Army of Two, HDTV acquired

I purchased a gift for my buddy on Christmas; a copy of Army of Two. Well, 2 copy's actually. It was a decent idea i think anyways, even if the game was mediocre (my friend does love achievements after all).

Picking up the box, naturally, surged me with thoughts of Contra and Metal Slug. The end result was not far off. It was good fun, you're playing co-op with a buddy, it's kinda hard to mess that up.

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I have a respectable television now. It's a 37 inch 1080P Sharp, matched with some newly purchased PC speakers and a subwoofer, since television speakers generally suck. Perhaps i will lean more towards the 360 from now on? Perhaps...

The void filled

It's interesting, I actually get to talk to people, in person, about video games. Up until this point video games had been a secret passion i tried to keep to myself.

I've rewritten this next paragraph many times. Talking about the old town is strange, and hard. How do i articulate my feelings of alienation without appearing to have a superiority complex? In fact I've written in the past how I feel bellow average, at least academically, so hopefully i don't come off has smug.

I felt very deeply that the "electronics are for weird nerds" philosophy was ingrained in the culture there. This had a large effect on me which has almost completely evaporated after moving here (traces remain with my family). The result is lively discussions with little being held back, and it's honestly staggering to me.

I don't define myself by video games of course, that's silly, but it's an insanely interesting medium that i could talk about for hours, and I finally get that chance.

Plok

Some impressive 16 bit music from the SNES game Plok.

Cryostasis: The Sleep of Reason, Prince of Persia (2008)

Greg Kasavin made a comparison on his late blog about Stalker feeling very punk rock, it always stuck with me, if Stalker has taught me anything it's that Russia demands attention.

Cryostasis seems to have come out of thin air and I am genuinely interested. From what I've read on forums the game makes extensive use of PhysX to the point where actually having a dedicated video card for PhysX is ideal (though a patch is in route to alleviate these high demands).

I don't know too much about the game to be honest (just what's in the gamespot preview), if it turns out to be something "important" like Stalker than it's probably best i go into it without much knowledge (similar to Stalker). I was subconsciously aware of the game actually, but for some reason I didn't really acknowledged it until i read about it in this article about Russian gaming. I did know that PC gaming is still huge in Russia however i was not aware of the Russian juggernaut known as 1c.

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I finished Prince of Persia last night. It seemed very likely that I was going to be left with a Assassin's Creed like ending; where the credits roll yet you're still left with a confined environment with many hidden secrets. Assassin's Creed never actually "ends" in the normal sense.

Prince of Persia has more in common with Assassin's Creed than I'd like to admit, it's "choose your own path" approach means the difficulty can't really scale. I almost didn't think of Prince of Persia has a game, at least not in the classic sense. The fact that it's SO easy, that you're basically just queuing actions (thoughts of World of Warcraft actually came to mind), mixed with the fact that a large portion of the games dialogue is entirely optional left me with the feeling that i was playing an experience, not a game.

It's coming to the point where that's almost what I'm actually looking for. My colleague at work expressed great displeasure towards most of the game, citing that he skipped the dialogue, didn't care for the combat, and was severely disappointed with the platforming in comparison to the trilogy of the last generation. Perhaps I didn't have an attachment to the last iteration of this series simply because of the versions i played, however, i definiatly walked away from this game looking forward to more.

EA on Steam

Okay that's a good step. The only problem I have with this new move is that now I have the crappy Direct to Drive version of Dead Space while a nice self updating version laughs at me on Steam. Sure, I can add it to the games list, but it's nice to have everything in one place. Oh well, these are small issues.

Why EA failed

I was listening to the Gamers with Jobs podcast (mainly because Shawn Elliot was on it) and heard Jeff Green let slip that EA was unhappy with the PC sales for their games and it was likely that they would not be supporting them anymore (or something along those lines). It's pretty clear that when you are putting a game like Dead Space out on the PC it's not going to sell very well because the game is designed with a specific set of hardware in mind; it's not made to run on that average World of Warcraft computer everyone has lying around their home.

The ugly truth is that games like Crysis are a thing of the past. Crysis did not play the same with a gamepad, it supported it wonderfully, but many key features were missing. You could not go prone (only crouch) and you could not lean left and right (vital if there is foliage obstructing your view). FarCry 2 is a game that could have used these controls on the PC version, however it was excluded because the number of buttons on the controller wouldn't allow it, therefor the PC version suffered slightly. The lack of control in FarCry 2 is a shame, however the game was still very much superior on the PC and I think it's a great example of what western games with big budgets will look like on the PC from here on out. The upcoming Mirrors Edge and Burnout Paradise PC versions further my point, Mirrors Edge will support PhysX (and apparently have a set of modding tools) while Burnout Paradise will have higher quality textures among other things (here's to hopping i can find a way to make my dual monitors work with the game).

Most PC gamers I would assume also own consoles so chances are high that they will buy the console version of Dead Space over the PC version since there is no incentive to buy the PC version other than the control scheme. The PC version of Dead Space is great (trackball for lyfe) but I can't even set the AA higher than X2. Why couldn't they include higher quality textures for the PC version? People with both sets of hardware (I'm guessing the majority of PC gamers) need to be enticed to own the PC version, Dead Space clearly didn't do that which is why it didn't sell well.

You're going to drive the enthusiasts away if you don't do anything to take advantage of the open nature of the PC. Valve, Blizzard, and CD Projekt are living proof that PC gaming is alive and thriving despite piracy, and i think it's safe to say that Bethesda also has the right idea when it comes to supporting the PC. If EA wants to back away from supporting the PC that's their choice, but in all honesty they never really did support the PC and its strengths, they simply tried to move the console experience over to the PC and that is clearly not why we maintain this hardware.

My computer