Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Update 2 of 3 - Products
Well... update 2 of 3. In the previous update, I mentioned TV tuner cards, such as the AtI TV Wonder ve.... and the Avermedia Ultra TV USb 300 tv tuner. Turns out the Avermedia does not have tv-out, but I bought it anyway. It looks pretty good. It seems to work well so far. The video codecs were bugging me, and Premiere was totally bugging me, so I re-installed it and works sexily again. So that's awesome. Divx is Premiere's friend again.
I also wanted to buy Matrix Revolutions (to complete the set, and perhaps I can try doing some video-stuffs with it) and Return of the King, but that didn't come out till yesterday, which we will probably buy tomorrow. Can't wait for extended version yet... although one day, I'll probably want some super boxset with extended versions of each movie...
Homestarrunner.com is having a sale, like they always do. Teen Girl Squad shirt for $8, and the Cheat shirt for $11. That's what I was looking at, and there's a slight chance that I'll buy them. It'll be $8+$11+$6shipping so $25... $25US for 2 shirts, but they're *special*... so I have to think really hard about it, and then I'll either initialize and buy them, or I'll take the passive route and let it go.
Okay, the 3rd update will be the longest of the 3. This update has one final portion, and thanks to Isaque + cheap price + impulse buy, we bought F-Zero GX for Gamecube at Toys R Us for $29.99.
Well, there are a lot of things about F-Zero GX that should make it a good game, or at least should make it look good. It has good technical specs, such as frame rates, graphics, and special effects. The menus look okay, etc, etc. You can now drift, wheee. You can customize and make your own car, there's a story mode, there are other modes, you can save replays, save course records, save ghosts, and race against up to 5 ghosts at a time, which is pretty nifty. I'm a big fan of time trial mode, at least in Mario Kart.
Then there are the little things that are bad. One of the first things we noticed is that we can't go backwards on some menu screens - like, once you've picked your car, you can't go back - you have to start the race before you can do anything else. So that automatically reduces the game's score.
But now onto the heart of the matter. Well... it's not as fun. First of all, it's fast. Too fast. F-Zero was nicely paced, F-Zero X was much faster, and now F-Zero GX is even faster. It's fast such that, at times, it seems a bit random. It's harder to time turns or use special turning techniques. Also, because it's so fast, I can't really see the advantage (yet) of using drift rather than turn or slide turn.
Attacks (spin and side) aren't as cool, I think. Computers do them more often though. Anyway, until I get used to it, I don't like these attacks too much.
Then, to the graphics. To show off cool lighting effects and graphics, you have to make it dark. Like nighttime in Las Vegas. It's dark, but lots of fancy lights make it look so cool. Same with F-Zero GX. At many times, it's dark, and it's hard to see anything and that's really annoying. Also, F-Zero GX likes fancy graphics, and another way to do that is transparency. The road is sometimes a bit transparent, and because everything's moving so fast, it's hard to determine what's ground and what's not, what's a railing and what's not, where there is a turn and where there isn't.
Last but not least, there's Duy's dislike: Music. F-Zero 1 had distinct music tracks. F-Zero X also had pretty good music tracks. F-Zero GX goes all "cool" and has a bunch of techno tracks, and a couple familiar Mute City and big Blue tracks. Wen once said that when you listen to video game music and you can't tell it's videogame music, then that's good. Unfortunately, that's not always the case... vgmusic has a certain vibe with it... and F-Zero GX doesn't have much of that vibe. F-Zero GX is **tooo cool*. Anyway, that ends update 2 of 3. Here comes update 3 of 3, just before the 12:00 mark.
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I also wanted to buy Matrix Revolutions (to complete the set, and perhaps I can try doing some video-stuffs with it) and Return of the King, but that didn't come out till yesterday, which we will probably buy tomorrow. Can't wait for extended version yet... although one day, I'll probably want some super boxset with extended versions of each movie...
Homestarrunner.com is having a sale, like they always do. Teen Girl Squad shirt for $8, and the Cheat shirt for $11. That's what I was looking at, and there's a slight chance that I'll buy them. It'll be $8+$11+$6shipping so $25... $25US for 2 shirts, but they're *special*... so I have to think really hard about it, and then I'll either initialize and buy them, or I'll take the passive route and let it go.
Okay, the 3rd update will be the longest of the 3. This update has one final portion, and thanks to Isaque + cheap price + impulse buy, we bought F-Zero GX for Gamecube at Toys R Us for $29.99.
Well, there are a lot of things about F-Zero GX that should make it a good game, or at least should make it look good. It has good technical specs, such as frame rates, graphics, and special effects. The menus look okay, etc, etc. You can now drift, wheee. You can customize and make your own car, there's a story mode, there are other modes, you can save replays, save course records, save ghosts, and race against up to 5 ghosts at a time, which is pretty nifty. I'm a big fan of time trial mode, at least in Mario Kart.
Then there are the little things that are bad. One of the first things we noticed is that we can't go backwards on some menu screens - like, once you've picked your car, you can't go back - you have to start the race before you can do anything else. So that automatically reduces the game's score.
But now onto the heart of the matter. Well... it's not as fun. First of all, it's fast. Too fast. F-Zero was nicely paced, F-Zero X was much faster, and now F-Zero GX is even faster. It's fast such that, at times, it seems a bit random. It's harder to time turns or use special turning techniques. Also, because it's so fast, I can't really see the advantage (yet) of using drift rather than turn or slide turn.
Attacks (spin and side) aren't as cool, I think. Computers do them more often though. Anyway, until I get used to it, I don't like these attacks too much.
Then, to the graphics. To show off cool lighting effects and graphics, you have to make it dark. Like nighttime in Las Vegas. It's dark, but lots of fancy lights make it look so cool. Same with F-Zero GX. At many times, it's dark, and it's hard to see anything and that's really annoying. Also, F-Zero GX likes fancy graphics, and another way to do that is transparency. The road is sometimes a bit transparent, and because everything's moving so fast, it's hard to determine what's ground and what's not, what's a railing and what's not, where there is a turn and where there isn't.
Last but not least, there's Duy's dislike: Music. F-Zero 1 had distinct music tracks. F-Zero X also had pretty good music tracks. F-Zero GX goes all "cool" and has a bunch of techno tracks, and a couple familiar Mute City and big Blue tracks. Wen once said that when you listen to video game music and you can't tell it's videogame music, then that's good. Unfortunately, that's not always the case... vgmusic has a certain vibe with it... and F-Zero GX doesn't have much of that vibe. F-Zero GX is **tooo cool*. Anyway, that ends update 2 of 3. Here comes update 3 of 3, just before the 12:00 mark.