Month: July 2008

The new Trophy system (introduced in firmware 2.41) has me thinking about earning some of the good living in my other games. It looks like Unchartered: Drake’s Fortune will get some trophies via a patch. [Sources: here and here.]

Unchartered is a really cool game, but I ended up getting it around the same time I was distracted with some other game (i.e. MLB), so I never got around to finishing it.  In fact, I think I only made it about 25% of the way through the game before chasing a new shiny.  That may work out good for me because I can start over again without little fuss once the new trophy patch is uploaded.

What’s the latest with Home? This guy scares the crap out of me with his doom and gloom, cluttered prediction of the upcoming virtual environment.

The simplicity of PSN is what draws me to the service. There is very little clutter and few distractions on the way to downloading whatever I desire. Home isn’t just an endeavor to be the one place where PS3 gamers can finally collide. It will be also utilized as a marketing tool, and heavily so. Just think of it this way. You create your avatar, complete with a pair of Nikes and an Old Navy Tee, and then traverse to your apartment furnished for free by Home Depot, with the option to buy more furniture from Ikea.”

I guess “scare” is not the right word, but the doom and gloom stuff is probably in order. Between Home and Qore, we should be pretty well covered by the Sony marketing folks.

In other news Qore episode 2 Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm is still exclusive to Qore. I am shocked it was not part of the latest PlayStation Store update. Over/under is the Qore episode 3 release.  Much like the graphics, the boxart looks pretty.  I doubt I will pick it up, but it gives me something to fuss about if Naruto becomes un-exclusive.  Maybe I will give the demo a go this weekend; have to get my money’s worth from the Qore subscription.

Now featuring seven consecutive days of posting.

I never thought I would care much for this trophy thing, but color my convinced, that the new system is addicting and “just one more game” enticing. I now have 9/17 Super Stardust HD trophies!

Last night was pretty cool for a couple of reasons: co-op play with my boys and snagging a few trophies.

First, I was playing co-op mode with my sons, and we (me and oldest son) managed a pretty decent score that was good for a Top 5350 ranking. Sounds crazy, but we got excited knowing that our score was better than 62K other Super Stardust teams. We also picked up the Scenic Route trophy.

Second, I was about to hit the hay, but decided to give it a go to try to land a couple of trophies that I felt were within my reach. My final play session of the night landed me Close Encounters, Token Hoarder, and Well Prepared. Good stuff!

I know there are gamers that have (or will) quickly outpaced me, but I have an article to write, so I will throw this up anyway. My current Trophy List includes:

• Hero of Lave – Complete planet Lave
• Hero of Coventina – Complete planet Coventina
• Hero of Nemain – Complete planet Nemain
• The Tokenizer – Collect 5 tokens with a single boost in Arcade
• Scrooge MacBoom – Get 10 bombs in Arcade
• Close Encounters – Survive 45 seconds without shooting or using bombs in Survival*
• Token Hoarder – Collect 15 tokens with a single boost in Arcade
• Well Prepared – Get 20 bombs in Arcade
• Scenic Route – Complete a planet without using boost

I will have a harder time picking some of the rest, but I will have fun trying!

It has been a while since I wrote much of anything significant about the PSP, which means it has not been on for a while. One of my biggest gripes with the PSP is that once the battery drains, you have to rest the date and time. In this day and age, I do not get that. It is a minor issue, but since battery life is not very long, if your system sits idle, the PSP will drain the battery, and you will have to rest the date and time the next time you power up the system.

As I mentioned yesterday, I downloaded the 4.01 firmware. I plan to spend some time this weekend playing around with remote play to see if I can get it working correctly. I would really love to be able to throw in a PSX game and do the remote play thing. Also, it will be a travesty if Qore does not support remote play.

I think Space Invaders Extreme has to be my next purchase. It is getting a lot of good reviews (n4g.com and metacritic.com).

This totalplaystation.com review caught my eye:

“It also means the game is almost constantly giving you something new to play with. It’s challenging, of that there can be no doubt, but as you re-play levels, you’ll notice patterns and more efficient ways of destroying enemies that lend themselves to what I can only imagine will end up being some of the most incredible speed runs of the game ever seen. The potential for those with far more time and obsessive-compulsive tendencies will end up blowing minds.”

This sounds like the perfect pick up and play game. I have to tell myself reasons to justify keeping my PSP. Maybe this one will do the trick.

Anticipation. Every year I live and breath for the latest, greatest version of NCAA Football. Some call it a sickness; I just call it an expression of joy. Either way, I think the game usually brings out the best in me, and for the site. I love to write about games, but these days it takes a lot to get me writing. You get fresh content; I get to pound down another High Life.

Bill Abner continues his entertaining look at NCAA Football 09.

“Well, in my Dynasty, Bradford’s 176.52 would rank him 6th. Not too insane but here’s the catch: In my NCAA test season, 24 QBs came in with a rating of 160 or higher. Last year in the Real World ™ there were THREE. It’s the same with QBs who have a 150 and up rating. It’s too high. It’s sorta stupid high, really. It’s like playing an NFL game and 3/4 of the league has a 90+ QB rating.”

I am trying really hard to keep to the “fun factor” experience, but like any man, I have my needs.

At the end of the day, I am a stats whore. I do want consistent gameplay; is it too much to ask the human controlled players can do what the CPU can do? In other words, screw the super human high jumping, lighting fast defenders.

I also want the game to be challenging, but within reason. The easy level should be straight forward; pretty much do what you want without too much of a fight. Progressive levels should be more challenging, without the CPU “cheating” – the AI should improve without anticipating the perfect defense or offense depending on the plays I call.

I want teams to simulate real life counterparts. Running team should run the damn ball, and passing teams should not 100% abandon the run unless they have a tendency to do so in real life.

I want the polls to be decent. This is very subjective, but is it that hard to put in a decent poll system. OK, really life notwithstanding, I guess I am asking too much on this one.

Finally, I do not want to spend all damn day playing with sliders. They should be available, but any slider adjustments should be meaningful and actually work.

I just need me a little bit of that and I will shut the hell up and just play the game.

Unless something significant happens, I do not think this Qore thing is going to end well. I wrote recently that there was just not much I was interested on volume 2. Exclusive demos are nice, but not much fun if the game is not interesting. Last night I cranked up volume 1. I thought maybe the SOCOM beta thing would be cool; oops not available right now. The only good thing to come of it was seeing the Afro Samurai video footage. That is a game that I would never have looked twice at (just casually hearing or reading about it), but it looks damn cool. The Star Wars Force Unleashed stuff was also OK, but I had already seen similar stuff elsewhere. Overall, I like the concept of having lots of HD stuff available every month on Qore, but so far I do not think I have made a wise investment. Will certainly post more updates as warranted.

Soccer fans may enjoy Gameplayer’s PSP 09 vs FIFA 09 article (link thanks to n4g).

“Will they finally get the pace of the gameplay fluid and natural?

Ultimately FIFA 09, in the critics’ eyes at lest, will live or die on the answer to that question. You can have fancy tricks, regionalised stadiums, big collisions, awesome commentary and Moby on the soundtrack – but that means fuck all if the game plays like a dog.”

FIFA dreams of having solid gameplay – © dispair.com

Call me a whore, but I am going to give FIFA a go this year. Unless PSP (or Winning Eleven) is plain awesome, I will pass; I can always go back to my PS2 (or PlayStation Portable) version to get in my kicks.

It has been a while since I have done anything PSP related, so I had to pull down the 4.01 firmware last night. Other than the new integrated Google Search on the XMB, I am not sure what else is different. In the next couple of days I will try to see if the combination PSP 4.01 and PS3 2.41 will allow for picture perfect remote play.

Jeff Francoeur went 1-5 in his first game back from the purgatory of AA Mississippi. Looks like that worked (not so much). At least the Braves beat the Dodgers 9-3. I suppose that is something. The Braves are now 5 games under .500, but only 5 games back of first. Maybe there is a glimmer of hope, but not much. Who would have thought the Braves would sport a horrid 13-30 record on the road. Ouch.

Off to settle some trophy issues in Super Stardust HD!

According to espn.com, the worst kept secret in the garage will be reveled over the next couple of days. Tony Stewart is leaving Joe Gibbs Racing in order to secure his own gig.

“On Thursday at Chicagoland Speedway, Stewart will formally announce a move to Haas/CNC Racing as co-owner and driver, sources close to Stewart said.

Sources close to both sides told ESPN.com the deal will make Stewart the highest-paid driver in NASCAR.”

Stewart Hass or bust © SI.com

I am surprised about the money. I figured Stewart would leave because he wanted to get back in a Chevy, control his own destiny, and make some more duckets. I had no idea the pay day would be so large.

If Stewart Hass does not get a huge influx of money, the team will be in serious trouble. The current owner of HASS/CNC is already behind bars on tax evasion, and neither car is in the Top 35. In other words, Stewart is going to have a challenge in front of him if he wants to continue racing every Sunday.

I missed all the fun and festivities around the release of the 2.40 firmware. Of course it was release during my dry spell, but apparently several users experienced serious issues when they applied the 2.40 update. I know I would be seriously pissed if my PS3 became unusable unless I sent it back to Sony or reformatted my HDD.

Shortly before I left for work this morning I read that the 2.41 update was available. Of course if I could get my PSP and PS3 to remote play nicely, I could have already initiated a download, but I digress.

I am installing 2.41 as I write this, so I have not checked out all the wonderful new features such as in-game XMB access, custom soundtracks, and trophies. Since I cannot get my iTunes AAC files to work on my PS3, I doubt I will worry that much about custom soundtracks. I have no idea which games will have trophies (much less how they will work), but I have read in multiple places, include a post from wco81, that Super Stardust HD will be patched very quickly to include trophies.

[Quick Edit #1: 2.41 update just completed its install, and I am now downloading the 4.0 patch to Super Stardust HD. Trophies to follow?]

[Quick Edit #2: 2.41 update is still installing. PSXExtreme is reporting that Sony plans to fix any systems that were “bricked” by the bad firmware included in 2.40.]

[Quick Edit #3:  I earned my first Trophy (a bronze one for completing the first level in arcade mode – Hero of Lave).  So I guess that means I can call it a day.]

According to the Macon Telegraph Jeff Francoeur is flying out west to rejoin the Braves in LA.

“Jeff Francoeur’s stay in the minor leagues barely lasted a weekend. Francoeur, who had four hits in his third game with Double-A Mississippi on Sunday, was recalled to the Atlanta Braves on Monday. Francoeur was 7 for 13 (.548) with two RBIs at Mississippi.”

Wow. That was quick. Apparently the move to recall Francoeur occurred so quickly because the Braves just put relief pitchers Jeff Bennett and Manny Acosta, and infielder Omar Infante on the Disabled List.

“A player can be recalled after spending less than 10 days in the minors if replacing an injured player.”

I had no idea that rule was in place, but I guess it works out well for the Braves. I do not see how three games was enough time for Francoeur to get his head straight, but hopefully he quickly returns to form.

I am not sure if this was a waste of money, or a sign of my further movement towards the center of the mass market gaming world, but I decided to pick up a Qore subscription ($24.99). Since the PSN subscription currently starts with episode 2, I had to pick up the first one as well ($2.99). I am such a whore.

I am not going to touch on Volume 1 right now (its currently downloading … very slowly downloading), but you can check out PS3 Fanboy for a run down on what is what with the first episode.

This article does not speak favorably about Volume 2 (or for that matter Qore).

“So what can I say about Qore? it’s a bunch of crappy interviews(it’s been a long time since i’ve seen such badly done interviews. really) and it forces you to watch trailers that you probably don’t care about. This is the 3$ i regret wasting the most. If you have 3$ just lying around and don’t know what to do with it, don’t even consider getting a volume of Qore, throwing the money in the sewers would be a much better investment.”

Ouch! That is a pretty damning indictment. At this point it is hard for me to say if Qore is that bad (from a content point of view). I do think the author is being a little harsh. Here are my random impressions.

• You can skip the Hellboy II trailer at any point. Not sure WTF the ScrewAttack dude is fusing about.
• Same for the Veronica Belmont trailer. She is cute; probably a good choice for horny teenagers (or older perverted males).
• Resistance 2 – four videos, an art gallery, and a downloadable theme. This one is sponsored by Monstor Madness: Grave Danger (and you can skip the ad, complete with movie and photo gallery). I did not make it too far with the first Resistance, so this feature set was not very useful to me. Interesting at best.
• Silent Hill: Homecoming – two videos, and an art gallery. This feature is sponsored by a Meta Gear Solid 4 video.
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm – two videos, an art gallery, and an exclusive demo. The game looks very pretty, but is not really my cup of tea.
• Madden 09 – random video about how great Madden is, and an art gallery featuring 20 years of Madden covers. I suck; I buy Madden every year.
• Download Center includes an exclusive Naruto Demo, Resistance 2 Theme, and Calling All Cars (the full game for Qore annual subscribers). This section is sponsored by Burger King.

So all of this begs a few questions …

First, how “exclusive” are the Qore demos (in this case Naruto). My guess is that they will be released after the next issue of Qore drops (i.e. 4 weeks exclusive to Qore).

Second, are we going down the path of having to pay for demos and more content? It sure looks like I just did, albeit, I had no idea what Qore was all about before I decided to throw it in my shopping cart.

Third, is Qore really worth the money? Verdict is still out. I was not planning on picking up Calling All Cars ($9.99); maybe future games (that I have yet to purchase) will also be included.

I am not really sure how Sony plans to push content towards Qore. Will publishers start paying for exclusive rights to get content on each month’s edition? My guess is yes. If Sony can get sponsors (i.e. Burger King) to offset the cost of producing Qore, and they can get third party publishers to pay for the privilege of including videos, the Sony marketing machine will have a nice little victory. Dumb nuts like me willingly fork over money for this stuff.

Is Sony really in this for the long haul? In other words, are they really committed to Qore? It is too soon to say. Right now Sony seems to be all over the map. Should they focus on getting firmware updates out the door? Or maybe finally releasing Home? Or how about more games for PSN? My guess is Qore will become the mechanism for pushing additional content to PSN.

How will Sony position Qore against the Official PlayStation Magazine? Why not give print edition subscribers free access to Qore? Or maybe it means that Sony is not very dedicated to the magazine. With Sony, who really knows WTF the powers that be are thinking.

OK, enough about Qore. For now. More to come later as we see how this Qore thing shakes out.

As you can tell by the number of posts over the last few days, I actually spent a fair amount of time with the PS3 over Independence weekend. It is a damn shame that it takes a three-day holiday weekend to get my gaming on. For the first time in a long time, I was happy playing, and writing about my experiences. I think something in NCAA Football always brings out the inner gamer (and game writer) in me. So, it was a good gaming weekend – Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, NCAA Football 09 (demo), and Super Stardust HD ruled the day.

Saturday I threw up a couple of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue posts, so I will not rehash too much of that right now. I am still a couple of Gold Trophies short of getting all Gold in the C Class: Race C-3 (Cappaccino Time Target) and C-9 (FF Challenge). Sunday I moved on to the B Class and rapidly made mincemeat of the competition. While it may be too easy, there is something compelling (dare I say gratifying) about beating the snot out of the competition. Of course the AI is not very smart, but I will take what I can get. I think I am short of Gold on three B Class races, so I still have a little work in front of me. Gran Turismo is something you either love or hate. Obviously I am in the loving me some GT camp. Besides, it gives me a reason to do some eye candy posts.

NCAA Football 09 cannot get here soon enough. I am sure that some of the gaming/blog/message board “experts” will slice this one up ten ways to Saturday, pointing out all the flaws, perceived show stoppers, and then some. Hopefully I will enjoy the game and avoid the yearly negativity that follows the hype machine associated with EA Sports football games. In the spirit of a Presidential Election Year, I promise to keep my comments squarely on fun factor, with some pros/cons type of posts.

Finally we move on to Super Stardust HD (with solo expansion), which has to be one of the greatest shooters ever.

I am still struggling to break 6 million …

Last night I just missed breaking my high score; I was within 400K of my 5.9 million record. That damn long snake boss thing on the second planet did me in. That’s right, I have not cleared the second planet, but I have fun trying. My top score continues to be bumped further and further to the back of the buss. I remember when I was in the Top 15K; my score is now ranks in the top 60.5K. My goal this week is to break 6 million. Simple pleasures equal lots of fun factor.

Finally, there is Qore, but it deserves a post of its own.

I have to ask, who cares about the All-Star game? Obviously I must care a little, or else I would not have posted this column. I have to have something to bitch about to make my day complete, so here we go.
Many years ago, back in my youthful days of collecting baseball cards, actually playing baseball, and beating the socks off all comers in Intellivision MLB Baseball, I actually looked forward to the All-Star game. Somewhere in between those bygone days, playing marathon sessions of R.B.I. Baseball (NES of course) in college, a strike ruined season, and steroids, I stopped paying attention.

I admit that every year I may casually follow the All-Star voting to see which players (according to the pundits and various blog writers) are getting screwed out of an appearance, who is popular, and which Braves are getting attention. If there is really a compelling reason, I may even watch a few minutes of the game, but I cannot remember tuning into an All-Star game in the last 2-5 years. With that said, this year’s game has the Yankee stadium thing going for it, but being a Braves fan, and not caring much for the Yankees, I doubt I will bother to watch.

The Atlanta Braves put two players on the 2008 All-Star team: Chipper Jones (starting 3B) and Brian McCann (backup C). Jones is having an incredible year, only recently falling off the .400 mark. McCann can hit the cover off of left-handed pitching, and certainly deserves an appearance. I am sure someone that is not a Braves fan will complain that their 3B and C got hosed. Such is the nature of All-Star teams.

So go Braves, but otherwise I could care less. I am down on the rest of the All-Star festivities, and cannot understand why the game still warrants so much attention.

For what it is worth, I am an equal opportunity All-Star game hater. It has been years since I watched the NFL and NBA equivalents. I guess someone cares, or the games would just go away.

Like magic, clockwork, or another year of the Farmer’s Almanac, the latest, greatest edition of EA Sports NCAA Football is about to ship. Lucky for us, this year we get to spend some time with a demo before blindly throwing down our hard earned dollars. Of course, I would probably end up talking myself into purchasing the game, even if the demo sucked, because I am a glutton for NCAA Football punishment.

My most recent game may give a glimpse of what is to come on July 15 when the full version of the game finally hits stores. I was LSU (Ohio St. is just not going to do it for me), and to make things interesting, I wanted to see how I could do just by running the ball. Two minute quarters, so there is not going to be a lot of action. Ohio St. got the ball first and it appeared that I was going to get an early hand up by recovering a fumble. However, the play was reviewed, and promptly reversed. I think it was a close call, but should be interesting to watch how often reviews come into play.

During the next series Ohio St. managed to break a couple of tackles and out ran my entire defense to the endzone. 7-0 Ohio St.

I took the kickoff a good 30 yards, and started running, pounding the ball inside and out, slowly moving down the field. A 15-yard facemask penalty helped me continue to pick up decent chunks of yards. After a few timely first downs, including one fourth and two conversion, I found myself at the seven yard line, with 17 seconds and no timeouts to stop the clock. OK, to hell with running the ball. I called a play-action pass, intending to hit my TE in the right corner of the endzone, but the Buckeye defense was not fooled by the call, sacking my QB. I could not get the ball snapped in time to get another crack at the endzone or a field goal. Oops.

In the second half I continued to move the ball well on the ground. This is good stuff for someone that loves playing three-yards and a cloud of dust. I ended up turning the ball over on downs around the Ohio St. 20 yard line. I lost the game 7-0, but a few things stood out.

• Ohio St. continued to pass the ball instead of trying to run the clock. I am not sure if this has anything to do with the two minute quarters, but even the announcers were questioning the play calling.
• Ohio St. missed field goals of 56 (wide left) and 52 (wide right) yards. Are you kidding me?
• I do not like the play calling screen, where you pick one of four visible plays. The screen does have a nice page x of y indicator, to let you know how many screens you have to scroll through to see all the plays.
• I do like the option to view plays by formation (I, Shotgun, etc) or type (run, pass).
• I have not seen any crazy super human jumps by the CPU in order to stop a play. The series usually features fast sliding LBs or quick jumping CBs that cover an impossible amount of ground.

I know it is just a demo, but the gameplay is encouraging.

At what point did gaming become such a core? I think it must be some kind of a loss of innocence; it’s hard to describe, but I know it when I see it. I think most of my longtime readers know it as well.

If it were not already painfully obvious, I have been saying for a while that I am no longer a serious game. I laugh at the notion of my “hard core” playing days. Countless hours, dollars, and videogame systems later, what do I have to show for my reckless gaming addiction? Some fond memories, a musty old site archive, and of course this humble site.

Last month Gamers with Jobs posted a great article titled “Embracing My Inner Mainstream Gamer.”

“The truth is that the less time I have to game, the more like an average video game consumer I become. I don’t necessarily have the inclination anymore to peel back the onion layers of innovation cloaked as inapproachability in games with obtuse conceits and arcane controls.”

Well said.

The article made me ask myself, “at what point I lost my gaming innocence?” Did it in start in the late 90s with more and more gaming sites selling out (dare I say going mainstream)? Or maybe it was somewhere between the birth of Thing Number One and Thing Number Two (or perhaps Thing Number Three)? Could it just be a sign of growing up, getting older, and moving on to other interests? Or as the author at Gamers with Jobs just mentioned, maybe it all comes down to time.

“Yes, I can compare the relative value of the next Madden to its predecessor. I can carp about how Halo 3 was in no meaningful way different from Halo 2. I can realize the World of WarCraft is basically a big hole into which I can throw my time, but it’s far more enjoyable to just have fun with these games. We constantly run the risk of taking the whole endeavor too seriously.”

I think those monolithic reviews from back in the day sort of did me in to the point where I burned myself out on gaming. The end result is that I have become much more of a casual gamer (that mainstream thing again). Be it football or racing games; the hardcore sim nut in me is almost a thing of the past.

These days I have such a limited amount of gaming time that I have to play games for fun. It is no longer the other way around. I want a quick “pick up and play” experience, that is fun, semi realistic, but easy enough not to frustrate.

I still enjoy writing about games. In fact, I have done more of it this weekend than I have in several months. With that said, the days of long, verbose diatribes on braking lines, statistical abnormalities, and the like are long gone. I am not into scientific gaming these days. When I do play, it is all for fun factor. Simply put; if it is not fun, why bother playing?

Firecracker, Pepsi, Coke, etc. I call it night racing at Daytona. And what an interesting race it was. I really expected Gordon or Junior to take the checkered flag, but as is often the case at Daytona, interesting things happen inside the final laps. Gordon did have to work through some early handling issues, but towards the end his car was solid. Earnhardt should have had the car to beat, but at a restrictor track, you have to have a willing dance partner.

Daytona at Night © espn.com

In the end, it was not to be for Gordon, who I think was being diplomatic about his spinout with two laps to go. Too much blocking and rearview mirror watching? Maybe. Gordon really needed this one. He ran too well not to get a Top 5 finish.

I like a photo finish as much as the next guy, but having to turn to video, scoring loops, timers, etc to see who beat who when the final caution flag was waved is a piss poor way to end a solid night of racing.

Since the NASCAR boys are done for the day, I can turn my racing attention to today’s race at Watkins Glen (hopefully ABC will come through with a HD broadcast).
I have not watched a lot of IRL races this year, but this one will line up with my schedule.

While I am on racing, WTF is wrong with FOX? It stinks that as soon as NASCAR went to TNT, FOX decided that we want to watch tap delayed F1. If there is nothing else going on, maybe, but I may just watch the live scoring instead. Thanks a lot FOX; way to treat us F1 and SPEED fans.

Every once in a while I check out what is going on in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. I am not sure why. I guess it is sort of a trip down memory lane, and in the back of my mind I think maybe my kids will take this stuff up one day. I digress.

At any rate, “every once in a while” must have been a very long time ago, because I had no idea that a new edition was on the way (or already out). Total sticker shock of MSRP $104.95. Sure, amazon.com and the like will discount the core rules, but seriously, this game is no longer for kids.

I remember back in the day when a highly anticipated new rule book would cost $12.00 – Fiend Folio, Unearthed Arcana, Greyhawk Adventures, etc. None of this $34.95 per book BS for the core rulebooks – Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual.

Actually I am surprised that a new edition made it out the door. I figured that all the new computer games (i.e. WoW) pretty much put an end to the old pen and paper days.