Entries from June 2005 ↓

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Looks like Joystiq ( http://www.joystiq.com ) or more correctly Weblogs, Inc. ( http://www.weblogsinc.com/ ) might want to get some upgrades… It’s cleared up now… I wonder if it was the hosting provider. Oh well, whatever.

So, I’m 28% into ‘Destroy All Humans’ ( http://www.destroyallhumansgame.com/ )… And the game is great! The graphics are terrific, the story is insane, and they used clips from Edward D Wood Jr’s ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’. Really, what else could you ask for? Well, besides using your mental powers well using your jet pack, what more could you ask for? Pandemic ( http://www.pandemicstudios.com/ ) did a fantastic job with this title! Out of the stack of games sitting on top of the Xbox right now this is one that I’ll probably see through to the end and possibly all the way to 100%.

The other new game on my plate is ‘Batman Begins’ for the Xbox. I’m on the fourth or fifth stage of that so far and it is also a great game. For a ’stealth action’ it does seem to be a bit to easy with moves and action points handed right to the player. But, that’s probably only to make it easier on the majority of casual players so I can forgive that. I can’t decide about the picture below either the programers have a sense of humor or I caught my Xbox in the middle of redrawing the model. You can see for your self - stand next to a wall and move the camera around looking at Batman’s face.

Well, I had some time today to check out EA’s ‘Batman Begins’ ( http://www.eagames.com ) for the GBA today. And Just so you know my game is currently at 25% complete and 2 out of 16 bat-a-rangs. I still haven’t made it to see the movie and the game does have spoilers but I’ll try to ignore them.

This is a great little game. It’s ’stealth action’ which means you can hide in well placed shadows and grab the bad guys as they walk by (see the third picture below). There is also a nice beat-em-up feel to the game thanks to some well done combos and an overall nice set of moves (the sweep is still the cheapest way to beat most enemies).

Graphics wise I’d say yeah it’s definitely a GBA game. The controls seem pretty good, everything feels nice and smooth. All of Batman’s ‘wonderful toys’ are here including a special attack which calls in a bunch of bats that deal nice amounts of damage. There is only one flaw as far as I’m concerned - you restart at the beginning of the level if you die. All in all a fine game for the GBA. Now I can’t wait till Monday to try the Xbox version.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

There is some very interesting reading over at Acid For Blood ( Thoughts on Video Game Legislation ) today.

Are video games the new comic books, destined to be villified until some new form of entertainment media comes along to supplant its place as corruptors of the young? Possibly. New media has the tendency to make older people nervous or uneasy.

Go check it out.

So I did something odd this past weekend. I went over to Best Buy and actually bought a computer game. Yeah I know… WTF? What caused me to do this? Well, my girlfriend was telling me a day or so before that she wished she had another game to play besides ‘The Sims’. So, since it was Saturday and she was at work I went to get the game that I think (I still don’t know if she does) she might like. What’s this game? It was ‘Still Life’ ( http://www.stilllife-game.com ). I figured since it is an adventure game that she would be into it.

I installed the game onto her computer and preceded to play for the next several hours. The game is fairly straight forward. Every character you encounter direct you toward the next step in the game. The puzzles that I’ve seen so far are pretty tough. The baking puzzle has got to be the hardest. I’m not ashamed to say that I headed over to GameFaqs ( http://www.gamefaqs.com ) for a helping hand on that one. Game play is pretty standard move your mouse cursor around the screen and wait for it to change to a different style cursor at which point click and do some task. Moving around is point and click and with a double click your character will break into some sort of shambling run.

The voice acting has to be the worst part of the entire game. And that brings me to a small aside… Did the voice acting get redone for the Xbox version? There is a review of it done by Ashley - mumble mumble something or other - in the June issue of Play Magazine ( http://www.playmagazine.com ) in which she says something like ‘the voice acting is great and totally believable’. I don’t know but maybe the PC version is different. The voice acting is ok I guess but not in the least location accurate.

The pre-rendered back grounds look great and the movies are just fantastic looking. The opening movie is fantastic. The character models are very well done but the animation seems a little jerky to me. And I won’t even mention anything about the mouth movements matching up with the dialog. The running animation just seems all wrong to me. It just look awkward.

The music for the game fits in very well it’s all most ashamed that there is so little. If you want to check it out go over to Grawl ( http://www.grawl.nl ) and check the downloads section for an FTP which has the ’soundtrack’.

All in all the game is pretty good. I won’t really get another chance to play till this weekend but if I have enough time maybe I can finish it up.

Well it looks like now might be the time to pick up a PSP. Since version 1.5 now has a working exploit I can play SNES and Mame on it. Also since the UMD dumper was released the number of ‘released’ UMD’s is up to 37 according to Console News ( http://www.console-news.org ). Anyway, back to other stuff.

I’ve been putting off posting this… Alright, I admit - I keep forgetting.

Anyway, I hope you all know about www.newgrounds.com (if not wtf mate?). Anyway, back in 2002 a game called ‘Alien Hominid’ ( http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/59593 ) was released. Then a strange thing happened the people behind it ( http://www.thebehemoth.com/ ) rewrote it as a console game. Not being a PS2 or GC owner, personally I ignored the release of the game and sat in my corner waiting for the Xbox version to hit the scene. Well, here in the US we (well not quite everyone) are still waiting (And US stores don’t seem to have a solid release date). On May, 27th the Xbox version came out in Europe. Lucky for me a few days later I had my copy. And I am glad I got it!

The game like the early Flash version looks just fantastic! Of course it looks great - it’s the same people from the original.

The game is hard! Let’s just make that clear right now. There are no unlimited continues or any of that crap. That means you better have the hand eye coordination to keep track of all the bullets flying around the screen.

I don’t have any screens of the included mini-games but I have tried a couple and they are great. The EU version has exclusive content that can be downloaded also. We’ll have to wait and see if this great game actually comes out in the US… Take it with a grain of salt but Gamestop has it listed as an August release ( http://www.gamestop.com/product.asp?product%5Fid=210694 ).

Anyway, visit the web site for more info ( http://www.alienhominid.com ) and a great batch of product based on the game.

Star Wars Horoscope for Pisces

A typical Pisces, you have your head in the clouds.
You’re self-sacrificing and a bit too passive to stand up to the dark side.
You become fairly pessimistic when put under pressure.
You are a chameleon - wanting to change your scenery on occassion.

Star wars character you are most like: Lando

What is Your Star Wars Horoscope?

More on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility - Joystiq -www.joystiq.com ( http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000137046044/ )

By now we%u2019ve all heard that the Xbox 360 will support %u201Cmost top selling Xbox games%u201D. And in truth, we%u2019re willing to bet that most of the entire catalogue for the Xbox will run on the 360. Basically, it%u2019s been worked out so that the 360 will emulate the original Xbox to an extent that all single layer games will be supported. For popular multi-layered games, Microsoft will install a number of patches on the preloaded hard drive and has promised to release more depending on the level of demand.

I’m just testing some code updates and a hacked out Mozilla Firefox ( http://www.mozilla.org ) plugin. More code updates of the next couple of days (maybe). And some more game goodness tomorrow.

Opps on the post php. Testing rebuild…