Did you know you could have watched the first hour of BioShock 2 and Mass Effect 2 before you were even allowed to buy game? That’s like watching the first 20 minutes of a full length movie. I know why they do it. They want to feed on the hype of the weak and lure them over to their websites. But it’s a trend that I’m not too pleased with.
GiantBomb’s Quick Looks operate in a similar fashion, but they tend to focus on less story centric games. It’s okay to watch the first twenty minutes of Sega All-Star Racing to see how it works out, but why spoil the first hour of a story heavy game like Mass Effect 2?
Even if it’s not story heavy, certain games thrive on creating spectacles and to have it ruined by 480p streaming video when you could have experienced it first hand on your 52″ 1080p HDTV is a travesty in my opinion.
But as difficult as it is to stay unspoiled pre-release, it is twice as difficult post-release. With websites, podcasts, forums, social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, I’m finding it very difficult to stay pure. Just searching for possible technical issues on a game before buying can incredibly risky in forums. Even NeoGAF with its spoiler tags and dedicated spoiler zones can sometime slip up.
And that’s why I didn’t even bother with visiting the God of War III official thread on GAF. I don’t even bother visiting the Heavy Rain one either since I have yet to play it. I’m also skipping entire podcast episodes since they’re covering Final Fantasy XIII for the week.
I didn’t care much about these spoilers a few years ago, but since games have become a bit more interesting narratively, I’ve come to care about it more and more. But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I shouldn’t be caring since developers and publishers are allowing sites like GameTrailers to post the opening acts to their games for all to see before release. If they don’t care, why should I?
Having grown up with limited funds to obtain the latest and greatest PC hardware to play games on, I’m used to wringing out the most performance possible out of my hardware and software. If this means I need to do some overclocking of the hardware, I will do it. I’m not afraid to do registry hacks, toy with configuration files or go through anything with a guide in order to improve framerate or improve image quality.
I wanted nothing, but the best framerate and image quality my hardware and I could muster. I wasn’t willing to settle and I certainly couldn’t simply go out and pick up a $300 video card. And although my gaming now occurs primarily on the consoles, I still want that smooth framerate and high image quality out of my games. But with console games, I cannot tweak or overclock the hardware to make them run faster. The best I could do is to choose the right platform or choose not to buy it.
It’s the end of February. While in year’s past, this would be gaming business as usual, 2010’s March lineup rivals the best holiday lineups ever.
I placed my order for Battlefield: Bad Company 2, my Final Fantasy XIII order was placed earlier this year and God of War III was in the queue since mid-2009.
Unfortunately, I still have games I wish to spend with including BioShock 2’s multiplayer which I will do a write up about later this week. I also have Trine to complete; I would have been a bit disappointed with if I had spent the full $19.99 for it. Then there’s Starship Defense, which didn’t particularly wow me, but I did just finish it with all “Perfect” medals. I did want to spend more time with Marvel vs Capcom 2 as well. After all these years, I really wanted to spend time into executing an “Air Combo” consistently.
I acquired the Sony KDL-52V5100 for $400 last year as an offer for resolve my issue with the KDS-50A2000. It is most definitely an improvement, but it does have one flaw known as “red flashing”.
What is the “red flashing” problem?
It’s called “red flashing” by many owners of the AVSForum’s V5100 thread who are experiencing this issue. What happens is the color intensity/balance of an image will sometimes automatically adjust as seen in the video below:
The YouTube description is apt:
While difficult to capture with a video camera, in this clip the background noticeably shifts colors when the interview subject brings his hands into the frame. In person the color shift is visible across the entire picture.
Sony denies the problem exists.
Called local authorized repair shop and they were told that this problem was already addressed in the most recent firmware update which I already have. That’s bullshit. The most recent firmware available on the support site addressed the auto-dimming issue, not this new color fluctuation issue.
As for what they could do? They offered to pick up the unit for in-house testing, but that’s it; they could not do anything else for me. As we all know, this is not a simple part replacement fix. Many AVSForum members already tried part replacements without success. I told them I wanted to contact Sony Canada themselves. They said that was fine and to repeat what they told me.
Contacting Sony Canada produced no results. They were shocked to discover that the local authorized repair shop couldn’t do anything. They reconfirmed that I installed the latest firmware and that was all. They told me that they had to contact the local authorized repair shop to sync up info and will get back to me in a “few days”. I voiced my displeasure and said that I would be waiting.
Now I wait. If there’s no acknowledgement of this problem, I’m going to demand a replacement. I don’t want to risk another defective replacement.
Clip from the “Colbert Report” on November 16, 2009, with guest Paul Goldberger.
Whoops. I completely forgot about this week’s Checkpoint. Sunday came and went, and I didn’t flinch.
It was Chinese New Year and thus there was a whole lot of nothing going on. I finished BioShock the other day and it was still creepy all these years later. I was also still impressed with the technical and artistic work overall. The character models were a bit disturbing though; too doll like.
It’s the third month into the life of Modern Warfare 2’s multiplayer and I think I’ve had enough of it.
You could say I’m in the trough of disillusionment or maybe there’s just so many issues (little or large) that I’ve just had enough.
I’ve played over two day’s worth. My Kill/Death ratio is hovering at around 2.40 and I’ve Prestiged once. But as time passed, the thrills of acquiring a chopper gunner and mowing people down is no longer there. Instead, I see a borderline broken game.
It’s Super Bowl Sunday 2010. This is the first NFL season which I’ve paid significant attention to, but it’s still superficial compared to the dedicated fans out there. Nevertheless, I do have a preference and want the Indianapolis Colts to achieve victory.
