I'm desperately trying to get back to blogging rut... so here's some observations on the Halo: Reach beta.

I'm usually not into demos, especially if we're talking about demos that eat up a gigabyte of disk space. But this is not a PC game, and I had bunch of free space on the Xbox 360 anyway. I had actually waited a long time to get this demo, and it has so far been just as awesome as I suspected.

Only thing is that it makes me post weird crap in screenshot filenames.
"MASTUR CEEFS FR1ST SNIEP EVAR" - yes, Arby 'n' the Chief is just this awesome.
"A PORTHOLE SNIEP rofl" - I swear, this thing is doing a number on my spelling abilities. That, or the game needs less Powerhouse. Less portholes = less rofls.
"OMG BEST SNIEP EVER" - I can actually snipe a person from across this tiny room and make them fall face down on the floor! I must be the best Halo player ever! It is decided, I shall make a montage or something.

Another thing is that the playlists have so far had too much of game modes that I've seen in Halo 3, and the new game modes appear too rarely. Dammit, I hope there'll be more Elite stuff and Invasion and Headhunter and perhaps even "if your feet touch the ground you're dead, so keep using those jetpacks". Team Slayer is still awesome, but it'd be sweet to see more of these new modes. If you have to test old modes, at least put in Grifball.

Also, there are a few minor irritating deficiencies that I'm concerned about. I expected a lot more based on the multiplayer trailer, and these deficiencies are very blatant.

Allow me to illustrate.

Here's some facts that I noted on my gaming.

• I played somewhat less games on GameCube once I got Animal Crossing.
• I played somewhat less games on DS once I got Animal Crossing: Wild World.
• I played somewhat less games on Wii once I got Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City.
  

And now, I'll just say that I've played less Halo games when Halo Waypoint came out.

Now, I'm not saying that Animal Crossing series is that bad. (Complete waste of time, granted, but not really awful, and heck, video games are supposed to be about wasting time.) I sort of like Halo Waypoint too. (Not as kickass as Halopedia, but still.)

It's still weird. I'm kind of paralysed by the fact that games can turn into mundane existence. It's as if I really need some hook to go on - like the music collection or the statue in Animal Crossing, after which I sort of quit playing those games. I'm playing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion like a "mundane" game, and have over 100 hours in the clock, yet I'm not bored - there's actually stuff to do in the game.

Bleh, I guess I just needed to ramble about something in a beautiful Saturday morning. =)

I got my Xbox 360 in December 30, 2008, and it's now February 1, 2009 - when my Xbox Live Gold trial was supposed to run out (but didn't, because I obviously renewed it =).So, (puny) 460 gamer points later, it's a good time to ramble a little bit on how a self-professed Nintendo geek has so far survived in the Microsoft world.

The short answer, of course, is that while it has been a little bit bumpy ride, in the end, I'm very happy.

The last few days have been quite interesting. The end of the year is the time of cheap games, for starters.

My new year's celebrations were held this time in Animal Crossing: Let's Go to the City. This game seems quite interesting so far, though I have to say the game doesn't hit me like the previous parts did. Wasting time is starting to feel like wasting time!

Aside of that, I have, right at hand, a brand new system that was, to say the least, quite WTFy to get (to abuse innocent commas). It seems that this generation of consoles is really full of weird acquisitionary WTFs!

So here I am, a new owner of an XBox 360. I figured that simply having a Wii won't cut it, and a serious gamer needs two next-gen consoles: Wii gets amazing interesting games and XBox 360 will get many of the remaining massive multiplatform megahits, since Wii doesn't necessarily have the marbles to run the bigger titles. Oh, to get Soul Calibur IV! Oh, to get a smooth-running TES4: Oblivion!

The first big WTF moment was the package contents. You know the stereotype: "Nintendo is for kids, the $alternateconsoleoftheday is for Real Men." Well damn! If they want to enforce that stereotype, maybe they should pick the pack-in titles with a bit more care.


This was all the game store had. I may eventually try these games. Eventually.

Back to the two-platform approach for a bit. While on the holidays, I was joking to my sister that maybe they should make hardcore gamer bags that would carry both Wii and XBox 360. But when I saw the unpacked console, I had a very distinct sinking feeling. I had been under the impression that XBox 360 was going to be smaller and sleeker than its predecessor, but never in my life I could have anticipated how - pardon for not coming up with a more apt description - f*ng huge this thing is. F*ng metal chassis. F*ng huge connectors at the end of the cables. F*ng gigantic "please insert the plug in a power outlet fed by a medium-sized nuclear reactor" power supply (and I thought Wii's big power supply was a minus). I'm afraid no bag on this Earth can possibly carry this thing. (Or maybe I'll use my iron-reinforced camping backbag on my next holiday trip...)

Then, the connections. My eyebrows rose when I saw that Wii only supported WLAN out of box, but so far, this has worked pretty well practically. Thus, my eyebrows rose even further when I saw XBox 360 supported Ethernet out of box, but not WLAN! ...and came with an Ethernet cable that was way too short for my use. The store had 5 m cables, which were probably adequate but could be too short, so I got the next, longer one - a 10 m cable. Sold pre-knotted. Yay.

But aside of these little quirks, I've so far enjoyed XBox 360. I picked up BioShock, and aside of a few promo shots and a gigantic bunch of playing Thief and a nearly encyclopaedic knowledge of System Shock 2 (well, as encyclopaedic as anyone can have after about half a hour of playing...), I had no idea what to expect. A very pleasant and positive surprise indeed! I got Soulcalibur IV for pretty cheap, waltzed in the Xbox Live, was surprised by the somewhat low quality of the voice chat (but I suppose it's much better than no voice chat at all!), was amused by the fact that the first voice chat comment that I could make sense of from another player was something along the lines of "this lag is killing me", and pwn't the first match I could actually play in. (SC2 experience probably helps.)

Speaking of BioShock, I've long been a big sceptic of dual-stick controls - I've been a mouse-and-keyboard (or lock-on-the-target or lock-and-wiimote-zap, in case of Metroid Primes) kind of a guy. Now, it seems to me that the system doesn't entirely suck. As a gigantic Metroid fan, I obviously grabbed Halo 3, and was again somewhat positively surprised. A couple of pages of manual and one page of backstory explanation doesn't really help me a whole lot, but who cares, I got the basic idea pretty fast - just shoot whatever's trying to shoot you and run to the next room. ...and I ran out of ammo and it autosaved and basically I needed to grab weapons from a room with giant load of enemies and dodge and shoot and die a lot. Damn, if they want me to save the world, they should at least invest in some freaking energy guns! Oh well, I guess this will turn much more fun in time!

(A bit of a lull, and back to our ordinary scheduled blogging... more backlogged stuff coming soonish?)

Yesterday, I had was commenting on a rather ridiculous video and said a carefully weighed opinion. In case the video disappears, it's basically Chris-chan's ode to Playstation 3, a "life enchancement device" as he affectionately calls it. In case the video disappears, here's what I said:

I have had an occasional tendency to go in obsessive fanboy mode, but after this, I'll never ever feel bad afterwards - because I've never had even the slightest inclination to call my favourite things "life enhancement devices". My life's not ipso facto any better after pwning Mogenar today, dammit...

Well, actually, that Mogenar thing... that Mogenar thing...  I think it's pretty much safe to say that games are just something that you buy to get more challenges and intellectual stimulation. They don't enhance your life; they make it harder and more interesting.

And Mogenar, if anything, is exactly the sort of thing that makes your life a hell.

So, for the last few months, I've enjoyed Wii as a... um, new platform for playing GameCube games. Then, I got Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which was ultimately just improved Melee and the Serious Players could just stick to GC controller.

And this week's new highlights for me: Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Both will need more rambling in due time, but here's some rambling on the topic of Controlling The Games. Of course, I was a little bit sceptical about how these much-raved-about Wii controls really work in real life, but my fears have subsided.

I grew in a fairly ordinary Lutheran faith, but if you want a honest analytic opinion, I've always considered myself an "eclectic believer". Intricacies and slavish following of the Scriptures matter less to me - what really matters to me are the Good Ideas.

Yet, for a long time, I have had this weird mental condition that prevents me from being open-minded. It's one of those weird things that have to be demolished if I'm really going to accept Good Ideas from around me.

The mental block is simple: Are computer games a valid source for religion, philosophy and ethics? Can the same thing be said about fiction in general?

The weird thing about "games as art" debate is that everyone agrees that games are an art form, but when you really think about it, it's hard to say what really makes games a form of art of their own.

Games have the distinct feature that they are interactive. They have some sort of definable gameplay, and that is just about one of the distinct features of games, now that we really think of it. Games are an art form that stand on top of other art forms - motion picture, visual arts, music and literature, to mention just a few things.

But is there an excuse to call games a form of art that is truly separate from others?

This post might need a little bit of explanation to go with it, first. I've sometimes had to post jaded observations on how some things are awful. This post is not intended as a flame; the point is that this is an observation.

And the observation is that I've grown tired defending the Ultima series. Now, don't get me wrong... I'm just admitting excess zealotism, and is a part of healing process.

Limbo of the Lost is one of those game releases that confuse the heck out of me. How should I react?

I've seen the review, and it looks like an interesting little game - the creators had a decent enough concept to start from, and it looks at least some things were pulled off properly. The trailer was a bit cheesy but it had its good moments - a bit funniness, very cute cerberi (or how the hell you pluralise those)... and both good and very very bad animation and voice acting. A typical indie production, it seems, based on a freeware engine and tons of additional tweaking... I'm more of a RPG guy and not really an adventure game person (for a good reason), though I've enjoyed a few adventure games a lot.

But then, it turns out most of that tons of art assets have been blatantly ripped off from many games; The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion rip-offs are probably the most blatant, and I was alerted through the TTLG forums where people obviously paid most attention to Thief: Deadly Shadows rip-offs... and all of this is just the tip of the iceberg, because there's a giant huge big pile of this stuff.

I have to say I'm a bit confused, because in theory, I'm on the side of small developers and the game as a concept seems interesting. But on the other hand, ripping off assets from other games is not good, especially if it's a massive gigantic wholesale ripoff like what's been happening here. I have to apologise for working a "modern game development trends suck" angle to this thing, but I have to say that if the game had been published with, er, less impressive graphics that had been 100% homespun, this crisis would have been averted. But now, someone absolutely felt we need Leet Modern Graffix... and because the developers couldn't control themselves, we have a mess in our hands. What I'm trying to say is this: Yes, it's really awful that expectations about modern games are so high that independent developers have difficult time creating stuff that impresses modern gamer crowd. But I'm also saying this: if you feel the same, just screw the demographics and make the best-looking, best-sounding game that you can make with the available resources - copyright infringement will only make you the laughingstock and get you in trouble.

A sad affair, this one...