Planet Sillicon

Hope Zelda gets better

By blog on Jun. 17, 2010.

Because right now it’s pretty bad looking.

We’ve got a name now. Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword… So much for Miyamoto’s stupid hint comment a while back suggesting Link wouldn’t have a sword. I’ve been waiting a long, long time for any information, any, coming from Nintendo about this game after the one concept poster was released back at last year’s E3, and now we have a very small bit of info to go on.

Basically, Miyamoto showed a very ‘quick and dirty concept demo‘ that didn’t work particularly well, given that the majority of the audience were toting infra-red devices. The result of this comical, if unfortunate, occurrence was that the MotionPlus Wii controller Mr Miyamoto was trying to use, didn’t work.

So a lot of people went away from the demonstration fearing the game didn’t work. All of the people at the demonstration went away knowing practically nothing about the game, too. No info on storyline at all.

Now, here’s where I can talk about what we do know. We know that the graphics style is a cross between realistic and cell shaded, resulting in a realistically crap. Seriously, it’s ugly. Really looks terrible.

This is the first Zelda title for the Wii that was actually developed for the Wii. Twilight Princess was in development so long that the bloody console it was being developed for became obsolete – as if the Wii isn’t! – and developers ported the game before it was released so it would be Wii compatible. So taking that into consideration, the fact that this game looks like it was meant to be played on the Nintendo 64 is really disappointing. It doesn’t look quite as bad in motion, though, so that’s something. I mean, it’s still underwhelming, but the gameplay trailer doesn’t look quite as bad as the stills of the game do.

So much could be done with the Zelda franchise on the Wii, but Nintendo’s yet to tap into that potential. The game is set to be released sometime next year, but at this stage I seriously doubt it’s going to be awesome.

Microsoft unveils the Kinect

By blog on Jun. 17, 2010.

Microsoft unveils their new peripheral, the Kinect.

Okay so with E3 about to wrap up, it’s about time I started covering those games that stood out to me, or in this case, the hardware. Because, really, that’s what this year’s E3 has felt like, a very hardware-centric expo. Both Microsoft and Sony have shown off hardware that can only be described as a blatant attempt to raise sales by making their consoles more like the Wii; but I’ll come back to that later.

In this article I’ll be looking at the Kinect, and I’ll take a look at Sony’s version of the hardware in another entry. Basically, the Kinect is very, very similar to the Wii’s infared motion sensor, save that the Kinect is being billed as having a better sense of depth.

Microsoft, in it’s usually grandiose way, unveiled the Kinect – formerly known as Project Natal – at E3, with Cirque du Soleil performers riding in on a giant animatronic elephant whilst all the attending gaming press had to wear cult-like white robes to get in to see the show, and there was a whole bunch of other stuff going on too.

They’ve previewed 14 titles so far, all of which, save one, seem to be aimed at children. The graphics for the games associated to this device are poor, and the gameplay, if you could call it that, is pretty much a rip off of Wii Sports and Wii Fit titles. Seriously, it’s that bloody blatant that Microsoft just wants some of Nintendo’s profits from the damn Wii.

The Kinect could have something going for it, one day. In terms of a fancy Minority Report remote for a 360 it’s actually pretty nifty, but in terms of a US$150 peripheral to play some crappy games, it’s down right ridiculous. Does Microsoft really think they’re going to steal enough of Wii’s market to make this worth while? A Wii right now, with Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and a MotionPlus controller will set you back roughly £169.99, whilst a Xbox 360 Elite is £189.97, and whilst we don’t have a sure RRP from Microsoft for the UK yet, speculation puts it at around £120. That’s nearly twice the amount of the Wii, for essentially the same sort of set up. Now, the only thing that’ll sway people to pick up the 360 and Kinect over the Wii is the fact that the rest of the game library for the 360 isn’t crap, like it is for the Wii.

Basically, I can see that this has some interesting aspects to it, and heck year I’d love to flick my hand left or right to scroll through movies on my 360, but I’m sure as heck not going to pay £120 for it!

Father’s Day

By blog on Jun. 14, 2010.

Father’s day is this weekend, are you ready for it?

My father passed away a few years back, so I don’t have any Father’s Day gifts to buy, but my SO does. Her father is a difficult man to shop for. He’s taciturn nature doesn’t lend itself to getting to know the man easily, and all that anyone really does know about him is that he likes football and complaining.

So, with that in mind, my SO has bought him a lot of football merchandise over the years, but this year wants to go completely different. She’s doing her shopping online, so she’s got to order in the next twenty-four hours to get the item here on time, but that’s fine.

She wanted to make sure she could get ideas for, and buy, something unusual so shopping online worked out there. At the moment the contenders are the Hopside Down Beer Glass – as that’s one other thing we know about her dad, he likes beer – as well as a Bobble Opener, as she thinks they’re odd and fun and go with the glass, but she’s not sure what else.

My SO and her father don’t have a close relationship. The man doesn’t speak all that much and when he does it’s usually either rude or complaining. As such, he’s not fun to get presents for. I encourage her to spend little time around him as she always ends up sad and frustrated by him.

So what are you getting for your father for father’s day? Going to go with the traditional slippers and bathrobe? I miss shopping for my father. He was always really happy with whatever you got him, and was so proud that you’d found this amazingly awesome gift. He was so easy to shop for, too, because almost invariably whatever I thought was cool, he thought was awesome. Ah, I do miss the fellow.

Spam in disguise

By blog on Jun. 14, 2010.

Don’t you hate when you buy something from a website, and then they forever send you spam-like emails. I hate that.

I bought some office equipment a while back as I had to have a pretty comprehensive set up for working from home. Now I’m getting spam emails telling me to buy digital dect cordless phones, and you know what, I never will! When I do have to buy a new phone again for my home, I’ll absolutely be getting a BT phone. On a side note, how cheap and creepy is this telecoms company’s website? Seriously, you can’t see what their range of telephones is, or how much you’ll have to pay for service, or… anything. You’d have to buck up and kiss your money goodbye if you were going with that place, because seriously, they look dodgy. Telephonix’s website is pretty damn crap, but at least you can see prices and detailed listings of their phone systems for businesses and what not.

There’s always the allure of going with the cheap, little companies, but there’s also the fear that they’ll go under in two months taking your money and services with them. I just don’t like getting spam at all, let alone spam from people who I willingly gave my email address to.

In spite of attempting to unsubscribe, I am still getting emails from Aion about their upcoming events and what not. They’re obviously one of those groups that thinks if they make it really hard for people to unsubscribe they’ll be able to get further hooks into people. Well, no, no you can’t have that. I don’t mind knowing what’s going on with LOTRO, but apart from that if I’ve stopped playing a game I don’t really want to receive more emails about it.

I suppose if it were emails coming from somewhere you bought from, where the item purchased wasn’t one that would last the next five years, and the store had something more than that one item, then I wouldn’t mind quite so much… No, no scrap that. I’d hate that. Don’t spam me. Let’s just leave it at that.

Not feeling so completionist

By blog on Jun. 13, 2010.

I’m not really feeling so completionist now that John is dead in Red Dead Redemption, so the Ambient Challenges are falling by the wayside.

Basically, there’s four types of missions that you can go about and do all by yourself. You’ve got the Treasure Hunter Challenges, where you get a map with a landmark on it and it will direct you to the location of some treasure. Some are hard to figure out, but the more you actually roam around the world the better chance you’ll have to find them all. I’ve got all ten of these, as they were very fun to get and I sort of got on a roll with them for a while.

Then you’ve got the Sharpshooter Challenges, where you have to shoot specific tough targets. This is a fairly straight forward one, and I’m sitting at Rank 8 currently, where I have to shoot the hats off of two people and disarm them as well, which means shooting the gun out of their hands. This is a bit tougher than the animal challenges, but very manageable.

I’m only up to Rank 5 with the Master Hunter Challenges, as killing two cougars with a hunting knife is a tall order, really. Cougars are a scary thing in the RDR world. You’ll hear their familiar call and the next thing you know they’re attacking you, your horse is dead, and if you don’t move like lightning you’ll be next. Deadly creatures. The later ranks seem easier than this one, though killing a grizzly bear with a hunting knife is scarier than a cougar, I must say.

The Survivalist Challenges are just collecting plants from about the place. These are really quite boring and irritating, and as such I’m only up to Rank 6. Riding around and finding the right plant, dismounting, collecting, mounting, and then riding around some more isn’t really my idea of fun. If there was something you could actually do with the plants, apart from the odd quest or just selling them, then that would be something, but other than that they just feel largely out of character.

So, now that I’ve finished the story line, and I have to run around as the incredibly irritatingly voiced Jack, I don’t want to go and complete all the Ambient Challenges. The game-world is a lot less fun now that John’s dead.

No Football

By blog on Jun. 13, 2010.

I can’t watch it! That noise!

I’m not really that into football, to be honest. I know that’s sacrilegious of an English man to say, but it’s the truth, I find it a largely boring sport to watch. But when it’s countries playing then I find it at least a little interesting, so I usually check out the FIFA World Cup when it’s on.

However, this time round, there’s one particular aspect to the games that makes them pretty much intolerable to watch. The bloody noisemakers, in this case the Vuvuzelas. Seriously, turn the game on and it’s like a million moronic bumble bees made their way into your inner ear drum and you’ve got a fair idea.

Players, coaches, and fans all called for these things to be banned from the World Cup, but basically as they’re an instrument native to South Africa, they’ve been allowed to remain at the games as they’re part of the South African football culture.

Now, I don’t really think that’s fair, because fans are using the things to put the players off, and normally that’d not be an issue, but when just one of these things is louder than a chainsaw, the players are actually being affected by these. I don’t really feel that this annoying noise should be allowed, because it’s intensely off-putting for those of us watching the game and the World Cup is supposed to be enjoyed by the entire world, not just the country playing host.

When FIFA did consider banning the instrument, the reason wasn’t because of the noise, but because of concerns that they would be used by companies as a means of advertising during the World Cup, or of course, as weapons at the games. Such a damn pity they allowed the bloody things, as they are so damn annoying.

Now, I know that, when used correctly, they can actually be coordinated into music, but that’s not what’s happening at the games. What’s happening is thousands of people blowing away any chance that I’m going to be anything less than tense whilst watching the games. I’ve managed to watch one game so far, and I can sort of tune out the sound of the Vuvuzelas, but at the same time, I realise I’m slightly squinting the whole time against the din, even with my television as low as I can have it and still hear the commentary.

Warrior Profession

By blog on Jun. 13, 2010.

A new profession has been released on the Guild Wars 2 site, finally, and it’s the Warrior.

It’s about time, too, that we saw a significant update. The site has fairly much been stagnating for most of last month, but there’s been the odd bit of info go up now and then. However, finally, we’ve got a brand new profession up there, and I have to say, I’m impressed.

The Elementalist class is the only other profession up at this stage, and it’s a flashy one, really. Magic classes always get a lot of nifty particle effects and the biggest sound and light show when it comes to what the player can do. The Warrior in Guild Wars 2, however, isn’t short changed in this regard either. The five short videos of some of the Warrior’s class abilities all look pretty cool, some even kind of epic.

There seems to be a strong collaboration of a few different game classes; Diablo 2’s Barbarian, LOTRO’s Captain, and D&D’s Fighter and Paladin classes all seem to be melded here to make a pretty strong and awesome player class. There’s actually some flexibility to the class, in that the Warrior could be tank, oftank, or DPS, so that you can really tailor it to how you want to play it, and it doesn’t make two Warriors grouping totally redundant, either.

I’m really looking forward to more info on the game, and hoping that it lives up to the potential. That’s a big ask, because a lot of what’s been talked about is pretty amazing, and seems like it would be very hard to implement effectively.

I miss playing LOTRO, at the moment, but I don’t think I’ll go back to it just yet. I want to give Guild Wars a fair chance, and I’m hoping that the lore of the game is as thoughtfully and artfully crafted as the graphics and two professions so far released.

Mistborn book 1

By blog on Jun. 13, 2010.

I wasn’t sure I’d read the series, but after having started it, I’m glad I did.

First off, damn I’m happy to not be reading Malazan! Seriously! Erikson is one messed up fellow and I’m glad not to be reading his work anymore! It’s so refreshing!

I started Mistborn: The Final Empire a little while back when I was a little tired of reading Malazan. I enjoyed the change of pace, and I was quite intrigued by the Allomancy in the book. It’s a very interesting magic concept, and one that I think will be fun to read about for some time to come.

The book is written well, it’s not the best I’ve read but it’s still quality reading. The cast of characters is pretty good, and I’m quite intrigued to find out more about this Lord Ruler, as the excerpts from the beginning of each chapter seem to be from his perspective, prior to ascension. He seems like a pretty bad guy, but that perhaps he didn’t start out that way. Not sure, and I like the idea of finding out more about that.

The fact that at only half way through the first book you’re already getting character progression is nice. Such a change from books like Wheel of Time where the characters are largely unchanged for thousands and thousands of pages.

Sanderson seems to walk a nice line between descriptions of characters, locations, clothing, etc. There’s not too much description, but there’s enough to have a good sense of the world the author is envisioning.

I think what I like about it is that the characters are very real. They’re individuals, not cardboard cut outs of characters I’ve met in a dozen other fantasy novels. I’m impressed with how fleshed out the magic system is when it was Sanderson’s own creation. I also really like taking the tack of the after events of the bad guys winning, that’s a thoroughly interesting concept, I have to say. I’m looking forward to going off to read in the near future.

New Deus Ex trailer

By blog on Jun. 6, 2010.

There’s finally an expansion on the Deus Ex: Human Revolution trailer which was released back in early March.

I have to say first off, before anything else, that my wisdom teeth are coming in with a vengeance, and that the right side of my face is afire with pain. Yeah, so I’m not feeling great, but I’ll soldier on to get this post up.

Secondly, before I get to the meat of the article, remember me writing about my IP phone system that’s suitable for office or business, because since I started working from home there’s the odd occasion where I have to last minute join an internet video and audio conference? Yes well, that’s brought to light something. I don’t like strangers in my home, and I don’t like strangers being able to see in my home. So I’ve calibrated it now that you can only see a blank expanse of wall behind me when I’m talking. It’s less awkward that way, now I know prospective clients aren’t sitting there thinking ‘So that’s the kind of art this fellow’s into? We don’t want him creating our website!’ or something like that.

And now onto the trailer. I’ll preface this – there’s a lot of that going on today – by saying I really, really enjoyed the previous Deus Ex titles, so I’ve been eagerly awaiting updates on this game. Some time back Deus Ex: Human Revolution was announced, and a trailer soon followed. After a very long wait, an extended version of the trailer was released… It’s. Bloody. Awesome. Seriously, I cannot wait to play this game.

A lot of fans of the series were disappointed by Deus Ex: Invisible War, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game, and it still ranks as among my all time favourites. Human Revolution seems to be really tackling those gritty themes, and that’s a really good thing in my opinion. There’s a lot going on in the trailer, and the visuals are amazing, the voice acting great, and the musical score working very well too. Apparently the CG scenes have been outsourced to Visual Works in Japan, with the direction coming from Goldtooth Creative in Canada, and I have to say it really comes together. I know the game won’t look as good as this CG trailer, but the style of graphics is very appealing to me, and I really can’t wait to see where they’re going to take this title.

Spoilers found here

By blog on Jun. 6, 2010.

In this post spoilers will be found. Spoilers for the only game I can focus on at the moment, Red Dead Redemption.

So… where to start… Okay so I’m very close to finishing the game, but before I get to that I’ll go back a bit. I went to Mexico and helped out there for a while, waiting to get info on two members of my old crew. I had to do missions for both the Mexican government – a bureaucracy filled with drunken insane rapists and murderers – as well as having to do missions for the rebels uprising against said government.

Mexico was interesting for me because it was by far my favourite of the landscapes, and the music is fantastic there too, the missions were amongst the most irritating. I found it very frustrating to have to play through doing quests for both sides of this uprising, never being given a choice as to who I would support, whilst both sides jerked me around with regards to information, for quite a while until finally the government were going to kill me and then I’m fully on the rebels side. I really liked Landon Ricketts quests as he was a pretty awesome character, but Luisa was very fatalistic and irritating. Her refusal to see how much of an ass Reyes was was frustrating, and then having to do quests with that idiot was really annoying. I’m glad I got to kill De Santa and Allende, though, that was fun. Luisa dying was quite sad, but in a way I think she would have been less happy should she have made it through the rebellion alive.

Tall trees is also nice looking, however the music there is so annoying that I soon want to be out of the place. That ominous, tense, single piano key twanging soundtrack was a bad idea, in my opinion.

So, now onto the meat of things. Disposing of Dutch was… well a little unsatisfying. There wasn’t as large a build up to his death as there was with Bill, and in the end John doesn’t kill him, which I found frustrating. I would have shot that psychopath in an instant, even taking into account the history he had with Marston.

Getting back to my very own ranch was just awesome, and doing a few minor quests for Abigail was fun, as well as seeing them interact. The Jack quests were alright and I liked the way John handled Jack’s misbehaviour when running of to hunt a bear. Nice writing there.

The scene where John is gunned down by a large posse of Ross and his crew was… poignant. I felt like the writing was good, the story made sense, and I was very sad to see John go that way. He deserved better. So now I’m running around as Jack, after Abigail has died some ten years or so after John, and I’ve found out that there is a quest to kill Ross, so I’ll gladly be taking that on!

However running around as Jack is rather irritating. His voice is childish and overly chipper, in spite of how they’ve tried to make him look in his older state. This kid has lost his father to a corrupt government, and he’s recently lost his mother, his last family on earth, and yet you pass a rider on a track and Jack’ll greet them with an upbeat ‘Howdy, Mister’.

So all in all I’d give the game a 9.5 out of ten, it really is a masterpiece and gives me great hope for where Rockstar may go in the future. I’ve respected this game on every level, graphics, music, story line, game play, it’s all here!

Now I was going to talk about a call from my real estate agent about that overseas property investment in Philippines that I was considering a while back, but good lord this post has gotten too long to do that now! The Philippines will have to wait!