Street Fighter IV Fightstick Upgrade

I've had my Madcatz Street Fighter IV Standard fightstick since August of 2009. I thought it was time to upgrade the parts of it. Don't get me wrong it's a damn good stick, I just felt it needed an upgrade, with the stick getting squeaky and loose, likely due to abuse from me. So after partially disassembling and reassembling my stick to test if I could do it, well within the knowledge I could purchase a Tekken 6 Hori stick if I damaged it beyond repair.

Following this I managed to remove a couple of buttons and the stick itself with ease, replacing them was just as easy. From here I ordered the parts I required from Gremlin Solutions: who were very efficient, not the fastest postage, though all of my parts arrived in perfect condition 2 days after I ordered them. The parts I purchased were: A blackball Sanwa JLF-TP-8YT and 6 Sanwa OBSF-30 buttons with a red surround and white button.


A few days later I received my parts, then set about performing the upgrade. A couple of notes to this, some of the quick disconnect cables were a pain to remove, this may have been a manufacturing problem or process. One was so tight that I ended up snapping the contact on an old button. Despite these few flaws I managed to finish with no other problems.

Onto the hardware itself, it feels a hell of a lot better. The plastics are far superior and the edge are a lot smoother, making holding the stick feel more enjoyable. The mechanical parts of the stick are also stronger, particularly with the stick, where you can feel the micro-switches more definitely. While playing it is clear that that the new parts are superior, again the stick is the biggest improvement, performing a Light punch Shoryuken into a Shinkuu Hadouken feels more natural. All said the upgrade was well worth doing, especially with Blazblue around the corner in Europe.


Finally here is a link to the full photo album of the modification: http://www.flickr.com/photos/patrickjcarter/sets/72157623627194012/

Mass Effect 2

With Mass Effect, I was unsure what to expect. Knights of the Old Republic being the only other Bioware game I previously played. There were plenty of barriers preventing players from enjoying the Original, including but not limited to: a weak cover system, after being released a year later than Gears of War, and the infamous Mako. Mass Effect was one of the first titles I picked up for the Xbox 360, due to joining the seventh generation of games consoles in 2008. Despite the aforementioned problems, I fell in love with the game, the characters and the side quests were where my interest lay. The main storyline was inferior in many ways to the more consumable “assignments”, which piqued my interest in the game due to them not being a cliché ridden Science fiction.


So onto Mass Effect 2, I decided to purchase the PC release above the 360, several factors entered into this including cost and system preference. I had not finished a Mass Effect play-through on PC , however I was informed of a site with multiple save games for the original. Following this I chose one similar to my original character, I was set to go. Boy was I in for a surprise, Mass Effect 2 includes some of the biggest changes I have seen in a sequel for a long time, they kept very little of the core the same, at least with the combat, yes it shares many systems with the original, the refinement, of which, is great enough to warrant my statement. All of these points have been mentioned by others, so I shan't expand on this.


The characters in the second game are fantastic, far superior to those in Mass Effect, their backgrounds and development arcs were surprisingly fleshed out. Relationships between various crew mates seemed quite quite transparent, following the same formula for the occurrences. The character progression was simplified to a great extent compared to it's predecessor, I can see why they did it and it is no way a bad decision, I would have preferred a more complicated advancement system. These slight disagreements aside, Mass Effect 2 is easily the best hybrid of an RPG and an action game I have played.
With the end of the game, as in Knights of the Old Republic there is a possibility of losing a number of your squad, through decisions you make during the game, or during this section. So with my relationship with several of the characters, I spent a decent amount of time choosing who shall do what, with no knowledge of the outcomes. This leads me to my next point, there are several different results for the outcome of who lives and who dies. The outcome I experienced was favourable to that of fellow gamer Marek Bronstring (of Sega and Idle Thumbs). I have no idea of how many overall outcomes there are with this combined with the other decisions which are made during the game, I expect they are in the hundreds however.


My main interest is how this is all dealt with in the 3rd title in the Mass Effect series. Will they simply ignore the characters who can die, or will they create multiple situations where encounters between multiple characters from the two currently released titles can exist. I sincerely hope that the latter is the case. It may not be the massive jump forward that I predict gaming will have, though it is a definite push in the right direction.

Indie games and me.

I thought I would write an article on a few of the indie games I have played recently. So here it is.

Gravity Bone

A fantastic, despite ridiculously short first person game. You play as a detective doing missions for an unknown agency. Play it.

Radiator

A Half Life 2 mod, covering adult themes. Game play is interesting to say the least. This is a series of short games, 2 of which have been released, with 4 more planned before the end of the year. Play it if you are interested in playing an arty game.

Research and Development

Another Half Life 2 mod, This time it takes a stab at combining both the adventure games puzzles with Half life’s action game play, there is no gunplay. Most puzzles are physics based, similarly to those in Half Life 2, yet ramped up considerably. There are a couple of flaws in the design and UI (particularly the final level: which can be solved by using the console). Again I would recommend this to most gamers.

The Maw

A nice platformer (how I have missed you), ideally played on a 360 controller. Some pretty interesting game mechanics with the titular Character. Unfortunately this one isn’t free; it costs the equivalent of $10 or £6-7. If you like 3D platformers such as Mario titles, Banjo titles, as well as any other similar platformers.

Splosion Man

Another game from the guys who made The Maw, this time a 2.5D platformer. The puzzles in this are absolutely fantastic, the gameplay frantic. The game itself can be frustrating, but if you cannot do a section (and die enough) you can skip it. There is also a co-op campaign which is pretty good of what I played of it. The game itself is pretty quirky with the protagonist using famous quotes from actors and others, including: Arnie and Christian Bale. Again it isn’t free and has the same Price of The Maw ($10/£6-7). Buy it (if you have a 360).

Ben There Dan That

An adventure game in a similar vein to classic lucasarts games. Some pretty decent puzzle design, which is accompanied by some excellent pixel art for the visuals. Play it if you are a fan of adventure games.

Out of Order

One of the first ‘indie’ games which I played. Another adventure here, very well done. Fantastic artwork, I can’t remember so much about this, but I remember it is well worth playing.

Recently I have been playing far too many of these, despite having a large back log of games to play through, so I shouldn’t really, however these games are often the ones that I enjoy the most, despite being the shortest. Maybe it is because they are so streamlined into the small package that they do not drag as much as many retail or downloadable games. I would urge you to play some of these and look for others, while recommending them to others. They may not be as polished as some other games; although this is not always true as retail games can often be quite shoddy. Remember mods were a strong influence on games in times gone by (capture the flag was originally a Mod, and now is a standard game type in most shooters), so would likely do the same for now and in the future.

Music in Games.

To me this is one of if not the most important aspect in a game (which is not how the game actually plays). Consider it this way, do your favourite games have bad or average soundtracks... No they do not, unless you have no opinion on this due to disability (deafness). The soundtrack is often ignored, this is done less these days however the music should be recognised and commended more. If you look at some of my favourite Games they all have fantastic soundtracks: Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, has an excellent soundtrack done by Electronic artist Amon Tobin (he also did the majority of the InFamous soundtrack), the soundtrack captures the atmosphere of the game perfectly, with a change of tempo if you are discovered, if you haven’t heard the soundtrack or remember it fondly it is available to listen to on both Last.fm and Spotify. Another of my favourite games is Full Throttle, a classic Tim Schafer adventure game by Lucasarts, which featured music by The Gone Jackals, whose music fits perfectly into the Heavy Metal Adventure, despite by today’s standards it is very low quality, which is entirely forgivable due to it being 14 years old. My final example would be the Halo series (particularly 1 and 3) the fully orchestrated soundtracks work fantastically, despite what your opinion of those games is you cannot knock the soundtracks, the Halo theme is Iconic and clearly recognisable, it feels right, it feels like Halo; which is the exact thing you want it to be.

Unfortunately music in games is not perfect. Not enough games follow in the steps Lucasarts did with their adventure games, a system called iMuse was an interactive platform that allowed music to be synchronised perfectly with what was on screen, whilst seamlessly transitioning from one piece to another: Monkey Island 2: LeChucks revenge includes the best examples of this. The reason that iMuse wasn’t well known was due to how well it worked, generally people will only notice a system such as this if it is done clumsily.

Ideally music in games is unnoticed until you are looking for it; this is not to say you don’t hear it. I consider it a success if it fits into the game perfectly; you notice how well it is implemented as well as orchestrated in later playthroughs.

Games Journalism, and who is a gamer.

I really don't like numbers for reviews, particularly with most game reviews considering 7 out of 10 an average (I'm not sure but as a Mathematics University student I consider the average is 5). With numerical values I see no particular advantage, If I am going to see a movie I want to know if it interests me not how good it is for what it is and how the camera work is, if I am buying a guitar I want to know what kind of sound it makes, how much it weighs and how durable it is, if I am buying a Camera I want to see test pictures, weight distribution and how durable it is; and I want the same with a game review (how it feels to play, whether it is completely linear or not, how it compares to its predecessor if applicable). Games journalism need to grow up a little in my opinion, which I reckon should happen soon, with the games industry becoming bigger in recent years, in Britain (on average) 40% of people have a console (this is with the consoles sold, so doesn't account for those with multiple consoles, PC gamers or imports). People may argue that gaming hasn't grown up that much in the past 5 years, this I disagree with, particularly those who bring up the addition of casual games to the market (including fitness games), I disagree with people because if you look at most forms of entertainment there will be many genres which different people will enjoy: People don't always consider casual gamers real gamers, but if you don't like all sorts of film that doesn't mean you cannot be a film fan does it? And if you only like art house films, you aren't a film fan? My point here is that if you play games, regularly or semi regularly you are a gamer. 

I know numbers will never be out of all reviews in my lifetime with them being a pillar of that style of journalism. With this increased divergence in genres, such as films did as they matured, will hopefully encourage more diverse criticism, reviews now usually only say how it plays not how the gameplay makes the player feel about it. Language is a beautiful and constantly evolving thing, so why not use it in a more eloquent way?

Scale the Summit - Carving Desert Canyons review

This (Scale the Summit's second album) is an excellent follow on to 2007s Monument. You can hear the vast improvements of the 2 guitarists and know how to play off of one another’s styles excellently. With soaring solos being present, it is clear that Chris Letchford (8 string guitarist) is one to watch out for; the technicality he uses is amazing for one as young as him. The other the instruments (Bass and Drums) both have amazing subtlety, depth and strength to them, yet still manage to blend in and magnificently compliment the Guitars. While some may complain due to the lack of a Vocalist, I cannot see that complaint, this band wouldn't work as well as they do with a Vocalist.

Carving Desert Canyons contains a lot of variety in its songs, with ‘Glacial Planet’ and ‘Giants’ both containing particularly chunky riffs as well as beautifully written and performed solos. It is clear that the songs are concepts; especially if you look at the Band’s merchandise store with Shirts named after songs it shows that the songs have a concept of some sort; however it is unclear how thought out the concepts are or if they are linked throughout the entire album.

The album itself is marvellously mixed with the instruments specific volumes being very near to perfect (a little more bass wouldn’t go amiss however). The flow between tracks is superb and almost seamless, which is to be expected in a Progressive Masterpiece such as this.

I would suggest this to people who are fans of bands such as Dream Theater, Oceansize, Opeth and Between the Buried and me; despite being far lighter than three of these bands their style can be seen as reminiscent of them. If you are interested in supporting a fantastic young band that have a lot to give, listen to this album and consider giving it a purchase too.