The Agitated Gamer

Saw it on digg and couldn’t resist.

I am a big fan of the cutesy arcade style golf games like Mario Golf, Outlaw Golf, and Hot Shots Golf.  However, this genre is very hit or miss and none of these have the potential to arrive on my beloved Xbox 360.  Sure there is We Love Golf for Wii coming out this Tuesday (7/15).  But, XBL is what makes a game like this truly shine and I know that WFC is going to disappoint yet again.  So it was with this in mind that I made the purchase.  Actually, I downloaded the demo and played a few holes, once it gave me the ‘Unlock the full version and you will get this achievement’ message I couldn’t resist.  So I guess it was with an achievement in mind that I unlocked the full version.

I have to say that I have been pretty impressed with the game.  For $10 you get a lot of addictive, fun, action.  I think that had they added a few more options to character creations, a few more courses, and tournament modes online, they could have gotten away with making it a full priced game.  As it stands, it is a bargain and hopefully they will release new options and courses via DLC.

One of my favorite things about the XBL feature in the game is that you play side by side and do not have to wait for each other.  When you finish a hole you can watch other player’s replays to catch that sweet shot.  I do wish that you could actually choose the shot like you can the player.  But, for the most part online is fast paced and fun.  Except when your opponent disconnects because you are beating them badly.  Unfortunately the game does not deal with disconnects very gracefully and forces you to end the match.  Ugh!

My main complaint with the game is that (like you expect from any budget title) it seems to lack a little polish.  It’s just subtle details like the ball not spinning when it is rolling on the ground, the generic fonts and effects, or the physics seeming to be a little off.  But, this is definitely easy to look past and I don’t really even notice it now that I have played a few games.

All in all I think this is a great budget title and a must have for any Xbox player that is desiring an arcade golf experience.

So it’s that time of the year when the nights are long and gaming is short.  There is a gigantic void in the gaming industry in the  middle of the summer, that is only made palatable by the anticipation of exciting news coming out of E3.  Except, E3 is no longer what it used to be.  Gone are the days of waiting patiently for your magazine subscription to hear the latest news from the show, and gone are the days of millions of people sitting and refreshing their browsers on their favorite video game website, in hopes of being one of the first non-attendees to hear breaking news.  This year (and future years) we are stuck feeding on the table scraps of the few companies who are still participating in this affair.  Nonetheless, here are my predictions for this year:

1. Bungie will indeed announce a cross-platform game.
2. Song lists released for the next Guitar Hero and Rock Band. UPDATE: Rock Band Track List
3. Nintendo will announce the much anticipated, Kid Icarus and provide very little details.
4. Microsoft will drop the price on all the Xbox 360’s by $50, worst kept secret ever.  UPDATE: Worse yet, the $50 price drop is only until the 20 GB model runs out and gives way to the new 60 GB one
5. and, Sony will talk some more about the ill fated Home (or be suspiciously silent, maybe everyone will forget), which one is worse?

Now that seems drab.  Hopefully, there will be at least one exciting announcement.  What I would like to hear:

1. Activision and EA are cancelling the next iterations of Rock Band and Guitar Hero due to the fact that they are just fancy karaoke games and will soon be relegated to drunken, old, fat men playing in seedy bars on Sunday nights.
2. Nintendo is going to drop the D’s from 3 to 2 in their next Zelda game, since the last time the series had a decent game was in two dimensions.  Oh yea, and they will announce that it will be out by Christmas.
3. Friend codes will be removed from all Nintendo products, gamers will be treated like adults, and the Big N is implementing some kind of original ‘achievement’ type system.
4. Sony is going to redesign their PS3 console so it doesn’t look like something out of a flash forward in a low budget science fiction flick from the 80’s, and lighten it so it doesn’t weigh as much as my couch (is there a brick in there?).
5. Microsoft is going to add Blu Ray support to the 360, in the form of an external drive or Xbox Blue Edition, seems like a no brainer to me.

Needless to say, I am not holding my breath…

So over this past week Blizzard has been teasing us with daily changes to the splash page of www.blizzard.com. Everyone is expecting that these changes coincide with a major announcement coming up at the World Wide Invitation in Paris. I’ve been trying to keep up with the speculation and have decided I will add my own analysis and what I think is on the way.

First, the cracked ice background. Every day more of the ice is broken away and a new “rune” is added. Right now there are five of these “runes”, which are unknown symbols really, and they appear to form a pentagram. (Figure 1)

Figure 1

 In addition to the daily changes of the above image, there is also a hidden change to the page’s CSS document. Each day a new hidden CSS class is added and linked to an image. These images can be pieced together to form a drawing of a creature that resembles Barney so far. (Figure 2)

Figure 2

 The other cryptic thing about this is that each image is given a number as a file name. There has been a lot of people suspecting that these numbers correspond to letters in the alphabet. Let’s look more deeply at the CSS changes.

Figure 4 is a table illustrating what order the images were posted in, what CSS class they are a part of and what letter the image file name corresponds with. The second table is in the order as it appears in the CSS document.

The most recent class is Harbinger, which means a sign of things to come. The pentagram that can be drawn from the “runes” coupled with harbinger really hints at Diablo 3 being the answer to the riddle. Also, the eyes and scaly forehead that appear in the middle of the broken ice look very demonic.

 However, it can easily be argued that since the names of the CSS classes are all about cold and the new area, the Northend, in WoW will be cold that we should be looking for the Lich King. So I did, see figure 3. You know what, it very well could be Arthas, the Lich King there. I weened myself off of Warcrack a few years ago and I would love to see Diablo 3, so as I may be reaching a bit I am still going to try to convince myself that we can expect a Diablo 3 announcement.

Figure 3

If you associate the image file names with the letters and put them in the same order as the CSS, you get D-P-O-H-W. This may be the title of the game, perhaps it is “Diablo: Prince of H—– W——”.

The World of Warcraft players have been hoping the announcement is the start of the beta test for the newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. I really do not think that’s what it is, especially now given the facts, but I do not think Blizzard would put this much hype behind a beta release. I mean everyone knows the game is coming and the WoW fan boys and girls are anxiously awaiting the new classes, level cap and areas. However, I do see where the face behind ice could resemble Arthas, the Lich King. So a Wrath of the Lich King announcement is my second guess, but I am still leaning toward Diablo 3 for the time being. Starcraft 2 has been announced for a while, God knows when we will see it. I really do not think it is a Starcraft related announcement.

Right now, all fingers are pointing to Diablo and for me it is hard to do anything else. The pentagram, the eyes behind the ice, the letters and we have been expecting it for some time now. The only thing that has me confused is the purple monster. I suppose it could be a creature from Diablo 3, but to me it does not look devilish enough. Perhaps it has a face that was beat with the ugly stick, hopefully we will find out tomorrow. Maybe it’s Diablo 3 AND Wrath of the Lich King! *Splooge*

Figure 4

Yesterday I took a nap just so I would have enough energy to go pick up my copy of Grand Theft Auto IV and play it for a few hours. My intentions were to check out the multiplayer with some of my Xbox Live buddies and go to bed.

I left the house at approximately 11:55 PM and arrived at my neighborhood GameStop by midnight. I was tired, in line between two chain smokers and ready to recover my game that was being held hostage (since I had paid for it already). Thirty minutes elapsed and I was ready to show the pimply faced kid behind the counter my receipt, I swore if he asked me if I wanted to reserve Saints Row 2, NCAA Football, Wii Fit, or anything else I would go postal. Lucky for him, he did not ask.

I rushed home expecting I was missing out on some sweet multiplayer action. I inserted the disc and watched the opening title sequence, I was afraid to skip it because I was afraid I would not get another chance to watch it. After the opening scenes I found myself in Liberty City. Now to go through my friends list and see if I can get invited into a multiplayer game. Much to my suprise I was about the third person on my list to come online with GTA IV. It was at about this point I got a “Disconnected from Messenger” notification, followed shortly by “Disconnected from Xbox Live”. Are the servers down already? I attempted to reconnect, but failed and then I noticed a little red light on my modem. What luck! After resetting the modem I still had the little red LED which I was quickly beginning to despise. I tried the Internet on my computer and got nothing. I used the test connection tool on the Xbox Dashboard to find that I was falling into the abyss during the DNS step.

I went back into single player hoping that the problem would clear up. I played the single player for a little bit, until I received Roman’s old cell phone. I remembered reading that the phone was how you got into multiplayer. I checked the modem, all green! I decided to create a multiplayer match and invite the other night owls on my list. No one came. Come on guys, we said we would check out the multiplayer before we all passed out. I returned to the single player and after changing Niko’s threads I decided I would try multiplayer again. This time they came and we wound up with a six man game.

We started out with deathmatch in the Prison area just to get acquainted with things. We quickly began to have a common complaint, that damned camera. We had problems getting the camera to quickly recenter itself behind us. I also found that other players could literally run circles around me and I could not keep up with them, however I am not sure they could keep the camera on me either. One of the larger components of a third-person game is an easy to maneuver camera, I feel especially in the multiplayer that the GTA IV camera is a bit of a burden. The second thing that irritated me during this round was the fact that with guns, right trigger fires and B reloads. However, when you have the knife out B swings and right trigger, well, does nothing. Apparently B is the melee button, but come on, if the weapon you are toting is a melee weapon make the fire button swing the stinking weapon. Once you realize that you have to use B to swing, it’s not that big of a deal but it just does not make sense to me. The final issue that emerged from this round which exists in most of the other rounds is that when I picked the prison as our map, I thought we would be restricted to that area. It seems that really the only thing it did is make it so we (re)spawn in that area. You can jack a car and hit the town if you want, and with six people Liberty City is too large of a hunting ground. Hell, with 16 people Liberty City is still too large. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea that you have access to the entire city in multiplayer, but when you are playing advesarial games and an area is selected all of the action should be restricted to that area. A few of the area choices are islands and upon first examinations you can not leave the island.

The next mode we played was Cops ‘n Crooks, which basically wound up being a deathmatch game with no respawns since none of us really knew what we were supposed to do. In this round each team started out in a car. I gather that the crooks are supposed to get to a certain point, but like I said, this round just turned into a rolling shoot out between the cars. Once a team is wiped out players swap teams and play another round. I have no new complaints here, and think that this game mode would be fun if we knew what we were doing. Not that it was not fun anyway, but we really did not play according to the objective of the game.

On to Turf War. In this mode, respawns were back and the objective was to go stand on the marked areas controlled by the other team. We actually somewhat followed the objectives of the game in this one and I had fun. No new complaints here.

At this time I decided to try the GTA Race mode. I went into match settings and changed it to GTA Race. Instead of reloading the lobby, I suddenly found myself in a helicopter, which I did not expect. After getting over the suprise of getting put immediately into the game and realizing that the people talking were not my friends I backed out of the game, baffled by what happened and I was returned to the single player game. I recreated our multiplayer game and rounded up the crew once more.

We played a few more rounds of team deathmatch and I decided it would be wise for me to go to bed. I began thinking about my first impressions and hasty review.

Hasty Review

After playing the single player and multiplayer for about an hour each I have mixed feelings. The single player started out slow, but I expect that it will pick up speed. I just hope that it does not become redundant and grow tiresome. I did not really get to experience the new things such as forming relationships, going out to bars and playing darts or pool, and banging hookers. So I will reserve judgement on those. My first impressions of the single player and the game in general is that it looks good. The new engines used really give the game a nice look and the physics when you run someone over are cool. I feel like a badass when I am cruising in my Pinto with someone’s blood splattered on my windshield. With no loading screens when entering or exiting a building the game flow does not get broken up every five minutes, which is nice. The single player is Grand Theft Auto through and through and I hope that the new additions continue to impress me.

Now for the multiplayer, which shockingly (or not) reminds me of Saints Row’s multiplayer. I will not press the subject any further however, since Saints Row ripped off GTA first. The idea of adding multiplayer to GTA is great, but for me so far it does not blow me away. I am not big on third-person shooters to begin with and GTA IV does not help that case much. The gameplay is fun and the things you are able to do are neat, but the mechanics of the game make the multiplayer aggravating. (Keep in mind we did not play with auto aim, which may have made a difference but would have made it less challenging.) When you are playing against a human and they are zigging and zagging and running in circles it is hard to keep up with them with the camera or the aiming reticule. Maybe I’m just too much of a n00b at GTA IV, and with time it is possible I will not have these complaints.

This is a GTA title and I probably would have got it anyway, but with the addition of multiplayer the decision became a no-brainer. So far I have been somewhat disappointed in the multiplayer because it’s slower paced than I would like and the mechanics aggravate me. The game modes are fun, but if I want a serious multiplayer fix I will stick to Rainbow Six: Vegas 2. In other words, I would not buy this game strictly for multiplayer. Surprised? I’m not.

Disclaimer: This was written the morning following a late night and around only 2 hours of time spent the game. If, as I play the game, my feeling change I will update you with my new thoughts.

Mario Kart Wii came out today and I broke down and bought it. I received an invitation from a friend to play and I couldn’t resist. I have been disappointed with my wii ever since I bought it. Nintendo’s failure to implement simple and necessary components is maddening. It was with this in mind that I decided to give Mario Kart Wii a shot.

So far I think Mario Kart is a step in the right direction. We still have to deal with the friend codes, but at least they added the invite feature, which sends your friend code to your friends. No voice chat (no upside to this). I must admit though, leaving out voice chat does not bother me much when playing with randoms. I know I will be really annoyed when I am playing with friends though.

As for the actual gameplay, it is pretty much more of the same Mario Kart goodness. Each character has several vehicle, and they have added motorcycles. The ‘catch up’ factor is still present. I have mixed feeling about this. On one hand, it really annoys me that I can lead a whole race then get 3rd at the last moment b/c of excessive blue turtle shells, lightning, etc… On the other hand it really levels the playing field, allowing for people of different skill levels (ie. wife, kids) to compete.

I am glad I bought this game on a whim. I have played a little single player and some online with my wife, and it has been really fun. I think I should get plenty of playing time out of it and I highly recommend it to all wii owners.

I’d like to start off by saying I really like this game.  It will spend many hours spinning within my 360.  But I just have this little invisible devil tugging at my sleeve.  He’s just chuckling and suggesting that I might have been had.

 Yes, the graphics are better.  And yes, some features like the PEC XP ranking system have been modified.  I like these changes.  The T-hunt is also a lot more fun in Vegas 2. I like all of the new maps as well. But let’s face it.  To me this game just feels like a few tweaks have been made to the original Vegas.  It seems like it should have been an “add-on” to Vegas 1.

I might feel differently if there were a few more changes in Vegas 2.  Highest on my list is the cover system.  While this system is good it does need a little help.  Because you have the third person perspective while in this mode you have the ability to “see” too much.  If you are hiding behind something and you can see a baddie then he should be able to see you.  This is not always the case.  I know this is an old gripe so I won’t beat it to death.  But that is precisely why this issue should have been addressed. It’s an old gripe held by many faithful Rainbow Six players.

Does anyone remember the problem with Vegas 1 where a player was killed and his machine gun would continue firing for a lengthy period of time?  Well guess what…  It’s back.  And I think it’s actually worse.  I played a T-hunt round with some pals.  Upon the death of a team mate or terrorist (I don’t know which it was) his machine gun continued to fire.  For the rest of the match.  And into the lobby between games.  And then finally…. about one minute into a NEW GAME it stopped.  What’s with that?  It’s annoying as hell.  Hey Ubi….  If you’re not going to get creative or give us something more original you could at least fix the few flaws the first game had.

 One last thing I would like to mention is the bug with the achievement for the PFC rank.  As most everyone knows by now, Vegas 1 players were given a small amount of rank to start Vegas 2.  But they did not get the achievement for PFC.  Ubi knew about this before the release.  They chose not to fix it.  They opted to fix it via a patch at a later time.  I would agree that this may seem like a small issue.  And maybe it is.  But, for once, I’d like to buy a game that is actually finished upon release.  Something like this should have been so easy to find and fix before the game went gold.  But…  it wasn’t.

How could Ubi make me feel better about all of this?  Two things come to mind.  First, fix the bugs I have outlined in this post.  Get a decent patch together.  And second, give us some free maps.  I think we deserve them after spending $60 on Rainbow Six Vegas 1.1.  As stated above, I like this game and will play it a lot.  But it was not worth $60.  There’s not enough new material to warrant that price.  And we’re still living with the same bugs that were never fixed in version1.

 It’s funny.  The longer I sit here and type this the more ripped off I feel…lol  So I guess I will close and go play some Vegas 2!

Edit  4-4-2008:  2 Days ago I finished the story mode on realistic difficulty.  I didn’t get the achievement.  That’s 75 big ones!  What the hell?

First off, I love the XNA framework goal and implementation.  A lot of people do not understand how it really works.  I have heard people complaining that Microsoft will not pay it enough attention or will be slow to certify games.  What these people do not realize is that Microsoft is not supposed to be a part of the process.  It is a community-driven process, similar to the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Community_Process”>JCP</a>.

The JCP has been in process for 10 years now, and has been arguably successful.  It allows the community to give feedback and shape the direction of the Java programming language.  In the JCP you generally have large companies such as Oracle, or Red Hat participating.  In the XNA process it will be regular people like me that our XNA enthusiasts.  I am not involved in this  process, nor am I an expert XNA programmer.  While I hope, in my infinite spare time, to be able to better my understanding of the XNA framework and game programming in general.  I expect I may never reach the level that is required to become a member of the XNA approval process.

What does all this XNA stuff mean to you the casual gamer?  Quite frankly, not much.  Except to know that Microsoft is handing over the reigns for the community to produce content for the XBox.  This is a welcome change and something that has never been seen in the console gaming world before.  Another important thing to note is the cost, XNA Game Studio Express is completely free.  However, to test and run on your XBox will cost you $99 / year (compare to ~$1700k for Nintendo’s SDK).

What is Microsoft trying to get out of this?  Quite simply, a devoted community will be creating content for which they will take 65% of the sales and never have to pay out a cent. There are overhead costs of developing and maintaining the service.  More importantly for Microsoft I think this is an attempt to combat piracy.

Recently I have been debating on buying the R4DS chip for my Nintendo DS.  I wanted to play a neat little homebrew game that I have seen called Pocket Physics for the Nintendo DS.  Normally I wouldn’t bother with pirating and modding my systems, but, if I had a legitimate reason to put a chip in my DS, the temptation to acquire every single game made for the DS for free would be too much to resist.  Do you see where I am going with this?  Microsoft has taken away our moral excuse to mod our XBox.

Being relatively new to the PS3’s owners club I had never downloaded a demo from PSN.  Until this morning.  With all the baseball talk on the forums lately I was reminded how much I wanted to play a baseball game I actually liked.  To be accurate, the last game I played was an 06 version on the 360.  I love baseball but this game just didn’t do it for me.  It was more of the same only this time it was on a next gen console.  A lot of the forum talk centered about MLB 2K8.  Based on this talk I began to think this game wouldn’t be for me either.  So I went to PSN and got The Show Demo.

I think that one big reason I’ve had trouble enjoying baseball video games is that I’ve always had trouble batting.  It seemed as though most incoming pitches looked good to me.  Then came my swing…..  and a miss.  All too often the pitch that just sailed by me was received by the catcher’s mitt over my head or in the dirt.  Maybe it’s me.  Maybe I just stink at these games.  But after playing The Show for a short time I think I was able to discern balls and strikes a little bit better.  I’m not saying I didn’t swing at a few bad pitches.  I did.  But not nearly as many as in other games.  I even managed to bat as David Ortiz and deposit a ball in the right field seats.  It was very cool.  After the Ortiz solo shot Manny stepped into the box.  And something happened that I’ve never seen in a baseball video game.  The crowd was still going bananas over the Ortiz homer.  His homerun got the crowd into the game and they stayed that way until Manny ripped a 2-2 pitch.  He smoked a liner over the pitcher’s head to center field for single.  And then the inevitable happened.  I struck out to end the inning!  It had to happen sooner or later…

In the field I managed to do just fine in one inning.  I caught two fly balls in the outfield.  One of them was a close call.  Pitching as Josh Beckett I floated a tasty change up to Matt Holladay over the middle of plate. Big mistake.  He wasted no time in blasting it deep to dead center field.  Controlling Jacoby Ellsbury I had a long run to get to this ball but managed to reel it in just in front of the wall.  The third out in my one inning in the field came as a routine grounder to third base.  The batter was easily thrown out at first base.

I’m not entirely sure how the pitching works yet.  So, rather than guess at it I’ll just say there is more to come on that subject.  But I did manage to throw strikes and work the corners a little bit.  Changing speeds is one thing I need to learn more about. 

The show just looks great too.  I very much liked the way it looked on 52 inches of HD screen. This is the first baseball game that gave me some sort of feeling that I was actually at a ball park and participating in a game.   I only had time to play one inning but will be playing more soon.  In that one inning I was very impressed.  The game play seemed easy enough to learn and I think the play by play and commentating actually added to the game instead of annoying me.  I know I haven’t played very long but this game just felt good.  It’s possible that after a few games my impressions could change.  But first impressions do go a long way. 

Admittedly, I haven’t played this game nearly enough to render a proper review.  So please don’t consider buying it based on my first impressions.  But I would urge any baseball loving PS3 owner to get the demo.  I intend to play around a bit more with this demo.  And then I fully expect that I will purchase this game.  Look for an update to this article in the next month.  It will be interesting to see if my first impressions will stand the test of further game play.

After using the new, utterly useless ‘quick mute’ feature in Call of Duty 4 I began to wonder, “Infinity Ward, why did you tease us so?”. After thinking through the issue, I decided that the reason is simple. The mute feature is not truly integrated with the dashboard. This doesn’t explain why the settings can not be carried over from match to match, but it got me thinking. Is Microsoft withholding API features from 3rd party developers?

I remember the first time that I played Halo 3; when I went to someone’s profile while playing, a few menu items appeared. I think they are Halo 3 Service Record, Halo 3 File Share, and perhaps another. I don’t know if anyone else notices details like this, but being a programmer I got excited. This feature is not as simple as it may seem. This had to be accomplished through a dashboard update. What I wonder is why aren’t other people using it. Currently, the only way I can see someone’s rank in Call of Duty 4 is to go to the leaderboard, and then they have to be my friend. Why didn’t Infinity Ward, put a little dashboard integrated stats feature in there? In other games it is worse. How about Rainbow Six: Vegas? The only way I can see someone’s rank is by being in the lobby with them.

I know that there could be other reasons NOONE has used this feature. It might be difficult to do, time consuming, or maybe developers have not found a good use for it. Admittedly, there would be some cross platform compatibility issues, but nothing more than the controllers, and XBL cause. I doubt these are the reasons that it has not been done by anyone else. I think MS has not given 3rd party developers access to these API components. Why would they do this? I don’t know, maybe to make Halo 3 stand out a little more? It could also be a security issue or something. It seems to me that someone else would use the features.

I am surprised I have not heard anyone say anything about this. I guess most people don’t really notice the added Halo menu. Maybe people don’t care. I, for one, would love to see more games making use of this feature.