Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Bioshock: First Impressions

Today I finally chucked Bioshock into my 360's disc drive for the first time.

I know, I know...like a year after it first came out...in fact, almost a year since I received it, which was last Christmas, but I've barely had time to game at all this year so it just sat on my shelf squished in between a couple of Avril Lavigne CDs and Viva Pinata.

Also, in case I haven't mentioned this enough, I suck at shooters. In fact, I am still on level two of Gears of War. My manager bought a 360 console three days ago with Gears and in less than 72 hours he's ALMOST FINISHED IT.

This is how much I suck.

Anyway...so I popped it in and sat through the opening bit, and was quite uninspired by the blocky cartoony graphics in the first five seconds in the plane...and then the plane crashed and there was fire on the water everywhere and I was blown away by the sparkles and the light dancing off the water surface.

And then I heard a pained scream as I accidentally swam my character into a wall of fire.

I only played for an hour so I'm still only at the Medical Pavilion- which I suppose is Level Two, or The-Level-After-the-Introductory-Level. The whole concept is just fascinating and the artwork and advertising is really really amazing but I am very very freaked out.

I haven't battled a Big Daddy and a Little Sister yet but I've seen them harvesting from the safety of a high beam.

And yup...still freaked out.

Favourite moment so far is finding a pool of water with two Splicers standing in it and using my electroshocky plasmid and frying everything in it.

Childish giggling ensued.

But not the kind of creepy Little Sister giggling...*shudder*



Wednesday, October 15, 2008

What a Difference a Cable Makes...

Several months ago, I lost my precious little auxiliary cable.

I liked this cable. It was unique, and it was really pretty, because it was black with pretty red piping...and how many other auxiliary cables are that cute?

But then it went missing.

And instead of paying $6 to get another one, like any normal person would have done, I tried to hunt for a cheap one in the house. And so, as per usual, I ransacked my Dad's study to search for one.

My Dad's study is awesome. It's like a little tiny Bunnings. Whenever I need to find a screwdriver- of any size, shape or variety- he's got it. Whenever I need to use his multimeter, he's got like three of them. Plus AC adaptors. And international adaptors. And soldering stations. Oh, and lots and lots of cables.

On this occasion, I found two aux cables. The first one had this weird ridge and so I couldn't actually fit it in properly. The second one was flimsy, and cheap, and looked like it would break if I even thought about looking at it, but I used it anyway (my car has an aux/MP3 jack...all the better to hear Jigga with.)

And it worked. Up until recently, when I was listening to Flo Rida and one of the sound channels seemed to drop out in my car.

Resulting in:

"Ele....elevatooooooor...."

"She's stuck on....*static*....my...*static*...my elevatoooor...."

For a horrible moment, I thought my iPod had finally lost it- it's been on the blink recently- but I jiggled the cable and Flo Rida's voice boomed out, then faded.

This made me sad. Because I'm one of those people who can't stand silence in the car...or stand hearing commercial radio play Miley Cyrus for the umpteenth time...even if the journey is only seven minutes.

So I decided to get a nice premium cable from work instead.

Among other things, this cable- in its stupid, STUPID VACUUM PACKAGING WHICH TOOK FIFTEEN MINUTES TO SLICE OPEN- claims to have 'strain relief', 'gold plated tips' and 'easy grip metal connectors'.

So roughly, you'd pay $14 more* just to have a bigger pluggy thing, gold tips and the assurance that it won't kink when tossed around in your handbag. (Yes, I keep a lot of random things in my handbag. Including cables.)

But...when I actually hooked it up...

...the sound quality was GOOD.

Really, REALLY GOOD.

I was shocked.

You actually DO get what you pay for.

Either that, or I'm just experiencing the technological version of the placebo effect.


*I didn't pay full price, but I guess there's some justification to the price difference if you do...

Thursday, October 2, 2008

The Self-Made Net Nanny

Procrastination has risen to an all-time high, so I have taken drastic measures.

After some deep soul-searching that took all of twenty seconds, I have finally whittled my procrastination methods down to five main categories:

1. Raiding the pantry
2. Piano
3. Mahjong Titans (DAMN YOU PRE-PROGRAMMED GAMES FOR WINDOWS!)
4. DVDs (I have abandoned this practice after watching an episode of Supernatural the other night which featured a ghost with her throat slit open. Not a good idea at 1:00 a.m when you're about to go to sleep.)

But the worst, worst, WORST category is:

5. INTERNET.

Thus, I have taken drastic action.

Even though I'm probably the only person who actually prefers IE7 over Firefox, I have set Firefox as my default browser, and installed a nifty little add-on called LeechBlock.

LeechBlock
basically blocks you from sites that you waste time on. It's like saving you from yourself and the worthless minutes of total unproductivity that stem from surfing the web. With LeechBlock, you can nominate sites that you waste time on and block them completely. You can also cause certain sites to shut down access after a nominated period of time- for example, I've set Facebook to shut off after 5 minutes. You can even set an option that will stop yourself from changing the blocking settings during that period (so if you crack and attempt to reset LeechBlock, you're blocked from doing that too.)

Only problem is that most of the time I access the internet from Live Messenger, which is of course affiliated with IE7 as part of Microsoft, and I'd rather not mess with those settings. I have, however, unpinned IE7 from the Start menu (or whatever the stupid Vista icon thing is now).

Luckily I only have two browsers, to the temptation to circumvent myself is lessened somewhat.

Now let's just see how long it takes me to crack.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Daphne's Wish List

1. Star Wars: Force Unleashed
2. Rise of the Argonauts
3. Mortal Kombat v DC Universe
4. Lips
5. Guitar Hero IV: World Tour
6. Spore

Now to print it out and stick it on the fridge before Christmas :D

Friday, September 19, 2008

Ode to My 360

On the 7th of April, 2007 at 7:01 p.m, I bought my Xbox 360.

This was a momentous occasion for me as it was basically the most money I had ever ever spent on anything.

(The financial magnitude of this was squished rather dramatically when I purchased my first car four months later.)

I tend to wax lyrical about my 360, which I'm sure must get very, very annoying to my long-suffering peers, but oh, the love I have for that little piece of plastic hardware. Warm summer nights at 12 a.m playing Assassins Creed. Late-night missions in Mass Effect with giant scorpion alien things that shoot acid. Clutching the controller to my chest and going, "Awwwww...." my Commander Shepard finally declared her love for Kaidan Alenko (followed by a very visual consummation of that love which certainly earned the MA15+ rating). Weekends with my Scene It! controllers in fierce competition with my cousins. Sweating in the summer heat while jumping around maniacally on a Dance Dance Revolution mat. Hitting brightly coloured pinatas over the head with a shovel with Kris, then feeling immediately guilty at their helplessness.

And the funny thing is, what spurred my decision to buy a next-gen console was that fact that The Force Unleashed had been announced- on every platform but PC.

So if the mountain won't come to Mohammed, Mohammed will...buy the mountain.

And IN A CRUEL TWIST OF IRONY, when The Force Unleashed comes out, what does my XBox do?

IT DIES.

AAAARGGGGGH.

I rang Microsoft today. Microsoft apparently seem to enjoy employing Indian consultants with really really bad American accents.

Nevertheless, 'Nancy' was happy to process my repair, although my heart did sink when she said, "I'm just going to take you through some troubleshooting..."

She told me to turn the console on, wait ten seconds, and turn it off. I politely explained that I had done three test runs the night before doing exactly that, had checked both the status of the power supply and the AV cables, removed the hard drive and retested it, and totally confirmed that it had RROD'ed.

She said, "Oh."

Then she said, "How did you know how to do all that? Did you visit the website?"

I mentioned that I sell 360s at work. What I didn't tell her was that I'd spent part of my afternoon clutching my Xbox to my chest, rocking it back and forth telling it everything would be fine. I probably shouldn't have done this while I had a guest in the house- Sarah looked positively fearful- but she's used to my madness.

So I'm sending my little one to Chullora. Hopefully they can fix the fault, although this is what happens when you designate manufacturing to three shoddy Chinese factories and use crappy heatsinks. Hopefully I'll get it back just in time for after-exams.

To quote Ned Flanders..."God speed, little doodle."

Monday, August 18, 2008

Things You Don't Expect To Hear When Talking About Networks...

Customer: I'm looking to get an ethernet cable, maybe 20 metres long.
Me: Sorry, we've only got up to 15.
Customer: That's okay, I can join two of them together with one of those- what do you call those little things?
Me: An RJ45 coupler?
Customer: Yeah, that's it- hmm, that sounds really kinky doesn't it? 'Coupler' sounds like it's some kind of weird sex toy.
Me: Yeah, we don't really sell sex toys in the store...

In future, remind me to call those things 'joiners' and not 'couplers'...

Sunday, August 3, 2008

The Toner is IN the printer...?

Today, I had another one of those terrific phone conversations where people treat me as technical support.

News flash: I am not.

Whenever I buy something, I don't generally ring up the place I bought it from and make them walk me through the process of what is clearly laid out in the instruction manual. Surely, you would actually ring the manufacturer who pays people to act as specialised tech support, rather than a store that has only four staff working per day? It's like buying bedsheets, then ringing up Target asking for washing instructions.

Seems harsh? Quite a few of the queries I get could be solved with a simple search in Google or a look at the troubleshooting manual. I don't mind it when customers come in with mild troubleshooting questions, or if they bring in their instruction manuals wanting to know the best way to connect their equipment. But making me act as your tech support on the phone? No. I have better things to do with my $13/hr. Like spray isopropyl on everything.

This is what transpired today:

"Hi. We purchased a printer from your store this morning."
"Oh, okay. And?"

"We can't get it to work."
"What seems to be the problem?"
"It's just not printing."
"Okay. Have you inserted the toner?"
"The what?"
"The toner. That big black thing that came in the packaging."

"What's a toner?"

Five minutes later...

"Look at the top of the box where it says CONTENTS. THERE SHOULD BE A PICTURE OF THE TONER."
"I don't see it."
"Okay....there's a picture of the printer. And a picture of the manual. And two cables. And next to it there's this great ugly thing that is a picture of the toner cartridge."

Five minutes later...

"Can you open the lid for me?"
"How do I do that?"
"Just...open the top. Pretend the laser printer is a top-loading washing machine. Just open the top."
"I can't see it."
"There's a NOTCH FOR YOUR FINGER TO LIFT UP THE LID ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE."

Five minutes later...

"I can't get the lid shut."
"Have you snapped the toner in place?"
"Which bit is the toner?"


AAAARGH.

Five minutes later...

"Please stop thinking of this printer as an inkjet printer. THE TONER IS LIKE ONE FOOT LONG. IT IS NOT A LITTLE CARTRIDGE. BIG. BLACK. PLASTIC. THING."

Two minutes later...

"Look, I really cannot act as technical support for 20 minutes on the phone- I have customers to serve and HP have a support line that should be open tomorrow."
"But I need to print today."
"Well, if you give me your number I can call you back in 15 minutes when the store isn't quite so busy."
"But I'm going out in the afternoon. I won't be home."

Oh, gee. Sorry I can't fit into your schedule, ma'am.

Two minutes later, I had managed to extract myself from the gruelling conversation, during which I tried to stab myself with a blue biro in front of my colleague.

After I'd put the phone down, I turned to face the next customer who had caught the last five minutes of my barely repressed laser toner rage.

The customer looked at me, and smiled a little sheepishly before he said:

"Um, I know this is the last thing you want to hear...but I need help with a printer."

Friday, August 1, 2008

Cables, Trade-Ins, and Other Matters...

Today, I went searching for a VGA cable.

I thought that it would be a simple enough task.

But for some odd reason, NO ONE STOCKS THEM.

Well, I'll clarify this a bit- what I was after was a 15 pin male to female VGA extension cable, not your normal male-male (insert immature giggle here) cable. I tried FIVE stores. FIVE. Including my university computer shop, which seems to have whored itself out to Apple and now seems to be solely worshiping the shrine of Steve Jobs.

I told the guy what I was after, and he goes, "Well...we have cables to connect the Macs."

("Hi, I'm a Mac!" "And I'm a PC!" Do not distract me with your Mac words, peasant!)

And then he suggested the company for which I work.

But no, my store doesn't have male-female VGA cables. We also charge $40 for normal cables, which is just plain stupid.

Anyway...I toddled off to the industrial zone near my university, which has quite a few little computer shops nestled into it. Despite the fact that they are really quite tiny little shops, the I.T guys there were lovely. And...well, they could speak English. It was nice to have a conversation that didn't run along the lines of:

"Excuse me, do you have VGA cables?"
"VGA?"
"Yes, VGA. 15 pin male to female."
"Ahhh....we no have VGA cable. All sold out."

*Awkward pause*

"Um...do you usually stock them?"
"No more. Run out."
"Well, would you be able to order them in?"

*Uncomprehending blinking ensues*

"Never mind."

Finally, I reached the very end of the industrial area and struck gold. And the cables were like $5 each. Mentally, I uttered a joyful "WOOT!" as I handed my $10 over, while the jolly old man at the counter told me that the company I work for was basically 'daylight robbery!'.

Daylight robbery or not, my humble little electronics job has paid my way through law school :)

The cables were actually for a very good friend of mine, Kryssy. In fact, I dedicate this post to her, as she's just bloody awesome. I've shrieked through Halo on her old black brick, dragged her through JB jumping up and down at a Force Unleashed mock-up, rung her in the middle of the exam period wanting her advice whilst standing at an EB clearance table, and tottered around Chadstone with her on a PS3-buying expedition, dragging a limited-edition lead safe that came with GTAIV. (That was a brilliant expedition. She got her PS3, I got knee-length black leather boots. Happiness.)

Anyway...half an hour after I got home, she came over so we could go to my local GameTraders to trade in her all her old stuff. And there was a LOT. Like three bags full. The first was filled to the brim- and imagine a large retail bag FILLED WITH PLAYSTATION TWO GAMES- the second was filled with PS1 stuff, and the third had a Xbox Console plus games and controllers.

Suffice to say, the first bag actually broke when I'd only taken ten steps away from the car, but we managed to stumble into Game Traders- I heaved up the first bag on the counter with a large THUMP and said, "We'd like to trade."

The woman at GameTraders looked distinctly unimpressed.

We let her sort all that out while I snickered through the old Mega Drive collection and viewed their SNES collection with sweet nostalgia. Kryssy got a pretty good deal- she got Call of Duty 4 and Kane and Lynch for the PS3 and that only took up like half of her trade-in credit. Pretty sweet.

We had a most excellent day- and to Kryssy, I say thank you. For years of friendship and gaming and ranting...I have so many happy (and highly amusing) memories. Sitting on your living room floor and pouring through X-Men comics. Playing Mortal Kombat on your PS2 and yelling, "MY HAT KILLS PEOPLE!". Leaving the cinema after Iron Man two minutes before they played Samuel L. Jackson's cameo, saying to you, "Boy, I wish they'd showed Nick Fury from S.H.I.E.L.D." (Am still slapping myself over that one.)

And yeah, being defeated by a flight of stairs in Halo and then screaming and firing blindly when a bunch of beaky aliens jumped out at me behind a crate.

I'll learn how to shoot straight one of these days...

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Network of Hate!

I hate networks.

I hate routers.

I hate wireless receivers.

I hate 15 metre ethernet cables.

I hate filters.

I hate them all.

This hatred is not unfounded. It does not simply stem from the fact that I spend a goodly amount of my time at work patiently explaining the function of a router and what a wireless network is. (Took me 20 minutes to explain the difference between 802.11g and 802.11N the other day, although I only have a very vague conceptual idea of the latter...although if Mariah Carey can incorporate it into her Touch My Body video clip it can't be that hard, right?!)

Mostly, the hatred stems from a long history of drop-outs with the stupid piece of plastic crap that I call a D-Link router and the equally crap piece of plastic that I call a USB receiver (which has recently failed. Thus, the 15 metres of ethernet cable trailing all over my house.)

Plus the hours of fixing and twiddling and pinging and ooooooh how I hate that HP Pavilion downstairs...I can't explain why, but whenever something (else) goes wrong with it I fly into a homicidal rage. Which isn't really fair on my father, who generally has to put up with (a) his computer failing and (b) his daughter screaming at an inanimate object and cursing HP in non-too-polite terms.

Also, as I keep pointedly reminding my dad, I AM NOT A COMPUTER TECHNICIAN.

In fact, I suck. Every time something goes wrong I have to go through a process of trial and error based on the most likely issues with it...and at each point of failure my rage grows and grows until the urge to smash the computer is almost overwhelming.

On the upside, I have managed to fix it.

Tonight it was some kind of firewall problem.

Add that to the list:

I also hate firewalls.

That's all my venting today. Carry on surfing on your respective networks...

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

The Trouble With FPS

You may have heard me whine a lot on this blog about how much I suck at FPS.

Now, here is further proof!

I had a spare hour today to start Rainbow Six Vegas on my 360. I know it's a shooter so I probably shouldn't have bought it, but it was only $25 and hey, you blow up shit in a casino. Who hasn't ever wanted to leap onto the blackjack tables at Crown with an AK-47?

Anyway...here I was, happily trotting into a Mexican alleyway with my very large gun, when I reach a doorway. It happens to be one of the doorways that I can't open, since at this point in the tutorial I have not learnt the dubious joys of Snake Cam- but thinking this is Gears of War, I try to smash the door down with one meaty fist.

Except this does nothing. This is not Gears of War.

So I press the pretty little circle button on my controller.

A merry tinkling sound ensues as a teeny little round grenade thing drops at my feet.

Daphne has two seconds to go, "Oh...shit," before the grenade explodes in spectacular fashion at my feet and the whole world goes red.

Game over.

Whoops.



Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Bad Company Trailers

New trailers for Bad Company have just come out.

And they're fucking hilarious.

One spoofs Gears of War and the other the Rainbow Six series- both of which I own, but I prefer the Gears of War parody cos I always found Mad World to be most depressing, overrated song ever.

(Mr Coulter, if you're reading this, you'd better check it out, cos I recall you once telling me about the GoW Mad World trailer back in the good old Indo days...)


Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Breaking the Hiatus

Given my interest in gaming, it's actually quite a pity that I suck at it.

Yesterday I picked up my Xbox 360 controller for the first time in ages- weeks, months...and started playing Mass Effect.

This game has freaked me out more than once on occasion- there was once this terrible level which had horrible zombie husks attacking my crew and they were all coming towards me with hideous outstretched zombie hands AND THIS IS WHY I CAN'T PLAY RESIDENT EVIL.

Oh, and apparently I couldn't KILL any of the scientists additionally shooting at me because they were under mind-control so I had to shoot and destroy zombies while getting close enough to survivors in order to whack them with the butt of my rifle. (Virtue sucks.)

I can't even begin to tell you how long it took me to get past that stage.

Anyway, I was hoping for something relaxing after the stress of law exams, but OH NO, there had to be an entire level of effing Rachni, which are semi-sentient alien GIANT BUG THINGS THAT SPIT DEADLY POISON.

And after I set this weird neuron-pulse thing to kill them all, I had exactly two minutes to get out of the facility, only two medpacs, five grenades, and my sensor was swarming with red Rachni dots.

BUG THINGS. EVERYWHERE. SPITTING POISON AT ME.

I panicked.

Cue much mental swearing.

And this is why I suck at gaming.

It took me at least ten tries to get past that level- I tried being sneaky and using a pop'n'shoot technique but the time limit killed that idea, so I just started throwing grenades from a distance, using my pistols and biotics when I ventured closer.

I panic whenever anything remotely FPS comes up.

And that is why most of my games are single-player. Because no one wants to hear their partner shrieking profanities and running around in circles when there's shootin' to be done.

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Releasing the Spores

They've finally released the PC requirements to play Spore- check it out here.

(Or if you can't be stuffed clicking on the link, here they are)

FOR WINDOWS VISTA

2.0 GHz P4 processor or equivalent
768 MB RAM A 128 MB Video Card, with support for Pixel Shader 2.0
At least 6 GB of hard drive space

That's it?!


I thought it was going to be a monstrous exercise, something similar to the Stranglehold or Crysis specs.

But nope, it's actually reasonable.

(Well, I can say this now I've upgraded from 256MB RAM to 2GB and from a GeForce 2 MX to a GeForce 8600GT.)

Well, I'm happy.


Hopefully, this game won't prove as addictive as Sims 2.

I'm still looking for a game to test my system out on...Jade Empire (the special shiny edition) was $10 at work but I already have a swathe of RPGs to get through and I never have time to sit down and play.

Any suggestions?


Wednesday, May 21, 2008

When Gaming Affects Your Girly Shopping Habits

Popped into Myers today and they were having 30% off knitwear. 30%. Off. Knitwear.

*grins*

What doth this have to do with Technobabblement, you ask?

Well...

I saw this lovely long-sleeved, knee-length button knit- there was a choice of cream, charcoal or brown, but I went straight for the charcoal one (which also had hints of a dusky blue). Initially, I was devastated because the Size 10 was too big (Miss Shop have inconsistent sizing) but I managed to snag the last Size 6 which happened to be a perfect fit when I tried it on in the changing room.

And you know what?
It had a hood.

So I pulled it over my head to see what it looked like.

And oh. My. God.

It was an Altair hood.

This dude.

My thought process went as follows:
"This. Is. Way. Cool."
"Hey...it's also kind of like Luke's Jedi cowl in Episode VI except it's totally the wrong colour. Ooh, it's even got that funny pointy bit at the top."
"Hee hee...I look like the guy from Assassin's Creed...if you squint...and if you're drunk...and if you forget the fact that he's a highly trained male assassin and not a woman...tee hee hee."
"I am sooooo buying this."
And that was that.
Of course, if you saw it you'd be like, "Dude, it's a freakin' HOOD. People wear HOODIES, it's not like it's a big deal."
But I love it.
This knit shall now be known as the 'Altair' cardigan :D

Thursday, May 8, 2008

Mobile Update

I have only ever had two mobile phones.

The first was a wonderful, slightly bricky thing otherwise known as a Nokia 5110. The second phone is my current one, and has lasted me four years- a Nokia 6610i which has served me well.

And because I am brave and adventurous, I got another Nokia last week.

I've been pondering the phone question for a while now. Several months ago, I was considering getting a pink Sony Ericsson Z310i. Except that it looked impossibly girly to the point where I might have been embarrassed to actually take it out in public. And when I asked my colleague if it would be too girly, his response was somewhat damning. I think something along the lines of, "Yes, it would be too girly. In the kind of 'oh look at me, I'm a Playboy bunny' girly."

Anyway...I now have a Nokia 6300. Which is a delicious-looking candybar phone, in a pretty slim leather case, and it has this beautiful QVGA screen that blows my old phone out of the water. There's also Bluetooth, which I've never had before, an MP3 player and a theme function that has now let me have Jensen Ackles and Jared Padelecki always with me in my handbag.

However, the battery life sucks.

Really, really sucks.

I didn't even DO anything to the phone except play with it constantly and press the buttons constantly and poke it so I could see the picture of Jensen light up and try out the camera...and the battery life is already 3/4 gone after two days.

Surely that wouldn't have drained it? It's 860mah. Then again, I'm sure Jensen Ackles is so luminously gorgeous that he'd drain anything...

Anyhow, the point is I've finally made that jump and upgraded. But I haven't used any of the extra features because I'M SCARED OF DRAINING THE BATTERY. I looked online and a couple of people suggested shaving off the end of a BL-5C battery so that the contacts can physically fit, but y'know, I'd rather not do that...

I'm assuming/hoping/praying that the battery life will improve after a few charge cycles. If not, I don't think it's going to last quite so long as the 6610i...especially since the first 6300 I got had a faulty directional pad- cue the three of us at work cracking jokes about stroking stiff keys- and I had to delete everything off my one-day-old phone and replace it the next day. Hmm.

Now it's time to upgrade the computer in two or three weeks. Expect a bit more ranting as new developments arise...

N.B, post-post: Put it through a full discharge/recharge cycle. Battery life is MUCH better. And I've chucked on AC/DC as my ringtone on full volume...I still grin every time I hear the opening riff of 'Back in Black' from my handbag.

Monday, May 5, 2008

Signs You Need To Update Your Computer #1

My computer is making an odd chirping sound.

It sounds like there's a cricket stuck in the chassis.

Chirp.

Chirpy chirp chirp.

If the PC weren't running so slowly at the moment I might find it a little bit adorable.

But it's beginning to sound less like a cricket and more like hoards of locusts hiding in my lawn in summer....

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Mortal Kombat Vs. DC...?

Yup, you heard right.

Mortal Kombat versus...DC. As in, DC Comics. As in, you're going to see Sub-Zero against Batman. Raidan versus Wonder Woman.

This is either the stupidest game premise I've ever heard or the coolest.

And frankly, it is actually that stupid that I am going to rush out and buy it when it's released. Because I want to see Raiden jam lightning down Batman's suit...(except if it's as rubbery as George Clooney's costume then Raiden is sorta screwed.)

I'm pretty sure they had that Marvel vs Capcom thing ages ago, so the idea of mashing two worlds together is nothing new- and I'm guessing that everyone is secretly thinking, "Why couldn't it have been Marvel vs DC?!" But Marvel is Marvel, DC is DC, and never the twain shall meet.

I've been waiting so long for a Mortal Kombat title to hit the 360 that y'know what? I don't really care, I just want it. I'm sick of playing the Mortal Kombat 3 demo that I downloaded from Live four months ago...I want to see some high-definition butt-kicking, although apparently this new title will be sans Fatalities.

Now at least I can stop jealously eyeing Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the shelf at work that holds the Wii games.

I hope Ashrah makes an appearance in this new one. I have a weakness for Mortal Kombat characters with cool hats.

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Violence and the R 18+ Rating

Apparently, the Australian government is still mulling over the decision on whether to introduce an R 18+ rating for video games.

This means that all those gamers looking for an even greater level of violence to exceed GTA 4 (or Manhunt 2) will have to curb those bloodthirsty fingers on their trigger sticks for just a while longer.

Personally, I'm not too fussed either way. There's plenty of violence and gore out there already- how many times have we watched losers in Mortal Kombat fall screaming to their gory death on a bed of spikes?- so an R 18+ rating shouldn't really change things.

However, it did make me think of a family I sold an Xbox 360 to a couple of weeks ago- they were Asian, with a teenage son (a rather non-communicative little teenage son if I may say so myself.) One thing with Asian parents is that they believe that their teenage son is a little paragon of virtue who would never entertain the idea of virtually disembowelling someone, or teabagging a hapless n00b in an MMORPG, or viewing porn at a friend's house. Why, not my wonderful-little-boy-who-is-top-of-his-class-in-Maths-Methods.

Anyway...

...so the kid starts looking through the shelf of 360 games. Except his mother is standing over his shoulder overseeing what he's looking at. Which is never really a good idea.

The kid laconically informed me that yeah, he'd played Call of Duty 4 and Gears of War at friends' houses, but his mum wouldn't let him play anything violent.

Inwardly, I smirked.

His mother vetoed anything that looked remotely violent. In fact, I felt like falling on the floor and howling with laughter when she finally picked up one title and tried to convince the kid to get it.

Suffice to say, he was not impressed by his mother waggling Viva Pinata in front of his face and saying, "Look, this is a nice game!"

So she asks me for my opinion on a game for his new 360.

That isn't violent.

So I start pulling stuff from shelves.

Assassin's Creed. (Involves stabbing targets in public places and watching their blood billow out into fountains, then running away in kick-ass chase scenes).

Nope.

Crackdown. (Free rein to bash everything!!!)

Nope.

Saints' Row. (It's not like it sounds.)

Nope.

Call of Duty 4. (It has SOLDIERS on the front. Go figure.)

Nope, also out.

Gears of War (Note the use of the word "war". Also note the image of Marcus Fenix looking considerably grim and on some kind of steroid.)

Nups.

Mass Effect (This is currently set to eclipse KOTOR as my favouritest RPG, which is really saying something. However, it also features a suggested alien/human lesbian sex scene, many many drug references and mentions Krogan testicles. Man, I love that game so much.)

But yeah, that was out of the question too.

The kid finally settled on some kind of FIFA game. So that was nice and relatively non-violent, and I'm sure his mother must have been somewhat pacified by ther fact that her beloved Viva Pinata was packaged with the Xbox (along with Forza).

And this is why earning money and being over 18 is so much fun. You can buy your own Xbox 360 and get whatever you want.

Or you can get your parents to buy it for you, where the maximum level of violence in your games will be limited to hitting a cartoon pinata over the head with a shovel.

That said, I did reflect on the fact that there are very few family-friendly games for the 360, and that's just because of the demographic it's aimed at. It's not like you''ve got six year old girls wanting to play Bratz on 1080p, but after playing Scene It!, and looking at the popularity of the PS2's Singstar/Buzz games, maybe it's not such a bad market to tap into.

If you're under 18 and have a console, you're probably still living at home, in which case you probably can't play an R18+ game without getting grounded. So for all the other gamers out there, an R18+ rating won't really change things, it'll just open up more ground and more titles. The only thing I'm worried about is that eventually it might lead to a whole influx of gamer porn...like Playboy the Mansion for PC on crack.

But we'll see how this all pans out.




Friday, January 25, 2008

Warm-and-Fuzzy-Gaming-Moment-of-the-Week

Yesterday a father and son walked into the store and asked if they could buy an XBox 360.

(Not surprisingly, the first one died in a hideous blaze of three glowing red lights and they had to return one to EB because it bricked...I'd say that '30% failure rate' is warranted)

I asked what games they had, and the father turned to me with this big smile and said, "Me and my son love to play Call of Duty together."

Awwwww.

To quote Mr Brady, "The family that plays together, stays together."

Of course, the Brady Bunch enjoyed having sack races in the backyard, rather than blowing the brains out of NPCs in bloody combat, but it's all the same thing...

Saturday, January 19, 2008

The Pitfalls of Bubble Breaker

Despite the fact that I have a three-core next-gen gaming machine with all the bells and whistles of ATI graphics and shading, I have been spending most of my time on what is possibly the most addictive game in the history of stupid, mindless games.

It's called Bubble Breaker.

You might know it as The Same Game, although I think Hexic has a similar purpose...all you do is click/tap on groups of more than three bubbles. Extra points if it's a bigger stack.

THERE IS NO POINT TO IT. AND I CAN'T. STOP. PLAYING. IT.

It was one of the games that came pre-programmed into my PDA, and I have developed an obsessive-compulsive thing with it...the other day, all I did was stare into my screen without blinking for 40 minutes on the train, tapping frantically whilst ignoring all the other commuters around me.

The other night, I stayed up until 2 a.m playing the friggin' game.

I don't think I can take it into lectures this semester. I'll learn even less than I did last year, and I don't think that was even possible...

Thursday, January 17, 2008

Christmas Gaming

For Christmas, my family gave me Bioshock.

My uncle gave me Assassin's Creed.

My sister gave me Test Drive Unlimited. And also Scene It!

Then I went and bought Mass Effect because I really couldn't wait any longer for what is possibly the most uber-awesome RPG to ever hit shelves.

And then I bought Dancing Stage Universe because I thought the Workout mode might compensate for my general lack of exercise (it hasn't).

And thus, friends, I am now banning myself from spending any more money on anything XBox 360 related, at least until The Force Unleashed comes out and you'll see the frightening combination of Star Wars fangirl and gamer come into fruition. I also think that with Mass Effect, I have a lot to get through, and I haven't even opened Bioshock yet (I know, I know) but I figured that the curious blend of FPS and art deco can wait until I've conquered Saren and ground him into bits of little Turian dust. (BTW, did anyone else think that Nihlus looked like the Turian equivalent of Gene Simmons? Or was it just me?)

Nihlus:




Gene Simmons:



See?!

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Technobabblement Begins

I figured I'd do something I've always wanted to do, and start a blog entirely devoted to gaming and technology in general. Like the bastard child of Gizmodo and Gaming Today but ten million times crappier. In fact, take out all of the witty journalism from those two sites, and filter it down to the viewpoint of a young gamer who has very litte knowledge of HTML and thus is forced to stick to this plain old Blogspot format. (Ah, way to publicise my own blog).

'Learn HTML' was on my 'to-do' list, along with 'learn-how-to-program-with-Java' and 'go-to-the-gym-more-often'.

I figure this blog might die a slow and lingering death, but hey, at least I gave it a shot :D