Microsoft won’t release their 250gb hard drive separately.
Greenberg told Joystiq that limiting the release of the console is “part of what makes it special”
Huh. Ironically, not letting people get hold of a large hard drive without buying a whole new Xbox is part of what makes Microsoft complete jerk-offs.
It’s probably worth mentioning here that Mass Effect 2 is awesome, and in true Bioware fashion, insanely addictive. It certainly kicks Dragon Age into a cocked hat, at least on the Xbox 360. It looks amazing, and they’ve managed to strip away the clutter and annoyance of the previous game while still retaining everything that made the first game good. No more endless versions of the same weapon. No more “your inventory is full”, by virtue of not really having an inventory at all. Better combat. Funny dialogue. No more bloody Mako driving. Better implementation of persuade and morality choices.
It’s that last one that I’d like to expand on. You see, I’m normally a very good person in these games. I save the innocents, forgive the guilty, generally act like Jesus, if Jesus had a gun and awesome psychic powers. But now, you’re given the option at key moments in scenes to suddenly do something very good or very bad. And if someone’s standing right above a gas canister, well, how’s a person who likes explosives supposed to stop himself from blowing them up? Or, if someone of dubious character is stuck up against a full size glass window on a skyscraper, how do I hold myself back from kicking them out?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that Bioware, not happy with simply stealing my free time, are now trying to corrupt me as well. Bastards.
I’m not sure I recall what I used to do before Dragon Age: Origins. Hopefully it’ll come to me shortly. Bloody BioWare.
An update to Xbox 360s everywhere has been pushed out today, which brings the thrilling ability to buy more hats for my teeny little Xbox person. Woah, you might say, that’s pretty exciting right there. And I say to you; hold your horses. This thing’s not over yet. We can now buy entire Xbox 360 games online! Not this pissy old Xbox stuff we used to get.
And of course, because these are games which have been out for years, and they don’t have to sell them to retailers, hold stock in stores, make cases for them, make books for them, or transport them anywhere, obviously they’re… more expensive. I haven’t seen value this good since Village Cinemas started charging me a dollar extra for doing my own ticket-booking online. Mass Effect, an excellent game which you can get for $89.98 on JB Hi-Fi Online right now, is $99.95 through Games on Demand. Phwoar.
I’m done being sarcastic now. Maybe I’m just out of practice, but I’m finding it quite difficult to maintain. Perhaps you can get nasal injections for that.
Anyhow, it turns out that the prices are much more reasonable if you’re not in Australia. Which of course makes sense; the tubes to Australia are much longer and clearly Microsoft’s Australian division will need extra money to suck the content all the way to us.
But I reckon they don’t need it, because as far as I can see, they’re sucking pretty good already. Ba doom tish. Oh yeah.
There are actually some good, if subtle changes, like better sorting in menus and a rating system for content which could get very handy. I feel I should point this out in the interests of balance. Also, some games are only $49.95 and much much better value. On reflection, it’s almost not worth writing about, but there hasn’t been anything posted here for over a month so I’m hardly going to go around slashing perfectly adequate paragraphs now.
I’ve played two minutes of Red Faction: Guerrilla and I think I’m in love. Ever since playing UFO: Enemy Unknown I’ve longed for a physics-based fully destructible world to smash up. Buildings in UFO could be destroyed but parts of the building would be left hanging unsupported in mid-air. It tended to break the immersion.
But not this game. My first action in game was to walk up to a concrete wall and smash a hole in it with my hammer. Sweet, I think as the wall leans and falls on top of me, pinning me to the ground. This is going to be excellent.
I likes me some Prince of Persia. I have a soft spot for all the parts the Sands of Time trilogy, even if they did manage to screw various things up royally in the sequels. I’m very keen to play The Sands of Time again should they ever get around to releasing it on Xbox Live. I’m nostalgic.
So, do I hate this crazy new Prince, with his illustrated body, big scarf, and strong american accent? Well, no, because Ubisoft seem to have the knack back. After two sessions I’ve been won over; mostly due to the care they’ve taken with the dialogue between the Prince and his new friend, Elika. Someone over there has clearly found wherever they wrote down the secret of charming, simple, entertaining and amusing storytelling before they lost it for Warrior Within.
The platforming is simpler in many ways, but unlike some I don’t think that necessarily translates to easy, or at least, not to bad easy. Yes, some of the obstacles are removed by having you simply jump at a wall to wall-run, rather than holding a thumbstick towards the wall. But those obstacles were the obstacles of irritation and not the obstacles of working out where the hell to go next. Meanwhile, the game takes the surprising move of having collectables which actually have a story function — meaning that when I do eventually scour the kingdom for all 1001 of them, I’ll have the dubious excuse that not all of them have been collected in the name of obsessive compulsion.
Finally, and I’m not sure it’s even necessary to point this out, it’s a beautiful game. After the gorgeous visuals of Assassin’s Creed I’d have been disappointed if it wasn’t, but it’s its own crazy kind of illustrated, fairytale beautiful, with the beautifully animated Elika the icing on the cake.1 If you leave the game alone for a bit, it’ll even pan across some of its soothing landscapes, just to make sure you realise that it’s very, very nice indeed.
It’s kind of easy, but it’s kind of nice. Certainly, after playing Left 4 Dead and constantly being brutally slaughtered by legions of hideous zombies, this hits the spot.
As I write this, there are 79 minutes left in November, which means I’ll need to average something like 10 words per second to finish NaNoWriMo in time. Maybe next year.
Several things got in the way of it, but one of the most enjoyable was Fable II. After previously giving up on Fable in irritation after a gaggle of annoying villagers called me “Chicken Chaser” for no reason I could sensibly work out, I didn’t expect to enjoy the sequel, but a bunch of good reviews persuaded me to give it a chance. I was happy I did; though the villagers are still annoying in that they’ll swarm you the second you come into the village,1 the generally malleable nature of the world is highly entertaining. Any game which claims that you can make your own destiny will always be lying to some extent, but Fable II’s major decisions and consequences are usually interesting, and occasionally hilarious.
Another thing was Gears of War II, a solid if unremarkable sequel to the solid if unremarkable original. I’m playing through the campaign with Andy and with housemate Andrew at the moment, which avoids those awkward moments when you shout out the wrong partner’s name during a particularly intense bit.
I moved house recently, and was given a chilli plant. Having gotten over my initial disbelief and excitement at learning that I suddenly controlled the means of chilli production, I almost forgot I had it. Luckily, it still appears to be alive.
They’ve released a Deluxe Edition of Casino Royale, the bastards. It’s not even remotely fair. Most films don’t even have one Blu-Ray release, and here’s Casino Royale getting two. I’ve gotten some practice at palming off DVD copies of films to friends when I want to upgrade to Blu-Ray, but it’s harder to find people to palm old Blu-Rays off to.
I’ve been meaning to write one of Andy’s “And Now, Five Things”, but then, I’ve been meaning to do a lot of things.
