I guess I’ll start with what I like with the game, as I do find it quite enjoyable and will most likely continue to play it for quite some time. One thing that strikes me is that everything in the game is (or can be) player made, all you need is the cash and you can own the best stuff in the game. No more raiding 6 hours a night 4 nights a week, no more comitting to a game like it’s a job, and no more angst because you decide to take a weekend off from your game and all of a sudden everyone else is a week ahead of you. Of course you progress faster when playing more, but most of the time you can log in once or twice a week for 15 minutes and still get something done. Another thing that is very different from most other games is that there are no classes, whatever starting race or profession you have doesn’t matter that much after a while. If you after 3 months get tired of firing lasers you can start learning about rockets if you want, or maybe you would rather play a support ship repairing your friends ships and using targeting disruptors on their enemies. I love this freedom of choice, you can be whatever you want to be given time to learn the neccesary skills for the profession. That’s all that is needed really, time, and not game time, but real world time. CCP, the makers of EVE Online invite players to visit them on Iceland every now and then and talk about issues, concerns and the future of the game, now there is some community spirit right there! These players are chosen by other players by free voting to represent them and their wishes. Another cool thing is that you can pay for your subscription with in game money, although it will take you a while before you can make this kind of money in under a month, still it’s great for people who have been playing a while and don’t want to spend real money on it forever.

So, what don’t I like about EVE? A whole bunch of things actually, and I’ll start with the worst. The GUI is just horrible, I can’t believe they have a team working fulltime on this, it’s just horrid, stiff, buggy, unconfigurable and just nasty. A nice thing about space is that pathfinders can be farily simple, a straight line will suffice in 99% of all cases, but not 100% which CCP seems to have missed. It would be nice if my ship understood that the fastest way to an enemy I wish to approach isn’t to ram an asteroid and hump it until I either pass through it or bounce of itt enough times to actually have it out of my way. Pathfinders are easy to make, quick and would just make things a whole lot better. Also, it would be nice if asteroids or other large objects like space stations could actually stop bullets or rockets, right now all weapons pass through everything and this just plain sucks, I want to be able to take cover in an asteroid field if I want (and have it do something). And no space game should be without the most ultimate move of all space movies, ramming, ramming os the most awesome kamikaze move of all time and in space it’s just that much more awesome and crazy (like me), just give us ramming darn it! The game is also missing a halv a dimension, it is about 2.5 D, I say this because there is always an “up” wherever you are, space stations are all oriented the same way, the ship tries to orient itself after this, and some other things that generally bother me. And finally, all weapons can be fired in all directions, every ship can fire all its weapons in any direction at any time, what is up with that? I want ships with blind spots, I want ships with a big friggin cannon can can only be fired straight ahead (like the mothership cannon in Homeworld Cataclysm). On the same not I’d like to talk about armour, some ships look pretty awesome, their entire dorsal area is covered in armour plating to protect the sufter underbellie where it should be vulnerable.. but no.. Armour is omnidirectional, just like shields, and that also sucks. This loss is something that angers me a lot, although it might be a design choice to make the game easier and more accessable to the common man, to me as a sci-fi fan it’s just a missed oportunity.

All in all it’s a great game, with flaws just like most other games, but some aspects just shine and make you want to have its babies… for dinner… mm… tasty babies…

The Good:

First up is the Nintendo Wii, which for starters has a lousy name, although that is just cosmetic. The Wii had a few things going for it when it was released. It was substantially cheaper than its counterparts, and it supported gamecube games so it already had quite a few games you could play on it. Another bright idea was to not get involved in the full HD race, because as it turns out most experts can’t even tell the difference between 1080p and 720p, this would help make the console profitable and cheap compared to its peers. Also it had a new controller which gave it a nice fresh feeling. Some other nice aspects are that it uses bluetooth for communication and has built in wlan. Having old games available through Virtual Console (VC) was another stroke of genius, most people still remember and prefer old games above the games of today. Also it looks pretty decent in most environments, it’s quiet and feels more expensive than it should.

The Xbox 360 has quite a few things going for it, full HD compatible, Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), XNA, and the general attitude towards indie game developers. Another amazing fact it that Microsoft managed to get a whole lot of game companies to back it up with third party game, I’m especially impressed that they managed to steal away the GTA franchise from Sony. Today it is also reasonably priced, with the premium version available at around 200€ which is a pretty sweet spot for consoles. It’s a whole lot of machine on its own, but being as it’s also the cheapest console available it feels like the given choice at the moment. It also caters for all kinds of gamers, the hardcore fans, and some casual fans, being slightly more focused on hardcore it has stolen most of the hard core gamers from the other consoles, meaning that it probably has more people who actually play it regularly and buy games for it regularly, which is good if you make money on selling games.

Last up with the good stuff is the PS3. At first it wasn’t too expensive considering it was priced pretty much equally to any blue-ray player available, so it was really great for people who wanted to pick one of those up and the added bonus of a gaming console. This was the stronger console when looking purely at the hardware, it used OpenGL (well, a version of it), which means more standardized games, nicer code in general and easy portability to the PC. The PlayStation Network (PSN) is also a great thing, although it is slightly weaker than XBLA.

The Bad:

What the Wii did wrong is a long list. One word can summarize most of its problems: Delayed. The real 1:1 control scheme (also knows now as Wii Motion Plus) wasn’t available on release, saving Nintendo not even 1€ per controller pair (Nunchuck and Wiimote), this was their first mistake, because it couldn’t live up to its hype. Secondly, it’s basically a Gamecube with slightly better specs, there’s no reason it should cost more than three times as much as the game cube, it should have started out at about double the price of a Gamecube, and the price today should be much much lower. Seeing as it is a Gamecube with a makeover it should have been easy to manufacture as it used components that were readily available, Nintendo’s rant about not being able to produce them fast enough was and is bullshit, albeit clever bullshit helping them sell more as people went apenuts to get their mitts on one. Why they can only manage to release 3 old games a week on VC is beyond me, they don’t even do that much with them.. maybe if you could remap the input buttons to suit you this would be more reasonable, but not a lot as that would mainly be a one time thong for all VC games. Also, no one wants to pay 10$ for mario cart 64 when they can get a brand new nice game on XBLA for 5$. This overprices old rom shit has got to go Nintendo, and while you are at it lower the price of the console to about a third of the current price.

Wii part 2.. (yes, there’s that much bad stuff). If it had slightly higher specs the initial (and only) price would have been more reasonable, also it would have allowed it to get in on some HD action with 720p and HDMI, the fact that it doesn’t have either is quite lousy. Miyamoto may have been a reasonable person once, but has been gripped by delusion in his older years, yes, hardware becomes cheaper with time, it’s cheaper to manufacture the Wii now than when it was new, and you can pass this saving on to us you cheap bastard. And don’t lie about the old customers feeling cheated that they payed more for it, they got to have it for several years more than the rest of us, I would think this should be worth something, but when I look at all the lousy games for it I’m almost motivated to believe him, we saved a couple of years of wasted time instead. We were also promised more high quality Nintendo games at regular intervals when it was released, we have seen just a handful of these, and now, finally some third party developers have begun trying to make something for it that isn’t crap, although after 3 years this is a tad late in the game to just get started. And what is up with all the crappy addons, the Wii wheel, come on, not only does it suck and take up space, it’s just mean ugly. Not to get started about the Wii Fit… ugh, and now finally Motion Plus is showing up, but no one will be supporting it as no one will own one (hope you enjoy the 1€ you saved here Nintendo). Why can’t we get the only thing we have asked for since it was released? Support for external hard drives please! Another missed feature is that it can’t play DVD’s, although thanks to homebrew this is now possible, also a cheap ass corner to cut Nintendo, shame on you.

Wii part thrii.. The other consoles have terrible GUI’s for the most part, but the Nintendo must have aimed for the worst GUI ever, the only thing I can imagine that would make it worse was is it didn’t have the IR-point and click interface but rather forced you to use the tild functions on the Wiimote to navigate around. I’m not sure what is worst, the non-configurable TiVo layout, the elevator music in the Wii shop channel, the extreeeeeeeeemely slow connections to the Wii shop, the totally worthless progress bar (complete with the most annoying sound ever), or that you can’t get fullsize screenshots or watch games in action via some sort of embedded video is not for me to decide.. but it’s so bad I hope religion isn’t BS so the designers behind it all can burn in hell for all eternity to the sound of their own progress bar. And what happened to the 1/4 of the cost developing games for the Wii compared to other consoles? Most titles cost an equal amount to the games on the Xbox 360, and some are actually a lot more expensive, like Geometry Wars that costs 5€ on the Xbox and about 40€ on the Wii for a gimped version of the original. And why can’t I use the Classic Controller for my Gamecube games, or for that matter, use the Classic Controller without a Wiimote attached.

The Xbox 360, well, it was expensive as heck once, but now it’s actually the cheapest option out there. It’s made by Microsoft *gag* and that’s a stain it can never get rid of, but it’s the first thing they have done fairly well and I’ll give them that. The Red Ring of Death was horrible, but they took action and increased the warranty, and today with the (I think third?) incarnation of the hardware the problem might be solved. It looks like a cheap plastic toaster, sounds like a vacuum cleaner and generally doesn’t fit in anywhere, some more effort in this area would have been nice. The controllers are pretty good except for the totally apeshit useless steering cross, please, suck up your pride and buy a license from Nintendo to use their superior layout, it has worked for 25 years, and you haven’t come close to anything as good yourselves. And stop having multiple versions of the same console, colours are ok to fiddle with, but have one one hard-drive size and one set of output ports.

The PS3 did just about everything right except for having a blue-ray player, although it was a nifty way to get a blue-ray player when it was released Sony failed to realize that the Blue-ray would flop and that the console could live without it. The controllers are still the same old midget sized controller the Playstation consoles have always had, ergonomics anyone? Sadly Sony made an epic fail by using the Cell processor, since no one could (can) use it to its potential, but they meant well. Now if they could have gotten 3rd party developers to actually make games for it rather than make half-assed ports from the 360 it might just work out if it wasn’t too expensive. Yes I know it has Metal Gear Solid, Little Big Planet and soon God of War 3, but 3 games isn’t enough to pay 400€ plus nearly 100€ per game.

The End, Love and Peace everyone.

In general not much has happened, I’ve taken a break from Everquest 2 for a while and started playing EVE Online instead. I’m quite enjoying myself with that game, the only problem is that I don’t know that many others that are playing it. I’m not sure what people are talking about it being tough to learn, it’s not more complicated than any other mmo’s out there, just a bit different. But more on this later in the week.

Look forward to some of my ramblings on the current console generation, EVE Online, Everquest II, coming movies, coming games and some series I’ve been having a look at.

For those of you with little education in the fine art of gaming, the Mega Man series is an action platformer that started out on the NES a long time ago. The first game in the series can probably compete with the toughest games ever made and didn’t win that many hearts. But the second game is know by everyone with taste from that era.

Mega Man 9 had been developed to look and feel like Mega Man 2 in every way possible. This is the source of its strength, but also its Achilles’ heel, more on this later.

The game is tough, and it will probably cause more than a few tears in the eyes of grown men. At first it will be the charm, fond memories of olden days and the fantastic music. Later on the tears will be the result of frustration and in some cases, anger, but in a good way!

There are many achievements to be claimed, some are easy, like defeating 100 enemies, but most are not. The wonderful thing about them is that they can truly be called achievements. Apart from the first few really easy ones the rest are only for people who want have the ultimate bragging rights.

The only new feature this game contains compared to the second Mega Man is that you can collect something that I assume are screws. With these screws you can buy items to make the game a little more forgiving, like being able to survive landing on spikes once, or buying an extra life. It doesn’t add that much to the game, but it doesn’t distract from it either.

The graphics are wonderfully retro, and it really does feel like a NES original game. The music is also utterly fantastic, you can’t do more than smile and enjoy it, and occasionally head bang a little. The controls are flawless, even when the game does its best to mess with what you are trying to do.

Now to some down sides. I’m not a big fan of the pointless achievements, but I guess everyone should be able to get at least a few of them. The biggest drawback is that the game is completely in 4:3 aspect ratio. Normally I wouldn’t complain about such a thing, but most people today have a wide screen TV, and those big black stripes to the left and right are just such a waste.

Another thing that I would like to have seen would be that the buster (base weapon) could fire in more directions than left and right, as this is the cause of much annoyance when playing. Although I must admit I have not yet completed the game, so there might be a weapon that allows this kind of freedom, like in the Metal Blades from Mega Man 2. Also I’m not sure how much this would have changed the feel of the game, it might have ruined the game as well, thus I’m not going to give it a negative mark because of this. But the problem with the aspect ration remains!

A total of 9 out of 10 points for this game, would have been a 10 with some minor modifications. Sadly they made it a little bit too retro.

T.W.T.P.B is an arcade shooter made mainly by hObbe at Spell of Play Studios, an independent game development and publishing company. Spell of Play Studios release their own games with their platform hUb and all games are free to download in their demo mode, and cost a small penny for the complete versions.

T.W.T.P.B features 10 levels with a nice boss fight to round them off, and a story line to keep us curious folks interested in completing the game. Although, the game quickly becomes quite difficult and those 10 levels will feel like a lot more. There are 4 different abilities all acquired in the first four levels, and they all have their use, I’m particularly fond if the Time Warp ability which resembles Bullet Time from Max Payne.

The game has been developed iteratively and is currently in its 25th iteration, with bugs being fixed and features added every iteration (usually once a week). I myself am responsible for several aspects of the completed game, so if you have improvement suggestions feel free to join the forums at Spell of Play Studios and make your voice heard.

The game is integrated with the Spell of Play community where global high scores are stored. Future releases will feature different difficulty setting so hopefully everyone can beat the game and feel like rock stars. Achievements are also in the works for those that enjoy wearing their medals out in the open.

The graphics are stunning yet simplistic and leave little to be desired, the in game music is nice too but after a while you will probably end up disabling it for your own soundtracks. The sound effects are good but could be improved upon. The game is still incomplete so it would be unfair to judge it too harshly at the moment, needless to say I’ve commented on the things that need be improved and hope to see them realized in time.

All in all I give this game a score of 8 out of 10. With high hopes that the finished product will rate higher.

The graphics are simple, basically cubes and spheres, but clear and with some nice looking effects. I particularly like the flame effects, although I could be somewhat biased on this issue.

The sound is good, there’s only one soundtrack and it quickly repedative, but it’s ok. Sound effects are plentiful, and had I had a better sound system and sound card I might be inclined to say more, but as it is I can only say that the audio quality is good enough for me.

There are a few different gameplay modes, my favourite being Capture The Flag (CTF), since it promotes teamplay and goals other than violence, which isn’t bad that either. There’s also Babomatch (Deathmatch) and Team Babomatch for those so inclined.

There are several different weapons to chose from, each with unique attributes. A few popular choices are the shotgun, sub machine-gun, sniper rifle and of course my favourite, the flamer. There are also some secondary armaments tho chose from, knives for close encounters, a shield and a self destruct nuke.

All in all I must say I love this game even though it has some issues, and I give it a score of 8 out of 10.

Today I’ll be reviewing my first game. And I’ll also be adding a new category called Retrospective. This will mostly be used on older things that I have had for a while or things I saw long ago but have recently rediscovered, like movies I saw during my childhood.

In the future I’ll at least add one thing each week. Once I get some more routine in this matter I’ll ramp up to one post of each category each week, more than is out of the question though, at least as my minimum.

Last night I finally got around to watching this movie. Expectations were, well, I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t expecting that much. Having seen Richard Chamberlain’s interpretation of Quatermain I was however expecting something entertaining and with a twist of humour.

The movie is a typical Hero’s Journey, with Allan Quatermain as the hero. Two young British nobles seek Quatermain’s aid in searching for their missing friend, a friend that was searching for king Solomon’s mines when he vanished. The group trek across Afrika to find the mines and face several obstacles during their travels.

There is very little action to speak of, and theres no spark of humour at all. The story is predicatble and doesn’t stimulate at all. The acting is fairly good, with only some incidents of overacting. The dialogue is strained at times and doesn’t surprise at all.

The image quality is very good, but screen time is wasted on non-essential items on occasion. The audio quality is fair, with only a few instances of dialogue dropping below audible. The scenery is quite nice, and the props aren’t bad either, but the fact that the group mostly travel by foot makes the movies low budget painfully obvious. Thankfully the movie has very few CG-effects since these are often poor and overused in low budget movies, but I was surprised to see that the effort was in proportion to the size of the effects in different scenes.

All in att this is a B-movie, with good actors, sadly the movie itself fell short leaving a bland and unsatisfying aftertaste. I rate it a 3 out of 10.

Elfen Lied came from nowhere, and I had very little expectations of it. After only a few minutes I was hooked on this series, because by then I’d seen a nude girl kill about 20 armed guards in the most spectacular ways.

This series is nice and short, spanning only 13 episodes which are just over 20 minutes long. The artwork is nice, although some scenes could use a little more frames for animation. It’s a very dark and sad series at times, and other times it’s very lighthearted and funny, it manages to quickly change pace between the two. The characters aren’t very deep, but they are deep enough for this short series to stay interesting.

All in all I enjoyed it. I’m giving it a 9 out of 10.

So who am I? Well, I’m your not so average Swedish guy, working as a software engineer, and enjoying myself greatly. I have more hobbies than I have time for and I thought I’d blog about some of them. I’m quite creative but I have a very short attention span and I tend to get bored with things very quickly unless they stimulate me properly.

The three things I’m thinking of blogging about are games (pc/console), anime (movies and series) and odd movies. Naturally this may change in the future, but this seems like a good starting point.

I should probably add a warning that I have an odd and morbid sense of humor, and I’m not much for political correctness. Also, I can have a foul mouth at times but I’m going to attempt to keep profanity out of my blog.

Anyway, stay tuned for the next exciting adventure, soon in the internet near you.