PlayStation Home launched today (yes, i know. Officially it was yesterday but I logged on at 23.00 and it still wasn’t there which means that in reality, it launched today) and I had a little look around. I have to say, there were times when I sat with my jaw on the floor. Mostly, those times were when looking through the shops. 8$ for a brand new virtual not-actually-real-at-all-house? 1$ for an ditto origami dog!? That’s just crazy.
It makes me a little sad, actually. Home seemed so promising. Another place where I could satisfy my need to customize stuff and make female avatars! But, as it is, Home just feels to much like an elaborate 3d attempt at making you spend money on nothing.
Speaking of female avatars, I also got hit on two times in the 10 minutes that I was idleing in Town Square. I mean, all right, my avatar is hot, but seriously people! Are you really that desperate?
Later Addition: Penny Arcade has a good summary of how I feel about Home, only better written and with pictures.
It’s been a little over 3 years since the last time I wrote the words Pink, Fluffy and Dinosaurs in the same post here on my blog and I feel it is about time that I do it again. So here you have it:
Pink Fluffy Dinosaurs
Hey, it’s my blog. I can do whatever I want.
Games have come a long way in portraying and simulating reality since those early days with pong, but they are not quite there yet.
I was running around in Fallout and came upon this Raider hideout. They started shooting at me, as Raiders tend to do (I have no idea why. I mean, my character looks totally cute and has pink hair and everything.), so I shot back and killed them all. Except one, who was apparently tending the bar and wanted to do business with me.
The first sign of trouble was when he continued to stress that I should keep quiet so the others didn’t find out, in spite of the fact that I had just blown up two raiders with a grenade not 3 feet in front of him. I then proceeded to take everything on the two dead raiders and sold it to him without him seemingly finding anything wrong with this. I, on the other hand, went “hmmm” and then promptly stripped the entire room of everything not nailed down, including everything in his bar, and sold that to him also. He didn’t seem to have any problem with this either, as far as I could tell. Thus, I did the only logical thing I could think of at this point, which was, of course, to comb the rest of the complex for worthless junk and then sell him that also.
Fun times.
I wonder what he is going to do with all that stuff, half of which was probably his own to begin with, now that all his friends are dead.
I just had Maya crash on me for the Nth time today* and I noticed this little button with the label “Debug”. I wonder now, what exactly is it that I am supposed to debug? Are you expecting me to just have a quick look at the Maya source code; see if I can see anything wrong?
Or maybe Windows XP?
Even funnier: atop the absurdity of someone apparently expecting me to have any chance of making heads and tails of the source-code to a complex piece of software like Maya, is the implied assumption that I’m supposed to actually fix errors in a piece of software that I payed quite a lot of money for.
But enough venting for one day.
*where N is a number between “too bloody many times” and “oh my God, that I don’t believe in, I am going to kill someone soon”
Obama won, or so I am led to believe. I think this is a Good Thing.
I just thought I should mention that.
So, after having spent around 20 minutes (possibly only 10 but you know…) running around the town because I couldn’t figure out the very first fucking quest in the game (apparantly, you need to hold down the A button to accept quests, not just press the button. Who knew?), I am finally under-ways on my adventure and it is very promising so far. I have only gotten one piece of new clothes and my mind is already brimming with anticipation of all the character customizing I will be able to do.
The feel of the power of the magic is also very cool.
My only problem with the game so far is that the controls seem a bit loose. You get the ever so slight feeling that the character is sliding around more that actually walking or running. I just doesn’t feel as solid as Zelda. Oh, and the lip-sync is horrible. Just horrible I say. Which is a shame because the dialogue is really top notch.
And hello sweet escapism! The Christmas game season is about to begin. I might not survive.
First we have Fable 2. I wasn’t originally going to buy it, but early reviews seem favorable and with the delay of Little Big Planet, I need something to play next weekend. I am afraid it turns out to be to much sandbox and to little Adventure, but the moral choice good/evil aspect I find very attractive.
Which leads us to Little Big Planet. I have tried nothing of it but the buzz surrounding it is almost thick enough to float a boat and since my PS3 is still a virgin, I really couldn’t resist. It looks a lot of fun.
Then comen Fallout 3. Or, possible, It will be out before LBP. Well see. I never got to play the original Fallouts very much (yes, you can go ahead and disavow me now) but they looked very cool and I am always up for some post-apocalyptic mutant killing so how could I resist?
Then there will be a small pause until Gears of War 2 drops. This might be filled by Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, assuming that the US can still afford to send planes to Europe by then. And assuming that Europe can still afford to have them land here. The first two were surprisingly good platformers, compared to the last one i tried for the Gameboy which was slow and boring. Add a bit of of role-playing (as in stat-building and equipment hoarding) to keep me entertained and there goes some more of my money. And you play as a woman, which is always a bonus.
Gears of War 2 I am looking so much forward to that, assuming a spherical space-time, I might as well be looking backwards. It’s really not the big guns or the tough talk or the nasty aliens or the big guns. It’s the fact that the gameplay just fits me so perfectly that I played the first one 3 times. And possibly also the big guns. I mean, who can resist a really big gun?
Games like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge might also make the list eventually. I just have a terrible track-record with horror games; as in I can only play them for a maximum of 30 minutes before I need to put down the controller and have a good lie down with the lights on. Mirror’s Edge might also require a lie-down but in this case possibly preceded by headaches and vomiting. I get motion sick like you wouldn’t believe and almost didn’t make it through the first level of Call of Duty 4 because it took place on a boat. Mirror’s Edge looks amazing and all and also exactly like a something that would cause me to regret playing it.
Spam on my comments have begun to go up. This was fun to begin with, as you might remember, but now I am getting a bit tired of it. Thus I have implemented a captcha solution on my site. Sorry about that.
I did it to prevent spam but also because of a new (to me) project called reCAPTCHA which basically means that while you are silently cursing the 10 seconds that you must spend proving to me that you are a human, you are also contributing to the preservation of old books and texts by identifying words that computers cannot recognize. Isn’t that neat?
So: leave a comment and know that you have given my life meaning while also helping the greater good.
“People tend to be overconfident about their own abilities and the outcome of their plans. Something like 90% of people think that they are above average drivers less likely to get into an accident than the average joe. This is so pervasive that there is actually a scientific name for the few people who accurately assess their own future, their abilities, and what other people think of them: clinically depressed.”
From this article about the current economic crisis.
Have you ever noticed those small black security strips that are usually tacked on to DVD covers when you buy DVDs?
I have and I usually try to remove them when I do. What I don’t understand is why must the glue they use to stick them on be so damned strong when you always place them inside the plastic-sealed DVD covers anyway? It’s not like you can actually get a go at trying to remove them while in the store, unless you try to unwrap the DVD, and if you start doing that in a store I am sure that is an almost foolproof way of bringing the attention of people who will prevent you from stealing it.
But that’s probably just me.