A. Aronsson's WeBOLLog

So a month or so ago I bought Dance Dance Revolution Universe from last year for the Xbox 360, to be able to play with a friend in London over Xbox Live. I’ve played DDR games for several years, but he was as good as new to the genre.

Here’s a list of what I found broken when playing online.

• You cannot have different difficulties. You are forced to play at the same level as the host. This was a bit annoying since our experience levels were vastly different, me and my London friend.
• You cannot change speed multiplier settings, or anything else for that matter. I almost always play on 1.5x speed, as I’m not that good at making out large clusters of arrows when they’re tightly packed. When playing online though, you are forced to use 1x (normal) speed.
• No video chat! I want to see the one I play with! DDR is a physical game, and thus it is fun to watch people play it, seeing the actual person. It would be perfect to have a small video feed using the Xbox Live Vision camera in this game!!! :( But no, nada, nothing.

If this wasn’t enough, I found other things with the game that put me off.

• You can get new songs only by playing the Quest mode, which is broken. You cannot see what the challenge is before you pick a location, and after you have picked one you cannot go back to choose something else. Songs might also contain fewer arrows than are needed to complete the challenge. I want to win songs by playing the Arcade mode.
• I have to pick where to load/save my game data each time I start the game. Why can’t it just try to load from the HDD if it exists? It’s not a big issue, but it just feels unnecessary.
• The included mat is fairly useless, at least for intermediate / advanced players. As I usually play on a metal pad, the included soft, super-thin mat feels really floppy and undefined. But that’s mostly because of what I’m used to, and I guess you can’t really expect anything better out of a standard DDR box.

Summary: This will most likely be the DDR game I play the least as of yet. Thumbs down! And here I thought I would get a Nextgenâ„¢ game where everything would go beyond my expectations, but I got the exact opposite.

I got my pre-ordered Wii Fit last Friday, but as my weekend was very hectic, I have had very little play time. This is why i haven’t posted my impressions yet, until now, here’s another Casual Review!

Pros:

• Solid hardware design. I was surprised that the Balance Board was so large, sturdy and heavy, which is positive. It seems very durable and looks nice. You might have trouble to decide where to put it when not in use, though.
• Exercises have a good spread. There are several categories of exercises, for burning fat, getting flexible, building muscles and train your balance, with a fair number of different choices in each category. Personally I will probably do more muscle and balance training than flexibility training, but alas, that’s just up to me! It should be easy to find what you want to focus on.
• A lot of underlying research. While playing you get a whole lot of information outside the exercises, like the importance of a good posture, sleeping habits, and probably much much more further into the game. And this is in addition to all detailed descriptions for the different exercises and tests!
• Charts and statistics. You can keep track of which kind of exercises you have gone through on a daily basis, your BMI change, compare your own training to other players on the same Wii, etc.
• Lots of rewards, like harder modes, new exercises and games, new user settings, stars and titles for your performances. The trainer also commentates on how you’re doing while you play, which feels fairly natural, even though certain comments occur pretty often. Rewards, even though virtual, are what makes games worthwhile for me.
• Lovable characters…? The Balance Board is alive! It notices your movement with utmost precision and reacts when you leave it, or stand on it when it doesn’t want to, and this is communicated to you through the game. The on-screen characterized version of the Balance Board is totally kawaii, which makes the game feel friendly, very friendly. There are many other happy designs in the game, like the FitPiggy, which collects the minutes you have exercised. I can’t help but smile when all my Miis are watching me during games, especially when running, as I have a bunch of downloaded Miis like a Storm Trooper, Kenny (South Park), Naruto, Rock Lee, Scream, Einstein, Mr. T, Alien (white face), etc ad infinitum.
• Oh, and it actually feels good for you! I’m not in the worst shape you can be, but hardly the best either, and I have to say that I can feel my muscles burning and stretch when doing the different exercises, and my body cries!

Cons:

• BMI is quite inconsiderate. I don’t think BMI is a very good unit for measurement of your bodily state, as it doesn’t consider if you have more muscles than a normal person, or thicker bones. But, I guess it’s better than nothing. You can display your weight instead of BMI, which probably is what people are used to track.
• No buttons on the board for menues. To constantly have to pick up the Wiimote to accept your choices and start events is a hassle. I would much prefer a face button or two on the board, or on the back side, where the power button resides.
• No online functionality. I currently have three friends who also bought Wii Fit, but I have no easy way of comparing my scores and training charts with theirs. I would have loved an online voluntary Wii Friend records/progress board. The Wii really needs a solid friends system like Xbox Live does.
• Price. I have to admit, it’s totally worth it, but I think it will be a barrier for those who would benefit the most from using it. But who knows!

And this time I also include some unboxing photos, which might be appreciated!

Today I bought Mario Kart Wii, an instant buy, as we have played the previous games way too much. This is a very short, first-day review, only meant to act like a casual comment of my first impressions with the game.

Pros:

• The steering wheel is awesome! It feels great, even if you can accidentally hit the B-button on the underside when in menus, the driving experience is very nice, considering it’s only a piece of plastic. I guess it’s much due to how the software work. I find it harder to play without the wheel, as you have to hold the controller with the face buttons facing you, which doesn’t come naturally for me.
• New level elements! I love conveyor belts (both linear and crossing!), the bouncy mushrooms that launches you in the air and the half-pipe-ish boost sections which launches you in crazy arcs above that track!
• Much tighter fights. Somehow, it seems like there are always a ton of vehicles at the front of the race, so if you crash as #1, you might end up as #5, #8, #11 or last, no problem! It is a bit crazy, but keeps everyone in the game, never give up!
• Bikes. Sure, it’s a bit weird to have bikes in a kart game, but they add a new dimension to how you steer your vehicle, with wheelies, lighter wheight and sharp turns.
• Looks. When I watched screenshots, I thought the game looked ugly, old, flat and boring. Now when I play through the levels, I think it’s gorgeous, fantastic, wonderful and thrilling! Kind of weird, but I guess motion adds a lot, but the design sure is great.
• Team play! Team play is fun, even if the computer players might be the deciding factor, it lends the game a co-op feeling.
• Online play! There are still friend codes! (gah!) But we have a friends list in the game to play private games with peeps we know! It might be a bit uncomfortable to setup, but it works fine.

Cons:

• No options for multiplayer, it seems to always be 100cc, there doesn’t seem to be any options anywhere. Crazy item-box, I miss! Update: There is a rules button on the Solo/Team Race selection screen which we had totally missed, as we do that selection really quickly. There you can change things around, like CPU difficulty/off, items, vehicles, etc.
• There is no co-op mode to win cups. As co-op gaming is what I prefer above all other, and the fact that I play mostly multiplayer, it kind of sucks to only be able to play all tracks after sitting down solo with it. We take turns to play cups now, but not for long, multiplayer mayhem is this game’s forte.
• No LAN mode. I was thrilled about the 12 player feature of the game. But, it seems to only be available for online play, not local LAN play. One of the features I have looked forward to since I heard the Wii had build in wireless LAN, was to play LAN games with my friends. Just dumping the consoles in a room with a bunch of TVs and then running it all wirelessly would be neat, but as is, that still hasn’t happened. Right now we would need to gather six consoles, six TVs and have a broadband connection to play a local game, which in reality would be online.
• Computer players. The race is always full of computer players, if you don’t fill the slots with human players. It does keep the game chaotic, action filled, and messy! But sometimes I would like to only play against my friends, even if we can only play four people. Especially in the battle games. Update: Changeable with the before mentioned race rules screen.
• No voice or text chat online. Sure, it’s more important that the game runs smoothly and doesn’t lag when playing a racing game, but when playing with IRL friends over the internet, I want voice communication, as that’s what I’m used to playing over XBL or on the PC. We can’t even freely text chat in the game room before a race, not even with friends only, there are only predefined speech bubbles to choose from which feels very limiting when trying to communicate.
  

Even if I miss a few things, it seems to be a great game :) and right now, four of my local friends has also bought the game, so there will probably be a few online matches! We just have to decide what we’ll use for voice communication.

Oh, and my Mario Kart Wii friend code is: 3566-1696-9741

This is a collection of videos from Halo:CE on the Xbox from around 2003. Most of it is with modding or other hacks (everything but the first clip!). The source material was captured with various weird USB or PCI devices, so sound and image quality varies greatly. Sound can be especially bad, beware.

2003

This is me and my cousin having a bit of fun trying out to duo parts of BRS. We had never done it before, so we were just experimenting, and it was probably after a day of end-game raiding.

I’ve remastered this video to fit YouTube’s 10min limit, and added a blown up view of the Healing-log at the bottom of the screen. In the original video you could actually read the text.

To keep him alive I used two trinkets and a whole lot of +healing gear to bump my heals, at the time I recored this, it was quite nice. Collecting gear was the point of end-game raiding, but I got reminded too often that I needed someone else to heal for my gear to be useful, I hardly had any benefit myself.

2006-02-17