Archive for the 'media' Category

GTA IV Completed!

Published by Zach Inglis 3 months and 3 weeks ago in gaming.

As I am in between projects and I am sick (glandular fever), I have been playing Grand Theft Auto 4. I completed it an hour ago and have since run around shooting everything I can and mucking about a bit.

It is a great game, the graphics are awesome and the gameplay is great. I find it is not that innovative. Nearly everything has been done before, just not so well. The two things about it the most (apart from multiplayer) is the small details it puts in. Cars get scratched, your phone interferes with the radio and such. Secondly is the story-line. You get to make small changes and you watch Niko make some well informed decisions but always the wrong ones.

For instance, there is small choices you can make ( would prefer there were more) and as opposed to games like Fable and Star Wars, i feel connected to Niko so I want the best things to happen to him, so you generally choose the good path.

X-Play had suggested that it would take 100 hours to complete. I think this includes running around and doing the jumps, flying under the bridges and such small “hidden achievements”. I have completed the game 70% (the storyline is completed) and it has taken me 35 hours.

There are a few things I dislike.

  • If you muck up a mission, you start from the very beginning of that mission. You have to do the chase and such again, and there are some LONG missions.
  • Learning how to disarm someone at the beginning of the game is only useful for that perticular scene, onwards from that you never need to use it again.
  • Often you will cover behind an object in the wrong manner, exposing yourself.
Stats
  • Playing time 35 hours
  • Longest game: 7hrs 30mins
  • Cash: $580,756
  • Missions attempted: 150 (all tries on all missions)
  • Missions passed: 94
1 Comment

Will Wright iSXSW Keynote - Spore!

Published by Zach Inglis 1 year and 5 months ago in media.

I had the fantastic honour of watching Will Wright speak about Spore. I have uploaded it to Viddler.

After the panel, I managed to ask him a few questions regarding the space phase. In reply to my questions, he mentioned there WILL be Space Stations and such construction items. He also said that the reason you’d want to visit the supernovas are there’ll be wares that you can pick up.

It was fantastic. Click here for the Spore video

9 Comments

Wii Can’t Be Arsed

Published by Zach Inglis 1 year and 6 months ago in media.

Everything I am seeing from the almighty corporation of Nintendo is making me believe they have given up.

Nintendo have never been one for style, granted. I ca not name a pretty console made by them since the DS Lite. All have looked cheap and juvenile.

The problem I am currently having other than disliking the looks of it more and more each second is their lack of innovation on the new Channels. Nintendo have just released the Everybody Votes channel. You can get the basic idea by heading to Riffs and having a quick glance.

The only problem is: Wait times. You would hope voting would be instant, like that of an AJAX Yes or No button. You press the Channel on the Main Menu, then you have to set up your location information; The same one you set up during Wii Setup in the Control Panel. Once that is done, wait a few seconds for the program to initiate, for it to Gather Information and then set up which Mii’s to vote (upto 6). Once you do that, you click the Question you want to answer; there is 5, Worldwide(2) updated twice a month, and Regional(3) set up once every two days. You drag your Mii to either side of the question (there are two answers per question which you may choose one from, such as Yes or No). Once done, it sends your answer to the server (another wait time) then asks you whether you wish to predict the answer. You choose the answer that you think will be most chosen if you want to and then wait another wait time.

This is rather needless. All the data could be collected and sent on program exit or even in the background. We see it every day on the web and it’s a perfect example of where it is helpful.

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Insert Wii-ly funny title here

Published by Zach Inglis 1 year and 6 months ago in media.

I’ve been playing around with the Wii for a few weeks now and have formed a lot of opinions on the console. I decided that I’d share my likes and dislikes.

The first thing that …err.. sticks out is the console itself. What Nintendo decided to do was paint a DVD-rom white and stick a few buttons on it. They obviously thought the fact the console’s gameplay was so unlike its competitors would be enough. I do not understand how Nintendo could not bother enough with the console. They’ve profited a lot from the Wii already and it was obvious that they would when they started promoting it. When you have something this popular, nothing goes by not noticed.

The Nintendo DS is a perfect example of where they have done this before. Will we find a Wii Lite available sometime next year?

The DVD drive is a slot. In my experience, slot drives fail quicker and cause the user to scratch the disks more. To the counter argument, it is nice that the mini Gamecube disks slide in so easily.

There is also another problem with the LED that highlights the slot drive. I’ve heard a few reported cases of this and don’t know if it occurs to all, certainly occurs to the ones I have seen, it randomly flickers in standby and you have to hit the Reset button for it to stop.

Yet another bad feature of the drive is that, it doesn’t play DVDs. Don’t ask me why but in a world where it is standard for your video games console to do this, Nintendo (the big corporation who has survived the longest) decided to put away with the unnecessaries.

The backwards-compatibility to the Gamecube is a great idea to follow (all competitors offer this) however what is different with the Wii is that you need a Gamecube controller and memory card (no, the Internal Memory nor SD cards work). What is even less known is that you need an OFFICIAL controller (Wavebird included) to use the games. Bad Nintendo *shakes finger*.

The Mii’s (avatars) are never ending fun which you can introduce to your friends over and over again. The most exciting moment I have seen so far is when you find out you can store them them on your Wii remote controllers like a memory card.

All in all, it IS a great machine. The best game is the bundled Wii Sports and Zelda however it is best to go with a service such as Gamefly. The novelty of each game wears of easily and finding a good one is hard. Saying that, Will Wright has been playing around with the Wii developer’s kit for Spore.

1 Comment

DVD prices should be lowered

Published by Zach Inglis 3 years and 3 months ago in media and television.

Well, Faruk showed me this link and I am infuriated to say the least.

It is not the fact that I don’t think downloading warez is as bad as everyone suggests, because I dont 100% agree with it.

If I downloaded a Friends DVD (god save me if I did), I would be ‘hurting’ people like Jennifer Aniston. A woman who earned $1,000,000 per week for the latter half of Friends. Lets do some rough math (it gets boring but bare it out); most American’s earn a minimum wage of between $4 and $7.25 an hour according to a government site, we’ll say $6 as an average. An average day of $54 (6 * 9).. thus meaning an average week of $270… $1080 being a month’s wage… yearly of $54,000. A lifetime equals to around $1,728,000.

Ms. Aniston has to work less than 2 weeks to get a lifetime’s hard graft. This is disgusting and outrageous, the pinnacle of human greed. So by not paying for a DVD, I am deprivng her of a few dollars… somehow it doesn’t seem so bad when I put it like that. The lower level people on the set, are most likely paid in wages and see no royalties. People like Jeniffer Aniston wouldn’t notice if $2,000 was missing from their pocket…. whereas a normal working person would worry about $20 missing. They could easily cut the prices of DVDs and pay these actors less… I buy DVDs but I wait months and months till they are down to $13 before I buy. If they were at this price as soon as they came out, it’d be a different matter completely.

They US government have said they will make it so that if someone is caught recording the movie… they’ll get 3 years. This is a serious amount of time really considering people get less time for murder (to which they liken the offense) sometimes. Its a sick, sick world and this is justice?

The government has to stop digging.

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