Mr FofR » 05 – Games

Haloid and Dead Fantasy

Paul — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 15:35:00 +0000

If games could really be this good. This is some stunning animation by montyoum.

How to do a press conference badly

Paul — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 23:12:00 +0000

UK PS3 Launch

Paul — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:01:00 +0000

It is here at last it seems. In fact it is perfectly clear that it has arrived — newspapers are filled with ads shouting about the PS3s that they have in stock — get them now! And, on perusing the shopping centres late on Saturday, I noticed that every electronics store outlet from Game-station to HMV and Curry’s Digital had large protruding signs announcing “Playstation 3 in stock… hurry”. Should I have had £500 to lay down on a system + game I could have bought one from anywhere. Though, if I wanted to buy myself a Wii I would be hard pressed to find one; HMV, Game, et al. had all sold out and many stores still had waiting lists. I’ll take my £300 + Wii over a PS3 and Resistance Fall of Man any day, in fact, 4 months later I and my house-mates still avidly play Wii Sports. I do plan to purchase a PS3 (ICO 3, Little Big World), though not for a good 18 months.

Wii Bowling Perfect Score

Paul — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:55:00 +0000

Double,Turkey,…Six Pack…Eight in a Row…11 in a Row… Perfect.

My bowling rating is now 1760.

Wii Opera

Paul — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 14:31:00 +0000

Ahh, today saw the release of the Wii trial browser powered by Opera; just as I was lamenting the pains of having to use my sisters laptop to check my emails over this holiday season. Even though it is just a trial I am very impressed so far; full support for Gmail and Google Reader AJAX and out of the box Flash support that lets me watch YouTube on the television or load up my Last.fm personal radio station whilst I potter about. Improvements should include tabbed browsing and a box somewhere on the page that says what site or address you are visiting/on for security purposes, but I am sure these are in the works. On pages when the Wii decides it can’t cope the page disappears and the main browser page appears in its place without warning — this is my only annoyance so far. I’ll hold off on a proper review until the full product is released, however I can say this is a tidy little version to keep us going until then.

The ease and speed with which everything loads on the Wii is also a good point to note, especially after having fallen out with my PSP due to its excessive and ridiculous load times or even my PS2 and Xbox loading times. It makes it very easy just to turn on, play some Wii tennis and then leave, a quick 5 minute game is exactly that, not a quick 5 minute game plus 10 minutes of loading and options screens.

A friend has bought me 1000 wii points to buy some games on the Virtual Console, I think I’ll be getting bomberman 93 at some point when I get a few more controllers but until then i’ll wait to see what else comes out. I can’t wait for Mario Kart 64.

Wii Wii Wii all the way home

Paul — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 11:56:00 +0000

On September 15th Nintendo announced the European launch date and price, a short while after the American and Japanese launch information was unveiled. And so, come December 8th the Great British Wii launch occurred amongst quivers of reduced stocks and pre-orders not being satisfied. The biggest problems seemed to occur at Play.com where their 10,000 orders were met with a paltry 700 units. Many people, friends included, are now not receiving theirs until after Christmas. I also ordered from Play but I was lucky enough to place my order within an hour of the price announcement aforementioned and Play.com putting up the product for pre-order. Indeed, my Wii arrived by post on launch day, although I could not pick it up until Saturday. This also coincided with a Chinese exam and the last day of term, suffice to say my brain didn’t know what to do — torn between the trials of revision and nerves and tribulations of a child’s Christmas eve syndrome. I have now had the Wii for four days and feel I am versed enough to give out my overall impressions thus far.

First impressions: this thing is tiny. Even the Wii-mote and nunchuck are deceptively small. They also feel surprisingly sturdy and there is a definite air of quality about their production. Holding the device is comfortable and enjoyable, pointing is incredibly easy and as precise as I had expected, even after reading some reports that this was not the case. The inner speaker is also excellent, despite quarrels about its quality, I just love hearing the sound of hitting a tennis ball or the thwack as I hit the ball out of the park. Turning on, the Wii-mote was sync’d correctly and it worked right out of the box, as did the automatic CD feed. The blue light only comes on when inputting a disc or turning the Wii on; I’m not sure if this is meant to be the case, I’m not bothered.

I could be a hand model

Connecting the Wii online proved a significant hassle. No Ethernet port lead me to the setup of my old wireless router which I am not currently using in my halls of residence. This itself came with hassles which I wont go into, but suffice to say it took more than an hour to get this PC back up and running. In attempts thereafter to connect the Wii it connected smoothly and downloaded the Wii updates. However when it came to downloading the license agreement for the Shop channel, etc. I received the Wii error code: 220602, associated with DNS propagation issues. Reading discussions online suggested a couple of solutions, my Wii is already next to the router, on channel 11 and had of course been previously connected. Firstly I tried removing encryption from my connection, this did not resolve the problem. Eventually the problem was fixed by some quirky DNS switching solution: opening the manual configuration of DNS addresses for my net connection I swapped the first DNS around with my second (find these out via run CMD > ipconfig/all). This worked and once again I was a happy bunny.

With my order I of course received Wii Sports and I also purchased Zelda: Twilight Princess. To be honest, I haven’t played Zelda too much — I have picked up the dog, and fired the eagle at the monkey before catching two fish for the cat to steal but I am still relatively young to the game. My 7 hours clocked up thus far (total play time is shown on the Wii message board along side daily achievements which are interesting to look back on) have mainly been spent playing Wii Sports. I took first to the Tennis, Golf and Bowling which became instant favourites, now I have practiced a little more with Boxing and Baseball I am also enjoying these. My tennis rating is currently sitting pretty at 940, sub-pro whilst my top bowling score is 181. My Fitness age is 28 and I have yet to get that secret 91 pin instant strike.

My expectations for the product were exceptionally high due to hype and all the videos on YouTube, etc. I was positive nothing could live up to them, yet having played for more than 7 hours it most definitely has. Now all I need is a second controller, some Wii shop credit and another multiplayer game or two; it’s going to be hard waiting for Mario, Metroid, Trauma Centre and Smash Brothers. Oh how it all costs money and we British are screwed by our 17.5% VAT.

To end this, here’s a picture of Sonic enjoying this new toy:

Kristen Bell playing DS

Paul — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 11:23:00 +0000

It’s like she wore the top just to play her red DS. Any slightly different red would have been a terrible clash. I wish I’d bought a DS instead of a hunky black PSP. This seems like an apt place to link to an old post wherein I gave thanks for my new Veronica Mars region free boxset (it’s not released in region 2, UK) and whined about my PSP.

The Sonic Franchise

Paul — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:17:00 +0000

… has reached dizzying new heights. A long time ago I mixed up the meaning for the word nadir, thinking it meant precisely the opposite. I say this now; Sonic has reached its nadir; and I truly wish this sentence held the meaning I once would have thought it did.

One month to Wii

Paul — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 11:44:00 +0000

The wait has only just begun, yesterday I had confirmation that the pre-order I made on August 18th (approximately two hours after the announcement of the Wii UK price) would be available at launch, despite “European shortages”. My friend who I had hope to play multiplayer with sadly got the opposite letter stating the retailer could not guarantee the console would arrive on time. I also put in an order for Zelda (of course) and I’ll likely get a third game before Christmas. Come next week I will be most jealous with the flood of American reviews here there and everywhere whilst I wait another 20 days or so. “It’s like Christmas times a thousand”.

Burnout Revenge

Paul — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 00:58:00 +0000

I love playing this game, despite its replay flaws (i.e. there are none in the xbox version), the exhilaration of multiplayer Road Rage on the new tracks in unbeatable.