City of Heroes

I recently got my second level 50 (ie, max) character. Seems it takes me 2 years a pop, since I have no real focus on leveling, love alts, and Exemplar a lot (ex'ing doesn't earn XP). A buddy of mine and I are actually duo-ing the Freedom Phalanx task forces, and have completed Positron, Synapse and Sister Psyche's TF's. We'll be starting Citadel's tonight or tomorrow. Simple enough - we get some friends to form a team that meets the minimum TF size, start the TF, have them quit, and we work on it as we can. It takes us between one and three days to finish one. Its actually been a lot of fun, and we get together at the end mission to fight the Arch-Villain together, earn the reward, etc. Up until then we actually solo on our own, sometimes duoing if we can. The influence (money) and drops we get all work towards us making enough money to really pimp out our characters.

Street Fighter IV

Got it. Played through on Easy with Ryu to unlock Sakura. Played through on Easiest/1 round with Sakura to unlock Dan. I"m happy now. On another forum someone asked what's so great about joysticks, and I had to reply...

It really depends at your level of play and interest. For me, pretty much the moment you decide to get "serious" and money (ie, money tournaments) enters into the equation, you need to look into sticks. If you're a fighting game gourment, a stick is a very worthwhile investment.

I've personally found some things to be much easier on sticks than pads: 720's, Ivy's Summon Suffering, a good number of SNK supers (Raging Storm!), etc. I find it much easier to press multiple combinations of buttons without having to set up custom settings (more important for Tekken or VF), or to use them with speed and accuracy. I personally find a good stick to be more comfortable for long-term play than a pad where my thumb starts to get sore. The layout on a stick is universal (especially for SF), whereas a pad everyone wants to reconfigure it their way.

...

Standing 720's (ie, you do it and don't require a buffer of any sort) require a stick. I've never heard of them being done on pads (or, for that matter, American sticks). Seth Killian was quite floored when in Japan by their ability to do this, and he directly attributed it to the hardware.

Summon Suffering can be done on a pad, although I needed to take the full length of time (you get up to 5 seconds to do it in SC), and had to use a longer command than the df, ub, f, d, df+??. I think I did df, ub, roll to d, df+??. Been a few years, so I can remember the buttons. I could do it faster and more reliably on a stick.

A Rising Storm motion is db, f, roll to b, df + P. Great for Geese Howard, but also for K9999 in KOF.

Lightly feathering the buttons always made it easier for me to do Honda's 100-hand slap, Blanka's electricity and Chun Li's kicks. Quick, light strokes across the tops - enough to register (obviously, you need responsive buttons for this). No need to mash or slam them. Since you're not holding a pad, it doesn't affect your other hand at all, whereas jamming on buttons with one hand on a pad might make you lose some precision with the other.

For the record, I've got the Hori EX2 for the 360. And am discovering its been so long since I've played any fighting game seriously I now suck. Badly. Oh well. Need to get Fei Long and Cammy unlocked next.

360 and networking

The 360 is the straw that broke the camel's back, and now I'm going to have to network my room properly. I hate wireless and hate switching a single ethernet cable inbetween various machines. So by Monday my PC, Mac, 360 and printer should all be hooked up on a single router/switch/hub-thingie. Next up? Getting a DVI-KVM so I can use the same keyboard and mouse between my PC and Mac without having to switch things around.

While this may be a "duh" moment for most of us, its not exactly commen sense in the industry. Its a point of worry and concern, especially for makers of AAA-games.

So, when Gabe Newell (love him or hate him, maybe both), went on the record on DICE concerning some pricing experiments Valve did with Steam and backed things up with numbers? That's pretty, well, wow. This certainly jives with EA CEO John Riticello's belief that the $60/game revenue model will be obsolete within 10 years (if even that).

I'm curious. I've pointed out before that where the PC leads, consoles follow. So, where we're now really seeing increased flexibility in pricing and revenue streams on PC? How will that look on the next generation of consoles? The PS4's and XB 720's?

Enjoyed it quite a bit. Will I go through it again? I think so, although I'll have to go with a completely different playstyle. The way I beat it was actually pretty darn easy - high skill for headshots and Raise Dead for tanking.

And I picked the first option, in case you're wondering.

Interesting reading.

And I have to ask: how much of a point do you think they have?

"(The certification process) is going to be a consideration, but for me personally, it's going to be establishing the best experience for the users," Yanagi explained, "and right now the speculation for me is that PS3 players and PC players are kind of different social groups. PC players are used to the anonymity of text chat most of the time, and then once you get to know somebody or are playing with friends that you know, then you go to voice and use Ventrilo or TeamSpeak or something like that. Whereas console players, I think they're just used to going into voice chat right off the bat."

"Or muting voice," Andersen quipped, inciting laughter around the room.

"I also found that console players will just talk smack all the time," Yanagi continued. "While PC players tend to be a little bit more polite because of the social group acceptance and how chatting via voice comes about."

If anything, I think they might have a more pro-PC bias since its SOE, but I don't think its enough of one to say they're wrong. If anything, I think the gaming experience sought after might have a bit more to do with it manners. If you're constantly doing pick-up games, then yeah, I'd expect to run into more trash talkers and the like. If you're running with organized groups (like a lot of folks do in MMO's), you've begun filtering out your communication, thereby missing some of the more colorful morons out there, typing or not. That's been my experience, at anyrate. For example, in Guild Wars and City of Heroes, I pretty much ONLY pay attention Guild/SG chat and virtually ignore the public chatter. It goes a step further in COH where the guys I game with have a private chat channel (cross server, cross faction, its nice). When I do pay attention to the local/broadcast, man, I'm not missing much.

In short, I think they're turning a slightly blind eye to the PC's community's morons. Just offer keyboard/mouse control as an additional option for the PS3 (and pad control for PC players), and let people decide how they want to communicate. I've got friends I've played with for years, and we've never wanted or bothered with voice-chat. Simply put - not everyone wants it, so make both available.

I'm really, really hoping they can have at least two PC/PS3 servers (one PVP, one regular), even if it has to lag behind due to certification issues. A PS3 would be a lot cheaper than having to do a full upgrade of an older computer (motherboard, cpu, video card, ram, etc) for some of my friends, and we wouldn't have to give up each other's gaming company due to platform if a bunch of decided we wanted to play DCUO (which is looking far better than CO at this point).

Good read on the Guardian from SCEE's David Reeves.

But there's one little bit that I, quite frankly, wish had more detail...

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"We've learned from Nintendo how to grow the market and move from handheld device to device - they've done it brilliantly. And we've learned an enormous amount from Microsoft, too. Overall, the market has sharpened up individual competitors to do better - we should celebrate the industry and how we've collectively grown it beyond all recognition."

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What did they learn, exactly? As someone who likes the business side of things, I would love to have been a fly on the wall on some of those discussions! What did they learn from Nintendo, exactly? How are they using, or planning to use, that knowledge? What did they learn from Microsoft?

I do like the last sentence there - its something that all fanboys need to take notice of. The industry is better with competition, not their favorite company controlling 90% of the market.

Few notes:

1. My backups seem fine, so I have all my music and junk.

2. I LOVE the PlayNC launcher, Steam and Impulse. Why? Because I'm redownloading my games. Especially since Steam and Impulse, once I logged back on, knew what I had bought.

3. I don't think I'll ever go back to the 32-bit Windows. Nice having all 4gigs of RAM available.

4. Looking at things, I'm very glad I made a conscious decision to not only be platform agnostic but to also start moving stuff online. I need to try out that Windows Mesh - heard some good things about it. But for now, Windows Skydrive is awesome as-is. And Flickr. And my Yahoo email.

5. Next time, i need to remember to make a backup of my bookmarks. I mean, granted, its nothing spending some time with Google won't cure, but still.

Give it a quick read, and tell me what you think concerning how this applies to the console market.

Update: Some additional reading that might be usefl to the discussion.

From Arstechnica...

Mass Effect just hit $20. I can get Fallout 3 brand-new from Blockbuster for $30. Which should I get first? I will probably only play through either game once - I've never been much for replaying games.

1. About how long are both games each?

2. How large is each game? I've only got a 20g drive - got Fable II on there with some other stuff - 3.?g left. Obviously Fable II will be removed, but if I can install both, hey, great.

3. How buggy are they out of the box? Are things improved by updates?

4. How easy is it to get lost in the game? Morrowind was too much for me, most JRPG's too restrictive, but KOTOR was just right.

5. Which is more "casual play" friendly? I'd rather have a game that's "just 10 more minutes"-ish than "set aside an hour or two."

I need to finish Fable 2 first, mind you. I don't know when I'll get either one, to be honest. I'd like to go to England this year, and that means getting *really* tight on my budget, so...

Story here.

This introductory snippet really ought to explain everything:

Ex-Insomniac programmer Nathan Fouts created one of the standout Xbox Live Community Games for Xbox 360 in 2D side-scrolling shooter Weapon Of Choice, and explains just how in this in-depth Gamasutra postmortem.

Awesome, isn't it? Now, everyone knows about mods, but homebrewing isn't quite the same since you don't actually have a game to work off of. You're on your own. But the things that can be done!

Its a return to the "old days" when folks could make their own games. Granted, programming isn't the same now as it is then - I don't my practically non-existant BASIC skill will cut it. But I - and maybe more than a few other folks here - remember days long ago attempting to make my own games for the computer... trying to plan it out, writing it, testing and debugging, etc. I never did anything spectacular, but I did make a few mini-adventure/RPG games. Cheesy, lame, but they were mine!

While there are things like Little Big Planet and Kodu out there, to me they're just a start. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else comes out :)

Its a crying shame that Lionhead was bought by Microsoft - this game really is too good to be on a single system. This is something I would love for any gamer - 360, Wii, PS3 and PC - to be able to sit down, talk about how they're doing, and just enjoy.

If Ubisoft, EA or Vivendi had bought Lionhead the gaming world would be a lot better right now, I think.* If Microsoft was only a publisher instead of a platform holder, the gaming world would be, well... I won't go that far since it would just be Sony and Nintendo in an uncontested duopoly (core and casual). If only SEGA had been the publisher...! Okay, that's better and far more dreamy... :)

*Yes, I'm oversimplifying here. Let me dream.