Fallen at the last hurdle?

December 23, 2006

Most listened : Nothing, laptop has been gone an Chris’ wouldn’t play sound Most played : Wii Play

Current mood : Headache

This week has been an (intentionally) quiet week for me, which is good. Because we all need our caveman weeks every now and then. I’ve been able to properly sit down and find out a bit more about my Wii. Which I’e written up some imprssions. Oh and I’ve wrapped up my Christmas shopping as well. That just dragged on too long.

I also busted my ass on some more work for Designer Impulse. Worked a few hours a day on the template/logo. I really got that all polished up and finished. I’m quite pleased with the final result. It might not look like it took such a long time to make but I guess I’m just a poor designer. Although I’m really frustrated as all of my work was for nothing. Chris has decided to cancel making the website. The reasons are justified but it just frustrates me as he constant bullied me into working on it. Because he wanted it there and then, just like he always wants. Anyway that will free up plenty of my time. So I’m gonna be working on getting PrimeScape up and running, properly.

I also got my laptop back from repair, didn’t take long, which is a bad point. They had to open up my laptop and when they did they didn’t replace the standard grey keyboard which matches with the colour of the rest of my laptop. They installed a new keyboard for me, one which isn’t as soft either. But thats not what made me mad. The fact that the keyboard is solid lack and doesn’t match my laptop’s overall colour is terrible. It looks absolutely atrocious. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr….

So I suggest that anyone in South Australia should not buy from Leader. Oh they also removed/replaced my laptop stickers and I noticed that they used Opera to stream some soccer from the internet and cleared my recycle bin.

But the main thing that I wanted to conclude today (and I say ‘conclude’ hopingly) is this whole saga about this odd test that I believe that I’m being put thru this year. I’ve mentioned it a few times before but to quickly sumarise:

I’m a guy with fairly strong morals and beliefs, now there have been various situations/circumstances during this year in which have tested how strongly I believe in these morals. Or so it seems to me. Its abstract I know, but I am certain of it. One of the key formats of these events has been with my study, as I have put in my all this year.

Anyways, our TER results came in the other day, that is our final grade for the yar, our overall rank out of 100. Now I scored 71.65, which is a good score. But is distant from my expctations which weren’t that high. Anyways Chris unfortunately beat me, yeah there goes another effort destroyed. But some of my friends scored lower which I guess you could say was expected. The thing that I have noticed is though is that the people whom are generally average to good in their studies and study rather easy subjects got much higher than I. Now theres no secret about this trend. It seems as though the harder subjects aren’t scaled fairly.

Example one:

Someone I know had got grades for each subject around 15-17, the subjects that they studied where some of the easiest available. They got over 10% higher than myself.

Example two:

A friend of mine had studied some of the hardest subjects available. He passed them all quite well. About 12/20 for most. He scored less than 50%. Which absolutely doesn’t make sense.

This isn’t as bad for me as it is some other people but I think that it is plain unfair. Another kick in the nads. I can get into my course easily (55%). Which is fine. I am just very angry at this. I feel as though the system punishes you for doing harder subjects. Which stinks.

Anyway I’m done for today. Hoping to get a vanilla PrimeScape out soon.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed

Tags: Life, ter, exams, school, university, life
Posted in Life | Comments (0)

Wii Impressions

December 21, 2006

3 weeks after the console has been released down here in Australia and I am writing impressions for it. Yeah I’ve been rather busy in the last few weeks. Its only in the past 4 days that I’ve been able to sit down and have a complete blitz on the console.

The whole bundle was quite a desirable one. Wii Sports and a carry bag included. Unfortunately the carry bags ran our straight away so I only received mine about 6 days ago. I’d wished that I’d pre-ordered at JB as they had an official bag and wrist/head bands for Wii Sports. Its also great to be receiving a case for Wii Sports as the Americans didn’t.

These Wii condoms have been selling quite well, 2 of my friends have a set each.

Inside the box where 2 smaller ones which had cute icons to say what was in each one. You certainly get plenty in the pack. Beyond the regular console items you get a stand, a stand for the stand, your sesnor bar, 2 manuals and a quick manual.This actually took much longer than I initially thought. Its like setting up a normal console but you also have to:

stick batteries in the controllers
sync the controllers
calibrate with the sensor bar

And from there move thru all of the options, including setting up a name for the console. Then you probably want to create a Mii.

A sample taken from the Joystiq mock up

Chris and I started off creating our own Mii characters. I already knew what I was going to do for my Mii as I used the flash program that Joystiq made mimicing the system. My character turned out just like the one I planned on the computer, although the hair is a little dark and I may change that.

Games

Wii Sports

The initial impressions of Wii Sports were somewhat negative by myself and my brother. I think that its due to not understanding the controller very well. After a few hours of play we started to pick it up and it was actually really fun. I was surprised at how bad the graphics were. I mean I knew that they were going to be bad but Nintendo could have spent maybe a day of work and have made it look substatually better. Take the prerendered trees in Wii Tennis for example.

Wii Boxing and Tennis

I enjoy the game much more now though as I have a much improved technique. I most like Tennis and Boxing. Chris and I love to play boxing matches. Its incredibly imersive and frantic. But it certainly does hurt your arms after playing it for a few hours.

Wii Play

We then moved to Wii Play. Which is a collection of 9 games that are meant to tech you how to use the Wii remote. I reckon that Wii Play is probably better than Wii Sports its just so addictive. I don’t think that any of the games are duds at all, if I had to choose a worse one it would be the cow racing but even that is really fun.

My favourite games are:

Tanks
Fishing
Target Shooting
Table Tennis

Chris and I can’t stop playing the table tennis game, we could play it for a whole day straight and still want more and I’m not kidding. Its the king of twitch games. I haven’t been able to stop playing the tanks game, its so challenging.

Ah yes fishing, very addictive

The only faults with this game collection is that it is only a 2 player game and that some of the medals are much harder to get per each game. Some I could get Gold on my first try others I’ve wasted hours trying to nab that medal.

Super Monkey Ball Bannana Blitz

By now Chris and I wanted to play a ‘real’ game, so we put on Super Monkey Ball.

There’s not much to really say about Monkey Ball. It’s just like the other great games in the series but the single player uses the Wii remote and you can jump. There are also 50 mini games for the multiplayer component.

I haven’t had enough time on the single player game to say if the Wii remote feels better than the analogue stick. So far though I like using the analogue stick better just because it is easier to keep the stick still than the Wii remote. Which is handy for those tight corners. But the Wii remote gives you more satisfaction once you have completed a course than the analogue stick. My impressions on using the remote improved greatly rather quickly so I’m hoping that with more practice it will only get better.

One of the 50 mini games for SMB

The multiplayer is a bit of a mix bag. Out of the 50 games about 20 of them are good to great. But not as good as the original games like Monkey Race and Monkey Target. Which bugs me greatly as I loved playing those games with my friends and now I can’t get the same experience but with the Wii remote. Still need to try out the games more though.

Zelda Twilight Princess

I started playing this game about week after the release. Yes I must be crazy. But I wasn’t quite in the mood to play it right off the bat. I’m still only up to the first dungeon. What I have played has been really good. It seems very mixed up from the regular formula. Just when everything seems peaceful and back to the cliche it isn’t.

Graphically there is plenty of detail and does what Metroid Prime did for the Metroid series for Zelda TP to the Zelda franchise. The sound is also pretty neat. The music for the first time you enter Ordon village is very reminiscent of Lufia 2, which I rather enjoyed.

Red Steel

From reading the reviews that were on Game rankings I thought that this game would be garbage. After playing it for 15 minutes it seemed just like that. After sitting down with it for a bit longer it started to work. It just has a steep learning curve as well as a hide then shoot sort of method. I don’t think that people were expecting this.

Re-reading some of the reviews that slam the game I think that the people must have only played the game for a short while because I absolutely loved it. All of these comments like the controls are set up in a weird fashion and comments just stating that the controls don’t work are completely garbage. If I had to think of how to play Red Steel before I played the game then it would have been just like how the game plays. Point with the Wii remote and straft with the nunchuck. How is that weird?

Some of the nice effects for shooting different surfaces, the explosions are prerendered

The game is a pretty hard one, I must have died at least 4 times per mission. Some of the end missions I would die all the time. It is a particularly hard game, due to the amount of damage the enemies take off. Its a good thing that they have the health regeneration or else it would still be stuck on the early missions. The health regeneration actually helps the game play more like a hide and shoot kind of game.

Saying all of this there are some minor glitches with the auto aiming and controls, the action feels a bit scripted, there are some low res textures and the sound can be a little bit repetitve. But I love Red Steel so much for being such a challenge and working well for the most part.

That will wrap me up on the Wii for now. I might post a bit more on particular games later on.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed

Tags: Video Games, Red Steel, Zelda Twilight Princess, Super Monkey Ball Bannana Blitz, Wii Play, Wii Sports, wiimote, wii, nintendo, launch
Posted in Video Games | Comments (0)

No Room to Move

December 15, 2006

Most listened : Bunch of podcasts on Chris’ laptop

Most played : Red Steel

Current mood : Too damn busy

I usually consider the end of my week to be on the night that I have finished work for the week. Which is a pity as I’d like to say its the end of the week but I still have a longer than full day of work tommorow.

This week has been so damn busy. Everyday I’ve had something on. Which is fine for some people but I am the sort of person that needs to spend sometime at home after being out for a while. It just makes me feel more secure and incontrol I guess.

Anyways, I lied. Everyday but Monday I was busy. But I stayed up too late on Sunday reading interesting articles on Wikipedia. So I woke up at 1pm. John invited us round for the Tuesday for most of the day. On the Wednesday I had to go to the book sales and sell my books. They were snapped up really quickly as there are 2x the amount of people studying Physics and Maths Specialist this upcoming year. Supposively its the same over at Matt’s school. Then I had to go to work at 5pm for a special card holders night which was rather relaxed.

On the Thursday I did heaps of Christmas shopping so everything is almost finished as well. I also got my laptop organised to go away on repair as my LAN ports aren’t working. And today we went to see Casino Royale with Matt, unfortunately Andrew couldn’t come for some reason which was a pity. In anycase the movie was fantastic, back to the Roger Moore era style which is how it should be. Altho it didn’t quite feel like a Bond movie, it lacked the cleches of the regular movies.

And tommorow I have work. I sure do hope that now that all of this business that I’ve taken care of will repay itself with a nice relaxing following week. I wish I had my work roster though.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed

Tags: Life, Casino Royale, Roger Moore, christmas
Posted in Life | Comments (0)

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate destruction Review

December 11, 2006

Hulk rages out on the Gamecube

Graphics 8.8/10
Gameplay 9.3/10
Sound 9.2/10
Lastability 9.0/10
Overall 9.2/10

Being a gamer in the know I approached Hulk with a fair bit of caution due to its license and the tendency that license games are poor quality that rely on the license to sell. But to put it straight I am very impressed with this new Hulk game.It’s a sequel to the movie based Hulk game made by the same studio. The game follows a similar vein to the original although this time around the developers have given the control to the gamers. This is what makes Hulk so much fun. Instead of forcing you to follow the rules set by the developers you are given the freedom to explore 2 main areas. One of which is dense city and the other an open desert. There’s also a few boss battles to break the game up from the mission based structure. There are two types of mission, the story ones in which need to be completed to progress through the story and the extra missions in which earn extra unlockables. There is plenty unlockable content as well; developer videos, comic book covers, game cheats and more moves for the Hulk.

All of the games freedom would be pointless if the Hulk didn’t play right and luckily for us he is fine tuned to perfection. Personally I think that he can jump too high and too far in fact he could probably traverse a city quicker than Spidey. Also when jumping and running up buildings the camera and Hulk himself becomes somewhat difficult and turn in crazy directions that put you in the wrong direction. This becomes frustraing in missions that require you to get from A to be in a tight time limit. Hulk can punch, kick, do combos of both, smash down on the ground etc. As you progress through the game you unlock points for creating destruction that can be spent on buying new moves for out green friend. Theres a lot to do with Hulk. It’s not what Hulk can do that makes playing around with him enjoyable, its how he can interact with the environment. You can rip trees out of the ground and use it as a bat to smack pedestrians into the sea, tear cars into boxing gloves, surf the streets on a truck there’s just so much that you can do with the environment around you.

In between missions you can go around and do whatever. You can move between the church(main hub for the game) to the city and badlands(desert). Although the church links the main areas the city is where you’ll be spending most of your time.

Presentation wise Hulk is rather nice. FMVs accompany the main game which contain professional voice actors. Hulk of which is done by the voice actor doing the voice in the new cartoon series. The main menu looks nice enough but is a bit tacky. Another element that that makes this game a Hulk fans dream is the story line which much like the voice acting is made by people already working on the Hulk franchise. The story itself is one of twists and turns and is quite typical of most superhero plots not in a bad way though.

Graphically Hulk looks very solid, the grity art style that the developers have opted for works a treat and fits into the Hulk universe. The characters are all very well animated and use motion capture that gives it a realistic feel. The draw distance in the game is rather impressive. From the city level you can see most of what is in the background scaled down to a realistic view. Since Hulk is all about destroying things the explosions are done very well. They are very flexible and don’t look bad when your up close.

Just like the graphics and presentation further time and effort was put into creating realistic sound effects. Any form of destruction leads to some sort of realistic sound effect. From buildings crashing to throwing someone into a wall. All characters in the game contain full voice acting and as mentioned before are very well done. There’s plenty of variety in sounds that come out of Hulk. So he never sounds repetitive and annoying.

The whole Hulk game engine is very diverse an is made so well. There are a few glitches and the ocassional bad camera angle but for the most part it works lovely. I was amazed that some things in the game occurred. It is something that I’d expect from an upcoming gen title. When you think something isn’t covered it probably is.

Closing comments

The depth of the game, freedom that is given to the player and the load of unloackables make this game one of the best action games for the Gamecube of the year. The effort that has been put into this title shows, despite a few common flaws Hulk is a must have title for any super hero fan.

If you enjoyed this post, then make sure you subscribe to my RSS Feed