Category: Gaming

Deathspank strands me in a Demonic Mine

Posted on by Nimgimli

So I’ve been playing Deathspank, the hack & slash rpg-lite game from Ron Gilbert and Hothead Games. You can find it on PSN or XBLA for $15, or whatever arcane equivalent that is in Microsoft Points.

It plays basically like a Diablo or Torchlight, though it’s stripped down somewhat. Still, I’m really enjoying it but there’re reviews all over the place. So I’m not going to review it but I do want to tell you a story.

The other night I was on a quest to rescue a lost orphan. I have a special orphan sack in my inventory so I can carry lots of orphans, you see. I’ve heard one of these little tykes is in the Demon Mine. So off I go. The fighting is challenging but not impossibly so. I’m level 12 and the demons are 12-14. I can do this thing. I follow the signs to the Orphan Storage Area and finally I come face to face with the Demon Nanny, who is responsible for taking care of the captured orphans.

And I find that this Demon Nanny is a lot tougher than her Demon colleagues. I die. And die again. And again. And finally decide that I’ve bit off more than I can chew and that it’s time to head back above ground to take on easier tasks until I level up a bit. But it’s nearly midnight so I save my game and quit for the night.

So tonight I fire up Deathspank again and start making my way out of the Demon Mines. But all the baddies I killed on the way in have respawned. No worries, I killed them once, I can kill them again, and I need the exp. Then I run out of food. Uh-oh. As far as I can see, in Deathspank you don’t regain health automagically (if you do, it’s very, very slowly). You need to eat or drink potions to heal. Eating takes time and combat ‘breaks’ the process, and potions are instant regens. When you die, your drop a bunch of coins and respawn with about 1/3rd health at the Outhouse you most recently passed by.

So I was trapped. A horde of demons between myself and the exit, and me with no way to heal myself. The only thing I could do was whittle away at the baddies: kill one or two, die, respawn, kill another couple, respawn. Sometimes I wouldn’t even kill a single demon. Other times I’d get through three of four. I did find a couple of mushrooms (food items) in my pack which I used very judiciously.

It was *awesome* to be stuck in this position. It took me back to my days of playing Diablo when death meant dropping all your gear on your corpse and hoping you had backup stuff in town. Sometimes you’d died a second time and lose even more gear. Sometimes you’d start doing naked corpse runs… run through the monsters frantically clicking on gear and picking up a few bits before you died (you’d drop equipped gear but not stuff in your backpack, and clicking on fallen gear put it in your backpack). We’d curse up a storm in these situations and wind up playing much too late into the night and when finally we had all our stuff back it was *so* satisfying.

Kill-die-respawn. Kill-die-respawn. Slowly, painfully, I made it through the dungeon and finally saw the light of day once again. Deathspank was saved! He immediately ran back to town to gorge on pizza and fries.

It was the most fun I’ve had gaming in quite a while. And I’m sure most of today’s gamers, in that situation, would be complaining about how the game was broken, or too grindy, or something.

So here’s a salute to Ron Gilbert and Hothead Games for building something that can tickle the fancy of us old-timers who remember when games sometimes stacked the odds against you. Sometimes its good to be a punching bag.

Playstation Move in this month’s Qore

Posted on by Nimgimli

In the run-up to E3 I was pretty excited to see what Sony was going to show with regard to Move, their new Wii-like motion controller.

At the end of E3 I was asking myself “Why was I ever excited about that product?” The offers on display were pretty mediocre. There was that Sorcery game which looked fun, and the possibility of playing Socom with it, but most of the rest of the stuff just looked like higher res Wii games.

Then this month’s Qore came out and I remembered why I’d been excited. Move at E3 2009 was more interesting than Move at E3 2010 (and I’d honestly say the same for Microsoft’s Natal/Kinect). The July Qore has the same boring games on display, but then a series of tech demos which we (or at least I) haven’t seen since E3 2009. They have me interested in the potential (at least) of Move again. Whether any game developers ever use that potential is a very big question.

As a worst, and most likely, case most gamers, having seen the dull E3 2010 coverage of Move, will stay away from it in droves, and so developers will see no reason to support it, and it’ll end up another withered branch of the Playstation tree.

But before I gave up on Move entirely, I wanted to share these videos. (We’ll see how long they stay on YouTube before Sony has them removed.) In video 1, skip to the 5 minute mark if you’re not interested in seeing Veronica Belmont spew happy marketing-speak about the Move. The rest of video 1 and first half of video 2 are kind of interesting Move tech demos. The 2nd half of video two is a developer visit with the people making Move Sports or whatever their Wii sports clone is called.

A lot of this stuff boils down to using Move as a 3D mouse, really. I just think about the potential for using it in strategy games or RPGs, rather than silly Wii Sports wannabe titles.

Does sequel potential impact purchase decisions?

Posted on by Nimgimli

So Alpha Protocol came out a few weeks back. Reviews have been moderate, but I’ve heard more than one person say that in spite of some jankiness, they were still having fun with the game.

I was on the fence about getting it, figuring I would eventually but waiting on a good sale (after all, I’m neck deep in Steam games after the big 4th of July sale they had). Then, earlier this week, Sega announced that because sales of Alpha Protocol weren’t very good, they wouldn’t be creating any kind of a sequel for it. It was to be a 1 game intellectual property (IP).

I was surprised to find that this announcement dampened my interest in the existing game. I’m really not sure why; I haven’t taken the time to dig through my own psyche to figure it out. I mean, as far as I know Alpha Protocol stands along as a cohesive whole; no sequel is needed to complete the narrative or anything.

For the purposes of this post, why I feel the way I do isn’t really relevant. What’s interesting to me is just the fact that I felt that way: that by announcing there would be no sequel, Sega cost themselves a sale (or at least, delayed it…now I’ll wait for it to be a $5-$10 game on Steam before trying it).

And I was wondering if this is just another case where I’m way out on the lunatic fringe, or if anyone else felt this same way. So here’s today’s question:

Do you think that knowing a company has given up on a new IP would adversely impact your decision to buy the game that debuted the IP?

APB vs GiantBomb

Posted on by Nimgimli

I was listening to GiantBomb’s podcast, the BombCast, yesterday, and Jeff Gerstmann was talking about APB. He did a real hatchet job on the game, talking at length about things he didn’t like about the game. In some cases, things that don’t actually exist in APB.

Now in all fairness he said “I’m reserving judgement” but by the time he was done he’d convinced at least one of his cohorts (Ryan Davis) to not give the game a try. And I’m sure that same applies to some percentage of his listenership.

And even this wouldn’t be a problem if he wasn’t basing his experience totally on playing “for about an hour” during the pre-launch event.

Now APB most definitely has some flaws and I myself am still undecided about it. But I’m not a professional game journalist talking to thousands of listeners to my podcast and conveying mis-information about the game.

I’m going from memory, but here were some of his issues:

Point 1: the first ten minutes of him playing the game was chugging as it struggled to load textures.

OK, maybe that happened to him on his system. I haven’t seen that problem but APB is a beast that brings high-end systems to their knees. Should a journalist slag a game because it won’t run on their system? Virtually every PC game won’t run on someone’s system, somewhere. If this is a systemic problem then it’s fair game. If it only happens on his PC, then it isn’t.

Point 2: He went on and on about the payment model. He made it sound more confusing than doing your taxes when you’ve worked 2 jobs, owned a business, made half a million gambling and gotten married all in the same year. In fact this was his main focus: that the payment model is too hard.

Here is the payment model: The game comes with 50 hours of playing time. When you use that up, you can either go to a $10/month unlimited subscription, or you can spent $7 and get 20 more hours. For 99% of the players, that’s the whole payment model.

There are other things you can do if you really get into the game, but most players won’t ever touch them (I haven’t). Gerstmann focused on them. Here they are:

A) When you use the in-game voice chat you’ll get an ad once every 3 hours when you change zones. If that really bothers you (I almost never change zones in a single play session) you can pay some small fee to remove the ads.

B) There’s something called RTW Points that you can optionally purchase for real money and spend on a cash-shop to buy items. Same as almost every other MMO. This seemed incredibly confusing to Gerstmann; I guess he doesn’t play many MMOs.

He went on and on about the payment model to the point where he had Ryan Davis saying APB sounded like an accounting program and talking about roll-over minutes. WTF??

Point 3: The single player missions were dull and the PvP too infrequent.

This is where my jaw really dropped. There ARE NO SINGLE PLAY MISSIONS IN APB! Every mission has 2 sides. When you get invited to a mission you’re either initializing the mission, or you’re responding to a mission.

If you initialize the mission, the game will start asking people from the other side to respond to that mission. Until someone accepts the invite to respond, you will be playing unopposed. And its true that sometimes no one responds and you never encounter opposition. During pre-launch that happened a lot more than it does now.

If you respond to a mission in progress, you’ll immediately be in conflict with another team.

The point is, there are no dedicated solo missions and now that the game has launched you’re doing PvP pretty constantly. When you do end up running a mission unopposed it feels more like a breather than a problem.

OK I’ve rambled on enough about this. Like I said, APB has legitimate issues and if Gerstmann had gone after those (semi-broken matchmaking, lack of a manual, high system requirements) I wouldn’t have a problem with his comments.

But if you’re talking to a huge audience who, by the looks of the comments on Giant Bomb, idolizes you for some reason, I think you should be a bit more careful when it comes to talking trash about a game that you’ve barely played. RTW has enough of a challenge in front of them without high-profile gaming journalists tearing them apart over imagined issues.

APB: Cops vs Robbers

Posted on by Nimgimli

In APB every character has to choose a faction: Enforcer (cops) or Criminal.

I almost always play “good” characters when gaming; I really don’t like doing bad things to people, even pretend people. But in APB I choose Criminal because, well, I’ve played GTA IV (at least, until Niko’s forced actions became too unsavory for me) and I know that when I drive through a city, I tend to accidentally run over people. In APB, Criminals don’t get penalized for doing this but Enforcers do. So for practical reasons I went Criminal.

In APB, Criminals sow chaos and it can be a lot of fun just to cruise around the city making mischief. A lot of the times you’ll get missions that turn into car chases (with you the one being chased) and careening around corners, sliding into buildings, crashing through gates, destroying one car to the point where you have to bail out and steal another…it can be a ton of fun even if you eventually get caught.

But a bunch of Twitter friends who’re just started playing chose to go Enforcer, so last night I created an Enforcer character. Enforcers are penalized for committing crimes. Run over a mailbox in sight of a pedestrian and you’ve committed a crime. You can commandeer cars from people but, at least from my understanding, that’s going to cost you prestige, and the lower your prestige the lower your mission rewards will be. [Melmothulhu says I’m wrong and there’s no prestige cost of commandeering vehicles…I need to test this tonight. It would change playing as Enforcer a lot!] (This might be a good time to point out that RealTimeWorlds has NOT produced any kind of a manual for the game, lending to its “Paid Beta” status.)

So instead of madcap mayhem, I found myself doing a lot of running, or a lot of scratching my head wondering where I’d parked my car.

Those chase missions that are so fun as a Criminal are something of a pain in the neck as an Enforcer. You can’t drive with wild abandon; you have to be constantly wary of hitting things. And the missions I was drawing (on the Zombie server) tended to be small 1vs1 or at most 2v2 affairs.

The other problem, being a new character with low-level gear, is that you die constantly unless you’re a very skilled player. I’ll be the first to admit I am NOT a skilled player, but on my Criminal I at least have a modicum of success. My Enforcer was pure fail. After an hour of playing my newbie Enforcer I quit the game in frustration and declared that I was done with APB.

After cooling down a bit, I jumped back in on my Criminal, and the fun flooded back in. I’d get calls for backup constantly and when I said “Yes” to those would get dumped in as team member #4 fighting against 3-4 man teams of Enforcers. Once you get that many people even an unskilled player can have fun as they can help distract the other side, or finish off wounded opponents, or even just be the driver.

And when not on a mission, the joy of spreading chaos returns. Bottom line: for me, playing a Criminal in APB is an activity that is full of laughs and grinning cringes and fist pumps from a lucky shot. Somehow when I die as a Criminal, it’s no biggie. I laughed out loud when I was breaking into a car and suddenly an Enforcer rammed me going full speed, squishing me against the car I was trying to steal. Well, first I jumped out of my chair (had no idea he was coming) and then I laughed.

Playing an Enforcer, on the other hand, was an exercise in frustration. No one responded to my own calls for backup, no calls for backup popped from other players. All the missions I fought were 1v1 or at most 2v2. I spent way too much time running around and not enough time driving with reckless abandon. It just wasn’t fun.

Part of this is in the nature of the two roles each side plays. Part of it is because the Enforcer was new and poorly equipped.

But part of it, I suspect, is that the Enforcer side is populated by organized gamers who’re already in Clans and regular groups. When I’d get into a good fight as a Criminal, I’d often see everyone on the other side who killed me (which was pretty much everyone on the other side) was part of the same clan. Criminals, in contrast, are just a bunch of crazy-assed gamers having fun. The Criminal side has lots of open groups and lots of calls for backup going on.

If you, like me, are someone who doesn’t have a regular group of gaming friends to play with, and you’re finding the Enforcer side of APB to be not-very-fun, I strongly urge you to roll a Criminal before you give up on the game. Spend some time stealing vehicles and taking them to the drop off points to earn a bit of $$. Hit Yes to Calls for Backup. Join one of the many open groups. Just have fun. Criminals are easy-going fun-lovers. Enforcers…. aren’t.

OnLive’s LEGO Harry Potter Contest

Posted on by Nimgimli

To commemorate this milestone, we’re going to have a contest! The first OnLive member to make it all the way through LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 will win an Apple iPadTM, and the next 5 OnLive members will win an Apple iPod touch®. The six winning entrants will:
OnLive made a big splash when it launched but then things quieted down a bit. In some ways it’s success and it’s slow roll-out is working against it. Games just work… once you report that there isn’t all that much to say about the service!

So now they’re shaking it up. At 12:01 PDT tonight, LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 hits the service. At 12:01 PDT tonight, you can be playing the game before anyone else not on OnLive is (unless someone broke street date). For people who go to midnight launches and stuff, being first seems to really matter. With OnLive you don’t have to go to the store, download the game or even install it.

To emphasis the speed thing, OnLive is running a contest. The first member to finish the game gets an iPad, and the following 5 get an iPod Touch. That’s an idea that will appeal a lot to some people. Me, I can’t think of anything less appealing then rushing through a game, but that’s just me.

Here’s the full email. I hope OnLive runs more contests like this one…it’s a nice way to play off the strengths of their service.

———————————————————————————————-
Greetings from the OnLive Community Team!

We hope you have been enjoying the brand new OnLive Game Service! We’ve been open to the public for just ten days so far, and the initial feedback we’ve received has been very positive. We’re very excited about the opportunities that OnLive opens up in the videogame world.

And of course, we’ll be adding lots more games! The first new game will be added just after midnight tonight, and we’re celebrating with OnLive’s first contest! Here’s an announcement we just posted on OnLive’s blog:

LEGO Harry Potter: Years 1-4 is being released tonight at 12:01 AM PDT on Tuesday, June 29th. What makes this a major milestone for OnLive—and showcases an awesome benefit of instant gaming—is OnLive members will be playing the game before anyone on any other platform. No waiting for a store to open or waiting in line to buy a physical disc. No downloads, updates, installs or authorizations required. (And, no Windows required if you are a Mac user.)

With OnLive you Just Play. It’s better than being first in line!

  • Have a PlayPass for the game to participate in the contest, so if you are logged in just prior to the game going live, we recommend you log out and log back in at 12:01AM to be sure your Marketplace list is refreshed and all PlayPass options appear for the game.
  • Take a Brag ClipTM video showing collection of all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and reaching the final bonus level. Specifically, winning Brag Clip videos must show you have collected all 200 Gold Bricks in the game and have become Lord Voldemort in the final bonus level. You must enable “All players” to view your Brag Clips video under the Privacy settings in the OnLive Game Service Dashboard.
  • Send an email to community@onlive.com with your Player Tag (associated with the Brag Clip video of the game completion screen), First Name/Last Name, Address, Telephone Number and Date of Birth in the body of the email as soon as you have completed the game. Entrants will be ranked based on when OnLive receives a properly completed email.
  • Receive a contest confirmation email from OnLive to confirm receipt of your validated entry. Remember that your OnLive Account will only save your last 15 Brag Clip videos, so wait until the winners of the contest have been announced by OnLive before making any more Brag Clip videos that might delete the game completion Brag Clip video.

For full contest rules and eligibility please click here.

Regardless of whether you’d like to participate in this contest, we very much appreciate the time you’ve taken to try out OnLive in its very earliest days, and we welcome and encourage your feedback (please email to support@onlive.com). There are lots of new features and performance improvements coming to the OnLive Game Service as we catch up with initial demand. Your feedback will help us tune OnLive to best meet the needs of OnLive Members.

Looking forward to seeing you in the OnLive Community! Have a great time and Just Play!

–Matt Jensen
OnLive Community Manager

APB, Day 2

Posted on by Nimgimli

So back I went to APB today, and continued my love/hate relationship with the game.

I’ve found, as someone who solos as a rule, that accepting “Call for Backup” missions is my favorite way to go. When you accept one of these you get thrown into the group that called for backup and can help them complete their mission. Once the mission ends, the group dissolves. I love that mechanic as I hate being shackled to a group.

When the matchmaking works, it can be great fun. I got into some great 3vs3, 3vs4, & 4vs4 fights where our team worked together and they were awesome. I also got into a lot of 2vs4 fights where the dude that called for backup apparently sat in a garage somewhere the whole time.

And even with the numbers, missions can be really one-sided. I finally figured out how to pay attention to a player’s Threat Level. As you gain threat levels you gain access to better gear. You don’t have stats that go up, so they aren’t really ‘levels’ in the traditional sense. A player who is threat level 9 who has never upgraded his gear isn’t going to have a more powerful character than a player who is threat level 1. And player skill factors in heavily.

But generally speaking, a Threat level 9 is going to be more lethal than a Threat level 1. And I was in missions where one side had Threat Levels of 1, 3 & 4 vs a team with 2, 4, 7 & 8. That wasn’t pretty.

But at the end of the day, teamwork is what matters even more than threat level. Focusing fire, flanking, watching all ingress vectors.. that’s all going to help a bunch. So as a solo player who hasn’t used a mike yet, I’m going to be at a huge disadvantage, but that’s my choice so I’m not really complaining about it… just noting it.

I did also find something I’m pretty good at: driving. Whenever I get an Evade mission I tend to do pretty well since I can drive around the city pretty much flat out, making me hard to catch, unless the Enforcers have enough cars to cut me off.

Still, the funnest thing in the game for me is just messing around, mostly in cars. Since you can smash into anyone you can help out, sorta, even if you aren’t part of a mission. If I see an Enforcer cruising along with his lights on and siren blaring, I’ll do everything I can to run him off the road… 🙂

My other favorite thing is people who haven’t yet figured out that voice chat is heard by everyone in proximity. So they’ll be ‘sneaking up’ on you and chatting about what they’re doing the whole time. Before too long people will start using that as deliberate misdirection.

Oh, and I tried the Enforcer side a bit too. It didn’t feel all that much different from a gameplay point of view, except you can’t jack any car you see without consequences. If I end up playing over the long run I might switch. There’s a lot of stuff the Criminals do that is a bit harsh for my weird tastes. So I come flying around a corner and slide sideways through a crowd of pedestrians, it doesn’t really bother me, but mugging, for instance, isn’t my thing. When you mug someone you punch them in the face a bunch of times even though they’re quaking with fear. I just don’t like doing that.

And actually they’ve managed to make the Enforcer side seem kind of cool. Nice job with that.

I’ll be very surprised indeed if I use up my 50 hours of play time and find myself wanting more of APB. I’m pretty sure it’ll be a short-term interest for me. Once the game launches and people who play 40 hours a week hone their skills, it’s going to be nothing but frustration for casual players like me.

APB, Day 1

Posted on by Nimgimli

Today started “Early Access” in APB. I logged in this morning and spent some time making a character and a shirt that looks like it came from Woot and putting decals on a car. I didn’t get to actually play until later this evening.

APB is a pretty humbling experience, and I think Real Time Worlds is going to have trouble pulling in people once the initial sales taper off. The problem is that there’s no real way to balance things. When I started playing tonight, with my default gun and it’s very deliberate rate of fire, I was being cut down left and right by people with machine guns. I played for a while and earned enough cash to get a machine gun… and then started running into people with shot guns. Basically all night I felt like I was out-matched in the weapons department. And that’s after people I’m up against have been playing for 1 day. What’ll it be like for a newbie in 3 weeks?

There are only 2 combat zones in APB and there’s no sense of ‘levels’ in them, so you’re just thrown into the shark tank. In theory, I guess, the game will assign relatively equivalent firepower against you. Wait, let me back up…

Y’see, it’s full PvP (really it’s just a shooter). So I, as a Criminal, get a mission from a contact. Say it’s “Spray graffiti at these locations” and I get waypoints to head to. At this point there’s no opposition and no one can shoot me. But after the few seconds I’ll get a message that Enforcers (cops) have been dispatched to stop me. I *assume* the game is offering the mission of stopping me to someone relatively close to me in terms of gear, but I’m not sure.

Now what the game doesn’t know is that I suck at online shooters. It’d be nice to know there’s some kind of matchmaking that looks at my cumulative win/lose score and finds an opponent who’ll be an even match. It’s really too early to see if this exists or not. I hope it does.

My other concern is that defending seems a lot easier than attacking. So often, as a Criminal, I’ll be tasked with occupying a particular area. There’s a lit circle I have to stand in while a timer counts down. The Enforcers, if they get there first, will invariably get up on a roof. So in order to control this circle, I first have to get up onto the roof and kill the Enforcer. To get up onto a roof you climb ladders. To climb a ladder you hit a single key and your character ‘auto-pilots’ up the latter. And when you get to the top you immediately get a face full of shotgun or SMG before you’ve really reestablished control of your character.

I think the ‘right’ way of taking out someone on a roof is by getting up onto another roof and sniping him. If I had a sniper rifle. Long range gunplay is normally pretty ineffective in APB since if you start taking fire you just duck behind something and auto-heal back up. Of course while you do that, the other dude is healing back up as well.

Further on the ‘right’ way to play… get a team. That way while one of you is playing cat and mouse with the Enforcers, the other can occupy the target area.

Now for all that whining, there are moments when the game is really fun, too. And sometimes it’s fun just watching others play. You see these crazy firefights break out and can just spectate since you aren’t part of the mission, so their bullets won’t harm you (though explosions will still kill you, and anyone can shoot a car and make it explode).

So far my favorite missions have been those where I get called in as backup. If you accept one of these, you get stuck into a group with whomever is working on the mission you’re backing up. Then you can run in and help. Even if you suck (like I do) you can at least distract the other side.

I have a lot of fun just driving around causing chaos, too. The zones are pretty full today, which means you’ll get caught in the midst of plenty of chases and running firefights.

I’m liking APB so far, but mostly in short sessions. I get frustrated pretty quickly and need to learn to recognize that in myself and bail out before the game stops being fun.

The new Xbox, hands-on

Posted on by Nimgimli

Last Monday at their E3 press conference, Microsoft dropped…well, not a bombshell, but a really large firecracker, when they made official the long-rumored “Xbox Slim” and said it was shipping to retailers that same day. I snagged one from Best Buy on Friday and have been dinking around with it on and off since. So far I’m pretty happy.

Now I should put me and Xbox in perspective. My old Xbox 360 was a 20 GB model with a manufacture day of September 2006. It’s my third Xbox. My first Xbox (I was one of the lucky few to get a 360 on Day 1) died without having the decency of RRODing, so I had to pay $100 to get it “fixed.” It took several weeks for MS to get my dead one, replace it and get a refurb back to me. I was not a happy camper. My second Xbox died less than a year later, so my repair warranty was still in effect. That time turn-around was much faster, too.

But generally I haven’t been a huge Xbox 360 fan. Besides reliability issues, my old Xboxes were *loud*. If you have a relatively new model you probably can’t imagine how loud the original units were. With my first two units, I could play the Xbox with full headphones (not earbuds) on and still easily hear the turbine whine of the fan over the game sounds being pumped right into my noggin. It was that loud. You had to raise your voice to be heard over it. Seriously.

The third unit, the one I’m replacing, was a bit quieter but still too loud for me ever to watch Netflix or stream music on the 360.

So, low reliability and super noisy. The third problem I had with the original was that 20 gb hard drive. Back when the system launched that sounded like plenty of space, but for the past year or so I’ve felt extremely constrained on disk space. Of the 20 GB about 5 GB is taken up by the OS (or something). Suffice to say that if I wanted to download a new demo, I’d have to go and delete something else, and installing games to disk and Games on Demand were out of the question. The recent addition of USB support did help that some. A 16 GB USB stick pretty much doubled my usable space.

OK enough bitching about the old Xbox, let’s talk about this shiny new black model. The cost is the same as the old Xbox ($300 US) but it does come with built-in WiFi. Not a feature I’ll put to use since my entertainment center has wired internet access, but for a lot of people it’ll be a nice perk. A 250 GB hard drive feels enormous to me. (We’ll see how long that lasts!) When Kinect comes out, the new Xbox has a dedicated port for it that’ll supply power as well as data transfer to Kinect (not that I’m all that interested in Kinect at this point). 2 USB ports on the front, 3 on the back, so plenty of room for expansion.

What’s missing? Well, some of the bulk, for one thing. But this isn’t really an Xbox Slim in the same way that Sony drastically reduced the size of the PS3 with the PS3 Slim. The new Xbox is smaller but not radically smaller. Sites with whiz-bang electro-tools say this new one uses significantly less power than the old one, which is nothing but good news.

One other thing missing that MS is downplaying are ports for the old-style Microsoft Memory Units. If you’re upgrading and have data on one of those, you’ll need to transfer that data to a USB stick on your old Xbox before swapping in the new Xbox. That’s not a big deal unless you get home ready to play and find out about it. USB sticks are dirt cheap these days so just be sure to pick one up when you’re buying your Xbox. Also there’s no HDMI cable in the box, but I think MS stopped supplying those a while ago. They do include a proprietary composite cable; if you need component cables those made for the old 360 will work (thanks to JD at XBoxSupport for confirming this). The new Xbox has a separate optical audio port, thank goodness. For my set up, I used HDMI for video and optical audio (ancient receiver w/no HDMI ports) so I don’t need to use the proprietary cables at all.

One benefit of my tiny 20 GB hard drive is that I didn’t need a MS Transfer Kit to move into the new Xbox; I just used a USB stick. It was a bit slow but otherwise worked like a charm. I couldn’t transfer some saves from original Xbox games; I’m not even sure what the status of backwards compatibility is. Those saves were years old and I won’t miss them.

So now we’ve got this puppy all powered up (and how come swapping 1 component of your home theater always turns into a bigger project of tweaking everything else) what’s the experience like?

Well, it’s an Xbox. There’re no new revelations, really. Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. When a disk is spinning, you can definitely hear it. It isn’t really whisper quiet, and in my case the noise, which is a low-frequency hum, really drives me batty. That’s a very personal observation. I’m just bothered by this type of sound; it gives me a headache. Y’know how some people are really bothered by fingernails on a chalkboard? Low-frequency hums do that to me. Angela doesn’t even notice it, and when I pointed it out to her she could hear it but it didn’t really bother her at all. If this kind of noise bothers you, you already know it and should be aware of the issue. If you’re wondering what the heck I’m going on about, just ignore this paragraph. 🙂

So far that’s the extent of the bad news, and with that big fat 250 GB hard drive it isn’t bothering me much, because my intent is to install all my games to the hard drive anyway. That way the Xbox just has to poll the drive to make sure the disk is there and then we’re back to silent running. Because when the drive isn’t spinning, the new Xbox *is* whisper quiet, and that has completely changed the Xbox experience for me. I find myself watching videos and poking around in the dashboard looking for things to watch. I’ll probably start using Netflix on the Xbox more now, just for the pseudo-social aspects of it (in our house we have approximate 523 devices that will stream Netflix…ok I exaggerate, but we have a Roku, 2 PS3s, the Wii, 2 iPads, all the computers plus the Xbox 360, all of which can stream Netflix. Before now the Roku was my #1 source).

Game demos? Load me up. Games on Demand? I’m downloading my first one as I type this. Who knows, I might even dabble in the Zune Marketplace to see how their 1080P content looks (generally I’m an Amazon Video-on-Demand/Roku guy, but that tops out at 720P).

Oh, and it’s worth noting that hardware-geek sites say the new Xbox loads games faster. I don’t really have a way to measure that, so I’ll take their word for it.

All in all, I’m very pleased with the new Xbox 360 so far. My one concern is whether it’ll have any reliability issues; so far I haven’t heard anything negative along those lines (and my guess is that MS went above and beyond the call of duty in insuring they don’t have a repeat of the RROD fiasco).

[UPDATE: Kotaku has a post showing a new Xbox shutting down due to over-heating. This is a good sign (at least in theory): if the system gets too hot it shuts itself down before (hopefully!) any permanent damage is done.]

So should you get one? If you’re like me and have a launch Xbox 360 with a jet turbine for a fan, then I’d say yes, it’s definitely worth it. Otherwise, if you’re considering an upgrade, it’s probably a safe bet that waiting for the fall will get you a better deal; there’s bound to be some kind of Xbox + Game bundles around the holidays, and if you’re interested in Kinect then for sure there’ll be Xbox + Kinect bundles.

Remember at the end of the day it’s still an Xbox 360. Quieter and with a nice big hard drive, but it’s not a radical change. It’s just a nice solid evolution on the Xbox 360 design. For me, I got HDMI, peace and quiet and lots more drive space so I’m very pleased with the unit so far.

OnLive first look

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve had nothing but snarky comments for OnLive since it was first announced. See The Emperor Has No Clothes! (OnLive), OnLive, a new game-changing technology or OnLive’s streaming game service to launch June 17th. I don’t expect you to go read all those, but if you did, you’d find that I slipped in a virtual sneer at every chance I got.

I was absolutely positive this service was snake oil.

Tonight I got in and… dammit, it works pretty well. I’m gonna have to eat my words.

Tonight I’m just going to convey my experience with a game; there’s a lot to talk about re: social aspects of the service but I’ll leave that for another day.

I selected Borderlands as the first game to try, partially because Scopique chose it (and I wanted to compare notes) and partially because I just wanted to play it. I haven’t played Borderlands on PC before and only a bit on the 360.

I fired it up and more or less instantly was seeing the intro stuff. You get 30 minutes of demo time per game, but otherwise a demo is the full game, and that includes intro movies, tutorials and stuff. That’s a slight flaw and in a perfect world they’d start your timer when you got control of your character, but I realize that’s asking a lot.

The game ran pretty nicely. One weird thing was when I aimed my gun, distant terrain and enemies would be blurry and then come into focus. I don’t know if this is an OnLive artifact or a style choice. It didn’t feel wrong…in fact it felt pretty neat. Like I’m raising my gun and squinting down the sights to focus on a target.

A very few times things went slightly wonky and I’d suddenly turn 180 degrees or something. This didn’t happen enough that it hurt the experience, but it’s worth mentioning. Presumably the OnLive servers aren’t packed yet.

So I ran around killing stuff, finished a few quests, made a level, then my demo ran out. So now I had a choice to make. In the case of Borderlands, I could buy a “Full Pass” for $29.99 and have full access to the game for as long as I was subscribed to OnLive (that’s the same price I’d pay to just buy the game from Steam) or I could buy a 5 day pass ($8.99) or a 3 day pass ($5.99). So there are options, at least for Borderlands.

On the other hand, Assassin’s Creed II was $39.99 for a Full Pass (again, same as Steam) and had no short term rentals, but Batman Arkham Asylum only had 3 & 5 day passes ($4.99 & $6.99 respectively) with no Full Pass option. Splinter Cell Conviction was $59.99 for a Full Pass, no other options.

Point being every game is different. Scopique played some demos where you could save your progress and pick right up from where you left off if you bought the game, but Borderlands, when the demo ran out, let me know that my progress wasn’t saved. It’d be nice to know this ahead of time.

There’s no way I’d pay $60 for Splinter Cell Conviction on this service, but I could see myself buying a 3-day pass to Batman some weekend, if I didn’t already own the game on the PS3. Or even a 3-day pass to Borderlands if some friends were playing some weekend.

I feel like I’m focusing too much on the negatives here. The fact is, I was *stunned* that the service works. It was really nice jumping into a game without have to download or install anything (once the OnLive client was installed, that is). While I was playing, Angela was in EQ2 and she didn’t notice any lag caused by my OnLive-ing, which was something I was concerned about.

And my PC is decent for gaming, but pretty much every game kicks the video card’s fan into high gear, making the PC suddenly start sounding like a vacuum cleaner. That didn’t happen playing OnLive, since my PC wasn’t doing the heavy lifting. And if you have a snappy internet connection but not such a great PC, OnLive should in theory be right up your alley.

With their special offer, the first year of OnLive is free, and I’ll definitely be using it at least now and then. Year 2 it’ll cost $4.95/month; we’ll see if I’m up for that. After that the intent is for it to go to $14.95/month and I’m pretty sure I would not do that, unless it came with some kind of perks (certain games free each month or something along those lines).

There’s a bunch of social stuff that I’ll go into more in another post if people are interested, but suffice to say it’s kind of fun watching other people play games now and then.

If you try out OnLive, add me as a friend: my gamertag there is Jaded (same as it is on Xbox Live).