Thinking of building a gaming PC? Don’t!

Despite the overwhelming market dominance of gaming on consoles seemingly only challenged by gaming on what we used to call telephones, graphics card manufacturer nVidia are predicting a surge in the uptake of PC gaming. Do you want to be part of this hip new trend? You shouldn’t! But the stories are intoxicating, aren’t they? Tales of dedicated multiplayer servers. Rumours of true high definition gaming, powered by multicore CPUs that unleash the true power of exotic European developed game engines. Implausibly large multiplayer games supporting thousands of players simultaneously. Rumours of wonderful indie game distribution networks and those preposterously good value Steam sales. But then if you go out and look at some PCs in shops they’re all so expensive you might begin to wonder just what the big fuss regarding the PS3 launch price was even over. Then you hear another rumour, that you can save money and build a PC yourself! It all sounds too enticing and you find yourself wondering that maybe you should buy some components off the shelf and craft your very own PC. Well don’t.

Continue reading “Thinking of building a gaming PC? Don’t!” →

Free Roaming – Go Vacation

Hi everyone! What’s the next activity on the schedule? Schedule? Screw that! There is none, we’re on HOLIDAY! I just don’t feel like doing anything. So far we’ve already wet ourselves, gone skateboarding and sniffed some petrol. It’s time for a break. In this article, I’m going to introduce you to the game outside the games, in the game system. Go Vacation features 4 different resorts to roam around in: Marine, City, Mountain, and Snow, all with their own style and appropriately themed activities. The resorts are how you find each mini-game – walk around and you’ll see icons above peoples heads, inviting you to activities. However, there’s much more here than a simple hub for the games: the resorts are vast and contain many nice views and secrets.

Your character controls like any standard third person adventure game: simple analog stick movements to walk around and B to jump. It’s not exactly Mario levels of interaction, but movement is smooth and polished and the animation is consistent. Running is pretty slow however, and if you tried to run around an entire resort on foot it would take forever, so thankfully there’s different forms of transport lying around. If there’s water, you can bet there’s either a kayak or jet-ski nearby. On land, there’s either a motor vehicle, skateboard, or snowboard to speed things up, or even a horse. The game does well to make the transport always accessible; you can teleport to key areas of the map (Xenoblade style) and pick any vehicle you want from a quick menu. Namco has made sure there will be NO discomfort on this vacation!


Continue reading “Free Roaming – Go Vacation” →

Motorsport (Go Vacation) – Impressions

Motorsport is a big part of Go Vacation, much to my excitement, and it’s found in the form of “Motor Fest” in the City Resort. This one mini-game manages to include not only street races through the resort, but also motorbike racing, checkpoint races, and open-wheel oval racing in a huge stadium. All the motorsport games are controlled with the Wii Wheel setup, using motion to turn – no nunchuck – and much to my relief it feels very smooth, a bit like Mario Kart Wii but faster. The car handling isn’t realistic, but they do wiggle about a bit if you tackle a corner too fast, and you need to lift off the throttle a fair bit, with braking only required on the sharp corners. It’s not exactly Race Pro, but it’s just challenging enough to be satisfying. It’s more comparable to Ridge Racer, which is no surprise when you find out the Ridge Racer development team actually helped work on Go Vacation.


Continue reading “Motorsport (Go Vacation) – Impressions” →

Sites I Like – Tumblr Edition

So this was meant to be a regular column on Pietriots as I compile and write love letters to the websites that make the internet worth visiting. However, the internet would prove to be a hostile, unloving place with few sites worth mentioning. In fact it was looking so bleak that I was considering deleting my previous Sites I Like column so that the internet would never know my shame of enjoying a single piece of its content. But then I discovered Tumblr.

Tumblr Logo

Critics would have you believe that Tumblr is the worst form of social networking. A LiveJournal for idiots, if such a thing could exist, with typical site layouts designed for 640×480 monitors. Those critics are right on the money as the vast majority of tumble logs and their entries consist of little more than image memes and animated gifs, re-blogged from other worthless tumblr accounts. A giant cycle of filth perpetuates, like a tornado sucking up all the shit of the internet, swirling it around and flinging it back out. The last time I used the metaphor of a cylindrical storm though was in an academic essay when I talked about the generation of knowledge in emerging academic areas. My tutor was so impressed she suggested I do honours but I managed to turn things around and fail the unit anyway. What I’m getting at though is that in this insular land of chaos, this quagmire, beautiful content producers have emerged, delivering content that is edgy, hilarious and post-ironic. It is true irony that it is Tumblr, of all places, that I found the quality web content I required to restart Sites I Like.

Continue reading “Sites I Like – Tumblr Edition” →

Skateboarding (Go Vacation) – Impressions

Skateboarding is a huge part of Go Vacation, not only do several games focus on it, but it’s a primary method of transportation around the City Resort. When I was first thrust into the City Resort, I felt like a bit of a retard trying to control the skateboard. The concept of having to move both the Wiimote and Nunchuck in the direction I wanted to go was bizarre and felt awkward. Not only that, but to go forward, you have to shake the controller up and down to take off. This is unlike any other skateboarding game I’ve played; it’s very physical and everything is done by motion. Can’t I use the joystick and hold B? No. The reason for this begins to make sense very slowly, using motion for primary movement frees up the joystick and buttons for spinning and doing tricks while you’re in the air, and having motion turning lets you still move while spinning. The use of motion turning and accelerating also makes the entire experience of jumping, tricking and grinding more connected and active. It really gives you a solid feeling of balance, as you land from a jump and have to steadily correct the controllers to keep going. The simple act of going straight, keeping speed, and jumping from one place to the next is the challenge in this game. Whenever I screw up, it’s because I’m shaking when I should be turning or vice versa. The challenging aspect here is holding everything together and being consistent with your movements. It’s an amazing use of Wii controls to create a NEW experience, and after spending a few hours mastering the skateboarding mini-games I’m absolutely in love with it.


Continue reading “Skateboarding (Go Vacation) – Impressions” →

Mario Kart 7: A Diagnosis

So I’ve done the basic run through of 150cc and played some online matches. I think I’m prepared to talk about Mario Kart 7. This isn’t a review because I hate reviews and any Mario Kart 7 review that doesn’t read: “it’s Mario Kart“, is a waste of time. I am going to file this under reviews though because, you know, convention. Instead this is an analysis of changes made to the Mario Kart formula in this, the seventh entry to the series. It’ll be posted here and over at Koopa Beach.

First up, I am really disappointed that the game doesn’t feature some of the more extensive time trial options that Mario Kart Wii included. By that I’m talking about being able to download regional and worldwide ghosts and examine the top ten rankings. This was a real source of motivation to improve in Mario Kart Wii and I’m proud to say I made the top ten in Australia for Cheep Cheep Beach and Vanilla Lake. That came from seeing that my times were close to the top times and having amazing ghosts to compete against in the form of wifi friends and housemates. The other great thing it did was tell stories. If you followed the world record times closely you’d see new shortcuts and techniques for tracks open up. It was incredible and I was hoping to dedicate a significant amount of words on Koopa Beach to just that aspect of the game as it went through early development stages. As it stands though, that commentary will now probably come from the elite players who I expect will be hanging around at the established time trial communities. That link I just made though is dead at time of writing. And any stories that do come will only be fragments strewn across message board posts. It looks like history may be lost.

Continue reading “Mario Kart 7: A Diagnosis” →

Forza vs Gran Turismo, which is better?

Ah, the age old question. It’s a debate that’s raged on over the internet gaming community for the past decade or so. Gran Turismo has dazzled people over the years with its fantastic presentation, wealth of options and satisfying career mode. Forza has emerged with improved driving physics and community aspects, and now thanks to Kinect support you can move your head in your living room to look around realistically inside your TV. If only there was some kind of “joystick” device for such a feature, maybe in the future. Nevertheless, both Forza and Gran Turismo have a lot to offer. For someone looking for a true racing experience, which one is the best bet?

Continue reading “Forza vs Gran Turismo, which is better?” →

Water Gun Battle (Go Vacation) – Impressions

I’ve been playing quite a lot of Go Vacation on Wii. It’s a great way to relax, which i’ve been needing lately; the game is very calm and features a lot of fun mini-games with quite a bit of work put into them. The scope is so huge that a review wouldn’t be enough to give an accurate impression of this game – there’s that many different methods of control and presentation. So instead of doing a boring wholesome review, here I’m going to talk about one of the fifty mini-games, Water Gun Battle, in the first of at least one writeup for Go Vacation.


Continue reading “Water Gun Battle (Go Vacation) – Impressions” →

Jeep Thrills

I like the trees in this game. I really, really do. Or rather, I like some of the trees in this game; the purple ones. These trees stand out with their inexplicable glowing branches, almost like sickles that have cut into something unknown. Humanity has a deep-seated fascination with which they cannot comprehend, like the popularity of hit shitcom The Big Bang Theory. Merely catching these in the corner of your eye makes it virtually impossible not to veer off the road into their warm, Grimace-like embrace.

Jeep Thrills is somewhat thrilling. This is another budget release from Funbox Media, the same publisher responsible for thrusting all those explosive copies of Speed upon the PAL market. And much like that racer, Jeep Thrills is actually pretty old for the first world, originally released in America back in 2007. It’s also a PlayStation 2 port, just to complete the whole ‘yep this is a Wii game alright’ package.

Continue reading “Jeep Thrills” →

Geist Videos – Revisiting The Mature

About a month before suffering my Professional Engineer Exams at the end of October, I fired up Geist for the Nintendo SHEETKYUUB (actually, my Wii system) in an effort to update my aging, neglected GC video library. This recording session was the FIRST and ONLY time I played ANY “dual analog” shooter this entire generation (2006-2011). This experience was HORRIBLE. I kept tarding-out into walls like classic Resident Evil controls, and the screen was stiff and jerky while the camera dragged ass. And the enemies were kind enough to shoot me with 20-30 rifle rounds without killing me, sympathetic to your inability to be a real threat (impotence) given the limitations of the “traditional” input method.

From what I hear, today’s shooty games treat customers like children more than ever; probably because it’s the most appropriate thing to do.

Why do people keep playing like this after 10 years? (and keep paying for it?)  Why are games still made this way? What’s wrong with this industry?

Luckily, the game’s first-person adventure (FPA) principles are still intact and meaningful after all these years.

Does anyone remember the former upcoming next-generation “possession mechanic” zombie action-strategy title, Possession? Nope, nobody.

Congrats, n-Space – despite the cruel passage of time, your masterpiece is still unrivaled.

View/Download:
Geist, 7 videos (DivX)