Not just another NPC - (ds-x2 ver.)

After positive reviews and lack of a XB360, my curiosity drove me to download the PC DirectX9 version and give it a shot. I’m not a big first person(/over-the-shoulder) shooter person, but I do enjoy a good game of Battle field(1942 DC or 2), Quake3 arena, and even Metroid Prime: Hunters. I dislike Halo because I find it a bit bland, slow, and even a bit broken. Luckily -from what I hear- I think Halo 3 seems to have fixed all that, but this isn’t about Halo or other XB360 shooters -This is spartaaaaa about Lost planet(sorry, I had to).

First thing I did when I got the demo was run the performance test to see if my computer could actually handle this game. Luckily it ran quite well at a solid 60 to 45 frames. The worst being about 26 frames in some areas of the second performance test. I took my own screen-shots for this and even though there’s a huge resolution difference between this and the 360 the graphics are somewhat comparable. Of course getting hung up on graphics is pretty pointless as long as the game runs at a solid frame rate.
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Lost planet not only looks good but plays great as well. The first mission(w/2 acts) is a bug fest where you rip apart the “Akrid” and their spawning holes(I wonder if there’s a in-game term for those…). In a way it feels a lot like Resident evil4 at first: Mindless zombies enemies? Check. Over the shoulder camera? Check. Guns? Check. Moving on to the second mission though you encounter “snow pirates” which actually have AI, good AI too. It’s not broken like James Bond: Everything or Nothing where the AI bots can somehow hear you standing up behind them while around a corner. In lost planet if you shoot at them from a distance they’ll actually look around and shoot if they see you. At the same time you can effectively sneak up on them. Effectively planning your route also seems to actually be worthwhile in preventing you from running out of “T-eng” and getting killed. With that in mind, there’s multiple ways to tackle this stage and the best way(IMO) is to be stealthy. I won’t go too much in detail(this is already a bit late!) but combine the open-endness, with good controls and gameplay, and you’ve got a solid game here.

A few glitches with the music, I had to turn it off. I’m just going to dismiss it as a demo glitch or something. The sound effects were great on their own anyways.

The final thought here is to compare it to the 360 version. “Which one is worth buying?” you might ask. I found the graphics not to be so important -in fact the snow was sometimes very annoying- so if your computer can handle the demo at a solid frame rate like mine, then I see no reason to buy a XB360 for this game. If it can’t run it at all or something then it might be worth it. Whatever you do though don’t go out and upgrade your computer to be the ultimate Vista machine for the DX10 version. Heck, even if you plan to make a really powerful machine it’s not really worth switching to Vista for this game.
Screen-shots below:
XB360 comparison pictures via IGN
Mine:

A lot of news takes place in a week: Starcraft 2, the Square Enix party (FFCC trailer via FFCC-news, click to play), and other random crap. In order to stay up-to-date with it all while having a life slacking off I’m going to scatter my impressions of the many recent PC demos I’ve been playing on a daily basis. One game a day.
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Starting with the recent localization of Korean MMO Mario Kart rip-off KartRider. That pretty much summarizes the whole game right there. If you haven’t played Mario kart yet…then I’m sorry, you’re on the wrong webpage. Let me redirect you.

First, I have to be honest. I haven’t played more than 2 hours of this game. I found it really boring and the power sliding broken. Not in a good way, but in a “Why do I have no control?” kind of way. Of course people argued with me saying I had to play it more to enjoy it(ie: earn credits and buy a better cart), but why waste time earning my fun? This game sounds like another Nexon MMO I once heard of. Yes, Maple story. I have yet to play it but I kept hearing how pointless and boring it was. Hmm… sounds familiar. Let me put it this way; racing games have come a long long way over the years, I consider them the most “advanced” genre in all of gaming. So in my opinion, don’t bother wasting your time with KartRider. There are much better racing games to waste time on.

Oh and I now have a feedburner RSS feed! Zero readers FTW!

After much building, rebuilding, and switching between different computers, I finally am back with my second computer. Not only that, I actually went to the new Frys store near me and bought two 512Mb sticks of PC3200 Corsair RAM. So now I have a gig of RAM! Woot! The other two 256Mb sticks will just be lying around until I find a use for them. I could use them seeing as I have 4 RAM slots on my motherboard, but it would bring down the speed to PC2100.
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So getting back to games finally, I have to point out this would normally be E3 week. I’ll miss watching Gamespot’s crappy stream of Iwata making some speech about gamers, seeing the Kentia hall oddities(Note: They all hilariously suck), and most of all - E3 insider’s Famcam. I don’t think too many people know about this, but it’s a guy who walks around with a few cameras strapped to his head, navigating the crowds and booths at E3. It’s like being there yourself(!), but with an over-enthusiastic narrator. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing though, it really comes in handy when he interviews developers. For example: “Oh wow that looks great!” and “I can’t wait to play it!”. Developers eat that up… and spit out more info! It’s very effective. A most notable interview from last year in my opinion was the interview with Ben Herman North American SNK President. No, not as a great example of enthusiasm extracting info from a developer, but just the overall coolness. Or maybe both… I think I heard all the Metal slug anthology details from this interview and even though he says “Uh.. it’s still in development” he basically gave away everything.
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I guess E3 isn’t gone and dead per-se, but I’m not sure it’ll have the same feel to it… kinda sad. Unless… the FamCam can get back in, then it’s alright.

-I’ve been playing a few PC demos lately, look forward to some impressions in my next post!

…Turns out Windows works just fine, it just needed some drivers. But until Abit sends me back my motherboard I can’t play any PC games(stupid Celeron with integrated Intel 82845G graphics card-…er.. chip and no PCIE or AGP slots). I don’t have much confidence in Abit’s RMA either, their forums had a few complaints floating around and the automated Email misspelled -not one- but two words. Some minimal shmups still run well though, and I’ve got my DS to back me up. I’ll give it a good week and a half before I go insane.

I know almost nothing about web design or code, but some messing around with my main blog led to this awesome new banner for my (main) blog. It’s a screenshot of “Negima?!” I took a long time ago of one of the characters looking at her computer. It has some random “Net idol” page/blog, a typical windows desktop, a bit of keyboard, and if you look closely 2ch is in one of the windows. Well representing and poking fun at the stereotypical internet nerd/geek, not necessarily in a bad way, but in a humorous way.

Also, if you right clicked and looked at the URL -Yes, I am hosting it with Photobucket… I could use my friends host if I wanted to. However I’m not going to bother unless I see my blog picking up lots of traffic.

Also, for this DS-X2 blog I finally changed the tagline and the header theme. I hear Wordpress is very “flexible” so I may change more things (such as the theme) in the future.