are now pretty cheap. It also means that I've got a real sense of excitement about finally getting to play them, which is something that can really add to the experience - I find that if I expect to be bored or underwhelmed by a game, I'm inevitably bored or underwhelmed by it, whereas games that I'm totally pumped for nearly always end up being my latest Best Thing Ever.
Magic Pengel, in particular, I can't wait to load up. A game that asks you to doodle your own characters, then translates them into three dimensions and lets you send them into battle? A game that Studio Ghibli have brushed their magic paintbrush over? Yes please. It doesn't even matter that the battle part is meant to be a bit under-developed - a game doesn't *have* to be constructed of rules and balances in order to be a game, you know. It just has to be fun (which'd be why I tend to overuse that word like a loony).
All in all, I'm very chuffed about this, and will likely be boring the pants off people by going on about a whole range of games that they couldn't give two shits about for the foreseeable future.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 23:17
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Please to forgive the fact that I'm about to simply cut and paste a post I've just made elsewhere on the old Internet, but I feel the need.
See, FarCry Instincts has been getting some decent write-ups by reviewing bods and is arguably the Xbox's last big game before the 360 hits (or splutters to the ground with an explosion that has all the force of a gnat's fart, if - as now seems extremely likely - the only games available for it in its first month of retail life are EA Sports titles), so I think I can be forgiven for expecting slightly more than this. A game that works, for a start.
Just prior to this post, I'd been talking about how the game's frame rate is depressingly inconsistent, leading to the first first-person shooter in about thirteen years to give me motion sickness. Post begins:
Seems that just pegging it about, firing wildly makes the frame rate issues far less problematic than when you're trying to play it stealthy.
So I can live with that.
Unfortunately, I'm not sure that I can live with the FUCKING BUGS that FUCKING UBISOFT have ensured that the FUCKING GAME is FUCKING RIDDLED WITH by, presumably, doing exactly the same as they did with Ghost Recon 2: Summit Strike, and pushing it out of the FUCKING DOOR without FUCKING TESTING THE THING.
I'm still on level two, I think. Wherever I am, my objective is to destroy an ammo dump. So I make my way to the point indicated on the radar. Take out a bunch of baddies. Hang on, there's one still around here somewhere. Ah, there he is. Pop. Bullet to the head. Oh, still alive. Pop. Another bullet. No, not dead yet. Machine gun time. Rattattatatatat. Hmm. Still alive. Knife. Slicey slicey. Ouch. Sliced me back.
Oh, what's this next to him? A quad bike? Smart, I'll get on that. Ah, hang about again. "You cannot get in a vehicle that is being used by an enemy." Okay, yeah, that makes sense, but he's not using it - he's stood about three feet away from it. Bah. Kick it out of the way. Put it back upright. Now can I get onto it? Yeah, cool. I'll run the cunt down with it. No, maybe I won't - he's now stood on top of it while I'm driving it around. Interesting.
So yeah. I give up trying to kill the invincible dude. He's harmless as long as I don't try and cut him. Keeps on repeating the same voice sample over and over again, but he's not doing me any physical harm. Now then, let's find this ammo dump.
Find it. Clear it out. Now what do I do? Hmm. Presume it's this building here. Locked. Can't get in. Bah. Bang the quad bike into the doors in frustration. Oh, look - the front of the building disappeared. Doors are still standing, though. Wonder if I can go through the broken wall? Yes, yes I can. Oh, and when I turn back around to look at the way I came in, the wall is suddenly visible from the inside of the building. Can I get back out that way? Yes, yes I can. Visible. Invisible. Visible. Invisible. Nice work.
Explosives. Nice. Plant them here? Okay. Find my way out quickly? No problem - I'll go through the magic wall again.
And then, friends, we come to the point where I just gave up. Follow the helicopter? Yeah, no problem. Oh, it's gone to the right. Maybe I can jump off this bridge and land safely in the water below, take a short cut? Jump. Oh, no. The water's not as deep as I thought it was. Bums. Dead now. Reload from last autosave.
Oh. Oh dear. It's autosaved while I was in mid-air, half a second before I died. And I die within a second every time I load that save point. Fuckit.
So, what's the other option? Start the mission over from the beginning.
You must be fucking joking.
How in the name of FUCKING HELL has this bug-ridden piece of shit made it into the FUCKING SHOPS? More to the point, how in the name of FUCKING HELL is it getting such blistering reviews - reviews, it should be noted, that don't mention the FUCKING GAME-DESTROYING BUGS once.
Those of you looking to Ghost Recon 360 to provide your first real hit of next gen thrills, consider yourselves warned. I was presuming that maybe GR2:SS was messed up because it was just a quick and easy franchise filler for Ubi while they were getting their bigger name stuff polished off, but that's clearly not the case now. This is supposed to be their biggest Xbox game of the year, and it's even more broken than that was. It'll be the very last time I buy a game developed by one of their teams.
Post ends.
E. Randy Dupre's brain told him to write this at 02:57
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Losing the fight against mediocrity for the last few years. Fire a volley |
