A savePoint at storpi.com

I listen to a lot of podcasts these days, so I can’t remember on which one I heard it on, but on the topic of Microsoft wanting to branch out into the casual market, with Rare leading the way, someone said something to the effect that Rare is not exactly a family friendly game studio.  They have a strange sense of style.  Take Viva Pinata.  It was heavily marketed towards kids, but the people really enjoying it are adults that “get” the game, if you know what I mean. 

The other argument I hear is that Xbox Live Arcade is the vehicle to get casual gamers onboard 360.  Well, that just seems silly to me.  I mean, who’s going to buy a $300 system to play Hexic HD, and if Hexic HD is targeted towards the mothers and sisters of hardcore gamer, how does that expand the installed base?  That guy was going to buy the system anyways.

Getting to the point, I don’t generally consider myself an anti-Xbox, pro-PlayStation gamer.  In fact, if you were to bash the 360 in front of me, I’d be perfectly capable of standing up for the system.  Yet here I am, writing a blog almost entirely on PS3.  It might have something to do with the fact that there’s just a lot of PS3 hate out there, so I feel like I have to defend it, but mostly, I’m just more excited about the games coming to Sony’s machine.  (more…)

Boktai, created by legendary game designer Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame, was a game in which a player used actual sunlight, from our sun (the real sun, just making sure we’re clear), to burn vampires back to where ever it is they come from. Strange? You see, Kojima wanted not only to make a game that worked on a handheld but to make a game that would only work on a handheld. Admittedly, it would be hard to get an Xbox and TV outside for a little sunshine.

That was several years ago. (more…)

Originally published on Playstation Underground Gamer Advisory Panel (GAP) 2007-03-16 11:18:

Yesterday, when I heard that Folding@Home was going to be available for the Playstation 3 by the end of the month, I was extremely excited. The reports on how exactly the PS3 will benefit the Folding@Home Project aren’t exactly clear, and many of them are based entirely on speculation or PR rhetoric. Regardless of how fast a single PS3 will be able to run these calculations, the fact of the matter is that the more users they can get to run Folding, the more processing power there will be. The project has been going on for over half a decade and there are only 200,000+ active users. Just half of the number of PS3’s online would double that number. I think that’s a conservative estimate, since it’s much easier to get a PS3 on Folding@Home than a PC. Not every PC has Folding on it, but since it’ll be part of a firmware update, every PS3 will soon have Folding@Home, and running the app is just a couple of button presses away. With that in mind, hitting that 50% mark of all PS3 online users should be simple.

It seems though that many people do not share my enthusiasm. Quite frankly, I am shocked at some of the things I’ve seen on other forums and messages boards where I had gone to spread the good news about F@H. A lot of people simply don’t see the benefits and would rather not spend the little-bit-more on electricity to leave the PS3 running occasionally. Listen, if you’re worrying about electricity costs, you shouldn’t have bought a PS3. Seriously. Would you rather save the few extra dollars today on power, or the possibly hundreds of thousands of dollar in the future when you don’t have to worry about diseases that Folding@Home may have helped cure?

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Do you remember why we were all excited about the Wii last year? Besides the Virtual Console, I can remember the promise of a deluge of fun, new games, played in a way we had never played before. Swinging the controller around seemed like such an innovative new approach to controls, and we all dreamed of playing Wii in big groups gathered around it, everyone with smiles on their faces.

Yet, here I am, four months into the console’s life cycle, and the only Wii game I really want to play is still Zelda: Twilight Princess. In fact, that’s the only game I can see myself truly wanting for Wii until the first week of April. That’s five months without a single game I want coming out for the system that has so much promise. I think if I actually had bought a Wii back in November, I’d be pretty disappointed by now.

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November 17th, 2006 Friday: Against all odds, I have just picked up my Playstation 3 and a copy of what has been promised to be the most of what the PS3 launch lineup has to offer, Resistance: Fall of Man. The reviews have been good, and I am ready to be blown away by this truly next generation experience.

November 17th, 2006 Later that afternoon: Had a weird sort of problem with the Playstation 3, but have finally gotten around to playing Resistance: Fall of Man. Initial impressions are not what I expected. I would go as far as saying that this game is a bit boring, with few, un-intelligent enemies on screen at a time and limited weapon variety. Also, in this post-Halo world of shooters, the inability to heal simply by ducking out of the fight for a second, comes as a shock making the game less fun than I had wanted.
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