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Diary of a Lethargic Video Gamer http://www.stevejackson.org.uk "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for Sega." - Brodie (Mallrats) Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:00:31 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 en New TV http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/10/11/new-tv/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/10/11/new-tv/#comments Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:57:33 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/10/11/new-tv/ I treated myself to a new TV last weekend, a 40″ Sony KDL-40V4000.

Sony 40″ KDL-40V4000

It’s replacing a 32″ Hyundai ImageQuest A321, which is a cracking set, but I didn’t feel that a 720p screen at that size was doing any justice to the potential visual quality of my HD-DVDs, Blu-Rays and having recently upgraded to Sky HD, much of my TV viewing.  The Sony is a native 1080p set with 24p support, has a 33,000:1 contrast ratio, and equally as important for me after issues with a HDMI switch I was using on the Hyundai, 3 HDMI inputs, and I’ve found myself completely stunned by the difference between the two TVs.  The quality of HD movie playback on the Sony is overwhelming with great sharpness, no motion blurring and excellent display of dark colours, my games have never looked so vivid, and it even has a fairly decent SD picture for an LCD of this size.

My son is also overjoyed with this upgrade, as his 360 is now hooked up to the Hyundai rather than the old, very bulky, 20″ SD CRT he was using previously.

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Samba de Amigo http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/25/samba-de-amigo/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/25/samba-de-amigo/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:19:11 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/25/samba-de-amigo/ I was so looking forward to the new Wii version of Samba de Amigo, but it’s turned out to be a crushing disappointment.  Being such a massive fan of Samba on the Dreamcast, I was hoping to
overlook the reported control issues, but they are all too apparent for me I’m afraid.  I can handle flawed controls preventing me from getting perfect scores, but playing on medium is really highlighting how hit and miss they really are, and the amount of times they fail to register my movements correctly is detracting from the overall fun now. I dread to think what playing on hard is like, and as things stand, I doubt I’ll have the patience to even try.

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LittleBigPlanet Beta http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/23/littlebigplanet-beta/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/23/littlebigplanet-beta/#comments Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:26:59 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/09/23/littlebigplanet-beta/ Bah!  Eurogamer started to give away keys to the beta of one of my most anticipated games of the year, LittleBigPlanet, earlier this evening.  I was out at a school open evening and so appeared to have missed out though.   I tried as soon as I got in, and the Eurogamer site appeared to be under heavy strain as the page kept timing out, but I eventually got the giveaway page to load and saw this:

Yes, one bloody key left.  I clicked the claim button but the next page then timed out and there is nothing in my EG account inbox, so it looks like I was too late.  So near, and yet so far, eh?

Bum.

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Official PS3 gamercards now available http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/official-ps3-gamercards-now-available/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/official-ps3-gamercards-now-available/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:25:44 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/official-ps3-gamercards-now-available/ Official 360-style PS3 gamercards are now available.  Here’s mine:

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And now my PS3 is buggered too… http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/and-now-my-ps3-is-buggered-too/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/and-now-my-ps3-is-buggered-too/#comments Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:17:17 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/14/and-now-my-ps3-is-buggered-too/ So, after my 360 breaking down yesterday, my PS3 decided to follow suit this afternoon.  First the menu wouldn’t appear if the machine was connected to the internet.  Offline it appeared to be working, but throws up a blue screen whenever I try and run a game either from blu-ray or the hard drive, and now it goes back to the initial set-up everytime I reboot.  I’ve spoken to Sony, and they’ve put it down to a problem with the update, even though I installed both the 2.40 and 2.41 firmwares with no apparent problems until today. They are bringing me a new machine on Wednesday, the same day I’m expecting UPS to come back to collect my faulty 360. I’m just waiting for my already temperamental Wii disk drive to completely fail on me now for a complete current generation failure hat-trick.

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Another 360 death http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/13/another-360-death/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/13/another-360-death/#comments Sun, 13 Jul 2008 19:17:05 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/13/another-360-death/ The replacement I received for my original 360 last year has decided to gift me with three nice shining red lights this morning  After a quick call to Microsoft I’m now expecting a pick-up from UPS sometime in the week.  Having recently starting to use my 360 again, after seeing it gather dust for several months, I’m glad I now have a spare machine upstairs to continue my gaming on.

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Rainbow Six Vegas 2 - Completed http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/06/rainbow-six-vegas-2-completed/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/06/rainbow-six-vegas-2-completed/#comments Sun, 06 Jul 2008 06:25:47 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/07/06/rainbow-six-vegas-2-completed/ A late night on Friday saw me earn the Extreme Hunter achievement for completing all the Terrorist Hunt levels on realistic difficulty (the convention centre and oil refinery levels took bloody ages), and I followed this off by completing the main game yesterday.  I had a tricky showdown with a helicopter gunship and a small army of terrorists, then, after a short cutscene I merely had to fire a single shot to kill Gabe and bring up the end of game credits.

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Super Smash Bros Brawl http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/27/super-smash-bros-brawl/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/27/super-smash-bros-brawl/#comments Fri, 27 Jun 2008 20:09:39 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/27/super-smash-bros-brawl/ Another idiot purchase, possibly.  Whilst almost universally praised, I didn’t like it’s Gamecube predecessor much.  With this in mind, and after my recent experience with buying GTA IV against better judgement, plus the fact that I’ve recently bought Civilization Revolution, Lego Indiana Jones, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and Ticket to Ride on the 360, My Life as a King and LostWinds on the Wii, and Everybody’s Golf World Tour on PS3, and Buzz Quiz TV is arriving next week, leaving me with more than enough to get on with, you’d have thought I’d have stayed well clear of Smash Bros, wouldn’t you?  Despite all this I somehow found myself browsing shopto.net earlier, and having a promotional £4.00 credit in my account about to expire I clicked on the add to cart and confirm order buttons before I’d thought it all through.  Ah well, it should be here tomorrow morning, and hopefully I’ll fare a little better with this one.

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Ticket To Ride http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/25/ticket-to-ride/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/25/ticket-to-ride/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:32:21 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/25/ticket-to-ride/ Bloody hell, where did this come from?  I love the board game Ticket To Ride: Europe, and I mentioned how I would love to see an XBLA version in a Usenet post way back in May of last year  Little did I know that someone out there was listening and decided to bring the original Ticket to Ride board game to XBLA today.  I completely missed yesterday’s announcement that is was due for release, and just happened to see it listed on the Arcade blade earlier.  Not knowing it was in development, and just seeing it appear made it a real treat and I instantly bought it without even looking at the demo first.  It was a good decision because, yes, it’s simplistic, but like Uno, it’s an excellent wind-down game after a hectic session on COD4 or whatever.  I’ve already played a few games against the CPU and also won my first attempt at a ranked game.  The only possible downside is that I fail to see how it is supposed to work in offline multiplayer as your cards, destination tickets especially, need to be kept secret.  Having to look away or close you eyes in between turns is far from ideal after all.

I notice there is a download content option, so hopefully they’ll release TRT: Europe soon which has a little more variation that the original game.

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My Life As A King - Completed http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/22/my-life-as-a-king-completed/ http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/22/my-life-as-a-king-completed/#comments Sun, 22 Jun 2008 20:54:07 +0000 Steve http://www.stevejackson.org.uk/2008/06/22/my-life-as-a-king-completed/ Great game until the end when it started to get a little tedious as I’d cleared all the dungeons and discovered the Shrine where the end of game boss, the Dark Lord was lurking, but my adventurers were not strong enough to defeat him.  As a result I had to get them to battle through already fully explored dungeons again to level up for a while, with nothing new to unlock for my town either, before they were finally ready to take him on.  I’ve now unlocked the hard and extra hard modes that I’ll probably work through in short bursts over a longer period of time.

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