Games – Page 3 – Ian Dick

Bombermine

I’m really enjoying Bombermine. Take Bomberman, tweak the rules, make it playable via a browser….and allow up to 1000 players to join a room. It is so much fun and makes me yearn for games of old.

Bomberman more than any other game reminds me of my University years. A Super Nintendo with a multi-tap and usually Richard, Lewis and Dave (speedy boots) all suspecting that I was cheating to get the hand each and every time I was golden bomber. Honest – no cheating:-)

So Bombermine can lag sometimes and it can be really random at times but I was enjoying it all the same. Then it hit me. It’s running in the browser. A browser that can go full screen. Full screen on my iMac is 2560×1440. It wouldn’t still be playable would it?

I’ve uploaded that at full resolution so if you can view it at it’s native resolution rather than 1080p. It’s amazing when you see so much running while remembering it’s all in the browser. If you don’t want to watch the video, at least click on the screen below to see it in all its glory. There’s also some support for gamepads.

Click to view full screen - looks great — Click to view full screen – looks great

It’s given me an itch to crack out the emulators and pay some classic games – Pilotwings, F-Zero, Zelda etc. When games were fun.

Hot Air

What a stunning picture for a Sunday morning – a real pick me up. It’s when I see images like this I realise I need to get out and about more and take pictures.

Edge Covers

Back in March Edge celebrated their 200th issue. Something I kicked off earlier this year but didn’t get finished in time was to scan in all the Edge magazine covers. I love the covers and they were always distinctive when compared to the competition. Doing the scanning has taken longer than I thought but it’s now finally done. All 202 issues can now be found in my Edge Magazine Covers set on Flickr. I intend to keep it up to date (well, every six months or so) so it should provide a good resource of all the covers. My scanner doesn’t like the colour Orange very much though so a few of the covers look more pink than they should be. One day I’ll colour correct them but today’s not that day. A great way to view them is via the slideshow. Brings back a lot of memories and highlights how gaming has moved on in a relatively short time-scale. Where will we be in 15 years time? I’ll be 50!!!

Out of all the covers I have a few favourites. What’s common is that the one’s I like are the simple ones. Little text, no titles – the image speaks for itself.

Enjoy the covers. I know I do!

Happiness

Riceboy Sleeps – Happiness

I love this track. From the album Dark Was The Night which I highly recommend.

OnLive – A new Era?

GDC is currently in full flow and the biggest story for me has been OnLive. The press conference from GDC is very impressive. New titles available over the internet instantly. No downloading, no patching, any platform. Run on an inexpensive micro-console connected to a TV via HDMI or in a browser using a plugin on low specification Mac’s or PC’s. How?

The game isn’t played locally. You connect to a server and the game is played there. What your seeing on your TV or computer screen is streamed video. The concept just sounds so….wrong. Technically it sounds like an impossible proposition. Lag, key to an enjoyable online game, would surely kill the service.

Watching the launch presentation and the lag issue is addressed. Typical video lag is quoted as 500ms. OnLive have developed a system where video lag is 1ms. The service is demo’d and certainly looks quick enough with no lag. There looks to be a little lag during the Crysis demo though. However, remember this is Crysis running on a low end Dell. Admittedly it’s not running at a high resolution or frame rate but none the less it looks extremely playable. The other demo host then joins in a multiplayer game via the micro console. Again a very seamless experience is demonstrated and it certainly all looks impressive. The servers are located 50 miles form where the demo takes place. Not that far away. During the Q&A the developers quoted 1000 miles as being the current maximum distance for the service to remain playable.

One other key difference is how visual the service looks. A great 3d interface. Video streams showing games that your friends are currently playing, something that I’ve wanted for years looks to be finally available. Demo’s that don’t take an hour to download – they start almost immediately. The end to patching. The end of piracy! The end of cheating via patches and add-ons!! Games that you no longer need to buy – renting a game is finally an easy option with no need to download

At this point, taken on face value, this is a game changer. Zero hardware costs to play the latest games on consoles. No more upgrading to the latest 3d hardware on PC’s and Mac’s. I still smell bullshit though. A company can develop this and be in stealth for seven years. Really?

I still have issues with lag and also bandwidth requirements. I really can’t see lag not being a show stopper with this service. The requirements for OnLive are also going to blow many people’s bandwidth cap’s. Playing online with a console or computer at the moment needs just a 1/2Mbps connection. For SD, OnLive requires a 1.5Mbps connection and for HD it needs 5.0Mbps. SD was described as Wii equivalent and HD as 720p, 60fps. A consistent 5Mbps connection would quickly use up VirginMedia’s download limits and hence throttle the connection to make OnLive unplayable and that just an example for one broadband provider. Faster connections are coming but many come with very restrictive download limits with OnLive would need to address.

I also think there will be cost issues. Low cost entry was emphasised but a monthly subscription before games are bought/rented is not everyone’s cup of tea.

The hardware needed to run this must also be massive. They talked about custom chips and virtualisation but to run that many game instances, to decode video that quickly and serve out that much data so quickly. Just doesn’t seem possible as it’s such a leap over what anyone else is doing right now. Surely the video will be compressed and show artefacts. Look at the many HD video that can be downloaded or streamed now as an example. Definitely low par compared to current gaming expectations. What about surround sound which is now standard on console games. Surely a 5Mbps stream couldn’t provide a 720p stream with surround sound audio as well?

It must be bull.

But then look at the companies signed up to the service – EA, THQ, Ubisoft, Take2, Warner Bros, Epic, Eidos, Atari, Codemasters, 2D Boy, Crytek. The games shown weren’t old 2d games either. Crysis, Hawx, GRID, Burnout and many current FPS’s. Then remember the demo’s looked really good.

We won’t have long to find out. A beta launches in America in summer 09 with a launch in winter 09. Disappointing but understandable that it’s America only at the moment. I really want this to work. It could change the games market radically. Based on current knowledge though I can’t see it working. Time will tell and I can’t wait to see what happens.

Edge 200

Edge magazine was first published in 1993. Today the 200th issue popped through the letterbox. For a reason only really known to me I have every issue. I did think about dumping them when i moved house but I didn’t and I’m glad I didn’t. Despite the arrogance and the twatty writing that can sometimes get in the way of a good review, i still enjoy the magazine and get a lot out of it even in this age of t’internet reviews and Metacritic ratings.

To celebrate, Edge are using 200 different covers for their 200th magazine. Quite a novel idea with no way of anyone collecting every cover issue. However they have published all the covers which I’ve grabbed and loaded into this Edge 200 Flickr set. My fav covers and/or games are listed below.

Head Over Heels how I loved thee. This was a great game that I played on my beloved Amstrad CPC 464. Got to love that tape drive.

This was when isometric gaming was all the rage but it was the mixture of graphics, puzzles and pixel perfect jumping that made for such a great game. Isometric Batman was also a great game at the time but nothing compared to Head Over Heels.

A remake was made available for the PC, Mac and Linux. It’s available from this website. Playing the remake now and it’s just not the same though. Slow gameplay and very dated graphics show just how far things have moved on.

I played F-Zero to death on the SNES. This might have been my most played game thinking back. I completed it over and over, chasing times that were published in magazines at the time and beating them.

I can still remember the music even now. Where’s my SNES emulator? Even better, the SNES is in the attic. Might get dusted off this weekend.

Thinking back through all my consoles, surely the SNES was the best overall? Great pad, a real step forward in graphics and some classic games – Mario, Zelda etc.

Doom – played the demo when I was at uni. In fact I’ve got my mum to thank for buying the demo. She was at the post office, felt sorry for me and picked up a PC mag which had the 8 or 9 level demo on the cover. One install later and I was on the PC for the rest of the night. I guess it brings back memories of my first multi-player games over at Lewis, Dave and Ricky D’s flat. Descent. Can still hear Ricky shouting it even to this day. In fact I’m sure it was Ahhhhhh Descent ya bastard. Those were the days. Dave’s lucky arse has also just popped into my head. The joys.

Bomberman was the multiplayer game of choice on the SNES where we were at uni. Dave and his speedy boot obsession. Me and my golden bomber obsession. This was a game that never got dull.

Even loved the recent Xbox Live version. Also need to clarify something – I didn’t cheat golden bomber. Honest. I was that good.

A few years ago I went a game’s exhibition in Edinburgh where they had the 10 player version that came out on the PC Engine. I still remember Graham noticing when I was playing even though I was four or five players away from him. Simple game but so much depth, strategy and fun.

Wipeout – first game on the PS1 and one that sticks in the head even today. Ground breaking visuals, great design throughout the game thanks to The Designers Republic and sound like I’d never heard in a game. The gameplay was solid too. Really did take gaming forward and sold many a PS1.

Roll on many a year and Wipeout HD on the PS3 is still pretty ground breaking. Graphics to die for and solid handling via the much maligned PS3 pad. Good choice of tracks, a good online mode and custom soundtracks had me scouring the internet for all the soundtracks o previous Wipeout games. One of my favourite PS3 games so far.

Halo 3. Multiplayer perfection. It’s now served over a billion online games in it’s short life and new maps that have just come out have extended the game even further. I don’t know what it is about Halo that appeals so much to me. Even when I used to do split screen multiplayer with Graham and Roy it was great despite shady Roy colouring his character especially so he could screen watch. Happy days. Happy, happy days. So much of my time on Halo 2 and Halo 3 was spent with Robert aka Foe Real. So many class gaming moments. Will he ever return?

So that’s my fav’s. My subscriber cover will have to do although I may take a spin out to the shops later this week just in case a fav cover is lurking on a shelf. Yep, very sad but I don’t care. So is there anything that you like in the Edge covers that I haven’t mentioned? Any great gaming memories triggered by the artwork? Comment away please!

Race Pro

There’s been a real lack of racing games on the 360 recently. There’s always been a healthy amount of racing game from arcade through to sim like but since GRID (which i really didn’t like apart form the graphics) and Forza 2 (so long ago now) there’s been hardly anything. Thank goodness for Race Pro which was released last week.

Now unlike most games that I pick up, first impressions aren’t very good. Graphically this isn’t a looker and while proficient enough it suffers from frame rate issues, stuttering during playback and a fairly standard career mode that does nothing new.

Online options are also more limited than similar games and suffer from some issues. Hosting a game can be problematic at first as when a new player joins the game the hosts game stutters. Even worse, to change car choice you need to drop the game and restart the multiplayer room. You can change the track your racing on while using the same cars but that’s about it. Pretty poor. Scoreboards are also full of glitcher times. Sigh.

However, this is a game from SimBin, renowned for their PC racing game pedigree. Move the settings to professional, turn off all the driving aids and switch to manual gears and you’ll find the best driving sim on the 360. It feels superb and online play has been excellent so far despite the shortcomings already mentioned. I’ve spent a couple of nights now online with the game and it is very rewarding and will definetly be the racing game of choice until Forza 3 eventually appears.

The physics just feel right. Unlike other console racers where there physics, or lack off, are soon exposed everything in Race Pro feels real. You can flip your car and I have done a couple of times now. Most other racers refuse to flip no matter what you do. Also refreshing is the car and track choice. A variety of tracks are making their first appearance on the 360 and Race Pro is all the better for it’s track variety. The cars are also varied, each having their own unique feel and sound. One thing that really does annoy though is that cars need to be unlocked before you can play them online. What a daft decision. By not having at least a car unlocked on each class makes it difficult to join random races online until you’ve played quite a bit of the career mode which is fairly dull and unrewarding. It also makes it difficult for friends to pick up the game later in the year and join in online until they have unlocked some cars. Ill thought out and a lack of understanding what players want from a game, both offline and on.

The fact that it’s graphics are a bit of a let down should not put you off this game. It’s a shame but doesn’t detract from the games main selling point – highly realistic racing. While some issues may be fixed via a patch I don’t hold out much hope as we haven’t really see many games get better and better with patches (online Burnout Paradise perhaps?). I love the game and hope others pick up and enjoy it too but it will be a hard sell for Atari. It would be great if there’s enough sales for a Race Pro 2 with better graphics and presentation and a larger range of online options and tracks. The racing engine deserves it.

Home

Home on the PS3 has been out for well over a month now. Since then there have been updates to the software plus additional content so it seems more appropriate to scribble down my thoughts.

Home is downloaded and installed on your PS3. It’s accessed from the XMB as if launching a game or separate app. Initially I couldn’t connect to Home but after the first update I’ve been find. Some of my friends have still been unable to connect though. After 5-6 weeks. Sony admitted recently that they had released Home too early – it certainly looks that way based on my experience.

Once in Home you start off in your house. You can buy other homes and also furniture for your current home. I used the word buy – get used to it. While there are some things for free in Home, a lot of the content is pay for only. One other aspect to get used to in Home is waiting.

As you move from your Home to the shopping centre, cinema, bowling alley, arcade games, basically any new area, you need to download and install that area. I found this tedious and took away any feeling of inversion in a virtual world. Even worse, the bowling alley, pool tables and arcade machines – you need to queue to use them. If they are in use you need to wait your turn. I do not jest.

In a virtual world Sony have implemented queue’s. Unbelievable. Who thought this was a good idea?

It would be bad enough if the games were worth playing but they aren’t. Virtual Pool on the iPhone is leaps and bounds better than the pool found in Home. A new addition is Red Bull Air Racing but this is no better than a few years old Flash game. Very disappointing.

Add to this a cinema where you can watch movie trailers and quite a few shops where you can buy clothes, furniture and features for your house and you have one of the worst features of the PS3. I can’t believe this was once talked about as a dashboard replacement.

New Xbox Experience

On November 19th (just three short days away) all Xbox 360 owners will get a new dashboard delivered to them – the strangely titled New Xbox Experience. I was selected in the latest round of previews so I’ve had the dash since Friday. So what can you expect later this week?

The dash does a quick install followed by a reboot. You then download the new dashboard which took me under two minutes. You then watch a swanky video before your presented with the avatar creation screen. Microsoft are chasing the Wii market so everyone has to create an avatar. The creation options are pretty varied – a lot more than I remember on the Wii but I found it harder to get a character that was a look alike despite the greater options. It’s no surprise that an avatar specific store is also on it’s way which would explain why the clothing options were underwhelming. They had lots of options but you couldn’t change the colour of any of your choices. Cha-ching! The avatars can be used within games but I’d expect to see that in Arcade titles only. With the avatar creation out of the way your dropped into the new dashboard.

Instead of blades and moving right to left through options you move through a vertical list. The animations are very quick and it’s easy to get around. It’s a lot more visual than the previous dash so it’s good to see the speed is there with all the extra gloss. The first, erm, folder (not sure what the proper name is) is Welcome which introduces the new dashboard – this menu can be disabled – as far as I can see that’s the only one that can be removed or customised in any way. These folders look as if they are based on Coverflow as seen in OS X. The other menu’s are as follows:

My Xbox – For me the hub of the system and will become the most used menu. Access the current game, access other games installed on your hard drive, media libraries and your 360 settings.

Friends – Shows your friend list. This is really well animated and highlights the avatars well. However it is slower to see who is online as you can only see a few friends at any one time. However it display friends parties really well and it looks easy to join parties from here (based on the Microsoft video detailing the party feature as I don’t know anyone else with the new dash).

Inside Xbox – shows you stuff from Microsoft – behind the scenes videos and other stuff like that

Game and Video Marketplace – A really nicely animated menu for the marketplace content but you can also browse via a three screen system which makes finding content in these large folders a lot easier. At the dashboards official launch you can also browse the marketplace content from the xbox.com website and seemingly tell your Xbox to download any content you select.

Events – For special one off type events and more social gaming

Spotlight – Combines bits from other menu’s and shows you the game in the disc drive, lets you access your gamercard, see achievements – all standard stuff. You also get to see adverts and not just for games – anything could appear like the Subway advert in the above screen.

There’s also a couple of missing menu’s for Europeans. We don’t have Netflix here so don’t get any of those features and also Primetime is missing, rumoured to be delivered next Spring. Primetime is where Microsoft hope to provide more social gaming akin to the Wii with games like 1vs100. Not a big miss for me and something to look forward to next year.

I had reservations before getting the dash but I really like the new system for everything apart from the friends list which feels slower to access the same information as before. However the blades haven’t gone away entirely. Hit the guide button from the dash or in a game and you access a blade based menu that gives you quick access to…well, everything. Friends lists, messages, party setup, media playback, marketplace and system settings. So the best of both worlds.

This menu is called the Quick Launch Bar and is really snappy to use. However a couple of times I’ve had issues getting back out of the QLB. Pressing B should take you back a page but I’ve had it hang for 5-10 seconds a couple of times. Not sure if that was due to the game running in the background or not but it was a bit annoying.

This update doesn’t just change navigation options – there’s a few new features that should have a big impact on how I game. The first is Parties. You and up to seven other friends can create a party. The party can then move from game to game as a group or just chat privately while each group member does there own thing – play different games, watch movies etc.

You can set the party up so that you need to invite friends or just allow friends to join without invites. The party feature is a godsend as the amount of swearing, screaming, shouting and singing on Live can be intolerable. Certain games seem to attract a higher amount – Fifa for example. It will be great to setup a party and then play Fifa as our club without constant interruption. This is another feature I couldn’t test as no one I know has the dash.

The second new feature is game installs. You can now install a game fully to the Xbox hard drive and play from there rather than the disk drive. This allegedly makes the game quicker to run but without a stopwatch I couldn’t tell. The biggest impact is on noise – the disk drive on the 360 is noisy as hell and not having that spin makes the 360 a lot quieter and allegedly less hot too. This is such a big deal for me, so much so that I bought the 120GB hard drive so I can take full advantage of installing. So far it’s been excellent. I’ve installed Fifa, Gear of War 2 and CoD:World At War and all work well. The installs take anything from 5 to 15 mins depending on game size. While installing though you can still access the guide menu which is nice.

I noticed a few other things in the last couple of days. Launch a game and you’ll get a pop-up telling you that friends are also playing the same title. I also turned off auto playing of games when inserted so that I could play the game from the hard drive – even though the game in installed you still need the disk to verify that you own the game. One other issue is with NAT settings. After installing I had some issues getting into Fifa games. Only a couple worked out of 20 or so attempts. On checking my NAT settings, which were previously Open, they had moved to Strict. The advice was to reboot my router which I thought strange but that worked so I’d advise you to reboot your router after upgrading or at the very least check your NAT settings. The check was also a lot faster than on the old dash. Thankfully video and music playback from the Mac still works as does selecting custom soundtracks in game.

So overall a very nice upgrade. The dash looks a lot nicer than the old one and if your put off by it’s looks you’ve still got the old blades available via the guide button. In fact the guide button is a lot more useful than it is today. I would have liked to see some more new features like the ability to take pictures in game rather than each game providing it’s own functionality, take video’s in game and upload to Youtube or a Microsoft site.

What’s surprising is that we are getting this new look and extra features without having to buy a new console. Usually this type of upgrade would only come with new hardware so it’s nice to see Microsoft not resting on it’s laurels and trying to innovate and improve the dashboard further. On improving the dashboard it also widens the lead that it already had on the PS3. Sony really need to take a long hard look at it’s own dashboard system and hopefully learn from the 360’s better features. Here’s hoping that the upgrade goes well for all on Wednesday and we don’t experience any Live issues which would be a real shame.

WipEout HD

Wipeout on the PS1 heralded a generational leap in home consoles. It was the essential launch game for Sony and it left a long and satisfying impression on me. Updates over the years have ranged from middling to good with the two games on the PSP being particularly good. WipEout HD has now finally arrived for the PS3 as a downloadable PSN game. Does this mean it’s a cut down game? Far from it.

The screen above is from the actual game. Jaw droppingly good. Screens however can mask how a game actually moves but in WipEout’s case (why the uppercase E???) the game is so smooth, fluid and best of all fast that it’s a joy to behold. I’ve been playing it since Thursday and I’ve yet to see a drop in frame rate or a graphic effect that seems out of place. The menu’s and overall graphic design is excellent. Each new mode or track offers something new and fresh. Coupled with that is a great soundtrack. The original Wipeout changed how game music was used. Established bands like Leftfield and Chemical Brothers provided some of the tracks and it was so fresh and different from other game at the time. WipEout HD doesn’t have the same impact but it’s still quite good. You can also use your own music by creating playlists on the PS3. Unlike the Xbox though you can’t listen to music streamed from from Mac’s or PC’s but at least there is an option. More important than any audio or visual concerns is the handling and feel of the craft. Mess that up and the game is a waste.

For me the handling is spot on. The craft have a real weight to them. As the game speeds up it can get difficult and there is a pilot assist mode to help but don’t use it – once you get used to the handling it just feels so right and getting it right without any assists is so satisfying.

There are a few game modes but strangely less than on the PSP versions. You have the normal race and tournament modes and fastest lap, time trial modes. Thankfully the zone modes from the PSP games are included. The graphics are stripped down (see above screen) and you have to try and clear as many zones as you can, your craft getting faster and faster as you clear the zones. It’s a real challenge and is very hypnotic. You unlock more tracks and challenges via the Campaign mode. As you progress in this mode there are more options unlocked in the Racebox mode. You can basically set up any style of game for any track and then race it. Great flexibility which also applies to the online mode.

I’ve only had a few online games but they have all been excellent. Still very quiet compared to the Xbox due to a lack of headsets but online felt very smooth with little signs of lag. It’s also a lot more competitive than the offline modes.

So, any negatives? Well there is a reported bug that the game locks up if you have a friends list of more than 50. There’s also people reporting general lock-ups but I’ve not seen any. There’s also only eight tracks, which can be reversed, which feels a bit tight especially as they are lifted from the PSP games.

However the tracks have been totally remodelled and look superb. Eight tracks also doesn’t sound so bad when you hear the game costs £12. It’s available as a download only but this is an absolute bargain. Don’t let the fact it’s available on PSN put you off. This is a high quality game full of customisation and unlockables to keep you playing all the while adding a superb online mode. There’s also a photo mode which allows you to take pic’s and save them to the PS3’s hard disk and I’m sure there will be future track packs available to extend the game even further.

This is an essential purchase for the PS3. Cheap, great gameplay and some sublime graphics makes for a really good package. The PS3 would have got off to a much better start if, like the PS1, this had been available as a launch title. Looking like a strong period for PS3 with Little Big Planet coming in October. About time. I’m off to create a Wipeout playlist or two. Hopefully see some of you online soon for a race or two.