Starcraft 2 arrived and I’ve been playing the campaign a bit. The small amount of screen feels a bit claustrophobic after playing Supreme Commander 2 where you can zoom way out and the HUD isn’t so huge as it is in SC2. Still, super-high-quality art and sound though…and fun! Anyway, I’m nalter@gmail.com so add me to your buddy list.
Archive for the ‘videogames’ Category
We took a walk in the desert to some volcanic rock hills near our house last night around dark. I almost stepped on a small rattlesnake. It slithered away and barely made much noise until it got under a rock and then started rattling. It didn’t strike at me or anything. Later on, another another one immediately started rattling and I walked out of the way pretty quickly. I don’t remember ever seeing a rattler in the wild, but they seem to love warm rocks when the sun’s going down. We also saw the international space station flying by…looked like a slow flying star or something.
Vanessa’s brother and family have been visiting and I’ve gotten in some time on LittleBigPlanet with the kids and Supreme Commander 2 with da bruvah-in-law.
Starcraft 2 is set to come out on July 27th (unless it’s not.) It’ll sell a bazillion copies. I wonder if there are a lot of people for whom Starcraft is THE only RTS game. Maybe there are people out there who’ve been saying, “When is somebody gonna make another beautiful strategic game like that?” Thousands of developers who’ve been making games like Supreme Commander and Rise of Nations for the last ten years would just let out a collective scream of frustration. You can’t beat a name sometimes.
Computer, give me an RSS feed of games with a Metacritic score of 80 or higher that are currently on sale for $5 or less. I missed fl0w being available for free the other day!
I tried the new Gran Turismo 5 demo. Either I’m a bad driver (more likely) or the grass just off the track is covered with oil. I did more spinning out and frustrated gunning of the engine off the track than actual driving on the track.
I saw a movie in 3D Friday and was really impressed. One cool thing I noticed was that I actually had to change my focus between foreground and background as you do in real life. The theater charged $3.50 extra for the 3D version…I assume the projector is more expensive. I think you can keep the polarized glasses. They come in a sealed plastic bag and there’s a cardboard recycling box outside the theater where you can put them on the way out. I’m not sure how useful the glasses would be outside the theater. One cool thing to do with the glasses is to look in a mirror with them. Close one eye at a time and you can only see one eye at a time.
A little while back I saw a PC at Fry’s demoing 3D gaming. I thought I just remembered it using polarized glasses, but the ones on Nvidia’s site use LCD shutter glasses, which would be more expensive. I guess you need Vista/Windows 7, a compatible 120Hz monitor, and the shutter glasses. They have a list of compatible games. I was reading that it doesn’t work so well for some of these games, so it may not be ready for primetime yet. Anyway, it’ll be cool when it’s all working nicely. I wouldn’t buy any of this stuff yet.
Blu-ray is also planning to add 3D, but it’ll also require a compatible TV.
UPDATE: After reading this article on how theaters do 3D, I realize there is not much hope of using circular polarization on LCD monitors/TVs and that you probably always would have to use shutter glasses.
We got Lego Rock Band. It’s amusing trying to sing The Final Countdown or We Will Rock You. Makes you realize how high most song vocals are. PROS: more family-friendly lyrics, super easy mode for kids, your character is no longer stuck to one instrument, free play lets you just jump in and pick any song, cute challenges. CONS: emo, Counting Crows, fewer songs than previous releases.
I’m not sure I’ve got enough rhythm to calibrate the game properly. We tried to calibrate, but were getting different numbers every time. I’m tempted to get a Rock Band 2 guitar just to accurately calibrate it, since they come with a built-in calibration sensor.
Sean seems to have a superpower where he can remember videogame levels really well. I was playing Castlevania before they went to Houston and when he came back a week later, he remembered where to get the goggles in the game (a very obscure item.) If only his memory applied to more important things too.
Tonight, he goes to some sort of basketball evaluation where they see how much the kids know before the program starts. I hope they teach the kids all they need to know, cause I can’t remember much about basketball at all. I just hope he has fun.
Last night, I put SFIV in challenge mode (or whatever it’s called). You play in single player mode and random internet dudes come in and school you. It’s like playing in an arcade with infinite quarters. After about 20 rounds, I still don’t have a single victory. I gave several people their first victories. Maybe it was my tag, “Full of beans”. I’ve changed it to “Moe” so that should do better.
I pulled out Ye Olde Starcraft to install it on the netbook…but I have no CD drive. What to do? Well, like everybody else, Blizzard came out with their own Steam-like games download client. This is getting a bit annoying. I currently have Steam, Stardock, EA Downloader, and now Blizzard’s client. Anyway, you give them your CD key and they let you download a copy of the game that doesn’t require the CD. Huzzah! I guess you can’t blame Blizzard for doing this. I mean, they sell 99% of all PC games (WoW.) You think they’re gonna give a chunk of that change to Valve to put it on Steam? Nope.
