3 posts tagged “video games”

It has been another busy week for video gaming, although I haven't played any of them that I reported on last week (typical of me). Some PS3 gaming, some computer gaming and a final stab at an Xbox game.

C and I began Chapter Two of Neverwinter Nights on Tuesday. It has been going along pretty well, although a bit of ennui has set in. It might have something to do with the fact that he had previously played the first couple of chapters of Neverwinter, so we haven't hit anything new for C. I just kind of follow along and kill things. We have a pretty long list of quests to do, but none of them are very tricky and we have had the way carefully pointed out to us in every case. Perhaps when we begin playing some parts he hasn't done already my interest will pick up.

C was pretty excited to hear I got a PS3. I think we may give Army of Two a try soon. So far I have been pretty happy with the PS3 as a game machine. It really has everything you could want in a modern console, all builtin. A hi-def DVD player, wireless (and wired!) network capability, wireless (up to 7 I think) controllers with USB cables for charging (although the one that comes with it is only good for charging, as it is only like four feet long), and HDMI. It's a little ridiculous that it only comes with a composite video cable, but the HDMI/USB cable pack wasn't too outrageously expensive.

I went out an bought an optical digital cable for the audio output, but was saddened to find I had already maxed out the optical digital in for my Marantz SR7001 (it has 3 optical and 3 coax inputs). I already have the Toshiba HD-DVD player, the Sony SACD player and the Xbox using the optical inputs. Of course, the Toshiba and the Xbox are obsolete, but I don't want to give up on them yet. The SACD player can use the 6 cable direct input, but it is not as flexible an input as the optical one, so I didn't want to give up on that either. Turns out, though, I didn't need to buy the optical cable, as the PS3 will do the audio directly from HDMI. It wasn't working originally on my setup, and I thought it had something to do with how the SR7001 doesn't support the latest and greatest HDMI version, but I must have had the setup wrong, as it works just fine. Sounds great too.

Oblivion looks great, too, even if it is "only" 720p. The most impressive graphic display comes when you walk backwards in shallow water. You see the wake from your legs and it fans out in an incredibly realistic fashion. I was showing it off to my co-op friend and then we saw a horse mounted guard ride by. But we uncovered a graphical glitch, as he seemed to get stuck on the side of the hill in mid-jump. It was very funny looking.

I've only played a bit more Oblivion, as I am trying to decide just how fine-tuned I want to make my character. It is an interesting skill system, where you improve in the skills you use, but you start out higher and improve faster in your 7 "major" skills. I'm not sure just how much tweaking I want to do with it.

M and I had our weekly co-op game on Wednesday and decided to give Brute Force one last try. We have been playing it for a couple of weeks now and found it uncompelling, graphically murky and basically repetitive. But this was the first week we had all four characters, so we hoped for better.

And it didn't deliver. The level design is uninspiring and confusing. Either you are completely funneled along or it is wide open and, even with the radar, you have no idea where to go next. The weapons are boring and there seems to be no strategy, while the story is either incomprehensible or non-existent. We don't look for the height of strategy or story, but let's at least hit the Halo level (which wasn't the pinnacle of game design many think it is). So we are giving up on it, which for my friend isn't something that happens lightly. Next week, I think we are going to try Splinter Cell Chaos Theory, which finally added a co-op mode to the Splinter Cell series.

I picked up Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare yesterday. I know I promised to not spend any more discretionary money, but I needed a 1080p game, just so I could say I had something 1080p. Played it a bit last night, and it is pretty sharp. But my Sony XBR TV said it was only in 720p, which had me confused. Using some Google-fu just now uncovered the fact that CoD4 defaults to 720p, even if 1080p (or 1080i) is available. So you have to turn off 720p in the PS3 settings before running it in order to get it to run at 1080p. I'll have to try that tonight.

That being said, the game looked great and was exciting to play. But I have to say that playing an FPS with the stock PS3 "SIXAXIS" controller is pretty bad. The Xbox controller has two triggers, but to fire a weapon using the PS3 controller, you have to press one of the shoulder buttons. It's just not as nice a feel as a trigger and I often find myself pressing the second shoulder button, which drops a grenade, much to the chagrin of my teammates.

Busy and expensive weekend for me. After having a couple of martinis on the back deck with my wife (hey, it was way up into the 30s!), I went in and watched The Assassination of Richard Nixon, found on the Free Movies section of Comcast HD on Demand. Starring Sean Penn as the loser Samuel Bicke (actually Byck), is is based on the real story of Byck's planned assassination of Richard Nixon. A movie of unrelenting pessimism and gloom, Sean Penn's portrayal of the crazed Bicke was simply remarkably, and really, I think, the only reason to watch the movie. Truly a depressing yet fascinating movie, in the old "watching a car crash" fashion.

Then my wife and I watched Knocked Up on HD and, frankly, I don't see what the fuss was all about. Nor did my wife, who had an even harder time understanding Alison's motivations at getting involved with this loser and then keeping him around. Knocked Up reminded me of director Judd Apatow's earlier film, The 40 Year Old Virgin in its uneveness. I found some spots to be hilarious but the movie seemed to drag and at nearly 2 1/4 hours, was about 30 minutes too long.

But Katherine Heigl is truly a stunning beauty, which made her connection with Seth Rogan's Ben Stone even harder to understand. I think my favorite character was Kristen Wiig's TV exec Jill. Her reactions, both to Alison's first promotion and then to her newly discovered pregnancy, were classic.

But Sunday I spent way too much money on a Playstation 3 and various accessories. It is, however, a very slick looking console, if a little big. And I was surprised to see that it plays Playstation one games (the new 40gb machine purposefully does not play PS2 games). even if they do look ugly. It doesn't come with an HDMI cable, so I had to buy one of those. And I forgot to buy an optical audio cable, so I need to get another one, although I borrowed the one from my Xbox for now. I also bought another controller, the DVD controller, a game (Oblivion because it was cheap), and a movie (Life Of Brian).

The game looks spectacular, even if it is "only" 720p. Life of Brian, while still uproariously funny, doesn't look quite as nice. I demand solid colors from my hi-def DVDs, and this had a little too much speckling. I supposed I shouldn't be surprised at that, give its age (nearly 30 years ago it was filmed!). I will enable BluRay on my Netflix account and will try some newer movies. I tried to get some James Bond movies, which I thought were all out on BluRay, but I guess only the latest one, Casino Royale is available.

But I probably shouldn't have indulged, even if I did get a windfall from the selling of a boardgame. The game catalog is sadly lacking. At the Best Buy where I picked it up, maybe a third of a row had PS3 games, while the other 2/3 was PS2 games. The XBox 360 had 1.5 rows. But there are a couple of co-op games available I might try, like Resistance: Fall of Man or the upcoming Army of Two.

Some video gaming notes from the past few weeks include finishing TimeSplitters: Future Perfect and playing Neverwinter Nights over the Internet. And, of course, there's always time for Day of Defeat, old-skool style. No time for any of my other, single player games, though.

My buddy M and I finished up TimeSplitters: Future Perfect last week and we had a good time. The graphics aren't top notch, and the game play isn't innovative, but the story is fun and the cooperative play works very well. There is no in-level save game, but the levels were mostly well conceived and we were able to do one or two a night. The game was good enough that when the DVD drive in my Xbox died, I went out and bought a used Xbox from Craigslist and we did a DVD-dectomy so that we could finish the game. We were within four levels or so of the end and, while it wasn't good enough to want to start from scratch, it was good enough to want to finish it. All in all, one of the better cooperative games we have played in quite some time. I might have to track down the earlier TimeSplitters 2 now.

Another friend of mine, C, who is more into "hardcore RPGs" (he used to be an EverQuest junky) said he was interested in playing Neverwinter Nights across the Internet, so we've started that game. He has the Diamond version, while I merely have the Platinum version, with the difference being the added Kingmaker adventure. M and I started playing NwN a few months ago, but ran into some probably not insurmountable technical problems, but it was enough for us to move on, as M isn't quite as into the 'tweak your stats' kind of RPG as I am.

But C is, and so we have played a couple of nights now. As I haven't figured out how to do port forwarding on my super secure router, he's running the server. Actually, he has installed the Stand-Alone Server, which I think makes things a little more stable, as we each connect to it. I just noticed the Linux Client available from the NWN web site - I'll have to check it out, although it seems to run pretty well under WINE. He's running a thief, while I'm a half-elf ranger who just multiclassed to a cleric. We're about half done the first chapter, and it has been fun. I run a Teamspeak server on my FreeBSD server box and so we talk over headphones. Very good setup and if it wasn't for Windows XP being so damned unstable, it would be well nigh perfect.

Finally, I can always be found on the 95th Rifles Clan server, playing Day of Defeat. I'm First Lt. Headwound Harry and I enjoy playing it, as you can just pop in, play a bit and then stop. No big commitment and we run a clean, fair, adult server. My daughter R has gotten into it, but I think just so she can talk over the Internet. It kind of freaks her mom out, but I keep a close watch on her, we have some strict rules (both here at home and on the server), and my clanmates are a solid group of grownups, many of whom have kids playing as well.