[Blog thing] Charlesr - Higher standards!

[charlesr]

I haven't played CoD MW2 for a long time. Had 15 mins to spare so I fired it up expecting to get murdered. Decided what the hell and went for hardcore team deathmatch. After a quick spot of camping, I quickly got an attack helicopter (7 kills) and ended up 12k/4d, decimator (killed entire enemy team without dying) and immortal (most kills without dying).

Not sure what happened though. Some of my teammates came over and one of them stood next to me so I couldn't leave the corner. It was looking right at me. Was I committing some sin by camping or something? I didn't want to shoot him because it was hardcore, so a flashbang diverted his attention just enough to let me squeeze free. A minute later, another guy positioned himself in front of me while I was picking people off so I shot him in the head by accident. He was trying to get killed as far as I could make out?

Oh CoD how I missed thee. Not.

[charlesr]

Sorry about the dire music in the second one. Damn youtubers....

Anyway, my son saw the GC force wheel in the loft while I was rummaging around for Christmas decorations, so I was forced (not that it took much) to fire it up. The only game I have that it works with is R:Racing Evolution (as above vids). It also worked on Burnout 2, but no idea what else.

R:Racing Evolution was a great sim that confused everyone by not being an Arcade racer like Ridge. And also everyone mistook the tutorial (story) mode for the full game. Doh. Another thing that confused everyone was the realllly grainy graphics which meant it was immediately pronounced rubbish by all and sundry.

However, if you could get past that little lot, the TT mode was very good. It had tarmac, rally and drag stages, with some great tracks and fun handling. The force feedback was spot on too. Prog scan mode on the GC for more detailed graininess

I was really good at it. See attached.

Playing it last night revealed it still has what it takes to make it playable, even with advances in graphics and AI/Physics that have come in the last 7 years.

If anyone has a spare set of pedals for the logitech gc force wheel, please let me know.

[charlesr]

I've found the perfect games for a 4 year old to play. Snowboarding games. Massive wide courses with huge gaps to aim though between obstacles and obvious which way to turn mostly.

Pros and cons below are for a 4 year old

Successes so far....

Stoked



Pros:
Biggest widest slopes ever
Cons:
Jumping while touching the stick is death unless you know what you are doing

1080 Avalanche



Pros:
Left and Right will get you all the way down
Cons:
Tracks are narrow in many places

SSX Tricky



Pros:
Easy to stay upright - landing at an angle doesn't really matter most of the time
Cons:
Dull courses if you aren't doing tricks.

[charlesr]

UK gamers bought less games, but more consoles in 2010. Bit weird eh?

[Neon Ignition]

Going off the state of the pricing in stores I'm almost not surprised

?50 for Vanquish? Sorry HMV

[ItsThere]

UK gamers bought less games, but more consoles in 2010. Bit weird eh?

Replacements, family consoles and updated machines no doubt.

I used to buy a new PS2 every year to get new controllers and bundled games. Mind you they were a fair bit cheaper than the current bundles going about.

[charlesr]

Yeah, I'm guessing Kinect and Move bundles persuaded a fair few to move to slimmer versions of their consoles to match their expected slimmer selves after a few minutes on body-toner3 or whatever.

[charlesr]

So, now on NTSC-uk, there's an import forum.

In the mists of time, I recall there being an PAL forum, with most of the chat in the rest of the forum being about ntsc releases from Japan and the US. That was a time where if you wanted to play games as the developer intended, ntsc was the only reliable option. Even on the Dreamcast which had a fantastic track record for 60Hz modes in most games, it was still necessary to import if you were into shmups and other J-specific releases. And since the hardware was region locked, chipped PS2s, freeloader and DC-X boot discs and softmods were frequently discussed.

However, ask the PAL players and you'd know they were having just as much fun; and "ignorance-is-bliss". So eventually the PAL discussion was merged with the rest.

With the advent of HD, a major part of the NTSC-uk mission was realised, with a single video format worldwide, negating the need to import (on supported platforms), purely for video and speed benefits. Shame the Wii messed that up, but at least it it has 60Hz mode and Progressive scan in dash, rather than on the discs.

This leaves the other reasons for importing - Japan exclusives that are unlikely ever to appear in the west, games like Raiden Fighters and Deadly Premonition and Stoked that came out months/years earlier than Europe. But with most games getting worldwide release dates within days of each other, even this issue is reduced.

And who would have thought it? The PS3 was region free across the board! So you can buy a PS3 in Europe and still play imported games. The Xbox360 gives the publishers the option of region locking, so it's a bit of a lottery as to which games can be imported, with a Japanese Xbox360 being fairly essential in certain niche areas, but with the ticking time bomb of 360 reliability, it's an expensive prospect

And the PS3 didn't get it perfect - original J machines had hardware level backwards compatability for PS2 and PS1 games, with this feature being removed in later editions in favour of software based BC. Not important for most games, but on a site like this with a strong undercurrent of hoarding collecting, this was a blow.

In comparison to previous generations, the number of really quality Japan/US exclusives has dipped, so the incentive to import is reduced further, and so chat about these exclusives was disappearing off the page too quickly. Which leads us back to where I started, with the Import specific forum. A sad day in some respects, but by giving it focus, I hope it will allow non-importers the ability to easily keep up to date with the import scene if they want so that they can decide when/if they need to turn. And Importers will find it easier spot all the necessary purchases instead of realising they missed out on something good because it disappeared off the page within a day.

So what lies ahead for imports? With the impending prospect of possible IP address region locking on the 3DS downloads and the general increasing prevelance of downloads on all platforms, it's maybe going to become even trickier to import. Popular import site lik-sang disappeared after continuing to ship Sony items to the West, with Play-Asia following suit by limiting what games they allow to which regions (and not just Sony stuff either!), thus even on the physical media side, there are dark forces staked against us. Luckily there are always other options. Fight for the right to party import!

Would love to hear your thoughts on this. I'm going to do a feature on this at some point soon (probably after we know what's going on with the 3DS) and could use some choice forum quotes.

[charlesr]

Oh yeah, and the exchange rate scuppered things a bit too.

[chopemon]

For me buying a Japanese 360 was one of the best decisions I ever made.

The import forum seemed strange at first because of the seeming ghettoisation of the importers but it has turned into a wonderful happy place where everyone is unremittingly enthusiastic and nice.

It's nice to not have to find import news and first plays between the barrage of PAL titles. People on here know their stuff inside and out and the import forum is going to be an amazing source of knowledge.

I encourage everyone to dip into it and if you have never imported something, just go an do it

[charlesr]

My spare time over the last few months has been zilch. Gaming has taken a back seat (apart from Ikenie No Yoru which I'm back on the case with now that someone on the interwebs showed me how to get past the bit I was stuck on). Most of my time seems to have been spent moving the site and getting the forum upgraded and most recently battling with the server and learning how to performance tune in linux. Not exactly what I had in mind, but needs must.

So I'm looking forward to some time in the near future when I can get back into games properly.
Dirt3 is looking very enticing, so I'll be picking that up soon I reckon.

Meanwhile the only "game" related thing I did recently was to download a game for my S60 Nokia 5800. It was a top down racer, with auto accelerate and only left and right. It links to ovi maps, so you drive around your local streets. Great concept. Shame about the game. Delete....

But it got me thinking that back in the C64/Spectrum era I would have played this for a week at least. Maybe. I certainly properly played worse back then.

So are there any demos you have downloaded recently that you would have been quite happy with 10 years ago, but now instantly reject? I think a lot of XLIG is like that for me.