So today I removed some 50 Facebook friends and deleted my Twitter account. Feels good to reclaim my social graph. Honestly I only want to be connected to people I really care about and not people who are more of acquaintances. I will keep all my Linked in contacts because that is a perfect service for business type relationships.
So the other night I was playing Fallout 3 and the graphics started getting weird. There were red vertical bands where shading would be and when I went into VATS mode the highlighted body parts looked like TV static. I thought I would power cycle my XBOX and hopefully that would clear the problem – wrong!
Came back up with an error E74.
So I bought a new one last night and will ship the broken one off to Microsoft to get repaired.
Once I get it back I will sell it on craigslist.
So I have been hearing for years that this was one of the hardest movies to watch, a real horror show as Alex DeLarge would say. Well I finally watched it tonight and thought it was totally tame and stupid. The actors are not convincing and the music is horrible. I just don’t get what the big deal is.
I must be completely desensitized…wait, I am not the only one:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068833/board/nest/133875876?d=133875876&p=1#133875876
Movies that, for me, were harder to watch (but I still liked!):
So over the weekend I got Duels of the Planeswalkers for the XBOX 360. I played Magic the Gathering a lot when it first came out. When I started playing “The Dark” expansion had just been released so I consider myself an old school player. I am rusty though and have been getting my butt kicked all weekend on Live. Tonight finally I am about to win my first ranked match and am feeling good when the host drops. Nice. Instead of loosing a match fair and square and affecting their rank they drop. I don’t know if this breed of jerk has a name so I am going to call them “live droppers”. I think they deserve their own level in hell right below traitors.
By the way the game is excellent! If you like Magic The Gathering or card games in general its worth picking up for 800 points.
So I have been playing Infamous for the last two weeks and have a love/hate relationship. There are some things that really piss me off but I am still playing so it must be a good game. I picked up Prototype and Red Faction recently so I am going to compare and contrast the three games as they are very similar.
First the similarities
Now the differences
All three games have a cheesy story but its passable. Of the three I like Red Faction the least. Something about having superhuman powers, being able to scale everything is just too much fun, Red Faction feels not as fun by comparison but its still a good game.
One of the things that bothers about Infamous and Prototype is you have this super human power, you can fall off of a sky scraper but bullets hurt you; both are kinetic impacts why does one type hurt you but the other doesn’t?
In Red Faction you can blow up just about everything except blue barrels and rocks it doesn’t make any sense.
Of the three games I think Prototype has the best crowd system. The crowd reacts like I think they should: they run in terror. In Infamous they either boo you or give you the “you’re the man” sign. In Red Faction folks just wander about not really caring what you do and they tend to clump up in front of buildings so you have to bully your way in.
In Infamous you can ride the rails and electric wires so you can get around quick. In Prototype you have super speed and in Red Faction you have vehicles. Now Prototype also has vehicles but they are tanks and stuff and not meant to get you around. All three makes it easy to get to the main and side missions.
Of the three I think Red Faction and Infamous have the best side missions but that isn’t saying much. Prototype’s side missions are time trials. I hate time trials. I want to play the game at my own pace. Any way I want in depth side missions like in Oblivion or Fallout 3 not shallow “kill X things” and “run X maze”.
All three have an upgrade system so you can get more powers or better weapons. I like the Protoype system the best then Infamous and finally Red Faction in dead last. Red Faction makes you collect scrap metal like Rachet & Clank. So stupid.
I am still going through the single player missions so I haven’t played multiplayer yet.
Finally above and beyond everything I said above all three are great games and if you can only afford one you won’t be disappointed with any of them.
Well it has been almost a month since I got my PS3 and I thought I would give my second impressions. I still love it. In fact I have to say that I prefer gaming on it to the XBOX 360 because of the noise issue alone. The PS3 is so quiet, it is a refreshing change.
I recently finished Drakes Uncharted Fortune and I had a lot fun playing it. The gun combat was really hard though.
I am in the middle of Resistance Fall of Man and am enjoying it as well.
Aside from the noise issue I mentioned above I cannot tell a difference between the PS3 or XBOX 360 in graphics, sound or performance.
If I had to go back in time and could only buy one system I think I would still choose the XBOX 360 how ever. The online gaming is so much better.
I recently got a PS3 and having been a XBOX 360 user for the past two years I thought I would give my first impressions. Note that I am not a “fanboy” or a “hater” just pragmatic. Up until now I haven’t really had extra money to spend on one.
Okay first the good:
1. It is Quiet. I cannot believe how silent it is. The XBOX 360 sounds like a plane landing so I was expecting *some* noise but there isn’t any.
2. It is an excellent DVD player. So good I unhooked my dedicated one. It has a really good upscaling feature.
3. I really like the hardware design. It has a slot loading disc drive and touch buttons so there are no moving parts on the outside. It doesn’t have a huge power brick like the XBOX 360. It uses a standard, easily replaceable hard drive.
Now the bad:
1. Sealed rechargeable controllers
2. Didn’t come with high definition cables (component or HDMI)
Games:
Looks good. Not better or worse than the XBOX 360.
Conclusion:
I like it!
I uninstalled the Safari 4.0 beta today because I just couldn’t stand two things:
1. Beach balls all the time!
2. Copy and paste just stop working all the time!
I didn’t find it faster than 3.x at all. The copy and paste stops working and you have to restart the browser.
This is the second time I have said good-bye to gametap on this blog. Gametap has decided to ditch the fat, rich, desktop client with a web one and in the process went from a service that I loved to one I can’t stand anymore. I spent the better part of this morning trying to play a game and finally had to use google to end up in a obscure gametap forum to find the the solution; after that I was done.
Why would any company take a working, well received, product and shit all over it? I am not entirely sure. My guess is they didn’t want to pay developers anymore. The site is now also covered in ads – even if you have a gold subscription! They are also now competing with Direct2Drive and the other johnny-come-lately game download services.
Good-bye Gametap – it was a good run while it lasted.
One of my all time favorite “hard scifi” movies is 1974’s Phase IV available on Amazon. What I mean by “hard scifi” is it only takes a little bit of suspension of disbelief to really think it could happen. Think Andromeda Strain or Colossus: The Forbin Project.
The movie starts out with a simple explanation that some astrological event happens and scientists wonder what will happen to the planet. Something small does happen instead of something big. Ants. Ants become more intelligent. They begin to behave differently. Two scientists are tasked with studying the problem using computers and crypto analysis.
The movie is filled with beautiful macro photography of ants working against the humans. Stuff like infiltrating the AC so the computers can only work at night. Bringing bits of poison to the queen so the next generation of ants is immune. And finally communicating using geometry!
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