In the Future

Well guys, since no-one seems to be reading this any more I figure it's not wasting anyone's time if I do a post about stuff I'm gonna buy and indeed stuff I have bought.

Since my PC and desk now function as my entertainment system, and I have a widescreen 1050p monitor, I decided to make use of those pixels and seriously upgrade my media centre.

Firstly, I bought a LiteOn DH 4O1S Blu-Ray Disc Reader to allow playback of the dominant consumer HD video format. It's in the system now, though I can't yet watch any Blu-Rays (More on that later).

Next, I decided to upgrade the control system. Now, I do have a wireless presenter mouse built into my desktop mouse. That method of control does work of course, but it can be tedious to mouse ball over controls from my bed.

So I got CyberLink's IR USB remote control. It works great - controls DVD(/Blu-Ray) playback, TV Centre Pro (Helpful, since the mouse and keyboards for that are jacked) and iTunes. Basically, I'm set.

Incidentally, Need for Speed Carbon (Yes, I did buy it) is great on Wii and works really well with my steering wheel shell.

For those of you wondering, my first Blu-Ray movie is The Simpsons Movie - easily one of my favourite films of all time. 2007 was a great year for movies. Bear in mind, Spider-Man 3 (Another of my all-time favourites) and other truly great films came out this year as well. Even made for TV Movies were better than expected (Yes, I do love HSM 2. So sue me.). It was also a great year for games between Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, CoD 4 and of course Portal. This year shall go down in entertainment history.

So what am I buying in the coming future? Well, first I'm going to get a Sapphire HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of GDDR4 memory. Besides bumping games performance (Like making Halo 2 at least seem playable) and providing access to recent games like Unreal Tournament 3, it has HDCP. With that, I will be able to watch my Blu-Rays (My monitor is also HDCP-compliant).

Games-wise, Medal of Honor Hereos 2 is next on my list (I'm moving to renting games unless I really want them from now on, thanks to my £10.99 per month LoveFilm account which is also supplying me with additional HD content in the form of Blu-Rays). February 8th can't come soon enough.

I'm also buying an Xbox Live Vision Camera £50 set, the one which comes with a headset, 12 months of Gold and 2 Arcade games. It's outstanding value. I more interested in the Gold subscription, games and the headset to be honest, but the camera will be nice to have.

Then, a month later, I'll be grabbing Game's £209.99 Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle and putting the hard drive from my brother's Premium in it. He's buying an Elite. The Premium will go in the living room, mine will go in the upstairs TV room (My dad won a 20" HDTV at work).

So once I have that and I can play 360 just about whenever I want, you can expect my GamerScore to go up a fair bit. Possibly I could take it to above 5,000 before we leave Cambridgeshire.

I'll also grab a GameWare Play and Charge kit as I continue my ongoing fight against Double-As.

Then, in mid-June, I will make the biggest purchase I ever have. At long last, I will be buying my MacBook. So hooray for that.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of where I'm headed in the coming months. You can probably expect me to gush at length about most of those products and, indeed, I advise you to be prepared for more Blu-Ray love than anywhere else on the internet which doesn't swear allegiance to PS3.

Jens Out

Kyoto, Wii have a problem

As a Wii owner and a current Nintendo man, I put up with a lot - especially living in Europe. But things like Mario Galaxy and Club Nintendo's new status (Including the Stars to Wii Points dealie) make it worthwhile.

But the delays make me want to kill. Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Europe won't get it until Q3 '08 at the earliest. It's not the most important game in the world for me, but I do want it. And that delay makes me angry.

We've had to wait an ungodly length of time for Nintendo to make good use of the internet on Wii, with the exception of VC and the Internet Channel. Finally, online games are trickling in.

And guess what? The best one (Medal of Honor Heroes 2), has been delayed for Europe. Not cool.

Another great implementation of the internets is the Everybody's Nintendo Channel. I want that channel. But the US and Europe/Australia haven't seen hide nor hair of it. Excluding it's now obvious beta The Metroid Prime 3 Preview Channel.

But what makes me most pissed at the Wii and Nintendo is bigger. And don't get me wrong, I love my Wii and I love Nintendo, they're being good at the moment and have great characters like Mario. But they make mistakes and they make me mad sometimes. I've explained where Nintendo annoys me, now here's the number one Wii annoyance:

Where are all the driving games?

Oh sure, I know it's been a bad year for driving games anyway, but the only good driving games on Wii are Need for Speed: Carbon and Excite Truck. I'm going to try and get Carbon, primarily because I want another driving game on Wii, but I'm having difficulty. Stocks are low, it's a year old.

Of course, February will bring Ferrari Challenge and Mario Kart is due in the first half of '08, but that's not now is it?

Jens Out

Breaking the Street Date

Super Mario Galaxy is officially released tomorrow here in the UK. Millions of fans nationwide are waiting impatiently. I've already played about 3 and a half hours of it.

GAME sent my copy early, so I was able to play it once I got back today. It's actually probably a bad thing, I have some homework I need to do for tomorrow. But it's not too much, I should be able to get by.

To start, the game's freaking gorgeous. The water and the normal mapping in particular shine - as do the brilliant light effects. Pun fully intended.

Next, the controls are great. Mario moves perfectly and his various actions like spinning and jumping feel great to do. Spinning initially worried me. Shaking the Remote, you know? But it actually works very well.

Now, the game is a roller coaster in difficulty. There are some extremely fiendish levels that had me pulling my hair out to get the star, and others which simply require some effort to get through. It's all very satisfying.

All in all, deserved its hype.

To move on, Call of Duty 4 is awesome. We played it in 1080p - the first time we've played any game at that resolution - and it just looks fantastic. And watching my brother play it reminded me how much I like that style of gameplay. Which put me onto the Medal of Honor Heroes 2 thing again.

So I went and found IGN's review. Normally, I avoid IGN. I prefer to stick to 1UP and GameSpot. But IGN had a review and I read it. Game looks totally awesome. I can see myself spending hours playing and tweaking the controls.

I'm really pumped for it! 32-Player CTF on Wii? Hell yeah I'll pay £30 for that!

Well, £27 to me.

I've been looking into PS3. My father intends to buy a 60GB model, but I think I will probably also need my own model. As such, I'd likely grab a 40GB. But I'm holding out for the White one.

But this is after iPhone, MacBook, 360 (May buy my brother's off of him), and PC upgrades.

Jens Out

Passing the 7th Position in the Rule of Doubling

In a brief follow-up to the previous post, I have now definitely decided on the iPhone. It was the web that won it.

Now then, to the issue of the day. Portal. Hot freaking damn. Way back when Portal was newly announced and everyone was drooling over Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2 Episode 2 (I'm sorry, that is such a mouthful), I myself was more interested in Portal.

And man was I right to be. This game kicks ass. It's funny, crazy, quirky and above all, original. Truly it is the class of the Orange Box, as many have conceded in the time since the Box was unleashed.

Incidentally, what a freaking dumb name. Orange Box. It's so...Meh. Mind you, the box art is far worse.

Another great game is Metroid Prime 3 Corruption. Easily the best controls ina first-person shooter to date. I can't wait for an online game with similar controls - which I am reliably informed is inbound in the form of the 32-Player online Medal of Honor Heroes 2. Finally a reason to play a Medal of Honor game.

I know I can't wait to be blasting fools with my Wii. EA, I salute you.

Speaking of the Wii itself, my Remote Jackets showed up. I have my spare Remote in one - so newbies to Wii can't kill me - but my own personal Remote, with a rechargeable battery, is Jacket free. Well, it has one. I just don't put it on it.

The Writer's Guild is on strike stateside. Wowsers bowsers. That shit is real. I hope it gets resolved properly and fast - imagine the turmoil if the actors and directors went out in sympathy.

iPhone is out this Friday at 6:02PM. Yes, that's right. 02. O2. Get it?

Clever...But really lame.

Tomorrow I'm off to an interview for a job. Assuming I get said job, it should bring in moneys to buy all the things I'm wanting - starting with such games as Super Mario Galaxy, Medal of Honor Heroes 2, Guitar Hero 3 and some maybes like Geometry Wars Galaxies, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games and a Disney game I might pick up to review for All Your Disney dependent on how much I earn.

And then later, of course, the iPhone, ahead of the MacBook a couple months later.

I should probably also upgrade my Desktop. I'll do that after the MacBook though. Things that need doing:

Replace Graphics Card with a higher memory DX10 number
Replace Pentium 4 with Core2 Duo
Replace one Optical Drive with Blu-Ray capable equivalent
Replace one optical drive with HD-DVD capable equivalent.
Maybe add another Half-Gig of RAM

That'll bring it in line with the peripherals and its peers - read, my brother's media centre monster.

Lastamly, I'm soft-announcing a delay in Six's development owing to other commitments the team has. I can however just about promise a 2008 launch. We may launch, however, with some of our niftiest features not in place yet. The content uploading and everything will be there, it's just of the flashy stuff like in-page notifications may be released in our 1.0.6, 1.1.2, 1.1.8 etc. updates.

"We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Jens

PS: Anyone else think an open, multi-platform competitor to Xbox/Games for Windows LIVE would be a great idea? I sure do. And I have some ideas for it.You better believe it. Anyone who would like to see that happen, get in touch.

Joost

This is a landmark. 20th post. That's commitment for you - noone's reading this.

After finally getting into the Joost Beta (After finally just asking for an invite - my application didn't work right), I've been playing around with it for a while.

Yeah, the rumours are true. It's pretty okay, I guess. The thing is, as "yeah, that's pretty cool I guess" as it is, Joost is a window to the future.

This pre-release version of Joost might be simply something cool to watch when bored, or put in the background to web browsing, but I can see in it the potential that in the future, this is what TV will be.

The playback system is a little primitive (Playlists of videos), but in the culmination of the Joost idea, more old-media style broadcasting will be available too (Not instead of, just as well. Playlist TV is a medium that has potential so long as it's done right)

So, Joost. Touch the future as it's not even in the oven yet.

In other news, Super Mario Galaxy is out on the 1st of June over here in the UK according to IGN. This changes EVERYTHING. I was going to buy Twilight Princes and/or Red Steel around that time, but with Super Mario Galaxy coming out, my path is clear.

I'm-ah coming Mario!

Feel good,
Jens

PS: Don't trust the Trusted Computing. As FSR tell us, they don't just want it around to stop looting.