Review – Audiosurf
Audiosurf is one of these new casual colour matching games where you have to collect a series of coloured blocks to some music in order to score points. Sounds boring right? Wrong. Audiosurf allows you to choose any music track you have (within reason, you can’t play along to say the whole of “Tubular Bells Part 1″) and will design the level for you. The speed, intensity and difficulty of the level is pretty much determined by which music track you choose.
The objective is to collect 3+ coloured blocks (or ‘cars’ if you will) and then these become points, though you need to be careful not to get overfill, this is when one of your columns becomes too full and will cause you to re-spawn, losing precious time to collect more cars and so get a higher score. Depending on the intensity of the music, the track will either be level, slope upward for slow parts or downwards for faster parts. During the slower parts, there will be green and blue cars, these only earn a few points, but to get the high scores, you need to collect the yellow and red cars, however, these are mostly found on the fast downhill section.
You can choose different characters with different special abilities to help you get the high score. For example, one of my favourite characters is ‘Mono’, this causes all the cars to either become one colour or grey, so you need to avoid the grey and collect the single colour cars only. Successfully missing all of the grey blocks means you get a 30% bonus, there are other bonuses too, each requiring different criteria to be met.
Visually, this game is very pleasing, the colours match the mood of the music (cold colours for low intensity, hot colours for high intensity). The track is a euphony of colour, working very well with the music. Even though this game can be run on even the lowest end of machines, it still can use new technologies, such as pixel shader 3.0.
Since the track is generated when you select the music track, there can be some problems as a result. Firstly, choosing the right piece of music can be hard, it needs to have a strong rhythm to it and not be too bland over all. Some pieces ended up with me having a pretty much flat empty track, whilst others worked well. This will never produce results anywhere near that of Guitar Hero 3 or Rock Band, as each track of them was not created by a piece of code, but rather by some guy in front of a computer. Audiosurf sacrifices having perfect tracks, for the ability to use any piece of music you have (Audiosurf can use a wide variety of codecs) When selecting music to use, do not try to use any heavy thrash metal rubbish as this simply doesn’t work, bands like Coldplay however work very well with this game and can generate some tough , yet very fun tracks (try ‘Talk’).
Overall, this game is worth a buy, coming in at $10 or around £6, it shows brilliant value for money and will give you hours of gameplay. Any new track you buy will simply expand this game, so you never really have to worry about the game getting too repetitive, as you can always keep your music fresh.
Why I Like The Wii (and Why It Isn’t Even In The Console Wars)
Well, the Nintendo Wii. What I would consider a brilliant move from Nintendo. It has easily outsold all the other consoles, but I don’t want to look at it as a console, at least not in the regular sense. With it’s motion sensitive control system and what some would consider brilliant games, it is easy to see why it has even won some ‘best gadget of the year’ awards.
The Wii is probably one of the smartest moves I have seen a console developer do. Instead of plunging loads of cash into the development of top of the range hardware, it used that money in a smarter way by focusing on creating an innovative control system. The Wii is essentially a Gamecube in a new case with a fancy control system, but it is this control system that separated it from the rest of the pack and helped to make it so popular. Just to even make a point how easy it is for parents and non-gamer types to play the Wii, both my mother and grandmother, both self-confessed non-gamer technophobes started playing Wii sports with ease.
By focusing on a much larger target market, which included a lot more than just gamers, has helped to make it sell so well. On the selling front, the Wii has sold almost 22 million units, which is just over double that of the PS3 and over 25% more than the XBox 360 in total. I also want to point out that Nintendo is actually making a small profit on each console sale, as opposed to the 360 and PS3 which are losing money with each sale. Though I don’t count this as the Wii isn’t really a console in a traditional sense.
Then again, how do you say what a game console is in the traditional sense, as they continue to evolve, they seem to become the centre of out media experience, offering DVD and Blu-ray playback, being able to stream data from media servers full of XviD’s. If anything, the Wii is actually more of a console than any of the others! However, the games and graphics are rather pitiful.
By going for innovative controls than good graphics, the Wii seems to have almost chased off all developers than those that run under it’s own name. You have 5 seconds to name me 3 good Nintendo Wii games that didn’t come from the studios of Nintendo or isn’t a washed down version of a game found on another console.
5… 4… 3… 2… 1… Times up
If you managed to get some, then congratulations, 5 points for each. If you didn’t manage to get one, that’s OK, no points to you and if you named one with the word “Mario” in it, deduct 1000 points. Developers avoid trying to make games for the Wii as they want to create the next triple-A blockbuster, to do so they have to develop it for the 360 or PS3 as they are the only consoles with the power to do so, you cannot do it with the casualness of the Wii. However, this is not to say that the Wii has no games, on the contrary it has quite a few decent games I enjoy to play.
So, to wrap all this up, I want to share my thought with you on what the future may hold, what the Wii2 will bring to the table. Seeing as Nintendo should logically keep with this intriguing control system and the PS3 will continue to remain as a powerhouse console. Nintendo should be able to create a console to handle current generation graphics whilst maintaining the Wii’s controls, imagine that, a Wii with the power of a PS3 and the third-party game support that the 360 has.
Excuse me, I need to change…
Why I Like The PS3 (and Why It Will Win The Console War Again)
Well, the PS3, what some would consider overpriced with a poor collection of games and doomed to fail. Well, that’s what some people think, they seem to be overlooking the following points and hopefully thanks to some recent revalations, the PS3 isn’t as disadvantaged as it once seemed.
Ability to Install Linux
By being able to install Linux on the console, you can use it for a multitude of purposes, such as streaming video and audio from your media server or other computers directly into your living room. You can use Linux to play Linux based games and all the other benefits of having an operating system on a computer. There are some things you can’t do with Linux on the PS3 when compared to a computer, but it is still better than nothing.
Blu-Ray Player
This was not only an important part during the format was for the next generation of DVD’s, but is also important in the post-was stages. Think about all the poor 360 owners of the HD-DVD drive add-on, seeing as the PS3 has the Blu-ray drive built into it, this will help to boost it’s sales and should help push the PS3 into being the winner of the console race for this generation. Look at the DVD playing capability of the PS2 and CD playing capability of the PS1, these features of these two consoles helped to boost sales.
Actually Does Have Games
A common misconception is that the PS3 has few exclusive games worth playing, here is a list of some to look forward to over the coming year:
- Final Fantasy XIII
- God of War III
- Gran Tourismo 5
- Jak and Daxter: The Lost Frontier
- LittleBigPlanet
- Metal Gear Solid 4
- Motorstorm 2
- Resistance: Rise of Man
This isn’t of course a total list and there are still the games already released. Just expect to see over the next year the PS3 start to have some really good games. The only reason other consoles have plenty of good exclusives is entirely down to the fact that they have been out for longer and so developers have had more time to develop games for it. There is also all the old classic PS1 games becoming available from the store at low prices. I’d also like to bring up how most games you will ever buy for a console will usually be released on multiple platforms.
It Wasn’t Rushed
Unlike the xBox 360, the PS3 wasn’t rushed as much, the xBox was rushed in order to try and capitalise on the market by being first to release a new console, in a way this is a double-edged sword. By getting it to the market earlier, it got more sales and had more developers interested in producing games for it but at the cost of faulty hardware (very high failure rate with the RROD).
Other Media Capabilities
With it’s larger hard-drive (which can be replaced by a regular SATA laptop hard drive) media can be stored to it easily and accessed. It also has the ability to play DivX content (which how you will use this function is beyond me, but may have something to do with a media server) without the need to go through any complex mods to it.
Acutely Affordable
According to Amazon, the price of a PS3 is around £280 and the 360 is around £230, This price difference of 50 quid isn’t as bad as it once was, especially when compared to the time when the PS3 cost £425 to get hold of (the price I paid for it). The price of games is about the same and varies from place to place. Hardware accessories however are something interesting that needs to be looked at, the PS3 controller is around £28 and the 360 controller costs around £30, but then again the PS3 controller doesn’t have a rumble function, but has motion sensitivity (which I have yet to see being fully used) to make up for it.
I’d also like to bring up the cost of a wireless adapter price for the 360, weighing in at around £60 and a USB port. This suddenly causes the 360 to cost more than a PS3 which has built in wireless. Now I undrstand not all will have or use a wireless network, but seeing as they are increasingly becoming popular, this is something certainly worth mentioning.
A Pre-emptive Response to Fan boys
Now all I need to do is to wait for the 360 fan boys to come in here and start throwing insults my way because of my superior logic. Whilst I’m not claiming the PS3 is the going to be the winner and is the superior console, all I am saying is that it has a lot going for it and do not be surprised as the 360 falls behind it into second place.
Also, if you are wondering why the Wii wasn’t included, just wait until later this week to see my reasoning.
The Future of Gaming and Hardware
There seems to be a lot of chatter currently going around hardware forums that for the first time in history, computing power has outstripped the pace of computer games. Meaning that games are being able to be run on new computers much easier than they may have been in the past. This is a result of the number of cores of CPU’s increasing rapidly as recently the new 6-core Intel processor is set to be released later this year. So what do all these additional cores actually mean?
Well, by having extra cores, you can technically set one core to be used for physics, one to handle sound, one to handle general computations and one to handle the AI. So we can expect developers to start creating games that will take advantage of these additional cores fully, leading to better games more rapidly, as double the number of cores would logically lead to double the computing power available, right? Well, sort of, whilst an increase in cores does mean that there is more total processing power inside of a computer, unless it can be tapped into by developers, it is useless.
Let me give you an example, the release of the Orange Box from Valve was meant to bring in a new version of the Source game engine that would allow the engine to use multiple CPU cores. However, this is not fully implemented and took Valve a lot longer to perfect, in fact I am sure they are still trying to iron out all of the bugs. Whilst the games can use 2 core and 4 core processors, the benefits from using the additional cores have yet to be seen. Multiple cores are an exciting challenge for game developers and is in fact useful for the actual development of games. The build programs that the Source engine used (VBSP, VRAD and VVIS) can all operate on multiple cores, severely reducing the time it takes to compile a map, very useful for developers like myself. These benefits include better AI, superior particle physics and more realistic physics. These will not be seen until Episode 3, when the game is programmed with multi-cores in mind.
I am wondering if there will be a point that computers will never need to get any more powerful for the purpose of gaming, we are already entering the age of photo-realistic games, they look very close to real life. However, there is still some obvious, more technical issues that still tell us it is only a game. Firstly, getting accurate physics is still an issue and having a fully interactive environment (more so than Crysis) is still a long way off.
There is also the cost of trying to make games look and feel better and better. By trying to use up all of this additional power, by having incredible graphics, realistic physics, smart AI etc. It pushes development costs up and up, which will in turn either effect the companies profits, or more likely, increase the cost of the product for us, the gamers. It will also push away modders from working with the games engine, as it’s complexity increases, so does the knowledge needed to use it to it’s fullest does. Instead, game developers need to take incremental steps, as to prevent a sudden sky rocket in costs, at roughly the same rate as they always have. So don’t expect to see games get more rapidly better with the rapidly increasing technology, but instead expect to be able to play newer games to their fullest with a less than top-end computer.
How much do you rely on the Internet?
If you are anything like me, the Internet makes up a part of your day-to-day life and to have no access to it over, say the last couple of days can really throw you off-course. I feel that this is very similar to many others who use the internet regularly, you need your daily dose to get through the day. You need to be able to get on-line. I had to suffer without it for the past couple of days (well, suffering is a strong word, but it is incredibly frustrating not being able to get to it).
I rely on the Internet, not only as a source of information, but as a form of communication (MSN etc.) , keep in contact with current ones (MySpace, Facebook), get work assignments from the university (which heavily relies on students being able to get online) and to just procrastinate on. Only until all of this is taken away suddenly, did I miss and appreciate all of these websites, it is indeed difficult to imagine a world without the web.
Expect regular service to continue tomorrow.
Portal Pondering’s
When in th concept stage of ‘Subject Omega,’ I continually wondered about the Portal and HL2 universe, considering how the enrichment centre, Aperture science, Borealis etc. fits into the bigger picture. Oh, I forgot to mention, this post is heavily relying on the fact you have played through Portal and the Half-Life series. So I came up with a list of points, theories, ideas whatever you would like to call them that should answer as many questions as they ask. I’m a complete nerd, yeah I know, get over it.
Portals break the idea of energy conservation!
A real physics puzzle here to begin with, if you have not yet noticed that in Portal you can cause an object to fall ad infinitum by placing one portal directly above another, thus the object keeps gaining energy, thanks to gravity and friction with the air. In my eyes this can be explained by the portals themselves take the additional energy that has been created the instant that the object passes through them and instantaneously destroys said energy, so there is no net gain or loss of energy in the entire universe. It can do this is a way that only GLaDOS could explain to you.
How does Portal and HL2 fit together?
Quite simple really, apart from several instances in the games that can link the two together, such as the referencing to Black Mesa in Portal (both Black Mesa and Aperture Science Enrichment Centre are apparently doing research into Portal technology), the Borealis ship as seem in HL2:Ep2 and how the energy balls look the same in both games gives a few indications to links between the games. So really this doesn’t mean we will find out how the two link together until Ep3 and Portal 2. I for one can’t wait until I see the two games converge.
What happened to GLaDOS?
Well, at the end of the game, GLaDOS was seemingly destroyed, but the still alive song played over the credits have given some the idea that it is not gone (because if GLaDOS was destroyed, how will we have Portal 2?). Chances are, what we saw in the game was only a smaller part of a much larger device or GLaDOS downloaded herself into the brain of Chell (the games protagonist). Whilst both seem highly unlikely, we may need to come to terms that the hilarious bantering from GLaDOS may be gone forever.
‘Subject Omega’ needs to fit in somehow?
Well, a good mod needs a good story line, so a major question that I needed to answer early on was how ‘Subject Omega’ would fit into the greater world. Well, I did this by… Wait… I think I’ll hang on to that one, don’t want to give it all away now do we?
Will I ever get to see my precious WCC (Weighted Companion Cube <3) ever again?
I… I, I don’t know… *sniff*
If anyone else has any questions or thoughts on Portal, feel free to post away.
Subject Omega – Workflow
Well, seeing as nothing more interesting happened today, I thought I’d show off my work flow when I have spare moments to map for ‘Subject Omega.’ I am more than confident that this is probably the best method for making maps in the Source engine, especially when it comes down to Portal maps. I suggest that only if you are truly interested in making maps for Portal, do you bother to read on.
An Increase In Blogging?
Over the last few weeks, it has become apparent to me the number of friends and acquaintances whom have started blogs. Some examples are dotbenjamin, The Verdant Atheist, Francium and Tool Chronicles, this is perhaps just an example of the increasing popularity of blogs. Just by looking at WordPress you can tell there is an increase in the number of blogs and the popularity of them. I’m not necessarily saying that they are seen as cool and that everyone needs to have one, but it may be something in the future that may happen as blogs continue to increase in popularity. Though the word ‘blog’ is still not part of Firefox’s dictionary and it keeps getting highlighted as a mis-spell.
I like the idea of friends starting blogs, it gives another angle from which to look at a person, it is another way to keep friends informed of what you are thinking in an environment. You can see what you are saying and can revise any comments you make before everyone hears them and judges you by them. It also allows you to communicate with associates in a simple way no matter what the physical distance between you, as is the incredible ability of the Internet.
Even if you have not yet thought of running a blog yourself, consider this, why not? Why not start a blog and share your ideas, your creations, thoughts and feelings with others, you can maintain your anonymity from the wierdo’s of the web and can disclose your identity to your friends so they know that it is you. A blog doesn’t necessarily need to have focus (but don’t expect it to become popular if you don’t) and can be about anything you want, it costs no money to start one (eg. WordPress) and gives you a time to reflect on your recent experiences.
Retrospection – Theme Hospital
Recently, a flat mate of mine installed the classic Theme Hospital on his laptop and started playing it just as I walked in from an entertaining 2 hour lecture on Supply Chain Management. Suddenly I remembered the hours I used to waste playing this game on the Playstation and wanted to play it again, so I took the install disk and tried to install it on my laptop, but surprise, surprise, Vista caused massive problems preventing me from playing it and reliving those days of watching Bloated Head being popped with a pin like a small child’s balloon.
This is when I realised that I could get the game over the PSN and wasted no time in buying (for the low price of £3.49), downloading and installing the game. The game was identical to the classic on Playstation, you couldn’t tell it was a port minus the fact I was playing on an HDTV with a PS3 connected to it, instead of a spare 14″ TV in the back room covered in dust.
For those of you who have never experienced Theme Hospital, the concept is simple, build and run your own hospital against other hospitals in the local area. You need to diagnose the patient, research the condition, let them start a puking contest with all the other patients in the entrance hall and then send them off to be cured, usually in a clinic room, operating theatre or psychiatrists office. You had to hire and train the right staff too, to keep them happy and keep the whole operation running smoothly whilst earning a profit. It also features some heavily stereotypical representation of characters and hilarious methods of treatment for patients, such as electrocuting one patient with a certain condition, to make them lose all the superficial body hair they have grown as a result of their condition. There is plenty of comedy to be found if you look for it, for example, the King Complex, where the patient looks like Elvis and even baldness can be cured.
Some would say that Theme Hospital is a rather tough game and when coming to the final levels of the game, this is very true, seeing as a lot can go wrong very quickly and before you know it, your getting kicked out of the door. Especially the last two hospitals, they can be considered a real pain in the ass to do well and needed a lot of micromanagement to get done, but it was always satisfying to just sit back and watch everything flow well, that is until an emergency happens with 12 patients coming in with slack tongue or some other condition that needs it’s own independent treatment room.
Whilst playing this port has been great fun, what I would really like to see is a sequel, as long as it’s done right, they maintain the current sense of humour and make sure they keep all the wacky-ness of before, it could be a great game, it really deserves a graphical overhaul. Just the only problem with sequels is that if it fails, it can tarnish the reputation of the original game and that is something I would like to avoid. Though I doubt this would happened, as Bullfrog Productions is now simply a cog in the EA machine, so the chances of a sequel by them is unlikely.
I suggest that if you do have a PS3 and fancy playing some classic Playstation games, may I suggest this one. It’s cheap to buy, you can even play it on your PSP and will give you quite a few hours of gameplay. It’s combination of strategy and style is something I have yet to see again and is perfect for the gamer with no reaction times, but still wants a real challenge and a bit of a laugh on the side. Who knew hospital management could be so difficult, yet so fulfilling and hilarious at the same time.
Format Wars (Blu-Ray vs. HD DVD)
For those who do not already know, Blu-Ray and HD DVD are the next generation of movie formats, offering higher definition and greater sound quality supposedly. Now recently due to a series of rather unfortunate events, Blu-Ray is pretty much crossing the line victorious. The differences between the two are slight, Blu-Ray has slightly higher capacity, but is slightly more expensive.
But why did we as consumers need to live through this horror in the first place? Why couldn’t the companies agree on a single format to begin with? Wouldn’t it be cheaper and easier in the first place to just agree on a single format and pursue that one? By making two different formats, some companies will spend the money developing products for one format, only for that one to lose and have to develop for the other one, whilst others my develop technologies for both formats at the same time, usually at the result of high cost or poor quality. Surely companies will also lose out due to customers buying only one kind of format (rarely both) or staying out of the market completely, waiting for a conclusion to be reached.
For once, Sony was not on the losing side for a format war (see SACD, Minidisc, Betamax, ATRAC), then again, they have had some successes in the past before, so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise (3.5″ floppy disk, CD, memory stick). The victory of Blu-ray is also useful for the PS3, with it’s built-in Blu-Ray drive and the XBox 360 will soon enough have a Blu-ray external drive, like the HD DVD one it currently has (showing that Microsoft does have some level of intelligence somewhere in it’s organisation). I do want to congratulate Sony on having the balls to actually make the PS3 more expensive by putting the Blu-Ray drive into it, this move should pay off as now the PS3 sales should increase, along with it’s lowered price a few months back.
I still want to give an ultimatum to large technology companies and get them to stop all this useless bickering between them when it comes to a new digital format and simply settle on something in between what everyone wants. Yes this could be a challenge, seeing as each company has differing levels of research into different technologies, but the long term gains should outweigh this. Just think of the consumers next time and stop us from having to worry about which format to choose from.
