Nonchalant LANs

19th April '06

Well today was the athletics carnival so we had a LAN instead of going to that. pwnt.

People Invited:
Bucci
CAmo
Matt
Justin
Andrew

People Attended:
CAmo
Matt

We played:

The good:

(vc-mp, Vice City Multiplayer)


Last Man Standing

The bad:

Walk Over

and the ugly:

Hacknet (Multiplayer nethack, I shit you not)

Matt and me also played a bit of "United Halo 2", just playing the Matrix level with the pistols. Hilarious.

Well sorry for the entire lack of updates over the past couple months but we've just been lanning too much for me to do write-ups for each one. aka i'm just plain lazy. I don't even have photos to post since we've been doing so many movies lately. Might be able to convert them to web friendy formats and get them hosted *somewhere* though although I haven't been able to reduce the filesize enough. Will have a look at DivX 6 and XviD though so don't despair!

No we haven't disappeared, tomorrow we are having another LAN and are filming parts for our new online media show entitled "Jugular n00b" if anyone could make us a logo that would be appreciated. We also need some ideas for the intro to the show.

Please contact:

e-mail: alias.zero2097@gmail.com
MSN: agret2097@hotmail.com
AIM: agretsaim
ICQ: 107711814

Thanks,
Andrew

In september they are releasing ninja gaiden black which include 2004's Ninja Gaiden, the Hurricane Packs 1 & 2 expansions, and bonus content, however black will also contain bonus difficulty modes, new cut scenes, and the arcade version of the original Ninja Gaiden, known as Ninja Ryukenden.

I must say Rachael is still looking better than ever! :)


I wonder if I can get the guys from E3 to mail that one out to me...

Everyone knows how much I love re-mastered cut scenes so this announcement made me weep with joy. I also must add that I found the original Ninja Gaiden way too easy on Hurricane Pack 2 on the ultra-hard-holy-shit-you-cant-beat-the-first-half-of-the-game difficulty level so I welcome these new difficulty levels and hope they are at least 300x as difficult as the ultra-hard-holy-shit-you-cant-beat-the-first-half-of-the-game mode.



Long live the arcade version!

I got my dad to find Slaget om Midgård(tm) upstairs and then bring it down.
When I started installing just for a laugh I decided to choose a non-english language.

After the install I received this message:

---------------------------
Brandvägg detekterad
---------------------------
Din dator har Windoes brandvägg aktiverad. För att spela Slaget om Midgård online måste vi lägga till detta program i brandväggens undantagslista. Är det okej?
---------------------------
Yes No
---------------------------

I chose "Yes" and I guess it worked because my install is finished now.

I can now choose to:
Lasa Readme-fieln
Starta Slaget om Midgård(tm)
Avsluta

I chose "Avsluta" due to it containing the word "slut" :)

My install completed without any errors (amazingly!)

I suggest you stick to English while installing Slaget om Midgård(tm).

After installing Slaget om Midgård(tm) and starting it up for the first time I was presented with a very strange main menu which I couldn't understand. This made me regret installing the game in Swedish. I then went to Multiplayer and joined Justin's game (Not sure how I managed to pull this off!) and we started to play. We played a really bad map which I lagged out of so I quit the game, cleaned my ram up and closed Azureus (SYSTEM HOG!!!) and then copied the registry from Justin's computer (Well actually my Sis's but Justin was using it at the time).

After importing the registry (After a few screwups) I managed to get Slaget om Midgård(tm) to start up as Battle For Middle Earth. This was a much better title and we managed to get a game going on.

The map we started on was one I had downloaded previously and it had unlimited ammounts of respawning units and lagged like a bitch. We then decided to change map and we got a game going on for 4 hours Me & Justin VS 2 "Hard" Computers. I managed to take out one computer (barely) before getting annihilated. Justin kept playing and got pwned by the remaining computer. This was the first time i've actually seen him back someone up in a strategy game. Bravo! Let's see more of this in future! We've all gotta die sometime, right?

The game is pretty good, they have done a great job with the Rome Total War engine and have made it so you can actually move the camera properly. In Rome Total War the camera is actually an object in the game which can get stuck on mountains and various other 3D elements of the terrain and it then blocks you from moving it. Anyway this problem is fixed in Battle For Middle earth and the game turns out quite enjoyable.

The main problem in the game is the Ent's, they are majorly overpowered and can be built in great quanities in short ammounts of time. They are definately match throwers and were one of the main reasons my base fell. Like most strategy games these days Battle For Middle earth features heroes which actually help in the battle field. Gandolf was my most expensive hero coming in at $6000!! Can you believe that? It took me ages to get him! Speaking of cash to earn money in this game you have to build farms on the points upon which you can build buildings. There are usually about 6 of these to a base so they really hurt to build them. They should've made it that your citadel gained you money and there were lots more building points.

Certain building points can only build defense items which adds a certain layer of strategy. Also in the game are "Power Points" which allow you to buy various magic spells and summons with the last being the army of the dead which totally wipes out anyone in it's path but only lasts a short ammount of time and takes forever to recharge. While I was dead in spectator I saw the computer cast this spell and create a big ghost army with a hero at the front of it only to just sit it outside the fog of war until the ghost army ran out. Pathetic. Ovbiously the AI needs a bit of work as it seems to forget what it's doing and just leave armies idling around for no reason while it contemplates it's next move.

Although a challenging game it was a pretty good experience with music from the movies (No locations afaik, maybe look for user maps?) with a good map building community which should increase as word of mouth spreads.

Worth a look if you are a strategy game fan. This is definately a title you should hire before you buy. Justin say's the campaign is rubbish and I haven't bothered to check so be sure to play the multiplayer before making a purchase decision.

I rate Slaget om Midgård(tm) 8/10 for Great.

Earlier tonight (5th May 2005 05/05/05) Cameron and myself went to Blockbuster in Diamond Creek and we decided to pickup a copy of Silent Hill 4. Cameron didn't have his block buster card on him so he had to give them information and proof of his identity. He gave them his phone number, his address & his name was on the back of his bag. They still had to ring his house for some strange reason even though he knew the names of everyone the card was registered to. Seems like needless security to hire 1 XBOX game. So anyhow I paid my $4 and we got the game onto Cameron's card after a needless call to his dad which went like this:

Woman: Hello this is Blockbuster Diamond Creek, your son Cameron wants to borrow an XBOX game.
*Cameron's dad speaks for a bit*
Woman: Alright thanks *Hangup*

Seriously, that was it!

So anyway I got home with the game and tried to play it. XBOX Logo then just my dash with "Unknown" as the disc type. I cleaned the disk than begun to rip it to my XBOX hard drive and then one of Josh's crappy songs started playing (The Beetles - Yellow Submarine) so I decided to watch Judge Judy which sucks majorly while it copied. A few of the movies had problems copying so I cleaned the disk and then resumed the copy. After awhile we had it copied.

We booted the game (From hard drive, of course) and then were confronted with a movie which basically spoiled everything that happens during the course of the game. We were then presented with a crappy main menu from which I could start a new game or load an old one (Which I don't have, oddly enough Continue is disabled yet Load wasn't!).

We started a new game and watched a low calibar intro movie which just zoomed around the apartment. Anyway you start off this game in your apartment and there is blood and rust everywhere. There is a face in the wall which when looked at reveals "It looks like a face". You look around your room and go "This is odd x is not x" a few times then it does some weird FMV thingy and you wake up. It was all a dream...or was it?

You then learn your character has been having recurring nightmares every day and all the windows and doors have been stuck closed since these started so you get up and walk around. Your door is still chained so you battle with the controls and try and look around in the horrible first person mode. You get your first weapon from inside the fridge which is a "White Wine Bottle". You can look out the Window and see some chick go into the Subway and then you see your neighbour outside your front door through the spyglass. After this a weird noise comes from the bathroom. You decide to check it out and find a mysterious hole in the wall.

Your character goes into the hole in the wall and you have to crawl through the tunnel for the next minute or so until you reach the other end. All the while having some crappy "old school" filter applied to the camera. You find yourself on an escalator coming down into a subway which looks a lot like the one from Hunter The Reckoning. There is a girl ahead of you which you go up to and talk to. She says this is all a dream and you are inside her dream. Of course being the cool guy you are you start to wonder if she's right or not and then insist that she is wrong.

You walk around with her trying to find the exit and she says she feels sick. She enters the womans toilets and your character waits outside for her. After awhile some mutant dog things come out of the men's toilets. The game doesn't tell you how to use the combat system so you have to try and work out the controls for yourself. Up arrow to equip your Sewerage Pipe and then hold R and press A to attack (Either A or X, I forget now actually). After owning the dogs you are free to walk around once more. I went inside the woman's toilets and found them completely empty except for a pipe in the wall (Much the same as the one in my apartment).

I entered the hole and crawled through (Automaticly this time, through the wonders of FMV) to find myself waking up in my apartment again. Once again it was all a dream and then I went and saved my game. After this I proceeded to re-enter the hole. I wandered around in the subway for about 20 minutes and found some pistol ammo. This is all I got to in this game as I can't for the life of me work out where I have to go next. The game is horribly vague and has the worst camera angles i've ever had to deal with. I wasn't scared once throughout the play and CAmo said "Well i'm not scared but i'm a little freaked out".

This game was a big disappoint and could've ammounted to more.

If LOST was going to be made into a video game i'd have to pick this one as the best fit. Every time it answers a question it asks a thousand more and leaves you in a state of confusion until the very end when it presents you with a completely profound solution to everything which your supposed to accept.

You may have read my review and thought that I was giving a negative basis towards the game. Well of course I am! There is nothing positive about this game at all! When me and Cameron were first playing CAmo though the chick was a drag queen lol

Worst. Game. Ever.

Here is a flash animation I spent 15 minutes making.

I give it a rating of 2/10 (We've switched to the Gamespot rating system now)
(Changed from my previous rating of 3 in the revised edition)

First, I want you to picture this, a game where you are free to roam seamlessly as one of the many characters out of the "Dragon ball Z" series, utilizing their many formidable powers and abilities, while playing alongside a good mate throughout EVERY single season, it's a good thought isn't it? This is EXACTLY what Avalanche software's "Dragonball Z: Sagas" does, which makes it even harder to understand how the fuck they managed to screw it up so damn bad.

The gameplay of sagas is without a doubt its worst point, the fighting system in this is so linear it felt like I was playing a wall. Combat consists of a few attack buttons (X light, Y heavy) a ki button (B) and a fly (I think it was A, oh, and it's not really "flying" more like hovering a few feet off the ground). This is usually all you do for the hundreds of bland un inspired monsters populating the repetitive landscapes. You can buy upgrades by getting Z-coins which are scattered around the place but finding them is very tedious and irritating because the camera does everything possible to piss you off and since there is no camera control buttons it leads to a lot of wasted time just trying to see where you want to go or who you want to hit. There is also a problem with the upgrades, you see, as we were playing the old guy said "you need to find 4 Z-coins to purchase the special attack upgrade", this sounds ok, but that's what the move was called "the special attack". Sagas is so uninspired it's a wonder the developers could be buggered making it to begin with.

The sound (while definitely not good) was not an absolute pile of trash like the gameplay. Well, that's what I thought until I heard Piccolo pronounce "Kamay kamay! (I believe it's called)" like "Turkey feeder!". What else can I say, shitty sounds for the ki blasts, some random old bastard off the probably voiced the old master guy and Piccolo yelling "Turkey Feeder!" Every 5 seconds didn't exactly impress me.

The graphics were bland, uninspired and irritating to begin with. Even the more complex and detailed antagonists were horrible and painful to look at. Imagine a giant tree thing that looks more like a desk than the actual monster it's trying to represent. Also, you can easily tell the strength of different enemies by what colour they are. For example, the first guys you attack are green little goblin things, and the next level up they are purple and the next they are blue, etc, etc.

The value is horrible as it takes usually no more than 10 hours to go from start to finish. The co-op adds some replay value, but very little as the only real reason to play with a mate is if you hate them and like seeing them suffer.

The tilt of the game is........... Bad. Enough said.

All in all this in a terrible game which we have given a rating of *Drumroll* 3.2. Remember that I go by the gamespot rating:
10: Perfect
9: superb
8: Great
7: Good
6: Fair
5: Medicore
4: Poor
3: Bad
2: Terrible
1: Abysmal

Doom 3 is a faithful port of the PC version to the XBOX. Although they have gotten all the graphical goodness of the PC version onto the less powerful XBOX the frame rate doesn't suffer at all. The game runs with a rock steady FPS hindered with only occasional slowdowns at certain points of the game.

The PDA is accessible with the "Back" button on your Game PAD but the game has noticable lag when entering and exiting from the PDA which gets annoying considering how often you need to use it.

For those of you who never played Doom 3 on the PC the PDA holds voice logs and emails from people whose PDA's you pickup off their corpses. You need to refer to it frequently throughout the game to open storage lockers and certain doors.

Alongside all the features of the PC game Doom 3 also adds a new co-op mode which allows you to tackle the monsters of hell with a buddy over system link or with a complete stranger over XBOX Live. Sadly co-op is limited to only 2 players.

The co-op mode removes almost all story elements and the PDA and is a blast to play through. We played over XLink Kai with a ping of 35 and experienced no lag during the game. At times either Cameron or myself were left without a Flashlight though which got annoying considering how dark the game is, at points it was so dark I was just wandering blindly bumping into all the walls.

Since the co-op removes a lot of the story elements from the game we managed to clock in a 3 hour finish time. It's damn fun while it lasts and holds significant replay if you leave it for a few months in between play sessions.

One of the best additions to co-op is that near the start of the game there are 2 Super Turkey Puncher games setup so you can verse each other. The first to 3000 wins the game, I don't think I beat Cameron once.

Since we got the collectors edition of Doom 3 it came with the original Doom & Doom 2 in the Extra's section. I was terribly disappointed with it as there was no system link support and playing 2 player split screen had you both playing on screens the size of the 4 player split screen. I ended up adding 4 players to the game just so we could have the screens positioned in a normal portion of the screen. Along with this the bad lighting effects make for a totally unplayable experience. I would stick to the Doom Legacy XBOX port for playing Classic Doom. It features Internet, Network & Split Screen play.

Doom 3 contains graphics & physics that are leading games to the next generation. It makes the move to XBOX with no loss of detail and would make an excellent addition to your XBOX collection.

I rate it 4/5.