Updated as often as I can manage

 



Tuesday, May 17, 2005  

Alright, so I haven't blogged in a few days because... I'm in LA! Quick recap of everything so far:

THE FLIGHT: First I was denied my business class upgrade. Then it was delayed from 4:15 to 5:55. Then to 7. Then I was stuck in front of a kid who kept kicking my seat over and over again. Then I plod along to the toilet in my socks only to step into a gigantic puddle of god-I-hope-it's-just-water and soak my socks right through. Then every time I was on the verge of falling asleep I was disturbed by something or another, including an idiot steward who decided that he REALLY needed to poke me awake to ask if I wanted breakfast (seriously, did it LOOK like I wanted to eat?). Grrr.

THE CAR: As soon as we got through the ridiculous immigration line, we picked up our car. It's an SUV. I'm really no SUV fan, but this is really nice car. It feels good to have a big car in the US and the roads are so terrible (seriously, they're so run down and potty) that they're almost necessary. We've been having tons of fun cruising in it -- to the point that we actually drove to the hotel, turned around, drove to Jack in the Box and then drove back to the hotel just because driving around was fun.

THE HOTEL: The W is awesome. It's a little weird, because it's basically a nightclub with rooms (seriously -- there's even a line to get in, though naturally I'm on "the list" as a guest), but it's pretty luxurious. Expensive, but so comfortable.

I'll update with more tomorrow because I am SO exhausted.

Posted at 5:42 PM



Friday, May 13, 2005  

So the first Xbox 360 shots have trickled out. I've been curious to see just what THE NEXT GENERATION looks like, and if Dead or Alive 4 (according to the leaked screens, anyway) is anything to go by... it's a little underwhelming.

At first glance, it looks like it's on Xbox 1. It's a very good looking Xbox 1 game, mind you, but with the DOA series and Ninja Gaiden, they've proven they can make good looking games. A closer look reveals details not possible with Xbox 1; the characters are too sharp, their clothing has real bumps and ridges and fabric and isn't a flat texture, and the backgrounds are fairly detailed. But that close look also shows plenty WRONG with that scene. The ground, even when it's a cobbled street, is flat with a texture slapped on top. There are odd lines here or there that are telltale signs of a polygonal model, showing off how a curve or a joint hasn't been properly rounded. And the hair! I realise human hair is a soft spot even for Pixar, but surely we can do better than that?

Of course, this might be ten times better in motion. The other key point is the whole "HD" thing. I remember the DC looking good but maybe not "GENERATION GAP" great, but the first time I saw it you could tell. Something about the clarity and smoothness of it all; maybe that's something we'll see with 360 as well.

99 Nights though fares better because of the sheer number of characters on screen. As Patrick says, this gen might more about "tons of stuff" rather than "photo-realism", and that's absolutely fine by me.

The other amusing thing on the message boards has been the anti-MTV zealots whining about Microsoft's choice of channel to unveil the Xbox 360. This entire argument is really quite funny to me. I seem to remember hearing people complain that E3 is closed to industry only (in theory, anyway) and that it should get wider exposure. Now Microsoft are taking the wraps off the new Xbox for consumers on MTV... and people are complaining that it should be held back for E3. I give up.

Posted at 3:23 AM



Saturday, May 07, 2005  

Two recent Halo 2 sessions illustrate the beauty and the beast that is Bungie's masterpiece in multiplayer.

- SYSTEM LINK: One of my colleagues at work is a Halo freak. Totally nuts about the game. He has a cool dual-Xbox System Link setup (which is really kinda rare out here... well, I have three linked, but that's besides the point) and regularly hosts LAN games on it. My position on Halo multiplayer has always been that it's cool, but my friends hated it so I never had anyone to play with.

Anyway, I finally scored an invite to one of those fabled LAN parties and... I didn't suck. This was a massive, massive relief to me. I did pretty damned well too, around the second or third best player there, though behind the host who was indeed brilliant at Halo. And there were some real highlights, too (nothing beats hearing people constantly scream your name in frustration), like consistently killing one poor woman (honestly, I wasn't trying to...) and sticking people multiple times. And I also managed a couple of Kobe Bryant-esque performances in getting the most kills while trying to help my ailing but inferior teammates (though this is not a diss, it's that one of them was new to Halo but was an impressively quick learner; by the end he was genuinely good). And there were a couple of against-the-odds victories that really hinged on the opposition not copying our "GET IN THE GODDAMNED WARTHOG AND SHOOT" tactics.

Still, win or lose... it was fun. It was tons of fun. The social aspect helps, but there's still something more solid and entertaining about playing with your friends over System Link where you can't whine about lag. Hell, even in games where I got totally wasted I really enjoyed it.

- XBOX LIVE: Soon after the LAN party Bungie released their Halo updates. New maps are always exciting (really, with Halo sessions stretching to the hours you NEVER have enough maps) but I was really pumped for the 2v2 playlist. 4v4 was tons of fun but impractical; 2v2 would be cool, I thought. So I enlisted Mukund and we fired it up. The results:

Midship Multi-flag CTF: 0-3
Not a good start when you jump in, see your own flag, and think... "wait, what the hell do we do now?". Meanwhile, they grabbed the sword and we lost very quickly.

Warlock Teamball: 0:24 to 3:00
Right, that last one was a false start. Except when Warlock came up, we went "OOH NEW MAP!"... and forgot about the whole ball thing. They also ambushed us plenty of times by making the ball carrier bait while the other guy attacked from above. You'd think we'd figure it out by the tenth time they pulled it. The ball guy also killed us twice. Each.

Lockout 1-Flag CTF: 0-2
OK, this time we kinda knew what to do and what we were doing. The other guys were just better. Like, much better. They had us covered from every angle and had the counter for every weapon (got the sword? we'll snipe you. got the shottie? we've got the sword -- etc).

Midship Team Slayer: 6-30
By this point, we were pissed. We wanted revenge. We had to nail them. Good start: These guys sound like they're 10, and it's Slayer -- no dumb rules here. They still wasted us. After a while, I found my niche by sticking them repeatedly. This pissed them off, which I liked, even though they were still cruising to victory. Then they decided to start sticking ME. This I didn't like, because it turns out they're better than I am at it.

Ascension Rifle Slayer: 0-30
I had to beg Muk to stay for this game. I said we couldn't leave it at that low point. Even though this one was even worse... I was OK with it. Because this time, we weren't just beaten by superior foes, but by bad game design too. We were stuck on one side of Ascension pinned down by sniper fire. EVERY TIME we died we respawned in the same spot. There were no sniper rifles on our side and every time we tried to escape, BOOM. That sucked. That made it easy to quit.

It was awful. Universally awful. We were destroyed. And it was not fun. Though, in hindsight, it was really funny.

Posted at 5:22 AM



Thursday, May 05, 2005  

I realise I am not exactly a FIFA Soccer friend, but with the agonising lack of any Winning Eleven I just had to get my fix and pick it up. And while it's not bad... it's not good, either. It'd be more than passable if not for sheer sloppiness. The graphics are muddy, animation suspect, control loose, and the loading is atrocious. I'm used to waiting 20+ seconds before games in EA Sports titles -- that's a given, and I'm fine with it. What's unacceptable are the lagtimes within games and menus. I'm not kidding when I say it took me five minutes to transfer Fernando Morientes to Liverpool. You press the button to change leagues, then you have to wait 3-5 seconds for it to load the league. Then you press it again to scroll to the next league. You can't just hit the button four times in a row and wait for it to catch up; you have to wait for it to load every league in your path between "ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP" and "SPANISH PRIMERA LIGA". Oh, then you have to wait while you switch between teams in the league; from ZARAGOZA up to REAL MADRID and then from ARSENAL down to LIVERPOOL. Even that's not as bad as the in-game lag -- kick the ball out of the field (be it out of play or in the goal) and it freezes for another 3-5 seconds to load the reaction animation that FIFA has always been so damned proud of.

Still, there are some positives. I really like the mid-season mode, that's a clever addition. But my favourite are the Challenges. I've loved the Challenges (or Scenarios) ever since they made an appearance in the SNES International Superstar Soccer/Perfect Eleven games. You're put in a historical situation where a team has come back (or in FIFA's Rout case thrashed another team) and you have to emulate their performance in a limited amount of time. So for instance you could replay France's last-minute comeback against England at Euro 2004 by scoring two goals in the last ten minutes. It's a great idea, but like the rest of FIFA it's pretty flawed. Still, I appreciate the idea and the effort so instead of just bitching I'll offer some creative criticism and send some ideas out for the next game:

- CONTEXT: Part of the drama in Challenge Mode are the stories behind the comebacks. Since there seems to be an effort from EA to eschew just doing the standard ones everyone knows in order to get a fairly broad range of great comebacks from the Premiership to the MLS, it'd be great to have a short blurb (you can display it during the load screen!) explaining the story of the match. Even something as short as: "Arsenal completed a historic unbeaten season last year, but now they're 3-1 down to a determined Middlesbrough side at home with only 35 minutes to play. Can the Gunners fire back and keep their incredible streak going?" That gives you some idea of the story and flavour, who you are, what the situation is, and why you have to haul yourself back into this game.

- FAMOUS SCENARIOS: Of course, the flipside is to just include more famous comebacks that people remember. It's pretty shocking to see some of the most famous ones of them all missing from that list. Indeed arguably the most famous one of them all -- Manchester United's European Cup victory over Bayern Munich in 1999 where both goals came in the last minute -- is missing entirely. Ditto Deportivo's famous comeback from 3-0 down to PSG at home to win 4-3 30 minutes later in the same competition.

- ATMOSPHERE: This is a really simple one. Again, there's high drama in most of these comebacks. So why not throw in a couple of extra voice samples for the commentators to reflect it? If I score a winner in one of those challenges in the last minute, I want to hear Motson scream something like "AND THEY'VE DONE IT! UNBELIEVABLE!" rather than his usual quiet announcement of a goal. It's really only a matter of adding in two soundbites, or even more if you want to really set it up ("they're running out of time here Ally, think they can come back?" etc), and it adds SO much.

- HISTORICAL ACCURACY: This one involves a lot more work, and with tight PSP launch deadlines I fully understand and appreciate why this didn't happen, but on the other hand in a dream world this would be ideal. When I loaded up the Arsenal - Chelsea scenario, while it clearly marked it as a tie from last year... the teams were from this year. This is especially obvious with Chelsea, which overhauled its team in the summer. I'd like to play the scenarios with the right teams and players; indeed, I'd like to play it with the exact set of players that were really on the pitch at the moment you take over the game. It adds a hell of a lot (especially since FIFA readily admits some of the challenge matches took place back in the 1990s) to play as the exact players, especially since in many cases matches have turned after say key players have left or been sent off. For instance, in that hypothetical Man U - Bayern challenge, Bayern's lynchpin and inspiration Lothar Matthaus was taken off over ten minutes from the end, disrupting them defensively, while United had key players in Scholes and captain Roy Keane missing through suspension. If you were to pick it up from 10 minutes left to play, with those three players out (and unable to come in!) it'd make a HUGE impact on the game and alters the challenge dramatically.

I really hope they incorporate some of these ideas into the next version. As it is, including Challenges at all is a very promising start, so I hope they can build on it.

Posted at 6:33 AM



Wednesday, May 04, 2005  

Liverpool have reached the Final of the Champions League. I'm stunned, I'm shocked, I'm in absolute heaven.

It's so hard to put this into perspective, to show why this is such a huge deal. Liverpool have the greatest history of any English side both at home and in Europe, but have had nothing to show for it in the last fifteen years. Now Liverpool are in the final of the European Cup for the first time in twenty years.

And it's not like this was ever expected. Liverpool have had a horrible year and are generally considered a (large) notch below the top English teams, let alone the best in Europe. We're rebuilding under a new boss. But somehow, Liverpool have improbably made it to the Final of the world's top club competition, and have knocked out two of Europe's top three clubs in Juventus and Chelsea along the way.

And what a game that Chelsea match was. Liverpool hadn't beaten Chelsea in four tries this year, but knew all they had to do was beat them to reach the final. On the other hand, Chelsea are rather good and needed only a draw. But Liverpool gave it all they've got, stole a goal early on, and put up a fantastic defensive performance to stop Chelsea. And they were spurred on by the loudest crowd I've ever heard. For 90 minutes they roared every time Liverpool had the ball and booed relentlessly whenever a Chelsea player touched it.

I've often been made fun of for my Liverpool fandom. I don't think people doubt my passion -- in fact, they pick on how nuts I am about them -- more the disconnect I have with Liverpool's roots and success. It's a charge I cannot deny. I was not born anywhere near Liverpool. And I did not witness any of those four famous European Cup triumphs (which is what you get when you win the Champions League). But tonight I had my own little bit of Liverpool lore, I saw the passion, I felt what it all meant.

One famous story of the old European nights involve the Kop End at Liverpool's Anfield stadium, the end where the most loyal home supporters are. Their passion -- evident in the sheer amount of noise they make -- is legendary. Opponents used to complain that the Kop was Liverpool's 12th man; some swore the residents of the Kop would collectively "suck" the ball into the back of the net. And you know what? When Garcia's flick deflected off Terry and spun goalwards, I could almost swear that the Kop sucked that ball further in...

Posted at 7:03 AM