Month: November 2004

Reviews of the Nintendo DS are starting to trickle in, and they’re pretty positive so far. Although the dual screens and touchpad seem a bit gimmicky, it’s at least as functional as a standard GBA if you strip all the gimmicks away. It’ll be interesting to see what they do with the WiFi and Internet capabilities, too.

I’d been thinking of upgrading my plain old GBA to a GBA SP for a while, but I’ll probably pick up a DS instead. There’s nothing terribly compelling right now, but it’ll still solve the backlight and battery problems with the original, and still let me use any nifty new DS-specific stuff that might come out…

I am now waiting on the completion of the single biggest thing I have ever tried to download: Half-Life 2. It’ll probably be at least 3-4 gigs of data transferred, to meet the ~8 gig install size, but at this rate it should be done by morning.

Normally, given the option, I prefer to get copies of software on actual physical media instead of downloading them. In this case though, there is a difference: the CD version apparently still has the CD-in-drive check on startup. Even though the downloadable version obviously doesn’t. Don’t bother trying to reason it out; it’s apparently because of Orders From Above and nothing else… There’s also been the what-happens-if-I-lose-it concern, but they’ve actually included the ability to burn backup copies to DVD/CD.

The whole online activation requirement for HL2 has been a bit controversial, but at least it’s a one-time-only thing for the single-player game. (Multiplayer always has to do a key check, as is standard nowadays.) It has been effective, though: they avoided having any pre-release or zero-day leaks of pirated copies of the whole game, unlike nearly every other big title to come out recently.

Hopefully my system is even capable of running it well. I technically meet all of the specs, except that my FSB is stuck at 266MHz, which is a bit lacking compared to the effective 800MHz you can get on recent motherboards. It should be good enough with some options turned down, at least.

37) Hijack a train, derail it, and set it on fire:

As if I didn’t have enough distractions already, I picked up one of the new slimmer PS2s yesterday and wow, this thing is *tiny*:

(That white blob is my way-overexposed hand.)

This is actually the first real console I’ve had since the original NES. I know the Xbox has technically better specs and graphics and so forth, but in the console world the raw performance specs have never really seemed to matter all that much. Video game history is littered with systems that were technically superior spec-wise, but still colossal failures. It’s more a matter of what titles there are to choose from and what style of games you enjoy, and the PS2 library will fit me better, I think.

And I also picked up a handful of games, of course. Gran Turismo 3, since I haven’t played a decent driving game since Pod. Katamari Damacy, which proves that the Japanese have been smoking something pretty potent lately. FFX and the first .hack to check out the current console RPG scene.

And of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Because life isn’t complete until you’ve beaten an enemy gang member to death with a giant purple dildo.