- Video Games

Blade Kitten has some potential...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 17:54:00 +0000

Fun with fraps...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:47:57 +0000

ONE LAST UPDATE ** and one more. Laura and Toby are a hoot.

UPDATED AGAIN ** one more video

UPDATED *** HD versions of videos

Went back and captured the video using fraps at full size. My native resolution is 1680x1050; I resized to 1840x1080 which meets the top-end HD requirement and makes the frame size compatible with my h264 codec. Came out pretty good. Now I just need to find the embed tag that tells Youtube you're linking to a widescreen video rather than a 4:3.

Playing around with fraps and Virtualdub...finally uploaded some videos to my Youtube account. Either I'm doing the HD upload wrong, or I'm just doing too much to the video before giving it to Youtube. I get a pretty nice 784x480 video about 10Mb in size, which is pretty good. Youtube resizes it again and seems to cut about half of the picture information out. Can't see a difference between standard quality and 480p. I'll work on it. Here are the videos as they are; the quality is good enough.

Saints Row: GTA III for the fun of it...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:00:07 +0000

Just about everyone has called the Saints Row games "GTA III clones" (or ripoffs); but that doesn't quite do as a description. After all, almost all sandbox-style open world games with story missions and mini-games are called "GTA clones" now. However, the Saints Row games probably come as close as possible to being pure GTA III clones. They use the exact formula as the GTA III games, with the same story concept and game design. The Saints Row games would probably best be described as "GTA III refinements."

What I mean by that is that Saints Row and it's sequel drop any pretense at being taken even slightly serious. The plethora of side-games are all designed to exaggerate the goofiest (and, coincidentally, the most fun) elements of the GTA III games. The player is encouraged at every turn to crash cars, shoot everything that moves, blow everything up, and generally take as much advantage of the physics engine as possible.

I'm playing Saints Row 2 on PC; the original was only release on Xbox360 and while I'm sure I'll pick it up sooner or later, for now I'm watching the cut scenes on Youtube. I haven't finished yet, but nearest I can tell your character helped drive the 3rd Street Saints straight to the top of the criminal underworld of Stillwater but was betrayed and left comatose in a prison hospital. You awake 5 years later at the beginning of SR 2. Here's my current character:

Baddest Bruiser of the 3rd Street Saints
The graphics are a leap beyond GTA III, but my understanding is that GTA IV looks even better than this.

Spartan Prep...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:19:22 +0000

Forgot to link this earlier, via Kaedrin: God of War, the movie. Sort of. Not exactly what you had in mind.

It is where it is...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:25:00 +0000

Pickup in shop for front-end alignment; this will be followed by another trip to another shop to figure out why the Low-4 won't engage. I'm guessing it's dirty, but I don't know what to wash.

Got new phone. While it's good to know for sure that jailbreaking and rooting phones is not illegal (I mean, according to the law it was legal, but when does a silly thing like written laws stop lawsuits? Or the government?), but I didn't really see where the iPhone 4 was better than a Samsung Captivate. The iPhone 4 has a slightly better screen, the gyroscope and a front-facing camera; the Captivate has more storage capability, a more open OS (and a faster one, in my experience) and a not-buggy antenna. It's taking a bit to get used to doing things differently, but so far I really like the phone. Oh, and it's $100 cheaper than the top-of-the-line iphone 4; same price as the cheaper iPhone 4.

I'll try to get some screen grabs and commentary from Saints Row 2 up later. I never played the first Saints Row, but I remember that it was a fairly popular game when it came out and SR 2 carried some anticipation. Kinda fell off the radar pretty quick; but then, there are sandbox games with mini-games, story missions, side-missions, unlockables and purchasables coming out every week. I've found there is a small but dedicated fan base, and a handful of people working on some pretty major mods. As is, from where I am now I can see playing through the game twice; it's an open-world sandbox but I'm not sure it really should be. At least not to the extent that it is.

Late to the party: GTA San Andreas Finished

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:20:19 +0000

I've been sitting on writing a summary of my experience playing San Andreas for a couple of days, mainly in the hopes that I could come up with something really significant to write. But I got nothing, really. So here goes.

One of the few real debates amongst the Grand Theft Auto faithful is whether Vice City or San Andreas is the best game Rockstar has made. Having played both now, I've really been going back and forth on the question myself. The bottom line, I think, is that I would have liked a lot of the game mechanics, the somewhat refined graphics, and the HUGE size of the gameworld in San Andreas to have been available in Vice City. I would have liked San Andreas to have been as fun and irreverent as Vice City was. San Andreas is clearly, technically the better game, but I had a lot more fun playing Vice City.

Ultimately my enjoyment, or lack thereof, is rooted in the story and characterization. And it should be fairly noted that GTA III, Vice City, and the two Stories games don't really have much of either. GTA III features the silent protagonist Claude Speed obediently following a chain of missions that are linked by arbitrary but not necessarily nonsensical plot points. Vice City added a ton of characterization to the main character, Tommy Vercetti, and his many minions and compatriots; but the missions that form the story didn't always fit together as nicely as they seemed to in GTA III. The two Stories games cut back a bit on the story and characterization, to the point where the games were even more just a list of activities to be checked off.

San Andreas tries very hard to bring a good story into the game and fit everything together into a cohesive whole, but after the first third of the game the plot just seems to get stretched too thinly. The final act seemed especially silly to me. Maybe it's a cultural thing, I don't know. I'm the right age, but I am neither of the proper geographical or racial demographic to truly identify with 1992 Los Angeles (as presented in the game). Of course I don't have the proper background to identify with a New York Italian mafioso taking over the underworld of 1986 Miami, but I didn't really get the feeling I was supposed to. Rockstar seemed to try very hard to get the player to identify with Carl Johnson and internalize the story of San Andreas, and it worked for a little while. I was really into the game through the first major story arc, but everything just seemed to collapse after that. Although I really liked Wu Zi. I would play the game again at least through the Wu Zi missions in San Fierro. But after that the game just doesn't seem to have much to offer.

The single biggest problem, though is that San Andreas isn't nearly as over-the-top as Vice City and GTA III. There's still a lot of comedy, and one of the real joys of the game is hearing the dialogue that occurs during missions, mainly when driving. Generally, though; the game is much more serious in tone and style. This appears to have been Rockstar's intention; from what I've heard San Andreas is a laugh-a-minute madcap adventure compared to GTA IV.

Which is why I am now trying Saints Row 2. Getting scored for how well I fling myself into oncoming traffic sounds like just the thing.

Late to the party: GTA San Andreas

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 21:56:23 +0000

I posted a couple of years ago that I didn't even start playing the GTA III games until, well a couple of years ago. I've finished III, Vice City and Liberty City Stories. I tried Vice City Stories and didn't like it very much, and I tried San Andreas right after I finished Vice City. I didn't really like San Andreas much either, but I put that down at the time to being so much larger and a bit more realistic.

Thanks to one of the many Steam sales, I picked of San Andreas for PC and decided to try it again. After spending a day and a half trying to come up with a decent control scheme (I ended up using my PS3 controller), I'm now several hours into the game and can give a few thoughts. I'm trying to play the game a bit more naturally than I did GTA III, Vice City or Liberty City Stories. I haven't gone out of my way to do collection games or mini-games until they're introduced in the story or I stumble on them. Of course, I still looked up the Graffiti Tag locations online, and even then I missed one (ONE! out of one hundred) and had to cross check with another guide to find the exact one I missed. I found the burglary mini-game by accident (got in the truck) which was really handy; finishing the burglary game is one way to get unlimited stamina. I have tried but not completed the standard Paramedic, Vigilante and Firefighter games. The Firefighter game in particular seems to be much harder in this iteration.

I visited the gym after it was brought up in the story and got my muscles maxed out. Either something has bugged, I completed some unknown achievement, or I've just managed to keep things really balanced lately because sometime in the last few missions I stopped periodically losing muscle tone (normally, it seems to lose it slowly and have to keep working out to keep it up, which makes sense).

Here's our protagonist, Carl Johnson; or C.J. to his friends and tormentors:

Here's how he looks when he wants to show off:

The last mission I did brought in one of the things the GTA games have always done that really bug me: Changing the rules for a specific mission. After rescuing someone from a shootout, you have to get them home safely. Right as you take off, a rival gang shows up in a couple of cars. They don't shoot, they just try to ram you. You can't shoot them, they're bulletproof. Your car is somehow limited to about 40 mph, so the rival gang can easily slam into you over and over, spinning you around and eventually doing enough damage to cause your car to catch on fire. BS like that drives me nuts. It would be a hard enough mission with two normal cars full of gun-toting, vengeance-seeking rivals to dog you all the way home; the handicapping is a bit silly to me.

The only other thing that really bugs me in this game is that there's no reason in the world to keep a car for personal use. Every time I take my favorite daily driver out to do a mission, it will disappear after the mission starts or after it ends. Additionally, if you leave your car for an extended period of time, it will almost always disappear. At first I thought they were just being stolen a lot, but after I while I confirmed that the car would be there one minute, then I could literally turn my back on the car then turn around again and it would be gone.

One neat addition to the game is bicycles. They're a bit weird, in that if you're in good shape you can outrun almost anything, plus you can go just about anywhere. Of course, you're completely unprotected and everything else on or around the road can knock you off and send you flying...which is bad when your doing 80 mph in downtown LA on your Huffy.

Generally, the controls are better than the last GTA game I played; the story as well. There hasn't been a cut scene yet that felt out of place, and the only really silly mission arc so far has been C.J.'s attempts to help a friend (who was a prison bitch, apparently) become a rapper. Or hip hop artist; or something. This missions include dancing well enough to get invited into the D.J.'s van (so you can steal her equipment); and stealing famous rapper "Madd Dogg"'s Rhyme Book, because your friend can't rhyme or write worth anything.

There is the general silliness of C.J., the budding crime lord, rescuing a girl from a fire he started (this is after slitting the throats of "Madd Dogg"'s guards in order to facilitate the theft of his rhymes for a former prison bitch (apparently) who can't rap worth spit.) Oh, and after winning the pimping mini-game, stealing guns, and killing crack dealers for dealing crack while killing rival crack dealers so your buddies and make a buck.

On the plus side, C.J. bet all his money on the long shot at the horse races to win twice in a row and made 1.4 million dollars.

You'd think he would smile more.

Status and Links...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:33:38 +0000

This is the longest I've gone between posts in quite a while. I've been pretty danged busy, though; and the last few weeks especially have been nothing but constant headaches. My wife and I (btw, Happy Birthday, Love of My Life!) made a quick trip to the nearest Gamestop two weeks ago, but I just now got around to updating the games lists and playing one of the games. Specifically, I picked up Lego Batman and X-Blades for the 360; Wild Arms 4 and and the original Lego Star Wars for PS2. When I bought my 360 I got Lego Indiana Jones in a pack of used games and really enjoyed it, so I went back and played Lego Star Wars 2: The Original Trilogy on PS2. I wanted to get the Complete Collection for 360, but it was cheaper to just pick up a used copy of the original game for PS2. I've done a couple of levels in Lego Batman, and so far I'm not really getting much enjoyment out of this Lego installment. My wife, who for some odd reason enjoys watching me play video games, says the game isn't nearly as much fun to watch as LSW and LIJ; so I may not stay with this one.

In the meantime, I play a little Street Fighter 4; and, thanks to Steam and Impulse, I've loaded up on some classic sim and strategy titles for only a few bucks. I'm almost done with Railroad Tycoon 2's Campaign in Normal mode...I've made it this far before but I'm having trouble with the last few scenarios. Still haven't tried Sword of the Stars or Making History, but I've heard a lot of good things about them.

In other news, I'm still not completely caught up on Naruto Shippuden. After the Atomic Bomb Ninja Technique, recurring Deus Ex Machina Sasuke started the biggest dumb-ass subplot I've seen in the series so far...(details under the fold, spoilerific). It's takes a lot for me to work up enthusiasm to keep watching. But I'm sooooo close....

Crunchyroll has also started streaming The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. I haven't checked to see what order the episodes are in.

I've made it through episode 11 of Chu-Bra! (with my wife...I was too scared to watch it alone.) If I can ever organize my thoughts on this series, it deserves a short amount of commentary. For those who have avoided...yes, it's squicky. Really, really squicky.

Mark finished Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and has started A's. I'm refraining from any comment until he finishes that series.

The 2010 F1 season has begun, which means Wonderduck has started his wonderful F1 Updates again.

Noah Antwiler, aka Spoony; the man responsible for a hilariously savage review/commentary/let's play of Final Fantasy VIII, is going to try Final Fantasy X.

Linkara is producing and narrating a "History of the Power Rangers", which is actually pretty interesting if you're into absolutely useless information, like I am.

I've completely forgotten by this point if I had any other point to make in this post...so I guess I'll stop here.

EDIT: Oh yeah, details about the Sasuke subplot below the fold.
Continue reading "Status and Links..."

My two recent unexpected reversals...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:20:00 +0000

UPDATE 3:

Ok, starting with episode 25 things get quite a bit better. Seems like the studio decided they needed to stretch the story out a bit, and so 15 - 20 move really slowly and are very repetitive. Sakura finally get's her very own crowning moment of awesome. The writers tried, and I think are still trying, to take it away from her (can't have a woman beat the bad guys, can we?); but anything they do at this point is going to seem like complete bullshit if they try to back out.

Actually wanted to finish the storyline last night, but quantserve stopped working around 11:45. Again.

UPDATE 2:

Not sure how long I"m going to be able to stick with Naruto Shippuden. I'm on episode 24 now; there have been TWO good episodes so far in the new series. Each episode is getting slower and more repetitive. The story is pure deus ex machina, with no regard for internal consistency. Looking ahead, this story arch apparently ends around episode 33; it needed to run maybe 13 or so AT MOST. The Chuunin Exams and Sasuke Retrieval archs were faster paced and better timed. Hell, the Zabusa arch was faster and made more sense.

I'm going to try to finish this first story, but if Shippuden doesn't get any better, I won't be able to keep watching. I'm already spending two thirds of each episode saying "What the hell," "that doesn't make sense," and "yes! We know! You've already said that TEN TIMES!!!"

Talk about stumbling out of the starting block...

jeez.

I had to vent to my wife (who thinks I'm nuts for watching Naruto in the first place) for 45 minutes before I could go back to watching.

---------

UPDATE:

Pete at Ani-Nouto comments on my Naruto viewing. Thanks for your comments! I hadn't dug through the archives and noticed all of his posts on the subject.

To update: I finished the original Naruto series last night and started the second series, Naruto Shippuden. The original series ran for 220 episodes, from October 2002 through February 2007. The second series began airing the same month and is still in production; episode 150 is scheduled to air this week. The Naruto manga storyline runs through episode 135 of the original series, which is where the original manga storyline ends; episodes 136 through 220 are "filler" episodes, and the original storyline for second part of the manga series is followed in Naruto Shippuden.

You see quite a few recommendations to skip episodes 136 - 220, but there are a few good storylines in that section. Unfortunately, the worst storylines are also present in the final 85 episodes.

Pete mentioned Sakura's improvement in Shippuden. The results of her training with Tsunade start showing up in the filler episodes and movies, but the Sakura of Shippuden is a good leap beyond. It's especially nice seeing the confidence and attitude she has...she's finally a character equal to Naruto and the more interesting second-tier personalities.

And regarding Temari's legs; I don't love the Sand Village stories because of Kankuro's winning personality.

---------

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was pretty close to buying either a PS3 or a 360. I had been leaning towards a PS3 for about a year, but in the end bought a 360 Arcade from Gamestop. Don't have it hooked up yet; needed a component cable and I wasn't about to spring for what they cost retail. Got one off of eBay, and while I was at it picked up a 60GB hard drive, too. Probably should have bought the Elite when Gamestop was offering a $50 Gift Card with purchase; that would have been a better system with more games for only a bit more money than I ended up spending...but I hadn't made up my mind at the time.

The other recent oddity is that, completely out of the blue, I decided to watch Naruto on Crunchyroll. I never, ever thought I would do this. I've never had anything against Naruto, per se...just against the ~~people~~ kids that watched it on Cartoon Network. I had to give it some respect, of course...Naruto brought a whole new generation of Americans to anime; but I watched a couple of episodes and it just seemed; well, silly and more than a little stupid.

That may have something to do with the dub or editing, I don't know for sure. I've heard of many complaints about Naruto's English voice acting, but only marginal gripes concerning editing or censorship. The version available on Crunchyroll appears to be either a Japanese TV or DVD rip; the Japanese sponsorship splash is still present after the OP but there's no text or logos. I'm assuming that means these rips are probably from the DVD. The subtitles are mostly pretty good, but prepositions seems to disappear in waves; usually one or two episodes at a time every ten episodes will have poor sentence structure and obviously missing words. Whoever did the subtitles also selectively used the "Believe it!" catchphrase for dattebayo, which I've always had a problem with. It seems possible that only certain translators used this convention, as the phrase appears heavily in some episodes but is left entirely out of most.

Anyway, I started watching two weeks ago and I'm just about 100 episodes in, now. I was surprised early on, after a few episodes, to discover that I was enjoying myself and wanted to know what happened next. Sixty or seventy episodes in I was completely floored to discover that I hadn't had as much fun watching an anime series in *years*. Yes, this series has it's problems; especially in pacing. Early on there is a story arch that's at least twice as long as it needed to be; almost half of one episode is literally a repeat of the last half of the previous episode. Naruto doesn't really do "filler", at least until, I'm told, the last part of the original series. Instead, the action is slowed down and you get lot's of repetition. The segment I mentioned is the only one that's really bad, but these techniques show up every now and then just to stretch an episode or two out.

Beyond how ridiculous the premise of the show is, the story maintains consistency and characterization. Unlike most recent shonen protagonists, Naruto is actually someone I like and want to root for. He's a bit of a spaz, but he's not a jerk or an asshole. He's not too bright or quick, but he's not stupid, either; and he has pretty good insight. The series does a good job of establishing and maintaining his character and making his actions believable and consistent. The two main supporting characters don't get quite as good treatment; genius student Sasuke is whipped around like a rag doll by the plot...early in the series you get the feeling Sasuke is actually the protagonist; later on he's a massive deus ex machina. The female lead Sakura is present, so far, just for Naruto to have a crush on. She doesn't do anything. Even when she does something, she doesn't do anything. She's likable enough, but she really needs some more depth to her character if we're EVER going to start caring about her. I've read that she get's better later on in the first series...here's hoping.

But, yeah...I really like Naruto, and I never thought I would say that.

Return of 360 vs. PS3

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:35:37 +0000

Very shortly, I will have $100 in Gamestop credit. I'm not the biggest fan of Gamestop in the world, as I mentioned in a Twitter post not too long ago. But, I get credit there easily.

I've got a huge list of games for last gen systems that I need (want) to get, but I'm way behind on games anyway. As $100 is not a small amount, I started thinking once again about picking up a 360 or a PS3. I had been planning to get a PS3 if I ever got anything, but some recent research, and events in general, have complicated the decision again. Here are the relevant facts, my handful of readers may chip in with their thoughts (I would appreciate it, in fact.)

1) I have a pretty good computer (rather, a really awesome computer). The only game, oddly enough, that I have been unable to run at maximum settings recently is the Champions Online Demo. Had to set everything just about to minimum. I think that might be a bandwidth thing, though. If a game is available on PC, I have no doubt that I would be able to play it, and play it better than either the 360 or the PS3. BUT, not everything is available for PC. It would be nice if I could find a list of which 360 and PS3 games are published for PC.

2) I will not pay for Xbox Live Gold. Period. There are rumors that the Playstation Network is going to start charging, but at the moment, it's free.

3) I don't care about the BD drive in the PS3. I have a great HTPC, and GPL BD drivers and software are finally showing up for media programs to use. I figure I'll add a BD drive to my HTPC before the end of the year.

4) Unless the title is programmed well, the 360 usually provides a better game experience with it's more capable graphics chip. What mainly impresses me is that the 360 seldom falls below 30 frames per second on any game, while the PS3 seems to run around 20-25 fps in the same games. To be clear: neither system's visuals look "better" to me, but the 360 does seem to run more smoothly most of the time...

5) when it's running, anyway. I can't find firm numbers, but the newest 360s are supposed to be much more reliable than older models, but that's a hell of a record to overcome. I never bought the anecdotal stories that the 360 had a first-year failure rate of 50%, but the more-likely rate of 15% is beyond bad enough.

6) Do I need both? I don't want to spend that much money, even with $100 in gift cards.

Maybe I should just ignore it all for another six months. Again.

Son of a...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:27:23 +0000

I was working on a document to help me decide what order I wanted to do the planets in (in Knights of the Old Republic 2), but AbiWord crashed. The reason this is a significant choice is because which order you visit/complete the planets in determines which party members you gain earlier and later.

Well, that's in theory. In actuality, you collect all of your party (except for one mandatory and one conditional character), typically after the intro section and one other planet. While the choice of planets should be important, I've always felt that it's pretty clear what Obsidian intended:

1) You start out on the Peragus Mining Station
2) You travel to Telos Citadel Station; no choice. You now have Atton, Kreia, and T3-M4 available.
3) Surface of Telos; no choice. Bao-Dur is a mandatory addition to the party, plus you have to take him along for this section.
4) North Pole of Telos; no choice. If you are male, you will add Handmaiden after leaving Telos.

Those four stops are all linear and mandatory.

You may now travel to Nar Shadaa, Dantooine, Dxun/Onderon, or Korriban.

Which NPC's can you add at/from each planet?

5) Dantooine - Disciple can be added to your party if you are Female; instead of Handmaiden. I don't believe he is mandatory in any way, nor must you complete the planet story to get him.

6) Nar Shadaa - During the course of the "final act" of Nar Shadaa, you will add Mira (Light Side/Neutral) or Hanhaar (Dark Side) to your party. Upon completion of the final act, you will add G0-T0. You can also complete HK-47 after finishing Nar Shadaa.

7) Dxun/Onderon - Mandalore is a mandatory addition to your party before entering the plot door from Dxun to Onderon.

Korriban - Nothing.

Onderon 2 - Nothing.

Dantooine 2 - Nothing.

End Game - Nothing.

Plot character - Visas Marr will arrive on your ship after you become clearly Light Side/Dark Side AFTER you travel to another OPEN PORT, leave your ship and re-enter it. For most players this will occur on the second free planet they visit. (unless you're strictly playing neutral)

So assuming you want to get each character ASAP, you can do the planets in the order listed above. You don't have to finish Dantooine if you're female, and if you're male, you can skip it entirely in favor of a direct trip to Nar Shadaa.

The conflicting issue: Influence.

KotOR 2 added the game mechanic of influence. You can gain influence with your party members in order to learn more of the back story, learn about each character's personal story, gain skill and ability increases for yourself and the NPC party members, and turn several of them into Jedi. I don't want to get into an influence guide, but there are a couple of salient points that affect who you take to which planet.

Mira, Handmaiden, Disciple, Hanhaar and Visas can nearly or completely max out on influence through conversations and actions on the ship. If you need extra influence, they are all most influenced on Dxun/Onderon.

Mandalore gains most of his influence on Onderon, where he is a mandatory party member. Like all of the dark side NPC's, there are also several people in the game that you can murder for influence. However, Mandalore is broken and you CANNOT max influence with him. What you get from Mandalore is a significant piece of the back story and stat bonuses.

Bao-Dur has no conversation influence options, he must witness you performing good deeds. He is most influenced on Dxun/Onderon, but also shares several influence points with the others on Nar Shadaa, and has a unique influence point on Dantooine. It is possible for Bao-Dur to "break" and become unavailable.

Atton has a couple of influence points while he is forced into the party, plus you have to take him off the the ship on Nar Shadaa at least once. You then have to navigate a conversation map with him to finish out his influence and story. I think you have to complete Nar Shadaa first, but I'm not sure.

Atton, Bao-Dur, Handmaiden and Visas share several influence points on Nar Shadaa and Dantooine. You must have ONE of these NPC's plus Kreia in your party.

HK gains the most influence by witnessing you threaten and murder innocents.

GoTo as well, to some extent; but more importantly he has several plot related doors.

T3-M4 has a few influence points in the early game and on the ship, but is most influenced by your ability to upgrade him. You need a computer skill of 15 and a repair of 20, if I remember.

GoTo, HK, Hanhaar and Mandalore are all evil. You must do things that will result in Dark Side Points in order to gain influence with them. Very easy if you're evil, go find a list of killable NPC's and go to town.

Handmaiden, Visas and Mira can all be maxed out through conversation (I think...or close to it) but (I think) all of them have "level gates". I know you can't finish out your story with Handmaiden until you reach level 18, regardless of how much influence you have with her. I think the same is true of Visas and Mira.

You must seek out some influence points for Bao-Dur, as you can't influence him via conversation. He has either a location gate or a level gate himself, although I'm not sure what it is.

Kreia - I think you can get all of the influence you need through conversations. Just always agree with her. If you have her in your party, there are several places that will gain you influence with Kreia while losing influence with the other party member, and vice versa.

So, the influence guide would seem to indicate the order listed above.

So what's the problem?

Nar Shadaa is almost half of the game. Doing it second, after the railroad of the the introductory sequences, is a major drag. To be sure, I went to Nar Shadaa after Telos the first time I played the game, but this time I got so bored by the time I was halfway through NS that I reloaded from an earlier save and went to Dxun instead. The problem now is actually an obvious one: I'm now getting 3 characters one planet later than I would otherwise. Since I'm playing light side, and two of them will be evil, only Mira is a possible loss. But we'll see. Getting Mandalore early isn't really much of an advantage. Taking Bao-Dur and Handmaiden along on Dxun/Onderon, however has definitely maxed Handmaiden's influence and I think has maxed Bao-Dur's as well.

So, basically, unless you do the game in one particular order, you only make things harder for yourself.

I'd be glad to hear from others who have played the game regarding what order they did the planets in and what they think about it.

The most wonderful and stressful time of year...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 12:53:36 +0000

No, not what you think. With few exceptions, the "holidays" aspect of the Fall and Winter is a stress-reliever for me. What I'm referring to is that my financial year usually starts in March, April or May; and ends in December. I start getting some income in December. So, the period from November to the end of the year is filled with making every dollar count. Plus, you never "really" know how good a job you did during the year until this final huge, expensive effort.

The amount of work that goes into a harvest and all of the stress mentioned above means, as I posted last year, that I don't really have a lot of time for posting...and when I do, I don't feel like it. I don't want to just do more re-posting from other blogs. I like to try to keep blog mentions confined to other bloggers' original work rather than contributing to another round of viral videos. OTOH, Wonderduck comes up with some of the more unique and entertaining examples I've seen, there are currently two good videos on his front page.

So, just to force myself, I'll just run through some randomness.

Recently found the Let's Play Archive. This particular LP got me wanting to play KotOR 2 again...he made the game sound pretty good. As I tweeted recently; though, I actually think the writing is WORSE in 2 than in one. Different, yes. The story certainly has the basis for something MUCH deeper and more complex than KotOR. Unfortunately, the writer(s) didn't know what they were talking about half the time. Obviously, somebody made it through the first chapter of the Pop Guide to Chaos Theory and a Psychology 101 primer, but missed out on War Strategy and Tactics That Anyone Can Understand and Principles of Leadership: A Common Sense Approach. Then there are the "moral choices." Bioware games and western RPG's in general have become well-known for their "black and white" moral choices. KotOR 2 was made by Obsidian rather than Bioware, and a lot of players felt that Obsidian did a better job of making those choices more like "multiple shades of gray." I don't see it, myself. Most of the choices are still "Save/Eat Puppy", they just word them differently. Most of the "gray" choices are actually railroading by the plot...which is to say, rather than "Save/Eat Puppy" you get to choose "Eat Puppy Now/Eat Puppy Later." See, the writer(s) don't really give you a lot of freedom in "defining" your character. Sure, you can level and play your Jedi as Light/Dark Side, Neutral or Insane; but KotOR 2 goes well beyond KotOR's "this is who you are and what you did, now what are you going to do?" KotOR 2 says, "this is who you are, what you did, why you did it, who you did it with and for, and what you thought of them. Now what are you going to do? Oh, and you're still mad about this, so you should probably choose A, and even though we've made it perfectly clear to you repeatedly, and you have high intelligence and wisdom, you don't really understand B, so we'll just fill in "duuuuuuuuuuuh" for that answer.

And so on.

End the end, it still comes down to "side with/kill bad guy". But there's so much arrogance and ignorance in the story, and the frequent Character Development railroading make the game less enjoyable than KotOR...at least to a certain degree. On the other hand, the story IS more complex...not better, just deeper. The game is bigger, the mechanics are a little better, the crafting system is much improved, and the animations and graphics are much better. On the third hand, the rushed development time means that something like 20% of the game got cut before release, and you see a lot of the resultant broken bits still in the game. I don't bear any hard feelings about that, though...13 months is not enough time to develop a game like this.

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I'm just about tired of my iPhone. Getting sick of what I can't do with it. It's a decent multimedia phone, but it just can't compare to a full smartphone with better desktop integration. Add to that the number of ways that Apple WON'T service the phone, and the dreaded iTunes. Think I'll switch to THIS.

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Thought about playing Dwarf Fortress. Got over it.

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Can't think of anything else, right now. Although this is good:

A few more video game updates...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:11:35 +0000

UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM because I'm forgetful.

I've finished or at least tried a few other games in the last few months that I haven't talked about, and at least one that I surprisingly don't have any real interest in revisiting after about 15 hours investment.

1) I finished the original Katamari Damacy a couple months back. What can you say about it, really? It's fun, unique and not too challenging until you try to get some of the optional stuff, which I wasn't interested in. Took me about 12 hours to play the game through. Doubt I'll revisit, but everyone should try it once. Paid about $15 for it used, which isn't too bad.

2) Tried Final Fantasy X-2 after finishing Final Fantasy X. Looked really neat; but, despite being a fan of the idea, I've never really like the Active Time Battle System. You either just click the attack option by default so you can watch what's on the screen (and X-2 is very pretty to look at) or you spend all your time working the menu and only glancing at the screen. Still, I imagine I'll go back to it sooner or later. I mean this game is REALLY nice to watch.

3) Tried Final Fantasy 7 after that, which I've never played all the way through. Made it about 15 hours in, got busy at work, and have never gone back...even with a hurt back. Just no interest. Unfortunately, I KNOW the story already...it's hard to miss if you spend any time around video games for as long as I have. Plus, Final Fantasy games have never been at the center of my radar, as I discussed in my unfinished Final Fantasy X Play Through. So, yeah, great story, most of us can agree on that anyway...I just wasn't having a lot of fun playing the game.

4) Recent tries: One, I lied and tried Vice City Stories for a few hours. I liked Vic Vance, the protagonist, except he seems a little TOO conditioned to following orders. ASK him to do something illegal, and he'll tell you to go to hell. Have an unknown drug trafficer order him to shoot people he doesn't know with an assault rifle, and he does it. I guess you could view that as some kind of commentary on military training, but that's a big stretch. You can't walk up to a PFC on the street and say "Those people are after me! Kill them with this M-4!" and expect anything other than being forcibly disarmed and hauled to the nearest police officer. Vice City looked much better this time around (compared to the original game) and they got rid of that damned glare in your eyes all of the time. On the other hand, just like Liberty City Stories, everything has a grainy, washed out look; like you're always wearing dirty glasses. I guess that's the price you pay for having all the extra buildings and such. What finally broke it for me was the new Hidden Package mechanic. Rather than running around finding the hidden packages tucked in far-away corners, in VCS you look for Red Balloons floating high in the air. Then you pop them. This has to be done generally with a precise shot in the free aim mode or with an automatic weapon that places a random grouping in the area you're aiming. I tried hitting a balloon with my pistol in free aim mode, including putting my nose on the TV screen in order to make sure the center of the reticule was EXACTLY on the balloon, but never hit it. I didn't want to waste the assault rifle I had found by accident, and I won't have access to the OTHER recommended method, the attack chopper, until much later in the game. The thing is, those hidden packages, or red balloons, are one of the things that makes these games playable early on. You can usually get 20 or 30 at the beginning of the game, which will give you typically a spawn point for a pistol, shotgun, and some other weapon near your safe house. Without these, you have to find the weapon spawn points around town and camp them to build up ammo. Plus, if you get busted or wasted, you lose the weapon and have to start over (thus making the spawn points near your safe house VERY convenient.) Maybe I'll go back to it some other time, but it didn't impress me too much.

Also tried Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone on the Xbox. I thought this was kind of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Lite. It's more of a standard modern Beat'em Up like God of War and the thousands of other titles like it. The graphics are amazing, the gameplay is poor. If I had paid more than $2.00 for it, I'd want my money back.

5) Always keep a stack of fighting games available. Playing Street Fighter 3: Third Strike on Xbox, but may try something different. Trying to get a copy of Arcana Hearts for PS2.

6) Started Psychonauts on Xbox and The Godfather on PS2 last night. I already posted on Psychonauts in Twitter; wow. Yeah, everyone told me so. How have I not played this game before now? Sounds like a simple but quirky and entertaining platformer, but I put two solid hours in before I noticed, and wanted to keep playing. The Godfather really surprised me. Similar to Demon Stone, I thought it was kind of GTA 3 Lite. It's actually a bit more focused and complex, with some really interesting gameplay elements. Not sure I like the controls though. Need to look at that. I think I'll stick with these two games for a while.

7) I mentioned finally getting a copy of Phantasy Star Online Episodes I and II Plus for Gamecube. Pretty rare game. Been trying to get a copy for a few years. I played the original Phantasy Star Online on the Dreamcast. This is a simple, straightforward MMORPG. Only I never played it online, as that's just not my usual cup of tea. The offline mode is a straightforward Beat'em Up style RPG, kind of like Fable. The Dreamcast version could only be played multiplayer online. When we got our Xbox several years ago, one of the games we wanted was the Xbox version of PSO, which supposedly had OFFLINE multiplayer (my wife likes the game as well.) Turns out it does, but you have to log on to Xbox Live first, which was a waste of money to me. However, the Gamecube version of the game had OFFLINE MULTIPLAYER. AND, there was a PLUS version of the game that basically had all of the content EVER released for PSO. The CATCH was, very few copies of the game were made. It sells new now for over $100. So, I'm looking forward to getting back into that game.

Other recent completion: Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy. Well, 99%. I never went back and finished the final boss bottle because it was a huge pain and I didn't care THAT much. SatCM is somewhat similar to Prince of Persia, in that there's combat and there are puzzles. Unlike Prince of Persia, the combat is pretty straightforward and the puzzles are difficult. The only really difficult battles are the boss battles (and I beat all except the last with only a few tries...they're all timing and 'find the weakness' battles, rather than straight up combat). The only REALLY hard puzzles were the ones that required precision timing and perfect jumping. Oddly enough, one of the main characters does all the combat and timing puzzles while the other main character does all of the 'how the hell does this work?' puzzles. I liked the latter much more than the former; unfortunately, Sphinx is actually the MAIN main character, and you spend about 2/3 of the game controlling him rather than the Mummy.

The game splits itself between controlling Sphinx, a semi-demi-god and apprentice magician (which never figures in to anything), and The Cursed Mummy, aka Tutankhamen. Yeah, THAT Tutankhamen. Obviously the story is based on ancient Egypt and several of the Egyptian religions and mythologies. Equally obvious is that the story, just like Egypt's "official" ancient history, is almost complete bunk. It's done well, though, and is great deal of fun. While the levels with Sphinx can get a bit tedious, I loved the levels with the Mummy. Well done, HUGE puzzle levels. Oddly, most reviewers seemed to have the opposite view; favoring Sphinx while finding the Mummy levels too difficult or boring. YMMV. The visuals in the game are gorgeous, and the soundtrack is appropriate and enjoyable. However, there is absolutely NO VOICE track in the game. The most you get is some characters have a little "Hmm..." or "Ah ha!" or "Aiiiieeee!" or whatever that they repeat whenever their text comes up. I imaging this came from the game being a budget title to start with, and a puzzle game to boot...the producers probably felt that adding voice talent would just be throwing money away. Would have been nice, though.

All-in-all, this is a well done puzzle game. If you like slow, intelligent, platform puzzlers; SatCM is worth picking up. It was only $20 new, and I found a like new copy at Gamestop for $5.00. Easily worth it.

By the way, you can find links for all of these games in the Amazon Lists to the right.

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:15:44 +0000

Just finished GTA: LCS. Tearing up your back gives you all sorts of time to lay in front of a TV. This is my third GTA game; I started a couple years ago with Grand Theft Auto 3 and then played Vice City about a year ago. I tried San Andreas a couple of times but haven't been able to get into it. Played the PS2 version, btw.

I was actually pretty excited about LCS. I enjoyed playing in Liberty City in the first game a lot more than Vice City, although Vice City of course did have much better control and many more game options. LCS gives you even better control than Vice City, but fewer gameplay elements. Plus, I really liked the character of Toni Cipriani from the first game. LCS is a prequel to GTA III telling the story of how Toni became Salvatore Leone's right-hand man.

Whereas Claude Speed, the (originally) unnamed, voiceless hero of GTA III was a petty criminal just trying to get by any way he could, Toni is a single-minded one man army who doesn't give a damn about anything other than the money he's owed for doing a job for the Leone family, and loyalty to Don Salvatore. Claude's lack of character was compensated for by NPC's giving him explicit directions for every single mission he went on. LCS is clever enough that I felt like Toni was actually in the driver's seat at least half the time, and his answer to solving life's mysteries was to kill a bunch of rival gangsters and blow something up.

Unfortunately, the LCS story doesn't hold up quite as well overall. Despite excellent attention to keeping alternative missions from conflicting with each other, several of the missions just didn't seem to flow well with the narrative. Within several missions you run into plot-generated inconsistencies, ridiculous requirements, and even downright goofy messes (like the final mission against the Sicilians, who apparently brought around 100 speed boats to attack you.) Still, the game did what I expected and told the story reasonably well.

I skipped a lot of the optional content on this one. In GTA III I got 100% completion, which was a bastard with the much poor controls. On the other hand, there wasn't that much to do to finish it all in GTA III. I got 99% in Vice City and never did figure out what I missed. LCS has even more side quests than Vice City, and the majority of them are only for a small bit of cash and 1% towards completion. I stayed with the sidequests that give you weapons spawns, certain car spawns, and health, armor and special attribute bonuses. Even that added probably 25% to my play time.

I've got Vice City Stories, but I'm not looking forward to that one quite as much. The main character in VCS is Lance Vance's (from Vice City) older brother, whom he mentions a few times. The story in VCS seems really weak from what I've read, and the main story missions are cut back to minimum in order to focus more on the side quests. If that's true, I may end up not finishing it. Either way, I doubt I'll pick it up for a while...the GTA gameplay tends to get a bit boring after a while.

No shame...

nospam@example.com (Ben) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:55:09 +0000

I've stated repeatedly that the first current-gen console I would buy, if I had an urgent need to spend money, would be a PS3. But the current God Mode really nails the unbelievable levels of Sony Fanboy-ism going on these days: