Bruce Dickinson, the awesome lead singer of one of my favourite bands, just keeps getting better every time I read about him. He’s a fully certified Boeing 757 pilot (yes, he flies the plane when Iron Maiden tours), and didn’t turn down the distress call to fly around the world and save the tourists stranded by the collapse of XL Leisure Group.
Over the weekend, I had the chance to sit down and evaluate my current gaming and to decide if it was time to get another game. Despite still having fun with Soul Calibur 4, I think I’ve achieved all I’m realistically going to (after all, I don’t have nobody‘s skill or dedication, so there’s no way in hell I’m going to reach 450,000 points in Arcade mode).
All the recent intellectual discussion on games as art, and gender politics in game design has got me hankering to play something new but kind of turned me off current offerings. I also blame Yahtzee. Nonetheless, let’s have a look out there and see if I can be convinced to part with my money on something.
I picked up Dragonball Z: Burst Limit ages ago and was going to write a moderately positive review. I kept putting it off, and now I understand why: it’s just not that good. After giving it about 4 hours, I put the disc back in its box and moved on. I didn’t really play anything until Soul Calibur 4 came out. And that’s the true measure of how good a game is, isn’t it? After your excitement about the shiny new toy wears off, are you still playing with it?
So, what’s wrong? Nothing specifically: there’s just not enough of anything.
Let’s get the good stuff out of the way so I can pound in the mediocrity: the visuals are amazing. The use of cel-shading really hides the polygonal nature of the game and engages the player like no game in the DBZ franchise has before. It is exactly like directing a fight out of the cartoon, and that is awesome. For no other reason alone did I buy this game. If you’re a fan of DBZ, or even of fighting anime in general, then this game will satisfy the need to interact directly with the animation.
And upping your power level to go Super Saiyan or Kaio Ken in the middle of a battle looks awesome.
So, just in case you’re not following the latest and greatest from our Internet Lords and Masters, Google have released their own browser. There’s a little comic available that explains what’s so awesome about it. Have a read, it’s quite interesting for those who get tickled by browser technology. Since every man and his blog is reviewing it, I figured I’d chuck my random thoughts out there.
I’ve had it up and running for a while, and it seems pretty nifty. The New Tab Page is the best use of that space I’ve seen yet. It compiles everything I would most likely be doing with the browser into one neat little place. I could definitely get used to it.
Overall, it definitely feels zippier than Firefox 3, and definitely better than any version of IE or Safari I’ve encountered. Some of the new features are definitely cool. The syntax hilighting in the “view source” window, as well as the “inspect element” will definitely help me with the little bits of web design and programming that I do. Also, the Task Manager will be a boon to anybody trying to figure out why the browser isn’t responding (though it’s a little difficult to find).
I’ve had some intermittent issues with some pages not being able to render and getting the “Sad Tab”. But then that stopped. I’m not sure what happened there, particularly as the site I was visiting was a very popular Australian newspaper. Also, it looks like there’s some issues with YouTube. I can’t get it to play more than 2 seconds of any clip.
Still, for a beta, it’s very well-polished, and I’ll keep using it. It may even replace FF3 on my Mac once it’s released for my favourite platform.
Here’s an interesting followup to yesterday’s post on games as an artistic expression.
Kotaku (I must read them more often) is offering up opinion on the controversy surrounding Douglas Edric Stanley’s Invaders!. In what Stanley is calling installation art, players are pitted against the traditional Space Invaders, which are destroying the World Trade Center.
… the exhibit … was also accompanied by video clips of American films and President George W. Bush, additional peripheral elements that let us know we had a nebulous “political message” on our hands.