Category: Games

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Wii: Mario Kart impressions.

Well its another month and Another Good wii game comes out. As a big fan of Mario Kart for the SNES, I’ve not really played any mario Karts till i purchased the Wii, I had downloaded Mario Kart 64 for the wii and my reception to that was pretty blah..

Usually when it comes down to games I have an interest in , I tend to stay away from prerelease reviews and anything to do with the guts of the games. I have 2 reasons for doing that, I’d Rather figure out things for myself and I want an unbiased opinion of the game in my mind. Anyways…

Continue reading “Wii: Mario Kart impressions.”

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Media… Completely fascinated with bored people .. and there wii’s

I find the media often gets fascinated with some pretty weird shit at times, weither its the next missing garden gnomes, or some star taking a dump… the media is there normally to smell it. Lately with the media getting involved with console gaming, they have been attacking it as the next WMD, to the Media it is something that beats your wife , kills your pets and makes your children into cannibals. When the media is bored i find thats when there at there most dangerous to themselves and others around them. So just doing my normal thing of looking at Fark.com , an article caught my eye and I clicked. the Title of it was “Growing a wii bit bored” from the Calgary Herald. but the dumbfuckery of this one gets to me. its a long write by me but I’ll take a stab at his stab.

read on for my silly take to this article of playing with numbers and attention whoring at its best from the calgary heralds department of pulling numbers outta there ass.

It starts

In an interview with gaming publication IGN.com, the president of Epic Games, which produces the incredible Gears of War for the Xbox 360, dumped on Nintendo’s Wii, dismissing the system that has sold 20 million units as a fad that will soon wane, and saying his company won’t ever be releasing games on it.

“The first time I played a videogame with my parents was on Atari 2600,” says Mike Capps. “The next time I played a videogame with my parents . . . was Wii Tennis. So it’s about bringing people together, families, Thanksgiving, all that. I think it’s kind of like a weird virus because I have not yet found a reason to play with my Wii since then.

“It’s a virus where you buy it and you play it with your friends and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so cool, I’m gonna go buy it. So you stop playing it after two months, but they buy it and they stop playing it after two months but they’ve showed it to someone else who then goes out and buys it and so on.

theres so many things wrong with this I don’t even know where to begin. To Immediately just start dumping on something means your pissed off for one reason or another rather than taking a neutral bias to what your writing about. Also bringing the Asshat from epic in on the first line from and interview just starts this article all wrong.. I’m allowed to have bias here… gears of war? I couldn’t care any less for the game. I mean just how many times can you rehash unreal tournament. The comment alone is shortsighted, The reason people get the Wii is it is FUN…

As far the wii being a virus, i think not , Nintendo has realized that power is not everything. Generally i have one rule with gaming, the more eyecandy generally the shittier the game is for fun and replayability. I Do not play a game for eye-candy , I learned that lesson once too many that general focus on graphics tend to kill games, Or make the game so short its not worth it. Balancing graphics and gameplay is the key, people still play D&D… now theres some heavy fricken graphics for ya .. This guy is full of it .. by the looks of it this guy never played anything past Wii Sports. Continuing…

Continue reading “Media… Completely fascinated with bored people .. and there wii’s”

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Console gaming and movie watching… When you dont have a TV.. Wait what?

When I got my Wii, it was a thought to exactly how i’d play the console since i don’t have a TV so to speak. Eventually I just ended up going to most efficient route for myself. I connect the Wii to my PC via an analog TV Card, it works fine for me. but there are little things you do notice between having the Wii connected to a TV vs connected to a PC through a TV card.

Personally i use my PC as my center for media, Watching movies, playing games(PC), and playing the Wii. I don’t need a super huge screen, having one would be nice but eh… what can you do. I don’t watch enough TV to validate the idea of getting cable or anything, the way channels are these days its just all rehash of programs anyways… what are we on now “survivor 923 – Night with the power out” edition? About the only thing I tend to watch is mythbusters.

The only thing about having the wii through an analog tv card though is that the screen looks a bit fuzzy and lagged a bit. I’ve tried out many digital Tuner cards with no luck whatsoever, Either I have some sort of weird problem or perhaps my pc is getting a bit aged.

I have tried –

  • WinTV-HVR-1600 – This card is ok, If you have an Via Chipset/Nvidia Video card you will run into an overlay problem, easily fixed but …. the Crashes are not, generally HD channels look spectacular but on occasion the software would crash on channels with a low signal or format difference. Using it to play a console through was worthless, Trying to play the wii on this was like trying to play the Wii underwater , You would move the cursor, and the screen would always be half a second behind becoming extremely annoying fast.
  • Pinnacle PCTV HD Card – out of the box the card was purely annoying… the install software DEMANDED to have WinXP Service pack 2 installed, Nothing would progress unless you did that. as far as channels it did not have the problems that the HVR1600 had, but there was a noticeable unsynchronized Audio, For having the Wii hooked up , Again Display lag issues made this card useless.
  • Visiontek TV wonder 600 – based off the ATI TV wonder 600, installation was painless, Installation of software was relatively painless, Operation was terrible. Trying to pull in any sort of digital channels was totally out of the question no matter the position of the antenna NO channels were received. I even Put the antenna outside the window in hopes of seeing some sort of life from the tuner itself, For the Input part of the card for the Wii, This card got the Worst of the ratings – Display lag was far greater than the other cards, Up to 1.5 seconds of display lag which made any sort of console gaming Completely out of the question.

These card were all tried through about a years time, and Likely in the future possibly there will be a Digital HD TV card that will serve my purposes for both a TV Card and a Console hookup. but I have discovered theres a 4th option that would remove the PC completely from the math , which hopefully will remove all my percieved points that i dont like about running my Wii to Tv Card to PC output. while its the cheapest of the options I’ve only heard and seen very limited reviews on this I’ve ordered the VD-W2 Wii VGA cable . This will skip having the PC as an intermediary and plug directly into my monitor , which thankfully has 2 VGA inputs and 1 DVI input.

My hope is this will solve all my complaints about having the setup i do and having a more direct setup which eliminates a device which the console Passes through

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Super Smash Brothers Brawl, post Solo Subspace.

had a short post up yesterday but got rid of it in order to put up a better post.

I’ve so far played out the subspace emissary through to the end, To be honest the way the story is told is kinda of amazing in one respect since not one word of dialog is used. that mode alone takes about 8 to 10 hours to complete and for the ability of having a second player join you is really a nice add-on. Also as far as the subspace emisary the stages age agravating but the good agravating where you dont want to eat your controller

So far my online experience with brawl is limited to a few sessions but they are rather enjoyable. Missing from that is chat but thats a double edged sword right there. If you have played any “on-line” game dealing with the never ending stupidity of certain types of people wear on you after awhile. you are limited to a few different statements you can put in while your playing but nothing huge. as for the lack of a full chat – i don’t mind it since its a console. Sure the Wii has keyboard support but it is very limited at this time.

Plus a full chat client would be worse than a cell phone text conversation. “how r u” “am gd” ect ect text shorthand has its places but it gets annoying after awhile.

Until i play out smash brothers brawl online I’m not inclined to make a total decision on how good this game is. really from a single player point of view i find that Nintendo made a really good effort to appeal to many different players in this game.

As far as the hype that brawl had when it was announce for the Wii I intentionally mostly stayed away from sites hyping it up so i could have an as unbiased opinion as possible with brawl, too which in the end i am in glad I took that road. What really surprised me was the use of the Havok physics engine thats used in half life 2. Playing through you can see the physics at work with items and knocking things around which made me quite happy.

As far as this post is concerned though its relatively a beginning post because later.

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EA games.. a plague like no other.

EA games… now theres a Love hate relationship 99% of gamers deal with. EA used to be a good company, but over the years they have been going downhill and just about freefall speeds. Back in the console only days of my gaming i never really gave a thought to electronic arts, but as the PC days of my gaming came I started to realize more and more just how bad EA was. Back in the days of my first MMO, Ultima Online my friends and I played that like crack. About a year into playing EA bought out origin and Ultima online started slipping into obscurity.

Continue reading “EA games.. a plague like no other.”

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whao. i think i need to update a bit more often .

its been quiet and thankfully good , for the most part capital one issue has been solved but still ongoing. in the end my own bank ended up refunding me all the fees , but capital one 4 days later screwed up and refunded me twice more, my main objective is to get that crap payed off and get rid of credit cards… who needs em.. they suck.

Picked up madden 08 for the Wii, although when it comes to games from EA i am extremely wary of EA due to there quality , 9 times out of 10 they have some stupid "Show stopping" bug that either pisses you off to no end or you have to do some thing to get passed that part. the last game i suffered through like that was Command and conquer III, every time you got to the 3rd of 4th level of that game you were greeted with a HARD lock of your PC, i had tried it out on my other PC and same thing happened. Anyways getting to the Madden thing.. about the 3rd game in if you "sim" the games leading up to the game your about to play from the Team scedule it locks the wii in a hard lock which you have to shut it down and restart , If you go from the menu that shows all games every team is playing schedule, it does not lock up. plus if you haven’t saved your screwed. you loose all progress till the last time you saved (did you remember to save)

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Wii would like to play..

I posted a really short comment. In October about me ending up getting a Wii, Now, i had been Debating on a console system for months and was fairly decided but money was an issues and finding one was also an issue. Around the holidays which are here now. Finding a Wii is about as likely finding bigfoot.

I managed to get extremely lucky when i had got mine last month at the begining of october. I had been in best buy for another reason and just for the hell of it i asked the blue shirt with the expected answer of "we don’t have one". I figured I’d go up the road to Target and when i was walking down the isle i noticed 3 boxes and i thought they may of been displays. I Had to ask twice, And they were indeed real, Knowing that how hard it is to acquire I ended up borrowing some money to get it. Since then I’ve not seen one for sale since.

As far as fun the system kicks ass, and my major complaint about gaming in the last couple of years is that, the focus on gaming has been on making a pretty picture with basicly no controls. all graphics No fun. I’ve seen the other systems and the expense to me just doesnt make sense when i have a PC. my Main complaints for consoles are

1. most are insanely expensive

PS3 = 400$ (no games inc. accessories you have to pay even more for. Lack of games.

Xbox360 = 300$ to 400$ +35$ for online play (Not to sure how it works out with other stuff, but most games are eventaully ported over to the PC from this system so pointless to buy into)

Wii = $249 the Cheapest and most fun i’ve had with console gaming in a very long time.

2. Games

Ps3 = lack of games, Lack Of interesting games + Used to Have backwards compatibility but removed.

Xbox360 = since most games come to the PC – no real need to have since 90% of the games come over to the PC , and really Halo Does not appeal to me since its just a slowed down version of Unreal tournament (Halo doesnt even come close to the fun of unreal tournament)

Wii = ALot of games whole game cube library + Wii games availible , nintendo normally has different games than the above two systems so its a more unique experence.

 

*All systems = Fuck Guitar hero with a baseball bat. its retarded, ITs a guitar simulator simulator , wow You simulate someone whos simulating a guitar… Pick up a real instrument you sissy. if you want something more interesting and to actaully learn music rather than playing dance dance revolution for your fingers try "Jam Sessions" for the nintendo DS.

3. Controls

Ps3 = Tried and true controller setup, only exception was when nintendo announced the wii controls and they delayed there controller to attempt a motion control setup themselves. SUXAXIS was put on after the fact removing the Dual shock- which was quoted from sony that both could not be on the controller or some silly shit.

Xbox = appears like the older gravis control pads. I’ve not personally tried to out the xbox controls but im sure its works.

Wii = Completely Unique system of control, brings very interesting gameplay and adaptions to gameplay.. gesture based system does make some really fun games. I could go on and on how actaully interacting with the game rather than Inputing actions into the game and reacting makes a huge difference.

 

4. Graphics

PS3 – some really nice visuals at times but really most of the time games are not much better than the 360

Xbox360 – same as above but reverse the comment. both systems are pretty much equals to each other.

Wii – I’ve not seen many games I could compare to the other systems but It gets down to my Final comment. Graphically it has lesser than the above two systems but in the same comment the games are more involving . Less eye candy more dimension.

5. Fun

Im not going to compare each system down. Reasoning is it would just be a flogging of epic proportions, theres only so far that PS3/xboxs dated controls can go , and there basically running on running on a control set thats 20 years old. To me graphics do not mean Everything. Sure you can make it look "pretty" but 90% of the time you know when something looks "good" as far as a game you know it controls like ass. there are notable exceptions to that.

Gamewise you get more involved , You dont get bored off your ass watching someone else play. Even thinking sporting games golf is like golf on the wii , bowling is like bowling. First person shooters even have a strangely appealing system of use on the wii. by Far the system thats the most interactive and Fun in the same sentence I’d say is the Wii .

I’ve picked up only a few games so far but I forsee myself picking up other games as well as they come out. I’ve Really liked how the system works as you can see above and the future will see more responce out of me.

 

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Wii!

Random thought came to mind, I was wandering around at the begining of the month and i had been passively tracking the wii. ended up getting one of those.

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NC Soft – I wish you could hear us….

Lineage 2 -The Chaotic WTF Chronicle. over the last week the C5 PTS opened with a bang.. more like a thud. Where a Russian hacker brought down the server by hacking into the game and giving himself every subclass + who knows what. After that the server went down for 12+ hours and No one knew much other than the servers had been hacked. 2 days later the servers go down for another 10 hours NC soft locked forum access and Claims it had a problem with the forum

WHen the forum went down and you tried to log in the forum told you “you cannot post here because you may have an inactive account or are banned.”

so Watching the forums for hours for any sign of life wondering if i had been baned till another used MSN’d me with the same error msg.

My problems are for one NCsoft is staying very quiet about this and pushing everything under the rug as fast as they can. 2 they changed everyones passwords.

It leaves everyone uneasy, the thought Of someone may have our information . so Whatevers going on NC NEEDS TO keep the users in the loop