Archive for the 'Video Games' Category
GTA IV
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008
No excess violence there. Nope. None that I can see. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to make a run to Best Buy.
Halo 3 Update
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
The halls of Quake, seek not. A game of skill, Halo is, young Obiwan.
Halo 3 Synopsis
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
Shoot shoot shoot die. Restart. Shoot die. Restart. Shoot shoot shoot die. Restart. Shoot die. Restart. Die. Restart. Die. Restart. Shoot die. Restart. Shoot shoot shoot die. Restart. Shoot die. Restart. Die. Restart. Shoot shoot shoot shoot die. Restart. Ad nauseam. I assume at some point this becomes a fun game to play? So far however, it’s, well, repetitive, if nothing else. The game has merits, no doubt. It’s not Quake 3 – not even close. I’ll go into that in a future review, once I learn how to survive more than ten seconds of this game. Where the heck is the easy setting in this thing? 
BillG Makes The Rounds
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
Bill Gates, the official king of the uber geek. No doubt smiling because he just made another bazillion dollars in 24 hours on a simple video game. If I was Gates I’d be over smoozing with the hot blonde picking up her own copy of Halo 3.
Unfortunately Destin’s diehard Halo fans didn’t get a chance to try out the game until the morning since no midnight release stores were located down here in our sleepy little beach side town. By the time I got out to a local Best Buy in the afternoon – all copies were gone. I’ll try one more time tomorrow at Best Buy and Wal-Mart before biting the bullet and ordering up a copy on Amazon. I need a copy pretty bad, I’ve burned through Bioshock now twice to get at both endings, and it’s got me jones’ing for more hard core 1st person shooter action.
Halo 3 Starts Tonight
Monday, September 24th, 2007
I won’t be waiting in any lines, quite happy with a 3 or so day wait until Amazon gets me a copy. (Of course by then, I’ll be so far behind in online playing skillz I’ll never catch up.) But it might be fun to drive around tonight and see all the kids out waiting. So far the release is looking very good for Microsoft, the reviews have all been stellar, and with 1.5 million pre-sales already racked up – equaling over 100 million in sales, I’d say the chances of breaking Spiderman 3′s record are pretty much, in the bag.
Related – I came across this video on 360 Fanboy, which is pretty interesting. I have to wonder if someday that’s exactly how video games will look, and I wonder if that’s going to be such a good thing.
And So It Begins…
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
The start of what will become the largest advertising blitz in history for a single video game – Halo 3. Check out the Monday Night Football commercial that just ran this week, which marks the first on-air advertising to come out. The game is scheduled for release two weeks from now, on September 25th.
I posted about Halo 3 way back when Bungie made the announcement in May of 2006. Since then I’ve done a lot of reading about it, but so far haven’t jumped in with a purchase of Halo 2. While I’m not a huge fps / Gears of War fan these days, I do like immersive environments and smart game play similar to what you find in a game like BioShock. Everything I’ve read about Halo 3 indicates it’s an fps, with Bioshock’esk game play mixed in, especially when you’re playing multiplayer. Sounds great. I’ve got a pre-order already queued up on Amazon, and am looking forward to trying it out. It’ll be interesting to see if it lives up to all the hype.
It’s been suggested the 3rd and final installment in the Halo series will, like its predecessor, shatter Hollywood’s current one day sales record for a blockbuster film. Halo 2 managed to pull that off with 125 million in sales, beating the one day sales record for Pirates of the Caribbean – Dead Man’s Chest. Today, Halo 3 would have to out do Spiderman 3, which holds the current record at 155 million.
Testing One’s Character
Friday, August 24th, 2007
The first Little Sister you ran into in BioShock, did you Harvest her, or did you save her? (I saved her.) I’m such a fricking wimp! I needed Adam after that crazed surgeon! I knew I should have listened to Ryan. Next time little girl, you’re all mine. mua ha ha ha haaaa.
All in all – this ‘interactive film’ totally kicks ass. If you combined a first person shooter and an episodic like Myst, throw in absolutely stunning visuals and a soundtrack worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster to boot, ghosts, more plot, bad guys, codes, more visuals, tons of power ups, more plot, another ghost, and of course, Big Daddy, and Little Sister, you have BioShock. Wow. BioShock is just fantastic, and I’m just a couple hours into the game. The first game I’ve played in a long long time that actually made me jump out of my seat, and in some cases, had me taunting other characters in the game. Sound crazy? Try it. Best played alone, and in the dark!
See Wired for a grood writeup.
Microsoft Unified Game Network Patent
Friday, July 27th, 2007
Multi-component gaming system Abstract
A gaming system including handheld devices and console devices has variable functionality and processing performance as determined by the number of components in the system. Gaming components can be combined wirelessly, by wired connections (e.g., via a docking station), or a combination thereof. The processing capabilities and functionality of each gaming component in a combination are augmented by the processing capabilities and functionality of other gaming components in the combination. To take advantage of another gaming components processing capabilities and memory capacity, each gaming component is capable of utilizing another gaming component to process gaming applications. Further, each gaming component is capable of rendering audio and/or video information provided by another gaming component. Also, a gaming component is capable of utilizing another gaming component as an adjunct processor.
Basically, it sounds like a multiplayer network which brings together consoles and handhelds that share processing of the game being played. The console can also act as a wireless access point for multiple handhelds. Depending on the processing power of devices connected to the network, devices will be able to hand off processing tasks to other, more powerful devices on the same network. In looking at the image, I immediately thought about kids living in a dorm, all playing against each other using a single 360 as the access point and game server. Or, possibly playing online through a handheld device, with your 360 acting as the network access point.
I’d say a Zune gaming handheld is pretty much “in the works” from looking at this. I doubt it’ll be out this year though, although you never know for sure. Pretty much every rumor I’ve read mentions two devices this Christmas – a small, fullscreen RAM based player that supports video and wireless, and a new hard drive based Zune 2, supposedly with either 80GB or 120GB of drive space.
Hazzaa!
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
Not sure how I missed this – Starcraft ][! No release date yet, sometime this fall maybe. The video on the site is absolutely incredible! YouTube also has smaller versions that don’t require DIVX.
Crackdown – Keys To The City
Saturday, June 2nd, 2007
In that free content that I somehow missed, there’s a new mode called “Keys To The City”. It basically lets you spawn anything anywhere within the game, including explosive ordinance and vehicles. Check out this promotional video, which features a bunch of in-game footage with the new add-on enabled. I’ve been playing with it today, it’s a little tough to get familiar with the controls, but once you do, well, you’ll have some fun!
If you haven’t picked up Crackdown yet, I highly recommend you do. Some players who are big into the first person shooter genre have disparaged it, since it’s more like a comic book than real life. But for more refined players like myself (‘refined’ as in.. ‘old’) it’s a blast.
