Category: games

PS3 observations

I’ve had my PS3 for a few days now, and I thought I’d share a few random observations. First, if you hook up a PS3, and then start to get an incessant buzz coming from your TV, you’ve probably got a ground loop problem. This thread at the Sony forums describes the problem quite clearly. I solved the problem easily by using a cheap three-prong to two-prong adapter from Home Depot. Still, it was kind of annoying working through it and figuring out what was going on.
I do like the PS3 in general, and I think that now is the time to buy one if you’ve been holding off. When it launched, I wasn’t too excited about it. It seemed overpriced for what it could do, and there were a few questions about stuff like backward-compatibility that hadn’t been answered yet. The 80 GB MGS4 bundle I bought hits the sweet spot in terms of functionality and value. It’s got WiFi and wired Ethernet. It’s got a reasonably large hard drive. It’s got a reasonable level of backward compatibility with PS1 and PS2 games. And it’s maturing in terms of the software that’s out there for it. The downloadable stuff on the Playstation Network is pretty good. There are a few great games out for it — GTA4, MGS4, and a few others. And, like it or not, Blu-Ray has won the battle with HD-DVD.
I’m just starting to experiment with all the stuff the PS3 can do. I’ve watched a couple of regular DVDs on it, and it works fine as an upscaling DVD player. I’ve watched a few downloaded 720p movie trailers on it, and those look good too. I haven’t actually watched any Blu-Ray discs yet, but a friend gave me a copy of Ratatouille, so I’ll be checking that out soon. And I subscribed to Qore, which is kind of fun.

video game stuff

While waiting for my new PS3 to arrive, I decided to dust off the PSP and play around with that a bit. I discovered that my battery could only hold a charge for about 10 minutes, which makes it pretty useless. I ordered a new battery from Best Buy, along with a new 2GB memory stick. My old memory stick was 128MB, and cost more, I think, than the new 2GB one. So, I now have enough room to copy some reasonably long videos down to my PSP, though there’s really not anything I’m interested in watching on it right now.

I also spent some time today playing Final Fantasy VIII on my PS2, which I haven’t touched in a long while. I did make some progress — I got past Norg, for whatever that’s worth. Despite the fact that I started this game in 2003 or thereabouts, I’m still determined to finish it at some point!

MGS 4

So I broke down and ordered the PlayStation 3 80GB Limited Edition Metal Gear Solid 4 Pack from Wal-Mart this morning. It looks like it’s sold out now, so I guess it’s good that I ordered it in the morning instead of waiting until I got home from work. I probably won’t get it for a couple of weeks, but that’s fine. I’m still really not that excited about the PS3, or MGS4 in particular, but it ought be fun to play around with. MGS has always been kind of a weird franchise, and I do enjoy the distinctly Japanese oddness to be found in MGS. And of course I’l use the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player, though I’ll always be a little bitter about Blu-Ray beating out HD-DVD.

WSJ RT 3: Quest for the Teenage DM

“An adventure in which your 7th-level columnist honors the passing of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax by exploring the depths of his own early teen D&D years. Featuring hypotheses of attempted profundity and confessions of adolescent dorkery. Enter, brave adventurer, if you dare!”

Jason Fry of the Wall Street Journal has a nice column on Gary Gygax. It sounds like Mr. Fry is about the same age I am, and started playing D&D at about the same time. And he too was a DM more often than a player. It sounds like we have a lot in common, in the area of D&D experiences. (I never colored the pictures in my Monster Manual though. Yikes!) He’s got a lot of good observations in this piece that I heartily agree with, particularly his note on Gygax’s vocabulary, and how it had “taught me two very interesting ideas at once: first, that a single thing could be described by many names; and second, that each of those names meant something subtly different.”

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Gary Gygax

I saw in the news today that Gary Gygax has passed away. I haven’t played D&D in years, but I have very fond memories of some great D&D games with my friends back when I was a kid. I remember bugging my mom to buy the Basic D&D box when I saw it in a store, back around 1979. Bless her, she did buy it for me, though she was a little leery about it. I had no idea what the game was about, mind you, I just thought the box art was cool. When I opened the box, and figured out that it wasn’t just a board game, I got sucked in. I remember being really excited about it. At some point, I transitioned to AD&D, and of course bought the Player’s Handbook, Dungeon Master’s Guide, and Monster Manual. Those books sure saw a lot of use.

Though I haven’t really thought much lately about D&D, it did have a big effect on my youth. At one time, role-playing games were pretty much the center of my (geeky) social life. I was usually the DM, so I’d say that RPGs had a lot to do with my development of a lot of key skills, including leadership, organizational skills, creativity, consensus-building, and all that good stuff.

Thanks, Gary, for making the teenage years of many a geek just a bit more bearable, and maybe even a bit exciting now and again!

yet more Wii stuff

I feel a little silly for posting so much Wii-related stuff over the last couple of weeks, but not silly enough to stop doing it, apparently.

  • It looks like getting a GameCube WaveBird controller is probably a better idea than buying the Wii Classic Controller. It’s wireless, and it should work with all GameCube games and (I think) all Virtual Console games. (And it’s not impossible to find.)
  • I started messing around with the Wii’s ability to send and receive e-mail today. It’s not a tremendously useful ability — I’ve already got at least a half-dozen e-mail addresses, and it’s really not a problem to check any of them from my living room. But it’s kind of neat to be able to send & receive e-mail on a game console.
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was in stock at Best Buy today. They had the strategy guide too, which I must say is the thickest game guide I’ve ever seen. (This may have been the “collector’s edition”, so that may explain the extra thickness.) I managed to resist buying them, by reminding myself that I haven’t finished Final Fantasy VIII, and I still have FF IX and X on the shelf. I just read a very positive review of Zelda, though, so I’m going to just have to keep reminding myself: I have no time for another gigantic fantasy RPG right now!

The Older Gamers Paradise

I stumbled across 2old2play.com today, a web site for “older gamers.” I guess that’s me, what with me being nearly 40 years old now. I actually haven’t been playing video games much lately — too much other stuff to do. I am kind of curious about the PS3, but not enough to pay $3000 for one on eBay. I’m still playing PS1 games. I’m curious about Final Fantasy XII, too, but I won’t go looking for that until I’ve finished FF VIII, IX, and X first, I think.