Thanks to everyone who sent me suggestions and comments on my request for HDTV advice. The over-whelming suggestion was to go with a wide-screen LCD monitor. While I initially had my reservations about the idea, I must say I was misguided. Read on for what was purchased, along with a quick review…
[Read more…] about HDTV advice follow-up
Archives for 2006
Blogging update
If you’re a sports fan (more specifically a college football fan), you’re aware of a little game this weekend (just look at the countdown in the middle of this page. It’s been there for over a month.). That’s right, the Ohio State versus Michigan game is HUGE. HUGE is actually the understatement of the century. This game is going to be HUGER than HUGE. It’s something that’s never happened — an undefeated Ohio State team ranked #1 in the country playing an undefeated Michigan team ranked #2. It’s basically a mini-National Championship, a prelude to the BCS Title game in Glendale.
So I’ll be busy this week blogging at my other site, Men of the Scarlet and Gray. We’ve got a lot of content this week that will be taking up my time. We’ll also be participating in CSTV.com’s Battle of the Blogs. Our piece will be up on Thursday.
So I’ll try to keep the posting here, too, but it may be too much. This week is just chock-full of stuff going on. The game on Saturday, the release of the Wii six hours later and this football geek’s head is going to explode. It’s gonna be sweet.
I’ve got some Carnival updates coming soon, too. Unfortunately our December host dropped out but Michael at MMOGNation (Zonk from Slashdot Games) has agreed to take over the hosting duties for December. You can get your submissions in whenever you’re ready. I’ve updated the Carnival HQ page to reflect the changes.
So I’m excited about this week. I’m excited about the Wii. I’m excited about “The Game.” It’s Ohio State/Michigan. It doesn’t get any bigger than that.
And if you’re wondering, I don’t really care much about the state of Michigan.
Wii is hitting the game-o-sphere
And it’s exploding! These guys got their hands on Wii’s, pre-launch. Lucky!
Here are some links for your reading pleasure.
Seth at The Gamechair got his Wii and put it through its paces. He mentions playing the bowling game in Wii Sports with his wife. It got me thinking about Mrs. Buttonmasher. She really likes bowling but I’m not a fan of actually going to the bowling alley, so this may serve as justification for my purchase of the Wii. Score one for making the missus happy! He also has some impressions of Excite Truck, Wii Sports and Zelda Twilight Princess. His piece about Zelda is an exceptionally good read.
Joystiq got their Wii and live blogged the whole experience. Looked like a lot of fun, I can’t wait to have mine in-hand. Everyone has mentioned the “Fitness” games on the Wii Sports They also looked at the manual in between Zelda play sessions. Speaking of Zelda, they also posted a point/counter-point discussing whether the new Zelda has “fallen flat” or not. Vladimir Cole says it did by basically bashing the fact that you can’t read signs from afar. Hardly a reason to say it falls flat. Christopher Grant provides the counter-point, pointing out that, “Twilight Princess offers the same brilliant core gameplay mechanics that have driven the series for the last twenty years.” Of course it does. Finally, they have a list of ten things you probably didn’t know about the Wii and its games. 5 heart pieces for a whole heart in Zelda?
Brian over at Kotaku unboxes his Wii. It’s like watching a nerd strip-tease. He also has a bunch of good stuff up, including his impressions with the controller, how backwards compatibly with Gamecube games look (a fresh coat of paint, he says). He didn’t seem impressed with Wii Sports. He did, however, have some good things to say about Zelda.
Destructoid (another blog favorite of mine, but renders horribly in Opera 9.1) did us the favor of posting links to all their videos and impressions in one place for your perusal.
I’m sure more Wii experiences will be hitting the blogs and I’ll try update this post as they come in.
As for my Wii plans, I’m still deciding. I currently have an Amazon.com gift certificate balance that would knock a big chunk of the price, so I may place an order with them. I’m on the “email alert list” for when they start taking orders but I haven’t heard anything yet, so I’m still waiting on that. Using Amazon for my Wii needs might delay the arrival of my Wii but I’ll have other diversions to take up my time until then.
Regardless, after reading people’s impressions of their new Nintendo console, I am getting excited about playing on myself. Very excited.
(On a side note, I noticed I’m still using the category “NREV” that I made when the Wii was still being referred to as the “Nintendo Revolution.” Guess it was time to update the category name!)
HDTV advice sought
Buttonmashing friend Bobster asked me for advice on getting a small HDTV that he can use as a dedicated Xbox 360 display. He wanted to keep it under $400 and wanted at least above average image quality. He asked me if I had any suggestions.
I’ve been researching HDTVs for a while now, but I’ve been looking at larger TVs, out of the range Bobster is looking at. Right off the bat I would recommend a Samsung LCD. I think a 23″ Samsung LCD (like this one) would fit the bill perfectly, but the cheapest I found was $569 at Amazon.com. I found this 23″ LCD TV by Olevia on sale locally at HHGregg for $399. I’ve heard good things about Olevia TVs and feel confident that it would be a solid 360 display.
But before I give Bobster my final recommendations, I wanted to ask my fellow Buttonmashers if they have any recommendations or experiences with HDTVs that fall in this price range (or experience with Oleviea TVs).
Any suggestions or comments are greatly appreciated.
Gears of War, Day 2
Last night I had a chance to put a little more time into Gears of War. Like I mentioned earlier, I definitely should have started with the “Casual” difficulty, as I’m enjoying the game a heck of a lot more now. Things are easier (duh) and move along a lot faster than before. I should note, though, that starting at a harder difficulty may actually be beneficial as I now have the skills to take the bad guys out with ease. At the “Hardcore” difficulty there was a lot of “blindfire” shoot-outs (blindfire meaning shooting at the badguys while staying completely covered. You don’t have much accuracy, but you stay safe from their gunfire). The enemies on the Casual level are easier to take down and don’t really coordinate themselves as well as they did on the harder level. I hardly ever have to resort to blindfire. I can’t begin to imagine how tough the Insane difficulty level will be. I imagine there will be a lot of blind shooting.
So the game has become a lot more fun. I can actually progress without having to do the same part over and over again. That definitely helps out in the “enjoyment” department. But I’m also seeing some flaws that I don’t like. If I catch a bad guy heading for cover and I start blasting him, he’ll zoom to safety at an unnatural speed. It looks like he’s warping through air to get to cover. I see it happening all the time and I don’t like it. If I catch him exposed, I should be able to put him down before he gets to cover. It’s cheap to see him safe behind a barricade when I could have easily dropped him before he got there.
The way the game handles your teammates survival is another thing I’m struggling with. I see why they did it (at least I think I do) but it’s still bothering me. If one your squad members is hurt, you can go over and “revive” him. It’s a good system. But if your mate goes down and you don’t get to him before you finish a set checkpoint, he’s immediately healed and waiting by your side. I assume they did that so you don’t have to backtrack and revive your comrade and then head back to the checkpoint. I get that. It’s just breaks the immersion a little bit.
Even still, GoW has a great single player game here, as I’ve not even touched the co-op or multiplayer parts yet. These flaws I point out are pretty minor, but still little thorns in the side of the game. I’m hoping to make some more progress this weekend and hopefully give the online portions of the game a go.
Gears of War First Impressions
I had a bit of a scare right off the bat — I started up my 360 to the red ring of death. I panicked because I ran the Dashboard update last week and hadn’t booted up the 360 since. Just last night I chatted with a buddy of mine whose 360 died on him shortly after updating, so I was certain mine was down for the count, too. But I turned it off, took a deep breath, restarted it and it booted right up. Phew. I thought I’d be GoW-less for a minute there.
So, what to say about my first impressions? I’ll be honest — for the first half hour, I was not digging GoW at all. I didn’t like the controls, they felt too sluggish for me and things didn’t feel right. The action was intense, almost too much so. At times, so many things were going on around me that I was completely disoriented and going crazy trying to figure out what the frack was going on. I couldn’t tell my teammates apart from the bad guys. As soon as I’d find something to shoot at, someone was blasting me in the face. I had no idea how he got around me, but there he was, punching my face in.
Then I realized that all the mayhem was exactly how the game was supposed to feel. The bad guys were actually using a little bit of strategy. One guy kept me occupied with the other one flanked me. I finally got comfortable with the duck-and-cover gameplay and how to watch my back and things started to click. I was using the environment to my advantage and I was curb stomping grubs in no time.
I think my first mistake was not starting off with the easy/normal difficulty. I jumped right in with the higher difficulty and I think that hindered my progress. When I go back to the game tomorrow, I’m starting over with the normal difficulty. Call me a sissy, but I’d rather get a better hang of the game before I tried to tackle the harder difficulties.
Aside from the control issues I have primarily, I can say that Gears of War is, so far, an excellent game. The visuals are stunning. The details, like heat coming off the barrel of the gun to the sweat and grime on the soldiers arms, are amazing. I still can’t get over how good things look, especially on my standard-def TV. It looks FANTASTIC. The sound is great and the voice acting is a treat as well. Gears of War is one polished game.
I will say that the learning curve is probably going to be steep for a lot of people. I think it may turn some people off, especially those who will be hoping for a run and gun shooter. GoW certainly isn’t that at all. But if you’re willing to get past the learning curve, GoW is extremely fun. I can’t wait to get back to it.
In my hands
Actually, the instruction booklet is in my hands, as Mrs. buttonMashing is watching the end of America’s Next Top Future Coke Addict and then it’s time for Lost. But after that, It’s Gears of War time, all the time.
I’ll be hitting up anyone that’s on Live after I finish the first couple of levels. See you on the Jacinto Plateau.
OK Go – Oh No
I don’t mention music a lot on this site unless it’s in the context of game music (which I love) but once and a while an album comes along that just has to be mentioned. As you can tell from my recent last.fm track list, I’ve been listening to a certain album in particular. Indulge me for a few moments to tell you how unbelieveably good the new OK Go album is, Oh No.
I’m sure most of you will have seen the famous OK Go “Treadmill” video. “Here It Goes Again” is a great track, but definitely not the best on the album. Oh No really doesn’t have a bad track. Top to bottom, Oh No is one of the best albums I’ve heard. OK Go’s distinct “alterna-pop” sound is unmistakable and a lot of fun to listen to.
Oh No starts with a great opening track, “Invincible”. The next two, “Do What You Want” and “Here It Goes Again” are two more fantastic songs. While “Invincible” is an excellent track, I think my favorite song on the album is “Oh Lately It’s So Quiet”. It’s an extremely smooth song with OK Go’s signature sound. The rest of the tracks aren’t simply filler, either. “Television, Television” has one of the best lines on the album — “You cannot fight the television.” I love it.
Actually, now that I think about it, this review isn’t completely unrelated to gaming. The first time I heard an OK Go song was on the “EA Trax” for Madden 2003, which included OK Go’s “Get over it” (another excellent song). I went out and bought their first album, OK Go, and have been a fan ever since. I highly recommend OK Go’s newest offering. I picked it up on iTunes for $6.93, an absolute steal (iTunes Link). Go forth and purchase this musical wonder.
Gears of War
I just finished listening to the 1-Up Yours podcast where they were gushing about Gears of War. The said even in Standard Definition, the game looks absolutely amazing. (They gave it a 10/10, by the way) I try not to get caught up in the hype machine (Gears of War has quite the hype machine) but I’m completely caught up.
There’s been an embargo on reviews until today, and they’re starting to pour in. They all look extremely positive.
I initially thought I’d be picking up a copy this evening, but I was at Best Buy earlier today and was informed that the game won’t be in until tomorrow. So after Lost tomorrow, I should knee-deep in Gears of War.
Thank you sir, may I have another?
That’s basically what my wallet will be saying all month long. First and foremost, we’ve got the release of the Wii. It’s up in the air whether I’ll be able to secure a Wii at launch or not, but I’ll still try my best to grab one. That is the first whack on my wallet’s behind.
Then we’ve got Gears of War and Call of Duty 3 for the 360. While it’s doubtful I’ll grab CoD 3, Gears of War is already on the shopping list. Whack!
My current console of choice gets two games I’m particularly excited about, Elite Beat Agents and Final Fantasy III for the DS. Ouch, this is getting ugly.
And finally, the coup de grace for the Gamecube, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess will be available for both the ‘Cube and the Wii.
It’s just not fair!