XBOX 360 - my Views

The Xbox 360 was the first of the heavy hitting consoles I bought. My brother had one which meant access to his (mostly driving) games collection. I was interested in First Person Shooters and the prospect of online gaming. I played a lot of Left for Dead online but mostly Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 online. I played this game online for about four months every night and managed to make my way up the ranks and enjoy discovering Domination Team games as being the most enjoyable. I'm annoyed that Microsoft make their online gaming service a subscription only basis. I also enjoy the Guitar Hero and Rock Band series of musical rhythm games. I was bought the 60gb model of which almost a third of it has been used in updates. The Xbox 360 plays most of the Xbox games by downloading an executable file to the hard drive and pulls the graphics and data from the DVD. Considering how cheap hard drives are, its shocking to see Microsoft charge so much for so little.

My Life with a Wii U

I did not take an initial strong interest in the Wii U, but it is growing on me, it helps that it is significantly cheaper than either of the two big hitters by around one hundred pounds in 2014. Although a Zelda game that just begs to be played, or a Mario Galaxy 3 comes would convince me otherwise. I like the concept of a controller with an inbuilt screen for added gaming elements. One downside to the inbuilt screen is that it is not multi-touch. I will most likely eventually own a Xbox One, but many years into its development cycle and with already cheap games and system exclusives. I will most likely buy a Playstation 4 first. The Wii U is essentially a graphically enhanced up Wii with HDMI output and a processing power equivalent of an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. The release of games from Nintendo shows that they held back a lot of Wii games to be released on their Wii U. The Deluxe version has 32gb of internal memory, and lets you add an additional 32gb Secure Digital card. It also has multiple USB ports, and has the facility to let you add a self-powered 2tb external hard drive for data storage, both of which is impressive, and helps keep the cost of the main unit down.

I finally found out about Hyrule Warriors the first of the Zelda games by Nintendo for their Wii U. And it looks to be a disappointment. Essentially its a open world hack and slash game akin to Dynasty Warriors and other such blade combat games. I had a look at the credits and the only thing about the game thats Nintendo is the name. They have even farmed the work out to a third party company who has made these kind of games before Koei.

 

I’ve owned my Wii U for a week now and am proud to say I’ve opened the box and thats it. I haven't plugged anything in or installed any updates and not even registered a Mii Wii Universe character. It came with Mario Kart 8, and I am aware that the number of good games is very limited, but I didn't buy it for millions of games, probably at best a dozen or so quality first party releases.

 

Sad that my Wii U still has been set up, but I'm getting closer. I have bought a 32gb Secure Digital card which will act as quick instant storage for the unit for doing upgrades and data saves. And I also bought an external self-powered 2tb Western Digital hard drive for saving games, downloadable content etc. When I first turned the Wii U on, it recognised the hard drive and instantly formatted it ready for use, great news. I’ve yet to check to see if it knows I plugged a 32gb card in as well.

 

I finally setup the Wii U in the loft, and I immediately fell in love with the interface and the way the gamepad makes music which compliments the music from the television. A perfect Nintendo harmony. I set up my Wii Mii and now have to find the time for an hour and a half to update the console before I can start playing anything. Its a lengthy day one update. The internet connection in the loft is not very good at the moment, and the connection does drop out. What I liked about the Nintendo Wii U is that when its downloading an update, if the connection drops it carries on from where it left off, rather than starting again from scratch.

A mixed night of Wii U updates whilst playing Half Life 2. I'm very impressed with the Wii U, but really need to see it on a decent television to appreciate it better. That will come later. I played Super Mario Bros Wii U and enjoyed the game. On the gamepad it looked and played just a Nintendo DS version of the game, albeit with a bigger screen. The graphics were excellent. The controls are tight, but I noticed something about the gamepad that I had never heard of or heard before. The A B X Y buttons rattle. Not just a little bit, but a lot. Its not a big issue, but its odd. Everyone seems to have the same problem, and its not just me.

 

The Mario Wii U game installed an update to the external hard disk drive so I am happy its working. When I get a chance I will check the storage of the three main devices and see how it is configured, internal memory, the 32gb Secure Digital card and the 2tb external hard disk drive.

Because Nintendo recommend an external self-powered hard drive as opposed to a normal USB powered external hard disk drive, I am contemplating moving my entire Wii game collection from three mixed external hard disk drives and putting them onto one single 2tb device, and then keep the external drives as emergency backups. Having worked out home much the main console cost, along with the Secure Digital and Hard Disk Drive upgrades added on top, the machine has cost the same as a Playstation 4.

 

I have been playing it more now, as I have played and enjoy Mario Kart 8, and looking forward to more Mario and Nintendo first party games, after all that was the sole reason I got this console.

Adventures in Gaming Part 5

After my poor introduction to text adventure games I loaded up and first encountered Twin Kingdom Valley on the BBC Model B but didn't get very far with it. Back in those days the puzzles were simple, and you only had a small set of objects to pick up and carry and items to manipulate. The trick was discovering the words and sometimes obscure solutions to obvious puzzles to win. Twin Kingdom Valley was a very advanced graphic adventure text game that simulated a living world. Every time you moved to a new location it would take about ten to twenty seconds to draw the scene for you. Oddly watching and waiting for this never got old, and you would watch it draw the scene every time. This was as close as I got to text adventures again. The world felt alive and forward planning made this a difficult game to play, but like Valhalla and The Hobbit, it was fun to wander around and do things that you normally shouldn't. As you typed your next sentence, characters would appear and leave the location, say or do things. The game was ahead of its time.

I can't remember the reason why, but one Christmas I was lent a Commodore 64 to borrow for the entire holiday fortnight. That Christmas was the most fun I think I’ve ever had playing computer games. With no interruptions I was able to dedicate the entire fortnight to the Commodore 64. I'd go to my room whenever I possibly could and load up the computer. The computer only came with a few games, but there was just enough to blow my mind with its amazing graphics and beautiful sounds. I remember playing Epyx’s Winter Games, I signed up and played all eight events and played as all eight countries into the early hours of the morning. It was far superior to my BBC computer. I gave it back after the fortnight, with no hope of owning one, I sadly forgot all about the Commodore until several months later.

We had a charity event at school and me and Greg decided to do a sponsored “playing games day” at school. I spent the whole day playing his Atari, and he spent the whole day playing on my BBC. I think it cemented my wanting to play American games as well as British games, a need that would only be fulfilled once I got a Commodore 64. We broke only for lunch, but I played Encounter, Battlezone and many Atari classic games like Pacman, Centipede and Asteroids.

There was a new boy who joined our form class at school, Thomas, and we quickly became good friends. We shared an interest in the same kind of music, he introduced me to role-playing games and we hung out most Saturdays. I later found out he owned a Commodore 64 and he wasn't that impressed with computers, mostly due to lack of interest and games. He didn't know anyone else with a Commodore 64, but I knew what the machine was capable of and later I somehow convinced him to swap his Commodore 64 the machine for my BBC model B. The Commodore had far superior games for it. He agreed to the swap, partly because I had many more games for my BBC. Whilst I did do some programming on the BBC, once I got my Commodore 64 I never did any kind of programming for years. The next time would be on the Atari ST many years later. After I did the swap, I never really saw much of him, and when we did he never ever mentioned computers again.

The games on the Commodore were bigger and better, and musically more impressive than the BBC, and even though I had initially less games for it, I was happier and it didn't take long for my games collection to grow. The BBC was essentially a black screen with coloured sprites moving around the screen. With the Commodore 64 the screens, sprites and background were full colour. And not only that but had full three channel sound, rather than the radio hiss from the BBC speaker. The Commodore 64 had been in the consumer market for a couple of years already and had a vast array of games. I had access to all a lot of second-hand games, re-releases, compilation box sets and budget games. I did find two fellow Commodore 64 owners who were passionate about games.

I began buying ZZAP64!, a popular computer games magazine dedicated to the Commodore 64 which kept me abreast of all the good and bad games. I liked the features, the humorous writing style and especially the Work in Progress articles which gave me a huge insight into how games were created. I was suddenly exposed to the inventive programming genius of Andrew Braybrook, the audio skills of Rob Hubbard and the witty insight of Jeff Minter. They did huge interviews with groups of musicians or programmers. The games I became interested in were because of the programmer or the musician who was involved rather than anything else. The reviewers of ZZAP64! actually seemed to enjoy playing the games and they weren't afraid to give good games good reviews and terrible games a shameful review. It was refreshing to see a high level of standards of journalism. Where a magazine used a scoring system out of ten, even the worst games got at least a seven. ZZAP64! used the full spectrum of scoring. I would rate ZZAP64! along with Amiga Power, Super Play, Edge and Zero as the five best computer magazines of all time. It helped that it was written by people who enjoyed the games they played and could write enthusiastically and negatively when needed. It set the standard for which I would rate all future gaming magazines.

At this stage all my computer games were originals, as I didn't know anyone who pirated Commodore games. I knew Greg copied most if his Atari games, but that was a real struggle and appeared to take technical knowledge and spending money on hardware. I knew it was easy to copy music tape to tape from friends and we didn't consider it piracy, a term that seemed alien to us.

One of the little games Thomas had (and was now mine), was a little gem called Chuckie Egg. At the time I just felt it was a relatively interesting and easy to play platformer. I already was experienced at playing platform games, and Chuckie Egg seem to look like a clone of Burger Time, which was one of my favourite games. What made Chuckie Egg more interesting and better than Burger Time was the Miner 2049er style level layouts which had areas that could only be reached by carefully examining the screen and making careful jumps. Suddenly the basic platforming skills required to collect all the corn whilst avoiding the mindless chickens became far more enjoyable. Watching and learning their simple patterns and discovering their fairly good artificial intelligence movement patterns made for an enjoyable expansion on platform games. In my opinion any new game should either be a whole new genre or bring something new to the game instead of rehashing old styles. Added to this was a generous time limit you were given to complete the level, so while I would hesitate to class this game as pedestrian, it was so well paced. If you exceeded this time limit, the big mother chicken came out and homed in directly on you and pushed you on to finish the level faster. The original game had roughly twenty levels which when completed clocked over and started you again from level one, but with more chickens. For me, Chuckie Egg was like Bruce Lee, a game where experiencing it was more important than the challenge. I didn't think either game was difficult to play. This is the game that I loved the most at the time, and despite being easy, is a game I still find time for now.

The Commodore 64 had a reputation as a temperamental and long loader when loading games from a cassette tape. Until somebody wrote a turbo loader for the machine, most games or programs took between five and ten minutes to load and there was no visual representation of whether or not a game was loading or had loaded. The screen would go purple and wait there until the program had loaded. The “loading bars” was copied from the ZX Spectrum method of loading so at least you knew something was happening. Later programmers would develop develop loading screens, and loading music as well as even little games to play as it loaded, such as Delta's Mix-e-load.

Sandboxing with Grand Theft Auto V and L.A. Noire

I have played Grand Theft Auto V on the Playstation 3 and have completed the main story. It took me on and off almost a month, but it was an enjoyable month as well. I loved the planning of the missions and the variety, and all three of the main characters had stories that I found worth exploring. I did feel that some of the opening magic was lost later in the game, and limiting the game to six heist missions is a shame, as I would have loved much more. There was still lots to do between the main missions, and some of the side quests are to collect cars and equipment to complete the main heist missions which were often more enjoyable and more varied than the main heist itself. I liked that you were given a choice of how you wished to accomplish the heist, quietly or noisily, front entrance or back door. Although I felt some of the choices you could make were irrelevant, i.e. who you brought along to assist you in the mission heists, as their contribution seemed pointless, but took varying amounts of the profits. I liked the way it told a bigger story by having you play three totally different characters, whereas in previous Grand Theft Auto games you only got to see the story from one viewpoint.

The only other time a sandbox game had employed this switching viewpoint as a story narrative was the final chapter in Rockstar’s L.A. Noire (a brilliant sandbox police procedure Grand Theft Auto-alike with an original interrogation mechanic), where towards the final chapter of the game you no longer played the hero police detective, but instead his private detective opposite. Its a classic movie and novel technique, but after having invested a lot into your character, it felt bad he was taken away from you and you were given a lesser character to finish the game with. Whilst the sandbox elements were not as extensive as any Grand Theft Auto game, it did have collectibles in the form of seeing sights in the city, lots of little side missions where you rescued passers by and performing many driving feats of speed, jumps and driving all the cars. The difference between this game and others was that the city wasn't fictional, but instead based on the 1950s Los Angeles, complete with post-war feel and city design. A lot of the story was set to this background, including new housing estates being built, people working in jobs that were involved with the mafia and low level crime.

I didn't like the way Grand Theft Auto V ended with each of the main characters murdering the nemesis of one of the other main characters. It felt empty and made me wonder why they didn't do this many weeks earlier as it would have saved a ton of problems. Still the game has some memorable moments and visually and aurally amazing, with the dialogue being the strongest element of the game. Still the game kept me occupied almost every night for over a month, and I’ve not really explored the multiplayer content at all, and very unlikely to either.

Playstation 3 - Late to the Game - First Thoughts

I came late to the Playstation 3 arena, but decided the console was mature enough and there were enough unique games on the Playstation 3 to warrant buying a one. The main reason was to enjoy the games released by Insomniac Games and Naughty Dog whom made some great games like Spyro the Dragon, Crash Bandicoot, Jak and Daxter on the previous two Playstations and I really missed their humour. I had also been made aware of three games by That Game Company that were Playstation 3 exclusives. The first had already been released as a flash game that was an ambient experience plus a detailed and involved game to boot. This was revamped and released for the Playstation 3. Their next game was also an ambient experience called Flower in which you used the six-axis controller to fly a flower across lush grasslands to cause flowers to pop open. But it was their third game that really inspired me to buy a Playstation 3, Journey. One distinct feature of That Game Company was August Wintory’s sounds, and Journey really allowed him to expand and explore this music fully.

I got the 500gb model, as I knew most Playstation 3 games installed part of the game on the hard drive, and my experience with the Xbox was that my 60gb hard drive space seemed to disappear fast. One downside of buying older games is that you can't play them straight out of the box. You need to install them (Grand Theft Auto V had a record twenty minute install) and then wait for updates. The Blu Ray player on the Playstation 3 is slower than the DVD drive on the Xbox 360, but the Blu Ray disc has a higher capacity. By allowing you to install as much of the game to the hard drive as possible it does speed up loading times. I was surprised that Sony released a 20gb model which is seriously underpowered and I have a friend who did buy it and is constantly managing the storage data. Interestingly the Playstation 4 has a 500gb hard drive, and is swappable and the Xbox One is now 500gb too. Both manufacturers have realised that they can't fool their customers any longer with high priced small hard drives any more.

The existing Playstation 3 is not backward compatible with the previous versions of the Playstation, which is a shame as this way Sony have cashed in on retro and High Definition (HD) remakes of older games, essentially selling you the game twice. And with the release of the Playstation 4 they have begun making HD remakes of Playstation 3 games too, such as The Last of Us. The Playstation 3 initially lived in the loft, but the portable television I played it on was so small you couldn't read the text designed for an HDMI LED flat 40” screen, and it wasn't long before I smuggled it into the lounge and it became home to SingStar for my second daughter who has a fairly decent singing voice. Getting her to sing Def Leppard and Toto songs is a winner in my book.