Sunday, June 05, 2005

MORE ON MY GAMING STUFF

To close my gaming stuff chapter, it gives me a great pleasure to show the remaining devices I use to play and have fun, among others activities.

Below, you can see a PC laptop I use to work and, from time to time, to play arcade games. In fact, this laptop belongs to my university, and more specifically to the catalan branch of TEDIP research team. So I'm a part-time user. As you can see, I'm watching Brothers in Arms DVD.

TEDIP

Once reviewed Computers, let's take a look to my console stuff. I have two consoles right now. A PS2 and an Xbox. The Sony machine was acquired in november 2002, and I've play with it a lot of games since then. I added the online device to play SOCOM, 'cause I was selected as a betatester by Sony.

PS2

More recently, on January 2005 I bought the Xbox machine, and in the last months I've played a few games, including COUNTERSTRIKE, BROTHERS IN ARMS, and FULL SPECTRUM WARRIOR.

MY TV+Xbox

Xbox

I plan to acquire next generation consoles in the following years, and also some mobiles devices such as PSP when available in Europe in order to known more closely the mobile gaming sector. Right now, the only mobile gaming experience I have is provided by my SIEMENS S-65 cellphone, (see picture below), that allows me to play SeaBattle, Siemens 3D Rally and Worms games.

SIEMENS S-65

Although it does not belong to game industry, I think that my 512 mb iPOD shuffle deserves a picture in this post. He also is part of my digital life.

iPOD Shuffle

Friday, June 03, 2005

INTRODUCING ALEX AND WILLIE

It gives me a great pleasure to introduce two more members of my digital gaming world. In the first picture, you can see Alex, my iMac G5 17 and 1.8 ghz work computer, located at Research Unit in Facultat de Comunicació Blanquerna, that is part of Universitat Ramon Llull. Properly speaking, Alex is not mine, that is, do not belong to me. I use it. In fact, it is only two weeks since I started to use it. But as I said in a previous post, life is very different after using Alex in comparison with Felix. Of course, as a working unit I cannot play with it as I play with Felix, but since today I had downloaded a few well-known demos, such as UT2004, Ghost Recon, Call of Duty, MOH Breakthrough and Spearhead, and America's Army Special Forces. And there is a big difference.

ÀLEX1


WILLIE

The second picture is from Willie, the other Mac I have at home. As you can see it is an old iMac G3 at 500 mhz. It is my son's Mac, in fact, 'cause he is always using, i.e. playing. The games most played with it are: the venerable sim Majesty, and also Age of Empires II and Stronghold. Prior to these three games, we also played kid games from Pangea's factory such as Cro-Mag Rally, Nanosaur, Bugdom, Otto Matic (see picture).

ottobox

Although this Mac is old, I think he still develops a plurality of common tasks not associated with last generation of games, so it is an ideal tool for kids first contact with computers.

Nothing more right now. See you next day.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

ONE from DIGITAL LEGENDS... and more

On Sunday I was listening GAME OVER a fully video-game dedicated program aired at ONA CATALANA radio station. They reviewed last E3 edition. It was really interesting. But the news that shocked me more was that a Catalan video-game firm, Barcelona's Digital Legends has developed exclusively for Nokia's N-Gage platform a fighting game play with cool beat-em-up features, called ONE. You can read a review about this game here.

ONE from DIGITAL LEGENDS

This announcement made me think. Until now, the Catalan contribution to video-game industry has been minimum, contrary to other nations without state, as Scotland (Edimburgh's Rockstarnorth) or Quebec (Montreal's Ubi Soft). May be, we are facing something new. I really think that Catalonia has enough human capital to increase his share. A second thought was that the fact that ONE belongs to the mobile gaming world is really interesting since this area of video-games industry will increase his weight in the foreseable future, as many market reports inform. Having a Catalan game will be a good reason to buy a N-Gage device :-).

And More
I have mentioned previously GAME OVER radio program. Another media outlet that inform about video-game news and industry in Catalan is 3xl.net video-games section. If GAME OVER is addressed to mature players and stresses analysis, 3xl.net is a youth addressed web portal manufactured by the Catalan Public Television.

Today I've played two games. The first one has been a demo version of Tank-o-Box downloaded at Felix (see previous post) Mac. It is a game for kids, and, yeah, it's nice. The other game has been Ubi Soft's Brothers in Arms Road to Hill 30. This game is a superb, although it seems laughable the fact that a "brother" killed in action in a previous chapter, is in good shape in the next chapter. I have made my own rules: in order to advance to the next chapter, all my men must survive. That's really tough.











MAC GAMER


FELIX, MY HOME MAC
Originally uploaded by graccus.
I confess that I'm a Mac Gamer. That is, I use Apple hardware to play games (well in fact I'm also a videogame player, as I own a PS2 and an Xbox). As a Mac Gamer I belong to a minority. But I don't care. Mac gamers are well served with Game Ranger platform, and I have all the needs covered. Well may be there are some shortcomings, but broadly speaking, I'm fine.

Since July 2002, when I bought my current iMac 14 G4 at 800 MHz, the interest from Apple towards gaming has increased a lot. I think the last iMac G5 and Power Mac G5 are built having in mind game requirements, so from my point of view, the future of Mac gaming is brilliant. As a consequence, I'm thinking in buying a new one this summer. Originally the idea was to buy a new one in 4 years (that is in summer 2006), but events are changing so fast that may be I change my mind and advance the decision in one year. Of course, I must confess that gaming is not the only activity I do with my Mac.

Another important reason is that in my office (in fact a table) I have a brand new iMac 17 G5 1.8 GHz, and the difference is so big that I can't wait to change. You may say that I'm too much consume intoxicated. May be you are right. But when I realize that my office Mac plays (called Alex) at 0 pings instead of 200 or more pings that plays my home Mac (called Felix), that's another world.

Today I've played America's Army. Special Forces after downloading at my Office Mac (Alex), and the experience is light years far from when I play at home. I've played three times. The outcomes: 22 (not qualified), 30 (qualified for sharpshooter) and 24 (qualified) in basic training (from 40 shots, 23 to qualify). But the most interesting fact is the difference between playing with Alex than playing with Felix. In the latter I use to have some troubles in every match (low speed, crazy mouse). In the former, all quiet, all sweet, no problems at all (well in fact there is one, the mouse ultrasensibility, that made me shot twice when I wanted to shot just once).

To finish this chronicle, let me introduce Felix, my home Mac. It is not old except for playing (but I still can play Ghost Recon without problems).

Felix, say hello to the people...