tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21828728392716795792024-03-15T18:10:17.489-07:00comradesnarky's Adventures In Game CollectingGame information, reviews and more from any and all console generations.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.comBlogger56125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-20959723033058328022016-01-18T18:10:00.000-08:002016-01-18T18:10:09.563-08:00The Quest for Better Video Quality, Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLzY3aCh-ThHUYfvtLW7z0_eHYR0AMvoLW8u439GaXgFwSh8Xfn-MLeA2gYDh4QsADIZtJbXOa89oT8XfDBkRwVJtxz93al3ZC1Yqxgl4aWgWWMWp1dioEy3NtCsjubLKX9SFVly2l7g/s1600/Sony_PVM-2130QM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="232" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLzY3aCh-ThHUYfvtLW7z0_eHYR0AMvoLW8u439GaXgFwSh8Xfn-MLeA2gYDh4QsADIZtJbXOa89oT8XfDBkRwVJtxz93al3ZC1Yqxgl4aWgWWMWp1dioEy3NtCsjubLKX9SFVly2l7g/s320/Sony_PVM-2130QM.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Gaming with any system before a Dreamcast (with its fantastic VGA output) on a modern TV really sucks. Everyone has seen nice crisp colorful screenshots from emulators. Why bother with old systems? Why not emulate? That's no fun, emulation is inaccurate and some games actually play incorrectly with segments you can't pass because of timing differences. What about a Retron? Well, that's an emulator too.</div>
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So, how do we get a great picture out of an older console on an HDTV? Sure, you can just get an old CRT... but composite video is still shitty. Well, then you can step your game up, buy a PVM, get some SCART cables and break out the RGB and sync signals and have the absolute best presentation for an old console that's possible. Barring that, you can drop about $300 on an XRGB and upscale everything and add scanlines and output it all through HDMI. </div>
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So, you've got some options there. They're options, but they'll cost you. I've looked for a good CRT for a long time with no luck. I haven't even come near finding a PVM locally, and I don't really want to have someone across the country ship me a PVM from eBay. The CRT TV is the cheaper option than an XRGB. I never even considered that, spending $300 on a video scaler is fucking bonkers. So, hope has been lost. Until I found out about this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb3mCU2gN-Du9rSyVvjk585bkG4tFpRuQe4PYBL0l5bx4f_eHDkoUJN53Sk2VTfqtjxT_J4_yZ0gU-_mqtfcw58TE9J5o_aw8bT4bEu0QJeDxwRnIikfCqYNHo2EIVELsV39B5BnH1Sw/s1600/579516468_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb3mCU2gN-Du9rSyVvjk585bkG4tFpRuQe4PYBL0l5bx4f_eHDkoUJN53Sk2VTfqtjxT_J4_yZ0gU-_mqtfcw58TE9J5o_aw8bT4bEu0QJeDxwRnIikfCqYNHo2EIVELsV39B5BnH1Sw/s320/579516468_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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A $25 video scaler (the Gonbes GBS-8220) made by our enterprising Chinese friends that can be modified to accept an RGB signal. Undoubtedly the quality won't be AS good as an XRGB, but for a fraction of the price I think we can accept some quality loss. I've priced everything out at $70 (including parts needed to make a sync stripper and a scanline generator, not including any needed SCART cables for consoles), which is less than I'd likely end up spending on a decent CRT as well. The only knock on this solution for some may be that it outputs VGA - the HDTV I have does have a VGA input, so it honestly makes no difference to me.</div>
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Why is it so hard to get a decent picture out of older systems? What the fuck is SCART?</div>
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Well, those composite video cables combine all of the picture data on a single cable. Colors don't come through as well, you get bleeding, you get all kinds of nasty shit. Composite carries all of the color information, all of the sync information, all of the information to make up the actual picture.. That's a mess. </div>
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SCART is a standard mostly used in European countries, and it was basically a one cable does all solution similar to HDMI. SCART RGB breaks out the video signal into red, green and blue channels (but it is NOT the same as component) with the signal needed to synchronize the separate channels separated out as well. This results in much truer colors and better overall image quality.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdwUc4iy-YhIrcJkMlMvot4iODnEgHNHrcECmdXjz4aE5w6-JUDCsfzUSgSFDA6SWTx2kv5-tHXyxG7PbWVOIwFelIpbZezpMPfzjQtmnlJYC84RE9VjTxBnZB3OsojZJOmKah59O6w/s1600/Screen+Shot+2016-01-18+at+5.49.51+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGdwUc4iy-YhIrcJkMlMvot4iODnEgHNHrcECmdXjz4aE5w6-JUDCsfzUSgSFDA6SWTx2kv5-tHXyxG7PbWVOIwFelIpbZezpMPfzjQtmnlJYC84RE9VjTxBnZB3OsojZJOmKah59O6w/s320/Screen+Shot+2016-01-18+at+5.49.51+PM.png" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Stolen from <a href="http://retrorgb.com/index.html">RetroRGB</a> because it's a fantastic example</i></div>
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You <i>can </i>scale composite video, but it's still going to have the same lacking colors, etc. This is why the gold standard is RGB. Since US TVs don't have any way to accept RGB natively (for the most part, some CRT TVs you can modify the chip providing the on screen display for channel info and feed it RGB directly), that's why we need some hardware acting as the go-between. </div>
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<a href="http://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=35423">This is how we'll connect an RGB source to the scaler.</a> The sync stripper is necessary as the board expects h-sync and v-sync to upscale the source signal. It's a very simple process for what you're getting in the end.</div>
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The other thing you'll want (this is really more of a preference type of item) is a <a href="http://www.mmmonkey.co.uk/console/other/vga-scanlines.htm">scanline generator</a>. This may seem unnecessary or even that it would <i>degrade</i> the image to some, and I don't think that's an incorrect stance to take. Why are scanlines desirable, though?</div>
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Well, CRT TVs displayed 480i images. If you're not up on your video standards, an <i>i</i> after the vertical resolution means the image is interlaced, and <i>p</i> means progressive. An interlaced image is essentially two signals which is stitched together to make one image. There's a signal of even lines and a signal of odd lines, which is combined to make one image. Older consoles actually didn't output interlaced signals. They output at 240p, which you can think of as half of a 480i image (so, either the odd or even signal). Since the TV was, in a sense, getting half of an image the lines which weren't present were simply blanked.</div>
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Since the scanlines are really being added as an aide to simulate the feel of how we <i>would have </i>seen the game, well, that's why I call it a personal preference item. </div>
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Basically every major system can output RGB over SCART - the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis (and its add on tumors, the 32x and the Sega CD), PlayStation, Saturn, even up to the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast (though the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast are better served with component and VGA respectively). The NES has an add-on board which you can purchase to output RGB and the Nintendo 64 can as well (some models with a simple signal amplifier, others with a rather expensive add on board which must be soldered very carefully). So, if you're tired of composite on an HDTV and you want some better video, a modified GBS-8220 seems to be your solution. I haven't yet received mine, but I will make a follow up post when I do.</div>
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I'll also note that I've left out some other "easier" options. In particular, there is a straight SCART to HDMI converter that's available on eBay for about $30. This is a very easy and cheap solution, though it's prone to a somewhat smeared look and shimmering around objects.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-85748111249291502952015-10-18T19:34:00.000-07:002016-01-18T18:20:15.772-08:00The Ultimate Xbox 360I had written before about how I <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/07/dr-x-love-or-how-i-learned-to-stop.html">wasn't too much of a fan of the newer model 360s</a>. I had made peace with the E model. Everything was going well. Until I found a Jasper Xbox 360 at Goodwill for $15. The belt had slipped out of the DVD drive so it wasn't opening. Easily fixed with an orthodontic rubber band. But the phat 360 is... missing some things that later models had. Namely, wireless internet and a Kinect port. We can fix that. I decided to install a wireless adapter and Kinect port internally. This is sort of useless to install internally since you're knocking out 2 of the 3 available USB ports. We can fix that, too.<br />
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Remember the memory cards for the Xbox 360 that no one bought?<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUgnic2mpU3QNo6ltDQ4iMxQ92FWLIlXhWOxGVUGAtORdi4GpMFHIpuCKA0W1IDBECtp4hFDW94xzRH6gWh_2nv-Hucho7iorgotavFoMJYHgLzH-0oAExnRsiiZXfoNZTXr3bl3gydw/s1600/41AD22HQSDL._SY300_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUgnic2mpU3QNo6ltDQ4iMxQ92FWLIlXhWOxGVUGAtORdi4GpMFHIpuCKA0W1IDBECtp4hFDW94xzRH6gWh_2nv-Hucho7iorgotavFoMJYHgLzH-0oAExnRsiiZXfoNZTXr3bl3gydw/s1600/41AD22HQSDL._SY300_.jpg" /></a></div>
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Those memory cards are actually just simple USB flash drives with a stupid end connector to throw everyone off the trail. Meaning we can convert those ports to connect USB devices. The only difference with the ports is that they supply 3.3v instead of the typical 5v that USB devices expect, but there's other places to source 5v. So, the goal became to add the Kinect port and the wifi adapter without rendering any of the original USB ports unusable. I mean, there's other shit we've gotta plug in. Like the Xbox Live Vision camera and the HDDVD drive!</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUSuzeIJCvWZMBuw9RJhELP4uDxxr4KxCeSY1Gkk4P_iwoUwOj_oZXqdeNwXa74hGBPLkhZK-7LNtSYhnIOBobB69flYx73tXoOBxDdpUyxKrU2kI9y3n8Pa6t97eBvjvwK1V_FfJRg/s1600/xbox_hd_dvd_big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFUSuzeIJCvWZMBuw9RJhELP4uDxxr4KxCeSY1Gkk4P_iwoUwOj_oZXqdeNwXa74hGBPLkhZK-7LNtSYhnIOBobB69flYx73tXoOBxDdpUyxKrU2kI9y3n8Pa6t97eBvjvwK1V_FfJRg/s320/xbox_hd_dvd_big.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>IT COMES WITH KING KONG THO</i></div>
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So, I grabbed a wireless N adapter, a Kinect extension cable (for a female Kinect port), two USB extension cables (for the female USB end) and a 500gb HDD to make it even sweeter.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_TGkSzQDLpxaF5Dri978FvqLWnZA3x5mPho5Nm_xKxIcvWEC1o4E8MFVSffTsdAP09GJgBZgUqPR1gfmDohsBWSQleMWM0pvJJqaCbdRxs3_y-6PLURHZZgWosEzJheEL5Cha6YX5Xg/s1600/image1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_TGkSzQDLpxaF5Dri978FvqLWnZA3x5mPho5Nm_xKxIcvWEC1o4E8MFVSffTsdAP09GJgBZgUqPR1gfmDohsBWSQleMWM0pvJJqaCbdRxs3_y-6PLURHZZgWosEzJheEL5Cha6YX5Xg/s320/image1.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the front of the 360 with the memory card slots already removed. I'm using the ground and data+ and data- lines from the memory card port and the red wire is going to my 5V source. I ended up wiring everything in this manner (just using the female USB end and plugging things into it) because I couldn't get anything to work when soldered directly to the ports. I'm assuming this is because the data lines in USB are susceptible to interference. The shielding in the cables seems to keep everything on the up and up.</div>
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Adding the Kinect port poses some interesting problems. The Kinect port is just a modified USB port with a 12v line added to it. It needs to use the rear USB port, the other ports are limited in speed since there are multiple USB devices running on the bus they're connected to. The Kinect needs the full bandwidth available. The Kinect port also needs a 12v power source, which is why using the Kinect with an original 360 needs you to use an AC adapter.<br />
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The thing with adding the Kinect port is that you need to have a later model 360 (Falcon or Jasper, Xenons are out) that draw less amperage than the original Xenon. You would also need to pair it with a power supply for one of the models that has a higher draw (I'm using the PSU from my Xenon with my Jasper). The Kinect draws about 1.5 amps, so the disparity between the amperage the Jasper draws and the Xenon PSU supplies covers the difference and then some. The other thing I'm not sure about is... whether or not it actually works. I don't have a Kinect. I know I'll end up with one eventually, so I thought it would just be sort of a fun thing to do. Anyways, here's a bit about how I wired up the Kinect port.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZALpXmlmA4zB0xdvRG8oQSRBkI2B8P1wqixKhUwE6GbFCVQy-clr04ah-kBy-gOMo95bW6Bm9OhhIGBSZKPgkR1yqBtpHkXLMXV-stGHpSJ4sL9P3-_CPMNDzYg922x_nzhIZzCqDQ/s1600/image2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvZALpXmlmA4zB0xdvRG8oQSRBkI2B8P1wqixKhUwE6GbFCVQy-clr04ah-kBy-gOMo95bW6Bm9OhhIGBSZKPgkR1yqBtpHkXLMXV-stGHpSJ4sL9P3-_CPMNDzYg922x_nzhIZzCqDQ/s320/image2.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the internals of the USB port and ethernet port towards the rear of the console. Since the USB port is on top, those silver traces run all the way down to the board. What I've done is cut the traces in half. This lets me solder the traces connected to the USB port to one of the memory card ports, meaning it can still be used as a USB port. The USB aspect of the Kinect port will be soldered to the traces still connected to the mother board. You'll notice that the farthest left trace is intact; it has no bearing on the USB connection. The relevant pins from <b>right to left</b> are 5V, data-, data+ and ground.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHnHtthk3jQzw6eyMFQoUfN2jumeHtxIyj5lk9ziGwACOrOw2mjBIpXgNlkQc9TdFuO8Tbraksxll7pEbLLx_mFdSjwhQdPW3u3zRl0VcNQ4m1D35jHiFX9viPoRGvZSYdaFUYXN9mg/s1600/image7.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHnHtthk3jQzw6eyMFQoUfN2jumeHtxIyj5lk9ziGwACOrOw2mjBIpXgNlkQc9TdFuO8Tbraksxll7pEbLLx_mFdSjwhQdPW3u3zRl0VcNQ4m1D35jHiFX9viPoRGvZSYdaFUYXN9mg/s320/image7.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This shows how the wiring ended up. The gray wire coming off of the Kinect port is for the 12v, it's connected to one of the pins where the PSU plugs into the console. There's several 12v points on the 360 but it made sense to me that the best place to pull 1.5a at 12v would probably be the connector for the PSU. Drawing that much power somewhere else is likely to cause problems. Those traces are very malleable, and I'm pulling up on the cable to show the picture which is why they look all bent and wild.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtAAhAiJjXJPy2tYdERN1WUxrJOoHZcYYBW_2AAcjka6GKXUIB1yMhK3uO3dqCBRjCB8uCP9giXNbscFPAK3-g1T-fZca6oixNH3RTgOCRiTje3lSzXLBoHZHaotyAARflTtfjQm6ZGg/s1600/image6.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtAAhAiJjXJPy2tYdERN1WUxrJOoHZcYYBW_2AAcjka6GKXUIB1yMhK3uO3dqCBRjCB8uCP9giXNbscFPAK3-g1T-fZca6oixNH3RTgOCRiTje3lSzXLBoHZHaotyAARflTtfjQm6ZGg/s320/image6.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I cut the case with some tin snips to let the port show through. This photo makes it look like the port is partially blocked, but it's mostly the angle and lighting. I'll have some more pics of that in a moment.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4Scbn5AxgnXEI-XYIj4Fea7B3FGl5C97EZRklY6ZCl4DOWpjLKWEYx0WZsy1EZHSp8WJZ9l9tLnEzZqu0M4JZZzRcmnXsRYYaUpfgkW1eXIo2Ia_KilYqHXWvkSFpd9xaCmACC8yOQ/s1600/image8.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv4Scbn5AxgnXEI-XYIj4Fea7B3FGl5C97EZRklY6ZCl4DOWpjLKWEYx0WZsy1EZHSp8WJZ9l9tLnEzZqu0M4JZZzRcmnXsRYYaUpfgkW1eXIo2Ia_KilYqHXWvkSFpd9xaCmACC8yOQ/s320/image8.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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To fit the wireless adapter in the case, it needs to be removed from its housing. It's fairly easy to break open with a flat head screwdriver. The wireless N adapter has nice long cables for the antennae. The plastic bits can be broken with a pair of pliers and the internals removed as well. I'll be completely hiding the antennae.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1af4iJDqXWMXBzQwYwRRoVZI3BNo3G0bMSs_PBg_KoIuM5CMqXYAPx34KgOFfrJcxV2B1R-LxIWRV0p1sfgwDzG7jbMA3lzMr6LvHTQuo-cv0ByE1cpJZMb00L533fXEbW3Wqe227kw/s1600/image9.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1af4iJDqXWMXBzQwYwRRoVZI3BNo3G0bMSs_PBg_KoIuM5CMqXYAPx34KgOFfrJcxV2B1R-LxIWRV0p1sfgwDzG7jbMA3lzMr6LvHTQuo-cv0ByE1cpJZMb00L533fXEbW3Wqe227kw/s320/image9.jpeg" width="240" /></a></div>
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I covered the adapter with electrical tape to prevent anything from shorting out against the housing. This is the area of the case where the DVD drive sits, that's the connector for the HDD right below the black mass that is the wifi adapter.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpDcsWNwE65jHcDlM-jVMHnDJm4qrFUIegHuBccEz6EKgH_kCZgeAu8GqtaGr4yxMtFDUP4FXhYjXdEyovSJbJgSICUsoMi9qauX1wV7aoXvmN4PIDfTdeltehhQjo9rx8OaAoejMzA/s1600/image10.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpDcsWNwE65jHcDlM-jVMHnDJm4qrFUIegHuBccEz6EKgH_kCZgeAu8GqtaGr4yxMtFDUP4FXhYjXdEyovSJbJgSICUsoMi9qauX1wV7aoXvmN4PIDfTdeltehhQjo9rx8OaAoejMzA/s320/image10.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This shows where the antennae come through the case. They'll be hidden in the small compartment in front of where the HDD sits. This will prevent any interference that the aluminum housing would have caused.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0objgbINrZYJ1fd7zrWssvJ7NifPWqAWJMvYxc1YruafBaNKkIZGwBKm7waqUi7XFNRqTmA07IbnNodwXeHt-eL18PtI3n_mVrJWCRBseBK4f5QWE0GRHvYo96OBRqYs_4c4aQpWssA/s1600/image12.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0objgbINrZYJ1fd7zrWssvJ7NifPWqAWJMvYxc1YruafBaNKkIZGwBKm7waqUi7XFNRqTmA07IbnNodwXeHt-eL18PtI3n_mVrJWCRBseBK4f5QWE0GRHvYo96OBRqYs_4c4aQpWssA/s320/image12.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I ended up cutting the bottom part of the fan shroud with a dremel to hide away some of the wires so that the DVD drive sits flat. Speaking of the DVD drive...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3sKuvVV6tCNhKabaeijIHuYJNeIIP2Il25vN_haIcvOluvZ1XYCG4IHtacKV-g_Y5dKrS5wNOYyMfYob4jBJOgr-f9MPESEs6L5NSm0HaZF8ScEEyjqSOI27ivQREG5yFTuKepE7zDA/s1600/image3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3sKuvVV6tCNhKabaeijIHuYJNeIIP2Il25vN_haIcvOluvZ1XYCG4IHtacKV-g_Y5dKrS5wNOYyMfYob4jBJOgr-f9MPESEs6L5NSm0HaZF8ScEEyjqSOI27ivQREG5yFTuKepE7zDA/s320/image3.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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I added some rubber bumpers to the DVD drive to prevent the infamous circular scratches from occurring. I've only had it happen once, and it was fixable (not very severe).. but I'd rather it didn't happen again.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfeVUEtw1mevSjmKcLl0HIFpARcw7uLT4ga9cOT8VMITtpMaRq7AbX61DeNLrOSR0mk-DOulYkdXQjyMtZ1LNjF8jDZpzUSB6zECbTtTkBh96f3zwCwvtQr87uYsAjeq_C5cTnXxANMw/s1600/image13.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfeVUEtw1mevSjmKcLl0HIFpARcw7uLT4ga9cOT8VMITtpMaRq7AbX61DeNLrOSR0mk-DOulYkdXQjyMtZ1LNjF8jDZpzUSB6zECbTtTkBh96f3zwCwvtQr87uYsAjeq_C5cTnXxANMw/s320/image13.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is the wifi adapter tucked away next to the DVD drive. The board is really small, it's not a tight fit at all.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwS_jcu6mvFxg8csPonVu93-sMb1ohPNLFLg-Q5Kp2TT_bnFNiPwHUCxDhB2AC9ubzLmGM3wfiJdPJZt2y3GlGNpTH8t_iu3Vt8VLDdD4IRuyKfsqu1SzufRJJOjYeDEJOxUcvINq8Q/s1600/image14.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCwS_jcu6mvFxg8csPonVu93-sMb1ohPNLFLg-Q5Kp2TT_bnFNiPwHUCxDhB2AC9ubzLmGM3wfiJdPJZt2y3GlGNpTH8t_iu3Vt8VLDdD4IRuyKfsqu1SzufRJJOjYeDEJOxUcvINq8Q/s320/image14.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This shows where the case was cut for the Kinect port to show through. I did this with a dremel as well. I'll probably end up sanding it a bit to clean up the edges.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMA38Inr0-GN-fn9Carc9E8bcsCZoM0J-gr6U6gY1JVNiIpPlcLUFEWd4MUhWuSM6GenWv9plf64PiOG-WkYuQ6LEC7YVmJ_hXl7yeEuaKgQQLtlyUuuUPf9cm24MNYIEMsfkjbb8SGg/s1600/image15.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMA38Inr0-GN-fn9Carc9E8bcsCZoM0J-gr6U6gY1JVNiIpPlcLUFEWd4MUhWuSM6GenWv9plf64PiOG-WkYuQ6LEC7YVmJ_hXl7yeEuaKgQQLtlyUuuUPf9cm24MNYIEMsfkjbb8SGg/s320/image15.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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This shows where the wifi antennae sit.</div>
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And finally...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfZ6xyp7Av9s8cxtVQAqVisvRTOoDHTSeYeIPQ_C4gFQiLSo2nLRT-UaI1iKzRugyKMkR_FfqadcqU3Q90UQ-vnH9j3t0DlDPPcDS65dCK30jydGCaMDqWRl5n6FepdVNunTjN0kthg/s1600/image16.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdfZ6xyp7Av9s8cxtVQAqVisvRTOoDHTSeYeIPQ_C4gFQiLSo2nLRT-UaI1iKzRugyKMkR_FfqadcqU3Q90UQ-vnH9j3t0DlDPPcDS65dCK30jydGCaMDqWRl5n6FepdVNunTjN0kthg/s320/image16.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's the Xbox, showing the rear USB port working and connected to Xbox Live with no ethernet cable. This is actually a better wifi setup than the 360s with the integrated wifi, as the wireless N adapter is capable of full 5ghz N band connectivity while the S and E models' integrated wifi is not.</div>
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My only concern with the Kinect port at this point is that I may have to reopen the Xbox and add shielding to the wires since the other ones were so sensitive to interference. I also learned that I need to clean my flux up better as I was having some conductivity between the data lines for the wifi adapter once the system was on and warmed up a bit.<br />
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Time to game like it's 2005.</div>
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<b>FOLLOW UP</b></div>
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Since writing this, I managed to grab a Kinect from Goodwill for $5. The Kinect port works fantastic, and I haven't had any issues with it when playing a Kinect game or just leaving it active while playing other games.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-52345493546210384512015-07-23T21:26:00.000-07:002015-07-23T21:26:33.434-07:00The Process of Ripping a Dreamcast GameA while ago, I blogged a little intro to <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2015/03/selfbooting-dreamcast-games-part-1.html">ripping Dreamcast games</a> (I will continue that). I wanted to go over what my personal process looks like, and what work is involved. Lately I've been working on ripping Sonic Adventure 2, a beast of a game. There's a lot of data, and fitting it to a 700mb CD-R is a challenge. So I'm going to go over what it all looks like, from start to finish.<br />
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<b>1. Picking a Game</b><br />
This may seem easy, just a matter of "what would I like to play?" but that's not always the case. The Dreamcast was never around long enough for there to be an official scene ruleset developed for the system. Yes, piracy has rules and they are very strict. If you're in the scene, violating the rules can get your releases nuked and you can lose access to sources. Groups in the scene have to ratify rules. Sometimes groups will disagree with them to the point that they'll abstain from signing and participate as outsiders.<br />
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Well, the Dreamcast never got that. While most consoles have a near complete set of scene rips, the Dreamcast didn't get that. Echelon was the most active group back in the day, ending up with about 250 releases or so. There were other groups, but even with all of them they didn't cover all of the Dreamcast games.<br />
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I have the means to dump GD-ROMs myself, but it's largely irrelevant honestly. TOSEC's GDI set is verified, and if I did dump my own GD-ROM, I'd check it against TOSEC's hashes to verify that my dump was good anyways. So I've got a 500gb TOSEC set to pull GD-ROM dumps from.<br />
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So, why is picking a game difficult? Personally, I've got a lot of criteria that I go by. Can I improve on existing rips? Is there anything wrong with existing rips? Do I like this game? Does anyone want this game? How difficult is this game to work with? Sometimes I take all of those into account. Sometimes I take none of them into account and it's just a matter of getting a game done. Sonic Adventure 2 is a game that I really love, but I just never looked into it myself. I had gotten requests for it before, but I decided I'd actually take a look into it this time. I was unsure if I was going to, but then...<br />
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<iframe width="320" height="266" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/3gPBmDptqlQ/0.jpg" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3gPBmDptqlQ?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
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I was looking through the game's files and heard that. Suddenly it was 2002 (when I played the game) again and this song was awesome. So, that settled it. Sonic Adventure 2 it is.<br />
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<b>2. Research</b><br />
Most Dreamcast games <i>don't</i> require much work. Games didn't have any kind of copy protection aside from the Dreamcast verifying it was loading a GD-ROM until about July of 2000. A lot of games still didn't after that point, but you can bet that Sonic Adventure 2 (from June of 2001) has protections that must be cracked to boot from a CD-R.<br />
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So, how do I research that?<br />
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First, I go all the way back to the Echelon days and pull their NFO files. Echelon's NFOs don't usually provide any specifics on cracking, but they do give an idea of what you could potentially be dealing with. Next, check for patches. Since Echelon functioned as a scene group, they were basically racing other ripping groups to get theirs out first. This lead to mistakes, and they put out patches to fix them. Then I'll take a look at NFO files from contemporary rips. Once I feel that I've gathered enough info, I'll start looking through the game's files and getting an idea of what needs to go. NFO files assist with this as well because they give you a frame of reference. What did earlier groups have to remove to get everything down to size and how can modern ripping techniques negate the need to remove some of these files?<br />
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Now we have our starting point. From looking over everything we can learn that..<br />
1. Sonic Adventure 2 is heavily protected<br />
2. Due to the size of the game, the audio was always made mono instead of stereo<br />
3. Videos had to be heavily downsampled<br />
4. The Chao Garden is broken in basically all rips since they're based on Echelon's hack<br />
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From that, I'll make my goals...<br />
1. Maintain stereo audio<br />
2. Fix the Chao Garden<br />
3. Add the DLC to the on-disc web browser so that it can still be accessed<br />
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Now, there are ways around the sizes of games. One common way to do it is a split release. A split release will break a game up into multiple discs with the NFO telling you when to switch to a different disc to continue with the game. My personal philosophy with ripping is to maintain the best possible quality for an 80 minute CD-R while maintaining the original number of discs. There are 99 minute discs, but frankly they're not easy for most people to get and burners that can handle them well are uncommon. The Dreamcast is common in less fortunate countries than MURRKA, and it's not fair for them to be left out of the fun. Aside from that, it's fun to set the bar high to really push yourself.<br />
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<b>3. Ripping the Game</b><br />
Now we're into the meat of the process. The actual work. For this process, I work in a few steps. First I'll take a look at file sizes and see where my largest problems are. At this point I'll usually hash all of the files and check for any duplicates. Once I know what I'm looking at in terms of data, I'll start moving files around between the two data sessions (assuming there's no CDDA) so I can start getting an idea of what I need to do to fit all of the files into the second data session, which is where the majority of the data is. Once I've got a rough idea, I'll start downsampling and squeezing everything in place. Finally, the game will be cracked and tested.<br />
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For Sonic Adventure 2, I started with the video. In the research phase, I learned that Sonic Adventure 2's video is unique. The Dreamcast's most common video format is MPEG-1 video multiplexed with ADX audio in a container called SFD. It's very similar to a basic MPEG container. Sonic Adventure 2's SFD container is actually very similar to a modern MKV or M4V container in that it contains multiple audio streams, a Japanese language stream and an English language stream. I had all of the correct tools to deal with this situation, but I immediately ran into a road bump. My typical process for demultiplexing the video was only giving me the first audio stream, the Japanese audio. This is where being flexible is handy.<br />
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After some research, I found a program called VGM Tool Box which has demultiplexers for a lot of different video formats common to games. This let me dump out both audio streams. I mentioned previously that this game has a huge amount of data, so first I had to deal with deleting the Japanese audio stream as much as I could. If it isn't present in some way, the Dreamcast won't play the English track because it would be multiplexed as the <i>first</i> track, which the Japanese track is. This was simple, just a matter of opening the audio track in a hex editor and deleting all of the data beyond the header. Now for the video itself. There are two different ways to handle MPEG-1 video with modern ripping. Back in the day, variable bit rate encoding wasn't really much of a thing. Everything was done with a constant bit rate, which meant that if you needed a max bitrate of 3000kbps to keep your video quality good, a black screen would still have that same bitrate. Variable lets the bitrate drop to near 0 if you have a black screen. This saves a lot of space.<br />
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Whenever I re-encode Dreamcast video, I always use a variable bitrate. The real question is a matter of encoder. If there's space to work with, I'll use a typical MPEG-1 encoder. If space is a pressing issue, then the big guns come out and I'll use a KVCD encoder for MPEG-1. KVCD is a very optimized encoding matrix that allows you to REALLY abuse the bitrate before there's much visible degradation of picture quality.<br />
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Obviously, we'll go with KVCD here. Initially, I encoded all of the video with 1200kbps KVCD and remuxed the files into SFDs with the ADX header file in place for the Japanese tracks so the English track would be positioned correctly.<br />
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With video out of the way (for now), it's time to turn to the audio. The research phase can be treacherous at times, and for Sonic Adventure 2 this was a good example. One NFO lead me to believe that Sonic Adventure 2 used modified ADX headers which stored loop data at different bytes, rendering the typical encoders which respect loop points useless. Loop points allow ADX files to loop endlessly, so this is important for a game. I wasted a day inspecting the header data and trying to determine how it differed.<br />
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The truth was that it wasn't different at all. I figured this out by just saying "fuck it" and going for it. Typically, Dreamcast games ADX files have a sampler ate of 44khz. Even Sonic Team found that their game was pushing it on space and the ADX files for Sonic Adventure 2 are 32khz. Usually you'll knock 44khz audio to 32khz for some quick and dirty downsampling, but that's out the window here. The only game I've seen with a lower audio quality is Ecco The Dolphin: Defender of the Future. It was 24khz for that game, which was fine since the soundtrack was synthesizer heavy. Since I would have to be reducing an already lower sample rate, quality became a concern. I found that 24khz was too low and the bass became very distorted. I settled in at 26khz as this worked best for the game's rock soundtrack.<br />
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With a game with so much data, some sacrifices have to be made. Japanese audio already had to go for the videos, so the Japanese voice files are going to have to go as well. A cool 75mb saved. Most games have a ton of duplicate files, we can save space there as well. Using hardlinking, we can make it so that only one copy of a file goes on the disc, but pointers are present which will redirect the system to the single copy of the file. 5mb down.<br />
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At this point, I'll usually make ISOs for both of the data sessions and merge them to a CDI to see how close everything is to fitting a CD-R and make a plan for proceeding. And Sonic Adventure 2 is.... 70mb over. Jesus Christ.<br />
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<b>4. Back to the Drawing Board</b><br />
I've cut the video and audio to a size I thought would fit, and I'm still over. Now we've got to start getting clever. One of the things I do for a rip is create a folder called EXTRAS and place data in that folder which would be found on part of the GD-ROM that could be read by a computer. A lot of the time this is empty but a few developers included desktop wallpapers and artwork from the game. Sonic Adventure 2 included some rather large wallpapers. Those will go first, an extras folder is just fine packed in an archive alongside the game.<br />
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Next I'll retrace my steps. First, back to the video. I use bat files for most of my work as most Dreamcast utilities are exes which must be run from the command line. Automating that saves a lot of time. Since I need as much space as possible, I went over each video individually and took the bitrate as low as it could possibly be while maintaining a fair level of detail and minimizing macrobloacking. It's important with KVCD that you watch every video after it's encoded. There are some problems with the encoder and if the bitrate drops too low you'll get some nasty glitchy macroblocks that pop up. This saved about 15mb.<br />
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Back to the audio now... I know that 24khz is too low. I'm already at 26khz. This leaves me...25khz. So, that'll be it then. 25khs sounds close enough to 26khz in terms of quality and the bass isn't distorted like at 24khz. Redoing all of the audio saves me 10mb.<br />
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Creating another CDI tells me that I still need to lose about 30mb. Unfortunately, we have to remove one of my goals from the list. That goal is adding DLC to the web browser. The web browser in Dreamcast games functions as sort of a standalone thing. It's not coded into the game's executable. Rather, the game boots into the browser separately. We're desperate for space, so it'll have to go. It doesn't change how the game itself plays, so it's expendable in this world. Losing the browser and the wallpapers saves about 15mb.<br />
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This is the point of true desperation since 15mb needs to go. In this situation, I usually finalize the ISO for the first data session. I'll hardlink the files, build the ISO and see how much space I have before I'm at my size limit for the 45000 boot LBA. I'll cram as many files as I can and then purely focus on the second data session.<br />
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There's nothing else I can adjust at this point and I <i>need</i> 15mb of data gone. This leads into another stage of research. For games like Sonic Adventure 2 fans on the internet have really picked the game apart. If there's unused files, they've found them and documented them on a website for curiosity's sake. I'll comb over these sites and locate the unused files and remove them. For Sonic Adventure 2 this barely saved me a mb. It ended up being two songs related to the Chao garden and some textures as well. I also ended up removing two audio files related to online connectivity for Chao functions since the servers are now offline.<br />
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And we still need 14mb. Time to expand our horizons with hardlinking. Going over the audio, I found that two versions of one song were on the disc. One had a two second intro which featured a bass riff and one did not. I linked these two files so that the only one on disc was the one with the bass riff. A negligible change. 3.5mb saved. Each character has a theme song in Sonic Adventure 2, a long version and a short version. The difference between these tracks was about 20 seconds. I removed the longer versions in favor of the shorter versions for a few of the characters. We're now in business and the game fits to a disc.<br />
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The tightest I had ever packed a game was Ecco the Dolphin. There was about 5mb of space on the disc which I ended up dummying out. Sonic Adventure 2 had 700kb.<br />
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<b>5. Cracking the Game</b><br />
Our game now fits to a disc... but does the Dreamcast play it?<br />
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For Sega's games, there wasn't a lot of variety in protections. I've got a list of common protection schemes and what bytes they show up as in hex. I'll search the game's binary and fix them with the known fix. Sonic Adventure 2 fell into this category, thankfully. Echelon had some problems with it, and their binary has been reused for contemporary rips. Their binary is coded for an 11700 boot LBA though, and I use 45000 which replicates the GD-ROM's boot LBA. Since we're mimicking that you typically have to fuss with games less.<br />
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Now that our game fits to a disc and it's cracked, I'll do an emulator test with nullDC before burning for a hardware test. The emulator test lets me know if anything is horribly wrong. The emulator test is not always right though, and due to the inaccuracies emulators can have the game won't always fail in the emulator where it would in real hardware.<br />
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The game boots, the music loops and it looks like everything is good. Thankfully, it behaves identically on the actual hardware.<br />
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<b>6. Testing</b><br />
Most games don't require much testing due to their simplicity. I don't really trust Sonic Adventure 2 for that, though. In this situation, I'll modify the game's boot information to display a test release notice and distribute it to a few interested parties online. The test release notice is there purely so no one redistributes it as their own work. It hasn't happened and the people who offer to help are honest, but just in case...<br />
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This game needs to be tested to the end. I understand that parts of the ending end up streaming audio and video at the same time, which is problematic for CD-Rs since they read at a slower speed than GD-ROMs. I'm working through the game myself, and I'll use tester feedback as well. At this point the game is finished, but my concern is tweaking the order that the files are in on the disc. If issues crop up with streaming speed, I'll have to modify the way the files are sorted in order to improve the performance.<br />
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<b>7. Release</b><br />
Sonic Adventure 2 isn't yet at this point, but it's close. This is a simple matter of archiving the game and getting it out to my preferred sites.<br />
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The process is complete. We've met two of our goals:<br />
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1. The game has stereo audio<br />
2. The Chao Garden works<br />
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Sometimes, all of the goals can't be met. Two out of three is pretty damn good though.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-56351673931912934162015-06-15T20:43:00.000-07:002015-06-15T20:56:41.291-07:00Why You Shouldn't Back Shenmue III's KickstarterPut the pitchforks and torches down, you unruly assholes.<br />
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I <i>love</i> Shenmue. I've played the first one several times. I think it's one of the finest games ever made. It's elegant in its simplicity and beautiful in the way it gives you an illusion of a living world. I didn't enjoy Shenmue II to the same extent, but I still want to know where things go from here.<br />
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Why? Why would I say "don't back Shenmue III" then?<br />
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Well, why <i>should</i> you? Sony apparently wants this game on their platform. They <i>know</i> that Shenmue fans are ravenous. They know that people will want to get in on this game just from all of the hype and desire over the years. They know people want it so much that they put aside time for it in their press conference and brought Yu Suzuki on stage.<br />
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There's a big fucking problem here. Sony stands to make money off of Shenmue III's existence, <i>especially</i> if it's only on PS4 and PC. They'll get a cut of every copy sold on the PSN store, and they know that a lot of people who were undecided will likely be swayed to a PS4. Sony will probably make more than $2 million in this exchange of money. So... why couldn't they just toss Yu Suzuki $2 million?<br />
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Well, why would they?<br />
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This is an experiment, and it's a dirty one. It's also already working, Shenmue III is almost at 1 million dollars as of 8:30 PM PST. Sony just pimped a game that it won't have any financial investment in on their grandest stage and they're going to get money off of it. Of course there were other games that they didn't have any financial involvement in... but every game there had some kind of funding for it. This? This is just free money and good PR for Sony.<br />
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Since you're blinded by the hype, let's look at some business basics. In the business world when you invest in something, you expect a return on investment. So if I give someone $1 million to sell a new product, I'd like to get money back on that. That's why I'm investing. I'm not just giving $1 million away for fun. As a Kickstarter backer, you get nothing back other than whatever tier you went into.<br />
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Sony just created a tidal wave of hype. Shenmue III will be forever associated with PS4, and they did it with nothing other than 2 minutes of time. Watching that dollar amount tick up on Kickstarter is proof that game companies can continue to do whatever they please.<br />
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Their deadliest weapon is hype and their easiest target is you, eager eyed gamer. Your wallets couldn't come out fast enough. No thought was put into the implications of this Kickstarter. Gamers have no impulse control, we're conditioned on the instant gratification that so many games provide us.<br />
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"I can 'donate' some money here and get Shenmue III? COUNT ME IN!"<br />
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Don't fund Shenmue III. Hold on to some bit of dignity and self respect as a gamer. Sony has clearly been in the loop on Shenmue III, but apparently $2 million was too much. This is a transparent ploy to see if Kickstarter can generate enough funds to build a large and impressive game. This is a test to see if Sony can successfully associate a game with the PS4 as an exclusive and not pay a dime. Instead, you pay for it.<br />
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Don't let this future exist.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-1284203508998608012015-06-15T20:07:00.001-07:002015-06-15T21:12:14.327-07:00E3 2015 Day 1 Wrap UpIt's that magical time of year where studio executives get to waltz onstage and try to act cool. Sony just closed out their press conference, which means we're basically done for the day. And... what a non-event it was. We'll just skip past Bethesda's "Fallout 4 is better than you guys initially thought, honest!" conference last night.<br />
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It seems like the theme of the day was who exactly could be more boring.<br />
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Microsoft trotted out the same E3 staples they've had for the past 8 years. Halo, Forza, Fable, Gears of War. Who cares? It's so fucking predictable at this point in time. It's like clockwork. All of those games are usually great when they come out, but can we get a bit of variety? They've found a winning formula, but we need more here.<br />
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After a lot of discussion about Rare finally doing something great, that something great appears to be a collection of 30 Rare games for $30. Sea of Thieves got a trailer, and nothing more. Sony manages to appear to have disappeared up their own asshole any time they bring a developer on stage to discuss a game (the hyperbole would make you think they've cured AIDs), but at least they talk about the game. About all we know about Sea of Thieves is that it is a game. That goes right along with the Keiji Inafune game, ReCore. We got a trailer with no context and no discussion.<br />
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Some indie stuff, some shoot shoot shoot military HU AH bullshit and some Minecraft.<br />
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Oh, and HoloLens. Why is anyone getting excited about that? It's another high concept Microsoft product that will never materialize. There's been a lot of those throughout time. And... Xbox 360 backwards compatibility. Okay, guess you're realizing you don't have much of an Xbox One library to go off of here.<br />
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Microsoft also thinks you're stupid enough to pay $150 for a fucking controller.<br />
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Ubisoft and EA apparently had press conferences as well, but I'm not sure when I ever gave a fuck about Assassin's Creed and I'm <i>guessing</i> that EA is making Madden 16. I'm not sure though. Is there going to be another football season after that tragic Seahawks interception or was that the end of football?<br />
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On to Sony.<br />
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While you could accuse Microsoft of lacking passion, Sony seems to have taken cues from every prior Microsoft press conference and managed to be utterly boring. There wasn't any sense of triumph like when the PS4 was announced. There wasn't any sense of things to come like last E3. It was just sort of Sony existing at a press conference.<br />
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The Last Guardian! It's back again to prove that it exists. All of the people who work up a half boner when discussing ICO or Shadow of the Colossus are pleased.<br />
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Some kind of weird Monster Hunter looking game from Guerrilla Games, Horizon: Zero Dawn. This has kind of a cool art style. It looks like it controls like The Last of Us though, which could suck. E3 2015 is apparently the year of the post apocalyptic game.<br />
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Street Fighter V... I've got a lot of thoughts on that. We'll just say that it exists here. No Man's Sky had an incredibly boring showing. The game looked slow and uninteresting. An amazing concept, but we'll see if it works. It'll probably turn out like StarFlight. An amazing concept, but not quite an amazing game. Very good, though.<br />
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Media Molecule were so far up their own assholes that they almost sucked me in as well.<br />
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World of Final Fantasy actually looked interesting. And it's getting a Vita version. I'll take one, please. Final Fantasy VII remake... why? Why does everything have to be remade? Play the original, enjoy it. If it has problems that you think are so bad they need to be rectified by a remake, then maybe that original game isn't so good. Or if you're so much of a graphics whore that you need it to be remade in HD, maybe you're playing games for the wrong reasons.<br />
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The absolute <i>worst</i> part of the night? Sony announcing Shenmue III's <i>Kickstarter.</i> What the fuck? So, Shenmue III is a property that you'd like to have on PS4 to the point that you will help promote a fundraiser for the game? Jesus, you can sneeze and a stray bit of spit will hit a stack of bills amounting to $2 million at Sony HQ. <i>Fuck this Kickstarter.</i> I love Shenmue, but I will be damned if I put my money towards something that was just promoted on a stage like that, but Sony can't spare the $2 mil.<br />
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Some VR bullshit, some Disney Infinity bullshit, some other bullshit. What a bunch of bullshit.<br />
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Oh, and Uncharted 4. Yay? We.. want more of that? Okay.<br />
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What a dismal opening day. I may not even write about any other things because everything was so boring that this was boring.<br />
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The race to see if the Xbox One or PS4 will become an interesting console first continues.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-49457491879344657022015-05-18T21:31:00.001-07:002015-05-18T21:45:17.283-07:00Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Essentials (PlayStation Portable) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Splinter Cell used to be Ubisoft's "it" franchise, much like Assassin's Creed is now. We got an entry pretty much every year, up until the meandering (and frequently delayed) Double Agent. Splinter Cell's plot wasn't complex but people were generally invested in Sam Fisher as a character. Double Agent looked to push Sam to the brink, and it was exciting. We knew that Double Agent would have branching paths, choices to make, so on and so forth. The final choice would involve the death of a character crucial to the franchise. He either dies by Sam's hand, or Sam saves him.</div>
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Everyone knew that there had to be a canonical ending, and Splinter Cell: Essentials was set to confirm which ending it was. There's a couple of problems with that. Essentials came out <i>months</i> before Double Agent and it only came out on the PSP. So, anyone with an eye on the franchise already knew what happened. That's... problematic. I was aware of what happened in Essentials because I knew I didn't have a PSP to play it, so I looked up what happened. I'm sure a lot of people did for this same reason. How was I supposed to know that Essentials would give Double Agent a canonical ending <i>months</i> before I (or anyone else) had the chance to play it? This sort of nullified some of the thrill of Double Agent, and I went with the canonical ending. It didn't feel like there was a purpose in any other choice.</div>
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So, Essentials spoiled everything for most of the diehard fans. For some reason everyone was waiting for Splinter Cell: Conviction to confirm the ending, when Essentials actually gave it to us before Double Agent came out. You would think that this meant Essentials was a sad excuse of a game that was best forgotten. Reviews from the time were pretty harsh, but I'm not sure it was entirely warranted.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQKrIdm2LqeJYFYk2XYjgFSkPv3Li13m7Hz1x7-E6F6HLRRPM5EQHX2m9KdXEFXe6fzIZDMXVRZbdxoO1XakuiaXBrW_xWmFlD3i8-gWUlqTWSTvq3wlOmahPFOpg4Aa9WqjFkuqRAhg/s1600/s28533_psp_15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQKrIdm2LqeJYFYk2XYjgFSkPv3Li13m7Hz1x7-E6F6HLRRPM5EQHX2m9KdXEFXe6fzIZDMXVRZbdxoO1XakuiaXBrW_xWmFlD3i8-gWUlqTWSTvq3wlOmahPFOpg4Aa9WqjFkuqRAhg/s320/s28533_psp_15.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Splinter Cell: Essentials plays out, for the most part, as a flashback. Sam Fisher is interrogated and recounts certain missions, leading up to that crucial point in Double Agent. This is not unlike the plot framing device of Conviction, with Douglas Shetland recounting events. Most of the levels are taken from the three preceding games, with a few original levels thrown in for good measure. The levels actually translate to the PSP's hardware very well. Graphics are grainy, but the remade levels are brought over with few compromises. There are more loading points and, seeing as this is the PSP, the loads are long.</div>
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The PSP translation actually seems to have been very well thought out by the developers. The controls are hampered by a lack of a second analog stick. An attempt was made to rectify this by having the circle button activate a free camera mode or recenter the camera with two taps. It's not completely successful, but it works. The best thing that the developers did to smooth the changeover was to dumb down the AI. The AI is now painfully dumb, but it gives you that extra second to orient yourself and react. If nothing had been done in this regard, the game would be impossibly frustrating. Interactivity with the environment has been toned down a bit, there are fewer lights that you can successfully shoot out but levels seem to be darker than the console counterparts, giving you more areas to hide. Otherwise, all of the features are present.</div>
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The levels are about a 50-50 mix of old and new. No levels from Pandora Tomorrow feature in the campaign (which is a shame, I personally think Pandora Tomorrow is a great game), but there are three levels from Pandora Tomorrow included as a bonus feature. It seems like these were possibly cut as a result of rushed development. The plot is... jumpy, to say the least. I was never fully on board with exactly <i>why</i> it was crucial to revisit these points. In particular, the GFO Oil Rig from the original game has never been a level that I particularly enjoyed. The way the game is patched together with new and old makes me wonder if it wasn't planned to be a wholly original title that was abandoned at some point. Including bonus levels from Pandora Tomorrow makes it seem like the developers were just kind of toying around with the PSP at some point to see what they could throw at it.</div>
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The real knock against Essentials is exactly that; I'm not sure what the point is. It's really an oddity in the franchise. It spoiled a main game, ported older levels and just sort of seemed superfluous. Is it as bad as the reviews suggested? No, I don't think so. The new levels actually work well and fit with the design of the original levels. They completely hold their own. If I didn't know that the new levels weren't from a main game, I wouldn't know. That said, it's a problem that I even have to compare the new content to old content <i>in the same game.</i> </div>
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This is a short review because there's not much to say for Essentials. It's a rehash of earlier content with a dash of new thrown in and it plays the same way. If you've played Splinter Cell or Chaos Theory, you've already played half of the game. Is Essentials worth it? Not particularly, no. With Conviction reconfirming this game's confirmation of Double Agent's true ending (and replicating and improving upon its storytelling style), Essentials is anything but. It's not a bad game but it's skippable, even for the most die hard fan.</div>
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<b>The Score: 7.5/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-58051001708670567912015-03-27T21:32:00.000-07:002015-03-28T11:10:08.539-07:00Knuckles' Chaotix (Sega 32X) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTh9CVRCqaqDDlR9oTV1o5439BytvpPeKFS0mteRaE6rmRLbwZ-p2Tj65eW5e77P8j1sIwLzhJfoowq6YRyDp99ycclX6WoR7om4SGCs32yRY4OhJKGIU_ZIOlA9FLhTZRwVqfJXQsFg/s1600/Knuckles'_Chaotix_Coverart.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTh9CVRCqaqDDlR9oTV1o5439BytvpPeKFS0mteRaE6rmRLbwZ-p2Tj65eW5e77P8j1sIwLzhJfoowq6YRyDp99ycclX6WoR7om4SGCs32yRY4OhJKGIU_ZIOlA9FLhTZRwVqfJXQsFg/s1600/Knuckles'_Chaotix_Coverart.png" height="320" width="234"></a></div>
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The Sonic franchise, like Sega itself, has seen better days. The Sega Genesis outings were truly sublime, and I believe that Sonic 3 & Knuckles (the combined Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles) is truly the best platforming game of all time. I don't think it gets the love it deserves due to the way it was released. Sonic 3 & Knuckles was always intended to be one game, but due to the size of the game it was too expansive to put on one cartridge in a cost effective way. It was split into Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to keep costs down for everyone.</div>
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Those games were the last real Sonic games for most people. Sonic 3D Blast came out later, but it was clear that it was never really intended to be a true successor. Sonic Xtreme, the planned Sega Saturn outing, never came to be and we were left without a true Sonic game until Sonic Adventure. There was another game, though... on the immediately deserted Sega 32X. I remember this game coming out, and the Archie Sonic comic series had a special tie-in issue for the game (most of the games had some sort of tie-in issue).</div>
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<i>Sonic is NOT in the game, though.</i></div>
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This was a treasured issue of mine, just because that red "Super" Metal Sonic is so fucking badass. The Archie Sonic series was actually pretty well done from what I remember, and the important bit is that Sonic's friends didn't suck in this series. That's another story for another time though.</div>
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My parents were (shockingly) aware that I couldn't get Knuckles' Chaotix though, as I didn't have the needed 32X mushroom. Now that I do, this was the game I was looking forward to the most by far. Knuckles' Chaotix has been something of a lost game in the Sonic canon. In all of the many emulated collections (Sonic Mega Collection, Sonic's Classic Genesis Collection, XBLA ports, so on and so forth), Knuckles' Chaotix has <i>never</i> been re-released in any form. There's a few rumors about the game, one of them being that Sega asked that Sonic be removed from the game because they had concerns about the format of the game. It surely seems possible as there is an early prototype of the game that can be found online that runs on Sega Genesis known as Sonic Crackers.<br>
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Instead of Sonic and Tails, we get Knuckles and his group of friends, the Chaotix. Mighty the Armadillo (who had actually appeared earlier in SegaSonic the Hedgehog, an arcade game), Charmy Bee, Vector the Crocodile and Espio the Chameleon. Utterly forgettable, and they wouldn't appear again until Sonic Heroes (which was also utterly forgettable). It manages to add to the Sonic-Knuckles rivalry that used to be a thing though, making it seem like Knuckles' has his group just as Sonic has his own.<br>
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Knuckles' Chaotix differs from traditional Sonic games in the fact that you use two characters. The characters are bound together by a chain of rings which essentially functions as a rubber band. One of the key gameplay elements is to use the hold button, which makes the non-player character stand in place while the other character runs until the chain is stretched, and then shoots forward.<br>
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This is admittedly awkward at first, but it adds a great sense of speed to the game and it becomes second nature once you understand the limitations of the mechanic and when the best times to use it are. The game makes a pretty admirable attempt at the physics of this idea, but sometimes it's just outright glitchy. It's not unusual or uncommon for the characters to just kind of spaz out and sling around all over the place when you're bouncing off a spring or moving between two different heights. This isn't surprising considering the age of the game, but it is disappointing that it happens since this is the key idea of the game. You can also pick the second character up and throw them to higher platforms or to hit switches, though this isn't used much. The rest of the game is essentially identical to other Sonic games in terms of mechanics.<br>
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Unfortunately, the level design is a bit scattershot. Most of the team that worked on Sonic CD worked on Knuckles' Chaotix and the level design shows. Where the numbered Sonic entries have multiple clear paths through the levels, Sonic CD and Chaotix just kind of have paths all over the place with no real single route. It is more bearable here than it was in Sonic CD since you won't be traveling back and forth in time, but the confusion takes away from the game. This group of developers did seem to be capable of relatively straightforward level design; the Speed Slider levels are fantastic and wouldn't feel out of place in a main series game. Would you like to replay those levels...?<br>
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Good luck. Knuckles' Chaotix decided everything needed to be <i>random. </i>The only real choice you have is which character you're controlling when the game starts. From there? Random. The character following you is picked from a claw machine which scrolls back and forth of its own accord.<br>
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There are two useless characters in this situation (the robots), and if you end up with one, you're stuck with them. You re-pick every time you reload the game. In addition to the claw moving back and forth, characters drop off the bottom of the screen and pop back up. Your best strategy here is to just immediately hit A to get the character directly under the claw. If you're playing as Knuckles, it's always Vector. As long as you end up with a character that isn't one of the useless ones, you're good. Levels are also selected in a random order. A cursor moves over all of the levels until you stop it, then it moves a few more times and lands on a level. Chaotix's levels are broken into acts just like other Sonic games, but there are 5 acts for each level. Once you complete an act, you go back out into the hub area and pick another random level. Once you've completed all five acts, that level is taken out of the selections and it can't be picked again.</div>
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The really strange part is that you can never freely pick levels. One of Sonic 3's best features was the ability to go back and pick levels freely once you finished the game. You could also collect any missing Chaos Emeralds and replay the last level to get to the better ending. Once you've beaten Knuckles' Chaotix it just replays the final boss fight. You have to start a new game and play levels randomly to revisit anything. It's really weird to play the acts in a random order and you never really get into a groove with any of the levels. Where the acts in previous games introduced a mechanic and then ramped up the difficulty, the acts here are just... randomly strewn about.<br>
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Anyways, this game is a 32X exclusive. Does it benefit from it? Not really. The graphics aren't anything that couldn't be done on the Genesis. The color count is obviously much better and there's no dithering in sight. It actually kind of makes me wish that Ristar would've been a 32X game. Both games have very similar styles, and it would be nice to see Ristar without all of the dithering. There are some 3D effects in the game, some levels have platforms that are 3D and can be seen from slightly different perspectives. The bonus stages are also fully 3D and play out like a more advanced version of the bonus stages in Sonic 2. The game also relies heavily on sprite scaling effects, which wasn't possible on the standard Genesis hardware (scaling was also possible on the Sega CD). There are some very nice parallax effects as well but it's nothing that would've been missed had this just been a Genesis game.<br>
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As it stands, Knuckles' Chaotix will likely forever remain a curiosity in Sonic, and even Sega, canon. This is not a bad game by any means. It's much more deserving of a spot in compilation releases than Sonic 3D Blast, but it looks like it will never get any kind of rerelease treatment. If you're looking for some classic Sonic, this will scratch the itch. You'll need a 32X or an emulator, though.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><b>The Score: 8/10</b></div>
<br>comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-91933323208918772372015-03-05T13:38:00.002-08:002015-03-05T13:40:12.888-08:00Selfbooting Dreamcast Games, Part 1: The Basics<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I was exchanging emails with someone recently and they asked me if I had a video tutorial for ripping games since I was no longer doing it. This was.. bothersome. I know that the internet has more or less become a glorified on-demand service for videos served on YouTube but, good god. If it was so easy, why wouldn't everyone be doing it? There's only been a few really excellent Dreamcast rippers since the Echelon and Kalisto days because it isn't easy. You need to have a keen eye for detail, you need to have time and you need to think. I make no guarantees that I'll even finish this, but it may provide some interesting perspective for some people.<br />
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We'll start off by looking at the basics and busting some myths so that we can get to the actual process.<br />
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The Dreamcast came out in 1998 in Japan, DVD existed at this time but was still prohibitively expensive. Sega knew that they would need more storage space (and.. copy protection), and DVD was the only real option at the time. In order to avoid skyrocketing the price of their console, they turned to Yamaha for a different solution. Yamaha developed a new disc format called the GD-ROM (Gigabyte Disc Read Only Memory) which stores a gigabyte (shockingly enough). The Dreamcast verifies that the disc is a GD-ROM, and starts the game. Problem solved, no piracy.<br />
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Except...<br />
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Sega had an idea for a new kind of multimedia disc, called MIL-CD. MIL-CDs would only work on Dreamcast, and they would offer additional content on a music CD (or just any other CD, I guess; MIL-CD never really took off obviously) by including video and other extras. So, we have a way to boot a regular CD with Dreamcast data on disc? There's our way in.<br />
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Look at any article on the Dreamcast and you'll always see remarks that "THERE WAS NO COPY PROTECTION!" This is incredibly false. It's there, it was just defeated by the pioneers of Dreamcast ripping. The earliest Dreamcast rips required a boot disc to use and would not boot on their own. Eventually the way the boot disc is set up was mimicked and now Dreamcast games start up all on their own.<br />
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There's a few issues with Dreamcast rips, which is why people are still doing and re-doing Dreamcast rips. Our first limitation is obviously the size disparity between media. CDs can only hold 700mb while the GD-ROM was over 1gb. This typically isn't too huge of a problem as a lot of games simply didn't cross over the 700mb threshold. There are a lot of PlayStation ports that just weren't that big and a lot of games just didn't need to be. There's usually workable solutions to the size disparity. The other key difference that can cause problems with game performance is the difference in read speed. The Dreamcast reads GD-ROMs at 12x while reading CDs at 6x. This causes some limitations with how fast we can get data off of CDs versus the GD. The speed difference can manifest in longer loading times, stuttering in FMV or audio not loading in time (particularly an issue for fighting games). Internet was slower back when Echelon was at work and as a consequence, games with CDDA audio suffered. A lot of games used CDDA and in order to keep file size down (WAV data doesn't compress much) the CDDA tracks were encoded to MP3s which were then converted back to WAV files and inserted into the disc image. In case you don't know, MP3s get small by basically throwing away huge amounts of the data in the audio and converting it back to a WAV file doesn't restore that data.<br />
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Another reason Dreamcast rips are still being done and redone is that the methods of dumping data from the GD-ROM have become more reliable over time. Back in the good old days, discs were dumped using a serial port connection. This could take almost a full day and sometimes data was missing. This resulted in repacks, patches, workarounds, you name it. These days the easiest way to dump games is with an SD card adapter and jj10dm's SD ripper application. This takes around 30 minutes in a worst case scenario.<br />
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Ripping methods have improved over time as well. If you've been around Dreamcast stuff for a long time, you've undoubtedly seen some dipshit say "well, the rippers eventually figured out how to interrupt the burning of the disc to make multiple data sessions so that the game boots on Dreamcast." Holy fuck, that is a stupid statement. Preparing a Dreamcast game to selfboot is precise. There is no mystery about anything happening. Dipshit is right though, we do need multiple data sessions.<br />
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Another reason that Dreamcast games are being redone is because of the selfboot method. Echelon and all the scene groups used what's known as an audio/data selfboot. The smallest CDDA track possible was burned as the first data session. This took a few mb and the following multisession data track killed a few more mb before we got to the actual game data. Disc space is precious, and this was inefficient. Modern selfbooting uses two data tracks which the file system treats as one uninterrupted ISO, so we get some precious mbs back. This is called data/data. This selfboot style also lets us imitate the Dreamcast's original boot LBA, 45000.<br />
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<b>What's an LBA? An LBA is a logical block address. In essence, it tells a computer where data is located by breaking so many bytes into a block. For data, 2048 bytes are in a block and for audio 2352 are in a block. </b>This is important for later.<br />
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The Dreamcast boots files by looking for bootsector data at the start of the second session, this is known as an IP.BIN. An IP.BIN is not an actual file that can be located in the disc, as it is placed at the start of the ISO information. Once the IP.BIN is found, the Dreamcast loads up the data and the IP.BIN points the system towards the 1ST_READ.BIN, essentially our main executable. The 1ST_READ.BIN then wants to know what LBA the IP.BIN is at. If it doesn't match, the boot fails and kicks you back to the Dreamcast BIOS screen. If it doesn't fail, sweet success. This is what I meant when I said Dreamcast ripping is precise. So, when we say the boot LBA is 45000 it means that the end of the 1st data session and the multi session data stops at 44999. The IP.BIN is located at 45000. Echelon's old audio/data style selfboot had a boot LBA of 11700, though most people's burners couldn't burn this file in the correct manner. Typically you'll end up with 11702 if you use the old method.<br />
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I think that's about enough for today, next time I'll post some tools and dig into even more technical details.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-59740736339138510782015-02-23T23:00:00.003-08:002015-02-23T23:10:11.313-08:00Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots (PlayStation 3) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What the hell is wrong with Snake's ear on that cover? Really, look at it. It's so fucked up. Look really closely. You'll never see the cover without immediately noticing the ear again.</div>
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Since I've recently been getting my hands on more and more Sony consoles, I was mostly experiencing the parts of Metal Gear that didn't really see other platforms. Peace Walker, Portable Ops, Metal Gear Solid 3 (which.. are all on other consoles now, except Portable Ops). All of those games were intriguing in their own way, mostly because of Big Boss. Big Boss is a fascinating character; flawed, misguided, foolish, conflicted. He was thrust into something far greater than himself and did what he believed was right at <i>that moment.</i> Big Boss' story has developed into a tragedy, and we'll hopefully see it reach its climax sometime soon with The Phantom Pain. This made me somewhat apprehensive to return to a Solid Snake helmed game. </div>
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Snake is badass, but he's a bit of a boy scout. He's got a sturdy moral compass throughout his appearances, which isn't quite as interesting as Big Boss' constant turmoil. For the most part, Big Boss' entries seem to keep Hideo Kojima's (somewhat poor) sense of humor in check as well, not to mention the welcome lack of <i>deux ex nanomachine</i> in the early (in the series' timeline) entries. </div>
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<i>Goddammit.</i></div>
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MGS4 finds Snake having aged considerably due to the failings of the cloning process used for himself and Liquid. This is hammered home constantly, with Snake clutching his back if you crouch for too long and hacking up a lung while smoking. Strangely, Old Snake works out well. The Colonel from MGS is back, and he's asking Snake to assassinate Ocelot to halt his uprising. Snake is clearly a bit uncomfortable with the thought of outright murdering Ocelot, but accepts. There's an understandably ridiculous number of plot threads that come together in this game, and summarizing them all would result in a week's worth of reading. In the best interests of everyone, I'll refrain from going much further.</div>
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Personally, I didn't have any issues keeping track of what was going on. If you've played the other games then everything you've seen before comes to a fine point here. If you haven't, this game may as well be Japanese. If you're unfamiliar and you do want to play this game, there is a companion app that can be downloaded from PlayStation Network that acts as an encyclopedia for the game's history. It's actually very interesting to go through if you're familiar with the plot, but if you aren't then it would be about as interesting as eating a bowl of Cheerios without sugar and reading a medical journal style summary of Tom Clancy's literary output. </div>
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It's worth noting that while the plot does move along at a good pace, it takes a while to get started. In addition, there is a plot thread that runs throughout the game that amounts to "WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON??" which gets old about... well, the moment it's introduced. Kojima's eye for directing has taken a step up here as well, and the (then) new tech afforded by the PS3 is used well.</div>
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<i>24-ish.</i></div>
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Since I brought that up, I have to say that I fucking hate it when Kojima gets cute. There's a cutscene in the fucking game, that occurs during normal gameplay where another character prompts you to change the disc... then goes "oh, whoops, this is the PS3, it has Blu-Ray technology and we don't need to do that!" </div>
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Are you fucking kidding me? In the middle of your game about a man who is on his death mission, you stop to talk about the PS3's Blu-Ray technology?</div>
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Speaking of which, let's talk about the tone of the game. It's all very final, and we're very much under the impression that this is it. This is the end for Snake. We're on a final tour, even heading back to Shadow Moses. From Snake's age to the title screen, this is the end. Yes, even the title screen carriers a ridiculous seriousness. If you press start immediately, all you see is Snake standing in a cemetery in front of The Boss' grave. If you wait and give time for the camera to move closer to Snake, you'll see that he's holding a gun and clearly contemplating suicide. Aaand we just took a break to talk about Blu-Ray discs.</div>
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Let's talk about that Blu-Ray disc more then since we've opened that can of worms. One of the primary talking points about this game was just the sheer amount of data. It uses a full 50gb Blu-Ray disc. I'm not really sure what for. Don't get me wrong, I love the fact that PS3 games can use uncompressed audio (and I'm all about the surround sound) but this game would not have been hurt with a bit of texture and audio compression to be on the 360. The graphics are unfortunately not that impressive. The art style still cuts close to the one seen in the PS2 entries, which means the characters still have a bit of an anime flair to them in their styling. They're not really meant to look real. It's a bit disappointing given the storytelling. It was acceptable in the older games as we really didn't expect photorealism at the time. Obviously true photorealism is still a stretch, but it seems as though the idea to try to look <i>real</i> wasn't quite on the table for the developers yet. Metal Gear Solid V has moved on to a more realistic style, and it paid off for everything about the game.</div>
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Oh, and that fantastic Blu-Ray disc? The game installs about 4gb of data per chapter. Between chapters, the game rewrites the old data and installs the new data needed for the next chapter. The most recent update to the game will let you install all of the needed data, coming in at about 10gb. Unless you like watching Snake smoke while the game installs, then you can stick with those per chapter installs.</div>
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There are a lot of nice details in the graphics which pay help to reinforce character traits and themes in the game. Meryl returns after a disappointing absence in Metal Gear Solid 2, and is now wielding a desert eagle comfortably; the same gun that Snake had mocked her for previously. I believe the wording was "that's a pretty big gun for a woman." Snake is seen using a 1911, a gun that is regarded as old but reliable (and fun to shoot). I'm not 100% positive, but I don't think Snake used a 1911 in previous entries.</div>
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The gunplay in the game is vastly improved. It's no longer a ridiculous 3 button combo to bring up your gun, go into first person and shoot the gun. You just bring up the sights and shoot, and it changes the game completely. Stealth is still a viable option (and the most desirable in most situations), but going all out guns blazing is an option now as well. In fact, there are sections where going all out is necessary. The best gameplay change?</div>
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YOU CAN CROUCH! Holy shit. Only 6 years after Sam Fisher first crouched, Snake can now crouch. It completely changes the stealth. It's much easier now to sneak up on a guard and grab them, where before it was crawl as close as possible, stand up, and hope you're not too loud. MGS3's camouflage system is also implemented here, in a more hands-off way. Snake's sneaking suit will automatically match the environment when you stay still for a period of time. For the most part it comes off as novelty, but it will save your ass occasionally.</div>
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MGS4 is an excellent game. There will be times when it feels like more of a movie, but it's probably the most fully realized Metal Gear game. The plot is well defined and moves to a satisfying conclusion. All questions are answered and basically every living character returns to play their part. If this had truly ended up being Kojima's last Metal Gear, it would have been an entirely satisfying ending.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_br2swCH1x1oYxzUIAmdUGht3QGM5X_lgBsy0XnHxybRvoQDTe_TjJw_ZMqFtyR1jw9YnJj03MZWmNQDxViRMtFpIWF8lxnoD69EsqRZgwFkGeKgs3giULRh-qEBWrhDHqgEkz-p1fg/s1600/end.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_br2swCH1x1oYxzUIAmdUGht3QGM5X_lgBsy0XnHxybRvoQDTe_TjJw_ZMqFtyR1jw9YnJj03MZWmNQDxViRMtFpIWF8lxnoD69EsqRZgwFkGeKgs3giULRh-qEBWrhDHqgEkz-p1fg/s1600/end.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b>The Score: 9/10</b></div>
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comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-31366916004655218812015-01-29T22:08:00.002-08:002015-01-29T22:08:40.185-08:00The Last of Us (PlayStation 3) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Even though I don't write these reviews very formally, you still need some sort of a thesis to start things off. A lot has been said about this game and I'm not entirely sure where to start. I'll start at the very beginning. There's going to be a couple of spoilers, but I'll keep the big stuff out of it.</div>
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From the moment you put the game into your PlayStation 3, it's made apparently that this is a game of a serious nature. The background on the XMB is a dramatic black and white rendering of our main characters, Joel and Ellie. Once you load up the game, you're greeted with what is instantly recognizable as Gustavo Santaolalla's unique composition. He's an excellent composer, with his soundtrack to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motorcycle_Diaries_%28film%29">The Motorcycle Diaries</a> being one of my favorite movie scores.</div>
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This struck me as a bit odd. I watched The Motorcycle Diaries dozens of times (usually sandwiched between readings on Che Guevara) in my teens. His score is perfectly suited for the movie, but it seemed odd here. A <strike>zombie</strike> cordyceps fungus monster game is something fundamentally American. Santaolalla's music has a distinctly South American edge to it. My initial thought was that this would end up in a sort of mismatch between environment and music, but it was actually quite the opposite. It fits; in the same way the score emphasized Che's early years and spirit to go out and <i>do something</i>, the music here emphasizes the same sense of scale and adventure.</div>
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It's fitting that they sprang for Santaolalla to do the score, as the story has the same weight as his music does. The writing here is a thing to behold; the characterization is the best of any game I've ever played. There's a myriad of games with powerful stories and excellent performances from voice actors (Robert Carlyle as Gabriel Belmont in the end of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow comes to mind), but we've never had such well rounded <i>characters.</i> Joel and Ellie are believable and real. We're not just treated to their personalities in cutscenes, they have banter while just walking around. Ellie spazzes out and acts weird like a kid would. You come to care for both of them and understand their actions.</div>
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Strong characterization drives home moments in a story. You could have the most dramatic moment imaginable, but if your characters are as paper thin as those in an SNL sketch, the moment will fall flat. The confidence in the characters is immediate and I think that this game has probably the finest opening moments of any game. Our <strike>zombies</strike> infected are here due to a mutated strain of a real life parasitic fungus that takes over ants and kills them, then uses their bodies to spread the fungus to other ants. This is a pretty clever idea, but really it's just another way to say zombie without being so cliche (I'll accept it because I'm so fucking tired of zombies everywhere). </div>
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The introductory sequence is set in 2013 with Joel and his daughter just as the fungus is beginning to spread. They make an attempt to escape the town that they live in as all hell is breaking lose. They've almost made it to the road, when a soldier orders them to stop and shoots Joel's daughter dead. Bring up the Santaolalla soundtrack, smash cut to the title card and all of your feels are on fire.</div>
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We pick up 20 years later with Joel a (predictably) broken and changed man, working with a woman named Tess (voiced excellently by Annie Wersching, aka the reason Jack Bauer went <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cyl7t1Qp0g">full Bauer</a>). They're into some shady thug shit, and are expecting a large shipment of guns. It turns out they were stolen and traded to a group called the Fireflies, who work in opposition to the government in trying to bring order back to society. Jeol and Tess are told that they can get the guns back if they take Ellie, a girl infected with the fungus but not changing, to a Firefly lab to be studied for a possible cure. Society has collapsed at this point in time, with survivors mostly packed into tightly controlled quarantine zones in major cities. Tess doesn't make the escape from the quarantine zone (Surprised? There's only two people on the cover, this isn't <i>really</i> a spoiler..), leaving Joel alone in taking Ellie to the Fireflies.</div>
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Joel resents this at first and sees it as a job, but eventually comes to care for Ellie. Their journey takes them across the country over the course of about a year, as they are always just slightly too late to meet up with the Fireflies. I won't spoil the ending, but it does bring up an interesting morality question which I may write about separately at another time. This was the talk of the internet when the game came out, and I managed to avoid spoilers. You probably should, too. The idea presented isn't necessarily unique, but the way the game forces you to consider it in the ending is.</div>
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I have nothing but praise for the story and soundtrack, but let's actually dig in to the gameplay. That's why we're really here, right? </div>
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<i>Weeeeelll.....</i></div>
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I'm going to be straight up. There's very little that's actually enjoyable about playing this game. You're either fucked or you're taking a casual walk to the next place that you'll be fucked. Supplies are limited in this game since we're 20 years into such a catastrophe. You don't have a lot of ammo, and you've got to scrounge supplies to put together makeshift grenades and weapons. There is still a healthy amount of ammo around, but the gun mechanics are just plain bad. Take a look at this screenshot from multiplayer (because I couldn't find any screenshots that actually showed the reticule on screen except this one):</div>
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The camera zooms into your character so tight and at such an odd angle that the reticule seems to have no actual relation to the position of your character and the gun. About midway through the game you begin to compensate for this and focus solely on the reticule, but then they pull the rug out from under you and the enemies all get armor and are almost impossible to kill. That midway point when you get comfortable with it? The game is fun to play at that point. </div>
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This is largely set up as a stealth game, but it's infuriating beyond belief. I'm a big fan of stealth games, but The Last of Us doesn't really look at what other games have done in the genre. Take Splinter Cell, a game from 2002. If there is a light that's causing you difficulty in moving through an area you can A) shoot it or B) find the switch and shut it off. The Last of Us does no such thing. </div>
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The shaky gunplay is basically a death sentence for you in almost every situation. There are enemies called clickers which typically take multiple hits to kill and if they get to you, you are IMMEDIATELY dead. You CAN level up a skill so that you have the ability to stab them, but it is one of the costliest skill upgrades in the game. It's not easy to upgrade your skills either; you have to collect pills that are hidden around levels. There are several other essential skills to upgrade, and by the time I got those to an acceptable level and went to get the stabbing skill, I didn't even end up using it because those enemies were hardly around anymore.</div>
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When you encounter enemies, you're usually greatly outnumbered. The game <i>wants</i> you to sneak around and stealthily deal with them one by one. This is... a lot to ask, and I'm patient with games. One misstep and you're fucked. The enemies have a pretty uncanny ability to shoot you consecutively until you die. You can sneak by enemies too, but there are times when the game has given you impossible odds and virtually forces you to fight by placing enemies in spots that you can't really draw them away from without exposing yourself. You will die a lot, it will be immediate, and it will be frustrating. To its credit the game does checkpoint frequently, but it still doesn't offset the frustration. </div>
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The Last of Us is a movie of unusual power. But the bits of game inbetween? Those bits are deeply flawed on a fundamental level.</div>
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I believe that games have to be scored as a sum of their parts. I don't think one part can override others. Case in point, Mass Effect 3. Most people loved the gameplay. The story was a disaster, which had always been touted as a key point of the Mass Effect series. Yet, we had a game that was highly controversial because of all of the 9.0 reviews with the little "well, the story sucks" caveat.</div>
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In that spirit...</div>
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<b>The Score: 7.5/10</b></div>
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This is an above average game with a lot of effort put into it, but it's just not fun to play. If I were to disregard the gameplay and reward it on its story merits alone, it would be a solid 9.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-53503910586118100172015-01-26T22:32:00.001-08:002015-01-26T22:32:05.382-08:00The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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In my opinion, the Legend of Zelda is a series of ups and downs (usually within the same game). The Wind Waker era was a huge down, and I never really had much interest in The Minish Cap. However, who can resist when you find the game at Goodwill <i>right after</i> you install a backlit screen (I'll write about that some day) in your original Game Boy Advance? I'll gladly pay $3 for that.</div>
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My main disappointment in the series stems from the over-reliance on gimmicks. This seems to be a recurring theme in recent Nintendo games. For Zelda, we've had transformative masks, a sailboat, the Four Sword, the titular Minish Cap, the wolf transformation in Twilight Princess, a boat again combined with an all out touchscreen assault... and whatever obstructs you in Skyward Sword and Spirit Tracks (I haven't played those two, but I did recently buy Skyward Sword). I'll say that I love Majora's Mask though, as the masks didn't really fundamentally change the game or hamper it. I said in my God of War review that there's something to be said for perfecting the wheel instead of reinventing it and this is something that Nintendo has no grasp on.</div>
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I mean, really, how good would it be to just get a straightforward Zelda adventure through Hyrule again? No fucking around, just doing what you need to do to kill Ganon.</div>
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Thankfully, Capcom developed The Minish Cap. Capcom knows not to fuck with a good thing <i>too much.</i> Well, not really. They knew for about 7 years before they started up with Street Fighter again.</div>
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<i>Fuck you guys.</i></div>
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The gimmick of the hour for Minish Cap is the ability to shrink down in size. Thankfully, this gimmick is limited to puzzle solving and exploration. It is used in some boss battles, but it works out surprisingly well. The artwork for the areas you can only access when you're shrunk down is really quite stunning, too.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAfUqxedGFhB_Ce1UAoiiE2olTL-jwPJnx1OBK61PBLWdF78MY985JRemCFmBGWWJ4B1jG9VLOK8UGHR1W2TolELPjbQGs-UhggxrWv6k5XSJ-_E9z5THwxm6Emv32eSgg63hVesubg/s1600/the-legend-of-zelda-the-minish-cap-20040920034003448.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyAfUqxedGFhB_Ce1UAoiiE2olTL-jwPJnx1OBK61PBLWdF78MY985JRemCFmBGWWJ4B1jG9VLOK8UGHR1W2TolELPjbQGs-UhggxrWv6k5XSJ-_E9z5THwxm6Emv32eSgg63hVesubg/s1600/the-legend-of-zelda-the-minish-cap-20040920034003448.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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It's good enough that it makes the rest of the areas almost disappointing. It's the same 2D Zelda you've always known, with a brighter coat of paint. The art style is similar to The Wind Waker, which is probably the best thing they could've taken from that game.</div>
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Minish Cap is the second game in the series chronology, following Skyward Sword. It explores the origin of the Four Sword, which approximately no one gave a fuck about since no one had four friends and four GBAs and four copies of the GBA version of A Link to the Past to actually <i>play </i>Four Swords. There's no Ganon here, instead your enemy is the wizard Vaati, who promptly turns Zelda to stone. Shit goes down and Link gets paired up with Ezlo, a bird-like thing who is actually your hat. He allows Link to shrink down to be the same size as the Minish, a race of microscopic beings that live in Hyrule. They help Link to take his sword and infuse it with four elements, making it the Four Sword. </div>
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Unfortunately, the quest is neither lengthy or difficult. There are more than four dungeons, but they're all short and there's really nothing challenging about them. It takes about 6 or so hours to finish the game. The game lacks the expansiveness to fuel the feeling that you're really on some grand adventure. It has nothing to do with the fact that it's 2D, either. Hell, the original Zelda on NES feels like it plays out on a grander scale.</div>
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There are attempts to make the game longer but they don't offer enough to bring you back into it. You'll collect things called Kinstones from chests and cutting down grass, which you combine with an NPC's Kinstone (there are also slots on walls for them in some places) for some kind of a reward somewhere on the map. Initially, hunting down Kinstones and matching them up is a fun distraction but it eventually reveals itself as shallow busywork. The vast majority of the rewards are simply not worth the effort of finding the person who has a Kinstone to match and then traveling to the location of the item. The other piece of busywork is collecting shells and trading them for figurines. This really isn't anything complicated, but getting the figurines is what's tedious.</div>
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You go to a store to exchange the shells. You walk to the right and pick how many shells you want to give for your random figure. There's an animation for this. Then the figurine appears across the store. There's an animation for this. Then you walk over and pick up the figure. There's an animation for this. Christ almighty, what a waste of fucking time. Again, it's just fucking busywork and it's not worth collecting them all.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Roc2T-MrL50cV_IjklnTteos7KmX-8dhhNiJYCCkCArXie4r9GYU7uW7iWQFEsytXIXFD1CI3Y4apoiZ8KBWLm1GWQ0pFLitEI2Teq71hI9-AObI5_3h-xWyS_1y8lcJ8rP6x3bSCg/s1600/zelda_minish_cap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4Roc2T-MrL50cV_IjklnTteos7KmX-8dhhNiJYCCkCArXie4r9GYU7uW7iWQFEsytXIXFD1CI3Y4apoiZ8KBWLm1GWQ0pFLitEI2Teq71hI9-AObI5_3h-xWyS_1y8lcJ8rP6x3bSCg/s1600/zelda_minish_cap.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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As far as the gameplay goes, it's your traditional 2D Zelda. The usual weapons appear, the usual enemies appear. Like all Zelda games, there'll be a new item that the game will have an over-reliance on. Our culprit here is the Wind Jar. It either sucks things up, or blows gusts of air. Predictably, this plays into a lot of puzzles. Infuriatingly, it becomes necessary for moving around certain environments. You'll be given a leaf on the water, and you've got to use the gust jar to blow yourself (ha) around, like a sail boat without a sail. It's.. tedious (there's a pattern here). The other thing of note here is the Four Sword. As you add elements, you'll be able to make copies of Link (so if you have two of the four elements, you have two Links). You'll need your copies to push blocks or defeat some bosses. There's a few bosses that require you to do this to beat them, and it is infuriating. You have to charge your sword fully in order to spawn your copies, and then stand on specific tiles. If you get hit, your sword stops charging. If one of your copies gets hit, they all disappear. You can figure out how that goes if you put it in the context of a boss.</div>
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I've done a good job of pointing out the bad, but there's a considerable amount of good as well. The music is truly excellent, and it's a bit shocking at what the GBA can do with sound. While the dungeons are short, the level design is excellent. It's always clear what you need to do, which is important for a 2D game. </div>
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I really had a whole lot of fun with the game. Most of the things I pointed out as negatives are things that you can (for the most part) ignore. The price is really the barrier to entry here. I couldn't recommend this as a $30 game, which is the typical asking price for a <i>legitimate</i> copy on eBay. There's a lot of fake cartridges out there for this game, but if you've got a keen eye then this may drive down the price of legitimate copies. If you can have it for less than that or if you don't mind a pirated cart, then I'd say it's worth it. It's good, but there's just not a lot of game here.</div>
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<b>The Score: 8/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-73132495477659374642015-01-18T22:16:00.000-08:002015-01-18T22:16:08.907-08:00PlayStation 2 Refurb and HDD Mod<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-vF6KtNUxfozsIoTYAUKMeTQcWVm3aAsNkZBNcymT7GlEsw3fAvFrwgABv4w8ncNsJfNLhezOOflEEPzi_pK6M3Mwo8K7wiJyxiHMaWugxf0DXd7ka_g5Ny5C25jUNxYvsjT23POOMA/s1600/IMG_20141207_203322.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-vF6KtNUxfozsIoTYAUKMeTQcWVm3aAsNkZBNcymT7GlEsw3fAvFrwgABv4w8ncNsJfNLhezOOflEEPzi_pK6M3Mwo8K7wiJyxiHMaWugxf0DXd7ka_g5Ny5C25jUNxYvsjT23POOMA/s1600/IMG_20141207_203322.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Riiiiight.</i></div>
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The early models of the original PlayStation 2 are... <i><a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/12/repairing-playstation-2s-ps1-fuse-with.html">difficult</a>. </i>That's my PlayStation 2. It was "refurbished." Which is why it ended up in Goodwill with disc read errors. Last January when I first started this blog, I had bought a <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/01/goodwill-find-playstation-2-slim.html">slim PlayStation 2</a>. I ended up hating it and buying a fat shortly after. Since the slim PlayStation 2 has a flip top lid instead of a DVD drive with a tray, it has some problems. Hoping to prevent the disc swap piracy circumvention of the PSX (and even the PS2), Sony put two lid sensors in the slim. One sits in the front corner of the disc area and one in the back. This wouldn't be a real problem, except for the fact that the rear lid sensor doesn't stay depressed very well. I was putting a book on top of it to keep it from thinking that the lid opened, and even then it didn't always help.<br />
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On top of this, the PS2 slim has compatibility issues with some games. The original PS2's processor was 294mhz, with the slim coming in at 300mhz. This breaks a few PS2 games and the slim has more compatibility issues with original PlayStation games, you can see these games <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_PlayStation_games_incompatible_with_PlayStation_2#SCPH-75001">here</a>. Really, the fat PS2 is anything but a downgrade.. not to mention out of the box HDD support (some PS2 slims support the HDD with modding).<br />
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HDD support is one of the lesser known features of the PS2. It was pretty well supported in Japan, with games featuring installs and caching to speed up loading. In the US, it was pretty much only used for Final Fantasy XI. There are US games which take advantage of the drive, but it's nowhere near what it was in Japan. We'll get into that later.<br />
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The PS2 is not a difficult console to work with, but it is finnicky. I think about older consoles like this somewhat like classic cars. You either can't be afraid to get your hands dirty, or you need to find a good mechanic who won't charge too much and will be honest with you. First, let's address one of the most blatant and annoying problems.<br />
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Not all PS2 games come on DVDs. Some come on CDs, particularly the earlier games. CDs come on blue backed discs and DVDs are silver/gold. I think everyone has a copy of Tekken Tag Tournament, and I think everyone has probably also noticed that playing the game results in a pretty horrible squealing noise coming from the PS2. I googled this and it apparently has to do with the fact that CDs read at 12x and DVDs read at 6x (those speeds may not be accurate, but CD is faster and that's what's important). The higher rate of speed causes the magnetic locking..top part.. thing of the drive to slip. There's a pretty ghetto solution going around:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijsUFo0LRGPBTcLsmjWI5_CWHNnqBTJ6yKs1oytd1cD2S3TPkVxPaisMNZTksxSxrW8EuFGUXwUwOdrZJ6Bf3YoSQoULRzTYgMmb_bMaspQvmT5rdMWQw9VDbVukKklHMC6oRwwKIDTg/s1600/FWRQCBKFLB4PLOX.LARGE.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijsUFo0LRGPBTcLsmjWI5_CWHNnqBTJ6yKs1oytd1cD2S3TPkVxPaisMNZTksxSxrW8EuFGUXwUwOdrZJ6Bf3YoSQoULRzTYgMmb_bMaspQvmT5rdMWQw9VDbVukKklHMC6oRwwKIDTg/s1600/FWRQCBKFLB4PLOX.LARGE.jpg" height="320" width="295" /></a></div>
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Put tape on the top of the disc to give the the top part a better grip. Yeah.. I don't want to tape up all of my CD based games. If you look closely at that picture, you can see near the center of the disc that some of the printing has rubbed off where the spindle contacts the disc and it's even more apparent on my copy of Tekken Tag Tournament. This needs to be fixed if it's actually damaging the disc. Instead of putting the tape on the disc, I decided to put the tape on the top part.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgrCDGB177i-Qw3VPzJI9fc52kNCqrXXbmDvnVnU3QHQMztEATh7IQIRSokB178eyTmvdv5X6g5jv2voukPMcpsBxLncxW9SOQzHDzWpdmrhIe5K0VfywEyFw7Qen2W259VlD9flyvA/s1600/IMG_20141207_210758.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXgrCDGB177i-Qw3VPzJI9fc52kNCqrXXbmDvnVnU3QHQMztEATh7IQIRSokB178eyTmvdv5X6g5jv2voukPMcpsBxLncxW9SOQzHDzWpdmrhIe5K0VfywEyFw7Qen2W259VlD9flyvA/s1600/IMG_20141207_210758.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Some simple painters' tape fixed the problem right up, and now I don't have to tape all of my discs like some kind of psychotic. I don't have to hear a banshee squealing anymore, either.</div>
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The next problem is the laser. Early models of the PlayStation 2 used the KHS-400B laser. This is the laser that lead to all of those infamous disc read errors. The first 3 revisions of the PS2 use the KHS-400B. The 400B was later retired in favor of the KHS-400C, a much more reliable piece of hardware. The 400C can go into most consoles with the 400B, but there are issues with the length of the flex cable which puts stress on it, causing a worse problem. Luckly, I have the 4th revision. It had a 400B in it, but the 400C goes in without problem.</div>
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I had originally replaced the laser with another 400B. It worked, but it had issues. CD based games started quickly, but DVD based games took a while to boot. In addition, there could be some hiccups with loading things fast enough. I got tired of it and decided to pop in a 400C. The 400C works much better. DVD and CD based games load in a similar time and there's no issue with loading assets quickly enough in game.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0sEXNbjDQWgZZPyFvIa_5qoor8rtnabq-Xfl1X7DeMy9ZZuOLvjtknsZo5eU59Tn2vvr_iJUYWl30NsGT8XCPLgnwlpymN4J-8GQc8yXGRqPgNtUWCAsYhPQxjvUHxfo4qFvsahExA/s1600/IMG_20141207_212920.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit0sEXNbjDQWgZZPyFvIa_5qoor8rtnabq-Xfl1X7DeMy9ZZuOLvjtknsZo5eU59Tn2vvr_iJUYWl30NsGT8XCPLgnwlpymN4J-8GQc8yXGRqPgNtUWCAsYhPQxjvUHxfo4qFvsahExA/s1600/IMG_20141207_212920.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Don't forget to remove the antistatic solder.</i></div>
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The fat PS2's teardown is a bit more involved than the slim, but there's plenty of guides out there. Replacing lasers is pretty much the same for every console, though. Get in there, unplug the old one, drop the new one in. We've now addressed two of the most critical problems with the original PS2. Now, let's improve.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidWyb-RPIojhslEGLn553kgbe84ioS4z7ASaxjyooAuwhcncrWqoQlhO2AicIykie2cnTVGX8k5p2F1IMRSEiOTw09A04XvhzcVIOgGp0sppkzw_PjuGwMIZpDZ6Hp12FvM4UHKxcnVg/s1600/IMG_20141207_203424.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidWyb-RPIojhslEGLn553kgbe84ioS4z7ASaxjyooAuwhcncrWqoQlhO2AicIykie2cnTVGX8k5p2F1IMRSEiOTw09A04XvhzcVIOgGp0sppkzw_PjuGwMIZpDZ6Hp12FvM4UHKxcnVg/s1600/IMG_20141207_203424.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's the back of the PS2 network adapter. These are common as hell and cheap, too. The official PS2 HDD kit had a 40gb HDD paired with... just this network adapter. Well, the good news is that we don't need the official Sony kit. Those are standard connectors that any IDE HDD will have. There is a company that sells a SATA upgrade as well, which you basically just plug right into the existing network adapter. Their website is a little sketchy, though.</div>
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If you're into modding and whatnot, then you've surely heard of FMCB for the PS2. It exploits a memory card function to load custom code. I don't have anything against FMCB... but there's a better way. That's the HDD OSD mod and it is <a href="http://theisozone.com/tutorials/ps2/hardware-and-modding/ps2-hdd-modding-tutorial-hddosd/">really easy</a>. I actually used that guide myself. For actually playing games, there's a few different options. OPL is the best option, but I don't really like it aesthetically. Thankfully, there's <a href="http://ichiba.geocities.jp/ysai187/PS2/HDLGameInstaller.htm">HDLGame Installer</a>. If you've never used a PS2, the memory card screen has these nifty little 3D icons for each game that are usually characters in the game animated somehow. The PS2 HDD uses this same interface, and it lets you install games to the HDD and launch them from the PS2 browser and associates the little icon with the game as well. Neat.</div>
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There's actually a lot of cool stuff you can do with the HDD mod. My favorite thing is probably the ability to back up memory card save files to the HDD (this works for PS2 and PS1 saves). For getting games on the HDD, WinHIIP is probably your best option even though it's a bit old. There's also a PlayStation emulator called POPStarter that you can use to load PS1 games on the HDD. HDD installation doesn't work with all PS2 games, but the compatibility is high. POPStarter doesn't work with all PS1 games either, but that's to be expected since it's an emulator. The HDD mod here is probably not for the faint of heart though, as it's not easy to work with in some regards. It's definitely more involved than an Xbox mod. On the other hand, it's not as pants shittingly terrifying as the Wii softmod with its risk of being bricked with anything you change on the system.</div>
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This <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1123PmnV3U">video</a> kind of shows what it's like. Now your HDD mod is working and you've put it in your PS2... but contrary to what everyone online said, it's not a very good fit. The official PS2 kit had HDD rails which held it steady. Obviously, we don't have that. This bothered me quite a bit as you could hear the HDD rocking around if you just slightly bump the PS2. Let's fix that too.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCBQnwmqtPtgiRoXZhyphenhyphenxtv_9ODsKZ7OxGExj5i8emQyZiE7M2Fnjt907XtPIoK3SMAm7G0jhyCRwcNqj-3zxLR-FIlbW20DcA2IDjAfsdDB0nhsQ80VhdaaUrkqKWXnVRSo8WVsG72g/s1600/IMG_20141207_203507.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNCBQnwmqtPtgiRoXZhyphenhyphenxtv_9ODsKZ7OxGExj5i8emQyZiE7M2Fnjt907XtPIoK3SMAm7G0jhyCRwcNqj-3zxLR-FIlbW20DcA2IDjAfsdDB0nhsQ80VhdaaUrkqKWXnVRSo8WVsG72g/s1600/IMG_20141207_203507.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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This is shielding from an original Xbox 360 HDD. It's pretty malleable, and already has holes drilled in it that will be the right size for the holes on any HDD. There's really not a lot of space in the PS2 HDD bay, so we'll just need to cut a thin strip of this and mold it to the side of the HDD and screw it in.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-igC2EfJ23PF-kIdg1wCNwAdWCCKudbfRsYD4FigDe31Gxm05pX9pPtENnBcNZk-DXKRLyqzCYnvhZuMbPH3d0nlx9HBbLRMVl_HCtkH8xMtObQEtddZ7jVxFjWG_GC7t4sSwGa3xA/s1600/IMG_20141207_210542.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-igC2EfJ23PF-kIdg1wCNwAdWCCKudbfRsYD4FigDe31Gxm05pX9pPtENnBcNZk-DXKRLyqzCYnvhZuMbPH3d0nlx9HBbLRMVl_HCtkH8xMtObQEtddZ7jVxFjWG_GC7t4sSwGa3xA/s1600/IMG_20141207_210542.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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That's another 500GB Hitachi Deskstar like I used for the Xbox mod. You can see the strip there that I attached. I was planing on doing both sides, but this one side was actually enough to hold the drive firmly in place.<br />
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Now that PS2 warrants the refurbished sticker.<br />
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Just kidding, I removed it.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-66371255839002159592015-01-13T23:31:00.002-08:002015-01-13T23:31:58.672-08:00God of War (PlayStation 2) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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God of War came out at a time when it was ripe to be ignored. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 were the worst kept secrets of all time, people were salivating over the next generation game consoles. God of War was a good enough game that it rose above and became a massive success. I even remember playing it at a friend's house back when it came out.</div>
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I'm a big fan of beat 'em up types like this, and God of War is a masterpiece of the genre. God of War doesn't reinvent the wheel, instead it perfects it. This is an approach which is often overlooked when creating games, and God of War deserves the highest praise for this.</div>
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The game follows the typical strong attack/weak attack/grab layout that is familiar to the genre and adds in magic for special attacks. Your weapons, the Blades of Chaos are pretty graphically impressive for the PlayStation 2 and their sweeping range makes combat a blast. God of War really captures the feeling of <i>being</i> Kratos. You feel empowered with the same rage that Kratos carries with him. The violence is so over the top that it almost borders on humorous at times, especially with the face smashing that Kratos delivers to the Sirens of a later level.</div>
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The game plays out in what I consider a pseudo-adventure game format. Areas loop back on themselves, and you do revisit areas but you're essentially in a linear progression broken up into levels. I first noticed this in the 2004 Ninja Gaiden on Xbox. There are puzzles and items collect, but they're compartmentalized and broken up. You won't be looking for items for some kind of end game push, what's in front of you is the only thing that's immediately important. </div>
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For the most part, the puzzles do work well. They're never too obscure, but they can be annoying. A large part of the puzzles consists of dragging boxes, which is about as interesting as paint drying for the most part. In fact, I think this is the most recent game I've seen that has an excessive amount of box dragging puzzles. Positioning things right, getting to a higher ledge.. the puzzles are a bit of relic from the N64/PSX level. It's a small black mark on an otherwise fantastic game. In addition, the puzzles can get a bit of excessive towards the end of the game. It can make you long for the full on action from earlier levels.</div>
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One other complaint I have is the lack of similar bosses to the early Hydra battle. This was hyped enough that a demo was actually released with this boss battle. After that, you expect to see many more gigantic bosses.. but it doesn't really happen. There are a few, but it's not enough. It's incredibly satisfying taking down the big bads in this game. </div>
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I've mentioned that the graphics in this game are pretty nice for a PlayStation 2 title. Kratos' character model is pretty high poly, and he's textured well. The enemies look nice, too. This seems to have been made easier by the game's setting. With its ancient Greece setting, all of the buildings are generally just made of large, plain gray stone blocks. This seems to have saved a lot of space and allowed for nicer textures for key environmental pieces and characters with the PS2's limited RAM. The game supports widescreen as well as 480p and holds up excellently.</div>
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The plot is actually quite compelling, and I usually don't get too invested in these sort of ancient time epics. Ares, the god of war, has launched an attack on Athena's city of Athens. Athena asks that Kratos kill the god of war by finding and using pandora's box. Kratos has been serving the gods since he called upon the god of war to kill his enemies when Kratos was faced with defeat. Kratos has a very particular bone to pick with Ares (and a reason for his ashy white skin), but I won't spoil it as it is a bit of a shocker if you're not familiar with the lore of the franchise.</div>
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The game's music is also stereotypical of your average ancient epic type of movie. I must note though, that there is some ambient synthesizer music that is absolutely fantastic. It first appears in the later stages of the game when you're close to pandora's box and continues to be used throughout. It almost sounds like Vangelis music, and would be right at home on the Blade Runner soundtrack. It sounds odd, but it really fits with the awe of the environments.</div>
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God of War is an excellent game. It's one of my favorite PlayStation 2 games that I've played so far, and I fully understand all of the hype that it has now. This is a game that is worth a play, nearly every second is enjoyable. Ninja Gaiden retains top action game honors in my book, but God of War comes in a very close second.</div>
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<b>The Score: 9.5/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-14849420954630231652015-01-12T21:41:00.002-08:002015-01-12T22:39:38.794-08:00Why does Nintendo get a free pass?There's been a lot of Nintendo love recently. <i>A lot.</i> I couldn't tell you why.<br />
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<i>Maybe I could.</i></div>
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Mostly, I'm confused. Are we all talking about the same Nintendo here? I don't think we are. The Nintendo that everyone is talking about is a fun company, focused on the core gaming experience. They only make the best games, and every hot Japanese game is <i>certainly </i>coming stateside.</div>
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I'm not familiar with this Nintendo. The Nintendo I'm familiar with is a far different company, and they'll have to do a lot to convince me otherwise. The Nintendo I'm thinking of promised big things for the Gamecube, and then trickled out about one good game a year (two if we were lucky), while forsaking third parties. The Nintendo I'm thinking of ignored a stunning amount of excellent import titles for the DS and the Wii.</div>
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<i>Thanks, XSEED!</i></div>
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Think back to only a few years ago. Operation Rainfall was coming out in full force, trying to get the Wii some support. <i>A group of fans were pushing Nintendo to support their own console.</i> This is depressing. It's especially depressing when you consider that the games in question (The Last Story, Xenoblade Chronicles and Pandora's Tower) were all either already localized by Nintendo of Europe or were in the process of localization. Nintendo managed to ignore this for quite a while, and if I recall correctly, they even made an announcement saying they would have news on Xenoblade Chronicles only to go on and announce that they were not releasing Xenoblade Chronicles. Holy shit. That's the customer service equivalent of leading people to the gas chamber.</div>
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Someone at Nintendo of America managed to figure this out, hit the OH SHIT button and get Xenoblade Chronicles released at Gamestop. Nintendo of America never publicly acknowledged Xenoblade Chronicles again. Everyone else loved it. <i>I </i>loved it. It was an incredible game. And...? Xenoblade Chronicles was successful enough that Gamestop reprinted it. No one knows what that initial allotment was, but it was big enough that Gamestop charged $120 for it used (the second hand market outside of Gamestop was even higher at times) and then did a new print run. And Nintendo of America never commented on it.</div>
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Sure, Nintendo <i>has</i> said that they'll be getting back to "core" gamers. Sure, Nintendo has shown off Xenoblade Chronicles X. The catch here is Nintendo of America. Nintendo of Japan can do all they want to get back to core gamers. If the geniuses over at NOA decide it won't fly though, it won't. Just like Xenoblade Chronicles almost didn't.<br />
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<i>MONADO MONADO MONADO MONADO MONADO MONADO MONADO</i></div>
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The Last Story was also an excellent game. After Xenoblade Chronicles did well enough to warrant massive prices in the used game market (implying everything sold out, economics 101), Nintendo said "fuck no" to The Last Story. XSEED came to the rescue and released The Last Story. They were generous enough to do it in quantities that the game could easily be found in. It was well received, and it seems to have sold well also.</div>
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XSEED is not a major company. They published a game that NINTENDO ITSELF published in Europe and did more to make it available and promote it than Nintendo of America did. I understand that Pandora's Tower was a pretty mediocre game, but I still want to get a copy. You see, I like the Wii. A lot. I really do. I think it's a great console, technical shortcomings aside (<a href="http://hackmii.com/2009/02/why-the-wii-will-never-get-any-better/">it really is a fucking mess</a>). But Nintendo of America did its fans a disservice. They did nothing to support the system when Nintendo of Europe was doing it. I don't place all of the blame on Nintendo of America.</div>
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I also blame this man:</div>
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Calm the fuck down.</div>
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It doesn't matter how much of a creative visionary you are, everyone shits the bed at some point. Remember when The Streets released Original Pirate Material? They (he? fuck you.) also released Everything is Borrowed. You cannot base your console around the whims of a quirky guy. </div>
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The Nintendo 64 had a weird controller, but it was practical. The Gamecube put form over function and it failed the system (those miniature discs pushed a lot of 3rd party devs out, even from ports). The Wii put a control gimmick as the primary control scheme and it failed. Now we have the Wii U... and I honestly don't know how the fuck you're supposed to control it.</div>
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As far as I know, it supports...</div>
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-The Wiimote and nunchuck (along with the classic controller and all variations in-between)</div>
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-The Wii U Game Pad</div>
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-The Wii U Pro Controller</div>
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Holy fuck. I get that the Game Pad is the primary input for the first player... but what do the other people typically use? Is it the Wiimote? Is it the pro controller? I honestly don't fucking know. Does it vary by game? Are you just supposed to play alone?</div>
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I honestly think Miyamoto is a problem for the company moving forward. There are a lot of Nintendo franchises, and a lot of them are ignored for stupid reasons. Take F-Zero. F-Zero GX is one of the finest arcade racing games of all time. I absolutely loved this game, and it was one of the few Gamecube games that I really truly had a great time with. I would go so far as to say that it brought me joy. We haven't gotten a new F-Zero since. Why? Because Miyamoto thinks it needs a new control scheme.</div>
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Holy shit guy, you can't reinvent the wheel for every fucking game. I get it, you're ambitious. You want people to interact in games with new ways and that means a stupid controller that has no practical applications outside of one game. So, stop it. Knock it the fuck off. It doesn't work. I can have a million different gaming experiences on a PlayStation or an Xbox and I do it with the same controller.</div>
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Oh, wait, I forgot another Wii U control method.</div>
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This is purely for Super Smash Bros for Wii U (what the fuck kind of a name is that?), and they promptly sold out. To which Nintendo basically shrugged and said "that sucks." Eventually the outcry was loud enough that they went "fuck it, fine, have more" but it's just ridiculous. Does Nintendo <i>hate</i> money? Look at Sony and Microsoft. If they release a peripheral it's never just a one run thing. Sony and Microsoft sell out of things, and then they say "we're working as fast as we can to get more to market." They don't say tough shit. They <i>try</i>. They understand that fans <i>want</i> something.</div>
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It's almost like Nintendo is bothered by fans. They seem to have a "what do you want?" attitude instead of "what can we do for you?"</div>
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I don't trust the Wii U and I don't trust the 3DS. They both had poorly timed launches. They're stuck in between, and unlike the DS and the Wii they aren't flourishing. I would love to play Bayonetta 2, but the Wii U isn't going to make it and I'm not going to spend the money on overpriced hardware (marginally better than a 360 or PS3 with a much higher cost). There's already rumblings of a new Nintendo console being worked on and typically once those rumblings start coming from legitimate sources they come true sooner rather than later. They messed up and they know it. The New 3DS is less of an incremental console that most can ignore (like the DSi) and more of a full fledged upgrade. This is basically the Game Boy Color to the Game Boy, and Nintendo is doing their best to pretend it isn't so.</div>
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Nintendo is still just as shifty as they used to be and always have been. Don't be fooled by amiibos and Super Smash Bros., they're still just as out of touch as they have been.</div>
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I'm also still bitter about Last Window: The Secret of Cape West not coming out on DS in America. And fuck you European exporters, $60 is pretty steep for a DS game. Seriously, play Hotel Dusk: Room 215. PLAY IT. Then weep for Last Window.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-38848542956993118212015-01-07T20:46:00.006-08:002015-01-07T21:29:52.643-08:00The Virtues of Using the Original Format In a Remake and Digital WorldI prefer vinyl, movies on film and playing games on the original console. Some call it being a snob but I think that there's something to be said about getting as close as possible to the original experience. Computers let us have everything now. I dislike emulation, yet I've got several ROMs on every computer in the house if I feel like running through a few levels of Castlevania really quickly. I've got an iPod loaded with hundreds of albums. Most of my consoles are modded so that I can play any game I want whenever I want. But for the most part, I don't.<br />
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"WHY THE FUCK NOT?" you bellow, as your monocle falls out and you spill your tea. Well, let's talk about that. Everything that goes into a game is a part of a presentation. From the console that you're putting the disc into to the controller you're playing it on, this is part of the experience. The case artwork, the disc artwork, all of this sets a precedent for what you're about to experience.<br />
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I've been playing God of War, so let's talk about that real quickly.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiijpsP8OuF7AJyORn1zxGj-_zRXhyX_ug-M2ZOMq-fVc3EUcontQar7jl0LkDIHbB8egCj_-OhYN7N4eF-kGDDkHv3X7FDCdpychZyPTklXljqWXk3S7Hb3wNb57znNetIkIuDh2x5_Q/s1600/150565-God_of_War_(USA)-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiijpsP8OuF7AJyORn1zxGj-_zRXhyX_ug-M2ZOMq-fVc3EUcontQar7jl0LkDIHbB8egCj_-OhYN7N4eF-kGDDkHv3X7FDCdpychZyPTklXljqWXk3S7Hb3wNb57znNetIkIuDh2x5_Q/s1600/150565-God_of_War_(USA)-4.jpg" height="320" width="226" /></a></div>
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Here's the box artwork for the PlayStation 2 version. This isn't necessarily excellent box art but it tells you what you're in for. This is a game of furious violence and grandeur. Kratos looks up to the challenge, but hesitant or burdened. The disc art carries a close up of the same image and the pages of the manual look like they're printed on old paper, with chaotic sketches showing the enemies.</div>
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Here's the cover to the remastered version:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BoqE2iCTTLubLP71uzdTqyWU5sIOYilZDnCF_9O-qSP357gzYSvPwJheosCCOAnP9RmBVJeklCq_Zn0GEPx8ZcNqj2rj1iM1w_CFwyH-vXP9QUbzi8CAQbNbyfvskyDduBv_zFQftw/s1600/God_of_War_Saga.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7BoqE2iCTTLubLP71uzdTqyWU5sIOYilZDnCF_9O-qSP357gzYSvPwJheosCCOAnP9RmBVJeklCq_Zn0GEPx8ZcNqj2rj1iM1w_CFwyH-vXP9QUbzi8CAQbNbyfvskyDduBv_zFQftw/s1600/God_of_War_Saga.jpg" height="320" width="270" /></a></div>
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5 FULL GAMES of sad lion hands in 3D. This takes away from <i>all</i> of the games. I get it, it's supposed to be a budget way to play the older games in the series in an enhanced quality. You've lost part of the presentation.. part of the experience. Picking the game from a menu is much different than being thrown directly to the flaming title screen with Kratos staring back at you. You lose the intensity, you lose the knowledge of what you're about to experience each time. You lose the anticipation and the excitement. It cheapens the game knowing that it's now just stuffed on a disc with four others in the series.</div>
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I'm honestly not fond of the HD remaster trend, either. It's running at a higher resolution yes, but typically the textures are untouched and there are other unfortunate changes. By far the worst remaster I've seen is for Resident Evil: Code VERONICA X HD. It's less of a remaster and more of an aborted remake. The game no longer runs on its original engine and instead runs in Capcom's MT Framework. They attempted to add in dynamic lighting where the original game's was mostly static. It's <i>horrible.</i></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ8dNCD_BYOt8SVhQUPYrcki7YMWDSv7u3olDNIoFhFHn5KXfQrZmHeREzA28uDfvFQAmPN92qbxD1gprFe8IXkQhcQDBKkbUK1YbK2R3dSxkKunNVkH-Edgmqf1oq93IKpmE6ocm9Jg/s1600/Resident_Evil_CODE_Veronica_X_HD_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ8dNCD_BYOt8SVhQUPYrcki7YMWDSv7u3olDNIoFhFHn5KXfQrZmHeREzA28uDfvFQAmPN92qbxD1gprFe8IXkQhcQDBKkbUK1YbK2R3dSxkKunNVkH-Edgmqf1oq93IKpmE6ocm9Jg/s1600/Resident_Evil_CODE_Veronica_X_HD_1.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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In the original version of the game, you could see quite well to the end of the hall and the lighting had more of a blue tint. That creepy doll way in the back was much more prominent, constantly looming. The lighting changes make the game look absolutely atrocious, with colors constantly appearing over saturated. In addition, they attempted to add some sort of depth of field effect and a grainy film filter. The depth of field effect is completely broken because as you know... Resident Evil has static cameras. Though this game was in full 3D and did feature occasional camera movement, it isn't dynamic. The result is just that your character sort of goes out of focus once they move too far away from the camera. It's lazy and sloppy. The cutscenes weren't re-rendered either, resulting in a macroblocked fuckery. The only textures that were re-done were the character's faces; if you look beyond their faces in the in-engine cutscenes, you'll see a blurry compressed mess. No one should have any faith in the Resident Evil Gamecube remake's....remake.</div>
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Granted, most HD remakes don't fuck up like this but in this case, you're better off with the Dreamcast version. The console's VGA output is beautiful and scales very well on HDTVs. Too often, said remakes make slight tweaks to the game. Altering difficulty, removing framerate issues.. but even those are part of the experience. Hell, I <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/05/castlevania-adventure-game-boy-review.html">don't always stick to the original format</a> but that was a pretty extreme case. In its original state Castlevania: The Adventure is borderline unplayable. Using an emulator significantly altered my experience.</div>
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Since I mentioned remakes, let's talk about remakes. Since we're already talking about Resident Evil, let's talk about Resident Evil. The original Resident Evil, in my opinion, is a masterpiece. It's one of the finest games ever made. I'm talking about this version:</div>
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That's right motherfucker, the Jill sandwich version. With the really bad voice acting. The game is brilliantly paced and everything just works incredibly well. Even the tank controls. You see, that's called <i>atmosphere.</i> You didn't used to be able to do anything you wanted in games. Games weren't always Grand Theft Auto. They had rules; the very nature of a game. That bad voice acting? Wonderful. It was clearly intended to be a pretty serious game but I love b-movie type things and I can't help but have a soft spot for the game. They had good intentions but they reached beyond their means. It's charm; it's character. Sure, the REmake for Gamecube fixed that. It made the graphics better. But it lost its character in the process. It became a grim horror movie taking itself way too seriously. It lost its soul. It wasn't the creators' original intent anymore. It was made bigger and louder, just because it could be. Not necessarily because it should be.</div>
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Let's talk about emulators as well. <a href="http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghz-quest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator/">They're terrible.</a> Accuracy has become more of a priority for recent developments, but it'll never be enough. bsnes does a good job at getting closer to how the console actually runs, but I don't think I've ever heard a Super Nintendo emulator that did a good job of recreating the sound. The Super Nintendo's sound chip has a very <i>smooth</i> sound. It's easy on the ears. I'm not quite sure how to adequately describe the particulars of what I mean, but we'll go with the coin sound in the Mario games. It sounds jagged and sharp on emulators, where it sounds smooth on the console. </div>
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This is true of emulated games on consoles as well. I've encountered quite a few strange glitches in Sonic 3 on the Xbox 360 version that I know don't happen on the console version. How? Because I've beat that game hundreds of fucking times, that's how. Just because it has some sort of endorsement or approval of the original developer means nothing for performance. The only real way to ensure a similar performance would be by porting the game with the original source code. Unfortunately, the original source code is frequently unavailable and even then it wouldn't guarantee a 100% perfect experience. </div>
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Using the console itself is even an experience. Picking up a Banjo-Kazooie cartridge and pushing it into the N64 then sliding the power button up and picking up the three pronged controller creates a vastly different mindset and mood than holding down the guide button on a 360 controller and going into your game library and pressing A. The difference in the analog sticks makes movement feel different. The difference in the shape of the buttons makes the timing feel different. Don't take this as an excuse for people who say they just can't play a game that's on PlayStation on an Xbox though. They're just mad they lost.</div>
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But what of movies and music, since I mentioned it? Film is a better format than digital. No question about it. Hollywood wants you to think otherwise so they can save a buck. When the Wizard of Oz was remastered for Blu-Ray the original negative was scanned at an 8k resolution. This is a movie that came out in 1939. Avatar came out in 2009 and was filmed in digital at a 2k resolution. In a few years when 4k becomes the standard, Avatar is going to have a lot of evidence of macroblocking and compression artifacts (read: it's going to look as shitty as the movie is). When The Wizard of Oz is released in 4k, it's going to look even better than the Blu-Ray. An entire generation of movies is going to look like shit because Hollywood wanted to save a dime.</div>
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Want to know the advantages of film? Watch this:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/o6b3sg0p8WY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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It's simplistic, but it gives a good overview of the advantages along with some side by side comparisons. The Level 1.1 and 1.2 Dragon Ball Z Blu-Rays were incredible... and then they got cancelled because fans didn't like the film grain and the fact that it was 4:3. So, instead we got another cropped atrocity that had digital noise reduction applied like it was nobody's business.</div>
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Vinyl is more subjective. From a technical standpoint, CD has advantages. I believe vinyl is a more accurate reproduction of sound though. I won't go into all that, but if you're buying your music in MP3 format from online stores, you're robbing yourself.</div>
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Too often we're just <i>okay</i> with things. By doing that, we're robbing ourselves of something. Next time you want to play a game, why not pass on the ROM and emulator? Why not look into getting the actual console? Next time you want to see a movie, why not go see it at a theater that shows it on film? Oh, wait, you can't. Bad example.</div>
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My point is, just because you can get it easier and run it in a higher resolution with an emulator it doesn't make it better. Just because you can download a song on iTunes for a dollar doesn't make it the best bang for your buck. Just because you can make your movie in HD doesn't mean you should. Embrace the experience. Spend the money and treat yourself. Look for the best way to watch a movie, listen to a song, play a game. Enjoy the art as it was meant to be enjoyed.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-25583456964257481932014-12-28T19:00:00.001-08:002014-12-28T19:00:11.313-08:00Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PlayStation 3) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3QsP5cnU7kgn0FjUUEYwmAUgD_ZA86IDSCz7EZlgvHkB9zHH0MWKaYDVtph0HVNLGg2gahVgcD4pg_VObetIupYF3y8LY1kaRdpVIcBmOxMjJFSibv_JAI-cstLRgkVqNgD3NrYoyiA/s1600/Uncharted_Drake's_Fortune.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3QsP5cnU7kgn0FjUUEYwmAUgD_ZA86IDSCz7EZlgvHkB9zHH0MWKaYDVtph0HVNLGg2gahVgcD4pg_VObetIupYF3y8LY1kaRdpVIcBmOxMjJFSibv_JAI-cstLRgkVqNgD3NrYoyiA/s1600/Uncharted_Drake's_Fortune.jpg" /></a></div>
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Uncharted seems to be the PlayStation 3's crown jewel, so I made this my first target in setting out with the system. I'm a fan of Indiana Jones and the bits I've seen of the Uncharted games seemed to follow in that vein. The game certainly looks the part (and does its best to be), but it doesn't quite meet those aspirations.<br />
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I remember Uncharted being <i>that</i> game. The killer app that was supposed to turn a console's fortunes around. It does a pretty good job of coming close to that. The graphics are still impressive, even for a game from 2007.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7DqunJxLeR_qWvWzslOfunwPw4kHJZDP8OHgTNpD005_9-uCu-XiiupswY2gB19ccbzPicwrN-ULWk8QDy7wUK2U7fXa7D8oVsKIFuSSNDDyj9sNy4oRA3b2VvEiB7x6q1Gvb4NR83g/s1600/uncharted1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7DqunJxLeR_qWvWzslOfunwPw4kHJZDP8OHgTNpD005_9-uCu-XiiupswY2gB19ccbzPicwrN-ULWk8QDy7wUK2U7fXa7D8oVsKIFuSSNDDyj9sNy4oRA3b2VvEiB7x6q1Gvb4NR83g/s1600/uncharted1.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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The character models aren't as good as anything we have now, but the environments still hold up well. In playing this and some other PlayStation 3 games I've noticed that a lot of games use pretty low texture resolution with the lighting sort of pre-applied to the textures. This isn't as much of an issue in Uncharted since you're never really close enough to many objects to see this, so it all works very convincingly.<br />
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The story for Uncharted focuses on Nathan Drake, the self proclaimed descendent of Sir Francis Drake. When the game opens Drake has tracked down Francis Drake's coffin, which contains a diary seemingly pointing towards El Dorado, the lost city of gold. Instead, Drake learns that El Dorado is actually a gold statue which was hauled away by the Spaniards to an island in the pacific. Drake heads to the island with a reporter named Elena who is trying to film a documentary.<br />
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Unfortunately, the characters never really feel fleshed out. They have enough personality to stand on their own, but you'd always like to know a bit more. Uncharted hurtles forward like a Hollywood blockbuster, so there's never really any time for that. Naughty Dog did their best to make Nathan Drake a ringer for Indiana Jones, but he never quite has the qualities to pull of the arrogance in a charming way. Elena is about as interesting as a wet rag and unfortunately, our villains are as well. The story never really rises above serviceable, but the lore surrounding El Dorado that the game creates is an interesting twist.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuP7vlHeYYCcUpP43JXnR9ocNS23LskCI1Cx6tYMtYgOYV6c_ENtBc32KdObWCafT_D8nliYIhFzvZycjAB7dQ1TDXenbcjwY2EPKjavK7M1MDPBfRPaZxB8jToSPbwdUuYU9cfOx_KQ/s1600/uncharted2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuP7vlHeYYCcUpP43JXnR9ocNS23LskCI1Cx6tYMtYgOYV6c_ENtBc32KdObWCafT_D8nliYIhFzvZycjAB7dQ1TDXenbcjwY2EPKjavK7M1MDPBfRPaZxB8jToSPbwdUuYU9cfOx_KQ/s1600/uncharted2.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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Uncharted plays out as a third person adventure game. There's a fair amount of platforming here, which works very well. You'll be scaling walls, swinging on vines, doing... adventurer stuff, I suppose. It would've been nice to have a bit more platforming, actually. There's also a puzzle element to the game. These are <i>very</i> poorly designed. They're not bad, they just make you feel like an idiot. I'm not a fan of games constantly pandering, but there are certain things that are sort of expected with puzzles in games. Some kind of indication of what exactly you <i>should</i> be doing.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWsDbLiMYYpXRCa122ruKNk6VykPRGZJDxxw2RoaAPyYSbtZmJOPT5D0TpEU-sA5BEeTeT7gk-2mD7lJKBdrJArkdouVzu9xoXv8cZyq3tkhkypUgI_97BpEBnOi_kmYpVHi_wwDQiA/s1600/uncharted3.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFWsDbLiMYYpXRCa122ruKNk6VykPRGZJDxxw2RoaAPyYSbtZmJOPT5D0TpEU-sA5BEeTeT7gk-2mD7lJKBdrJArkdouVzu9xoXv8cZyq3tkhkypUgI_97BpEBnOi_kmYpVHi_wwDQiA/s1600/uncharted3.gif" height="136" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>You're right, idol. I probably shouldn't have sex. Shia LaBoeuf be damned.</i></div>
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Let me explain; early in the game, a character (Sully) who is helping you lights a sort of giant torch on fire with a cigar. This in turn causes a lantern on the ceiling to light as well. In front of you is a giant pile of wood that it appears you can move out of the way somehow. The lantern on the ceiling is chained; logically, you can't shoot it down. Uncharted doesn't really give you hints or a clear solution. Sully makes some kind of a statement about burning the wood pile to get through. I immediately start looking for something to light off of the main torch thing. There's a lot of different objects in the environment, so the lantern is not the immediate choice. I wandered aimlessly for a few minutes until Sully says "try shooting the lantern." So, I shoot it. It doesn't break or fall down, it just sort of drops a bit of burning wood and it sets the pile on fire. Not only was this not intuitive, you made me feel stupid. I spent a fair amount of time looking for another way, then you just insult me with the answer.</div>
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Not all of the puzzles have the same absent-mindedness to their design, but there are a few. I think the key to making a good puzzle is to make it just obscure enough, but also just obvious enough. Then you feel clever, you're getting something done. That just wasted my time and made me feel stupid in the end.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJdEMMS0ywQju3p_l_Y3dC1GkUMX1bTK9-F3NKkx_KWt3Nmo4EonOMCdTGayADZyQ_tbUjcNEunJrBjyqLoz6B3VbvOGkUIuCZ0A9cKJjTOeX_b9nEQ-v-HJER3Og5BH_gtl2GbcApQ/s1600/uncharted4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJJdEMMS0ywQju3p_l_Y3dC1GkUMX1bTK9-F3NKkx_KWt3Nmo4EonOMCdTGayADZyQ_tbUjcNEunJrBjyqLoz6B3VbvOGkUIuCZ0A9cKJjTOeX_b9nEQ-v-HJER3Og5BH_gtl2GbcApQ/s1600/uncharted4.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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The rest of the game plays out as a third person shooter. There's a fun variety of weapons, but ammo can seem a bit scarce. For the most part, you'll be hugging cover and popping out to take shots. The shooting mechanics aren't the best. Your targeting reticule is a bit large and touchy, and it can be hard to get a good shot on an enemy. In addition, they take a lot of shots to take down. Some real bullet sponge business. This wouldn't be as glaring of an issue, but Uncharted isn't really a long game. It took me about 7 hours to finish. Moving through the levels doesn't take long, the only real hold up is the enemies. Once you're in an area where you're being attacked, it's wave after wave after wave of enemies. You're likely to die once or twice just because of the volume of enemies and the fact that they never stop coming. They just kind of upped the enemy count to pad out the game. It's sort of weird. With all of the bodies laying around at the end of some segments I think Nathan Drake may be a more prolific killer than Max Payne.</div>
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That difficulty padding applies heavily to the final boss as well. For the most part, he's an average shot. However, if you're popped out at a specific time he will shoot you in the head without fail, every time. It feels cheap and it's very annoying. It's especially odd as there's really nothing else in the game resembling a boss.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVKJdLh2oEi4LBogEAQNe1yOu7eKNgAh-Nutj64wmW-FV697IMFWgFBNsksn2M7F3TdsxPCC0fKaQDdG7LNUKSH2LEGZdX50yfd8RgEJwwpKOTozu9DNQ9jVGQWjpYsYGYRKC512Ylg/s1600/uncharted5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKVKJdLh2oEi4LBogEAQNe1yOu7eKNgAh-Nutj64wmW-FV697IMFWgFBNsksn2M7F3TdsxPCC0fKaQDdG7LNUKSH2LEGZdX50yfd8RgEJwwpKOTozu9DNQ9jVGQWjpYsYGYRKC512Ylg/s1600/uncharted5.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Forced motion controls!? NO WAY!</i></div>
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The controls can occasionally be frustrating. Using the Sixaxis control to balance on logs is annoying but it doesn't come up too often. This is also one of those games were buttons are context sensitive. There were a few times where I ended up hopping over a ledge to my death inadvertently. Surprisingly, the platforming goes off without a hitch. Everything with the game comes together when you're scaling walls. There are some odd design choices; in particular, a scene where you're riding with Elena on a jet ski. If you want to fire, you have to come to a complete stop to use your weapon. This obviously opens you up to being immediately fucking ruined with a rocket launcher.</div>
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It sounds like I have pretty heavy criticism for this game, but I did end up enjoying it quite a bit. It's just brainless enough that it's enjoyable to come back to and it's just clever enough to make you want to come back. This is one of those games where you know the sequel will rectify every single nitpick and make it all better. Time proved that to be right as Uncharted 2 was a blockbuster when it came out. I've got it sitting on the shelf, and I'm working my way to it. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune can be had for very cheap, and it's worth the 7 hours.</div>
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<b>The Score: 8/10</b></div>
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comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-13004062710659445732014-12-15T22:23:00.002-08:002014-12-15T22:23:46.467-08:00Repairing the PlayStation 2's PS1 Fuse with a Resettable FuseFirst things first... this isn't a <i>PlayStation 1 </i>fuse. It's a PS1 fuse. That's what it's labeled as on the motherboard.<br />
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This sucker is also the destroyer of worlds if you anger it.<br />
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The PS1 fuse is there for the power and eject buttons. If you've never opened a PS2, these are a nightmare. They're attached by a ~8 inch ribbon cable to the motherboard. The actual power and eject buttons are connected to the top of the case, meaning you have to walk on eggshells every time you open the PS2.<br />
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This fuse blows at the slightest disturbance. I blew mine out just doing some routine maintenance. I found that I had a V4 PS2 and not a V3 as I thought, so I bought a KHS-400C laser since they're reputed to be more reliable (it does seem to be). Anyways, while I was closing up the system I didn't have this ribbon cable seated well. It was slightly off, which shorted the cable and blew the PS1 fuse.<br />
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Shitty. Without the PS1 fuse functioning, there is no way to turn on the PS2 and use it. I don't like how easily this fuse blows, so I wanted to negate any future issues. I considered bridging the fuse, but if it blows that easily, this seemed like a bad idea. Enter resettable fuses. They don't blow like traditional fuses, and they're widely used in modern electronics. Opening any recent game console, you'll see resettable fuses everywhere. As always, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resettable_fuse">Wikipedia has the rundown</a>.<br />
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The PS1 fuse for a V4 PlayStation 2 is a 400 miliamp (or .4 amps) fuse rated at 12 volts. I couldn't find a 400mA 12v resettable fuse, so I bought a 400mA 60v fuse. The voltage really doesn't matter here, the amps do.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrZuu_uJs7ZpDgecIBIboI-IFDapSqaazfbMe39-zleSX483Emx6XEmYUiYjvKWIA4wlInK5vLU1a8z9glLAYP_gs6N84AaJvq0O0ITeYfMqiCGsWe-W0czG3vlt9oj84p_cclCCCZhw/s1600/IMG_20141215_183311.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrZuu_uJs7ZpDgecIBIboI-IFDapSqaazfbMe39-zleSX483Emx6XEmYUiYjvKWIA4wlInK5vLU1a8z9glLAYP_gs6N84AaJvq0O0ITeYfMqiCGsWe-W0czG3vlt9oj84p_cclCCCZhw/s1600/IMG_20141215_183311.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Pre-Installation</i></div>
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There's not enough clearance on the board for the resettable fuse to stand, so I trimmed the legs quite a bit and laid it down. Since the fuse is blown, you don't need to remove it; the current isn't moving through the fuse, so soldering either end of the fuse to the other will bypass the blown fuse. I left the original PS1 fuse in and soldered the resettable fuse to the sides of the fuse. This made life considerably easier since the original fuses are surface mount components.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6BT_KtzDJ7yVnMOZWpgsLDURrc-SpTs3nxIfIszOjzUdMUQcuJA6Q7aqPUtXhvEXDchgZVlM-ffZ23jkFDSl8UvK9FTKrTd2r-IDpXXjrSwdAss37WePLXdVVWc5TQLMQh51qmaykeg/s1600/IMG_20141215_183942.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6BT_KtzDJ7yVnMOZWpgsLDURrc-SpTs3nxIfIszOjzUdMUQcuJA6Q7aqPUtXhvEXDchgZVlM-ffZ23jkFDSl8UvK9FTKrTd2r-IDpXXjrSwdAss37WePLXdVVWc5TQLMQh51qmaykeg/s1600/IMG_20141215_183942.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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There it is all installed. I trimmed the legs down to where they bend inwards. It was the perfect size to fit right against the edges of the original fuse. I had concerns about this working even though it was completely sound in theory. I reassembled everything and...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-IBwvYtYaPH6RsEi0RAbUPAnTARDCtx2M6FRybvbncLvonMX2ku2St_85rRL-uWZSPHrQmhQ-_vI4rsbGZUHsA7ovuhQMY9F9g3P-4hgj0Vcqno-HiOOuM1lQR2TASLNPbZoCvlwUA/s1600/IMG_20141215_185007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo-IBwvYtYaPH6RsEi0RAbUPAnTARDCtx2M6FRybvbncLvonMX2ku2St_85rRL-uWZSPHrQmhQ-_vI4rsbGZUHsA7ovuhQMY9F9g3P-4hgj0Vcqno-HiOOuM1lQR2TASLNPbZoCvlwUA/s1600/IMG_20141215_185007.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Perfect!</div>
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Now I can get back to Final Fantasy XII. I did have a working PS2 slim, but I really hate that thing. Plus I'm very attached to my HDD mod now. I'll do a post on setting all of that up soon.</div>
<br />comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-47202294597917611152014-12-07T12:22:00.003-08:002014-12-07T12:24:19.661-08:00Xbox Mod Adventure: Part 3Now that the difficult things are out of the way, on to the easy stuff (depending on skill level).<br />
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First is putting on a more user friendly dash. I prefer an older version of XBMC with the MC360 skin. I think the newer versions of XBMC are a bit more style over substance.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYIhfcH7B3LYwnG-sAFmBm7fSbPt1_BlWHcLpvVFoMXqGnoQTQa0aqPJAmmc7BmS6lAMt8rMvjJPKP1rvQYNz09suXCRLxdZVUOJI0-8PqFFOzEPU_184qZ9M3Y5fBUiGPX_v3G5BTCg/s1600/IMG_20141121_213850.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYIhfcH7B3LYwnG-sAFmBm7fSbPt1_BlWHcLpvVFoMXqGnoQTQa0aqPJAmmc7BmS6lAMt8rMvjJPKP1rvQYNz09suXCRLxdZVUOJI0-8PqFFOzEPU_184qZ9M3Y5fBUiGPX_v3G5BTCg/s1600/IMG_20141121_213850.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Fantasy football team name + The Sacko for some smack talk.</i></div>
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There's a few different ways to get XBMC as your main dash. A more popular option is to set it up with a shortcut XBE that will change boot priority for dashes, but I just deleted UnleashX and dropped XBMC in. I figure this leaves less room for error and I felt ballsy enough to do it since I had XboxHDM running anyways. If you don't have XboxHDM and your EEPROM, you probably shouldn't do that just because you'll be screwed if you mess it up.</div>
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I left UnleashX on the Xbox and put it in the applications folder. UnleashX is a good way to rip games, so it's a useful dash to keep around. Honestly, there's not a whole lot UnleashX can do that XBMC can't if your Xbox is only softmodded. So, I ripped all of my Xbox games with UnleashX which did not take too long (probably averaged out to about 12 minutes per game, much better than ripping games to the PS2 HDD), and added about 30 more games which I downloaded.<br />
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If you're downloading games, you'll need to FTP them to the Xbox. <a href="https://filezilla-project.org/">Filezilla</a> is a wonderful option for this. If you don't have a crossover cable then you can share your wi-fi connection through your ethernet port and connect your Xbox to your computer that way. You'll then be able to check the IP address in XBMC (or on the main screen in UnleashX) and start moving your games over.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0tGh4jKgaj435y4aJXLRHShuBKW04yotzO2YtE88N8BzgjxFNsyAAYpRcCg18YwrboVRVuIAy-XcRCclq3eg3PTogwvKMz96oEcp0PxFs1goUkqYcEPa4ecQ2pPiBVXsx_Y1zNqkmqQ/s1600/IMG_20141121_213903.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0tGh4jKgaj435y4aJXLRHShuBKW04yotzO2YtE88N8BzgjxFNsyAAYpRcCg18YwrboVRVuIAy-XcRCclq3eg3PTogwvKMz96oEcp0PxFs1goUkqYcEPa4ecQ2pPiBVXsx_Y1zNqkmqQ/s1600/IMG_20141121_213903.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I ended up putting 82 games on the Xbox. There was still a fair amount of free space as well, but I think I covered most of the Xbox essentials. I also put on quite a few emulators. <a href="http://xbmcxbox.blogspot.com/2013/03/complete-list-of-emulators-for-original.html">This is a pretty good list of what's available</a>. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4rugDRMPZWBhK7p3_hc68iquC3v_ashrh-bHWa_3dV9erswqwqJiCPQn-j1paaj6tKUhXol7ddfmdYnI5D3b5BZVOgJzmx5D6e9hbVamFLW689YOG65kqA890cv2cDFiTp58yw_xQQ/s1600/IMG_20141121_213928.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp4rugDRMPZWBhK7p3_hc68iquC3v_ashrh-bHWa_3dV9erswqwqJiCPQn-j1paaj6tKUhXol7ddfmdYnI5D3b5BZVOgJzmx5D6e9hbVamFLW689YOG65kqA890cv2cDFiTp58yw_xQQ/s1600/IMG_20141121_213928.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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These were the emulators I ended up putting on. There's a few MAME games, a full NeoGeo set, full Gameboy/Color/Advance sets, full SNES set, full NES set, full Genesis set and full 32X set. The Nintendo 64 emulator has about 100 of the games that work best with the emulator. After all of the games went on, there was still over 200gb left. Plenty of space to add more MAME games and get a healthy collection going for a PlayStation emulator, too. The NeoGenesis emulator is actually pretty cool, as it will run genuine Sega CD games from the Xbox's drive. Sort of a novelty thing, but I tried it out.</div>
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I also added DLC for all of the original Xbox games that had it and applied title updates as well. You can no longer download the title updates or the DLC since the original Xbox Live servers went offline, but some kind souls created installers with all of the content that you can download and run. They'll install the DLC and sign it to your console.</div>
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A lot of that content is multiplayer only... but all is not lost. Most multiplayer Xbox games had LAN options... which you can tunnel over the internet and play with other people. Enter <a href="http://www.teamxlink.co.uk/">XLink Kai</a> and <a href="http://www.xbconnect.com/">XBConnect</a>. These let you tunnel that connection and play online. I use XLink Kai semi-frequently for Halo 2. This is the most common game people play, but I've managed to get people together to play some Tony Hawk 2x as well (awesome). I prefer XLink Kai's interface and the fact that it has a native OS X client. XBConnect has a much more serious crowd, which can sort of interrupt the fun of just getting online to play.</div>
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Anyways, this Xbox is done.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9sJvFj1G1Cpb5LBQniUrzdX_LpWd3t7VR2XoKBeh0Wc4Jyf0c8GWwnrDVHgtR3w5rOSBD-WQuIRFTZl4bPg2Ik1aJqsr_R6BFEA6a0Nk8r2XB82wHuK_Gtmo9QuZnHi927ecWfMescg/s1600/IMG_20141121_225841.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9sJvFj1G1Cpb5LBQniUrzdX_LpWd3t7VR2XoKBeh0Wc4Jyf0c8GWwnrDVHgtR3w5rOSBD-WQuIRFTZl4bPg2Ik1aJqsr_R6BFEA6a0Nk8r2XB82wHuK_Gtmo9QuZnHi927ecWfMescg/s1600/IMG_20141121_225841.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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It needs to be cleaned though. A lot of consoles seem to favor these ridges in their design for some reason. Dust likes to sit in those ridges but it's not a problem.</div>
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I take a paper towel, wet it and then use a credit card to run it along the inside of the ridges to get the dust out.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPXITqqSs2_uKMnHS2JNfXzV99EM-o9wmnjWdqatZeU6Wv-quWdJhI-ocDpmVJrrfVDhX0JAXxwoqBFVxmFUU9jf49Z2vx1xxMj0uDJFtD1u6EUglexPdTOH2qVNm2DE_QlqkMy7zTg/s1600/IMG_20141121_231013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRPXITqqSs2_uKMnHS2JNfXzV99EM-o9wmnjWdqatZeU6Wv-quWdJhI-ocDpmVJrrfVDhX0JAXxwoqBFVxmFUU9jf49Z2vx1xxMj0uDJFtD1u6EUglexPdTOH2qVNm2DE_QlqkMy7zTg/s1600/IMG_20141121_231013.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Now it looks brand new and it's better than ever with a 500gb HDD and tons of games.</div>
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I traded this Xbox to my friend for a 120gb PlayStation 3 slim, Max Payne 3, Uncharted 3, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Sports Champions, two DualShock 3 controllers, two Move controllers and the PS3 camera. He was having issues with data becoming corrupted on the hard drive and didn't want to mess with fixing it, so he bought a PS4 and wanted a way to play some older games.</div>
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This Xbox was actually finished and the exchange was made a couple of weeks ago, so I'll have some PlayStation 3 stuff up soon.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-16518415223419843662014-11-21T19:20:00.000-08:002014-11-21T19:20:20.301-08:00Xbox Mod Adventure: Part 2Just because everything has to be a debacle whenever I want to do anything, let's jump right in. Get that transistor replaced, a new DVD drive put in and a new faceplate.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWAnJmQjG06ELaMkaQre-aHYKP2_D_VCXTY2rZVzVZY0dAjuF8SxDWPruxbQS4nXKnisit0lefrp5yVCCY-o8LZsL1PgH0YMmJMkvfEuzpKaq8uVX4BvS_X7-2ecTnqb8mH1kdqUaTIQ/s1600/IMG_20141114_141518.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWAnJmQjG06ELaMkaQre-aHYKP2_D_VCXTY2rZVzVZY0dAjuF8SxDWPruxbQS4nXKnisit0lefrp5yVCCY-o8LZsL1PgH0YMmJMkvfEuzpKaq8uVX4BvS_X7-2ecTnqb8mH1kdqUaTIQ/s1600/IMG_20141114_141518.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Since the transistor is so damn small, I went ahead and bought a 4.5 watt battery powered soldering iron. I have to say I'm in love with this thing. You'd have to leave it on until the batteries drained to lift a pad or fuck anything up severely. As much as I solder things, it's just not my strong point. It's usually an exercise in frustration, and this iron is pretty idiot proof. I'm down.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin3MxGzL5xb7j1zWuBefxsw4vr-N1DhNW0aBdqzBhbGxVMVfyDGLTfr82l9oXNzOP0m-NrZZ15VTaK9xWEdKuZiepxrfn7Cwyxh7g6_77ebZ8bxn8BcusKxHSYztbrWzPyzm3VvJL5Aw/s1600/IMG_20141114_141609.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin3MxGzL5xb7j1zWuBefxsw4vr-N1DhNW0aBdqzBhbGxVMVfyDGLTfr82l9oXNzOP0m-NrZZ15VTaK9xWEdKuZiepxrfn7Cwyxh7g6_77ebZ8bxn8BcusKxHSYztbrWzPyzm3VvJL5Aw/s1600/IMG_20141114_141609.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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It was surprisingly easy. This soldering iron wasn't heating up enough to get the transistor removed easily, so I actually ended up cutting the legs with an exacto knife and then just removing the legs from the pads afterwards. The transistor is tiny enough that I had to hold it in place with tweezers. I couldn't steady my hand enough to set it down on the board and do the soldering. It actually went in incredibly easily.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLIPJbNASzmM94A2NC77v8f_g5dy-CnD2IVJVdzfQSzAGQBLBtExV9w0RO5yKzOxNEOOJSM1YSog0CjOYyubdJJX_oiNQmAtVxYgKERMCKu-GPhqz_NYk7w8t1iF0Yuosy4244oMOQdw/s1600/IMG_20141114_141546.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLIPJbNASzmM94A2NC77v8f_g5dy-CnD2IVJVdzfQSzAGQBLBtExV9w0RO5yKzOxNEOOJSM1YSog0CjOYyubdJJX_oiNQmAtVxYgKERMCKu-GPhqz_NYk7w8t1iF0Yuosy4244oMOQdw/s1600/IMG_20141114_141546.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Aaand here's our current faceplate. Nice scuffs. The power button was shot off with an airsoft gun by my friend who originally sold me the Xbox that was in this case for $5. There's a couple of spots around the buttons on the glossy spot where he missed the button and there are airsoft BB size indents. The faceplate I got to replace it was "Microsoft recertified."</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcrygSxx7tbNUc_tYGgxDYENlAQBjUlz_QKX4juHiMVHXrSdCsEeap5MvdGcVp6d7IH3cRfCI3LLexdrSaFs1bpTciV9Pc-yQ-iVfOZvsMsvgcTX8CySkurW6HItK6uBccMvrZMACPg/s1600/IMG_20141114_143206.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcrygSxx7tbNUc_tYGgxDYENlAQBjUlz_QKX4juHiMVHXrSdCsEeap5MvdGcVp6d7IH3cRfCI3LLexdrSaFs1bpTciV9Pc-yQ-iVfOZvsMsvgcTX8CySkurW6HItK6uBccMvrZMACPg/s1600/IMG_20141114_143206.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Surprisingly it actually does seem to be either new or refurbished. Even has some plastic covering the glossy bit to prevent scratches. Nice.</div>
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Now for the DVD drive. This has a Thompson in it currently. They are fucking horrible. I bought a Samsung drive to replace it. Thankfully the Xbox drives can work with any console, they aren't locked to the motherboard like Xbox 360 DVD drives.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUBCRzOiTbjssP8Y9407rKNRvpUxdjjAMWhpBU5_H2rPPV5WJw7fcgVPqkdJD34kvOaVqL6yZbuimZut6JDLazndCc4pGx_iH_hNiZUGhgCBLHSB5DGhCWSiWcfFhyphenhyphenR3ikxBRj9HlYPg/s1600/IMG_20141114_143912.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUBCRzOiTbjssP8Y9407rKNRvpUxdjjAMWhpBU5_H2rPPV5WJw7fcgVPqkdJD34kvOaVqL6yZbuimZut6JDLazndCc4pGx_iH_hNiZUGhgCBLHSB5DGhCWSiWcfFhyphenhyphenR3ikxBRj9HlYPg/s1600/IMG_20141114_143912.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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You can see that the Samsung drive doesn't have the Xbox bezel. That's not a problem, as the bezel actually just slides up vertically and it can be switched to another drive.</div>
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So, moment of truth... was the transistor the problem?</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv8OSPVEBQrTQMe1L7mWVytmLRhBJuR3NHjUAjZ6ukGuIcVKXie7fkatobO78F35pww0_FC7nX1bspsn9mraen760X3uKxKd8v_u6rbxQpUTHSclhCgRvm3pVn0wQEOjTuLM2Xrd43MA/s1600/IMG_20141114_145354.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv8OSPVEBQrTQMe1L7mWVytmLRhBJuR3NHjUAjZ6ukGuIcVKXie7fkatobO78F35pww0_FC7nX1bspsn9mraen760X3uKxKd8v_u6rbxQpUTHSclhCgRvm3pVn0wQEOjTuLM2Xrd43MA/s1600/IMG_20141114_145354.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yes it was! This is the only thing that will go right from here on out.</div>
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Also, in case you were curious..</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gl_jQ2UGY1xpWf7CVcuu9NJDw8j6KRpaBT8CAZBorfv7XpmjYJ2hrYt5GNJB9K0Q3aGsPTL8SkiNLrvXMBQV8MPvAQI5Qkj1kcDExt9VvMs3jxpsMHjQJ58YkI2QkwiJGPUpBNzBWg/s1600/IMG_20141114_212409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gl_jQ2UGY1xpWf7CVcuu9NJDw8j6KRpaBT8CAZBorfv7XpmjYJ2hrYt5GNJB9K0Q3aGsPTL8SkiNLrvXMBQV8MPvAQI5Qkj1kcDExt9VvMs3jxpsMHjQJ58YkI2QkwiJGPUpBNzBWg/s1600/IMG_20141114_212409.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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That's the transistor that was removed from the Xbox. It's that fucking small.</div>
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Anyways, let's get this shit rolling. Back to loading up Agent Under Fire with the Ndure exploit copied over to the HDD. Start up Agent Under Fire, load the game and...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY9DKLEhZGNTe0KJlKMJRzeJGHM1s2bhAZmW_7lMYZ_kVAMrkE_BH0c67Vjq8mDxkprFxLi4lhsQzlhZEp72oj-hgT0xoDHg-gBlDT7sXx-u1Vcu0pKfZSWBc55Gp2nYTi9rXOOX4kyA/s1600/IMG_20141114_145436.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY9DKLEhZGNTe0KJlKMJRzeJGHM1s2bhAZmW_7lMYZ_kVAMrkE_BH0c67Vjq8mDxkprFxLi4lhsQzlhZEp72oj-hgT0xoDHg-gBlDT7sXx-u1Vcu0pKfZSWBc55Gp2nYTi9rXOOX4kyA/s1600/IMG_20141114_145436.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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We have softmod! Create an MS backup, install the softmod, install UnleashX, patch the stock dash and we're (allegedly) good to go. Now, <i>if this worked</i> from this point, you would need to have some way to power the secondary HDD that you're going to be installing into the Xbox.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVI6yBqva2i-kBZQWK4oaHG15XTmShDd4I-tXd-bJ7ieIY1IopL14VKXLcuTMtZCo3NPrXmW5yS2_NgnWX-QLIo7JG0H8ymMFyBJqu4vhBHOZ_3OIgS7ByQDnPNA1L5WW4lU2oJ6IvpQ/s1600/IMG_20141114_151323.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVI6yBqva2i-kBZQWK4oaHG15XTmShDd4I-tXd-bJ7ieIY1IopL14VKXLcuTMtZCo3NPrXmW5yS2_NgnWX-QLIo7JG0H8ymMFyBJqu4vhBHOZ_3OIgS7ByQDnPNA1L5WW4lU2oJ6IvpQ/s1600/IMG_20141114_151323.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's our subject, a 500gb Hitachi Deskstar. While it's not made by Apple, we're going to say that we're putting some Apple into this Xbox. So, I got the HDD running on external power, swapped out the IDE cable for the DVD drive, FTP'd Chimp over to the Xbox, started Chimp... except Chimp wouldn't start. I checked the file layout I had a million times. Everything was right. Well, it turns out this is a 1.6b Xbox. Chimp was re-done to have compatibility with 1.6 Xboxes, so this should work right?</div>
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I talked it over with some online pals who are also into Xbox modding. One of them had no idea. The other had no idea too... until he remembered that he had a 1.6b Xbox at one point that Chimp just refused to run on. So, something about the 1.6b Xbox prevents Chimp from running correctly. Now we're going full old school in order to get this fucker working.</div>
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I forgot to mention with that whole softmod thing, back your motherfucking EEPROM up. The Xbox's HDD is keyed to the motherboard using the EEPROM. If your HDD dies? Your Xbox is dead, unless you've got your EEPROM. Fuck something up on your softmod and the Xbox won't work? Your Xbox is dead. Unless you get an EEPROM reader. Anywho, we're going to take that EEPROM and format the HDD manually.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7u9V1PI7qbNm49EW6Q0R7cHul1oCs4hV0ZoqUhyphenhypheny9FQNHuxWKg0-2l1u3rJ_CkkEHaBchcGMVQ0wrEW8MHvfFtXOIp-fAC9nK73dH3o6B8m1SokxRbp1dnwJXB5IDC_vJRNsQ59Jylg/s1600/IMG_20141116_185945.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7u9V1PI7qbNm49EW6Q0R7cHul1oCs4hV0ZoqUhyphenhypheny9FQNHuxWKg0-2l1u3rJ_CkkEHaBchcGMVQ0wrEW8MHvfFtXOIp-fAC9nK73dH3o6B8m1SokxRbp1dnwJXB5IDC_vJRNsQ59Jylg/s1600/IMG_20141116_185945.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's my old shitty HP piece of shit with IDE connections. We'll be using a Linux boot disc that runs something called XboxHDM. XboxHDM can install original MS Dash files, format the drive correctly, install a softmod and finally lock the HDD with a copy of the EEPROM that was backed up in the softmod process.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGve01N-H6D5I1-cQpauY9a7ojnmNRHuk82qviIn95S36JweN7peIfkBOKuYZhOm3QkWOAZQ52QLhKxuhXz43Po8RjAh1_LBDBkUijaEjoGDKje7jc4i10phx1_qMOiUeM44YArJEBQ/s1600/IMG_20141116_185950.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPGve01N-H6D5I1-cQpauY9a7ojnmNRHuk82qviIn95S36JweN7peIfkBOKuYZhOm3QkWOAZQ52QLhKxuhXz43Po8RjAh1_LBDBkUijaEjoGDKje7jc4i10phx1_qMOiUeM44YArJEBQ/s1600/IMG_20141116_185950.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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Nice and simple. It's actually very easy to use and faster than you'd expect, too. There's a few different tutorials out there, and a lot of them don't seem to be fully correct. I couldn't get the drive to launch in the Xbox until I came across t<a href="http://www.theisozone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=37673&p=273580#p273580">his post</a>. </div>
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You're not totally done after this though. You'll need to FTP XbPartitioner to the HDD and run it to get the full HDD size available. After all that...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfVGXQXCz45iDIKMYNk61zXHEaPFzCGpjBA6hyphenhyphenX4Ndj2-peOUojmYflRR3yS9DayHQ6JcaiGzebVF3Boo8csJuugXnHtz6yEi-FAQl3TlGQdz_-rjZ_mTMjZRuDUdWpIaxEuCJTYr8RQ/s1600/IMG_20141116_221353.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfVGXQXCz45iDIKMYNk61zXHEaPFzCGpjBA6hyphenhyphenX4Ndj2-peOUojmYflRR3yS9DayHQ6JcaiGzebVF3Boo8csJuugXnHtz6yEi-FAQl3TlGQdz_-rjZ_mTMjZRuDUdWpIaxEuCJTYr8RQ/s1600/IMG_20141116_221353.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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UnleashX and a nice 500gb HDD.</div>
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Next: adding games, a different dashboard and emulators.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-2411819918155072642014-11-13T20:30:00.001-08:002014-11-13T20:30:36.260-08:00Killzone (PlayStation 2) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGkhDqgz_OeIilaM0z9cCcRA1HR5XYOjn39_aUAyQ-QWaD-Ckmkaim4dh1Y2ofmOiR5udaHmgdgYA5lUiY3dvYK1cKQGkw0VjhTtGjcB-CVVegqThmXxpLmyz8mG_Yp3wlFoCHx0FCJA/s1600/1125373852-00.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGkhDqgz_OeIilaM0z9cCcRA1HR5XYOjn39_aUAyQ-QWaD-Ckmkaim4dh1Y2ofmOiR5udaHmgdgYA5lUiY3dvYK1cKQGkw0VjhTtGjcB-CVVegqThmXxpLmyz8mG_Yp3wlFoCHx0FCJA/s320/1125373852-00.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>
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Back in November of 2004, two apparent titans of gaming were about to be unleashed. Halo 2 and the Halo killing Killzone. Fanboys on both sides unleashed a cacophony of insults. Keyboards snapped under the pressure. Nokia cell phones rang nonstop. Gamecube owners were confused.<br />
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Then.. The dust suddenly settled. Everyone just sort of forgot about Killzone (until the infamous PlayStation 3 tech demo). Halo 2 was the undisputed victor. It changed the way people thought about console games online. It brought Xbox Live the attention it always deserved. </div>
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But what of Killzone? Was it good? Was it bad? I don't think most ever even knew. I tried out Killzone: Liberation on PSP and found it to be less than spectacular. Its fully featured predecessor is thankfully a much better game. </div>
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One important thing to note is that Microsoft brought a grenade to a slap fight with the Xbox. Its specs made the Gamecube and PS2 look out of place towards the end of the console generation. The PS2 had been looking old for quite a while, and Killzone looked to be a graphical powerhouse on the aging system. Unfortunately, it impacts the game in a negative way. They <i>really</i><b style="font-style: italic;"> </b>tried to make Killzone look great and for the most part, they succeeded. The PS2 just can't handle the game. The Xbox had twice as much RAM and much faster processors and later life Xbox games were a sight to behold. Killzone does manage to look quite nice, particularly the snowy level later in the game:<br />
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This isn't a great screenshot, but you can see some of the background and some nice details like the ice around the guard tower. It obviously doesn't look <i>great</i> but PS2 games just usually weren't detailed to this extent. </div>
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The game suffers from massive frame rate issues. They're not bad when you're inside of a building or on a smaller level, but when the game attempts an open environment it slows to a crawl. It's almost embarrassing how the developers attempt to hide the fact that some levels aren't open environments. Do you remember that old trick from N64 and PS1 games where if you were in a jungle or a forest, they would try to hide that you were in a hallway by making the walls basically solid trees? They do that here.</div>
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<a href="http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-images/killzonetri.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-images/killzonetri.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>This screenshot is from the HD version but you can see the effect here.</i></div>
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It's not a surprise that this game didn't fulfill its destiny as a Halo killer. The shooting mechanics are fundamentally flawed. Any automatic gun in the game is incapable of firing a single straight shot. A tap of the fire button with your crosshairs complete still will result in a shot way off to the left or right. The only guns that fire straight are the sniper rifle or the pistol. Obviously an automatic gun is not going to be the most accurate thing in the game, but your first shot should at least be on target. Is everything in the game on a slope or something? I played some multiplayer with bots and I wasn't impressed with how the game feels in a multiplayer situation. It's not a game breaker for single player but it does change the multiplayer aspect.</div>
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The other thing is that the enemies behave as bullet sponges. You can see two or three bloodsprays from the head of an enemy before they go down. On the other hand, you're pretty weak. I can see now what they were trying to capture with the PSP version. You'll frequently be hunkered down behind cover and pop out to make a couple of shots. This works in first person, it's pretty boring from a top down perspective.</div>
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As far as the story goes, it's really no more interesting than the PSP version that I discussed before. The Helghast have decided that Vetka is a pretty nice place and they'd like to live there even though they can't survive in the atmosphere. Or something. The most surprising aspect of the game to me was the fact that there are 4 playable characters. Two are essentially identical and the others are the stereotypical heavy and the stereotypical ranged character. For the most part, the other characters will be tagging along on the missions and helping out.</div>
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Yet another issue is that aside from the frame rate issues, it's buggy. I had a couple of instances where restarting from a checkpoint wouldn't fix a bug and I actually had to restart the game. In particular, when I was playing the last mission I kept hearing my teammates yelling things out but I couldn't see them and they weren't firing. This happened every time I died and had to restart. Then, about midway through the mission the time that I actually beat it they all just literally fell out of the ceiling. I'm really not sure if this was a glitch or what. It helped me out so I'm not complaining, but I will always wonder.</div>
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My favorite part of the game? The grenade cooking. When you throw a grenade you can hold down the button to cook the grenade before you throw it. In Killzone, the grenades have LEDs on the side that light up showing how close you are to detonation. It lets you get the throw just right.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDMIyZR9In555oMW6sPdMWjuQkMWK3B5KiBkyueYIA40jRbJUTOnMFr_2CTuoLW3i7cYYWVZqH9l59buFA7qjISlVAx4uh0B_bM692LjhydzC4JfJjebrZGYl-gTxob6nsY2hYbFai6A/s1600/150355-Killzone_(USA)-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDMIyZR9In555oMW6sPdMWjuQkMWK3B5KiBkyueYIA40jRbJUTOnMFr_2CTuoLW3i7cYYWVZqH9l59buFA7qjISlVAx4uh0B_bM692LjhydzC4JfJjebrZGYl-gTxob6nsY2hYbFai6A/s320/150355-Killzone_(USA)-2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Overall, Killzone is a slightly above average game. If it hadn't come out on PS2, it probably would've had a lot more hype and been a much better game. As it stands, Killzone seems to be something forever in the shadows of other major FPS franchises. It's an interesting idea, but the execution suffers. I had a lot of fun with it, but there are also a lot of frustrations.</div>
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<b>The Score: 7.8/10</b></div>
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comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-85149683690651737072014-10-29T21:40:00.000-07:002014-10-29T21:52:33.286-07:00Xbox Mod Adventure: Part 1I used to do some more technical writing here (not necessarily technical, but at least an overview of things I worked on) and I'm going to try to get back to that a bit. I finally did a backlit GBA mod a while ago so I'll go over that soon, but we're going to take a look at the original Xbox first.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp6dWbovwvOZgxL2xylPJVMVldeptHmywcAxpj2Kh3wno7ZsXzeli291Kt6jfC5-1EoAlMxE-jEsYGxRQijrncDsKh6hxyC1oalYiKj0LBRWebEyqt5Og_KAmLPgBPJkcl0Ox8jtWGQQ/s1600/magicgate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhp6dWbovwvOZgxL2xylPJVMVldeptHmywcAxpj2Kh3wno7ZsXzeli291Kt6jfC5-1EoAlMxE-jEsYGxRQijrncDsKh6hxyC1oalYiKj0LBRWebEyqt5Og_KAmLPgBPJkcl0Ox8jtWGQQ/s1600/magicgate.jpg" height="218" width="320" /></a></div>
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I've mentioned <i><a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/07/dr-x-love-or-how-i-learned-to-stop.html">briefly</a></i> before that the original Xbox was a pretty big turning point in my fandom of games. It's probably my favorite gaming console of all time. Like most, my first experience with the console was with Halo. When Halo 2 came out though? It was love. Then next year? It abruptly ended when the 360 came out. My torrid affair with the original Xbox lasted about a year and a half. I bought my first Xbox off of a good friend. He sold it to me for $5 in early 2005 because the DVD drive was shitty and he decided to shoot the power button off with an airsoft gun.</div>
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I went ahead and bought a new drive, and I was off to the races. The first two games I bought were the DOOM 3 collector's edition and Genma Onimusha. Up until I got a 360 for Christmas in 2006 I did little other than play Xbox. I got to be pretty fierce at Halo 2 and I bought and plowed through around 40 Xbox games in that time period. Xbox prices tanked fast since Microsoft dropped the console as quickly as they could when the 360 came out. Eventually, my Xbox ended up with an ex girlfriend some time in 2008 and wasn't seen again until 2011.</div>
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I made that awkward text requesting it back when I found a copy of Beyond Good & Evil. I didn't end up caring for the game, but it did reignite my love for the Xbox. All of my official controllers were gone and my HDD was filled with saves for Medal of Honor (I'm guessing her uncle had the system..). I purged the saves that weren't mine and comforted her. The DVD drive however, was bad again.</div>
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There are three <i>common</i> Xbox DVD drives and a fourth which possibly only shows up in refurb units. The one that this Xbox had was a Thompson. When my friend sold it to me, it had a Thompson as well. These drives are absolute shit. I replaced it with a Thompson because at the time, I believed you needed to replace it with the same drive. Not true. Thompsons are basically guaranteed to fail after a few years and investing in one is a bad choice. So, the Xbox went into what was (mostly) a state of rest.</div>
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About a year later, I came upon an Xbox in Goodwill for about $12, so I snagged it. The case was in good condition (no power button shot off with an airsoft gun) and I figured I could pull the DVD drive. Turns out I came upon a sort of <a href="http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=42971">uncommon drive</a>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5zaubq8Ko2l26nfBzdbndoWaVTOgnTGeK6TSk5p-u3BpbGKRZpVV4kmhel4MFeyoTilU9cdFYpypms-W6n6DtXeeKDu03777Sia5nuGkGjxBQQGiDKygdEiu6w4GcuYBP6MrKoNNPNQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-10-29+at+9.17.55+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5zaubq8Ko2l26nfBzdbndoWaVTOgnTGeK6TSk5p-u3BpbGKRZpVV4kmhel4MFeyoTilU9cdFYpypms-W6n6DtXeeKDu03777Sia5nuGkGjxBQQGiDKygdEiu6w4GcuYBP6MrKoNNPNQ/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-10-29+at+9.17.55+PM.png" height="194" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Awh yeah baby, quote me more..</i></div>
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Before proceeding, let me discuss <i>why</i> we've come to this point of modding an Xbox. A friend of mine was looking for an N64, so I told him I'd keep an eye out. I didn't come across anything, then I had the thought of softmodding an extra Xbox I had and putting emulators on it for him. He found out his PS3's HDD was going out, so he offered to trade it for the Xbox. I sweetened the deal by saying I'd get a better DVD drive and pop a 500gb HDD in it. Great deal for me since I enjoy doing this kind of thing and there's honestly not a whole lot in the PS3 library that I'm dying to play. Today, that 500GB HDD got here so I wanted to get started.</div>
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That Xbox I got at Goodwill? I didn't use the motherboard because of how the hard drives are tied to the motherboard and all of my saves were on my old HDD. I simply swapped my old board into the new case and switched out the DVD drives. No problem, right?</div>
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Wrong.</div>
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<a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-psp-1001-debacle-part-1.html">Whenever I think</a> <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-psp-1001-debacle-part-2-russian.html">"no problem,"</a> <a href="http://snarkycollectsgames.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-psp-1001-debacle-part-3-victory.html">I'm wrong.</a></div>
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That link up there with information about the Xbox goes into detail about the different motherboard revisions. The one my friend sold me is a 1.0 and the one I bought at Goodwill is a 1.6. So what, right?</div>
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Well that 1.6 motherboard that went into my 1.0 case, I just forgot about it. I never had another reason to plug it in or use it, so I didn't. I had no idea I colossally shot myself in the foot. I fired up my Xbox, made sure the Agent Under Fire Ndure exploit was on my memory card and pulled out the Xbox to be modded.</div>
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Speaking of which, praises be to Agent Under Fire.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2kR0IU1DganFms7ssd_aAblNRcNPMe34XsM33fkrXN7GNBJbU7Rp0YQV3XQSNgEPgAqNPDfLrIYMn0dBHtDbmkzp2q0Ea78z34mZbcujKqyZw1Q3dsdpfze6KyujcWpt4x58VftoqWA/s1600/holy007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2kR0IU1DganFms7ssd_aAblNRcNPMe34XsM33fkrXN7GNBJbU7Rp0YQV3XQSNgEPgAqNPDfLrIYMn0dBHtDbmkzp2q0Ea78z34mZbcujKqyZw1Q3dsdpfze6KyujcWpt4x58VftoqWA/s1600/holy007.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Isis gon' be mad</i></div>
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Seriously, who the fuck coded this game so incompetently and how are they not blacklisted from the industry? Agent Under Fire is not only a game that's exploitable to softmod an Xbox, the PS2 version is exploitable as well to set up Free McBoot. Sort of a crappy game, but goddamn. Thank you likely unpaid EA intern for your hard work.</div>
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So, I plugged in the Xbox and hit the power button... nothing. Nothing at all. I thought maybe I just stuffed the components into the case and didn't hook everything up since I wouldn't need to use it.</div>
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Nothing.</div>
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Then I started thinking maybe there was something wrong with the power button. I tear apart my Xbox, hook the power button up to the other one.</div>
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Nothing.</div>
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Time to Google.</div>
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Well, it turns out that Xbox motherboard revisions 1.0-1.5 use the exact same case. Switch those fuckers out freely. 1.6 though? This is the only case that's different.</div>
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I fucked up a transistor because while the two cases are mostly the same, there's one critical difference that you <a href="http://www.llamma.com/xbox/Repairs/1.6_Xbox_no_power.htm">would never even know about.</a> That tiny piece of tin has fucked my shit up.</div>
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So, now I need to replace that transistor. It's all good though, I bought one for $1. Now I just have to wait and get ready to solder something really small.</div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-45669565355957609812014-10-27T22:21:00.000-07:002014-10-27T22:21:06.583-07:00Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance (Game Boy Advance) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQQ0bBBvqVljXYfzaYsjL5Fn-vsL1T-ozOv3CbW-cKej4OUT8t8gVOuDW5k-jBEtpoEyMu1YfXlTto2zI6L-zcSbr8M8I_XDME7yqBu0Fate2q-hHAn4tiEsBqodfG9vp6Goz2nKgb5A/s1600/castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-gba-cover-front-27805.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQQ0bBBvqVljXYfzaYsjL5Fn-vsL1T-ozOv3CbW-cKej4OUT8t8gVOuDW5k-jBEtpoEyMu1YfXlTto2zI6L-zcSbr8M8I_XDME7yqBu0Fate2q-hHAn4tiEsBqodfG9vp6Goz2nKgb5A/s1600/castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-gba-cover-front-27805.jpg" height="320" width="320" /></a></div>
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Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance is the entry in the GBA Castlevania trilogy that's out in third place. Even people who don't like Circle of the Moon for the reason that <i>"it's not in Iga's timeline"</i> still like CotM better than HoD. I came into this game expecting another somewhat hollow and uninspired Igarashi helmed Castlevania. I was surprisingly wrong.</div>
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If you've been around the Castlevania series for a while, you're pretty familiar with the recycled sprites and the fact that there are maybe one or two new enemies each game. Harmony of Dissonance actually goes out of its way to bring in new enemies. I was surprised at the constant stream of them, and it gave me a drive to continue that I hadn't felt with an Igarashi game for a long time. The game is much darker in tone as well, with the enemy designs intentionally being more... horror-esque. Another step up in this game is the backgrounds. They're intricate and very detailed which leads the castle to feel like it really does have unique areas.</div>
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<a href="http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/Images/Screens/hodg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><i><img border="0" src="http://www.castlevaniadungeon.net/Images/Screens/hodg.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></i></a></div>
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<i>The background designs are very well done.</i></div>
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While the graphics are inspired, the music is kind of weird. Where CotM had a surprisingly lush soundtrack with some pretty high quality samples, HoD could be mistaken for an NES game with some added sound channels. Take a listen:</div>
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The music that is here is good, but it seems like a hugely missed opportunity. It's <i>really </i>hard to overlook the fact that this is just a gross misuse of the hardware. If this were a different series then I think it would be possible to overlook, but Castlevania has always been noted for its music. To have such a great and intense soundtrack rendered in such a way detracts from it when so much more was possible. Hell, maybe it could've been overlooked if CotM hadn't bettered it a year before..</div>
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Harmony of Dissonance's plot is actually somewhat interesting. Our Belmont this time is Juste, Simon's (from the original Castlevania) grandson. Juste is... weird. This was actually Igarashi's first crack at creating a Belmont. Excluding remakes, Igarashi's eight full-fledged Castlevania games only featured a Belmont as the main playable character three times. That's sort of weird. I mean... do you <i>like </i>Castlevania? Ayami Kojima's art works well for some characters, but as far as Juste is concerned it's a weird look. </div>
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Juste's friend Maxim decided to gather up the remains of Dracula (much like Simon's Quest) to destroy them, but ended up being possessed by Dracula. The castle has two layers, one reflecting Maxim's "good" personality, and the other his "evil" personality, influenced by Dracula. You have to move between the different layers in order to navigate the entire castle. This is sort of a drag on the game.</div>
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<a href="http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/376004-castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-game-boy-advance-screenshot.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/376004-castlevania-harmony-of-dissonance-game-boy-advance-screenshot.png" /></a></div>
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<i>A cool new enemy, this one jumps out of a mirror</i></div>
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You don't actually learn that you're going between the two layers until about 3/4ths of the way through the game. Then you're given a map for each layer and one map that shows your overall progress by different colors. The castle layout is identical for each layer, though the backgrounds and obstacles will differ. If this game were on the DS, then the layers would be a different story. Some kind of map annotation like in The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass would've been transformative for this game. Unfortunately, you'll be left to wander through the castles seemingly endlessly trying to find exactly what to trigger to progress. </div>
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If the way forward were more obvious, this would be a very short game. It almost seems as though the game is laid out this way just to pad the length. The castle is not large and it doesn't take a huge amount of time to traverse. Similarly, the difficulty is not very high. Save rooms are relatively sparse until you get the whole castle mapped out, which can make early explorations challenging. This is not <i>real</i> difficulty though, this is difficulty by circumstance.</div>
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Harmony of Dissonance is a <i>really</i> mixed bag. It's a step above other Igarashi produced Castlevanias and it's a mile behind others. It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game. It's not quite a great game... it just is. Everything adds together to become average.</div>
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<b>The Score: 7.5/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-82208892815404629552014-10-15T23:31:00.001-07:002014-10-15T23:33:10.632-07:00Resident Evil 6: Leon's Campaign (Xbox 360) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It's October, the month of Halloween and <i>scary things</i>. I was planning on reviewing a few horror games this month, but the games that I chose turned out to be a bit longer than I expected. As a result, I decided to break up my review of Resident Evil 6 into each individual campaign.</div>
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First, I want to talk about the Resident Evil 6 Archives set pictured up there. The 360 version isn't as impressive as the PS3 one (which contains almost all of the RE games), but it's still a nice value. I picked it up on eBay for $15. If you decide to try to grab this, make sure you're getting a new copy. Everything aside from the movie and RE6 comes in the form of a download code.</div>
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CODE: Veronica is probably my favorite RE game (next to Nemesis), and I wanted to play the HD version. Unfortunately, this HD version is definitely not the best way to experience the game, but that's another review. I actually already had Resident Evil: Degeneration on Blu-Ray, and while I'm not much of a fan of 4, I did always want to check out the DLC for 5 (even though I had a violently negative reaction to the game). So, overall, I got what I wanted for a less than I would've paid for the two story DLCs for RE5 alone.</div>
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Right off the bat, I'll say that I really don't like where the RE series has gone. I've never liked 4 and I think 5 is an atrocious game. It's unplayable without someone playing the game co-op with you. I heard nearly nothing positive about Resident Evil 6. I didn't <i>want </i>to like the game. I wanted to hate it. I want those tank controls and pre-rendered backgrounds again. I want Chris Redfield's bicep to be smaller than his head. <i>I want zombies in my Resident Evil.</i> </div>
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Then Conan didn't raise my expectations for this game any.</div>
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As I put the game in, I remembered Jim Sterling's <a href="http://www.destructoid.com/review-resident-evil-6-235326.phtml">scathing review</a>. The start of the game seemed to confirm my desire to hate everything about it as correct. It's a half speed slog through a dark alleyway littered with QTEs as you drag your injured partner to safety. I turned the game off in boredom about midway through the intro.</div>
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A few days later, I tried again. I made it through the intro. I was wholly unimpressed by the first chapter. Another half speed slog through a college campus with some irrelevant tertiary characters who would clearly be dead within 20 minutes. A trip through a subway and some city streets which demonstrated a lack of ammo. The end of the chapter presented a boss that took me about 20 minutes to kill because I kept having to kill zombies to get ammo. Through all of this though, I found myself enjoying the game. The return to a more urban area seemed to bring something back to the series that it has been missing. No longer are we in some bizarre vaguely eastern European area (Resident Evil 4), or brightly lit Africa (Resident Evil 5) with some (not so) subtle racism sprinkled throughout. We're back to the city, where an outbreak would wreak the most havoc.</div>
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Let's discuss the mechanics a bit before continuing. The greatest improvement to the game from RE5 comes to the partner system. You don't need to pay a damn bit of attention to the AI partner in this game. They take care of themselves. They don't leech your ammo. They have their own inventory and their inventory has gloriously unlimited ammo. They don't seem to die, either. Of course there are segments where you'll need to protect your partner, or you'll need their help opening a door but these sections don't seem like a chore. The AI's competency lessens the stress of these, and they go by painlessly. </div>
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The biggest failing of the game is probably the physics system. Character movement can be outright awkward. Your biggest obstacle in this game is a dead body on the floor. Have you ever been playing a game and walked over a body on the floor and thought "I shouldn't just clip through the body, there should be some physical reaction?" Well, that is a horrible idea and this game proves it. If there's a body on the floor, you'll trip over it. The first time it happens you will be wildly confused and it took me a while to figure out exactly what was happening. This was just a poor design choice. It doesn't <i>really</i> hamper you, but it is annoying.</div>
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Another thing... zombie wrestling.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">GOOD GAWD ALMIGHTY!!!</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">AS GAWD IS MY WITNESS HE IS BROKEN IN HALF!!!!!</span></b></div>
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I'm not really sure where the fuck this came from, but you can seriously just go around kicking zombies in the face and doing wrestling moves and shit on them. I'm not really sure how I feel about this. It's ridiculous...but it's fun? It feels so out of place but goddammit I can't help but like it. I mean, how many times do you some slow ass lumbering zombie in a game or movie and thought "why don't you just kick it and beat the shit out of it?" RE6 lets you do just that.</div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">THAT'S LEON'S MUSIC!!</span></b></div>
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As far as the story goes, I'm not entirely sure what's going on. The campaign is definitely designed to have you piece events together after playing through all of them. Leon's campaign crossed paths with all of the other campaigns, so I'm assuming everything will be filled in. Then again, it's an RE game. It may make no sense at the end anyways.</div>
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Let's be clear, this game is far from the survival horror-type RE games that I love, but I can accept it this time because it's designed to be this way. Resident Evil 4 and Resident Evil 5 control exactly the same as the earlier Resident Evil games. Seriously, play one of the "tank control" games and play 4 or 5. The controls work exactly the same, just with a third person camera. I found that it killed the momentum of the games since those games were meant to be action games but had the controls of a slow, deliberate survival-horror game. This game was designed as an action game and the controls work for it. The pace is fast and even though the physics are off, everything is responsive.</div>
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Honestly, I found that the more bombastic sections work well. If there was some kind of viral zombie outbreak, it would be chaotic and RE6 captures this well. This has been a point of criticism from other reviews, but at least for Leon's campaign I thought it worked.</div>
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I will concede that the final boss battle of the campaign is a bit too ridiculous. You'll find yourself scaling a massive building with everything burning and an ominous Umbrella logo on the ground that totally isn't supposed to be obvious until the end. It totally is obvious though.</div>
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I'm breaking these reviews up because I've read that the campaigns in this game vary wildly in quality. Taken on its own, I found Leon's campaign to be the best Resident Evil content since the Resident Evil remake on Gamecube. The urban areas recall Raccoon City in the best way possible and the chaotic scenes portray the sense of panic that would surely follow an outbreak event. There are highs and there are lows, but I had a whole lot of fun playing through this.</div>
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<b>Leon's Campaign: 8.5/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-86132131347623641632014-09-17T20:03:00.001-07:002014-09-17T20:03:38.082-07:00Game Journalism is Broken and #GamerGate Isn't to BlameI started writing about all of this #GamerGate shit yesterday because I got all fired up about it. I get passionate about things that are happening. This is hardly even something that you can write about right now because the narrative seems to shift every day. I think that someone turned up the smoking gun, though.<br />
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<a href="http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/09/17/Exposed-the-secret-mailing-list-of-the-gaming-journalism-elite">Take a look.</a><br />
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When I started writing yesterday, my scorn was equally pointed towards everyone. Zoe Quinn, the game media and gamers themselves. That was unfair. While I may feel at odds and even alienated from the "core" gaming audience a lot of the time, <i>nothing</i> compares to this. Game journalists aren't reporting on the news; they're actively trying to shape it.<br />
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Who's to say what's true now? Who can be trusted?<br />
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A game journalist mailing list discussing what to be covered. How many things that should've been bigger outcries have been buried over the years? How many things that should've been <i>nothing</i> have become something?<br />
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So, now we have #GamerGate. Let's be clear; no one deserves to be incessantly harassed. But I don't believe that sexism or misogyny is the root cause, here. We know that Zoe Quinn had some form of relationship that went beyond friendly with one or more journalists. The issue isn't that gamers hate her for being a woman, the issue is that they hate the situation. I'd like to think that the same reaction would happen if a female writer had close ties to a male developer, but I sort of doubt it.<br />
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Before I continue much further, I sort of want to take this argument out of the equation. This doesn't stem from a gamer-specific behavior of sexism. This is a failing of society as a whole. We should be just as mad at the men in this scenario, but for the most part I don't think people are. People have focused on Zoe Quinn, and she has been just as much of a shitty person in this situation as the writers she was allegedly involved with have been.<br />
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I don't think I really have anything to continue on, though.<br />
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The real issue here is that we've all been systematically lied to.<br />
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I'm sort of crushed by this and I think all of us should be. Gamers aren't always looked upon favorably, and the people that we look to for news on our hobby don't feel any better about us. All the scorn bubbling up here isn't a hatred towards women, it's a hatred towards being looked down upon that finally reached its breaking point.comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2182872839271679579.post-50938918967081409032014-09-15T19:42:00.000-07:002014-09-15T19:42:53.747-07:00Killzone: Liberation (PlayStation Portable) Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Killzone: Liberation is a bland, joyless affair. Nothing in this game hints that anyone involved in its development ever had fun, or ever considered what they were doing to be fun. It is bleak, serious and gray as though it has some grave point it's trying to make. It doesn't. You could mistake this game for being in black and white.</div>
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I've never played any of the full-fledged Killzone games, but this doesn't make a good intro to the series. I'm assuming it starts after the events of the first game, and leads into the second. I can't really speak to its impact on or placement in the overall story, but what's here is incredibly lame. It seems as if the developer was told to make a sci-fi game, and they said "okay." From some good old Wiki research, I determined that the enemies in this game are just humans who moved off of the home planet and are now coming to take it back. Or something. It doesn't matter. There's some obvious plot twists, betrayal.. whatever. Everything about this game can be punctuated with "whatever" or "or something." </div>
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The game plays out from an isometric perspective, in contrast to the FPS stylings of the full-fledged titles. It tries to kind of be a stealth game, I think. Or maybe it's trying to be a cover based shooter. I honestly don't know.</div>
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<i>Okay, I lied. Gray and orange.</i></div>
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A huge issue with this game is the difficulty. You can have one gun at a time. You're never prepared for the situation you're about to get into with one gun. Your best bet is usually the standard assault rifle. It doesn't have a huge amount of stopping power, it fires in bursts and it sucks. The only way to get different weapons is to get them at resupply boxes spread around the map. You can get a shotgun, but it's only going to stop the guys close to you. It's obviously useless at long range. You can get a sniper rifle, but it's mostly just useless since you're entirely at the mercy of the game's auto aim. There's a few other weapons you can get, but they're all pretty much useless. Later in the game you can get a chaingun with unlimited ammo that only needs to cool down, which is a bit of a lifesaver.</div>
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So, you're dealing with your one gun. The next problem is that the enemies seem to have literally the exact same amount of health that you do. Now we come back to... is it a cover based shooter or a stealth game? There are areas where the game clearly wants you to be sneaky. It's pointless, though. You can sneak as much as you want but you don't have any kind of a stealth takedown. You can sneak up behind any enemy you want and melee them, but they'll just turn around like nothing happened and melee you. <i>Which knocks you down and nearly kills you.</i> What? These are humans too. Why the fuck are they so much stronger?</div>
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Okay, so let's approach it like a cover based shooter. This is about the only way to play it, and it is fucking boring. Enemies will cling to cover just like you do. You can grenade them, but you get <i>two</i> grenades. They are essential, too. You can get more grenades by playing challenge mini-games, but whoever would be enough of a sadist to go out of their way to do this probably has a few dead animals buried around their yard and will soon be moving on to humans. At times the cover based approach collapses, too. There's some areas where you're clearly supposed to be playing it guns blazing. You can't win here, though. Enemies literally have as much health as you. You can't stop three of them fast enough.</div>
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<a href="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/gamespot/images/2006/127/727535-931635_20060508_002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://static.gamespot.com/uploads/scale_super/gamespot/images/2006/127/727535-931635_20060508_002.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Oooh, red.</i></div>
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This game wants to be tactical. Occasionally you'll get a teammate who you can give some pretty inconsequential orders. You can tell them to attack something or take cover somewhere, but it's generally best to just let the AI do its thing. This comes to another problem with the game. When you're in that tactical menu, it doesn't pause. That's okay, we're not going to use that. Instead of pausing, the game goes into this super slow motion type of thing. It does this when you're opening the supply boxes too. This is where it gets to be an issue because it prevents you from switching weapons effectively. It's already hard to run back to the box to get a different gun, then the game slows down instead of pausing and through the translucent item selection menu you can see a bullet fly towards yourself in slow motion and kill you.</div>
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I mentioned the story earlier, but this game seems to have gone to the stores unfinished. Why? There's free DLC for the game which adds an extra chapter (set of four missions) and online multiplayer to the game. I used the DLC, and without it the game's plot would've just ended completely unresolved. It's not on PSN (I don't think it ever was, I think it downloaded from a browser link within the game), but you can get it from the developer's website and install it to your memory stick. Not only this, the game just doesn't fucking have music. It's dead silent while you're running around doing your thing, which only makes the game even more bleak and un-fun. </div>
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<a href="http://ps2media.gamespy.com/ps2/image/article/703/703360/killzone-liberation-20060426113429387.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ps2media.gamespy.com/ps2/image/article/703/703360/killzone-liberation-20060426113429387.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>OMG YELLOWISH</i></div>
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I made it to the mission before the last and was just miserable with the game. I decided to try changing the difficulty level to see if that helped with the fun any... it didn't. Easy mode just halves the enemies' health. Nothing else changes. There's no extra ammo, there's not fewer enemies. It just takes "half" the hits to kill those enemies. It doesn't help.</div>
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Strangely, this game was pretty widely acclaimed when it released. I can't imagine having any more fun playing this game in 2006. Maybe it was just because the PSP didn't have many other games at the time? Killzone: Liberation is the worst kind of handheld game. It's a handheld game because someone felt there should be a handheld game. It's not an extension or modification of the other game's play-style. It's something else entirely with a brand name stuck on it.</div>
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<b>The Score: 5/10</b></div>
comradesnarkyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17003124869735983715noreply@blogger.com0