Oh, man!
Posted 15:17 CET Saturday February 6th, 2010 (32 days ago). 142 views. No comments. Tagged with Computer Games, Xbox 360.
I finally decided to unwrap my copy of Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. I bought it back in November when Anniken came down with a cold and had to stay home from work for a couple of days. I was sure I’d get ill, too, so I prepared for a few days at home by getting the latest addition to the Grand Theft Auto series. As it turned out, however, I didn’t get ill. The game has been sitting in its plastic wrap together with the rest of my Xbox 360 games since then – until today, when I decided I wanted to give it a go. I wasn’t ill, but I was at home. That’s one out of two, not too bad.
I’d forgotten all about how much noise the Xbox 360 makes. Compared to my PS3, it’s like sitting next to a jet engine. Fighting fire with fire, I turned up the volume of my amplifier, effectively drowning the Xbox noise in the sounds of screeching tyres, gun shots and police sirens. That worked out nicely for about twenty minutes, when this happened: Continue reading "Oh, man!" →
Weekend Waster.
Posted 21:13 CET Sunday January 24th, 2010 (45 days ago). 113 views. No comments. Tagged with Computer Games, Exercise, Personal.
For most of you it’s still Sunday, which means that it’s still weekend. For those of you who has entered “Monday” or “the working week”* as it’s also called: Good luck with that. You consolation should be that you’ll hit the next weekend before the rest of us. And how did you spend the precious weekend? Personally, I wasted most of it, and to be honest, it actually feels a like a bit of a waste, too. I used to be able to waste an entire weekend without even thinking about it, but not anymore, it seems.
I did manage to drag my ass to the gym today, though, and had a great workout, too. On the first weekend of the new year, the NRK gym was totally crammed with people starting a new life. The weekends after that have been rather quiet and today I turned on the lights in the men’s locker room and the gym when I arrived and turned everything off when I left. Didn’t see single soul anywhere. I was supposed to go to the gym yesterday, but somehow managed to leave one of my jogging shoes at home. When I waited for the bus, it struck me that I might have left one of them at home, but shrugged it off and got on the bus to the gym. Bad move. Well, at least I got to ride the bus a lot and I usually enjoy riding the bus.
Among other things I’ve done this weekend is to play a little Company of Heroes, a great strategy game that I picked up at one of the many Steam sales last year. If you like WWII strategy games, it comes highly recommended; the single player campaigns, multiplayer and skirmish, which I prefer since I really can’t stand loosing at strategy games. Beat me in any other type of game, not a problem, but don’t beat me in RTS games! I have no idea why it is like this.
And that’s about it! Next week is crammed with social activities, it feels like I really need it.
*Or, as it’s also known, “the workweek”. Now even the yanks should be satisfied.
Sicko.
Posted 14:01 CET Sunday November 8th, 2009 (122 days ago). 149 views. No comments. Tagged with Computer Games, Internet, Movies.
No, I haven’t got the swine flu. Not even a slight cough. Anniken was out sick for a couple of days last week and I was so sure I’d get ill too, I prepared good for it: I hocked up my old Xbox 360 and bought GTA Episodes From Liberty City. After I got my PS3, I tried to sell my Xbox 360 console, but the big consumer electronics store chains sold Xbox 360 systems so cheap, they completely killed off the second hand console market. There is an obvious upside to this, though; I can play games that are exclusive Xbox 360 releases.
But since I’m not sick yet, the game is still in its plastic wrapping. Nothing wrong with playing the game while I’m not ill, of course, but since being home sick can be quite boring, I need something to do if it happens. I do have some excellent PC games I can play, but they are all strategy games that require some level of brain activity and that’s usually not my strong side when the fever kicks in. But where did all those great strategy games come from? Continue reading "Sicko." →
Going Android.
Posted 20:42 CET Friday September 25th, 2009 (166 days ago). 92 views. No comments. Tagged with Android, Computer Games.
I’ve decided to ditch my iPhone in favor of an Android handset, notably an HTC Hero. I was considering the Samsung I7500 Galaxy as well, but it doesn’t look like it flies too well with the interweb crowd, and everything you read on the internet is true.
The decision to go Android wasn’t a very hard one. My iPhone is beginning to get old and the wear will soon result in a hole in the back cover. It’s also getting very, very slow so the only humane thing to do is to put Old Yeller to sleep. I’ve been playing around with the Android SDK and the emulator a little and read through the tutorials available on the Android Developers website. It’s all very interesting stuff and from what I gather, the road from the concept phase to a working prototype can be surprisingly short.
I’ve had another idea for an application as well, which I think can be very interesting. The application itself is not that innovative, but I’m hoping to be able to add a feature to it that I don’t think similar applications have. I could be wrong of course, so I should probably do a little research before I even start the design process, because implementing the feature might turn out be a rather daunting task.
So now I’m off to get a Google Maps API key and then play a little bit of The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition. I got it a while back when Steam had a 50% sale on the title. They’ve actually been able to sucker me into buying a few good titles when they’ve had some ridiculously good sales and bundles available. The bastards.
Yes, this is what I do on a Friday evening. I’m such a nerd.
For Me? Really!?
Posted 18:14 CET Monday July 27th, 2009 (226 days ago). 162 views. No comments. Tagged with Computer Games, Technology.
On Friday I had my last day (yet again) with Rubberduck Media Lab and since it’s now Monday and I’m not at work somewhere else, I’m officially on summer vacation. To make sure I have enough to do during my three weeks of pure laziness, I decided to dust off some of the classic computer games I’ve been playing over the years. Of course I ran into the same problems as I had when I tried to install Civilization IV; I was not able to play any of the games using VirtualBox on my Mac and the graphics card of my 2005 work laptop has a lot to be desired – 3 frames per second is not enough for me. My only option was my even older Dell 4150 laptop, bought way back in 2002. Some of the games worked reasonably well, I’ve been able to play Homeworld on it, for instance. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 also worked, sort of, but both the fans are running at full RPM all the time.
In my hunt for no CD cracks for my old games (the DVD-ROM on the Dell is broken), I came across AI War: Fleet Command:
- Cooperative RTS game (1-8 players) with numerous unique ship types.
- Challenging AI in 26 styles, many with unique superweapons.
- Insanely high unit counts: 30,000+ ships in most games.
- Lengthy campaigns featuring 80+ simultaneous planetary battlefields.
- Different Every Time: 16 billion procedural maps, each with specific units.
- A focus on deep strategy that you don’t get in most RTS games.
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