TallGuyCalif's Computer Gaming and Entertainment Site

Tag: Xbox 360

  • On the Importance of Game Controller Support

    I was somewhat out of gaming action for medical reasons for more than a month. During that time, I was pretty much unable to use keyboard and mouse to play games. I was, however, able to use my Xbox 360 controller for Windows to play games that supported it. And that led me to discover how poor the support for game controllers is in many of the games I enjoy.

    One of my favorite games, Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO), doesn’t support game controllers, so I was out of LOTRO for a month or so. Sure, I logged in occasionally to check mail, but couldn’t play it even a little bit. But TallGuy, you say, MMOs and controllers don’t mix. Well, there you’re wrong.

    My other favorite MMO, Star Trek Online (STO), has native support for game controllers. Even more importantly, it has a fully programmable binding mechanism that lets me customize button combinations, so I can use the triggers as modifiers (think Shift or Control) for the few face buttons. Therefore, I can easily get to 2 rows of the skill bar without touching a keyboard or mouse. I can fly my ship or move my captain with one stick, move the camera with the other, crouch, run, shoot, and do pretty much everything I need with an Xbox controller.

    Games like Diablo III and Torchlight II didn’t support the game controller, of course. But the PS3 version of Diablo III shows that it is entirely possible to convert a clicky game into a controller game. The PS3 version is great – my wife and I have lots of fun playing it. She’s a wizard, so can nuke the enemies from a distance, while I’m a healing tank (monk) to take the pressure off her. And a lot less chance of getting carpal tunnel on the PS3 version.

    Very sadly, Sins of a Solar Empire can’t be played with a game controller. Nothing would have been better than to conquer the Sins universe many times during my convalescence, but it was not to be.

    A thoughtful friend gave me a nifty game, Evoland. It is pretty cool and supports game controllers very well. If you want to experience the evolution of RPGs over many years, give it a shot. I spent a good few hours with it.

    The laptop computer I was using wasn’t overly great (thanks to HP for abandoning it and not releasing modern drivers, since it is an i7 quad core with an AMD 6770 GPU), so it can’t run graphics intensive games like Skyrim or Borderlands 2 or Batman Arkham City well, so I didn’t use those, even though they work with game controllers.

    Instead, I gave up on the PC and finished Halo 4 on Xbox 360 and then finished Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood on the PS3. I enjoyed both, but I especially loved AssCreed because of exploring Rome and its historical buildings.

    So, my point is that PC games should have better game controller support. Keyboards are fiddly and not appropriate for all games (sure, for a shooter, I’d prefer keyboard and mouse any day), and there may be people that have some limitations or are bedridden that would be better off with a controller.

  • Finally finished Gears of War 3 and loved it

    After finishing the Deus Ex: Human Revolution game and DLC, I jumped over to the old Xbox 360 to play Gears of War 3. Actually, this is the 3rd time I’ve started GOW3. Each previous time, I was either distracted by work or home crises or something, but this time, I was resolved to play the game.

    Yes, GOW3 could fall into Yahtzee’s “spunkgargleweewee” game category, as it mostly involves running from one chest high wall to another with an overbuilt space marine. But it is a very well done, atmospheric, cover-based shooter. While there are still lots of unanswered questions about the Locust and the Lambent, and why the Locust Queen looks human, none of that hurts the gameplay for a second. In general, you know where to go, what to do, and, to some extent, why, and that you need to kill lots of baddies on the way.

    In the previous GOW games, I quickly dropped the standard Gears’ Lancer rifle, because the enemy rifles were pretty good and ammo abounded, while Lancer ammo was hard to find. In this game, ammo was fairly easy to come by if I kept my eyes open, so I stuck with the Lancer through the game (with some excursions to explosive weapons for certain enemies). I’m glad I did, because using the Lancer’s chainsaw to rip through close-in enemies was great fun (and typically better than shooting when the enemy closed on you), as was executing injured baddies by splattering their guts all over the place.

    The fights were fairly tough, but sufficiently well balanced that they tended not to get too frustrating. The GOW games have a particularly good checkpoint system, so if you die, you don’t have to repeat much (unlike the frustrating, yet wonderful Dark Souls). I’m happy that the GOW series has reached a reasonable conclusion, though I see that there is a prequel coming out to hoover more money from our wallets. Well, if it is as good as GOW3 was, I’ll pay…

  • Got a Kinect

    I’ve been intrigued with the Kinect for the Xbox 360 since it was first announced. I’m less intrigued with it for games than I am for the technology. I think the games will mostly be Wii-style crap, but the technology is cool, as are the open source freenect drivers.

    It seems that Kinect units are as hard to get as Wii units were when they first came out. Apparently everyone has to have one for Christmas, so Amazon is out of them and all the slimy 3rd party sellers are reaming people with prices starting around $220 for a $150 item. Well today I walked into a Microsoft Store (very nice store and helpful sales guy, by the way) and got one right away. I even had a 20% off card, so it ended up being around $130 out the door, so a pretty good deal!

    I will plug it into the Xbox 360 this weekend, I hope, and will write about my experiences with it.

  • Too many games!

    Gosh, it’s a real problem that I have too many games to play and not enough time. Lord of the Rings Online had a recent update that fixed Lore Masters a bit and made positive changes to crafting. I’m really enjoying LOTRO!

    But now, Star Trek Online has put out the Season 3 update, so I need to check that out, perhaps with a new character, as they too claim to have improved crafting, among other things.

    I haven’t even had time to get back to Alan Wake for a week now, let alone Pocket Legends, Pocket Frogs, Dragon Age DLC, and all the other games that appeal to me. And I haven’t turned on either PS3 in over a month! Well, perhaps I’ll get some time over the holidays!

  • Alan Wake is creepy fun

    I finally had a chance to start Alan Wake last night and it’s quite good. The mood is very creepy and scary and the game really dragged me into it. I have really enjoyed other Remedy games in the past (Max Payne series) and this is more of the same. The unshaven male character wandering around in the dark being attacked by baddies is similar, but so far, I haven’t run across anything like Max Payne’s bullet time mechanic. In this game, Alan weakens creatures through light, then blows them away with guns once they are sufficiently weakened. Flare guns are a real treat, as they cause major carnage.

    I’m still unclear why all the baddies are attacking Alan, but I’ll keep playing to find out! Good fun!

  • Too Many Games, Not Enough Time

    While I have spent what little free time I’ve had lately enjoying Star Trek Online‘s great Weekly Episodes and Lord of the Rings Online‘s vast virtual world (and skirmishes), I have acquired or ordered some new games that I don’t know when I will have time to play.

    I bought Alan Wake a week or two ago when Buy.com had it on sale. It arrived, but I have yet to put the disk into my Xbox 360 (or even turn on a console recently).

    Now I’ve ordered Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood for PS3 because I enjoyed Assassin’s Creed II so much and I had some game credit from Amazon.com.

    It’s an exciting time to be a gamer with all the seemingly great games coming out and well-reviewed older games coming down in price. Now if I could just buy some free time…

  • Finished Halo Reach

    Well, I finished Halo Reach, which both ends the series and brings everything full circle. I thought I had a long battle sequence left that would take a while, but really I just had to kill a couple of Elites and a Zealot and then a Covenant cruiser, and that was it. I won’t spoil the ending, but it certainly wasn’t a fun ending, as you would expect from the opening scene of the game.

    Perhaps I can convince my wife to try co-op with me sometime, but otherwise, this one goes in the drawer. Now, time to finish Star Ocean, play Lord of the Rings Online and Star Trek Online, and maybe even check out some of the Dragon Age and Mass Effect 2 DLCs. And the Fallout New Vegas comes out… Can hardly wait!

  • Halo Reach Turning Ugly

    Things are getting pretty ugly in Halo Reach, and I don’t mean the graphics, which are pretty good.

    ***Spoiler Alert*** Do not read if you don’t want spoilers

    One of the unique features of Halo Reach (at least compared to the other Halo games I’ve played) is the presence of your Noble Team comrades. They were helpful in keeping the enemy’s attention off you for a bit so you could kill some baddies and even the odds. Well, now all my Noble Team mates have been killed off, so I am left to face the hordes alone. Cortana has been taken to the Pillar of Autumn, yet I’m left behind, so I’m guessing my character will die by the end. Fighting alone as the world is coming to an end is somewhat depressing.

    *** End Spoilers ***

    Unlike other games where you get more powerful weapons towards the end to help against large numbers of enemies, Halo Reach has always had all (or at least most) of the weapons available. Some of the more powerful weapons, like the Spartan Laser and the Sniper Rifle, take sufficiently long enough to aim and fire that they’re not too useful. A very annoying thing about Halo Reach (and all the other Halos, if I remember) is that if someone even farts in your general direction while you’re zoomed in, you get zoomed back out and lose your precise aim. That really makes it hard to use the sniper rifle when things are hot and heavy. Tough Spartans should be able to maintain zoom even when shot (perhaps not being blown up, however).

  • Halo Reach Space Fighting is Fun!

    The space fighting part of Halo Reach is the most fun, so far, but it was quite short, and since my Sabre was destroyed with the Covenant super-carrier, not likely to be repeated soon. The first video here shows part of the first space battle. It gets busier in the attack wave after the video, but is more of the same. As you can see, my teammates can’t seem to hit much of anything, so I have to do most of the blowing things up…

    In the second movie, we’re going after a Covenant corvette to take it over and use it in the upcoming attempt to destroy the super-carrier. I get the task of taking out the engines.

    Once we disabled the corvette, there are some fun battles inside to gain control. Then things go from bad to worse, but that’s for another post.

  • Halo Reach Turret Shooting

    Because Halo Reach put me more than an hour back in my game, I had a chance to relive some of my favorite moments so far. The first is as I’m being airlifted to a spire I need to shut down. I got to shoot from the turret and took out a lot of Covenant baddies and AA guns on the ground. Pretty fun.

    The next video shows the launch of my Sabre into orbit. It’s a cutscene, but it looks pretty good. Both videos are available in 1080p if your machine has the guts and your display has the pixels.

    I’ll have a couple more videos tomorrow. They’re uploading now, but I’m not going to wait for them to be done processing.