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Star Wars Force Unleashed

Posted on September 24th, 2008 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

My buddy that bought Force Unleashed has finished the game on his Playstation 3, so he’s loaning me the game for a while… More details to follow.

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Lego Batman

Posted on September 24th, 2008 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

Yes, it’s time once again for another Lego game to keep me busy. This time, it all takes place in the Batman universe. Stay tuned, I’ll be playing this one on the Xbox 360 this time - as a change of pace. I’ve played the others on the Playstation 3. Stay Tuned to the same bat channel for more updates to come.

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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed

Posted on September 16th, 2008 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

Today the video game Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was released into the wild. A friend of mine picked it up for the Playstation 3 and I had a chance to see the first few levels. This is a really impressive game. The very first level has you playing as THE Darth Vader. [insert sinister evil laugh here]. The amount of destruction allowed in the game is wonderful. I picked up a wookie with the force and threw him into a tree. The bark of the tree flew off due to the impact. The dark side of my soul felt the true understanding of ‘power corrupts’ as I was able to fling my enemies around. The artificial intelligence is interesting to watch. When you pick up anyone with the force and fling them about, they will try to hold onto things to save themselves. They actually have a will to ‘live’. I was holding one wookie in the air while trying to decide what to do with him, and he reached down and grabbed ahold of another wookie!!! (both wookies were hurt in the impact after being flung into a bridge). At least in the early levels, there’s not much worry about ‘friendly fire’, as you’re to kill everyone and everything - on both sides of The Force - to make sure there’s no witnesses. The explosions are not simple pre-rendered animations, nope - in this game every time a window breaks, bark comes off, a tie fighter explodes, any destruction, it’s based on a very nice physics engine that renders the particles in real time. So glass will never break the same way twice, each tie fighter will explode slightly differently. Even the glow on a surface after you nick it with your lightsaber will be different each time.

Even at the beginning of the game, your powers are pretty stout. You can pick things up via The Force, you can throw energy to clear things out of your path, and of course, you’ve got a handy light saber - (in red to show which side of The Force you’re on) In the trailers, it showed a player slamming a Star Destoyer into a planet’s surface. I get giddy just thinking about unlocking that kind of power.

The Playstation 3 version has the feel of a well polished game, I noticed a slight drop in framerate one time, when there was an seemingly impossible number of characters on the screen at once. The fine details are excellent, the textures are wonderful at 1080p. I could almost reach out and feel the leather on my character’s belt.

There should be a warning on the box about the use of the Darkside because the drive home had me wanting to sling some people out of my way via the force, but I guess I’m still an apprentice.

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Lego Star Wars, The Complete Sage (Playstation 3)

Posted on July 20th, 2008 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

I have started playing Lego Star Wars on the Playstation 3, since I have completed LEGO Indiana Jones to a full 100%. Star Wars was out first, but I picked up Indy for the PS3 when it came out and really enjoyed playing it with a buddy. Now it’s time to set our sites on LEgo Star Wars, but I’m wondering how long it will take to complete everything. So far, we’ve gone through the six chapters that make up Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and the game is showing 6.4% complete. This is going to take much longer than the 25 hours of controller time spent on Indy. Stay tuned for additional updates.

1 comment.

God of War: Chains of Olympus for PSP

Posted on March 20th, 2008 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

Kratos, has come to the PSP in God of War: Chains of Olympus, the prequel to the PS2 God of War games. He may be smaller, but that doesn’t mean his anger has shrunk along with him. This isn’t a game for the little kids, there’s plenty of blood and violence, even a sex themed mini game (It’s not nearly has dirty as you just imagined). The graphics look wonderful and it’s one of the first games to unlock the full 333Mhz of the PSP processor, that’s 33Mhz faster than the PS2 processor. Until now, most of the games have run the processor at a lower speed as a trade off to enable longer battery life.

The audio is wonderful , the graphics are among the best the PSP platform has to offer and the game play is intact and the controls have been altered slightly because the PSP doesn’t have a right joystick, but it’s easy to get used to and you’ll be tearing apart the enemies in no time.

If you have a PSP, this is a must buy. If you don’t have a PSP, this may be the game that will send you to Game Stop to pick one up.

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Bioshock Demo on Xbox360 - First Impressions

Posted on August 15th, 2007 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

Tonight, I grabbed the Bioshock demo from Xbox Live and tinkered with it a bit. Words fail me when trying to explain how well this game is done, but I’ll try anyway. When the ‘next generation’ of games were being promised (then failed to deliver), they left dreams of games this great.

The opening throws you right into the action, going through a plan wreck from a first person point of view and in a great film noir ambiance that draws you in, like a Raymond Chandler novel. It’s not long before you find a small light house like structure that you soon find out is an elevator down to the city beneath the sea, called Rapture. It excites your senses with top notch sound work, perfectly chosen color pallets, and the use of the vibration feature. This game should be used as the basis for a complete course for anyone wanting to create a video game because it does a great job with the story telling, the controls, and each of the resources. Sure, I only played for 45 minutes before going to work, but my soul is still in that city and I can’t wait to go back for more… that’s the sign of a game with excellent potential. We’ll know how the complete game stands up on August 21, when it’s released.

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Overlord, Unleash Your Inner Evil

Posted on August 14th, 2007 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

This is just a mini review of Overlord, hopefully there will be a more in depth one later as I get further into the game. I got to spend a tiny bit of time with Overlord for the Xbox 360, also available for the PC, and was instantly taken in by the humor, the fun and the entire world that it creates. In many of the recent games, you’re given the choice of being good or evil, but in Overlord it’s all about being bad, and it feels sooooo good. The attention to detail is amazing, the animation of the minions are very entertaining, as well as all the voice work that I heard. It will take some more time to determine how repetitive the audio clips are, but so far, I’m very impressed.

2 comments.

XBox 360 HD DVD Price Drops Today

Posted on August 1st, 2007 by William.
Categories: Tech, Movies, Video Games.

The price of the HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 drops to $179 from August 1st to September 30th. In addition to the $20 price drop, the price includes five free DVD movies via mail from a list of 15 titles that Toshiba deems “popular”. The retail box includes the multimedia remote for the 360 and a USB cable.
Keep in mind that this drive can easily be used as an external HD DVD drive for XP or Mac OSX. Directions can be found HERE.

If you have a High Def television, this may be an interesting addition because it’s the lowest priced HD drive at the moment, although it is missing an HDMI connector and requires the $40 VGA cable to display 1080p.  Overall, it seems like an low stakes way to play with high def until the format war has a clear winner.

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Can’t Stop Now Guys, Gotta Do One More Level

Posted on April 5th, 2007 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

CLICK HERE for original article.

In Fort Collins Colorado, a video game tournament ended in a rather suprising manner.  It’s not unheard of for there to be these tournaments where people get together to play video games. A 16 year old showed amazing dedication to the game as he wore, and used, his adult diaper.  After complaints of “the spetic tank smell” coming from his direction, Security for the warehouse holding the event closed down the event.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that chances are he doesn’t display the same level of dedication to his homework.

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There’s still fun to be had with the Playstation 2

Posted on November 21st, 2006 by William.
Categories: Video Games.

I had been looking for a replacement controller because my classic, well worn, Dual Shock 2 was starting to disagree with me when I was using the left analog stick. I say I pressed it left, it said I didn’t touch it, the game said ‘you lose’. Clearly I had to find a better solution.  I dropped by Fry’s Electronics to look at all the geek goodies and saw that the price on the Logitech wireless controller for the Playstation 2 had dropped $10, down to $29.99.  I swear, it leaped right into my hand… honest!!!

So far, I’m very happy with it… keep an eye out for more information.

Now I can sit on the couch, grab the controller and fire up the PS2, choose a game from the hard drive and have enjoy it all in glorious surround sound. This is a far cry from pong on the Atari with that old joystick.

I’ve been racking up the hours with Burnout Revenge, the excellent combat racing game where you get to run your opponents off the track and get rewarded for driving like an idiot. The pace is hectic and sometimes I think I need a couple of bowls of Sugar Bombs so I can get my fingers to twitch like a 6 year old out of their mind on a sugar rush. It just needs an add on to release the smell of burning rubber and all your senses will be tickled.

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