|
|
|
I've been wanting to update my username on Xbox Live for a long time now, but have been really hesitant because I didn't want to lose my 40,000+ gamerscore. I called up Xbox support today to get a confirmation of if it should stay or not (since as usual, a bunch of people are contradicting each other all over the web in regard to this question), and sure enough he assured me all that changes is the gamertag.
So my new Xbox 360 gamer tag is SikoSoft.
And sure enough I did get to keep my achievements - yay!
If you want to hook up and play something sometime, just drop me a line. RPGs and survival horror are my favorites, but I play almost anything. Plus, I have a nice collection of around 70 titles, so I'm sure I've got something you do if you want to set up a game date. 
[  comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Well, if you're into JRPGs you probably already know FF13 came out today.
I got my copy (didn't pre-order it, because I've been getting kinda tired of all these really weak campaigns GAME and GameStop have been having lately). Actually, I didn't even go in myself to get it; NeroAnima was nice enough to pick it up for me after she was done at her job.
I've been working today on a client's project, so I haven't popped it in just quite yet (of course, I have played the FF13 demo in Japanese, as I imported the Advent Children bluray for that).
After checking out the review (@ IGN at least) I was a bit less enthusiastic to rush into it to, because I usually think games are considerably less good than the mainstream sites score them. Plus, normally the comments are 100% fanboys going off on how stupid the person is who wrote the review, but this time I actually saw several comments by people who agreed that FF13 wasn't that great. Too bad, but I'm sure it will still be somewhat enjoyable.
Looks like I got a big narrow adventure in front of me; it's ironic that I've been without work for a little while now and just got a client who needs his stuff done quickly. Since I know money is on the line, as well as my reputation, I'll have to play FF13 only a little bit until I am satisfied I can finish this guy's stuff on time.
Anyone else get FF13 yet? What do you think of it?
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
I am so frigging sick of this game by now.
It's been close to a year since I last touched the thing, actually. I played it for a week after it's release last Autumn, and it was quickly beaten. Since there wasn't a whole lot to do, and since I encountered several annoying bugs (one in particular with moving your family to a new house), and - more importantly - since Fallout 3 quickly came out, I haven't touched Fable 2 for about a year.
I know I know, that's kinda blasphemy when I've been preaching about how awesome the sequel to one of my favorite games would be, but well - I hadn't really anticipated many of the disappointing factors associated with the game (particularly its unpolished nature).
In any event I had been going through Fallout 3 again. I've been playing through the various expansion packs, and since I basically have completed them all now, I thought I could give Fable 2 another try.
I'm quickly regretting that I did.
When I first fired the game up, I got a sigh of relief seeing there was an update available for the game. I thought "wow, maybe they finally fixed up some of these bugs". Sadly, things have only gotten worse for me now, and I'm quickly wanting to smash the disc in, and write a big rant telling Peter Molyneux what I really think of this broken and half-assed "masterpiece" of his.
Okay, maybe that was a bit much, but here's the thing.
I've been TRYING to play a new game of Fable 2, but about 50% of the stuff I play doesn't get saved.
I tell it "save and quit" every f*cking time, and about 50% of the time it will save, and 50% of the time it won't save.
It never gives me an error when it "saves", but I have recently discovered that if I don't shut the system down right away and go back into the title screen of the game I get this nice big error (as seen in the screen shot).
After clicking the error away, I will no longer have the "Continue" option (acting as if all my saved games are gone), but if I exit the game and go to the dashboard, and then go back into the game, the "Continue" option is there again, though any progress I had been making in my game is NOT saved.
I am quickly regretting downloading this "patch" because from my experience so far, it's made the playing experience all that much worse (hard to imagine with the already considerable number of bugs present).
For the record, I don't even touch my damn system, which has a 120 GB hard disc (with over 85GB free). The system is not being bumped, moved or touched and I've never had a single issue with saving video, pictures, game saves or anything else EVER.
I even went into the dash board and removed about 20-25 game saves from Fallout 3, probably 5 demos, and all my videos.
Still, it happens about 50% of the time.
Needless to I've been playing less and less, and I'm about to stop playing it altogether now. After all, I mean, what the f*ck is the point of pumping a bunch of time into becoming wealthy or buying lots of property, or even completing missions, when the odds are that the next time you play you'll have just as good a chance having nothing saved as you will having your game saved.
Seriously. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...
The fact that Fable 2 already has a number of glaring performance and design issues really suggests to me that this is NOT a hardware problem but a software problem with Fable 2. Further, the fact that the "Continue" option always disappears when seeing this error, and always re-appears when coming back into the game (without even shutting off the system) really seems to support the fact that something (else) is up with the game.
Normally I'd be willing to forgive the fact that the actual gameplay experience of Fable 2 was a lot more disappointing than I imagined it could have been, but with the compounding presence of so many darn performance issues, I'm finding myself being a lot less willing to forgive this game.
After seeing someone else created a thread for this on Lionhead's forums for Fable 2 technical issues, I thought I made my own to show them - "look, it's not just one person". Here is that thread I made:
http://community.lionhead.com/forums/thread/3416246.aspx
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Lately, it's been almost nothing but Theia all day long, but I have tried to make in an few hours every day or so to kick back and relax and play games.
Last night, I finally beat Ghostbusters! It was a pretty good game overall, and I know I will go through it again once or twice more (since I already started on a new game on the hard mode).
But not for a while at least, cause I picked up Call of Jaurez Bound in Blood today, and I've been looking forward to that for a while too. Best of all, I paid less than half cost (since I did trade-ins again, with games I picked up cheaply with the intent of trading them later for a profit). Plus, I got an extra 100 kronor gift card for GAME. Sweet deal, cause I have a 100 kronor gift card to GameStop as well, since they gave me one for their trade-in campaign with Ghostbusters.
I've played Call of Juarez for about an hour already, and it's also looking to be a good game. The graphics have improved a great deal since the first one, but even then I was pretty impressed with the visuals.
I feel like the first Call of Juarez game was a bit of a sleeper-hit. I don't think it's a brilliant game or anything, but it's a heck of a lot better (and more original) than many other shooters. Maybe "sleeper-hit" is a bit much, but it was definitely overrated.
Plus, I'm not sure if anyone else noticed, but there seems to be a major shortage of cowboy video games. The only one I can even think of playing or hearing of in the past 5-10 years (besides the original Call of Jaurez) would be Gun, and although I also enjoyed that game, I think Call of Jaurez is better.
Time to go jump into it for a little bit more...
Oh, and SCORE - it's 1080p on PS3! Ghostbusters (a couple weeks back) was the first PS3 game that I got to support 1080p, and I thought it would be a while before another one, but apparently not. I hope this is a good sign of games to come.
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
We ended up making two trips down to Lund to pick up the damn game (cause the first time we came in, they didn't have it yet; and I had prebooked it here already). So some 3 hours later, I finally ended up getting it.
And funny too, because I haven't even tried it out or opened it yet, and it's about time for me to wrap up for the night.
I've been coding and designing all day. The SikoSoft site is coming along fine, but I keep coming up with new ideas, and the part of me that wants to add them quickly kind of side tracks me. But, I still have have the week left to finish up a site, and the theme is about half there now. So all I need is to finish the theme up and create a logo during this week.
Next week it is debugging, and performance improvements.
Hopefully I will manage to find some time tomorrow to play around with Ghostbusters a bit, cause I've looked forward to it quite a bit. 
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Wow - super weak... Fracture (PS3 doesn't have trophy support)!
Man, did Sony do a horrible job with this trophy system. On the Xbox 360, you never need to ask or wonder if a game supports achievements, because they all do. On the PS3, games that came out right after the trophy system was available still don't even support trophies. Super super weak.
Had I known this before, I wouldn't have bought Fracture. I only really got it because I didn't find it too annoying, and it was mildly entertaining, but truth be told, I thought I'd have an incentive (trophies) while playing it.
Now that I have no incentive to play what is otherwise a really mediocre title, I don't even know if I want this game or if I'll just end up taking it back or selling it.
Damn, I'm tired of having only 3 f*cking games that have trophies out of 15 different PS3 titles I own...
Leave it to Sony to muck up something that simply can't miss.
So there you have it folks - there is no reason to buy Fracture on the PS3 at all.
I thought I was in for a bargain today when I picked it up (new) at 149 kronor, but now that I got it and tried it out and see there is no trophy support, I don't even know if I want to bother with it. It's not a good game, and without any reason to keep you playing it, I'm not all that sure that you would.
When will game developers and publishers learn that your game(s) simply will not sell as well anymore unless achievement/trophy support is present? To ignore how important these things have become for people is corporate suicide.
[  comment | leave a comment ] |
|
|
A big thanks for a stranger who visited my blog with the same problem in Oblivion (Game of the year edition) for the PS3.
A major bug, which seems to affect countless people, prevents you from ever completing the "Cure for vampirism" quest, as the witch will not accept your Bloodgrass.
No thanks to Bethesda (big, big surprise there... yeah right), the solution that was passed onto me works like a charm!
Basically, you create a save file outside of the witches house. Then you exit Oblivion to go to the PS3 menu system. A quick system language change to German, and load your game save back up again. Now, she finally accepts the bloodgrass, so all that is left is to resave, change the game back to English and play with it finally out of the way.
It worked perfectly for me on my first test of it (although I think I will have to redo it since I got busted buy guards and had to give up loads of $h!t I stole from people).
The solution where you had to use a NON-GOTY edition disc to complete the part and then go back to the GOTY edition didn't work for me, as my GOTY edition is PAL while the older version is NTSC/U.
So this solution really came in damn handy for me, because it didn't force me to buy yet another copy of the game simply because Bethesda doesn't give two shits about their fans after they got their money.
Here is a link that I was referred to, and I can vouch for its success:
http://oblivion.wikia.com/wiki/Vampire_Cure
Thanks again to the stranger who visited my blog and alerted me to the solution. To be honest, I didn't want to bring them down when they said they were contacting Bethesda because I knew it would be in vain. Although Bethesda makes some killer games, they don't seem to give a $h!t about their loyal audience who gives them the money that keeps their company alive. It's a sad state of affairs when a major game on a major console has a major bug affecting how you can play the game, while the developers do nothing for more than a year, and eventually have to turn to dedicated gamers out there to find wacky solutions.
In any event, it's finally done, and now I feel like I can go back to replaying the game when the mood strikes me!
[  comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
This little trick can help you earn the trophies/achievements that you get for beating the campaign missions on "Insane".
If you've tried this mode, you know how it is... It's not for regulars - that's for damn sure.
If you want to get the trophies/achievements for beating each act, then all you need to do is beat all the levels EXCEPT the last one on novice, and then go back into the menu and change the game back to Insane for the last mission of each act.
By doing this, you only have to play about 10% of the game on Insane, and can coast through all the other levels on as easy of a difficulty as you like!
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
I find myself asking that question a lot. I play an awful lot of video games, and I can't even begin to count the number of times I bitch about awful AI everywhere you look.
I've been playing Unreal Tournament 3 a lot lately, and I have got to get this out.
UT3 has some incredibly weak AI!
I don't even know where to begin, because the AI in UT3 really feels like a few major steps backwards in time.
Bots trying to jump up to areas, while repeatedly failing and trying again and again, is way too common. This is brutal to watch because you almost feel sorry for them, until your anger at the lousy coding kicks in (can you believe, they actually get paid good money to write clumsy code?).
And then there is the boxing in of vehicles. Your "friendly" bots have a tendency to not give a f*ck about you or where you are going, and drive their vehicles towards you (not killing you though since they are "friendly") which usually results in throwing you of course of where you were going, or in my case - boxing me into a corner so many times that I am left to either try double jumping over the vehicle or blowing myself up with a rocket launcher.
In my last match, I actually saw two bots that seemed to be almost stuck together, as they were literally running in a small circle, doing nothing and going no where.
Yesterday I played a match of capture the flag. I was in the enemies base as one of my team members had retrieved the flag. Instead of actually returning it to our base, he thought it was fun to walk back and forth in a constant and pointless cycle, never actually making a bit of progress.
Today I've been playing Warfare, and the biggest annoyance of this is trying to get your orb before your useless teammate bots get it. Well, I found out you can give an order to your team members to tell them to drop the orb. So I did, and not even a second later another team member who was right next to the other went ahead and picked it up. I told them to drop it again, and wouldn't you know another stupid bot did the same thing.
Now I don't think I am a wonderful programmer, and I know that gaming developers do a lot of serious and challenging work. But still, I can't turn my face from this crap, because the AI in UT3 is laughably painful.
Oh well, it's not like crappy AI is hard to come by these days. Maybe that's the result of these cash driven corporations who put their priorities in areas of making money and providing a popular concept to as large of an audience as possible.
I've said this before, and I know I will say it many more times: video game developers are ruining the video game industry.
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Okay, I just found this out today...
I can't vouch for whether this "exploit" works on the Xbox 360, but there is a much easier method to earning the online trophies for UT3 for the PS3.
You still have to do the same thing to earn them, but you can completely avoid ever having to fight more challenging opponents, and in essence only fight novice bots to earn them.
I have tested this out for the "Around the world", "Get a Life" and "Online Champion" trophies, so I know that it does in fact work.
Basically, the idea is simple... You want the trophies easily and quickly without the hassle of fighting many of the really skilled folks you may see online. Here's the solution to earn them by only playing bots:
HOST YOUR OWN GAMES!
By doing this, you are allowed to configure all the different options for the matches, including setting a password so not just anyone can join. All you need to do is create a password, set the bot level to novice and the points needed to win the match to the lowest possible score (for whatever mode) and you will win "online" matches in no time!
If you're like me, and you don't like people, and don't want to hassle with all the nonsense that goes on in the online gaming world, this little trick can get you the trophies without the torture of having to play with a bunch of nitwits or emo kids singing in their microphones.
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
I've said this a million times before, but I will say it again: Sony REALLY needs to get their $h!t together and give their loyal audience features and services that should have had for years now.
Now maybe it's just me, not being able to navigate through Playstation's increasingly clumsy and confusing menus. I accept this as a possibility, because I can't even count the number of times that the Playstation menu system and presentation has defied intuition.
Anyhow, is there no frigging way to leave feedback for other gamers? Xbox 360 has had this for more than three years, and the PS3 has been out for over 2 years, so what the f*ck gives, Sony?!
Further, I don't see any way of preferring or avoiding players.
Again, Sony, what the f*ck gives?!
I know we aren't paying for this online service, but I'd gladly pay if it meant having necessary features like this, or even better: decent connections while gaming, and not having to wait 10 minutes on a 100Mb/s connection to download 20 MB updates. Okay, now I'm starting to go in another direction.
Back to my topic.
Today, I was playing Unreal Tournament 3 online. I don't normally game online because I'm not a social person. I don't like people, and frankly the way most people are frightens me and pushes me towards playing AI.
Anyhow, I wanted to get some of the other trophies, so I went online today.
One of my first games, my teammate insisted on trying to kill me the entire game. Oh, this is my only teammate too, so it was basically me against a team of 2 other people and my fuckwit of a partner. I think they were a 10 year old who must have found it funny (since they had 1998 in their username). Wow, another immature kiddy doing something only they think is funny. That's new.
So then my first thought was to leave feedback for these people (as I normally do on the Xbox 360) and mark them as an avoided player so I don't see them again. Not a chance, because after all: Sony maintains the integrity of this service.
On Xbox 360, the environment feels much more safe and friendly, yet it is far less moderated and limited in terms of what you can do and say. On the PS3, it just feels like, if you have a bad experience, deal with it, and expect it to happen over and over again because there are no mechanisms to prevent or discourage this behavior.
Later on I played another match - this time it's me versus 3 other people. Why the stupid game was assigning the new people to join only to my opposing team, while I remained alone, is way beyond me. Anyhow it happened, and oddly enough I was still scoring roughly what they were combined.
There was this one lamo called "Twisted_Potsmoka", who apparently can't get a kill without the reedemer. It seemed all he did was hang around waiting for that to get his one kill and then wait again. Normal weapons only and he was nothing special; he wasn't bad and he wasn't great. So anyhow, he gets the redeemer again and fires it off. He missed this time, and I managed to manuevere my way over to him and take him down right after it. Not even two or three seconds later the game stops and goes back to the menu. Then I get this message on screen saying that I had been forcibly removed from the game. I guess playing online is only fun to some people when they are the one doing the killing. It's funny because they kicked the one enemy they had, for no apparent reason other than bitterness after a kill.
Once again, this brings me back to the issue of why aren't there mechanisms and features in Playstation Network to avoid these people and rate them based on how they play?! These things have all been on Xbox for years and are absolutely necessary in any well maintained online gaming community that tries to purge itself of idiots.
Things like this just make me want to play games online less and less, and all along Sony seems to preoccupied blacklisting words we can use on Playstation Home and not giving two shits about the gaming experience their customers have.
Granted these things are not purely Sony's fault as they couldn't happen if people out there had communal understanding of concepts like... oh, I don't know: "respect". Many don't, though, and worse than that, many more are simply young little kiddies who are ruining the online gaming experience by polluting the networks with their childish inconsideration.
We need some more school shootings to thin out the ranks of the immature nitwit gamers. You won't see me complaining! (seriously)
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
While I have been playing the game the past few days, I haven't been working on the Professional mode game because I realized after a while that level 5.3 is virtually impossible if you are playing with AI for your partner. Pretty much, that is the sad reality of the situation, but somehow I managed to beat it!
The trick is to take out Wesker as quickly as you can so the scene ends early. I know - it's a lot easier said than done. But if you focus on getting behind Wesker to take shots at him (possibly with a rocket launcher or magnum) it can be done. It's very difficult, and requires quite a bit of luck too, but it can be done.
I personally feel Capcom needs to patch up that level because as it is now, it's borderline impossible. It's really not up to how good you do, but how good your AI co-op partner is. Sad, I know.
I'm glad I finally did it though, as the rest of the game was a piece of cake compared to that.
Now, I'm only missing one secret trophy and the bronze trophy for completing the max chain combo. I assume once I get that bronze one, the other unlocks as well.
Here's hoping!
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Yay for me!
I just beat RE5 again, this time while cruising through it for the infinite rocket launcher. If you beat the whole game in under 5 hours (any difficulty) and you have the rocket launcher (found in Chapter 3) then you get the infinite rocket launcher!
I haven't even tested it out yet cause I currently have company.
Killing foes will be so much more fun. hehe
I did, however, try out the newly achieved Gatling gun. Not my cup of tea... The backpack you are wearing completely hinders your view of what is going on. I restarted less than 15 seconds after trying it out. Oh well, at least it's good for if I want the trophy for acquiring all weapons.
And I currently have infinite ammo on about half of the weapons. Nothing is more fun in RE than being able to pump enemies endlessly full of lead, without fear of running out or having to reload.
I'm looking to try it online soon - any takers?
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
I tried RE5 today for the first time on co-op. NeroAnima played a few rounds with me of Mercenaries, and then we played a couple of levels of the story mode.
Nice, they threw in support for co-op gameplay, even though I'm typically a solitary gamer.
Oh, and I've unlocked Jill and Wesker so far, but that's it!  I'm working on collecting all the emblems - I'm only missing two.
Yep, that's a bonus with RE5 at least - it may not be the best RE game, but at least it is packed with replay value.
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
Now either I really suck, or this mode is really hard.
Apparently after beating the game on Veteran mode (hard), you unlock an even harder, Professional, mode.
So that's what I've been doing now... going through the game again (for the third time) to see if I can make it.
This time I am using the infinite ammo bonus on several of my guns. Man, has that helped... Oh, and I just maxed out one of my magnums, so I exited the game and bought the infinite ammo bonus.
I think I'm at the end of chapter 3 now, so I'm about half way through the game already! Whohooo
[ comments | leave a comment ] |
|
|
|
|
| Blog » |
| · Artwork | | · Computers | | · Food | | · Linux | | · Movies | | · Programming | | · Psychonautics | | · Rants | | · Recreation | | · Science | | · Technology | | · Theia | | · Video Games |
| Sections » |
 Blog |
| Artwork |
| Gallery |
| Game Reviews |
[TAGCLOUD_ITM_SML]
|
Copyleft 2009