I started playing this game last week but it had been sitting around on my Xbox 360 for about a month before I had a chance to play it (my wife and I had been deep into Fallout 3 and had little time for anything else). I have to say that I am impressed so far. The fine people at Capcom and GRIN have put their collective heads together and created a new experience around a classic title.

The training rooms are perhaps the most significant departure from the original. While the new visual look and great audio soundtracks do not change the gameplay experience, the training exercises are designed to enhance the game with a public ranking system and add a competitive edge for those who would not be completely satisfied by Bionic Commando’s mission based levels.

For those who like item and monster records in their games, and I am one of those people, this game adds that feature to a genre which has traditionally shied away from such features. GRIN has also revised how you hack the enemies communication systems. Instead of simply selecting the “hack” option and then waiting to see if you have been detected, Rearmed starts a mini-game where you need to direct a ball to various target spaces in a cubic grid.

However, the most important feature the GRIN team has added is to ensure that it feels like Bionic Commando. I hope you give it a try and let me know what you think about the remake.

Categories: Games, Retro, Xbox 360
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Right around the point where you finish with the Waters of Life quest, one of the waypoints during the main quest, the game crashes at different points much to the frustration of Fallout players everywhere. I do not know of a fix for Xbox 360 players, but for PC players, using your debug console may save you a lot of time and headaches. The basic strategy is to turn off the AI engine before the game crashes (you’ll need to experiment), progress to a new scene or area or event, then enable it again. We had to do this a couple of times: once during our approach to Jefferson Memorial (we reactivated it once we teleported to Janice Kaplinski), and again before we turned the valve to unblock the pipes (last request from your father). To teleport to Janice we followed these steps:

1. Press the tilde (~) and disable the game’s AI with the “tai” console command.
2. Enter the command: player.moveto 00019FC6. This will teleport you to Janice Kaplinski.
3. Talk to her, Dr. Li, and any other scientists, if you want.
4. Turn the AI on again with the same “tai” command.

Categories: Games, PC
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We’ve been playing Fallout 3 for a few days now and it seems to have a few problems, but nothing too major so far. Over the last week or so, I have read a number of posts and articles complaining about the stability of the game. Well, my response to these people is to just relax and try and fix your problem with the debug console – Xbox and PS3 users are out of luck, I’m afraid.

With a game of this size and complexity, you must allow for the initial round of bugs, even ones related to the main quest. Bethesda simply does not employ enough people to cover the same amount of ground as the community. As an example, how many people do you think have purchased a copy of the game since it was released? I’m lazy, but let’s just say 100,000 copies were sold. As is the case for almost every piece of software, users really do make the best testers since there are a lot of bored people in the world, and everything they do in the game is new and intriguing to them so they tend to poke and prod at the software in ways the game development company never expected. Do you honestly think Bethesda should try and compete with that many play testers? Well in order to have a testing team which can compete with a group that size they would need to charge $1000 for the game. Yeah, no thanks, I’ll live with my slightly crippled software, until they come out with a patch release.

When you think about the number of things which could have gone wrong, the bugs I have seen floating around the Internet are annoying, but not outside what I would have expected from a game like Fallout 3.

Categories: Games, PC
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e·vil [ee – vuhl] – marked by calmness and serenity even during times of hardship and pending doom; literally oozing politeness when not absolutely required or called upon to exhibit; marked by ignorant suggestions and reiterateration of obvious facts and conclusions (can sometimes be confused with an idiot); shows no signs of being bubbly in personality which should normally accompany excessive politeness.

We’ve been playing Tales of the Abyss a lot lately and there are a few disturbing character traits we’ve noticed with Fon Master Ion. We presume you’ve noticed how blindly and obediently he unlocks all of those doors leading into the Sephiroth trees? After the cataclysm, notice how Luke takes the blame for letting Akzeriuth fall into the miasma, but in fact it was Ion who opened the doors in the first place! Ion is also in constant communication with Grand Maestro Mohs in the first half of the story, who we all know to be corrupt with power. Mysterious disappearances which he claims are kidnappings? Yeah, you’re laying it on pretty thick Fon Master. Last, but certainly not least, is his disposition. Who in the Nine Hells is that polite or apologetic on purpose, except for the Prince of Darkness himself?

Categories: Games, Playstation
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If you’ve been wondering how to get all those bonuses, or if you’ve been itching to try the game but would like a little demo first, check it out in all its poorly encoded glory. I just positively love the music in this game; I should make a CD or something…

Categories: DOS, Games, Retro
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The World of Goo has a tentative release date of February 14 or Valentine’s Day, whichever comes first. This game looks interesting, although there aren’t very many details. The video kind of fills in some of the void, but I certainly like what I’ve seen so far! Indie (independent developers) developers have been having a great time these last couple of years. Due largely to the sales channels created by companies like Microsoft for their Xbox 360 Marketplace, or even Nintendo’s Wii – although they haven’t seemed to really use it to its full potential yet. As a company of two, Ron and Kyle seem to be creating something unique and interesting. I can’t wait to try it! Maybe I’ll put my money where my mouth is and pre-pay for an indie game which hasn’t been released yet…

Categories: Games, Indie Games, Nintendo Wii, PC
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There is a game in development right now which can take objects drawn with “Crayons” on screen and apply physical properties to that object. Influences like gravity, collision with other objects, friction are all applied once the object is drawn. You can even draw a a small hole on the object which can represent axial mobility. For example, draw a circle with a small hole in the center and it can act as a wheel, connect two wheels together with the frame of a car and it becomes a car. The object of the game seems to be about collecting stars by drawing objects and getting them to interact together so that the stars can be collected. Pretty neat idea!

Categories: Games, Indie Games, Nintendo Wii
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A very effective strategy when trying to dig up the treasure maps on Harrow Island is to choose a quadrant on the island for each piece of the sea chart which you have already collected. When you start digging, just start around the perimeter of the square and dig a hole every other space. You don’t need to dig your holes right next to each other; I uncovered a treasure map the first time for each quadrant using this method.

Categories: Games, Nintendo DS
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Have you ever noticed how addicting the fishing mini-games are within games like Breath of Fire or The Legend of Zelda? I’m playing Phantom Hourglass right now and the fishing game is a lot of fun. Although, I don’t believe it will grow to be as detailed as Breath of Fire III’s mini-game with the shear number of lures and fish species. Zelda’s latest game does record your largest catch size for each fish and there are prizes for catching big or rare fish.

Categories: Games, Nintendo DS
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While I’m waiting for OS installations or code compilations to finish, I’ve been playing this great game on Xandros called Neverball. It’s a game similar to Monkey Ball, which is one of my faviourites on the Game Cube. It’s very polished for an open source game and is complete with the exception of minor enhancements or bug fixes from time to time. Its only dependencies on Linux are the most common SDL libraries: core library, SDL_image, SDL_ttf, and SDL_mixer. It doesn’t compile so well on Intel Macs, but I should get that working pretty soon. I believe there is an Xcode project file available too for those who choose to take the quick and easy path. I may soon walk the path of the dark side, depending on how quickly I can resolve these obtuse linker errors.

Categories: Games, Programming
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