For Pete's Sake

Forza 3 Collectors Edition

While release day for the UK isn’t till tomorrow thanks to a postal strike my Limited Edition came early. First off I’d like to tip my hat to whoever designed the box for the LE. It presents the game, the USB stick and the key ring in a very cool yet classy way. What is even better is the game itself is in a sleek black case and not plastered with the usual XBox 360 stuff and the lime green cases. While not a huge thing it certainly ties the whole thing together.

Along with the key ring and USB memory stick you get some downloadable goodies. At time of writing I’ve been able to download everything but the LCE dashboard theme. While not part of the game it was a little frustrating but from what I’ve read on the official forums its absence is simply due to the fact they haven’t uploaded it. So with any luck come Friday, I’ll re-download the pack and it’ll be there. They key ring is a lovely, brushed steel key ring which looks really cool and has the Forza 3 logo engrave on there. The USB stick on the other hand is your run of the mill plastic casing but contrary to some office jibes not a cheap knock-off stick. The make is SanDisk so should be pretty good and reliable though I have not yet used and don’t plan to either.

On to the actual game itself and oh my is it beautiful. The one thing that really struck me is how better looking it is than Forza 2. Maybe it’s just me but everything just seems to have that extra bit of polish, colours are brighter, cars are sharper and the off track scenery feel much more part of the circuit. What is even more amazing is when you think ‘it looks this good and still plays at 60fps.’ This for me is the big plus point as I’d rather have a game that makes you feel you’re going fast than one that looks pretty but at 140mph you feel like you’re doing twenty. Couple that then with some awesome physics and you find you’ve got a top draw sim racer.

The words sim and racer would put a lot of people off however don’t as Forza 3 is really easy to pick up and play. Don’t care about upgrading your car? Forza 3 will upgrade your car for you if it’s not competitive enough to race in the Championship you’ve just entered. Pretty awful at driving? With all the assists Forza has to offer you should find your happy medium. Add to this the new rewind feature which, like in Race Driver GRID, allows you to rewind the race if you mess up, it makes the whole racing thing a less stressful affair (well mostly). It also means that the more someone plays and gets used to how it all handles with the knowledge they can rewind it will probably encourage the “all assists” crowd to turn the odd one off. Personally I’ve played each iteration of Forza without assists, not because I’m amazing, but because you get more cash in-game if you do. At the same time though I’ve felt more a part of the game and find winning a lot more rewarding.

Next on the change list for Forza 3 was the look and feel. The menu system in Forza 2 was okay but not great and at times could get a little confusing. Forza 3 however has a clean white look with minimal menus which are easy to follow and intuitive. The first thing I said about the menus to myself when I played the demo was ‘how very Gran Turismo’ and that’s not a bad thing. Either way the new look interface is welcomed as is the new way to make vinyl groups. Ask any of the painters in Forza 2 the way they made a lot of designs was find the car with the biggest roof and make the groups from there. There is now a stand alone option to make a vinyl group in Forza 3 and it takes you to an area where you have a grid layout. This makes making vinyl groups much easier as you have lots of space to play with as you don’t have to worry about part of your design going off the side of the roof. These groups can then be saved and put on a car later or, if you’re an awesome painter (which I’m not) you can put up for sale on your storefront.

The storefront is another new addition to Forza 3. Here the community at large can check out the best painters and tuners and buy their designs/tunes. For someone like me who was awful at painting and tuning in Forza 2 this is a fantastic addition. Now I can easily find tunes and designs and give something to those who provide them. Right now there’s not much on there as the game isn’t out but I can’t wait to see what the games best painters come up with, especially with the new painting method for vinyl groups. However don’t think that this replaces the auction house as that is still there and seemingly for me, still impossible to win a bid.

Finally then it’s on to the single player game as I haven’t touched multiplayer. The first thing of note is the new season play. One of the biggest issues with previous Forza game was that it was just race after race and a slow progression through every category. Forza 3 introduces Season Play to combat this. Each season you’ll compete in one World Championship which take place on weekends then after each of those you’ll be asked to select a week based competition. It’s definitely a more engaging way to play the game but if you want to slog through just competitions you can still do this and is where I selected my first drag race which to be honest wasn’t as fun as I thought it’d be. There’s also still the usual leaderboards which can be asked for every track and event for fastest lap as well as for drifting, the other newcomer to Forza 3.

Drifting was a community startup with drift teams like Project Blackjack being the forerunners of this sub-community. In Forza 3 it’s an add-on accessed by pressing left on the D-pad but it’s fun sometimes to turn it on and just go nuts. The drift points are awarded in a Project Gotham like way and the familiarity is nice. The other thing to is that it’s not easy or at least I found it hard to get anything good going which makes your respect the drift teams immensely.

So in closing Forza 3 is such a huge step-up from the impressive Forza 2 I almost couldn’t believe it. Forza is a seasoned racer now and the current iteration shows this in the professional look and feel. At the same time however it’s still a serious simulation editor which, with all assists off will bite your head off if you get it badly wrong. What is even more amazing is that despite this it can still be picked up and played by the arcade type racer or those who aren’t big racing players and still be enjoyed. What Turn10 has done with Forza 3 is impressive and sets that bar high now for its competitors namely Race Pro. At the same time though it puts quite a lot of expectation on them for the future. But if Forza 3 is anything to go by they’ll excel under pressure and can’t wait to see what they do next.

So one thing I’ve been meaning to post on is the games industry push to capture those who would not normally play games. At E3 Microsoft and Sony launched their attempt to lure “non-gamers” to their respective platform. Microsoft announced Project Natal and Sony launched their Motion Control based peripheral. With Nintendo Wii having already been out now for over 2 years they have a lot of catching up to do but then again are they too late to the party?

Nintendo blind sided the games industry with the Wii. It wasn’t “nex-gen”, it didn’t have HD graphics and most importantly, it wasn’t expensive. What it was, was revolutionary. Nintendo’s gamble on motion based games which required some actual exertion was a hit with the masses, gamers and non-gamers alike. The console itself was like gold dust for many months after launch, I myself paid over the odds to get my hands on one for Christmas. When I opened it up on Christmas day 2006 it was instantly hook up to my parents TV and for several hours we made Mii’s and played Wii Sports. My parents who are without doubt non-gamers, took to the Wii with relative ease. Once the basics of Wii Bowling was acquired my Mother was almost unstoppable. For my parents having movement involved made it easy to learn, less complicated. They have their own Wii now, in-fact they have two, and they enjoy playing on it when they find the time. This was a revelation and the Wii was out-selling the other two by a country mile. Everyone wanted a Wii.

It was no surprise then that a couple years down the line Microsoft and Sony want in on the act. Lure those people of a certain generation who have the disposable income to buy their consoles but would normally be put off because of using a standard controller. Out of the two the Natal is odd one out as it’s a sort of camera based whole body motion controller. Sony’s effort does use the Playstation Eye but you still have a controller to hold. I watched the Natal demo video involving Milo and I was really taken with it. I have read Eurogamers hands-on and the fact that at the moment it’s pretty scripted but the possibilities are massive. What I was most impressed by was the passing of the picture to Milo. Think of an MMO with proper interaction, characters reading your body language and reacting accordingly, I’m honestly excited by what this could mean for the console.

On the flip side I feel that Sony’s effort is just their adaptation rather than a re-thinking. That’s not to say their wrong for doing so, I guess there’s only so many ways to introduce motion, but I guess I was looking for more after seeing Natal. Sony’s console is coming strong now and a lot of the most recent games are really starting to flex it’s muscles and adding motion control will aid in its goal to be an all-in-one home entertainment system. Want to watch a HD-movie? The PS3 has Blu-Ray. Want to play the latest HD games? PS3 has that too. Want to play interactive motion games? With a motion controller the PS3 will do that soon.

As the title of this post suggest all of this is in aid of capturing the non-gamer those who flocked to the Wii on launch. They’re also after those who have overlooked the Wii due to its lack of features like DVD playback. However I think in some ways both are a little late, at least, they are for those who already have a Wii. The non-gamers won’t want to have more than one console nor do I think they will sell one and buy another. They’ll be comfortable with what they have and don’t want to invest again in another formats peripherals and games. It’ll be about capturing those who haven’t made their choice yet and it maybe that Sony’s decision to imitate rather revolutionise that will help them. Many of these potential buyers will undoubtedly have already played on a Wii. The motion controller will be familiar to them and make it an easier adaptation. Couple that with Blu-Ray playback and Sony may be on to a winner here. However I also hope that Natal is taken on by the gaming fraternity. If it is used in an MMO context then it’ll sell, especially if it’s well implemented. The key for Natal is game support and innovative use and this depends upon game developers. Here again Sony has the upper hand as many have had experience with the Wii which will make the development life cycle a simpler issue. With Natal it’s a whole new concept and one would expect that it’ll take a while for developers to really push the envelope with it.

I’m excited to see where this will all go, who will do what and what the game developers will do. It’s an exciting time to be a gamer no matter which platform you’re on.

So this past week saw the announcement of the super-secret, seven years in the making gaming service called OnLive. Many blogs and news websites have touted this as the service that will make the games console and gaming PCs obsolete and the future of gaming. Not only that but if you read what OnLive promises to deliver they’re also pioneers of future Internet technology but I’m getting ahead of myself. I meant to blog about this earlier but as ever I wanted the dust to settle and give me the chance to read what my favourite gaming site Eurogamer had to say. When I read it I felt there’s no point in me posting my thoughts as they pretty much cover all the concerns and reasons why I thought it can’t possibly deliver on what they promise.

The main thing for me is they boast this service as an platform which can be played from a Windows or Mac PC as well as it’s ‘micro-console.’ Cool, brilliant love that especially as gaming on a Mac is pretty lacking in top notch titles. The reason I stopped playing games on my Windows PC was I was tired of having to upgrade every few months to play the latest title in it’s full glory. With my XBox I could play any of the latest titles without any upgrading and the only upgrade would be every few years when they release the new console. However when you consider the numbers that could potentially connect to this OnLive service you begin to wonder whether it’s at all feasible. According to a Gamespot article XBox Live currently boasts 17 million active members and the Playstation Network having 20 million members. If half of those join up to OnLive their servers would potentially have to deal with 18 million connections. That’s a little over the top I appreaciate but they could likely get say 1 million people wanting to play the latest games and they say no lag?

That’s the other thing, lag. Lag or latency is the bane of any online gamer and even with current tech you will, at some point, experience lag when gaming. However the boffins over at OnLive say they’ve eliminated it to the point where they can say that they’re service will be without it. That must mean then they have something completely new that no-one has figured out already but I simply can’t believe that. Even when I was gaming on a server where I had a ping of <10ms I still experienced lag, it was frustrating then and if I signed up to this service and was playing say Mirror’s Edge I’d be even more frustrated if I died because my input to jump was relayed that mili-second too late. The only thing I can think they’ll be doing is having different servers per game and even one per region and that’s a staggering amount so they must have a monumental amount of financial backing.

In the end it’s a cool idea and if it works, great! However it won’t spell the end of the console for one reason, this service relies on you being on broadband and while the numbers of broadband take up is on the increase it’s not reached everyone. There’ll always be those who will be too rural to get broadband or who plain don’t want or need it. It may become standard at some point in the future but too immediately for Microsoft or Sony to worry about. I wish OnLive all the best and if I lived in the US I’d apply for their public beta which is coming up. I guess like those ‘revolutionary’ services before time will be it’s judge.

Do you have red, sore lumps on the palms of your hands and soles of your feet? If the answer’s yes, then you could be suffering from… ahem … PlayStation palmar hidradenitis.

via Register Hardware.

Sometimes I wonder how people develop these conditions. In this case the girl apparantly plays on her Playstation several hours a day which coupled with sweating, which they think makes it worse, lead to the issues. The condition according to the article is usually more common in active children so one wonders what is happening whilst she plays the games. I guess shuffling around and movement during gameplay could attribute to this but it begs the question as to why her parents are happy enough to just let her sit there and veg-out playing Playstation.

I appreciate that parents need breaks and if your kid can be entertained for an hour or two playing Tomb Raider or whatever so you can get some peace and quiet is useful. However several hours each day is pretty darn unhealthy at that age or any age really. I know I game a fair bit but I do try to limit it to some extent, I think nowerdays I don’t game more than a hour or two at a time. I do have the odd session where I game for longer than that but they’re few and far between (tho Cati may possibly disagree on this). At 12, for me, you should be outside with friends doing whatever you like doing. For me, I played football or armies with the occasional game of cricket. When I was growing up my friend got a Sega Mega-Drive. It was cool and Sonic was fun but that only kept us interested for so long, I then got a Mega-Drive II myself a year or so afterwards for Christmas but being out and about still interested me more. I guess this is the same argument that’s spouted when these sort of stories come out but it’s a valid one I feel.

So I’m one week in now of watching my calorie intake and exercising more. It was an initiative sparked off at work and those interested signed up on the Calorie Count website and so far so good. I’ve haven’t lost much in the first week, roughly 1/2lb but that’s a start and nothing drastic was ever going to happen but at least I’ve started things off. It’ll be especially helpful with the Bristol 10K coming up fast in May.

Other than that my XBox has returned home and I’m happily playing once more, good times. Sorry for the quick post but not much else has happened to truthful.