It seems the much anticipated Playstation Home has, rather then revolutionise the game lobby experience, spawned a rather strange behavioural trend. Apparently all the male avatars gang up on the female avatars pestering them with their attentions… somewhere in the distance, the strained cry of “WOMAN” punctuates the silence followed by a left 4 dead style mobbing. Well, I guess that is what happens when you let pimply love starved socially inept geeks loose on the Internet… but I digress.
I chanced on a great little article describing in detail the act of ‘Quincying’. In the infinite world of Ying, yang and Newton’s third law, the Internet has come up with a comical rebuke to this sort of behaviour. Simply take one part beautiful avatar, mix with a pinch of deviancy. Stir for twenty minutes and add a sprinkle of button mashing and what do you come up with?
The process if trivial, create a beautiful avatar and glide along seductively where-ever other avatars roam. Human (and online geek) nature being what it is, you will have a nice gathering in no time at all. When you have their attention, suddenly change your avatar from striking blond or giant ogre and watch in amusement as your digital ‘peers’ recoil.
I must admit I was a bit surprised to see this, but it appears the PSP now has some limited third party touch screen support. Although noble in aim, I have grave doubts about the viability of this project. Its welcoming to see that there is no soldering iron required, although for any serious game developer to take notice would require mass adoption, which lets face it, is not going to happen.
According to the developer, the original idea was to turn the PSP into a fully functional GSM mobile phone, although this was later scaled back to just a touch screen device. I think they made the right call on that one, N-Gage anyone?
Some youtube videos of this in action:
A calibration / test program:
So bottom line: its ugly and lacks any serious support. Still, it is a testament to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of members of the community. Speaking of the PSP homebrew community, I wrote a few months ago about a n64 emulation project for the handheld which was then showing a fair amount of promise. Unfortunately, to my great sadness, the developer Strmnnrmn seems to have dropped off the face of the earth not having updated his blog since last December. Its always sad to see projects just die like this.
The game I briefly want to talk about was released over 15 years ago on the SNES, I played it back then and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I recently picked it back up and thought I would give it a whirl, given that my media center has a SNES emulator – and I must say I very pleasantly surprised. It is very easy to be carried away by simply drooling over improved graphics in new game releases. This can save all but the poorest modern releases, however, games like Portal on the other hand, bring us crashing back down to earth showing us that the way the game plays can (and normally is) far more important than any visual polish the game studio applies with a trowel afterwards.
I didn’t realise until I did a bit of background research for this post, but the Choplifter ‘franchise’ began way back in 1982 on the Apple II and has enjoyed a release on the gameboy as well prior to the final version on the SNES. The gameplay elements do not appear to have changed much, the game is still a sideways scrolling action shooter, but they have been perfected in Choplifter III.
So, what’s the story? Simply, you are a helicopter pilot who is tasked with rescuing a quota of downed pilots or hostages in each mission. This sounds simpler than it is, as the game throws you from Jungle to Naval encounters, culminating in a vicious city fight followed by an intense and unexpected setting for the final ‘world’. You pick up a variety of special weapons along the way and the enemies get progressively tougher as you go along. For those who find the game too easy, there is a non-’practice’ difficulty setting which is a lot less forgiving.
Below is a video of some of the early action made by someone else.
All in all, the game is a little short – taking between 3 and 4 hours depending on player ability, but it is varied enough to be a lot of fun. I get the impression that it was not one of the major releases back when it came out and as such may have been overlooked by many gamers which is a shame.
Graphics: 8/10 – Nothing special, but fairly detailed and pleasing to the eye.
Sound : 4/10 – Unimaginative, the main let down of the game.
Gameplay: 7.5/10 – Simple premise, not enough reward for rescuing extra hostages.
Overall: 8/10 A classic, casual game that is worth picking up and trying.
In a somewhat surprising move, ID Software today announced they had begun development of Doom 4. This is not particularly earth shattering in itself given the spate of recent rumours to this effect, however the reason it surprised me was that ID Software are already fairly far into a project named ‘Rage‘ which appears to be a post-apocalyptic vehicle slash first person shooter based on ID Software’s Tech 5 Engine, currently in development. Whilst is would not be unusual to ID to be working on two games at the same time using the same engine (Quake 4 / Doom 3 anyone?), given the rumours circulating about a new Quake game, I didn’t think we would be seeing another Doom game so soon.
Judging by the Careers page, the extra staff ID Software are taking on for this project will be require ‘applicable skills’ for developing for PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 platforms indicating ID Software are looking to make this a multi-platform game in much the same way as Doom 3 which was also released on the Xbox. This is, however, just early supposition on my part at this stage.
Doom 3 was criticised for being too dark, too broody, too linear and having too little variation. I disagree, having found it atmospheric and a lot of fun to play, but what worries me, is where ID takes us from here. Quake 4 didn’t really do it for me, I preferred Doom 3 for a number of reasons. The story was simpler and more elegant as was the environment. Whilst being a colonial marine and interacting with other marines and military equipment was fun in Quake 4; it felt a little over done and I never really bought into the whole Quake universe past Quake 2. There were, however, moments which I genuinely enjoyed not just because they brought something fresh into the ID-style FPS genre but also because they were quite unexpected. (Those that have completed Quake 4 will know of the Hospital section I am referring to!)
Doom 3 really was a no brainer in that it was classic Doom style game play with a modern engine, I will be decisively underwhelmed if ID are planning to just update the graphics for Doom 4.
This is a $600 dollar DS mod (price includes DS) which turns it into a behemoth of a portable touch screen gaming system! Whilst the modder’s motives are unclear, the pictures speak for themselves, a two 15″ touch screen mod running through a custom built FPGA hardware driver to translate and upscale each screen.
This mod is completely useless but it is the sheer scale that impresses me coupled with the work on the FPGA. Lots more pictures at the mod’s official site.
At the risk of jumping on the Sony bashing bandwagon, I thought it would be funny to post this message we got from our head office this week:
Regardless whether the shortage is artificially Nintendo imposed or genuine, whenever we have had stock of either the Nintendo Wii or DS they have flown off the shelves. The PS3… lingers hopefully in the shadows…
I briefly mentioned a National retailer that was giving away PS3s along with top tier TV packages in a comment on someone else’s blog. At the time I considered it to be more of a curious twist of fate, however I heard on the radio today that now AOL are also giving away PS3s! Admittedly they are only given away with, what I assume to be exorbitant contracts which last for 24 months.
This idea of giving away games consoles is not new, over a year ago mobile phone companies were offering free PSPs along with 18 month contracts. Initially I was tempted until I compared Free PSP contracts to Vanilla phone contracts and did some subtraction and multiplication. It turned out that the total overal cost of the PSP would have been ~1.6 times the store price. Needless to say I just went out and bought a PSP (with a nice game bundle) and renewed my contract with O2.
Its curious that at no point have Microsoft nor Nintendo needed to take such steps in order to sell their consoles, although this could be to do with being first to market and being highly sought after repectively. Sony is having a very bad time with the PS3 (the PS2 is still apparently outselling it) and recent surveys showed that at least 40% of PS3 owners did not even realise their console could play Blu-ray DVDs. At points this year, the Wii was outsetting the PS3 6 to 1. Sony’s profits are down, with the company reporting a multi hundred million dollor loss in its gaming division. Luckily other parts of the company are doing quite well (e.g. ATRAC and TVs) so its unlikely Sony will go under any time soon. Slashing the price of the PS3 has definitely boosted sales considerably, but considering they were making a loss at the higher price, I wager the Sony Computer Entertainment Execs are hoping volume and game sales will save their presently sinking ship.
It seems the much anticipated Playstation Home has, rather then revolutionise the game lobby experience, spawned a rather strange behavioural trend. Apparently all the male avatars gang up on the female avatars pestering them with their attentions… somewhere in the distance, the strained cry of “WOMAN” punctuates the silence followed by a left 4 dead style mobbing. Well, I guess that is what happens when you let pimply love starved socially inept geeks loose on the Internet… but I digress. 
The game I briefly want to talk about was released over 15 years ago on the SNES, I played it back then and found it thoroughly enjoyable. I recently picked it back up and thought I would give it a whirl, given that my media center has a SNES emulator – and I must say I very pleasantly surprised. It is very easy to be carried away by simply drooling over improved graphics in new game releases. This can save all but the poorest modern releases, however, games like Portal on the other hand, bring us crashing back down to earth showing us that the way the game plays can (and normally is) far more important than any visual polish the game studio applies with a trowel afterwards.
In a somewhat surprising move, ID Software 
