Uncharted worth buying a PS3 for?
So for the holiday break I got a hold of a Playstation 3 and decided to try out all the hot games for it. My number one game to play was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune from Naughty Dog. Really the game is just Tomb Raider meets Gears of War, but that really isn’t a bad thing. The graphics are amazing, the story is probably one of the better character based stories I have played in recent years, and the gameplay is fun. What more from a game do you want? If I had the cash I think this might be a game, or at least one game that could make me actually buy the Playstation 3. Perhaps when I get an HDTV in the next couple months.
Call of Duty 4 is pretty awesome
!@(/uploads/2007/11/cod4_cover.jpg:C510 )
So I have had very little time to play game recently being in crunch for my own game, but sometimes you just have to make time and that is what I did for Call of Duty 4. I decided to check out the PC version and I was extremely impressed with what Infinity Ward was able to do. The attention to detail and polish was just outstanding, as well as the extremely well crafted combat scenarios that keep you on the edge of your seat through the entire game. The graphics were were not on Crysis level, but still very nice looking and consistent in terms of art direction which is becoming more and more important these days. The story while cliche, was memorable because of the shocking risks that Infinity Ward did with character development, I’ll try not to spoil what happens, but you rarely see anything like this in games these days. I have read various people complain about the length of the game, but I found it to be hitting the sweet spot of long enough without becoming a chore. I wouldn’t have mind a little longer game, but the experience was very satisfying. I am personally waiting to play multiplayer on the Xbox 360, so I really can’t comment on how it is in the final game. I was on the beta on Xbox Live and that was extremely fun, more so then the Halo 3 beta. I’m really interested in what Infinity Ward will be doing next, hopefully doing a new intellectual property as they are an extremely talented team and it would be a shame if they have to keep churning out Call of Duty year after year.
Apple OSX 10.5 Leopard
!@(/uploads/2007/10/promo_leopard_20071026.jpg:C510 )So Apple released the long awaited update Leopard, and was it worth it. The updates are so far amazing and the speed increase is a great bonus. One of the first thing is Stacks, which are two icons that are on your dock. Clicking them fans out a number of files associated to that stack. It can be your documents, or recent downloads. It just makes it a great deal easier managing files. Stack animate when clicking on them in a curved icons, or you can change it to a grid by a simple click. I never really used Spaces in previous versions of OSX, but I started with Leopard and I don’t know how I can not use it anymore. Various Linux distros have desktop spaces like this, but being able to apply specific programs to specific desktop spaces is just really easy to setup and very intuitive. Some of the other nice features is the new search which will highlight and expand the text you are looking for. I am running on a Mini Mac with a Core Duo, not to be confused with a Core 2 Duo, with 2 GB of RAM, and it screams. Applications open up extremely fast, switching programs is extremely responsive. I have stopped using Camino because Apple made some major improvements with Safari 3.0.So if you have a Mac, I’d suggest going and picking up Leopard as soon as possible!
Metric @ The Showbox at The Market
So I got to see Metric tonight for the second time, and it was a great show. Emily was really playful with the crowd and the band was really tight. Emily was sporting a Jimi Hendrix t-shirt for the locals in Seattle. It was great to see them up close and personal this time as the last time I saw them I was fairly far back, but this time I was smack up front. I snapped a fair amount of photos from this show, but I have come to the conclusion that I need a new digital camera that does low light levels fairly well if not excellent. I didn’t remove any photos, so there are a fair amount of blurry shots as well as some black ones. But I hope you like the photos.
{gallery [Metric_10_9_2007]}
Crystal Castles @ The Showbox at The Market
So I went and checked out Metric tonight (more on that later), but this Canadian band Crystal Castles penned for them and was pretty cool to see live. Crystal Castle has two members, Ethan Fawn and Alice, as well as a touring drummer. Their sound can only be described as 8-bit riot dance, or if you took various sounds from classic Nintendo Entertainment System games, and threw them up with a Casio keyboard. It doesn’t sound very pleasant but it is pretty awesome once you hear it. Alice was dancing all around the stage while Ethan was stuck behind his various array of keyboards and synths. They have a full length album coming out in February 2008, but here is a sample of their work. Listen to more on their MySpace page.
{gallery [CrystalCastles]}
Halo 3 Launch
So the biggest game of the year came out tonight and I went out just to check out the spectacle and the events going around town. Being just miles away from Bungie’s offices and Microsoft, they tend to put on various events for the fans. I did the same thing as I did for Halo 2, going to Best Buy in Bellevue and then driving over to the EB Games at Redmond Town Centre. I left the house around 11:00 PM with my dog Scout and set off for Best Buy. Since I have been through a similar even and a couple console launches, this really isn’t new to me, but it is fun just going out and seeing fans around town.
I first stopped by Best Buy and was pretty taken back by the amount of people in line, as it was longer then the people in line for the Playstation 3 last year and pretty damn close to the line for the Xbox 360. I saw Laura Foy of on10 doing interviews as well as former NFL and Husky great Warren Moon. The Red Bull Teams were out in full effect as well as the Mountain Dew Game Fuel troop handing out free samples. It was pretty exciting, as there were I’d say around 1200 people in line. It is tough to guess. Here is a map that will give you and idea:
After taking some photos and let some people admire how cute of dog Scout was we ran off to the car and set off for Redmond Town Centre. It looked fairly dead at first, but then I could see that they had the line go away from EB Games instead of around the ring, which was a disappointment as some might remember the cool panoramic photo I took at the Halo 2 launch at RTC. There were probably a good 300 or 400 people at the event at Redmond Town Centre. I walked around the ring a couple times running into various people I knew from local game studios and some old friends when I worked at Microsoft. It was pretty cool. Scout had a great time with all the people around until Bungie arrived in their buses and honked their horns and stuff. I wanted to get someone to let me take a photo of Scout and their helmet, but that didn’t happen. Check out the photos, congrats to all my friends who worked on Halo 3, and go have fun playing Halo 3 now.
{gallery [Halo3Launch]}
What have I been playing?
So I find myself having some time this weekend, so I decided to play a fair amount of games. I rarely get a chance to sit back and play games for an extended period of time with the fiancee, the dog, and my game going into crunch mode. So it was a real treat to play some games. So I ran over to Hollywood Video and picked up Skate for the Xbox 360, and download the betas for Crysis and Frontlines: Fuels of War.
Upgraded to WordPress 2.3 Beta
So I took the plunge and upgraded to WordPress 2.3 Beta and everything seems to be working pretty damn well. Opera 9.5 Alpha crashed when clicking on Write Post for the first time, but is working now. I really didn’t even look into the changes for 2.3, but I’ll have some time to fool with it later.
WOOHOO!! PSP Unbricked!
So months and months ago I bricked my PSP. For those who don’t know what a bricked PSP is a PSP that does not boot due to corrupt update. I was fairly pissed as the PSP isn’t a cheap toy and I just let it sit there and gain dust. I thought about doing a return switch at some store like Walmart or something, but decided not to do so. A couple weeks ago there was word that a PSP hackers group were able to make an application that would unbrick any PSP via a special update to the PSP battery. So I got fairly excited and looked into it. The program is called Pandora, which has you format a memory stick and battery to rewrite the firmware. So I borrowed a friends PSP to make the battery and memory stick and BAM, working PSP. I’m pretty excited to have it working again as there has been a fair amount of cool games to come out, and even some older ones that I never got a chance to play. So Pandora Battery is awesome! If you have a bricked PSP, try it out.