How to be awesome in Modern Warfare 2

That was one of the coolest things I have ever seen.

Dead Space, post-mortem

Dead Space was an excellent game. Much more than I expected it to be before I played. Now, many months after I finished it for the third time, in the Impossible difficulty setting, I still feel like playing it. Too bad I have so many other games to play more thoroughly before I can get back to DS.

This week I thought about how they could improve the game for the sequel, which I hope to God is being made as I write this, hopefully to be released in 2010. I thought of three things, basically. The first would be the shadows, that were somewhat pixelated in the original game. That definitely needs improvement. Another graphical issue is the aliasing, which can get pretty evident in some parts. They could increase the anti-aliasing if that didn't sacrifice the frame rate, and we would be thankful for that.

The last improvement in my view would be with the Plasma Cutter. It's the first weapon you get in the game, and frankly it's the best one overall. Even when I had many other powerful ones, I always went back to the Cutter. After properly upgraded it packs quite a punch, ammo can be found easily and it's great fun to use. I thought they could integrate it more to Isaac's armour in the sequel. Since he's an engineer, he could be shown making what I'm about to explain himself.

The Cutter would be integrated to his right arm/wrist/hand, staying above these parts, unassembled when not in use. When the player chose to use it, it would unfold around his hand, expanding parts that were collapsed, and it would instantly be ready to use. It would be visually nice, and gameplay-wise it would make the Cutter something similar to the pistols in Left 4 Dead or the revolver in Killzone, for instance. Definitely not powerful weapons, but ready to use in case of emergency.

Borderlands is for Real Gamers

Link: IGN Video: IGN Originals Video - Borderlands is for Real Gamers

I'm not really sure this is a good approach. I mean, it's a nice ad, funny and all, but it may be a little over-the-top. Seems like a desperate move to promote your game.

I hope it doesn't "fucking suck".

Vettel did it again

This boy (and I say boy because he's younger than me) is truly a genius, and apparently the only one capable of stopping Button this year. Button won 6 of the 8 races so far this year, the other 2 victories belonging to Vettel. He's combining his superb skills with an excellent car and is on the road to fight for the championship.

Also, Button didn't have a great car today, but still he proved that he can't drive behind other racers. If he has a good car and is in first place, there's no competition. But if he has a little worse car and is behind other racers, he isn't very competitive.

Video on drugs

Amazing.

Headaches with Playstation 3

This is a post that hopefully will help other people who had the same issue I had this week.

I was downloading the game Trash Panic from the american Playstation Store. Left it downloading for an hour or so and went do something else. When I came back to check the download, it was at 42% and wouldn't download any more. It tried for a few seconds, displayed "Pending" instead of "Downloading" for half a second and then tried downloading again. So I realized something was wrong. I tried cancelling the download, and that's when everything started...

The PS3 froze up. Nothing would move in the screen, I couldn't go back to the XMB from the download item. Holding the PS button on the controller, though, worked, so I tried turning it off. The screen went black, the green light in the PS3 started flashing and wouldn't turn off. I left it flashing for a long time, and nothing. So I had to turn the power off manually in the back of the PS3.

When I turned it on again, it greeted me with the lovely message "the hard disk's file system is corrupted and will be restored". My hand started shaking. I have many games from the PSN in the HDD, as well as a ton of saves from many games I haven't yet finished properly. I was in the final mission of my last run in Dead Space, in Impossible Difficulty, and to lose that save would really piss me off. The system didn't give me any other options besides "restoring", so I went to Google and searched for this issue.

Many people said that the system formatted all your HDD when that message appeared. I only found two, if I recall correctly, saying that they didn't lose all their data. So, with my heart in my hand, I accepted the restoration. It took about a minute, and then the console rebooted. Thankfully, everything was still there, including the problematic download. I managed to cancel and delete it, and then immediately backed up all of my game saves to my pen drive. I was lucky this download didn't corrupt much in the file system, it was probably just a few blocks.

So I decided to try downloading the same game again. And, with a smile on my face, I saw that when it got at 42% again it stopped the same way, and the system wouldn't turn off once more. So I turned it off manually, turned it on again and there it was again, the message about the file system. This time restoration was even faster and again I didn't lose anything.

So my message is: if you see that notification ("the hard disk's file system is corrupted and will be restored"), don't panic. It doesn't mean you lost everything. Keep your hopes up and let the PS3 do his thing. You may not be that unlucky in the end.

And one more thing: screw that game, I'm not downloading it ever again. Trash Panic, alright. The name suits it.

Nostalgia

As a complement to the previous post, I've started playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 again, this time the PC version. Finally made the PS3 controller, DualShock 3, work as a gamepad for my XP. This game is still absolutely excellent and I intend to get 100% of everything, with time, once more.