Brownie Points: Games

Santa Claus...come straight to...

Sat, 30 Dec 2006 07:49:08 GMT

Apparently, Santa felt I was extremely nice this year. I got a really good haul under the tree including:

An Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel (with force feedback)
A 360 Wireless headset (you never notice how much you need one til you get one)
An extra wireless controller
An Xbox Live Vision camera (that doubles as a pc webcam)
A VRocker video chair...which after a period of adaptation has become my favorite piece of furniture.
Project Gotham Racing (the original).
And some household items for the missus and me.

If you have any interest in racing games, I would highly recommend the racing wheel! The precision of practically 270 degrees of rotation (135 each way) far exceeds anything you can do with the standard controller. It's akin to the difference between using a mouse and keyboard for a fps against a controller. The investment will be even more worth while when MSFT releases the wireless receiver for windows because it will work for PC racing games as well.

My current setup has the racing wheel attached to a low table (that serves double duty as my daughters' dining table) with the pedals under the table and the VRocker pulled up close. Between the force feedback, the rumble from the sub-woofer under my butt, and the cockpit view on PGR3, it's the closest I'll get to performing an 80 MPH powerslide throu London in a Ferrari.

As a late Christmas present from MSFT directly, I found out I was accepted in the Shadowrun Beta. I'm not even certain if I can reveal that but I will leave it at this THE GAME IS FRIGGIN AMAZING!! And we don't even have access to all of the functionality. Believe me FASA will be getting a ton of play data from me on this one.

On another note, we are in the final phase of the Project From Hell (TM). I've been using the time between Christmas and New Years as a bit of a recharge period for the final push. The next two weeks will be a pure battle of will between us and the code. No biggie, my best work has always come at the 11th hour.

Marvel's City of Heroes

Thu, 28 Sep 2006 15:53:52 GMT

In other Xbox 360 news, Marvel has finally decided if you can't beat 'em join 'em. After several unsuccessful attempts at suing the pants off City of Heroes developer, Cryptic Studio (claiming that although they didn't infringe on Marvel's copyright directly, they created a product that allows their subscribers to infringe on Marvel's copyright), Marvel has joined with Cryptic to create an Xbox 360 and Windows Vista MMO in the Marvel universe. I'd just like to know how that works? I mean, there's only so many characters in the Marvel universe and if you let some people play as Marvel characters and the rest have to create some knockoff character that would suck! Of course they could always do something like Star Wars Galaxies and have all the canonical characters be NPCs and everyone else be normal people unless they get a certain combination of skills that will trigger an event turning them into a super hero. Now that would be cool...one day I'm Mike the janitor the next I'm HANDIMAN!!! Either way it goes, I'm definitely excited to see what happens.

Look at the Effin' Graphics Man!

Mon, 14 Aug 2006 20:57:48 GMT

Every self-respecting techno-fanatic is also a gamer. I've had at least one system from every generation since the Atari 2600. And today I'm proud to say that I've finally taken the step into the next generation.

My wife decided that we would celebrate my birthday (tomorrow) on the weekend before rather than wait until the weekend after. By the way, she totally got me by making me think we were just going to Sunday brunch with the girls and having my entire family there to wish me happy birthday. I couldn't have asked for a better present.

Back to the story, so after brunch, I say "So, let's stop at best buy and see what kind of deals they have going on."

Just like when I picked up my HDTV, I had to put it through its paces. Yes it is as drop dead beautiful as you would think. Yes the games (the good ones that is) are a quantum leap beyond the games for the original Xbox. Even the games that were for the original that have been emulated on the 360 look better. (Unfortunately, Microsoft made the mistake of not owning the rights to their hardware so rather than just emulating the original Xbox on a chip like Sony did with the PS2 for compatibility with the PS1 games, MS has to go through the Xbox game catalog and verify that the software emulation works for each game.)

But I think my favorite "wow factor" game right now is definitely Fight Night Round 3. I mean it REALLY looks like a real boxing match. Hell, the health and time HUD aren't even shown by default. When people come over to the den who haven't seen it yet, that's what will be shown . Project Gotham 3 is a pretty good show as well. Especially with Gotham TV. You can watch races over Xbox live as if they are being broadcast on television. And Bizarre Creations did a meticulous job of modeling the cars and the tracks. They are truly photorealistic! And there is something to be said about power sliding through Vegas in a Ferrari Enzo.

Ubisoft is always pushing the envelope with their Tom Clancy brand of games. I don't think they've released a console game that hasn't netted a 9.0 or above from Gamespot. The first entry in their Xbox 360 lineup, Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter, continues that trend, taking advantage of everything the 360 has to offer.

I played Need for Speed Most Wanted on the original Xbox, and wanted to see what the 360 version offered above and beyond what was available on there. Sadly it was just a graphics touch up above the Xbox version...but what a touchup it was!

And the final acquisition was the new zombie game from Capcom, Dead Rising. I just played a tiny little bit of the game; but from previews, reviews, and general first impressions, I think I'm going to like it. Think about what playing a video game based on "Dawn of the Dead" would be like and you've got a good image of the game.

Also I just wanted to make a sidenote here...I'm writing this in the new Windows LiveWriter Beta. Oh and Microsoft just brought me one step closer to my dream of video game development by announcing that an express version of XNA (the cross-platform tools for Windows and Xbox 360 game development) will be available to the general public for free.