Sleepy Gamer

When Home was first announced, Sony had built up a lot of hype for this service.  First of all, it’s absolutely free and it provided a full 3-D interactive experience to online gaming.  Also, did I mention it was free?  However, after the long delay, it seemed that Home’s momentum has slowed down.  It has definitely lost its steam that it gained a couple years ago.  Plus, with the recent release of the new Xbox experience, will Home provide the revolutionary gaming experience that Sony promised?

So what is PlayStation Home?  Home is essentially a virtual online 3-D space that allows you to meet up and socialize with other PS3 users.  You can chat, dance, flirt, and also play games with them.  It’s basically the Sims meet Second Life, in which you create a personal avatar to traverse through the virtual realm.  Like Second Life, Home also serves as a breeding ground for advertisements.  Everywhere you go, there are large monitors that constantly loops movie and video game trailers.  There’s even a movie theater that you can enter just to watch game trailers.  Since its a free service, I suppose this is how Sony had to find some way to make money back.

Starting Home, you are immediately introduced to create an avatar.  The avatar creation tool is much more robust than the Xbox 360’s, but I’m not convinced if that it’s a good thing.  For a beginner, Home provides so many options that it can be quite intimidating for a non-core player.  Just customizing the face alone has hundreds of possibilities if you factor things like cheeks, forehead, and chin structures.  On top of that, all of these features can be adjusted with a grid that allows you to adjust the dimensions of your head.  Call me lazy, but it got to the point where I stopped caring and just picked a preset character model.
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Your gut is probably bulging the size of a bowling ball after stuffing yourself with turkey the last few days.  Don’t worry, there’s help.  I can show you plenty of games that can help you lose the holiday weight right in the comfort of your home.  Just make sure that you’re not pounding down donuts and hamburgers while playing these games.

Wii Sports
The ever popular Wii Sports comes bundled with a number of mini-games that include Tennis, Baseball, Bowling, Golf, and Boxing.  These mini-games feel more like tech-demos, but is very fun and intuitive for first time Wii players.  Most newcomers will burn a lot of calories since they will be standing and exerting all of their energy in every swing.  However, once you learn the gameplay nuances, you’ll end up slouching in your couch and lazily flicking your wrist effortlessly to get the same results.  Hopefully Wii Sports will be used as a template for other Mario Sports games.  Give use Mario Tennis already!

Wii Fit
This is the pinnacle of all fitness games.  Do not…I repeat…do not buy Wii Fit expecting it to be a game.  It’s more like a fitness program than anything else.  The main thing that stands Wii fit apart from other fitness games is the balance board.  Not only is the board used for exercising, it also measures your weight, balance, and body mass index (BMI).  Typically, BMI tells you if you’re underweight, normal, or obese.  However, if Wii Fit calls you a fat-ass, keep in mind that it doesn’t count other factors like your body type and muscle mass so it’s very misleading.  I only found that the Yoga and Strength training to be particularly useful since it does a good job working out your core.  However, the Aerobic exercises are pure garbage since running in one place doesn’t make your blood pumping enough to be effective.  The beauty of Wii Fit is that it keeps track of all your progress, so you can clearly see how much improvement you’ve made.  Just keep in mind that the balance board only works if you weigh less than 350lbs.  If you weigh more than that… it’s probably a good idea to get a gym pass.
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You just got yourself a 50″ HDTV and you’re thinking, man … isn’t life grand?  You never felt so good watching Miss Congeniality on your crisp 1080p display until… you raise the volume.  As good as the picture looks, most tvs have really crappy speakers.  It is time, my friend, to look into getting a home theater system.

Surround Sound Basics
Surround sound can be a very confusing purchase.  Just looking at the specifications can be a daunting task.  Here’s a quick glossary guide that explains some typical terms that you’ll need to know when buying a home theater system.

Receiver – Unit that decodes and amplifies the sound coming out of your speakers.
Satellite Speakers – These are the speakers that are connected to your receiver.  There are actually 3 types of speaker drivers: tweeters, mid-range, and subwoofer.
Tweeter – Produces the high frequency sounds.    Think how Mickey Mouse sounds like.
Subwoofer – Produces low frequency sounds.  Think Barry White.
Mid-Range – Produces all the sounds in between the tweeter and subwoofer.
Surround Channels – This refers to the number of speakers your surround sound system is capable of.  So a 5.1 system supports 5 satellite speakers with an additional subwoofer.  The .1 refers to the subwoofer.
Watts – Refers to the measurement of power that the receiver is capable to produce.  More watts usually equates to a louder sound system.
Ohms – Measures the resistance in the flow of electricity.  The more ohms, the more resistance it will cause.  You want this number to be low.

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Just thinking about the Dreamcast brings back lots of fond memories.  Witnessing the red swirl as you powered it on, you knew that there was something special about it.   This was the first system that truly felt “next gen”.  The thought of playing an arcade-perfect Marvel vs. Capcom at the comfort of your home was simply marvelous.  Resident Evil sent chills down my spine as I was blasting zombies away in beautiful real-time graphics.  So, where did it all go wrong?

History in the Making
Towards the later part of the 90s, Sega was in a rut.  With the previous blunders of the Sega CD and 32X, Sega’s current console, the Saturn, was on the verge of yet another failure.  Despite some modest success in Japan, the Saturn only sold a mere 9 million units worldwide.  In comparison, the original Sony PlayStation dominated the sales charts with over 100 million units sold.  The public was starting to lose faith in Sega, and they needed a way to revitalize the Sega name.  Towards the end of the Saturn lifecycle, Sega had a secret project with 2 of their internal groups.  With one group in Japan, and the other in the U.S, they would be competing against each other to develop a new console system.  In the end, Sega crowned the Japanese team the victor, and thus the Dreamcast was born.

Revolutionary Specs
At the time, the Dreamcast specs were unparalleled.  Powered by a powerful 200MHz 128-bit Hitachi SH4 processor, 16MB of RAM, and a 12x GD-ROM drive, it was capable of crunching a whopping 7 million polygons per second.  To provide a different perspective, the original PlayStation only featured a 33MHz 32-bit MIPS processor, 2MB of RAM, and a 2x CD-ROM drive only capable of processing 360,000 polygons per second.  Clearly, nothing came close to the Dreamcast power.  What’s even more impressive was that it came boxed with a 56k modem.  You may scoff at the thought of dial-up Internet, but back then, playing games online was something simply ahead of its time.  Online game play was always a PC commodity up until the Dreamcast, since no prior consoles offered anything like it.  Contrary to prior beliefs, it was actually Sega who pioneered console online gameplay, not Microsoft.
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In the spirits of Halloween, this post is dedicated to 4 scary video game moments that I’ve experienced.  I was originally going to do 5, but I couldn’t think of a 5th moment that scared the crap out of me without listing the same game franchise twice.  Plus, it’s Friday, so I deserve to be lazy.  =)  Enjoy and have a safe, and happy Halloween!

Resident Evil 2

Eternal Darkness
It has been hours since you last saved your game.  You’ve slain countless undead foes, traveled thousands of years, and gathered all of the Ancient’s artifacts.  The only thing’s left is to defeat Pious, the maniacal guardian who’s bent on ending all of humanity as we know it.  Moments before reaching the final boss and saving the world, you encounter… “Disc Read Error”.  At this point, you’re screaming out loud, “This can’t be happening!”  Just when you’re about to throw your Gamecube out the window, it resumes like nothing happened.  You then realized that the game was messing with you all along.  Good one Nintendo… bravo.
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Upon receiving a beta key for Resistance 2, I was really eager to rush home and download the beta.  However, after 3.5 hours for 2GB download, in addition to the 10 minute install, plus another 15 minutes for an update, I was finally ready to play.  So is this game worth that 4 hour wait?  Read on.

Beta Basics
Just to clarify, this beta only provides the multi-player feature.  You won’t get a sneak peak at the single player campaign until you buy it.  Starting the beta, you’re introduced to 2 game play options: Cooperative and Competitive.  In the cooperative mode, you have the choice to play online or offline with friends.  This mode allows casual fun play without affecting your ranking stats.  The competitive mode is where the meat of the game is focused on.  Similar to Call of Duty’s “Perks”, Resistance 2 has the “Berserks/Loadout” system.  As you gain more experience and rank up, you can unlock additional “Berserks/Loadout” that enhance your abilities.  The default beserks/loadouts provide small enhancements like upgraded radar or electric burst shots.  But leveling up will provide much better abilities, such as force fields or healing rings, that will help keep you alive longer.

The main appeal that Resistance 2 has over other shooters are the 60 player skirmishes.  When you jump into a 60 player battle, things can get really chaotic.  The first time I jumped in, my average lifespan was less than 10 seconds.  However, as you get more accustomed to the map layout, you’ll realize how grand and epic these matches are.  It’s quite exhilarating when there’s a stand-off between the two factions fighting on opposite sides of the ravine.  One side is desperately defending the beacon, while the other is trying to overtake it.  The whole beauty of this is that this grand experience is practically lag-free, so any deaths that you encounter is because of your own noob skills.

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