I've been too caught up in playing DJ Max Portable 2 to update this thing with any current happenings. But let me tell you folks. That game is INSANE and damn addictive.

Finally a game that not only lived up to the hype and anticipation but exceeded it!. I have not had this much fun playing a game in far too long. The game is hard, sure... but when you achieve something in it, its really really satisfying, and to know that your actually playing the song and it wouldnt sound right without you is also another bit of icing on the cake.

DJ max portable 1 should be arriving in the mail on monday along with my PSP carry protector case that i decided to order at the same time while i was at it. Phoenix Wright 2 will be arriving with it i expected it to come yesterday but it didnt hence why it says i'm playing PW2 when i'm not... not until monday anyway, saves me adding it on monday however. According to UPS my package is in Brisbane so it will be here first day after the weekend for sure, things always come the next day from brisbane, especially if its courier.

I've also given DJ Max Online a shot and i must say that its a little harder than the PSP version, the reason why this is is because in the DJ Max games when you land blocks to play the song, the accuracy of the land will give you a percentage rate, from 0-100%. It seems that the PSP version is more forgiving with the timing of the landing and gives you that extra split second room for error that the pc version doesnt.

The PC version has a few songs that i recognise from people playing DJ max portable 1 so that was good to see that there were some familier tunes there along with some other new really great ones.

DJ Max Online is free to an extent in that you can sign up and download it for free and they give you 111 songs that you can play for free. You can also on a free account battle other DJ's to head on head song plays using powerup's from catching certain items when you are landing combo's to play the song to hamper the other DJ. Some of these include faders, speed up's and slowdowns or a haze that fog's the area near where the block landing line is. The fader makes the blocks fade in and out to put you off unless you have practically memorised the song. The speed up's give you the illusion that the blocks are coming at you faster by making them come down faster but making the gap between the blocks longer (This is actually an advantage when you toggle it in single player mode because sometimes if you dont have the game set to the right speed a really fast song with really crazy block lines will confuse you with what you have to press first because the blocks will be far too compactly clustered together.). Slowdowns have the opposite effect, blocks move slower but are cramped together more.

What the PC version doesnt have that DJMP2 has is the fever bar and these thick pipe looking blocks that you have to swivel the analog stick to clear. The fever bar is this thing that charges up every time you hit a block, when it completely charges up you tap the x button and for a limited time, every block that you hit gets x2 score.

What isnt free about DJ Max Online is premium content. Premium content includes extra song pack's, custom avatar pictures, and other little dress up knicknacks if your into that sorta thing. Buying premium songs is a hell of a deal actually, costing only approximatly $14 Australian to activate 300 premium tracks on your account (There are over 1000 from what i hear in total).

One thing that is a rip off about this game, is avatar's, they cost a surprising amount of money for what they actually are. But i guess that if you bought $50 Australian worth of DJ Max Credits to buy 900 premium tracks and a avatar that isnt quite so bad of a deal at all if you think of it in a package kinda way. This all said, the games music is great, on both the portable and PC version, and the music is well varied in genre. There is everything from Rock, to Trance, Dance, Korean Pop Music, Techno, Hardcore (in a electronica sense), RnB, Hip-hop etc.

Graphically the game is very colourful, and features a visualisation ranging from animeish to weird and colourful drawscapes (thats not even a word i know) for each song that is shown to the side of the screen (if you have the game section set to the left or right) or on both sides (if you have the game section set in the middle). The only problem with the PC version is that the game only displays in 1 resolution and look's not as good as the PSP version when its compacted to the PSP's screen size. Just so nobody is mislead ... while DJ Max online and DJ Max portable are both made by the same company and feature some of the same songs, thier actually different games with the same game play so the PC version i'm describing isnt exactly the same as the PSP version. The PSP DJ max games definatly look more vibrant though, whether thats because of the screen or because of the fact that the games resolution is especially tweaked for the PSP i dont know.

Anyway i'm totally in love with this game and cant stop playing it. And anyone who owns a psp who is into music or rythem games should check it out. Even if you arent currently, if you have ever been curious about these sorts of games you should definatly check it out. Not to mention that both portable versions of the game have an english option so that you dont have to read any korean at all!

PC owners can try out the pc version by following the instructions found in both these forum threads on the DJ Max International Website:

http://weeman1337.we.funpic.de/index.php?showtopic=16 (Sign up Guide)

Once you have followed this guide click on the game start picture on the website after you have logged in to trigger the flash based downloader and installer. (Please note that you need East Asian Language pack installed to install this game since the installer is in japanese. Note that most of the text in the actual game is in english however).

http://weeman1337.we.funpic.de/index.php?showtopic=66 (Premium Guide)

http://weeman1337.we.funpic.de/index.php?showtopic=212 (Font Changer, Which you will need if you want to be able to read the song selection and chat window text properly.)

In Closing here is a video of the PC version in action (With the visualisation turned off).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ean1AjBOobo

Yeah, pretty hilarious:

http://www.pspfanboy.com/2007/04/11/psa-dj-max-demo-killed-psp/

And i do know that this demo IS hard ... i dled it and tried it (still waiting for my full game to arrive in mail)

However i've seen songs from the original game and the sequal that look quite easier than that demo song, i guess they went over board with trying to balance the demo challenge :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3pQBKoCfc4 (Easy Mode on DJ Max Portable One's Oblivion) 

Pretty amusing that he reached that level of frustration, no game is worth that destruction...

When they are talking about Joystiq's Jared Rea thier talking about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIGW8coU1W4

So i finished Pheonix Wright: Ace Attorney today. I have to say that while the game was great i felt empty after beating it. Probably because i wanted more but realised at the same time that if the game had of been any longer it would have been too long.  Believe me, Phoenix Wright is a very long game for an adventure game.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney has 5 cases in total, the first serving as a tutorial of sorts where you have to defend your friend larry who has been framed for the murder of his ex girlfriend. This beggining case helps show the player how everything works inside the games court room, the tutorial goes through presenting evidence, finding contradictions, and pressing statements to get the witness to elaborate when you cross examine.

Each case has been very well written and each are very interesting to work through. Lack of animation in the characters animeish artwork hardley is noticed because of such well written dialogue.

Phoenix Wright is a very linear game and there is never more than one way to do anything and because of this sometimes your left scratching your head trying to figure out what to do next.  A side effect of this is that this game leaves you with absolutely no desire to replay it.

The Ds's touch screen's functionality in the game isnt really that well highlighted until you reach the last case, a bonus case added into the game especially for the western ds release.  Keep in mind that the original version of this game in japan was a GBA title, so they probably couldnt have drastically changed the existing cases without making some of the parts completely different.

One of the touch screen features in this final case really blew me away and gave me a feeling i rarely get when playing games, a sense of amazement of sheer originality.

In this specific example, you are taking finger prints in an evidence room, and you are required to sprinkle the powder onto the print using the stylus and then it asks you to blow the powder away to reveal the print. I have to admit that at first i wasnt sure what it expected me to do and i spent 30 seconds or so thinking "whats the blow button?" until i finally realised that this game actually wanted me to blow away the powder by blowing on the touch screen. I couldnt believe it....

I'm glad i chose this game as my first DS title because at the time i wasnt expecting to be able to purchase another game until around 1-2 weeks afterwards because i didnt have anymore money and my descision to pick up this title was very wise as it is a very lengthy game.

I am now really wanting to pick up phoenix wright 2. The first game has made a fan out of me.

Who could have thought an adventure game where you play the role of a defense attorney could be so satisfying. The looks on the witness's faces when you find contradictions sometimes is priceless and quite comical.

You may be wondering why i didnt write a review for this game in the correct section. The answer is that i'm still new to this review writing idea and accordingly still havent gotten down pat the structure and different writing technique, writing these things is different from writing a story and i'm finding structuring this quite difficult so it looks all over the place.

On the PSP Front i have been playing Tekken Dark Ressurection and Street Fighter Zero 3: Double Upper (Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max, i call it Zero 3 cause i have the japanese version) and am impatiently waiting for DJ Max Portable 2 to arrive in the mail.

I made a mistake buying 2 fighting games in such close proximity without getting something else to mix things up, because now i'm totally sick of beating people up for the most part since in my excitment of getting the psp i've over played the thing a little bit and will probably end up taking a break from it until my new game arrives.

I can get another PSP game on monday if i wish to, but i'm conflicted as to whether i should get:

Metal Gear Solid Portable Op's (PSP), Mega Man Maverick Hunter X (PSP), Initial D (PSP), Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: And Justice For All (DS), Or the first DJ Max Portable game so that i can transfer all the song data onto my memory stick from the original and double the catelogue of songs i have to play through on DJ Max Portable 2.....

I guess logically i should get the game thats harder to get readily, but if i do that and i fall into the trap of non variety again i'm going to get brain dead again from no variety.

Dont get confused and think that i hate the 2 psp games i have already, its just that i need variety i suppose.

Anyway in a weeks time i'm ordering the Ram for my PC, after that is done all i need for my new PC Box is a new harddrive, case and power supply. 

On the topic of new current gen systems... i still feel conflicted over the 360 and PS3, why? because the PS3 will have tekken 6 ...... and i prefer the playstation controller, not because its nessesarily better but because i'm used to it. I guess i could get both eventually but for now i'm trying to cover most bases with 1 system as i can for now.... Virtua Fighter 5 is coming out on 360 check... Devil May Cry 4 Check, Resident Evil 5 Check, Blue Dragon Check, Lost Odysee Check, Gears of War Check, .... i cant think of any others right now... but as you cans ee i probably should just STFU and get a 360 but i think i have a stupid brand loyalty problem perhaps :( 

Got it on the way home from the coast, a white ceramic coloured one (will post pictures in a latter blog entry).

I've been playing heaps of tekken dark ressurection on it, and i'm still waiting for street fighter zero 3 double upper to arrive in the mail, also i have recently ordered DJ Max Portable 2 for PSP and am waiting for that also.

I really like the feel of the console when i hold it, its very comfortable in my hands and i would go as far as to say its more comfortable to hold than the DS lite. However unlike the DS lite, where its laptop style design protects the screens from getting damaged, with the psp you dont have anything so i suggest that everyone who gets one gets a decent carry case for the thing.

Its screen is very nice quality and movies and games display very nicely. Tekken dark ressurection on psp comes close to tekken 5 for ps2 graphics and the game handles exactly how i remember tekken 5 handling on the ps2. This has got to be one of the best to portable games i've ever seen. At the time this was released it was only out at arcades tho so this game doesnt count as a ps2 hand me down.

I havent gotten a chance to update the firmware to version 3.30 yet because my internet isnt working at the moment. So i'm on the factory preinstalled 2.71 patch that came already on the psp.

The battery in my experience so far lasts around 5-6 hours maybe a little less if your just playing games and dont have the volume super high and arent playing movies and stuff where the disc is being read constantly. My DS lasts 8-10 hours on 1 battery charge on the brightness level 3rd from the highest but then again the DS is mostly just chip and circutry inside the psp has a optical drive a better graphics processor and faster hardware so i think its kinda a given the fact that it doesnt last as much time on 1 battery charge. HOwever there are supposedly custom batteries available from other countries for psp that last longer.

Is the psp better than the DSlite? well no you cant really compare them in my oppinion they both have thier good and bad points, the psp has the superiour screen quality, more comfortable to hold and can do more things, aswell as have better graphics. But the DS has some really great games that make some very innovative uses of the touch screen. Lance will know the part on phoenix wright where you have to take finger prints in the evidence room and blowing the powder off as one of those innovations.

The DS's battery lasts longer which is a good thing for the DS, and since it takes cartridges the loading is almost instant.

Although the loading on Tekken: DA isnt very long, its quite quick actually.

A cool video of DJ MAx Portable that shows one of the cool songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1biVoBAR0Y

Street Fighter Zero 3:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Sy2PbrVU_Y

and tekken DA... no video's do it justice, they look like crap compared to how it is when your playing it on the actual psp

As we all know today is good friday, well in australia it is anyway since were ahead in time.

And my family and i are going to visit my uncle and aunt in hervey bay. I dont have to go, but i want to i suppose. And now that i have my Nintendo DSlite with me i dont have to be bored for the 5 hour drive.

I'm up to the last Level in New super mario bro's.

I'm half way through Phoenix Wright (alittle over half). And hotel dusk i've still only played once.

Castlevania portrait of ruin, well that games hard but i'm getting there.... need to level up i guess.

Anyway i dont mind going to my relatives in hervey bay because my uncle is pretty awesome and fun to talk to and i guess i just want to get out of the house for a while. Anyhow i'll see you guy's later. Take care and happy gamespotting :)

Crazy fingers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFqw5jp8rMA

@_@

But i doubt anyone will agree with me :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O81EUlvST_k 

So on thursday i got my new video card for this new pc i'm getting parts together for.

Its an Asus 8800gts and its pretty damn huge. I didnt really feel like taking photo's of all the componants i have so far so i will link to off site pictures, with the 8800 pictures dont do it justice to how big it is most of the time because its just huge....

This is what i've got so far:

Asus Nvidia Geforce 8800gts 320mb

http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=4216&s=17

(Second Card down on the first picture at the top)

MSI K9N Platinum Motherboard:

http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/mainboard/msi-k9n-platinum-sli-platinum-nf570ultra-nf570sli.html

(First picture)

AMD Athlon 64 AM2 X2 4400+

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103776

That is what i have together so far for my new PC's tower, now i need ram, harddrive, power supply and case.

I already have a dvd writer i can put in the thing when i have the rest of the parts.

In other news i got a 2gig PSP memory stick the other day for quite a good price to use with the PSP i am planning on getting soon.

The store i'm getting it from doesnt sell PSP's that often but they only have white ones at the moment, which is fine by me. I plan on getting tekken dark ressurection for my first game. I dont know why i'm so excited about the prospect of an awesome tekken game in the palm of my hand....

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/4235/whitepsp07largeju6.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2St37_uYln8

You get the idea, sure its a stretched crappy quality youtube video but its undeniably awesome.

Also check out gamespot's video review. Keep in mind that just like DS video's online they dont look no where near as good when your playing it on the actual console picture quality wise cause of the size and type of screen. 

At the moment i'm playing C&C3 on PC, its damn awesome folks, probably the best RTS i've played in a long time. I'm playing through the GDI campaign at the moment.

And i have this feeling that i'm going to need to finish it again to fully make up my mind what i think about it.

Sometimes when i was playing it i was going "yeah... this game is awesome" and some other times i was playing it like a zombie paying minimumal attention to what i was supposed to be doing in the story and just going to locations, gunning down enemies, pulling switches, recovering files etc then going back for my reward.

The game has 7 endings depending on different things you do in the game.

I read someones summary of the endings and read the list of bad endings to see if mine was there (i avoided reading the good endings section so i wouldnt get any spoilers), and sure enough it was.

The only problem with this game is that supposedly if you dont get the good ending, you dont actually get filled in on alot of the details as to what the hell was going on and what you were doing whilst playing the game. So in theory the game makes no sense unless you get the good ending. For most of the game you follow a story that is presented in a way not unlike if there was a person who had watched a television show with a story. That friend told your friend the story and then that friend told you the story. By then not all the parts would be intact and you'd be left with fragments of a story that sometimes is interesting but half the time feel's like a sequence of events without anything in between to hold it together.

The game is open ended and you are free to explore, however the game except to sate your hunger for exploration doesnt give you very many reasons to do so. The side quests are very basic and mostly only give cash rewards. Most of the good item's can be found along the story mission path so you dont need to save up to buy them anyway. The openness is also pulled back by the amount of anomolies (phenomina that twists and warpes the fabric of reality and can be very dangerous to your characters life), and the vast amounts of radiation (especially outside the reaches of the starting area of the zone), and the pack's of mutated animals and patrol's of not so friendly mercenaries and monolith soldiers.

The game is a little buggy and doesnt seem to be very well optimised even on higher end hardware. It could be argued that since there are shadows on every piece of grass and the weather and calculations that the Ai Life system has to do warrents this. I'm not so convinced. Oblivion has better graphics than stalker and is more open since its world isnt broken up into obvious mini zones seperated by visible loading screens (however to stalkers credit the mini zones that make up the entire exclusion zone are very large). My friends AMD AM2 5200 X2, 2 Gig's of DDR2 memory, and Geforce 8800gtx video card still delivers slightly choppy frame rates from time to time and the graphics engine is rather dated on this game.

This is by no means a definitive review on my part and i seem to be talking more bad than good about the game, but as my friends know i tend to be very cynical and critical of even things that i enjoy. I plan on writing an entire review once i've been through the game a second time, i mostly wrote this to get a few things off my chest about this game.Hopefully GSC gameworld and THQ release some good patches that fix this game up a bit.

As far as the DSlite goes i've been playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin and New Super Mario Bro's the most with a bit of Phoenix Wright here and there. Hotel Dusk i've only played once and feel that its a game that i need to be in a very specific mood to play and enjoy which also stands for a game like phoenix wright. I dont always feel like playing a slow paced game that i have to be mellowed out and be in a thinking frame of mind to play. I keep buying more games when i already have: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, New Super Mario Bro's, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk, Final Fantasy XII, Resident Evil 0, and Metriod Prime 2 Echo's to finish...... but there are so many good games coming out especially when your both a console and pc gamer like i am. Hell even if your a console gamer if you own multiple consoles like i do. However i'm still waiting for good Wii games to come out. Since i got that thing almost 2 month's ago i've only had 2 games, zelda and wii sports. I'm still waiting for something good to come out. Because while i'm not a graphics whore, if a cross platform game comes out that has very inferiour graphics to another consoles with tacked on motion sensing controll's i have a right to be pissed off especially since there seems to be alot of these cross platform games. Graphics was never the focal point of the Wii so i'm not picking on its graphics. But honestly, do i really want to play for example a graphically nerfed version of call of duty 3 with its multiplayer cut out?, i think not. At least i have Super Paper Mario to look forward to next month.

Ok i admit it, i'm in love with my DS lite.

Today i purchased an additional 3 games:

New Super Mario Bro's

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Hotel Dusk Room 215

New Super mario Bro's brings alot of memories back from the old nintendo days when i was younger and i'm a sucker for gameplay that feels nostalgic.

I'm new to Castlevania admittedly, i did play one of the snes games a long time ago but i dont remember it very well and i definatly didnt finish it.

Portrait of ruin seems pretty nice so far, i like the anime style presentation of the character portraits in dialogue and the short intro cutscene.

Hotel Dusk Room 215 is still in its shrink wrap and i am yet to play it. But it seems like an interesting game as it makes you turn your DS up on its side. I really like mystery adventure games that make you think so i should enjoy this.

I'm still up to the first main case on phoenix wright i havent been over playing it because before today it was the only game that i had on hand since i'm still waiting for castlevania: dawn of sorrow to arrive in the mail since the company i ordered it from had to back order it for me.

Speaking of backorder i really want to get my mit's on advance wars: dual strike sometime too. That game looks pretty cool.

Stalker is going well too, i'm starting to notice a few bugs in the game but for the most part thier not enough to hamper my enjoyment of the game over all. Hopefully GSC game world and THQ come out with a patch for it soon to address these issues.

Hopefully for you Vista users out there they address some issues when running that game under vista, i suppose i dont have to worry about that at the moment tho since i'm still content to use Windows XP SP2 until Direct X 10 really starts to take off.

I have this weird feeling that Crysis might be the game to start off that PC gaming revolution, and its only coming out Q3 supposedly.

So at the moment i see absolutely no need to install and run vista.

I attended another Lan party on wednesday and i have to say i'm impressed with Scarlett and Rhoades's new 22" Widescreen monitors. However i dont really have room on my desk for it since my desk is a nightmare. Not because its nessesarily untidy but because i have my tv on it, my computer monitor and the gaming console i have plugged up to it at that given time. At the moment that is final fantasy XII, at the moment my Wii isnt plugged up until some more games that i'm interested in playing come out for it.

I admit that i still havent finished Zelda i'm about 3/4's of the way through it but when i first got my Wii i played that game way too much and now i'm a little burnt out and need some time off from it. I occasionally still plug up my Wii however because i have a couple of gamecube games that i'm casually working on finishing when i feel like playing them.

Titles for this include Metroid Prime 2: Echo's and Resident Evil 0.

Yet again i will state that i absolutely love my DSlite and would like to thank again my gamespot buddies for recomending this system and some great games for it for me to consider.

Pretty sad that i've already got more games for this system than my Nintendo Wii :lol: