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2010 Jun 01 yuffie


Guy Blade Guy Blade---02:04:00


Gamex 2010 Day One
The first day of this year's Gamex was surprisingly uninteresting. There were no board games or RPGs that interested me particularly, so I instead spent the night playing a pair of RPGA games. The first game was relatively straightforward as far as plot and judging went: a sick young elf girl needed medicine and we as "a group of 4 to 6 adventurers" needed to take her to the nearby outcast elf tribe to get her healed. The GM basically ran everything by the book and so we did normal skill challenges (Insight to find the answer and the top people in each area roll) and had three encounters. It was interesting in that we found a nice weapon during the game (Vicious Longbow +2) that my character used for the duration of the module. However, due to the way that the Living Forgotten Realms rules work and although I got to keep the weapon at the end of the module, I couldn't use it in the second game that evening due to the fact that you can't use an item if you are more than four levels below the magic item's level. I ended that module at level 2 (and about 200 XP from level 3) and the longbow was a level 7 weapon.

The second game was somewhat more interesting due to the GM. The combination of the module itself and the GM who was running it led to a more roleplay-heavy session. Of course, my character isn't really built for doing social things (since, being a Ranger, I don't have charisma as a primary or secondary stat). Nevertheless, it was still a very interesting and enjoyable game and rather different from most RPGA games that I've played. This module was also polite enough to give me the XP necessary to reach level 3, so I'll be able to use that nice longbow in future fights.



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2010 May 21 utena


Guy Blade Guy Blade---20:34:00


The Transitive Property of Social Networking
I generally don't do much with Facebook. I have an account to which I will add just about anyone that I've ever known as a "friend", my account is set up to read in my public LJ posts as "Notes", and I have basic biographical information contained therein. To me, this doesn't represent a privacy threat any higher than any other place where I have a public persona.

When I got my new phone, I set up the Facebook application that came with it mainly out of curiosity. It turns out to mostly be full of stupid crap, but I do periodically respond to things people post when I feel the inclination. Yesterday, I did so in a snarky response to someone from highschool. It was at this time that I became aware of an interesting feature of Facebook.

When you post a comment to a public post, the fact of that comment becomes part of your public activity feed and is shown to your friends. In fact, this means that one of your friends can see the original post even if they aren't in the appropriate friend graph of the original poster, so long as the privacy settings on the original post are public enough. It seems that what this means is that it would be possible to create an arbitrarily long series of comments to an original post as each new poster widens the "social radius" to which that post is available. For a sufficiently interesting commentable post, it seems completely reasonable to believe that a post could be commented on by someone who is three or four degrees of seperation from even knowing the original poster.

In my particular case above, I posted a comment about something someone I knew from highschool said and it was responded to by someone that I knew from college. The original poster and the ultimate commenter were not friends and, in fact, had never met. Is this a useful feature? I think that is something that hasn't yet been determined.

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2010 May 19 aeris


Guy Blade Guy Blade---19:55:00


Maybe I lack the required Nostalgia
On Monday, I finished my playthrough of Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. This game is not to my taste, so it quickly became a "rush to the end" rather than an experience that I at least attempted to find some joy in.

I had originally purchased the game because it had been well reviewed and I believed (incorrectly) that it was a 3D platformer. It turns out that the game is actually much more of a racing game. Essentially, the game gives you a system for building custom vehicles from parts (rather similar to the Gummi Ships from Kingdom Hearts) and then has you complete various challenges using them in one of a half-dozen themed areas. Unfortunately, these challenges are uniformly timing-based with a large number of them being races. I generally don't care for racing games and having a series that had been, until now, a platformer series do a bait and switch was unexpected.

Additionally, the game seems out of place in time. There is no voice acting to be found anywhere in the game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they instead have Nintendo 64 era screeching noises play whenever a character has text on the screen. This led to me ceasing to read any text or watch any cutscene about 30% of the way through the game. "Press Y to Skip" became my mantra. Since every "challenge" gives a one sentence description of what you need on the vehicle choice menu, I chose to read that instead of listening to the horrible noises the characters tried to inflict through my speakers.

Of course, since the game doesn't have standard vehicles, that means it has a sort of generic control system that is supposed to cover all of the vehicle types available. This ends up mostly being frustrating since all of the controls feel off somehow. The frustration is made even greater if you actually try to use any weapons since the game provides no on-screen targeting and the geometries involved are rarely clear especially when the game decides to try to help by auto-aiming. Oh, and if your vehicle ever gets flipped, it is usually just easier to restart the challenge. It may have a button for resolving this, but it has a bad tendency to damage your vehicle in the process or get you stuck on any nearby outcropping available.

The game seems to make a lot of references back to previous games, mostly for humor. Since I perhaps played no more than 2 hours put together of all previous Banjo-Kazooie games, this is mostly lost to me.

Here, I think the comparison should be against the first Ratchet and Clank Future game (Tools of Destruction). It carried most of the same baggage that Banjo-Kazooie did--a long series of games, a humorous style, updates for a new generation system, released at a similar time--but Tools of Destruction revived my interest in the platformer genre and managed to be interesting and engaging without relying so heaviliy on backstory that a new player was unable to connect. This game will probably prevent my from buying another Rare. I think at this point, I've played almost all of their XBox 360 offerings (Kameo, Perfect Dark Zero, Viva Pinata, and this with only the second Viva Pinata and their XBLA offering being missing) and haven't found a single one compelling. Maybe they'll return to their SNES and N64 glory days, but I'm not going to hold my breath.


Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts: 0

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2010 May 18 elly


Guy Blade Guy Blade---04:08:00


Undocumented requirements
So, my PS3's hard drive has filled up. I attempted to play a new game and was happily told that the disk was full. Since Sony did make a few good design decisions, it turns out that I can simply buy a new laptop-style SATA drive and swap the disks using only a screwdriver and an easily removable cover. I found a 500 GB drive on Newegg for $75 that at least one person in the review thread had already used in a PS3, so I picked it up. Once it arrives, I'll have a 12.5x increase in storage.

Of course, before I do that, I first need to backup the old disk. Again, Sony has happily provided a utility to back up the old disk to a USB mass storage device. I have a USB/eSATA drive that had basically gone out of use since I picked up a high-capacity flash stick. The drive in it had previously been used on one of the various Linux boxes floating around, so I formatted it FAT32 and tried to do the backup. The PS3, however, refused to recognize it.

It turns out that the PS3 requires that the partition both be formatted FAT32 (a listed requirement) and also be properly marked as such in the parition table (an undocumented requirement). I know 0x0C (W95 FAT32 LBA) works, but 0x83 (Linux) doesn't. I suspect other partition type labels may also work, but am disinterested in trying. Nevertheless, this may be relevant if you intend to swap out your disks.

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2010 May 14 aeris


Guy Blade Guy Blade---19:06:00


Finally
While on my trip last week, I finally finished God of War: Chains of Olympus. When I bought my PSP back before Jason-2 launched (June 2008), I got two games: Final Fantasy 7: Crisis Core and God of War: Chains of Olympus. I beat Crisis Core around the time Jason-2 launched. Since then, Chains of Olympus has been in my PSP. In total, that means that it took my nearly a year and a half to finally finish it.

Chains of Olympus is a prequel to the first God of War game and it shows. Kratos is being sent around to do the gods errands all while being given the finger by said gods, much like in the first game. It includes (yet again) him dying and clawing back up from underworld. Only counting the God of War games that I've played, I think that makes at least 4 times that he's come back from there...

The gameplay is quite similar to the other God of War games, but is somewhat hampered by the PSP's lack of buttons. This is especially evident in the fact that dodging requires a two button combination (R+X) when it is probably the most commonly repeated action aside from attacking. Magic is similarly hampered by requiring a button combination, but that rarely was an issue for me given the few times that I actually bothered to cast magic.

Most of the game is actually rather easy. Although enemies are rather tough and do decent damage, I was able to survive most fights by just tanking through them and then picking up one of the incredibly common healing chests. The final boss, however, dramatically changes the paradigm. Its attacks do on the order of a quarter of a fully-expanded health bar and can't be blocked, only dodged. This brings the control flaws back into the foreground and made the final fight quite frustrating. It also didn't help that there was a two-minute-long, unskippable cutscene between the last checkpoint and the actual final fight.

Honestly, I don't remember all that much about the game. Given the piecemeal way that I went through it over something like 18 months, it is hard to remember anything more than the vaguest memories about the earlier bits. In fact, I think this unremarkability may be something core to the game. Since it happens before the first game but after the main character is given all of his nifty superpowers, there isn't much that can be done without requiring it to either all be forgotten or not mattering at all. Such is the fate of most prequels, I think.

I don't think this game is important even to hardcore fans of the series. It isn't bad--the gameplay is solid enough and the plot doesn't have any glaring holes--but it isn't that good either. I think this is the sort of game that the word mediocre is destined to describe.

God of War: Chains of Olympus: 0

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2010 May 12 harle


Guy Blade Guy Blade---20:49:00


See, they use bolts as currency
Two weekends ago, I played through Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time. For those unfamiliar with the series, they're rather quirky platformers with a humor slant and little need for realism.

I gushed about the previous one, and the sequel is quite good in its own right. The game follows most of the recent platformer tropes: weapons that level up when used, a dozen different types of collectables, jumping puzzles on rails, etc. The game does branch out a bit from the standard fair by adding some interesting things by making use of time-travel based puzzles. These show up in the form of rooms where you can record a sequence of moves for a "shadow" and then work in cooperation with the shadow to get through the room. Although this particular type of puzzle has shown up in a few flash games, this is the first time that I've seen it carried out in 3D in a modern platformer.

I found the game enjoyable enough that I decided to defeat it. I had mostly completed the task by the end of my first playthrough, but getting all of the trophies required a second playthrough anyway (basically there was a trophy for beating the game a second time) and I got the remaining trophy that I needed in the post-game of my second playthrough.

I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the Ratchet and Clank series is one of the top-tier Playstation-exclusive titles. Although it may not be as angry and violent as say God of War or Resistance, it provides one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences that I've had lately. It definitely helps that the game makes a strong point of not taking itself too seriously and provides continual humor value without compromising on gameplay.


Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time: 1!

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2010 May 10 emeralda


Guy Blade Guy Blade---03:17:00


Stingray Sam is not a Hero
So Xander apparently gets random DVDs in the main periodically. One DVD that he got was called Stingram Sam. Xander described it to me as "a cowboy musical in space" and frankly, it is approximately as brilliant as it sounds.

Stingray Sam is presented as six episodes of about 10 minutes each. Personally, it was episode two which sold me. Luckily, the first two episodes are available online for viewing.












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