So, I’m back.

I’ve been busy with work (55-60 hour weeks can’t be wrong) and I’ve also been busy with the SOGC. Drama abound.

There won’t be as many reviews coming (hell, there probably won’t be as many posts coming) but I need a place to keep my game-related musings and rants.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

The unthinkable has happened - my 360 has died on me.

It’s not a run-of-the-mill RROD, either. It all started towards the end of a good gaming session when the graphics suddenly began to distort, as if the colour depth had changed to 16-bit. Eventually the signal output had completely vanished, leaving me with a console that could produce sound but no video. It was well out of warranty (and, if I remember correctly, the extended warranty only applies to RROD symptoms).

I was playing 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand at the time, so perhaps there was some kind of karmic force at work.

After a bit of investigation, I deduced that an X-Clamp mod was needed. After spending a bit of money on some opening tools and the necessary screws and washers, I cracked it open and got to modding.

All things considered, it went quite smoothly at first. The guide I followed to dismantle my 360 was extremely detailed and well written, and removing the x-clamps was not as difficult as I expected. Soon I had a neatly arranged pile of parts. With any luck, I could be done by this weekend.

Then I got to the heatsink.

It was a GPU heatsink that already had some standoffs screwed in. It had a hex head so you could use a wrench to remove it, but as I worked at it with the wrench I found that I was gradually stripping the edges. It was stuck fast.

Not to be taken aback, I decided to get a dremel and cut a line across the top so I could use a flat-head screwdriver to remove it. The screw was still stuck hard - so hard that when I tried using the screwdriver, the metal on the screw began to warp.

Dejected, I resorted to one last try - drilling a hole straight through the middle of the screw and using a screw extractor to gradually ease it out. After successfully getting the screw extractor to catch, I began to wind it out…and the tungsten screw extractor snapped clean off with a surprisingly clear *ping*.

So now I have a 360 GPU heatsink with a screw stuck in one of the holes. A replacement one is on its way to me.

Now that I think about it, I could have saved myself the money spent on drill bits and screw extractors and bought the replacement heatsink in the first place…but it’s the principle, damn it.

So, I just finished Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.

I’ll admit that my main reasons for playing the game were only to hear exaggerated wild west accents, and to shoot pistols akimbo like the crazy Texan from The Simpsons.

BiB did deliver in both regards, but what really surprised me was the thought and care put into the story. The characterisation was a pleasant surprise, with a mixed cast consisting of a young preacher; a womanising lasso twirler; a headstrong and violent gunslinger; a deceitful Mexican bandito and his beautiful yet manipulative woman; a scorned Southern general; and an Apache brave. It’s a large list of characters to follow for a First Person Shooter, of all things, but the story is warm and chewy like well-made popcorn. It doesn’t require you to think too much, but it employs enough drama to keep you interested as to why you’re slinging guns and popping rifles.

Graphics and presentation are stunning, with a heavy emphasis on post-processing effects. High-end cards are the order of the day here.

Some nifty gameplay elements attempt to separate this from the numerous other shooters out there. There’s the option to choose one of the two playable brothers in the game, which usually means different weapons and abilities. There’s also a heavy focus on time-slowing, which is erring into the realm of cliche, but it’s relevant and it works, for the most part. The gun showdowns are something different, although the controls are a bit awkward when using the mouse.

It’s not so much essential gaming as it is comfort gaming. Well worth a second-hand purchase and definitely worth a look if you find it marked down.

I’ve been playing a lot of fighting games recently. It started off somewhat innocently, throwing a few carefree fireballs in Street Fighter 4 and thinking nothing of it.

And suddenly I felt like something more. Maybe it was the lack of gritty realism. Perhaps I just wasn’t convinced that a Honda, a sumo wrestler, could exhibit such a display of dexterity and agility. Or it could have been the fact that Seth was pounding my characters skull into the screen while stealing my credit card numbers and using my computer as part of his spam botnet.

So I moved on to UFC 2009 Undisputed and Fight Night Round 4.

Fight Night Round 4 feels a lot more sedate than FNR3. FNR3 was about big haymakers, dramatic counter-punches and chicks in bikinis. It was larger than life, so to speak.

FNR4 is more grounded. There’s a lot more focus on how inside work is done, thanks to the improved model clipping and counter system. Stray punches can get caught in the opponent’s arms and wild blows can be hit and miss. Counters are somewhat easier to pull off and are a lot more punishing. Leaning isn’t as effective as in FNR3 but the addition of Weaving is useful (if somewhat open to abuse). The controls are bit more accessible and don’t require as many buttons. Clinching is still pretty rudimentary, since you can just press a button to push the other guy off you.

Undisputed, on the other hand, makes FNR4 look like a tickling competition. Nothing says “mainstream lower-middle class society” than glorifying no-holds-barred fighting, and Undisputed is king of the hill in this regard. Within 15 minutes I was going Muay-Thai on some poor sucker’s ass, whipping his neck and driving my knees into the bastard’s face. The submission/ground work wasn’t all too intuitive, with a lot of stick and button mashing to get some kind of action going. (Not to mention that seeing two sweaty grown men writhing on the ground can easily give the wrong impression.)

That wasn’t to say that, after spending a session on it, I felt the urge to drink a glass of raw eggs mixed with protein powder and join a kickboxing gym so I could “defend myself” after I’ve had a few drinks and some guy was trying to steal the girl I’d been hitting on all night.

I also find it amusing that the Government elect decide to say one thing about how it’s bad that we’re jacking cars in GTA, and yet they decide to classify a game that involves two grown men beating each other to submission in a cage. But hey - I figure the youth of today need to know when to tower over someone and beat their opponent’s face in.

Great game. And great longevity, too - I’m still going through the single player (although I have been distracted with other stuff, lately).

Hit the image for the full write up.

If I had to make a list of things in Prototype to whinge about, the ridiculous title styling would make the top five. Because it’s not Prototype - it’s [PROTOTYPE]. Square brackets are back in vogue, baby.

Other than that, I experienced a complete about-face on this game. My first impressions after the linear “tutorial” level and the first few minutes of “parkour” (which…isn’t, as I’ll explain later) were that this game was half-finished. The graphics were disappointingly sub-par; the AI was awkward; and the controls were initially cumbersome. The so-called street running kicks in whenever you hold down the right trigger, which sends your character sprinting up the sides of buildings, tumbling over obstacles, hopping on cars and flying around corners. It’s not the same kind of parkour as you’d see in, say, Assassin’s Creed, Mirror’s Edge or Prince of Persia. Alex Mercer is simply too powerful and too wild compared to the graceful elegance of Altair.

Instead, Mercer looks like he’d be better placed in Crackdown. He can jump several stories, propel himself through the air, and glide between buildings. And if he’s equipped armour, he simply barges through obstacles instead of jumping over them.

But once I got over the initial expectation that he was supposed to be this precise acrobat, I quickly warmed to the idea that he was an untamed animal, summoning weapons at will and dismembering both innocent and guilty alike. I relished in the free falls from skyscrapers that ended in meaty impacts, sending cars flying (although I would have loved to get the same impression of falling as in Mirror’s Edge).

The gritty graphics simply allowed for excessive amounts of chaos to fill the screen. Strike Teams of attack choppers filled the sky unloading payloads into the street, supporting tanks that focused their fire on Hive Buildings. Jarheads rush onto the field of battle, firing at infected civilians that have choked the streets. Hunters emerge from Hives, rushing towards the soldiers as they cut blindly at the air in front of them. Explosions surround you, barely stifling the screams and the radio chatter. And you’re in the middle of it all, with the game hardly skipping a beat.

There is a surprising amount of variety in the side missions to keep you distracted, and there are plenty of upgrades that unlock some vicious attacks. Mercer’s takedowns are brutal and violent, and the game doesn’t let up on action, pace or sweet sweet blood.

The story was standard “Gubmint-conspiracy” fare, bogged down by the bizarre emotional delivery of Mercer’s lines, but it’s good for some mindless enjoyment.

And that’s the aim of the game, here. Other than the upgrades, there is nothing to truly aspire to in this title. There is no high learning curve, nor reward for time invested. (Those “stealth” missions would be a dead giveaway.) It’s to fulfil your dreams of being both ridiculously agile and near omnipotent. It’s the reason why media producers make things with big explosions and bad-ass characters - to appeal to the baser emotions in us.

Playing [PROTOTYPE] (sigh) is like eating copious amounts of average quality chocolate. It’s not good for you, and it’s not even the best stuff out there…but it tastes damn good. Not bad for a sandbox title.

In my eyes, it’s one thing to be a gamer and another to be a LANner.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that broadband would have all but trampled the LAN scene into dust. Better gaming services and big, fat trunks have helped gamers all over the hood/country/world to connect to others and blow giblets out of each other in the comfort of their lounge rooms. There hardly seemed to be any incentive to pack up one’s rig and peripherals, lug it over to the local community hall and connect with other pale, sweaty nerds in order to share Linux ISOs and overrun bases with Zerglings.

But the scene was still there. It became this culture where gamers could convene and admire other people’s hardware, meet online personalities face to face and build new friendships. Sure, broadband might have taken away the need to leech files off other LANners, but that was never the point of LANning. It was, and always will be, about the games - the sick, perverse joy you can only get from knifing the last terrorist on the map and hearing a cry of anguish from the other side of the room.

Just recently, a prominent LAN in the Sydney metro area was up for sale. Its admins had been retrenched. After being around for 10+ years, it became clear that it was no longer operating as a profitable venture to the media company that owned it.

The noise surrounding its departure was fairly muted, with some of the old guard reminiscing about the “good ol’ days”. I noticed that hardly any current gamers made any comment, and I had a feeling it was because the current attendees had turned a gaming LAN into a leeching ground. Given that sponsors were advertising games at the very events where they were being illegally distributed, it was bound to end badly.

But that couldn’t have been the only reason. My theory is that the gamers, the truly hardcore gamers…they are a dying breed. Where I said in my earlier post that the entry barrier to gaming was greatly lowered, the quality of opponent has dwindled. Masters of the trade became complacent. They grew up, they took jobs, they found wives, they had kids. The number of people that actually want to play games fell, and the number of people that attended simply to P2P took their place. LANs turned into places were DC++ gets more bandwidth than the latest FPS.

What can be done? Bring the focus back to gaming. It’d be folly to try and eliminate file-sharing entirely; rather, give the gamers a reason to keep forking over money per visit. Hold worthwhile competitions; get decent prizes in; hardware tech demos; game beta sessions…gamers can play with other players from their living rooms. They need incentive to get them out of the house and into the scene.

LANners are those that take their gaming seriously. It’s evident that LAN events need to follow suit and give them a reason to keep coming back, as well as encouraging their friends to join in.