Blog du Tristank : Games

Max Payne 2 on Xbox Originals

tristank — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 10:01:39 GMT

Awesome, in a word.

Wins my award for most heartbreaking game ever. With some pretty funky action along the way.

I wasn’t as much of a fan of the first one, though if you play them back to back, they run very well together.

(Though the part in MP2 that always troubled me was how the people you’re shooting at don’t get damaged per se; they just take an endless supply of bullets and get tossed around. Breaks suspension of disbelief. Well, that and the whole “Bullet Time” thing, which was done very well in this one.)

Game Season Approaches

tristank — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 09:25:18 GMT

After what seems like a drought of epic proportions, the holiday releases are gradually going to thump their way out. Yay!

What I'm looking forward to:

Fallout 3 - once again, the Australian OFLC needs an R rating for interactive entertainment. I watched the ABC's "Q&A" when the subject was brought up, and ended up furious that people could be so heavily, forcefully opinionated and ignorant at the same time. Makes me wonder whether it's worth watching on *any* subject, if everyone's just going to make stuff up, and then argue that (what they made up) is bad.

Saints Row 2 - I don't know about you, but while GTA IV was "good", I *seriously* fought the urge to skip the cutscenes. Every previous GTA game was entertaining in the cutscenes, and I actually looked forward to them. GTA IV - not at all. I'm hoping Saints Row is more of the over-the-top fun of Vice City or San Andreas; I really liked the original, despite its flaws (Invisible Car!).

Far Cry 2 - I read a developer interview on GamaSutra with the developer (Ubisoft Montreal, Crytek are doing Crysis these days) about how they were really shooting for "open world, open story" and might have a completely massive failure: I really hope they pull it off. I'll be playing it to find out.

Stalker: Clear Skies - I didn't actually finish Stalker, so I might go spend the next few weeks doing that. Loved it, early bugs and all.

Geometry Wars 2 - cheating, because I'm actually playing this already and it's great!

Battlefield: Bad Company - I thought that the earlier Battlefield version for the 360 was superior to the PC Battlefield 2 in many ways. (Controversially, I had the same impression of Xbox Operation Flashpoint vs PC Flashpoint - sometimes a game just *works* on a console). I just saw this is already out, so I'm there!

Too Human - Wasn't really interested, and I played the demo with some reluctance, but it was surprisingly engaging (I didn't think it'd grab me at all, but it did). The reviews haven't been stellar, but I enjoyed the 1GB's worth.

Force Unleashed - Possibly not for the reason you think- I want so see if there's an easter egg where I can get shot by Baltar (geddit!?)

Oh, it's the 29th!

tristank — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 10:05:19 GMT

Which means I was going to go buy GTA IV today!

GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas absolutely blew me away with the quality of the narrative and distinctive and unique open worlds. Best of all, guilty pleasures all in a consequence-free environment! I mean, I could jump buildings on a motorcycle! I can't do that in real life!

GTA IV, though, apparently got edited to appease the crazy "games are not for adults" censorship laws we have here in Oz.

I trust Rockstar to have produced the best story, characters and content possible, and while I'm sure it'll be great anyway, I'll have no idea what I'm missing out on.

And unfortunately if I buy a console version, I'm almost certainly not going to be able to mod it back to its original state later.

At least noises are being made about rescinding this sad, inexplicable state of affairs.

Might pick up a copy from Europe...

ROCKtober approaches again

tristank — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:12:49 GMT

Fans of this blog - of whom there are at least six (see mum? 100% up on last year, despite the lack of official updates) - will know that I hold a special place in my heart for October, or as the cool kids like to call it, ROCKtober.

Why does October Rock this year?

Well, I'll give you one good reason that rhymes with "Pron Heck Gob Ham Ray Thing Bore" - PGR4, baby! (well can you think of words that rhyme with Project Gotham Racing, without cheating? Nor could I. So just drop it, okay? Please? Hug?). I can't wait! But I must...

It's out October 2 according to the US site, so shortly thereafter Down Here would be my bet... Rocktober's off to a rockin' start, and it's only late August. Now that's Value™).

Aussie HD-DVD add-on selling well?

tristank — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 18:10:50 GMT

I'd heard they were out, but couldn't find one for money nor begging at the local shopping centre this weekend.

This either means they're really popular, or we just sold all four we imported!

Consumer: Drat. Shareholder: much rejoicing.

360 Elite, Eh?

tristank — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 09:48:17 GMT

We announced what appears to have been the world's worst-kept gaming secret!

From my perspective (as an Australian owner of a White Xbox for the last year), I'm not fussed; HDMI is non-present on my current monitor, and I'm quite happy with the VGA cable. Not as happy with the 50hz PAL problem on backwards compatible games, but if HDMI ain't an option anyway...

It costs about the same amount more as the drive costs, so HDMI looks like the fundamental improvement here:

Elite cost $US479
Premium $US399
Core $US299

Sooo... looks like I'll just upgrade the drive on my trusty white box at some point. Then again, there's no movie store here, so... hopefully we'll be guinea pigs for IPTV instead? :)

Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver for Windows: Installation Experience

tristank — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 13:26:19 GMT

"Experience" is a lovely word for a corporate blog. Discuss.

Anyway, my experience was that it didn't work the first time round. That was at 7pm. it's now 9pm, and I've just finished my first laps around Barcelona in RFactor, using the Wireless Racing Wheel and TrackIR.

Awesome? You betcha! Easy? Not quite what I'd hoped for!

So what can you learn from my experience, dear gamer? Read on...

I'd gone out to buy the receiver this evening - so it's available in Australia now! - and ended up getting a receiver-and-controller-in-one pack, as the standalone receivers seemed to have sold out quicksmart (and there was much rejoicing among shareholders).

After the by-now-rather-passe strains and cuts endured while opening the packaging/security enclosure/weaponized clear plastic container, I was eager to just plug stuff in!

Reading the helpful green tag on the plug ("Install software first"), I was tempted to just plug it in and let WindowsUpdate do the rest, but I thought I'd Do The Right Thing and, y'know, install the CD it came with.

That Was My Mistake

That, it appears, was my mistake. If you skip to the "After System Restore" section below, you'll see that the installation can be perfectly painless.

For me, though, it wasn't. The CD was put in, Autorun selected, and it promptly told me I didn't meet the system requirements and should check the website.

This I did, and eventually browsed my way over to the Wireless Receiver download for Windows Vista X64.

Note for first-time readers: I run Windows Vista X64 at home on my gaming machine. I've never been able to justify this decision rationally, except with the flimsiest of excuses: more bits must be better. (and more registers, and fewer k-mode drivers, and...)

Anyway, I installed the proffered software, it found the wireless receiver and installed a nice Xbox-like indicator accessory thingo.

But no matter what I did, whatever combination of resync-button-mashing or battery removal or unplugging or replugging or... well, anything (there are a massive total of three relevant buttons, the Guide button solely being used for power in this scenario, so there's not a vast amount of creativity required), the controller's ring of light would loop, then both the receiver and controller would flash, then the controller would continue all-quadrants-flashing. It was very consistent - sorta the equivalent of "yes, I know you're there, but I don't want to talk to you". Plus, when I was trying to repurpose an existing controller, I'd end up turning the Xbox 360 on all the time.

On the X64 box, I'm running in test-signing mode to get past some semi-signed driver issues, and at the back of my mind, I'm always a little suspicious that something somewhere is working differently because of this. So far, I haven't found anything that was directly attributable to it, but I live in fear (and with Test Mode printed in all eight corners of my screens).

So, I tried it out on Tiny, my P1610, far, far away from the Xbox. I just plugged in the receiver, and 32-bit Vista downloaded the Wireless Receiver software from Windows Update (Tiny doesn't have an optical drive), and the controller synced with the receiver. Took about two minutes all up, including resuming from hibernation.

With this in mind, I tried deleting the drivers for the Receiver using Device Manager, but they seemed to reinstall locally and not from Windows Update; an Update didn't seem to fix it, so I gave up and turned to my old new best friend, System Restore. Back to before I installed the download. This took about five minutes.

After System Restore, I Just Plugged It In

... and this time, it found the drivers directly from Windows Update, installed them in about five seconds flat, and then the controller magically synced itself straight away. The drivers installed for the controller, and whop! It was done!

I haven't yet downloaded the Accessory thingo again (the thing that does the Xbox-style on-screen Ring Of Light) again, but it's on the back burner.

Now, I might have seriously stuffed something up early on. I was going to add "but I don't think so", but it's pretty obvious that I did, barring a faulty download or something.

Yay!

Anyway, moral of the story this time is: Just plug it in and let Windows Update do the work for you, if you're running Windows Vista X64. And x86, for that matter, based on my similarly-good experience with Tiny.

Now, all my Wireless devices are happy to chat to the receiver (reminds me, I haven't tried the headset yet...) and I'm happily playing RFactor with a real wheel!

Yep - works just like the original headset with a wired controller (as a separate audio device in Windows), only it's wireless! Cool!

As they say in Jamaica*, w00t, m0n.

Anyone else have problems, or did it Just Work for y'all?

[Update 3rd March] - the receiver stopped working again on the restart after the more-recent Accessories installation. System Restore-ing back to just the bare drivers worked again; I'm going to try a couple more reboots to see if it's a reboot thing in general, or just an Accessories thing.

My Weekend: Crackdown

tristank — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 16:33:41 GMT

Gah! The whole weekend spent playing Crackdown! What has the world come to!?

Crackdown does a bunch of stuff phenomenally well. I've had to think, I've had to react quickly, and in some areas I've just had to sandbag my way through.

Climbing up the sides of buildings is great fun, and the puzzles involved - like getting to some of the 4-rated Agility Orbs high up on the skyscrapers in the corporate district - have been both frustrating and rewarding, all at once.

In some ways (possibly just Leg Augmentation ways), it's reminiscent of Deus Ex to me. I've retyped that sentence (and a few others) about thirty times now trying to get the sentiment correct, but I can't, so I'll leave explaining that as an exercise for the reader!

The bottom line is... it's just great fun to be able to scale tall buildings in multiple toehold-scrabbling bounds, destroy countless enemies (er, I can count to five, actually) at once with a well-placed rocket blast, and plow through traffic in the Agency truck cab.

For a sandbox-style game, there's also a noticeably larger-than-average amount of persistence - enemies spawn and respawn, but cars and other damaged items tend to linger much longer than, say, GTA.

I am a bit worried that once I finish the missions, there won't be any gangs left to destroy for more stats increases; guess I'll just concentrate on getting to that point first... And again, I guess there's always Co-Op multiplayer...

So, um, four agility orbs out of five. Stonking good.

Xbox 360 Wireless Receiver (for Windows)

tristank — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 15:04:05 GMT

It's great that it's finally out in the US... Not so good that I got back last week, dagnabbit! Now I just need to wait for Aussie availability, so I can play RFactor with Racing Wheel comfort until Forza 2 drops! Mmm. Racing wheel.

Combine that with TrackIR, and you have a pretty interesting driving experience, I'm hoping!

Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

tristank — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 18:45:47 GMT

About time! March brings us Aussies the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on.

$249 looks like the magic number - nicely equivalent with the US RRP.

Can't wait to watch MI3 and Superman Returns... And Kotaku said it even ships with King Kong in the box! Awesome!

I needed to type this sentence to make the formatting look balanced. Please ignore this sentence.

Link to Xbox.com | Xbox 360 - Xbox 360 HD DVD Player

Sick Day

tristank — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 04:10:12 GMT

My eyes just haven't been the same since the tusk incident, and the medication seems to be making them worse. I'm typically the last person you'll see away from the office, but with eye things, it's better to not take the risk of spreading them.

Still, British heritage, stiff upper eyelid and all that, so let's use the time wisely to make up words for things that probably already have more succinct definitions.

Invertendre - the act of deliberately picking the meaning other than the one intended by the perpetrator of a double (or *tuple) entendre.

Inadvertendre - when the other entendre dawns on you only after the uncomfortable silence sets in.

In other news - and close enough to this sick day to be of suspicious timing - the Armed Assault demo is absolutely rockin' with my new ($AU350! cheap!) X1950 Pro under Windows Vista. It's *so close* to being playable at 1920x1200.

I'd been using a 6600GT, but this makes that look like last year's video card. Sure, it's probably the video card of 18 months ago, but until ArmA, no cause for upgrade.

Two years from now, I'll be playing Armed Assault at 1920x1200 with 8xAA and 40-60fps. Can't wait to see what G80 and R600 make of it...

Back to work... (yes, I work on my sick days).

Xbox Live - Free Gold Weekend for Aussies

tristank — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:07:00 GMT

If you've got an Xbox and broadband but haven't upgraded from Silver, give it a go! It's free until 10pm Sunday.

I've been playing Gears of War this week, and am *itching* to take it online, but my phone line decided to suddenly choke my ADSL connection on Sunday night, and Telstra didn't get to fixing it this week. So no fun for me with all the cute little cuddly gib-able newbies.

Enjoy Dialup, they used to say on BCP. I don't.

Update: Well, the Telstra tech failed to show up today at the promised time, didn't call, didn't leave a message. Nice way to spend one day's annual leave. They say Wednesday now.

But was the weekend good, kids?

Games Games Games, Games Games Games, Game Game all the waaaay.

tristank — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 13:59:02 GMT

What am I looking forward to this Christmas?

Well, two have really caught my fancy:

Gears of War - 23 Nov (I mean seriously, with a metascore like that, I'd need to seriously justify not buying it)

Rainbow Six Vegas - 23 Nov (metascore not there yet, but the demo was awesome)

And with that, it's back to the WPF study... thanks for being my partner in procrastination.

I'm going to flee, I am.

tristank — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 19:51:24 GMT

To the beach, once more.

Since going on holiday a couple of hours ago, I've:

- bought Civ 4 and Psychonauts from Steam (played the Psychonauts demo a while back, absolutely loved it, but didn't buy it for a reason I can't remember right now) (they're peppering my DSL connection as I type)

- played the Rainbox 6: Lockdown demo from Xbox Live (that was very, very cool, kinda a faster-paced GRAW feel to it)

- downloaded the Windows SDK (Intended Holiday Activity #1: Sit near beach with Petzold's latest, and come back with Some Knowledge of WPF)

- found OpenGL drivers from Nvidia for Windows Vista RC2, so I can play Armadillo at high speed again

- realized my tax is due by the 31st this year (as it is every year). ZOMG!

- Also, it's Daylight Savings night tomorrow night, the clocks go back, I think.

It'll be a fun week at the beach, followed by a fun week not at the beach. As long as the weeks are fun, I'm happy. And vice versa.

Be seeing you...

August 31, 2006 (Australian Time)

tristank — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 15:44:00 GMT

Today:

1. Saints Row should become available locally for the Xbox 360. Liked the demo. On the subject, did anyone try out the Just Cause demo from Marketplace? That was really over-the-top latin american fun! I wonder if it'll have Live capabilities, so I can scream things like "Miguel! You keeeled my braaathaaaar!" at my Argentinian friend*.

2. XNA Studio (that's the one where you get a game development kit for C# that lets you sign up to test the game on the 360 as well) should become available. See http://www.microsoft.com/xna/ .

3. Always make three points, so, um... there was another game coming out at the same time, but I've forgotten what it was, or it's been pushed back, or something. Dead Rising is due on the 14th. Muted cheer.

* former friend

whose name is not Miguel

and who didn't (to my knowledge) keel my braaathaa.