Retro Diary - 15/7/12 - "Are the biscuits retail or digital?"

Wednesday 11th July 2012 - Saturday 14th July 2012

I'm back from my holiday in Italy, and at first it was boring, because I had no access to my games, but after I got used to it, I started to enjoy it a little.

While I was there, I bought a few PC games, there's something I'm jealous at Italy for, over there, you actually get free full games with magazines, I got Metro 2033 with a Italian PC magazine, the full game, with the DVD case in everything, for about €5, and it works fine, it's the full game, and even though it's Italian, you can install the game in English, so I of course did that.

I'll be honest, though, the game is kind of boring, for one thing, it's one of those games that forces anti-aliasing, motion blur, depth of field and bloom effects, I don't like those effects, they blur out the game for me, but if you want the high quality models and textures, like I do, you're going to have them turned on as well, because you can't manually edit these, you can only have what they give you, which blows!
Also, the game has all the stereotypes that any modern FPS parody has, a needlessly complicated story, players with gritty voices and seem to have tourette syndrome, and you can only do actions when told to, the the environments and dull and colourless.
To be honest, I'll probably keep playing to get more of the story, because as needlessly complicated as it is, I'm kind of intrigued by it, and want to find out how it unfolds.

While I was at Italy, I also came across a GameStop, for those who haven't heard of it, it's an American store, but it also had it's branches in Europe, except, for some reason, Scotland.
Anyway, over there, for €10, you can get 3 PC games, and it pretty much applied to all of them, which was awesome, well, it was a 3 for 2 offer, but most games were about €5 each, so it was about the same.
So I got a good few games from there, most notably Mirrors Edge, which is a great game in my opinion, and also Call of Duty: Deluxe Edition, which has both the Game of The Year Edition of Call of Duty and the United Offence expansion pack, and a game, which my mum picked out for me, because I took to long (heheh....) and she picked out a Basketball game, which, was only released in Italy, it was called Fronte Del Basket 2, for what it was, it was a pretty good little game, it's not nearly as good as the NBA 2k games, but it's still alright for €5.

I also found a reason to get Impluse, which is one of Steams main competitors, which was, up until Origin, the biggest, because I got a game called "Demigod", which was made by Stardock, who also made Impulse, and it installed Impluse with it, and if you create an account, you can update the game and get DLC for it, similar to Steam games, so I made an Impulse account, I'm sure you can guess what it is...

When we got back to Glasgow, I was greeted with a package, which was my copy of Stranglehold for the PC! Games for Windows to be pedantic, it was the Game of Windows range, it was a US copy, but of course, PC has no region lock, so it installed and played just fine, or should I say, beautifully? It ran at 60+ fps at high settings, so it looked and played brilliantly!

I finally completed the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D! Although with the New Wolf mod attached, the ending doesn't work, so I just watched it on Youtube. I also completed Episode 3 of Doom, I just have episode 4 to do, and then it's on to Doom 2!

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Sunday 15th July 2012

It was Saturn week this week at gran's.

Me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Virtua Fighter 2.1, then after a while, Steven took over, and while we were playing, we were having a Digital vs. Retail debate, just as a chatter, it wasn't like an argument or anything, it was like normal chatting, we both agreed at the end that both had their ups and downs, which I can accept. We then ended up making fun of them, for example, when Giancarlo mentioned there are biscuits being put out, I asked, for a joke, "Are they Retail or Digital?", and when Steven took one of the game to have a look at it, I said for a joke "I don't want you're Digital Download hand all over my Physical games!".

Then me and Steven had a game of Daytona USA, which I accentually quit... we declared him the winner, as he was in front when it happened.

Then we had a race of Sega Touring Car Championship, we've pretty much made of an in-joke where while we play this game, we randomly slowly say/shout "Slooowdooooown!", because the game kept slowing down.

Then we had a quick game of Sega Rally Championship, before the game, I showed him the famous game over screen, then when we had our game, I unfortunately won... (The "You Win!" text is in red and "You Lost!" is in green, which implies that losing is good!)

Then we played the sequel of the game that redefined the fighting genre, Rise 2: Resurrection! Which in all fairness, is a good game, and he had fun playing it, well, at least I did.

Then we had a few games of Sonic 2 in the Sonic Jam collection.

Then me and Steven had a half match of Sega Worldwide Soccer '98, when the first half ended, Riccardo took over, I won that match.

Then me and Riccardo had a rematch, which he beat me 6-4!

Then me and Giancarlo played a few matches of Fighters Megamix.

After that, we left.

At home, me and Riccardo had a few games of FIFA 12 on the PS3, 3 to be exact, all 3 matches I was Celtic and he was Chelsea, I won all 3 matches, with the scores 4-3, 9-6 and 9-3 in order, I written them down for the "Sliders Challenge" page.

Next week is PS1 week, time for some Vib Ribbon!

Retro Diary - 1/7/12 - "It's challenge, challenge, chalenge!"

Monday 25th June 2012

My Wolfenstein 3D PC collection (Wolfenstein 3D + Spear of Destiny) has arrived today... but they didn't work... However, I got the games working on DOSBox, which odd as they're supposed to be Windows ports, but at least I get to play them! As I mentioned last week, it came with Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which works just fine on my PC, so that's good!

I also got my Brick Buster game, which is a lot of fun, considering it's a budget game.

I got my PC back!!!! ASUS have actually fixed it! It feels so good to be sitting back at my desk!

Yeah, despite my attempt to upgrade the PC, which would've voided the warranty, they fixed my PC, it seems to them the warranty doesn't matter, either that or they don't mind people upgrading PCs, ad they make graphics cards and all, and on their help website solutions to problems sometimes involve "removing recently installed hardware", they can't be referring to USB devices, otherwise they'd of said "devices"...

Anyway, I'm not complaining, my PC works fine (touchwood), so now I can play games in stunning HD (No really, 1080p resolution) one again!

Just in case, I'm only going to upgrade my PC once the warranty has run out, that way, even if it breaks, ASUS won't fix it, my mum apparently know someone who could fix it for me, sop it's not a problem, hopefully...

I tried out Trackmania Nations Forever on the PC, and WOW is it a massive improvement, on my laptop, it ran at 30fps on low settings at best, but being how beat my PC is, I can run it highest settings at 60+fps, and it looks beautiful and runs beautifully!

I also tried out The Wrestling Channel 4: Fight! on it, same things, only it doesn't look as good, it still runs fantastic!

However, I wanted to play FIFA 12, but as usual, Origin is being sub-par, it was saying I didn't own EURO 2012, when I clearly bought it.

It turns out, and I wasn't told until I closed it and opened it back up that I needed to update it, it wasn't until I did, when it finally installed EURO 2012.

The problems didn't end there, though, I wanted to get saved on EA servers (yeah, great start), to my PC, I had to restart Origin 5 times before it successfully synced, and even then, it took 2 hours to do so, this is what you get when the evil overlords of gaming go cheap with everything...

After all that, I finally played the game, and everything was in order, although it took longer to load my data, I blame an update, because every other game I tired played the same as before. So I played the Italy vs. England EURO 2012 challenge, and then quite because I wanted to play other games.

Then I played a Co-Op Session of Portal 2 with my cousin, Steven, at first it thought it was my first time playing, because it showed the beginning intro which you only see when you first play Co-Op, so I tried restarting it to see if that was a one time thing, thankfully, it was, it loaded my data the second time, unfortunately, at that time, there was something wrong with the Portal 2 servers, because both me and Steven were both lagging like crazy and kept disconnecting.

After that, I saved up money for the past week or two to get a much of PC games for my new PC, so I ordered a bunch of games, including the Sims 3, Trackmania United Forever, and Stranglehold.

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Tuesday 26th June 2012

I played my brother in FIFA 12, and I kept scoring against him, and he was scoring against me as well, I wasn't counting the score, but when I looked at it after I scored a goal, I realised I was beating him 10-4! Ooft! I'm a lot better at FIFA than I thought!

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Wednesday 27th June 2012

3 game I've ordered have arrived today, Toy Story Mania, Toy Story 3 and Dreamcast Collection, all on PC. Also, my Stranglehold strategy guide arrived, although I've yet to receive the actual game...

Toy Story Mania came as a surprise when I found out about it, I thought the game was a Wii exclusive casual mini games game, and I was right, but I found out a year or so later, only in Europe, they made a PC version, I usually wouldn't have bothered with it, but since I was getting Toy Story 3 for the PC and this was less than £5 brand new, I thought "What the hey!", and ordered that alongside Toy Story 3 and a bunch of other PC games. I got it, and it sucks even more than the Wii version, half of the features don't work in this version, and by that, I mean basic things you have to do, such as shake the Wiimote/mouse, that doesn't work on the PC version, and it's just overall boring to play, but I suppose for £5, I shouldn't be complaining...

Toy Story 3, on the other hand, is brilliant! I've played the PS2 and Wii versions beforehand, and really enjoyed them, so I thought I'd get the PC version, because usually, PC versions of games are the best if you have the right hardware and a decent controller, and I had both (I use the Xbox 360 controller with wireless receiver!), and I was right, the PC version, is the best version at least from the versions I've played, it had a great Toy box mode much like the Wii version but has more and the game runs much faster, 60++ fps!

As for Dreamcast Collection, I wasn't going to get this one either, since I hate collections of old games, I think they abuse the original systems and deplete any value they have... but since the PC version of Dreamcast collection was only £1 brand new, I thought I might as well.

However, just like Toy Story Mania, I was disappointed with this one, it took, literally over an hour to install for starters, then I tried out Crazy Taxi, the controls were confusing as heck, and you couldn't change them, and most importantly, they ruined it by replacing the music, I understand Sega may no longer have the licence to use Bad Religion songs, but if that were the case, they shouldn't have bothered at all, it's just not Crazy Taxi without Bad Religion, they aren't any improvements in the game anyway, it's not even in widescreen like they claimed, it's in letterbox mode, they aren't any widescreen resolutions, so just stick with your Dreamcast original.

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Thursday 28th June 2012

Ultimate Quake on PC and Twisted on the 3DO have arrived today!

Unfortunately, I've been having problems with both at first. With Twisted, my 3Do stopped outputting sound, although I soon realised it was playing sound, just very quietly, and found out when the system warms up, then it plays the sound at normal volume, strange, but at least I know what the problem is exactly, now to find out what causes it and how to fix it... oh yeah, and Twisted worked perfectly, so I can just throw my broken burnt CD away, I have a genuine properly, working copy now!

Quake Live was a slightly different story, Quake 1 installed and played perfectly fine, but Quake 2 and 3 didn't install at all...

With Quake 2, it turns out all "install" did was move content of a certain folder into a folder in Program Files, so I just did that manually, and it worked... sort of, I could only play it windowed, however, I found out about a source port called "R1Q2", which fixed this problem, so I installed it, and it worked perfectly!

Quake 3 Arena was a weird one, the install didn't work at first, but I could run the game off the CD, but if I were to do that, I'd have to insert the CD key every time I start it, so I decided to try it again in compatibility mode, and it worked!

Remember when I got Wolfenstein 3D and it only worked in DOSBox? Well, it turns out there exists a source port called "New Wolf", which not only makes the game work on Windows, but also supports higher resolutions, a bigger screen, and it runs much smoother! I've applied it to both Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, which, by the way, I found out if you cope the folder from the CD to your hard drive, you can make the game work without the CD, so I did that.

I've also discovered GZ-Doom, which is an extension of Z-Doom, it improves it even further, supporting higher resolutions, and makes 3D models out of the doom levels, so you can look up and down without it looking awkward! There are also tonnes of little things that make GZ-Doom that much better! I've also found some Doom PWADS, one is called "Call of Dooty", which makes fun of modern shooters! Another is "Doom Center", which is a town, it has a bowling alley, and an arcade, in the arcade, there's a duck hunt game which you can play using doom itself, it's pretty awesome!

I've played a Co-Op session of Portal 2 with Steven again, this time, with the server up and running like normal!

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Friday 29th June 2012

The Sims 3 arrived today! I'm just about to play it...

...I've had a go, and it's absolutely brilliant, it's very addicting!

I've had a game of FIFA 12 with my brother on the PS3, a few, actually, and I've beaten him in pretty much all of them, one of them was completely mad, full of shots that ended up hitting the post and bar, one, in particular, my brother explained in detail, I had to wait for 5-10 minutes for him to type it.

EA claimed that you can pre-order FIFA 13 Ultimate Edition for the PS3, Xbox 360 and the PC, so I thought "Great! A PC version, I'll be getting that!", but guess what? No store have the PC version for pre-order, not even EA's very own Origin! EA: Trolls of the century!

I've been playing more Sims 3, and I was so into it, I didn't realise the time, so when I finished, when I stopped playing it, it was 1:15am!

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Saturday 30th June 2012

Trackmania United Forever had arrive today, and it's awesome!

I've played another (partial) game with my brother at FIFA 12, we only play for about 10 in game minutes, until he left, neither of us scored...

We played a full game of FIFA 12 later on, we both did random teams, he ended up with Arsenal and I ended up with some Portuguese team... We played another game afterwards, I believe it was an El Classico

Also, I'm going to make a new feature of my blog. It'll be similar to "Horse of the week", but it'll be with my and my brother, and we'll be recording the scores of games we do, there's a twist, which, chances are, like Horse of the Week, we'll soon stop exclusively doing that, is that we'll be using sliders for our games...

My friend from college, Jamie, got the Sims 3 as well, just a day after I did, which is pretty cool, we've added each other of the community website.

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Sunday 1st June 2012

It was 3DO week at grans this week...

I played a bit of Starblade and Need for speed first of all to get the sound on (It's quiet until it's been on for 5 minutes.), then when my cousins came in, we had a game of Twisted! Giancarlo technically won it, I say technically, we didn't finish it, but he got the furthest.

We had to leave after that, we brought our cousins up for the Euro 2012 finals (Spain vs. Italy), before the game, I played a bit of Sims 3, then my and Giancarlo played a match of Mortal Kombat Armageddon on the PS2, and then we played a race in the Motor Kombat mini-game.

After the Euro 2012 game, I showed Steven GZ-Doom, and a cool custom wad, which makes fun of modern FPSes, called "Call of Dooty", then I showed him Trackmania United/Nations Forever, and he said me might download Nations, as it's free, then he had to go.

I showed Giancarlo the Sims 3, and he said it looked like a lot of fun to play, and said he might get it, awesome, 2 people I know will (hopefully) have it!

After that, he left.

I'm going on holiday to Italy tomorrow, so there won't be a Retro Diary next week, but the week after, I'll be adding a lot to this site, like the Sliders feature with me and my brother being added.

Next time at our grans, it will be Saturn week.

Alright, see you in a couple of weeks!