Battles and some of Modern kind

For some reasons it's nice to have different release dates for North America and Europe - even if in most cases it's kind of annoying. In this one my preorder has been shipped already, not today, not yesterday, but at sunday (local time). Today is release day of Battlefield 3 in NA. Tomorrow in Australia. 28. day in Europe. Luckily I have stuff to do before the EU launch, but hopefully not too much.

While waiting for the release, I should play other games while I can. Few days back I got back for PS3 games. Tested PS Move once again with Sports Champions, which is quite nice if you ask me. Many gamers don't like the Move at all, but once you get used to it, it's not as bad everybody says it to be. Move still has low game count, but it doesn't mean it sucks. It is hard to do a good game for Move to it actually work smoothly and to be addictive. Yeah, the price is little bit high (games are little pricey too), but if you have cash left with your other purchases, why not try this one out.

But enough of Move.

Battle at Hu Lao gate - beware the almighty Lu Bu!

With Sports Champions to Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce. I believe the Dynasty Warriors may be known series for some. It is one of many titles from Tecmo Koei. As I liked Dynasty Warriors 4 Hyper (PC) years ago, I wanted to try this one out, one reasons to be the good price. But as I played, it might be quite difficult game, even if you tweek the difficulty settings pretty low (or I'm just bad player in this game). Maybe I'll play Bayonetta next time with PS3...

Another game I could play as I wait BF3 is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Even if I don't like it much as the first two games, it makes more harm not to play paid game. Graphics are nice yes, but this time I'm going to for game mechanics more. MW3 has pretty smooth settings (not the plot), but configs for keyboard changes (example: toggle buttons) are not there. You can change some keys for toggle, but not all. Ironsight and crouch can be changed to toggle, so you don't have to press them twice to go crouch and back up.
When I played the multiplayer first time some time ago (free weekend and maybe it was with 2x XP amount) it was fun, at the time didn't quite notice few things which made my decision of the game in the future (aka. today) change to not as fun as it was. One feature that I don't like is the kill spree award system, where you get chance to use harriets or other aircraft to almost instantly kill enemies (or other "usefull" stuff against opponents).

This all reminded how much I liked the first games in the series (sad they don't have multiplayer though). Love for the first game in the CoD series newer will go numb. They were simple as raindrops and someway entertaining for gamers in that genre. And as written before, 1 and 2 were the only games I played with every difficulty setting, or almost all of them. Still remember one-man mission in the first game - god I hated it so much. And the escape afterwards was pain in the ass. Times change and so does games do. Some to good some to bad and maybe some in between.

But when you think things through, every game has it's own problems and some may not even be that. All depends on players and their opinions what works for them.

7 and 8

I have been using Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate about year and a half. It is quite nice OS (Operating System) and newest PC games require it for DirectX 11 support (Vista uses it too, but who uses Vista nowadays?). 7 has nice slick look and some of its features are quite usefull for my opinion. Microsoft has improved the driver support, but still it has still much to cover up.

Many say that XP is still the best Windows OS available. And I agree in almost entirely. Yes it has good look and good user interface, at least better than 7, where the control panel is kinda messed up at least with normal and advanced display options. I have searched many times for couple settings, but keep getting using few minutes before realizing, I have been searching in wrong place etc.
XP has basic looks, but as I find myself liking for nice graphic interface, 7 is more for me in that case. And XP doesn't have DirectX 11 support as it supports only to version 9. Yeah, maybe I'm going with the rest of the audience too much...

As soon as I heard Microsoft was making new OS, I was interested. And same time I thought, what are they going to do for new OS that they don't already have in other systems. It would be hard to beat any previous system, because almost all of them work well. Now as time has passed and Windows 8 Developer Preview (the 8 is a codename what I have heard) is in test phase, so what the heck. It has 3 versions of it now: 32 and 64bit versions and 64bit version with developer tools in it. Of course I wanted to try the developer tool version, but it required about 5Gigabytes of space on DVD disc. At the time I had only 4.7Gb disc so I had to try the plain 64bit version. The installation went in the same way as previous two OS's, nothing special in there - which was quite disapointment for I hoped for updated installations windows. After installation copied the files and restarted, screen popped up with new UI (User Interface) with different settings to config the files after the final part of installation. To my opinion, there were too many choices for information gathering.

8's new Metro UI is pretty fun idea, but still it looks little bit too plain. All the programs you install to use them, will be showed in this interface. Luckily you can place all the apps however you like and even delete the shortcuts from the Metro UI or just realign them.
But what comes for settings for apps and other programs on Metro UI, they are quite oddly placed. After starting an app, you have to move your cursor to bottom left to have menu pop up and then select Settings option. How do you remember this or even understand to do this is beyond me. Same problem was with Shutting down or Restarting the computer. First you have to go to Desktop view (You can do it in Metro UI too, but I'm going to specify the "old style"), bottom left to open menu, Settings and then selecting the Power icon to have power menu pop up for restart, shutdown etc...
And if you want to change between Metro UI and classic UI, you have to shut active app in Metro and then press Windows key, and if you're in Desktop, pressing Windows key takes you to Metro.

It may feel complicated now, but don't know for sure. Some apps, if not all, have other settings or maybe "UI settings" showing up when you press right mouse button and yet other settings are completely elsewhere located. For some this may work perfectly, but I don't see any ideas behind this innovation.

In short:
Windows 8 is kind of nice update for new system, but I don't know if two UI options are the way for specially new users. It may take while to catch on with it...we'll see.

Too many titles and one Beta

Again with this crap, too many games to play and no time to lose. And don't even remind me of those PS3 games I have. Last title was Heavy Rain which has about 5hours of gameplay, and after that I have only used the console for videos and movies. Oh well, can only blame myself for hogging games like rare item collector, but newer finishing them. Reminds me of buying Terry Pratchett's novels...

Last game I finished was Dead Island, but you can play it again after completing it though. Other games I have started but never finished (and I mean those that have a value of finishing): Dragon Age 2, Hunted The Demon's Forge, Fist of the North Star Ken's Rage(PS3), Dynasty Warriors Strikeforce (PS3), Far Cry 2, Deus Ex HR. Too big list if you ask me. PS3 titles were mostly a case that I wanted to try them out, because they are KOEI titles. Both of them are kind of games that you have get used to before you can enjoy them. I didn't get past that line yet, but I'm thinking to return to. But unlikely in this year.

Luckily there is still Battlefield 3 Beta running, even if europe retail release is little over two weeks from now (28.10). And even if it is released, I believe lots of gamers are going to play the multiplayer over singleplayer more. I just hope the plot for singleplayer mode is playable, which reminds me of Battlefield Bad Company 2, which I never finished, but I don't care...multiplayer was tons of fun!

BF3 beta is quite nice game at the moment, with some bugs and glitches, but hey, what game doesn't have any of those. I have encountered couple glitches, one from alpha state and one from beta. Beta glitch was so tiny that I don't remember what it was, but I know it was there. They told that there was hundreds of bug and glitch fixes from alpha to beta, but we don't know what have changed. And now they promise to fix more bugs for retail version from all the feedback in Battlelog.

If there is bugs in retail version, they don't bother me as long as they aren't "in the way", which hasn't happened to me in alpha or in beta yet. At the moment as beta is running, I have had a blast of fun. Have only encountered couple nuts in the game, one who shot teammates for no reason and squad mates who ran straight to enemy fire without looking up if there was any threat.

And now if I would get some inspirations, I might continue to clean and make my sisters website to half ready. Till then, games are on hold...oh the horror!

"Do a Quest for me and i'll be your Friend"

"Oh crap, I have to write something to my blog, I'm awfully late for that again. I'll be back in a sec, gotta go in Sanctuary first *presses ESC key* and now I have to go to this "settings" panel with my character to bring Main game menu *selects Game Management and then Save Room* and yet again with my character go to nearest cloth mannequing to save the game..."

Yeah, I bought Fable 3 to PC at friday on Steam weekend sales. It was little over 13€ so it was quite nice deal, IF you can get over the flaws the game has. Fable 3 uses Games for Windows Live software, so be ready to wait to start the game if Microsoft Fable servers are busy...you have to wait to log in for the service before the game starts...

First of all, I have only played The Lost Chapters about 10 years ago...well not that long ago but not very far from it. Newest Fable release has the same funny NPCs that uses British accents, or something very similar. And the gameplay doesn't differ much from the first game. Interactivities with NPCs are little annoying, first selecting the character you want to talk to, then select what you want to do with them (with pushing or holding certain buttons) and when you're finished with them, you have to press escape to go next victim. This was much easier with first game even if there was little change to talk wrong npc, but you didn't have to choose them separately.

Fighting is kinda similar, except bows have been replaced with guns and magic use is WAY different than first one. You have to change spells from armoury everytime you want to use something else. And jumping is glitched. Normally in sword or gun fight when you're near the enemy, you can evade attacks by jumping, but this doesn't work sometime and you have to hope to get far enough from next attack.

And the experience system isn't quite nice. As in the first game you can spend your exp points to different skill, depending how much points you have in your Strenght, Accuracy and Magic bars. Third one uses this odd Long Road thing, where you open chest with Quild Seals which you gather from killing or making friends etc. But you can only open chests that are in current line you're in, so you have to continue main quest to open more chest for skills.
So the RPG system...isn't quite the system we hoped for.

There are quite a lot glitches in this game, or so I have heard. Only glitches I have encountered is one NPC character locked herself into a building and I have active quest for her...how can I finish it if I have no means to enter the building - unless that NPC is "freed" after becoming ruler of Albion. Another glitch was in a middle of one quest, where you have to travel through passage to arrive in mini arena, where some skeleton hobbes spawn and you have to kill them before continuing. First few times I tried this, the arena didn't lock me, so I couldn't continue the quest or leave it, because I didn't save before entering it. Finally trying this few times, got the quest finished, but it took so much time.


But if you get over all of the bad gameplay, this is quite nice and funny game. Quite easy too. So if you see this on sales somewhere - don't buy with full price, not worth it - give it a try.

Random Video Glance Vol2

Whole weekend almost on Battlefield 3 beta. Can say it was pretty good weekend, even though saturday went more in with little hangover. Was drinking with some old friends for long time at friday, too long if you ask me. Luckily it was my payday so I could afford to loose it a bit. Same day my boss retired - kinda felt odd that day with these all happening.

Oh well, now that I'm little late for posting another entry, but to fill that space and before posting major entry, I'll throw another Video Glance for you:

First video is very funny spoof for Phoenix Wright game with boots:
Phoenix Wright - Boot to the Head

 

As I like to watch some videos from internet movie/game/random_stuff reviewers, ThatGuyWithTheGlasses is one of the best site, with lots of reviewers. Next video is from Doug, also known as That Guy With the Glasses (...duh!) with couple shots from Super Mario Brothers movie: Nostalgia Critic "bob-omb, monkey"

And lets continue with another spoof video from TGWTG site and of course from Doug:
Judge Dredd Blow Dance! 

That's all. And now I'm going to continue working and writing next blog entry...hopefully completing it tomorrow...

Bugs and Glitches from Resort

Getting more into it...

14th day was pretty nice day. Although it was my final day-off from monday - wednesday timeline, it didn't matter so much, 'cause I got hold on my copy of Dead Island (PC)! This was pretty big surprise for me - usually it takes about week from release day for game been posted from UK to Finland.

Taking a ride (backseat) in the Jungle

As I told previous post that I loved this game. Love hasn't faded away at all. Me and my friend had little troubles with voice overs and ended up using Ventrilo at the end from Skype. You can blame the game for not having mute button or disable option for mic. But if you have microphone or headset where you can mute it via hardware, you have no trouble with this - or just unplug the mic.

After saving a guy and getting item reward

Some of you might say that this game is horrendous for all the bugs and glitches. But I think you just have to take it all with some humor. Some situations are just hilarious with good friends and some are there to find out what you can do. I found myself finding some bugs at some points and took screenshots of them.
Well, some of these bugs were kinda annoying and just evil, like the one with items stuck in air and you couldn't take them at all - even if I didn't need them anyways.

Matchmaking in this game works in someways. You can join other peoples games, if they are almost at the same chapter. But one thing the game doesn't show up which is not nice for new players: If the game you are about to join in has a player who has already finished it and started new one with old character. With this there is only one problem (can be routed, but takes time or patience): zombies are at the same level as the player who started the game. So if you are starting the game first time with level one character, you may stomp on zombies you can't kill easily (unless you have stomp skill - you can kick them on ground and smash the heads, one hit kills - but for that you need more then 4 levels to get the skill). You can hide or go with the higher level guy, but must be really careful, even if you don't lose as much of cash as at higher levels and with more zombies around you.

Oh yeah, one well known problem is on console (on PC too, but not as radical): save games. Sometimes they get deleted for no reason. My friend accidentally got this problem on (or so I believe) after some sort of glitch. He did join the game with different character with no problem, but his high level character data was almost wiped out. He started new game with same character and got some of his levels back as his skill points, but weapons and items were gone. I believe this is low chance to happen to anybody, but still the chances are too high.

But if you aren't that worried about funny bugs, glitches and other stuff and want some good time killing zombies, I recommend playing with friends who have same level character(s) as you do.

And lucky enough, even Australians can play this!

There is already newest patches for PS3 and Xbox 360, but not for PC version. It has been patched at the time of release, but after that they have only been working on next one. I can wait for the patch, but it better be coming soon before I'm starting to finish the game with other three main character.

Randomism - Little changes

Little thinking and consideration, I'm going to shorten the title and slogan of this blog. At the start of the blog, I had my doubt about the title (or header) what it should say, because my hobbies can go quite different ways and interests are quite vast, it's kind of hard to think fitting title. And I have yet to use humor in my blog, I'm going to let that go...I ain't no comedian on internet.

As the beginning I was trying to make something that is abbreviation or word "efin" in a way (I like to use my username on anything, like in my old website), but in a long run it kind of failed to my opinion. Couple words fits; I like experience everything that seems to be in point that falls in my category of interested or want to find more about the subject or object. Fandomism is the word I was struggling with a bit. In some way I hate talking about things I'm fan of, but in the end, I have no other subjects to write of.

Slogan was the hardest which was kinda odd for I like to play with words, so this is one thing I have to rethink again in the future.

Games, platforms and communes

PC gamers know very well about Valve's Steam and EA's Origin, game community and gaming platforms. Although Origin is pretty new as gaming platform, it still has the same purpose as Steam. There are several other platforms, like Xfire and Windows Live. Many PC gamers use them to show friends what games they are playing at the time or have been playing in general and same time they are able to communicate with each other. Some platforms show unlocked achievements and some are just for the gameplay.

Steam and Origin logos

I have been using Steam from 2009 when I got Left 4 Dead 2. I didn't know what to expect from this platform, but it ran quite easily. After some time, there were problems with downloading updates that didn't come in as easily as they should have. And there were some little issues with the interface.

Like Steam, Xfire is one quite popular platform too. At the time I registered using their program back in 2007 they didn't have game store, but as times go by, they are getting along with every platform. At first it was pretty nice to use it to keep tracking friends to join their gameplay sessions, if they were playing online games, like Maple Story long time ago. Using this program had little issues, like using custom skins with different feature windows. Sometimes they worked correctly and sometimes not at all. And now as they have updated their software, to my opinion they have WAY too many different features which can be opened with different hotkeys. I had little trouble with this, but now that I only use the program to track my game statistics, I don't have to use the hotkeys so much.

I like these platforms for the sole purpose to statistics tracking and friend tracking, it's more easier to join games nowadays without asking for IP address of a server etc.. And without doubt, the most best thing is no CD/DVD usage (Steam and Origin). After installing the game, you can put the case back to shelf and play never opening the case anymore. Even if there is some games discs that has DRM system with them. I don't mind myself that much, but in the long run it's more of annoying.


Even if they are popular, there are things people don't like or just hate.
Steam had its own problems, customer service (responsing to customers and resolving) and use of program, etc.. I have to admit that I don't really care about these things (too optimistic if you ask why), as long they are resolved within couple months and isn't affected to my gameplay, but still it's not nice to let customers wait.

Origin is another platform I have used, not for long though. As I got into Battlefield 3 alpha test, I had to download this platform in order to install game. It was no problem for me as I wanted to test it out anyways. There was one idiotic way to start the game, but I'll reveal that later (so I don't have any chances to get banned from the beta test period, EA is that strict).

Comics and Kimonos Part 2

Part one covered my love for anime, this part will cover second type of art: manga, which I'm kind fond of these days. I have always wanted to have quite big collection of manga in my bookshelf, but in a long run it takes quite a lot of money, and waiting for new is always something I curse (publishers deadlines for upcoming releases etc.). I had over 100 mangas, but now I may have less; got rid of finnish releases which I bought few years back because they were too easy to get and little cheap and I have gotten used to reading english translated comics basicly. And there are so many odd translations if compared to original text, or they just don't fit in at all.

At this moment I should have nearly the amount of copies of manga I had back then (or slighty over). And more is coming as I'm writing this.

Like with anime, I do have favourites among manga. The most liked series are Berserk and Claymore (their anime counterparts are nothing like them). Many of those who have read them at least one book or few pages, knows that these are very much alike. Blood, Gore, Horror and little thrill, big swords and bigger enemies. And the characters get in real troubles, not like in mangas for teenagers, where characters just hit in the head and keep saying "get stronger" or whatnot.

Other series I have which I like too are Fairy Tail, Samurai Deeper Kyo, Togari and Dragon Sisters! Well, after 20 volumes of Samurai Deeper Kyo, the story is just barely keeping up. Substory after substory, event after event they just keep adding more of these, never really explaining why and how. First 5-6 volumes were just fine with everybody looking out if Kyo, the main character might have been the guy who slaughtered hundreds or people at some point, but now it's more like their friendship...why?
Fairy Tail in this manner is handled little different and little better to my opinion, even if it relies more and more to some class as Dragon Ball with character development. As I am little fan with Koei's games, Dragon Sisters! rely on the story of The Three Kingdoms (with little twist) is quite funny, but yet again, I haven't read much to tell more about it. Same with Togari.

Artwork is pretty stunning - beware of the revealing stuff though

There is one another awesome serie, in anime and manga: Highschool of the Dead. Schoolgirls with...*ahem*, guns and zombies, you can't go wrong. And the art style, just breath taking to my opinion. Anime with same art style speeks for the serie itself.

Having fun at resort with Zombies

I got hold of Dead Island little earlier than I expected. Order depatched from UK 7.9 and I got it 14.9. Unlike with Deus Ex Human Revolution what took over a week to get in for some reason.
It was quite surprising moment, when it was dropped from my letterbox. First I thought my cat Maju had done something "nice" again, but lucky enough, it was one nicely brown letterbox.

Installation and other stuff went as usual, no problems. Before I called one of my IRC/Steam pal to play the game with, I went ahead and checked the gameplay and how the game looked graphically. I had little trouble with mouse sensitivity but got it working in no time. Game itself looked pretty nice, but some effects with random objects, like beach ball, were off. And you could not even kick chairs or anything else really...well, you can kick zombies, but nothing else. But every else works pretty well.

And after my friend got in the game and after few minutes we ran into sound problems. Because Dead Island isn't directly a Steam game, it (presumed after we both tried to change Steams voice setting to push-to-talk) uses its own voice over. My friend didn't like it as much, but I didn't care. Then we tried voice over with Skype, but ran problems with echo. I don't remember what settings and stuff my friend tried, but after while I remembered that my webcam - which I bought few months ago - had build-in mic. Disabled it, but problem still existed. That took about half an hour or whole hour. Then we tried Ventrilo, but problem existed still, but we had enough and started playing even if the sounds were echoing.

And because we played this on co-op, I don't really know what is it like in single player. I believe it may be pretty hard with all the zombies, but some of you may still beat it. Still I would recommend to play with friends.

Otherwise I'd say, this is damn good game and recommend playing with friends. Graphics may differ a bit regarding your computer specs, but if you have pretty high end, you should have no problems. With medium end computers you may wanna tweet couple settings.

I have only played this for about half a day, so I don't know too much yet. But as this is possible to play in multiplayer, I'll propably end it before Deus Ex - yes, I haven't played it through yet either.