arne360

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I met up again to continue plowing through the Halo 3 campaign, still on Legendary of course. We’ve moved along in the story and now we’re surrounded by the Flood as we try to get, well, rescue Cortana. I hate the Flood. I think that goes without saying and I’m probably not alone. This chapter took us a while to complete as we often found ourselves a little too outnumbered and outgunned for our strategy, or lack thereof. We still managed to get through almost all of it fairly uneventfully until we hit that dreaded player disconnect issue that completely prevents us from getting the chapter listed as completed and the achievement for the level.

LE SIGH.

This disconnect issue means that DMoTsunami and I will be replaying yet another level in its entirety yet again.

Animal Crossing: City Folk
I know I shouldn’t have. I know it would be a recipe for disaster. As I stated just a couple of weeks ago, this series should really just be renamed the Tom Nook Mortgage Simulator. Kind of feels like real life, being stuck in debt nearly forever. However, I booted it up just the same. Well, after updating my Wii firmware and downloading the Wii Speak channel which will likely not get that much use, but hopefully I’ll get to try it sometime.

Having read nothing about Animal Crossing: City Folk, I was surprised to find that I could essentially import my character on the Nintendo DS version of Animal Crossing: Wild World. After downloading a small application onto my DS via ad hoc WiFi and a short wait, my character, arne, appeared in my new, Wii-based town, turnip. Essentially it seems your name and your general appearance–that is, your face–are transferred over so you don’t have to select that anew. I might just keep him and his cute Animal Crossing face rather than go into town to get a Mii makeover.

Alas, the wonder of a new game didn’t last that long as already, I was thrust into finding myself a suitable house that Tom Nook would be overjoyed to sell to me, no doubt in return for some small favors and eventually just explicit payment of Bells.

*****

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Animal Crossing: City Folk
Oh how tedious Animal Crossing can be when you’re trying to accomplish a particular goal. I just want to get my friend code so I can open my gates and take advantage of the internet connectivity of the game with a bunch of people on a mailing list I’m on. I’m still running the first sequence of tasks for Tom Nook so I can’t do that yet and apparently my application still hasn’t cleared.

Thanks for the info, Copper! Grrr….

*****

Friday, November 21, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV
I start up this game in an attempt to try to get a quick mission off with Dwayne or Patrick McReary, but Roman decides to be his usual bumbling self and interrupt me when I want to be focused on a mission. Not only that, but the joker just wants to go play some darts. I’ve blown off my buddy a couple times recently, so guilty conscience concedes and I go play some darts with Roman. Thankfully, I’m good at darts and the game is over on my third set of throws. Of course, I have to drive Roman back home and that pretty much takes up all the time I had set aside at the moment.

*****

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Braid
I’m still missing one piece from World 2 on this, so I found out as I entered the game after a long hiatus. Instead of trying to figure it out, I just continued trying to plow through the Worlds for now. I’m up to World 6, even though Worlds 3 through 5 have no more than two or three puzzle pieces each. I do like how each World provides a new piece to the gameplay mechanics that you have to wrap your head around to fully understand how to complete all the levels and puzzle pieces.

To be fair, I still haven’t fully grasped all that the ring can do, beyond slow down time with some limitations. I got the first puzzle piece in World 6 and the nothing else before I quit. Which was not that much longer anyway.

I have a feeling that this game is going to frustrate me to no end before I complete it, but at least at that point then I’ll be able to refocus back on the celebrated story to be found within Braid.

*****

Q.E.D.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Halo 3
In my continuing effort to clear the campaign on Legendary with my co-op buddy, DMoTsunami, we tackled another level tonight, The Covenant. Overall this felt like a fairly short level, but let me tell you, it was quite satisfying pummeling the Scarabs with my Scorpion tank from afar while DMoTsunami kept them busy in his hornet. I managed to down one from a well placed cannon shot. Then the rest was just typical run and gun through the level to the end and then back out again.

We tried to jump through the rings for the IWHBYD skull and I think we messed it up so we would have to do the whole thing over again, but didn’t realize. So we restarted from the last checkpoint which I think compounded the problem even more so. All in all, I think I wasted about 45 minutes of our time trying to get the skull before we gave up. I’ll do it later, although I heard that DMoTsunami went back and started the level from the mission start on Normal and got it for himself.

Bastard.

*****

Q.E.D.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

[Only a week late right? Apologies, work has kept me incredibly busy to finish this post off. That's a good thing though!]

Friday, November 7, 2008

Rock Band 2
Played a good number of songs in Band World Tour with my mom, more or less trying out how portable my game profile is. I took my profile and save game with me. On a different Xbox 360 I could login and either use the local saved band or my band. We chose my parent’s band, the Sir Mondays, and I hit the drums. I’m definitely out of practice as I couldn’t do any songs on the hard difficulty setting, only on medium. We completed a bunch of new songs unlocking a few venues that were previously locked up for their Band World Tour. It was fun and I was glad my profile and save game had that level of portability — something I suspect wasn’t the case in the original Rock Band when bands and characters were less interchangeable.

Gears of War 2
Of course, like a kid at Christmas I couldn’t wait to give this a try when it arrived in the mail and was in my hands. Even though I know how to play the game, I chose the tutorial route with Benjamin Carmine rather than skipping it. Then I just completed the first chapter in Act 1, defending and clearing out a hospital of Locust. Then, in a quite boring decision, I moved over to try out the Horde mode by myself. I had played this mode during the Gears of War 2 event at E3 and loved it. The attraction and challenge to it is still there, even though I couldn’t last past wave 2 no matter how hard I tried.

Bangai-O Spirits
I’ve had this sitting around for a long while, but since I don’t regularly commute, my handheld gaming time is next to nil. I basically have to force myself to play something on a handheld, and it usually works when I think about it since I have been playing through Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO with some semblance of regularity.

Having never owned a Dreamcast, I’ve never played the original Bangai-O. However, many positive impressions around the Web, general gameplay mechanics which I like (side scrolling shooter) and then one of our designers at work had his own downloadable level featured in IGN’s “Bangai-O Spirits Elite Design Contest” all sealed the deal for me. As I advanced through the tutorial levels, I really liked what the game was trying to do overall and with the ability to select and mix your different kinds of weapons. Unfortunately I got stuck at the last tutorial level and all my attempts were fruitless, so I shelved the game until I could approach it with a fresh mind.

*****

Saturday, November 8, 2008

Bangai-O Spirits
Ah yes, I returned to this fiendishly difficult (for me, anyway) game. After many, many attempts at clearing the last tutorial level by brute force, I managed the clear the stage. I’m sure there was a more elegant way of finishing it, but I couldn’t come to discover it. After completing the tutorial I was left with a nearly immeasurable number of levels that don’t provide any story progression. Although I assume they do provide some progression of difficulty, or else I would be screwed. I still found the game difficult but I was having fun trying to get through the limited number of levels I cleared before I had to get off the train.

One thing: the baseball bat rules.

Grand Theft Auto IV
Unfortunately, I haven’t a clue on many details of what I did during this session, but I know I progressed a few missions. I’m also pretty certain I took Kate McReary out for a date and, of course, since we were “just friends” she didn’t take too kindly at my attempt to make an advance on her at the end of the date. I still got the thumbs up that it was a good date, so I guess she liked playing pool. Beyond that I only remember going after a lawyer who was putting the screws on Francis McReary about something or other, so I had to go into the law offices for an interview and the first few times the game said I was dressed incorrectly. I couldn’t understand because I was wearing a suit (several different ones) and nice shoes! It turns out I kept forgetting that I left sunglasses on Niko and that wouldn’t be acceptable… no, no. So finally, during the fourth or fifth time, I finally got to do the interview and then shot my way out of the law offices. This was pretty easy compared to some of the tougher earlier missions I had to shoot my way out of.

Gears of War 2
As soon as I loaded up Gears of War 2 I got invited to play the Horde mode from some current and former work-related friends. I don’t think we ever got past wave 4, but we were having a great time trying to discover the strategies that worked for each wave even when we felt we had a good grasp of the map. The flamethrower is fun, I can tell you that. A pretty cool addition even though a little nerve-wracking when you would be trying to down a Butcher with one and it would still keep coming at you, seemingly unfazed. Even though I had mastered the art of the active reload pretty quickly, I still did far too little damage when compared to my more able teammates. That will change next time, definitely next time.

*****
Q.E.D.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO

I’m trying to get to the next witch touching segment with Sofi, friend of lions. That means I’m back to finding clues, which is perhaps the more frustrating mechanic of the game. It’s not quite as simple or linear as Phoenix Wright in this regard, although the overall design is the same–you have different locations you can visit and you have to touch around the screen to trigger explanatory text or find a clue. Even though this game is pretty much intended for one purpose whatsoever–looking at and touching suspected witches in inappropriate areas–I can’t help just how heavy-handed the expository moments are. It makes the game less engaging and the characters less personable, ending up in a game where you’re really just exploring listlessly focused on getting to touching witches as quickly as possible. It’s really a bit of a missed opportunity and I don’t think it’s all that much more difficult to integrate story advancement into the actions within the story the player is forced to make. Ah well.

*****

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Grand Theft Auto IV

I can’t believe my game progress is only at 34.65% complete. I have entered a bit of artificially-induced impatience with the game, as I want to complete the story yet I’m wanting to not fall behind on the deluge of compelling content that has and will be released in the next two months. This means I’ve just gotten a bit annoyed at being called up by my friends for social outings. I know I can mute my phone so I won’t receive these requests, ostensibly not causing their like and respect percentages to go down, but I think that kind of ruins the integrity of that game mechanic that Rockstar intended to have. So in the end I had to deny Little Jacob because I was on a mission and Roman because I was feeling apathetic to take him out to play pool after I already took out him for a round of bowling. However, there was a call from Brucie which introduced the speedboat as we took a couple of girls out to the Poop Deck. Hurr hurr.

After I wasted time doing this, I went out to the question mark mission marker and found out it was none only than Deputy Commissioner Francis McReary and I did his first mission, which was the oft-mentioned in previews mission of where I had to find the guy who answered his cell phone to kill him. It would have been a bit more interesting if I could have used the binoculars to look at all the passersby rather than just walking around until I heard or saw the guy talking on his phone to me. I finally found out that Michelle is a goverment agent, as was so beating-me-over-the-head strongly alluded to earlier in the game. Although given that it seemed and was obvious she was just being nice to me to get close to me, her revelation really came out like she was sorry to have deceived me. It felt weird… maybe if she was more convincing being into my, uh, “talking sessions” I would have found this telegraphed twist more convincing. I did a couple more missions, one for Playboy X and one for Patrick McReary, and have found that the gunfights have increased in difficulty quite a bit forcing me to both take cover and approach the scenario a bit more tactically.

I also spent some time driving around Liberty City to find some new locations, like the Split Sides Comedy Club, or visit new locations ones that have opened up on my map now that I can travel to Algonquin. I decided to stop by Perseus and get some new clothes. I look swank in the new grey suit and new shoes I purchased, along with my existing aviator style glasses. The salesperson at Perseus totally sounded like Agador from The Birdcage. Unfortunately he doesn’t work hard for the money.

Mirror’s Edge demo

This was a highly anticipated demo of mine. This game is a pretty interesting beast. The first person perspective is familiar and feels a lot like any other well done FPS, but in those you’re also usually not doing fairly accurate jumps and manueuvers. Much like car racing games, you have to start getting learning how to judge distances in the game since it’s not directly analogous to real life. The controls also require a new lexicon since you’ll be stringing along certain combos of buttons to be fully effective later on. I’ll definitely be playing the tutorial several times just to get used to the controls and the game. Although I don’t think the game will be so unforgiving at the start to make it frustrating and the restart points are pretty conveniently placed in the tutorial mission in the demo. But it does feel like the game will have quite a steeper learning curve than most other games.

*****

Q.E.D.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Oh boy this is late. This was a tough week to keep up on entries.
Now, on with it…

Monday, October 20, 2008

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
I’m not going to say very much about this right now as this is a game I will bring up during my XABY Radio podcast and discuss at length. I will say that it took quite a while to really get anywhere in the game, so it’s a slow starter. If you’ve picked this up, “give it a while” I suppose is the best advice.

*****

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Portal: Still Alive
This was my Unidentified Secret Game A from the week of August 24 and boy does it still kick ass. I’m pacing myself a little as it’s really tempting to blow through it and then blow through all the challenges. Not that it would be excessively short for me–I got stuck several times for a couple hours in two different levels in the retail Portal–but more that I want to savor the experience. So far, this sort of expansion has maintained the magic of the original. To be fair I haven’t really noticed if there was the same sort of hype and it seems like it’s a little bit on the lacking side. It could be due to a digital download versus a retail copy, but it’s most likely that there doesn’t seem to really be a storyline which is what engendered everyone so much to the original.

Call of Duty: World at War beta

It’s very intriguing that I keep coming back to play this and I think I’ve either come close to or surpassed my multiplayer time in this beta when compared to the full retail release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. It’s even more curious to me considering that the multiplayer gameplay between the two games do not differ all that much at the foundation. I’ve found that this game so far has really been a struggle to survive long enough for a recon plane, much less calling in an artillery strike or the dogs. People around me do it, but I haven’t a clue how they can. For me (and some others) this multiplayer beta is “spawn-shoot-die-spawn-kill-shoot-die-spawn-shoot-explosion-die” or something approximating that.

I also played some Team Deathmatch on hardcore tonight and this was my first time with this type of playlist. I’m sure most of you know, but this is the game type that is basically boils down to Team Deathmatch without a HUD or radar. For me, this was almost frustratingly difficult to be fun for me as a gametype, but I can definitely see the appeal.

Regardless, I already know that I’ll be picking this title up to add to my holiday backlog.

My Japanese Coach
I picked this up in hopes that maybe, somewhere along the line, it’s going to help someone like me who knows one step above nothing learn some useful Japanese language and reading skills. I’m not expecting to get much out of this rather than a foundation that I can build off of via professional instruction, classes or textbooks. My Japanese Coach has been in the center of some minor polarized debates on message boards and on a mailing list I am on. There’s no doubt that this game isn’t for those people who are well-versed in the language already–as evidenced by the ceiling on how far into the lessons the non-game will let you start at (lesson 11) after taking their “placement test.” Others have criticized the game for using romaji at the beginning rather than throwing everyone into learning kana from the outset. I can see the reasoning behind that approach and it’s pretty solid, but as long as the software progresses from romaji and doesn’t let you return to it as a crutch, I think it can be overlooked.

I did the first few lessons, even though the placement test put me into the third lesson (colors). The use of romaji is somewhat ridiculous during some of the early lessons. A prime example occurs when the software asks you to match an english word to the Japanese equivalent and you get a word like “samurai” or “anime” which is spelled identically in English and romaji. I’ve only advanced as far as the colors, but already some interesting concepts to Japanese grammar are coming up and I’m really enjoying discovering the challenge of these new concepts.

*****

Friday, October 24, 2008

Call of Duty: World at War beta

I hopped back on for a few more quick games just to increase my rank. I am sort of reaching a little bit of my limit with the multiplayer game at the moment. Not because I don’t want to increase in rank and not because I don’t want to have fun. More than anything it’s just a case of “I should wait for the retail game to come out.” Regardless, this beta has easily replaced anything else on my gaming shelf as the first choice for a quick pick-up-and-play session. I can attribute a good portion of that to the fact that it lives under my “Games Library” section as a digital download, because I don’t perceive Call of Duty: Modern Warfare the same way, even though the multiplayer was just as fun and addictive. I sound supremely lazy, but the effort required to replace the disc for a 10 minute session of neutralizing my adversaries seems too much. That just sounds ridiculous though, so I should just deal with it.

*****

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan 2 DUO
FINALLY. I was able to touch a witch. After continuing frustrations, again all of which will be detailed in an upcoming podcast, the opportunity to subdue a witch presented itself. After a brief and currently too easy magic fighting mini-game, I was brought to the witch mark investigation screen. Well, that was definitely an interesting experience but not without it’s difficulties. I labored to find the witch mark, but that finally happened.

Now I’m back into investigating about the next suspected witch–a rather matronly looking girl with a lion. Wait, what? Yes, a girl with a lion for a pet at a middle school. Oh my.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Halo 3
I met up with DMoTsunami online again to continue our co-op campaign. We completed The Ark, Floodgate and part of The Covenant. Why part? That dreaded disconnect thing again. It’s gotten a little frustrating especially since neither of us has terrible connections or have had problems in other games.

Oh god, why more Flood? I knew this was gonna happen but I wasn’t looking forward to it. This also means that somehow, in the past year, I’ve managed to avoid any and all spoilers about the game. Ignorance is bliss.

NHL 09
I took on Denogginizer OS on a game fraught with tri-state area rivalry as he took the New Jersey Devils against my New York Rangers in an online match. He beat me 4 - 1 in a pretty good game where I drew first blood and then he just kept putting them in the net including a beautiful wrap-around goal. DenogginizerOS is pretty agressive and tenacious on the ice–I’d watch out for him.

Here are the game stats, courtesy of the functionality EA implemented where you can receive stats for your games via e-mail:

Stats              Away                Home
==========================================================
Team               New York Rangers®   New Jersey Devils®
Score              1                   4
Shots              12                  29
Hits               20                  34
Penalty Minutes    02:00               06:00
Power Play Goals   0                   0
Power Play Opport. 2                   1
Faceoffs Won       5                   18
Breakaways         0/0                 0/1
One Timers         0/3                 0/8
Passing            80/100              84/113
Penalty Shots      0/0                 0/0
Blocked Shots      3                   3

*****

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

NHL 09
After I grabbed some slider settings from OperationSports, I hit up “Be a Pro” mode. I was warned that this was digital crack of MMO proportions, but I couldn’t stay away anyway. Of course I picked to be a NY Ranger, so I am now on the Hartford Wolfpack, their AHL affiliate team.

I scored my first rookie goal in my debut game against the Iowa Chops. What kind of team name is that? If it isn’t obvious, I’m totally clueless about AHL teams.

Four games later, it was 2:00 AM and I realized I was addicted already. “Just one more game…” was the death of me.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
I found myself back playing the beta, but I’ve been sticking to only playing Team Deathmatch. I’ll have to give the War mode a shot at some point because it sounds like an interesting mechanic. I’m still having difficulty doing well on the dark map in the seaside village. It’s almost too dark and I’m practically relying almost entirely on my radar, which doesn’t help if there’s an adversary sneaking around. While I’m sure my overall kill-death ratio is in the negative, this map is definitely one where my deaths vastly outnumber my kills.

I’ve also hit level 5 during this sessions, so I’ve unlocked and made progress into the Challenges for each weapon type. So I’m definitely getting somewhere now since having a flash suppressor would come in handy on the above map. I’ve been feeling vastly outmatched by folks who are level 11 already, not only because of their skill, but because of some of the attachments such as the flash suppressor or a scope. Thankfully the Call of Duty progression system doesn’t make it feel like that being more evenly matched is out of reach–you just have to a little time and effort into it and I’m fine with that.

*****

Thursday, October 16, 2008

Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I are replaying The Ark and The Covenant because our unfortunate disconnects during the game meant we restarted during rally points within each chapter. That was no good, because even though it unlocked the chapter for me, it didn’t record me as finishing the chapter on Legendary nor did it give me the achievement for completing the chapter. Very un-fun. This time we can breeze through it a bit quicker since I also know what we’re up against.

NHL 09
Like I junkie, I keep coming back to NHL 09 for my fix of “Be a Pro” mode. I only played two games, fiddled with the sliders a bit more and it’s starting to feel more natural and realistic. The shifts (especially when I’m resting) are still a little too long, but that is because I’m still only at five minute periods. I’ll increase this up to ten for the next game and on until I’m done with the mode or the game. Most of the games have been generally been close and it’s gotten me genuinely excited whether I win or lose.

I noticed that a lot of my gaming information has been incorrect when reported over on EA Sports World. According to my profile page I’m playing for the Grand Rapids Griffins when I’m on the Wolfpack and my opponent is inaccurate, although the scores are correct as best as I can tell. For some reason my updates section is also empty, when it should be reflecting all of my games and milestones within the game. It would be nice, given how EA is trying to implement tight integration between their games and the Web site, but it’s not that big a deal.

*****

Q.E.D.

A weekly log of the games I’ve played accompanied by some random thoughts about them

Sunday, October 5, 2008

Mega Man 9
Oh man, why don’t I set aside enough time to play this? I know it’s going to take more than 45 minutes or so, but I keep conning myself that I can do something worthwhile in a short period of time. Upon advice of others, I took on the Splash Woman stage on. I got a bit farther in the same amount of time and I basically only stopped because I was asked to play Halo 3. I can say this though, the part at the very beginning of the stage where you have finished progressing horizontally and you have to take your first jump down–only to pretty much be guaranteed to land on some sweet spiky death is almost unfair. But I kind of love it at the same time.

Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I tackled our next chapter and completed going through The Crow’s Nest pretty quickly. Next up was Tsavo Highway, of which I have heard muttered under people’s breath and I don’t know why. Now I know why and I think it’s mostly that little sequence when you’re making a last stand kind of fight in two bunkers and you’re being hit by multiple waves of Brutes and just when you think you’re all clear, a Wraith shows up just to make things interesting. We both died a lot here but we got through it. We scavenged for weapons of our choice and made for the two brand new Warthogs waiting for us to wreck havoc… and then the game froze.

A wonderful Internet hiccup left the game thinking that one of us had either quit the game or was disconnected, when neither was true. Regardless, we were both dumped back out into the lobby.

Unfortunately, this ill-timed issue meant we had to start before our land stand and redo that all over again. Instead, DMoTsunami and I called it a night.

*****

Monday, October 6, 2008

LittleBigPlanet beta
In last week’s gaming log I forgot to mention that I had played LittleBigPlanet for about ten minutes or so–just enough to complete the first two levels of the The King’s Garden. That left Skipping the Tie and the last main level remaining. I completed those tonight along with a couple replays to try to get closer to 100% in the last two full levels.

I’ve now unlocked the create mode and being able to see other people’s level creations. I hearted two levels, one to play later and one to play immediately, if only because of the fact that the level was named LittleBigUncharted. I’ll be going to try the level creator the next time I fire LittleBigPlanet up.

*****

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Secret Game D

Yep. I played it and it was the only thing I played tonight. That’s all I can say.

*****

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Halo 3
DMoTsunami and I were joined by a third for tonight’s Legendary co-op campaign as MrJared came to help us newbs out (check out his +20 K/D ratio on this Team Slayer match). We ripped through Tsavo Highway and The Storm at a pretty decent clip. If you’re ever playing with MrJared, I must warn you that he tends to be a little overzealous with his driving–often with, er, explosive results.

This was pretty fun, I’m glad that more games are starting to allow for co-op beyond two people, although I can start to see how that could be problematic from a game design side. Even though we died a few times during our game tonight, it somewhat felt that with three user-controlled characters, the number of enemies and level of difficulty didn’t ramp up as much as I expected it to. It almost felt too easy based on the previous sessions.

Or we’re just THAT good.

Call of Duty: World at War beta
Got an early beta key and hopped into a fairly uncrowded lobby for Team Deathmatch. I think we started with just three on one team and four on the other. By the time I left it was a full or nearly full lobby and the games were fast, furious and lethal. I really liked the Castle map look and layout.

So far, so good, Treyarch!

*****

Friday, October 10, 2008

NHL 09
Set up my Be a Pro character and jumped into a quick five minute game with the NY Rangers vs LA Kings — kind of an preview of a game I’m going to in mid-December. Took a look at the instant replay feature, which reminds me of Skate.reel and that means a lot of good things.

Like editing highlight clips of games. OH. MY. GOD. That is going to be awesome… if I get around to it! Which in reality I won’t, but it was fun thinking about it.

The Kings won this game, although it was a tie game throughout all of regulation and it went down to the shootout. Which was scoreless for a pretty long time too. The Kings drew blood first and I couldn’t respond, letting them win. Total shame.

*****

Saturday, October 11, 2008

NHL 09
Came back for another quick game–against the Canadiens this time around. I had to quite before I finished the game off, but it looked quite certain to be headed into another overtime session as, after I scored, the Canadiens drew even and then we were deadlocked for the remaining two periods. I really need to find someone who has tweaked the settings to bring it more in line with reality. I had someone a couple years ago provide me with their settings for NHL 07 and it felt much better than the default settings. I don’t have the time on my own to fiddle around with them to figure out what feels better, so I hope someone has done the hard work for me!

I also played a bit more around with the video clip editor and the uploading feature. Pretty cool but it doesn’t seem quite a full featured as the Skate.reel, which is a little frustrating. My biggest gripe is that it doesn’t seem to give you the option of applying different camera angles within a particular clip, so you’re stuck with finding the best one for the up to 25 second video clip. Not a big deal if you’re going to edit them together offline since you’ll want a full clip for each angle you plan on using, but not so great for putting something quick together. It also seems that the feature set is pretty much eliminated after you’ve saved it locally and come back to the video clip at a later time. You can’t view the clip and either edit it further or take a screenshot from within the clip, you can only watch it again as saved. I guess I was spoiled by Skate.

*****

Q.E.D.