While talking to one of my friends about the announcement at E3 that Final Fantasy XIII is no longer a PS3 exclusive, I made a comment stating that all Xbox 360 owners need now is Metal Gear Solid 4. He said that would never happen because the size of the game is too big and it would have to be put on multiple DVDs. Who cares if it is on multiple discs? Apparently Kojima cares… or he pretends to care because Sony probably paid him to. Metal Gear Solid was on multiple discs and nobody seemed to have a problem with that, but that is beside the point.

You see kids, there is this little thing called compression. Did you know that the mp3s you buy (or pirate) are compressed? If they were not compressed, your songs would be 30mb and up compared to the 3-6mb songs we are used to. That is quite a difference isn’t it? The video on your DVD movies that you buy at the store (or pirate) are compressed. Most of the textures you see in games are compressed as well. The point is, with compression, it is possible to get MGS4 to the Xbox 360 with a reasonable amount of discs. I have heard people say that there are no pre-rendered cut scenes in the game, meaning, there is no video to compress in the game. That may be true, but there are other things to compress. The audio and textures used in the game most likely take up the majority of the space and can be compressed.

Also, some developers have had to duplicate data on the Blu-ray disc in order to decrease the load times for their games. Bethesda had to do this with the PS3 version of Oblivion. Basically, the larger a disc is, the longer it takes to read and jump from point to point on the disc (this is why some PS3 games require you to install the game to the hard drive). By duplicating data, the laser will have multiple points on the disc to read data, making it closer to the data it needs. Why is this relevant? If this technique was used for MGS4, the game may be a fraction of the size they claimed they needed.

Even if MGS4 has no duplicate data on the disc, and Kojima did not want to compress anything at all, there is now another way to get it on the Xbox 360. At E3, Microsoft announced that you will be able to install Xbox 360 games on your hard drive. I don’t think I need to explain much, but with this option you would need a large hard drive for your Xbox 360 and would have to install Metal Gear Solid 4 on it. After an install, no disc swapping would be needed.

What I am trying to say is, if Metal Gear Solid 4 does not come out on the Xbox 360, it is because Sony is paying for exclusivity. It has little to do with the size of the game. Before I get death threats from any Sony fan boys, know that I own a PSX, PS2, PSP, and a PS3. I am also going to buy MGS4 for the PS3 (after I beat 2 and 3). So There.

I got my first Playstation 3 trophy from Super Stardust HD. It took about an hour to get used to the game before I could pass the first level to earn the achievement. Now all I need is trophy support for ALL the games I own. Too bad that will never happen.

The balance and polish of Bad Company, along with the “Gold Rush” game mode, make it a truly amazing online experience. In each round, there is an attacking team that is trying to blow open some gold crates, and a defending team trying to protect the crates. This sounds like a typical game mode for any shooter right? It is until you add an almost fully destructible environment, unlockable weapons, and effective classes. What you are left with is pure gold… and my new favorite multiplayer shooter.

The destructible environments may sound like a gimmick before you play the game, but after a few rounds, you will see that it adds much more strategy to an already tactical game. Imagine taking cover and a few seconds later you have no cover at all. This helps keep the game moving and makes for some quick decision making.

Experienced Battlefield Veterans may have some trouble adapting to the game as there are a few changes. The biggest change for me was the fact that there are no parachutes. You are going to hate this at first, but after a while you will see why there are none. Basically, helicopters in Bad Company are meant for fighting, not transportation. It might also be hard getting used to the majority of classes not having a pistol, but I don’t miss it at all at this point.

I do have some complaints, but they have not stopped me from getting addicted to the game. My biggest complaint is the control scheme. The knife button is in the worst spot ever, and there is no way to change the button layout. Another problem I have with the game is the award system. It sounds like an odd thing to complain about, but after being in many games where my team lost due to a few guys trying to “Get 4 road kills with the helicopter in a round” or any other near impossible award; I can say that they are extremely annoying. I want achievements as much as the next guy, but not at the expense of a loss.

At any rate, it is worth a rent at the very least. Battlefield veterans should definitely try it before buying. I personally like it more than previous Battlefield games, but there are many who feel the opposite. Do yourself a favor and play it for a few hours before passing judgment.

I buy Xbox 360 games over Playstation 3 games because of the online community, the ease of joining a friend in an online game, and the achievements. To be fair, I have always liked the speed of the PS3 cross media bar compared to Xbox 360 blades that are ad heavy and extremely sluggish. As for the in-game cross media bar, it is a huge improvement but is still not as good as the Xbox 360 in-game communication system.

I was very excited at the thought of getting trophies for all the Playstation 3 games I own and was expecting to get some trophies that I may have already earned. Apparently, not all games will have trophies and the games that do will require you to play through them from the beginning. I was thinking about buying a few games for the PS3 that I already own on the 360 just as an excuse to play them again, but I doubt I will at this point. As usual, Sony just doesn’t get it. For something that should have been included with the system, the update is extremely underwhelming.

  

A NooberoUno Folding@home team has been created and anyone can now join. You will need to have downloaded the Folding@home software or own a Playstation 3 in order to participate. Once you have it up and running, just enter 91933 as the team number. If you have no idea what Folding@home is then read the following:

“What is protein folding and how is folding linked to disease?
Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out these important functions, they assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, in many ways remains a mystery.

Moreover, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes.

You can help by simply running a piece of software.
Folding@home is a distributed computing project — people from throughout the world download and run software to band together to make one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Every computer takes the project closer to our goals. Folding@home uses novel computational methods coupled to distributed computing, to simulate problems millions of times more challenging than previously achieved.”

Having recently acquired a PS3, I decided to install Linux on it. If you are only interested in playing games, specifically newer games that require a graphics accelerator, then don’t bother. If you are looking for something that has the potential to be the next XBMC, can run many emulators, and has a ton of built in apps including Thunderbird (e-mail) and Open Office (MS Office equivelant) then this is something you need to do. Unfortunately for us, Sony only allows other operating systems to use a fraction of the processing power the PS3 has to offer. This means that linux can run a tad slow but is still able to run the majority of apps I was interested in.

 

Read on for instructions…

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The Orange Box is Valve’s new compilation of five great games including: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode 1, Half-Life 2: Episode 2, Portal, and Team Fortress. If you have not played Half-Life 2 then that alone is a reason to own it. If you have played Half-Life 2 and/or Episode 1 already (most have), consider them a bonus. Portal and Team Fortress together are worth the price of The Orange Box.

Team Fortress is a multiplayer first person shooter where each character type plays a very unique role. For instance, an engineer can build turrets to defend an area while a spy can disguise themselves as a player on the other team in order to sneak past their defenses. It took me a while to learn the basics, but is turning out to be a very solid multiplayer shooter.

Portal is a first person puzzle game where you are given a gun that shoots portals too help you get through the levels. While the story mode may only be a few (extremely entertaining) hours long, there are many more things to do once you complete it. Unless you are a genius, this game should last between 10-1,000 hours depending on how smart you are.

The Orange Box is currently available for the PC and Xbox 360. It will be available for the PS3. To find out more about any of these games, check out The Orange Box site.

This years Comic-Con was an amazing site. I haven’t been to the convention in over ten years and things have changed quite a bit. The last time I went there were about 15,000 people, this year there were 125,000 people! That is an insane amount of people for a comic convention. I actually planned on buying a few things but the amount of people was so overwhelming, I ended up wandering around for hours never even seeing anything I planned on buying. I ended up spending $12 total.

Since I wasn’t spending much, I decided to try to get as many free promotional things as I could. I’m usually pretty laid back, but apparently when people are handing out free junk I turn into an excited little kid. Every time I saw a booth giving away something decent, I plowed my way over to claim my item having no regard for kids, moms, or other nerds.

As if going to a comic convention isn’t nerdy enough, I spent the majority of the time at the video game booths. I tried a lot of games,  many of which aren’t out yet. I was going to buy most of these anyway, but getting to see them in person sealed the deal.

Puzzle Fighter HD - plays as expected; I didn’t spend a lot of time with it.

Contra DS - I thought the gap in between the dual screens would be annoying but it didn’t cause any problems with the game.

Castle Crashers (360) – I didn’t play it much. It plays smoother than Alien Hominid. Support The Behemoth.

The Eye of Judgment (PS3) – Never even played it but I must have it.

Anyway, enough of my rambling, here are a few pictures of the event.

The Crowd
  Promotional Freebies
   The Games