This isn't much, but I have been a little out of touch of the gaming world for some time.  What have I been up to, Playing one game mainly, though I finally finished Mass Effect 2, which was good fun, now I only have n-1 games remaining to be played.  Though SWTOR has taken up most of my time.  Concentrating on getting all my characters up to the max level cap, which has now shifted to 55 since the release of the Rise of the Hutt Cartel digital expansion.

I have been reading, lots of reading, only fiction, but I have my Sony reader and since I bought it, I have read 14 books.  That is more books than I have previously read other than for school or university in my entire life prior.

Watching my children grow up and also having surgery. 

I have been write a bit in another blog of mine.  Despite the game I have not developed a great deal of games in XNA, though the intent was I get there, but life gets in the way.  I post about anything or everything.  SWTOR, Games, Development tips, life. 

Come back here, update things and hopefully get more updated on the gaming world.  E3 coming, and seeing the post from last time it has been 12 months since, strange how things happen.

Have fun and enjoy your gaming.

I have been hanging out for E3 for sometime. For the last couple of years I have watched all of the events live, thanks to GameSpot and Game Trailers. We aren?t that lucky in Australia, especially when it comes to games conventions and the like. It also takes a lot of effort, waking for a 1am start to start the procession of media events to end at mid-day EST AU. Then the next day start at the same time and go through till 8am. Then it will be off to work for a 9:30am start on the Wednesday.

I will be posting my thoughts and views on E3 and I will also do the usual and rank each of the majors on how well they did. I will also be publishing this up on my blogs on Game Trailers Profile and my XNA Game Development blog.

I will not be blogging live, as this to me will suck up valuable watching time since I am not the best typist and who knows what I might say.

Stay Tuned and I hope I can make an entertaining read.

I am currently playing through Killzone 3. Yes I am aware that my reviews are often very late but since getting married and having children I am forced to accept 2 things.

1. Game time is limited to time I can get alone in front of my PC or the TV. Since the TV is in the communal area it means it is often used by children and the wife alike.
2. Once upon a time when I was single and a analyst/programmer contractor earning lots of money, my gaming bill was astounding. I would buy games the day they were released, I might not get to play them much but I still did. Now, I am not longer a contractor and am no longer single. Having the only income and needing to house and feed 4 people puts a strain how much extra money that is out there for gaming. So, I have some subscriptions, SWTOR, Playstation Plus, XBox Live Gold, AppHub membership. So when I buy games they are very much well after release, sometimes used. It is only occasionally that I might get games on release and I am allowed some leeway from the wife when it comes to those games I really want.

So I might be putting up my review for Killzone 3 quite late in fact I might put my reviews for most of the games up veyr late, but I have a good reason for it.

I will be posting my review of Star Wars: The Old Republic up soon. Still ploughing through the game's massive content. And since it isn't my day job it is taking me sometime to do so.

As of the 30 December, The Old Republic (TOR) has been out for 10 days. The release of which has been delayed until March of 2012 for Australia. Once again, we down under are treated literally like a sore on our down under and should always remain a second class citizen in the world of video games.

For once, they good Doctors at Bioware gave a reason, to give the best possible experience for the regions in which we released in. Mmm, now I know that IS a reason but it is a pretty lame reason. Yes, geographically we are a long way from Europe and also from the United States. This also means that technically from a networking perspective it takes longer for a packet of data to go from point A, Australia, to point B to somewhere in Europe or the US and then back to point A again.

Having been a tester for the game in which I suffered some lag but only occasionally did it ever cause problems in the game. Now I am sure that this would have been a worst case scenario in terms of packet delivery. So I am still curious why we still must wait.

Well since I loved the game during the testing periods and I have performed 3 lots of them as well. I felt I needed to get the game. So I did, installed it yesterday and have started playing the game. Now I know that EA has prevented me from buying the game from their origin store but I was able to get it in. I have suffered virtually no problems with lag myself. And I say to those who I have prevented from having the best experience possible on the server I have picked, I am sorry, but I love the game and I feel that it isn't a bad thing.

To those sitting on the fence about the game, I will state that if there is a trial version give it a go. You won't be disappointed.

TOR and WOW
What I am seeing is a lot of posts going around and even in the in game chat that the game sucks in comparison to WOW. Well, in that I will say that in some ways it is like WOW. The game mechanics works very much the same. The combat and the questing is similar. But in other ways they are very different. The game draws in in more that WOW. Not needing to read each and every quest given to you, or the receiving the quest completion dialogue as well.

The Story to me is better implemented as well. I am not just talking about cut scenes or the use of dialogue but the story seems more integrated into the experience.

Socially the game is lacking behind WOW. But WOW has had years of tweaking the formula to get it right. But what I really like is the flash points. These are like instances I feel, but they each have a story. They have their own path and dialogue options and they work really well. Their end point though might be the same as that of an instance in WOW but I felt so much less like the grind that WOW feels like when I am doing and instance.

Graphics, well this has so much in TOR favour, onl due to its age. But since WOW has now a Direct-X 11 option I have failed to see really it shine. The games art ****is holding it back and the game is looking dated now. Whereas TOR is looking great, though it uses a distinct art-****it isn't so stylistic as WOW that if upgrades in graphic engines happen that it will seem out of place, where as WOW will. So I understand it, but without a doubt that TOR looks better.

Animations are a lot smoother on TOR. But seeing as they are motion captured then this was bound to happen. But I find that the fighting animations look better they mix together better whereas the WOW ones seem stilted and also seem to cut to and from between the different sets for each command, whereas the TOR ones blend in nicely.

Size, tough to compare since WOW has had a lot of time to build the world up, but considering the release world is a good size.

Sound, I would say that the sound in TOR is better. It has better separation of the channels than WOW and is nice a crisp.

So give the game a chance if you are a WOW player, but it will be a mighty effort for Bioware to realy cut into the marketshare of MMOs that Blizzard seem to have and since many people playing WOW will need to keep playing WOW it will possibly come down to money. And for them which is worth more for their money.

I say try it and try it without the rose coloured WOW glasses on and I think you will enjoy the experience. Afterall, WOW is not the game it was when it was released so many years ago.

Well I am progressing, it is a large and very long game. But it is good to be playing it.

• Back at H.Q.
  Cloud has been convinced to do the next mission for 2000 Gil.
• Sector 7 Slums
  Cloud, Tifa and Barret wander around the slums in sector 7. I pick up some Iron Bangles for them and sell the Bronze ones that they were all wearing. Picked up some materia and equipped that. Picks up a few potions and then headed for the train station.
• Raid on Sector 5 Reactor
  On the train everything is going relatively smoothly, Barret is busting chops of anyone who wants to have a go at him, especially the poor Shinra employee heading to work. Then the ID check and everyone is busted. The timer starts and Cloud and gang must make their way through the carriages as each one is locked down. I come on the 3rd Carriage and there is a person walking the opposite direction, usually I get pick pocketed by him but this time I stand still and let him walk past, nothing I can escape with ease now. Get into the final carriage and I noticed that there are 2 people sitting on the benches of the train and they are naked. I have never noticed this before and they mentioned something about an underwear thief. Strange. Anyway Cloud jumps from the train and into the tunnels.
  
  I make my way through the tunnels and down the scaffolding on my way to the Sector 5 reactor. Cloud slides down a huge pipe in the reactor and it is the same path to the reactor as last time. Just before Cloud sets the bomb he has another flash back with Tifa over her dead father. Cloud comes back to reality, sets the bomb and they head out of the reactor the same way as before.
• Boss Fight: Air Buster
  You see the president of Shinra he is going to kill you and let the reactor get destroyed. And he employs a techno-soldier called Air Buster. 3 Limit Breaks later and some minor damage to Barret and Cloud and we see Cloud hanging by some pipes as the reactor is about to blow. Cloud falls and Tifa is upset.
• The Flower Girl
  We meet Aeris again and as I have crashed into a Church with her inside. Reno of the Turks shows up and is after Aeris. She requests your assistance as a bodyguards in exchange for a date. Cloud agrees and they run to the back of the church. Up the wrecked remains of the church, some barrel dropping onto the Shinra soldiers and we escape. A mystery as to why the Turks are after Aeris. We run through the rubble and into the Sector 5 slums.

This is where I leave the game now, have to do some more work. But I will keep updating this as I go throughout the game. Hopefully.

I have finally, started my final play through of Final Fantasy VII. Having owned this game since its release on Playstation back in 1997 I have gotten almost to the end of the game 3 times. Then for some reason I have stopped playing and then resumed playing after a very long time.

So why didn't I just resume from the point I left off. Couple of reasons,

1. Battle readiness - The final battles of the game are some of the most difficult in the game. Having not played FFVII for a period time has left me a little blank on the materia each character has, the order level of equipment, ultimate weapons and so on. Playing the game continuously would put me in better stead than if I had the break I normally do.
2. Story continuity - This is similar to the battle readiness, but is more about the continuation of the story and from that having a break leaves me not fully knowing the story. One might argue this because I have played the game so often that I should know the story by now. But in reality I do, but I like to have that continuous flow when playing a game.
3. Start a game, finish a game - This is a new policy I have with games, when I start a game, I will finish a game. I have had this policy for a while now and I am slowly wading through my collection to be up to date with all my games. So I have decided that FFVII is the one I will be playing and therefore I will start it and finish it.
4. Completeness - This is a game I feel you need some of the better items that only come with playing the game in its near entirety. Certain materia, and weapons are just some of them, there is also the Ultimate Materia and the special enemies. I feel I have yet done this in the game when I have decide to go on the final battles. So I want to do this.
5. Because I love this game.

So this is just the start, so I have decided that I will blog the story in some capacity, in that I will not spoil it for anyone who hasn't played it, and if you haven't and like RPGs or JRPGs then you owe it to yourself to check it out. With it available on the PSN for the PSP and the PS3 for not much then get it, it is well worth the price tag. What I mean is I will blog through the sections of the game I complete not tell the story.

• Assault on Mako Reactor No. 1
  We are introduced with Cloud and Barret. With Biggs, Wedge and Jessie. They head to blow up a Mako reactor. We get the "for the planet's sake" speech from Barret but Cloud doesn't give a toss. They make their way into the bowels of the reactor, plant the bomb but not before Cloud has a mild flashback about the reactor being much more than a reactor.
• Boss Fight: Guard Scorpion
  With the bomb timer ticking, this seems trickier than it is. But if you aren't careful this can end the game very quickly.
• The Getaway
  With the boss taken care of, we now must get out before the reactor blows up. I can't forget Jessie on the out, since it seems you need her to exit. We escape with 5 minutes left on the clock. I bump into Aeris and I bought a flower from her. Was attacked by Shinra soldiers and jumped onto the train. Jessie showed me how the train runs and works.
• Back at H.Q.
  We exit the train and head back to the H.Q. The Seventh Heaven bar in the Sector 7 slums. We meet Tifa and Marlene (Barret's daughter).(This is where I have paused the game).

So, slowly but surely I will get there.I have done something that I said I wouldn't, but I figured that I don't care if I do. It will help me get through it.

A lot has been made recently about the hacks that are going on. First Sony, now Steam and MS have been the targets of hackers. What is interesting is the exposure that a lot of these are garnering in the media. These are big deal, to potentially have personally information breached and accessed on a whim and then sold for the potential use of identity theft is a big deal.

But interestingly people have no qualms about sharing even more personal information on the likes of Facebook or Twitter and give it no second thought. On Facebook it is even allowable for application makers to get access to your information as required and you are unable to use their application until you approve to them using this data. But the the other strange thing from this is the unheard hacks that are going on, FAR worse and more worrying from my point of view and who actually hears about them, not many people.

Banks, are often considered a safe haven for your money. They pay copious amounts of money to make sure your (I am sorry, their money) is nice and safe. But the Banks, all around the world are daily targets for hacks alike, have been for ages. Banks are hacked regularly and this information is kept in house and RARELY revealed to anyone outside of the Bank itself. Why is never common knowledge, easy confidence.

Sony copped a battering, in the shares and also in consumer confidence in this breach. If the likes of these breaches are revealed at a BANK the implications are far worse than a consumer electronics company. If a Bank is known to have been hacked the confidence lost is even greater since not only is there the potential for share market backlash but also potential government backlash, or international finance problems, consumers can withdraw funds quickly leaving the Bank in a very unstable position. We saw in the US a few years ago what happens when financial institutions go belly up the repercussions are felt all around the world. In Europe now we are seeing it on a country basis, and this could be worse.

Why am I saying this, possibly because I felt I needed to highlight this at the recent spate of hacker attacks on the gaming world. It could be worse, much worseif we knew more about what went on with hackers around the world.

Well, I am almost half way through my C++ course into game development. This is a self paced one. Though I decided to buy a new laptop for the occasion, very surprised with it, it was 30% off, I paid AU$1495 for it, down from AU$2195.

• 17.3 inch (not 1080p though, I think it is 1680 x 900) or something like that.
• Full size keyboard, include number pad :)
• ATI Radeon 6770M with 1GB switchable with Intel HD graphics (your choice to run either, but the Intel one which is on board gives me about 4 hours 30 min battery life, the ATI gives me about 1-2 hours. So for this course don't need the horse power, yet ;)
• 8GB RAM
• 2 x 750GB hdd
• Blue Ray drive
• HDMI out
• USB 3.0
• Intel i7 2.0GHz

I blew away the image of Windows 7 x64 they had one there since it has been severlely molested, so clean and it runs great.

Well I am over the halfway stage of the course and have submitted 3 assignments. 1. My asteroids clone which I felt came up quite nice. 2. A tile based platform game, which wasn't want I wanted but I think it was enough to pass. 3. Game idea document which will be used for the last 2 assignments. 4. Game design document and 5. The final Game based off this document.

One of the things that I have often done is think about what would be a really good game, trying to think as simply as possible but also not go too far, scope creeps up and suddenly my nice simple game has turned into a monster of a thing that only a veteran studio would be able to pull off, not some hack game developer only just learning XNA.

But I still have a ways to go and one of my concerns about the last project is the groups we will be allocated. It will make it difficult to say the least.