Category: Gaming

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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…

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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…

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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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Rant: Gaming and DLC/unlocks for money crap

Back in the day most addons or mods for games were created for users by users to extend a games life , but now it seems that the big 3 have taken the idea. Nintendo, sony and Microsoft are all making room on there plates for these DLC micro transactions for content. Usually I’d not write about these things but in the last year or so its caught on to such a point where its bugging the hell outta me. if you want to know why this bugs the hell outta me click read more to continue.

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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.