» 2009 » May

So I was playing my favorite Call of Duty 4 on my Playstation 3 and getting pwned, all of a sudden I lost the background sound and I could only hear gun shots. It wasn’t long until it was completely silent, or near silent. I quit the game after the match was over and I couldn’t, it just froze with the black screen, the screen you normally see when you quit the game and back to the main screen. I call this the black screen of death or BSOD for the PlayStation 3.

I’ve encountered freezes before but this time it was different. The console remained in the black screen so the first thing that came to mind was to turn off the console from the back after trying to turn it off from the touch-sensitive power switch at the front. I turned it back on hoping to get back in the game but I wasn’t able to. The game would not load, as in I didn’t see the game icon in the main screen. So then I tried loading one of my Blu-ray movie discs, same thing.

With less than 2 years of game time, my PS3′s disc drive is already busted. That’s pretty disappointing. I’m going to call support tomorrow and hopefully get it fixed. I don’t care if I have to ship my console to them.

Sigh.

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I recently got my hands on a full version of a DVD creation software called WinX DVD Author by FreeTime Soft. A very neat and relatively small, about 35mb, program that converts most of the popular video formats into VOB format, the format that DVD uses. The demo, which limits you to only 5 minutes of video, is available for download.

The program is basically broken down into three steps: importing your videos, designing a layout for the menus and the actual converting and burning of the DVD.

Importing videos is relatively easy, I purposely downloaded three different formats from Gametrailers (MP4, QuickTime and WMV) to test out the compatibility and there was no problem importing them. During this step you can also select the start and end time of each video as well as choosing between standard 4:3 or the wide screen 16:9. You also have the option to create a DVD menu, which is the second step. Skipping the second step will lead directly to converting the videos to VOB format and the actual burning of the DVD.

At the bottom is where you can choose whether you want to burn a DVD 5 with 4300mb or dual layer DVD9 with 8500mb.

The second step is where you let your creativity out. You can pick one of the premade backgrounds or you can import your own image as the background. You have one background for the root menu and one for each video’s chapter menu. It is also interesting to point out that WinX DVD Author helps you divide each video into chapters so you don’t have to worry about chopping them into chapters yourself.

Nothing is complete without background music, WinX DVD Author lets you add background music, again one for the root menu and one for each video’s chapter menu.

When you are satisfied with the layout we can move on to the final step.

The last step is just as straight forward as the previous two steps. Here is where you will specify the output folder (where the converted VOB files are located), the output format (NTSC and PAL) and the encoder engine which allows you to pick from best video quality but slower converting speed, normal video quality and standard converting speed to low video quality with high converting speed.

When ready, press the big Start button and you will be prompted to insert a blank DVD into your DVD burner (if there isn’t one already). You have the option to burn it right away, or save the VOB files in the output folder and burn it to a DVD by going back to the main screen and select DVD Disc Burner where you can select the entire DVD output folder or individual VOB files for burning.

WinX DVD Author Functions & Features (From their web site):

Convert and burn

• Supports almost all video formats to DVD
• High quality and super fast (With high quality and fastest converting engine inside)
• With DVD Video disc burner inside and support most of DVD burn device
• Support batch conversion

 

Author DVD

• Author DVD Menu & Chapter Menu
• Support to add background music & picture to DVD menu
• Support 16:9 widescreen and 4:3 standard TV, NTSC and PAL video
• Support subtitle to DVD
• Support AC3 Audio

 

Other features:

• Support all current hardware interfaces (IDE/SCSI/USB/1394/SATA)
• Support disc media: DVD+/-R, DVD+/- RW, DVD DL+R, DVD DL+/-RW, etc
• Support multilingual: English, French, Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, etc

Overall I think the program does what it intends to do without the frustration. But I do believe they can improve things here and there such as having one standard window instead of popping different ones with different sizes, having more Windows-like menus like File, Edit, Options etc across the top would make the program even more user friendly and finally being able to save the projects would be nice as well.

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So I was reading an article on BusinessWeek, it wasn’t directly related to gaming but it got me thinking about how it could apply to gaming. Motion-sensing isn’t new, not even in gaming since the Nintendo Wii has been out for some time now. The article talked about how TVs and PCs will soon work like the Wii, basically they will behave based on user input, in this case, improved built-in cameras track body gestures like nods, head shakes or a hand wave.

Again, such technology isn’t new but it just hasn’t been widely used yet, except the Wii.

It got me thinking, what would the future of gaming like if motion-sensing technology were more widely used? I was thinking as far as playing Call of Duty 4 without controllers where camera coming out of my PlayStation 3 would track all my body and hand movements and reflect that on the game. Like tilting your head forward would mean forward movement, tilt a bit more would be running, tilt back would, obviously mean moving backwards. These should be easy to do but I was also thinking about tracking my finger movement to the point where the game would know I was trying to fire a shot, where I would aim at and when I wanted to reload, I think the latter one is harder.

Will my thinking/dreaming become reality? I think so personally, its just a matter of time. Before we can fully immerse ourselves to video games.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine reminds me of Heavenly Sword, a lot, particularly the sound of Wolverine’s clawns make when you slash your enemies into pieces. The demo was actually enjoyable, but still not worth my money to be honest. Maybe its because I’m not a hardcore fan of Wolverine, but one thing for sure is this game has not been polished enough, again in my opinion.

As I mentioned the style is similar to Heavenly Sword, or any other hack and slash games out there. You can chain your normal attacks with your heavy attacks. The fights are fast and bloody, a plus for me. There are also features that I haven’t seen in other games before, or I just don’t play enough games anymore these days. One is the Lunge attack, which you get early on in the demo and which you get to lock on to a target (make sure there is no object in between you and the unfortunate, and then jump onto the target and kill him. I never got bored of using Lunge when I played the demo but I found it a bit too powerful. The second feature that I like is the way the environment can give you different ways of finishing off your enemies. Like you can throw someone into a large stake that you will find on the walls or floors. These features really give the game more varieties, in terms of killing.

You can also upgrade Wolverine by collecting orbs and gaining experience by killing your enemies. I’m a big fan of level grinding so experience is another +1 for the game.

Now you will probably want to ask “Then why won’t you buy this game since you sound like you enjoyed this game?”. Well for one thing this type of game does not really offer me too much replay value, once I finish the game, it will be collecting dust, but this can be easily solved by selling it back to game stores. But I’m too cheap for that even so I might go rent it for a weekend. Second thing I don’t like is related to the “has not been polished” that I have mentioned before. The graphics look nice until you notice your character, Wolverine, is sometimes “floating” above the floor instead of walking on the floor. Floating is noticable when you are going uphill. That alone just turned me off, it might minor for you but for some reason its a big deal for me and its not acceptable.

So overall I think this game is worth it if you can ignore little issues here and there, I’m sure there are more issues like “floating” in the full game. The fact that you can interact with the environment and make use of it for killing your enemies is really a big bonus, making the game much more fun. So that’s my take for this game, get the demo if you have an xbox and/or a PS3 and see for yourself!

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I played the demo for Lost Planet and at that time I didn’t like it at all. At first, I had doubts when I saw trailers for the sequel. Honestly after watching the trailers, I might just grab myself a copy of the first one, since its more than one year old and should be cheap, so even if I ended up not liking the game it would only be a small lost to me.

The reason why I’ve changed my impression for this game is the fact that there are actually huge monsters/insects to fight against (I know about the mechs already) which really reminds me of Monster Hunter and that game was a blast to play as well, specially with 3 other people. After watching one of the “epic” boss battles for Lost Planet 2 (I almost typed out LittleBigPlanet haha) I was impressed and surprised. I seriously didn’t know there were huge monsters/insects to fight against even in the first Lost Planet and I thought it was a new addition to Lost Planet 2. I was wrong, very wrong. So I quickly looked up Lost Planet: Extreme Condition’s review on Gametrailers and it rated the game 7.9 overall, though failing the story side.

I checked on eBay and the game is roughly $20 USD after shipping, one of the cheapest I’ve found. Looks like I will give this one a try. Lost Planet 2, unfortunately will only be available for Xbox 360 and release date is still unknown.

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When I saw it on Gametrailers, I couldn’t believe it, the video game version of The Grudge is coming out, well at least in Japan, for the Nintendo Wii. I can tell you I am a Japanese horror movie fanatic, I have all 3 games from the Fatal Frame series for the PlayStation 2, the forth installment is again for the Wii only, why?

Anyway, the trailer is pretty good in my opinion, the spookiness and the fact that you are exploring with just the flashlight makes the game even scarier. And in the end, the classic ghost-woman who makes creepy noise while crawling slowly towards you, just like from the movies! I’m pretty much used to all the horror movies, I don’t jump that easily but this one, although didn’t make me jump, I shaked a bit.

But why won’t it make it to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is really beyond me. That’s my grudge.

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