First, check this out if you didn't last night. Very education, no matter which side of the political fence you sit on. Whether you be a citizen of Gondor or Mordor, you will get something out of this.
I'd advise just to let that run while you read on or open a new tab and surf the net. Seriously, it's good stuff.
Random Gaming Musings
Here's some of the stuff that's come out over the past few days that I thought was note-worthy..
- the PSP's got some exciting stuff going on; I like the redesign, mostly. I wish the internal storage was upgradeable, and I have concerns about them being able to provide their entire library for download. Otherwise, if Disgaea, Final Fantasy Tactics, and FFVII: Crisis Core are available for download, count me in.
- I don't think it's a smart move for Squenix to limit Final Fantasy IV: the After Years to WiiWare. That's not their target demographic for the game, and never has been. Final Fantasy IV came out in 1991, which was before most Wii players were born. I think the smart money would be on releasing it on PSN for play on both PS3 and PSP, and making it so the two systems could share a save. An XBLA version definitely wouldn't hurt, either. I think that quite a few Final Fantasy fans happen to also own a Wii, in addition to their actual gaming consoles, and thus there will definitely be takers on this potential purchase, but not nearly as many as if it were spread across multiple consoles.
- A Mass Effect shooter on iPhone? Pfft. Yuck. Way to start sullying the franchise, guys.
- I gotta say, I am really looking forward to Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny on PSP. However, I guess I'm gonna hold off on buying it until it's available for download on PSP, since I don't wanna buy it twice. Regardless, I've always really enjoyed Soul Calibur, and the PSP actually seems like a good platform for the franchise. I was thinking about the controls for past entries, and this seems like it would translate well, and there wouldn't be the option for the cheesedick button-mapping of throws.
- my favorite NCAA Football feature finally returns in NCAA Football '10: school/team creation. A bunch of my friends and I all went to Columbia College Chicago (an art school) for our undergrad, and I used to always make us as a school/team in NCAA, and then go on to make a horribly obscene stadium, uniforms, players, and on and on. I'd drop us in the Big 10, since no one gives a shit about that conference (as opposed to the Big 12), and then I'd bump someone bullshit (like Northwestern) from the conference to make room for the Columbia College Chicago Killa Beez (no shit, that was the school "mascot" at the time.) Anyway, this feature was stripped from the PS360 versions, for whatever reason, but is returning this year. However, what's cool is that it's all PC-based, so you'll be able to work on your school/team whenever, and then upload it to your actual game. The team editor is supposed to be available starting in June, so that your team will be ready to humiliate the rest of the NCAA when the game ships in July. I am super, super pumped, as I used to go wild with this feature, and having it as an online app could, if properly implemented, open up all kindsa possibilities. Read about it here.
New Games
I've got a bad feeling about this year, guys n' gals. It's gonne be another crazy back-loaded year for releases. This year, I've gotten a handful of games, like Resident Evil 5, MLB09, Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II, Company of Heroes: Tales of Valor, but almost all that was in February and March. Looking ahead, I know I'm getting NCAA Football 10 and Madden NFL 10 this summer. This fall and winter, though, will feature BioShock 2, Disgaea 2 (PSP), Modern Warfare 2, Dragon Age: Origins, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Soul Calibur: Broken Destiny, as well as whatever else is coming out that we don't know about yet. I know early 2010 will also see Final Fantasy XIII, Mass Effect 2, and Star Trek Online. Additionally, there are titles like Star Wars: the Old Republic, Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Final Fanatasy Agito XIII, Parasite Eve: the 3rd Birthday, Again: Eye of Providence, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, and Guild Wars 2 that just don't have release dates yet, but could drop in the next year or so.
The point is that, once again, despite a few publishers pledging to break the cycle, we're gonna get 80% of this year's games that are worth owning all within a 4-month span. Bad. Just bad. August through November is gonna be crammed full of games, and some really worthwhile titles are gonna get crushed underfoot, especially since the Dubya Depression is really gonna limit how much cash we all have to spend on games.
This is stupid. Why not release some of these over the summer, or next summer? It seems like this time of year is totally barren of releases, and would be a great time to position a game for success. Actually, this time last year, GTA4 dropped, and I heard it did okay.
Lame. Just lame.
Open Source FTW
I reinstalled Ubuntu on my main desktop again, and as usual, it went all nice and smooth. I've been an Ubuntu user for about 3 years now, and I really gotta give 'em props and how nicely Ubuntu 9.04 handles drivers now. It used to be a bit of a challenge, at times, getting everything to work drivers-wise, but now ya just boot from a disc or a flash drive, and BAM! Everything installs, and you're ready to rock n' roll.
During that install, I was trying to install OpenSolaris on my second desktop, which has been stuck on Ubuntu 8.04 for what seems like ages. Every time I've tried to upgrade from that release, it's refused to boot afterwards. Every time I've booted it into another OS with a disc, it's started to install, then just hung. The OpenSolaris install was no different, which is unfortunate. I've been a big fan of Sun Microsystems for a long time now (OpenOffice.org and Netbeans FTW), and I like playing with Unix, and I really want to learn more about maintaining a Unix server, but the fucking machine refuses to let me install anything else on it. This is the weirdest issue I think I've seen in ages. I'm gonna play around with it a bit, and see if I get any different results when I boot from a flash drive.
Gaming on a Linux Machine
After installing Ubuntu, I proceeded to blow out a lot of the Ubuntu-provided software (I hate waiting on Ubuntu to get my updates for Firefox, OpenOffice, etc.), and then install the non-Ubuntu versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Netbeans, Wine, etc.
After I added the Wine repository, I installed Steam and XFire, then initiated the download for Quake Wars and Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II.
I haven't tried Dawn of War II yet, since I can already predict some problems getting that to run on Linux. x
I fired up Quake Wars this morning, and it actually managed to not crash during the DirectX install. It made it all the way through the install, which was shocking, then actually started to load the game, when it seized up during the UI loading process.
So, yeah, I'm back to messing with Linux gaming, since everything runs beauuutifully on the new laptop.
Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with more foolishness.
What's up with you guys? Anything new? Anything ya wanna comment on?
-Blaine
I know absolutely nothing about video games, unless it is on the Nintendo pre-1992, but Obama is awesome. How's that? :)
ReplyDelete@Mamacita That's more than enough. Thanks for the comment!
ReplyDeleteObama not satisfied, no shit. How can one be when the economy is crap. I hate political speeches. He pissed me off a great deal with his comments on interrogations and im worried about some other issues. I hope the best for him because the best for him is the best for us...
ReplyDeleteAs for video games, I see it being a big backlog year as well. Many of the great games coming are time consuming games. Im down for the PSP Soul Caliber title as well :)
Ha. You drop the smart kids from the Big Ten for pretentious pricks. Not to generalize too much, and I'm sure you are well aware of this, but art school kids can be (not always)a bunch of douche bags. I know firsthand so don't deny it. I like how you said your favorite College Football game - you sly dog. It's not that people don't care about the Big Ten, it's just that they haven't been able to compete in the BCS. It's weird how an entire conference is outmatched. What gives?
ReplyDeleteMass Effect on the iPhone is lame.
I thought Obama did a great job with the questions. How did his interrogation comments piss people off?
@Xcite79 Out of curiosity, what about his comments about interrogations bothered you? I was having an interesting discussion with my wife about this the other day. As for Soul Calibur, I'm surprised that such an obvious game hasn't been made for PSP already.
ReplyDelete@Laurance HEY NOW! Actually, I agree with ya about the stereotypical art school student, and there were plenty of them @ CCC, which is why it was so funny to make a highly-competitive football team for the school. Big Ten football just sucks, buddy, it just does. Now, Big Ten basketball has no excuse, as that SHOULD be a super-competitive conference for basketball, but it just hasn't been lately. Word up @ iMass. Agreed about Obama, and curious about the same thing.
-Blaine
What bothered was interrogations should be allowed. Waterboarding should be allowed. He said that the british didn't use hard interrogation methods. They did and they are recorded and im damn sure they done more (and we done more) than is recorded. Second, he said we could have got the info some other way. Bullshit. Those was last resort measures. We tried every other way before we done so. It is the memos. He iso nly saying one side. He didn't even mention the terrorist attacks that have been foiled. As far as im concerned, if anyone is going to cut someone's head off with a butcher knife or kill innocent people than I don't give a damn about their welfare and they dont give a damn about are "good" values. I hate politics so much. The president and every damn politician are never going to give us the complete truth. They are like fanboys. Democrats vs Republicans like Nintendo vs Sony and such.
ReplyDeleteAgreed that interrogations should be allowed. What concerns me about the waterboarding is that it was being used on people who hadn't been convicted of anything, thus their guilt hadn't been proven, and justice had been conveniently circumvented. No one knows one way or the other if we could have gotten the info any other way, but I'm not sure that's the most important point. I worry that if we torture people, as a practice, then a) we're walking down the same dark path as the piece of shit religious fanatics that think we need to be destroyed, and b) it's a slippery slope, and how long 'til we're torturing our own people? What about the suspects that died in interrogation? People that were never convicted of a crime were killed by us, and in the name of defending the very right we denied them. If we were to embrace torture as part of our culture, how long 'til you or I find ourselves in the care of the government? I agree, totally, about the politicians-fanboys connection, though.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughts, and I really enjoy intelligent discourse.
-Blaine
That is the thing though, they knew the information. They knew the information based off other reliable information. If they didn't know, then they would have no reason to question them in the first place. I believe this practice has been around longer than people suspect and it won't go away than any other country. It might be sad to say, but we are at a disadvantage through intelligence if we can't use those techniques. Technology can only get you so much information. Yeah, good discussion :)
ReplyDelete