Bands And Tracks

posted by Jaitu at 21:35

Last night ElDiablo and I met up with TechMaster and a few other friends to see Womble692's new band play at a local venue. We all had a good time and I took a couple of hundred photos, many of which fall into the category of 'artistic' by which I mean blurry. I'll let Womble692 go into more detail of the evening from the stage-front perspective if he wishes to. Suffice to say it constantly amazes me how he manages to make such wonderful sounds from what is really nothing more than a plank and some elastic bands.
Before heading out to the gig ElDiablo and I thrashed a couple of Aston Martin DB9s around the famous or maybe infamous Nordschleife circuit at the Nurburgring. Needless to say this was done from the comfort of a sofa and made possible by Forza Motorsport on the XBox. Anyway that little story, truth though it is, was really only an excuse to embed this clip. Imagine our racing skills to be like this only stretched over 24 miles.

Quest for eternal life.

posted by Kahoona7 at 08:46

As a 34 year old male the horror and embarrassment I experienced while being confronted with my very first Mii age on Wii Sports (age 42) was only alleviated when my friends 'attempt' resulted in a Mii age of 78.

My strongest event has always been bowling but of late this has become my Achilles heel. Now with regularity I return 99% of the balls in Tennis and hit 6 out of 10 home runs. But I have become increasing frustrated with my inept attempt at the bowling.

I decided last night to spend some time tinkering with my 'technique' and after three rounds I managed to post my highest ever score, 205, eureka!!!!

I don't really know why the game only allows one attempt a day at reducing your Mii age but I can not wait to try again tonight, and with an increasing optimism I am sure I can reach my quest and become 20 again.

-- Tuesday 23rd January, Mii Age 25.

Wii HD

posted by Dean at 11:39

I recently got hold of a Wii component cable that enables you to run your Wii at 480p on a HD TV.

It does make some subtle differences, as you can see here.

Definitely worth a purchase if you have a Wii + HD TV.

I also now have two as I accidently forgot to cancel one of my pre-orders. They're stll quite difficult to get hold of, so if you want my spare, unopened cable for cost price (£15), drop me an email dean.pullen@gmail.com and you can have it.

Here's a Youtube comparison:

Party in a box

posted by Kahoona7 at 08:49

Well, it's now been 3 weeks since the Wii arrived in our household, and last night marked a truly remarkable occasion, my wife asked me if we could have a go on the console....she asked me to play a video game!! I think her exact words were, 'I fancy trying to get my Wii age down on Wii sports'.
Now seeing that her previous best was 64 I can understand her plight and being a gentleman I replied 'no worries'.

What I love/hate about the Wii is that my wife can actually compete with me at bowling. In fact the very first night we tried out the console it took me three rounds to finally beat her, much to her delight and amusement.

Since then I have demonstrated it to various friends all who have been impressed with the innovative Wii remote, with ten pin bowling again being the firm favourite. Who ever decided to package Wii Sports with the console as a launch bundle was inspired; it's simple, fun and great for multiplayer. Where I believe the XBox360 and PS3 are superior consoles their demographic appeal is somewhat limited, the Wii however is aimed at...everyone!

I also purchased Wii Play with the console, these 8 pub games give an insight to how the Wii Remote can be used. Like Wii Sports I think this has limited single player appeal but is great for playing with friends and family. I think my initial excitement with the console has started to fade, not that I don't love it anymore but I find that I need to be playing with someone to get that full gaming experience. Next step is to purchase a game like Zelda which I am sure my wife will gladly let me play on my own.

By the way, her Wii age is now 48.

My First Taste Of Wii

posted by Jaitu at 12:45

Kahoona7 filled my house with the wonder of his Wii last night.
The first thing I was surprised by was size. Not of the console unit, it perfectly fits the 'three DVD cases' description and is no bigger than my external DVD writer. The Wiimote controllers however are much smaller than either printed or TV ads would have you expect. Imagine something about the size of a cheap Nokia handset. Now halve the width and make it a little thicker. That's the Wiimote. It sits very comfortably in the hand and I can imagine the A button and B trigger being placed about right for most users no matter what their age. The poorly named Sensor Bar (it emits but does not sense) is also only about half the size I expected and sat unobtrusively on top of the TV. Naomi, who joined us later in the evening, didn't even realise it was there until Kahoona7 was packing it away again.
We worked our way through the Wii Sports pack (Bowling, Boxing, Baseball, Tennis and Golf) which all proved to be very entertaining. I suspect the fun factor ramps up when you have a live competitor but can also see these games being a suitable distraction for anyone with some time to kill. Each of the five games is a simple implementation of their real world counterpart. And each acts as an effective tech demo of the motion sensing capabilities of the Wiimote. None of them actually make use of the pointing mode during game play, it is only evident when clicking buttons to make selections on screen. The tilt sensing seems pretty accurate and it doesn't take long for use of the Wiimote to become quite natural feeling. The additional WiiPlay game collection adds further tech demo titles including a number of pointer based games which further illustrate the potential for this console to shine. The pointing is very easy and because of the sensor bar requires none of the calibration that older 'light guns' necessitated. Instead all the calibration takes places subconsciously in your own head. The on-screen cursor isn't exactly where you're pointing the end of the Wiimote at but it's close enough and moves with you such that you don't question it.

As TechMaster said before this feels more like a machine to have fun with the family or friends whenever they come over and not so much a "Gamer" system. Based on these titles I would have to agree but I believe it could hold it's own in the current market if the software is right. The potential for the control system (with the nun chuck attached) to bridge the gap between the traditional console gamepad and the PC style keyboard-and-mouse control schemes is obvious. The real test will be how more traditional games titles fare on this format as I don't see it surviving on party titles. I would be very interested in trying out an FPS or Need For Speed style game. We already know that graphically the system is at a perceived disadvantage but there are other qualities on offer here that, at present, cannot be found elsewhere. As the DS has proven against the PSP, it's not all about horsepower.

I will certainly still buy one. Naomi demands it.

My Wii Review

posted by TechMaster at 13:39

I thought I would add my comments on the Wii, I was lucky enough to get one of these for Xmas from Virgin, which included the Wii Sports but I also grabbed a copy of Zelda.

First impressions are good, it was easy to setup up, very small/quiet unit and the controller seems responsive with minimal delay.

It obvious that the Wii is not a powerful HD ready console, the free Wii sports title is pretty basic but great fun especially with two players. I haven’t had time to play Zelda yet.
You do need quite a bit of space, I can see how its easy to smack someone by mistake while playing some of these game

Negative points : Crap picture quality although buying a component cable made a big improvement, and once you buy the "must have" second controller, a couple of games it works out more then the current 360 Bundles (which one is better value, the 360 in my opinion)

I’m lucky enough to have a Xbox 360 HD , digital 5.1 setup and can say they are totally different gaming experiences, Gears of War for example is great along with the online gaming the 360 offers.

I see the Wii as a family "pick up and play" type console, I think the Wii is a great novelty and I am interested to see how they implement the controller in upcoming games. But for me it’s a good "second" console and no more.

Will Wii Rock You

posted by Jaitu at 21:39

I fixed the Banner (hours ago). It seems the Blogger preview is a lot more forgiving of randomly inserted characters than the browser is.

Anyway, Kahoona7 should be coming over tomorrow night to show off his Wii. The Nintendo Wii is a console I'm very interested in and will definately be the next one I purchase (when stocks allow). I respect the decision by Nintendo to bow out of the console arms race and take a new direction. I've never been a fan of any particular camp, I still have an original Playstation, a Dreamcast, a pair of XBoxes and a brace of Nintendo DSes. It's fair to say that I have never been a particularly early adopter though. The Playstation was bought second hand a couple of years after launch, I made the decision to buy a Dreamcast after reading that Sega was discontinuing production. My first Xbox followed the console's first price drop and the second was a year after that. The DSes, in fact, were puchased nearest their launch when I picked them up in Melbourne two years ago. Of all these machines the XBox is the format that sees the most use although if I had to pick I would probably say that the Dreamcast and the DSes are my favourites. This is probably as a result of my own perception of them as underdogs. Arguably so is the XBox but with Microsoft behind it it seems hard to think of it that way. The Dreamcast was a generally underrated machine in my opinion.
The DSes have taken a while to hit their stride but anything that can turn maths into a bestseller has to be something special.

Why was I writing this? I don't remember and don't know where I was going with it anyway.

So the Wii next.
It's small enough that I don't need to lose a device from shelves to make space for it. I don't need to upgrade my TV to HD for it. I don't need to find a way to squeeze another digital signal into my amp. It offers new play experiences. Okay so it doesn't have the latest graphic capabilities and it doesn't do surround sound and it doesn't have the computational capacity to model the Earth's weather systems in realtime. Does it need those things to deliver entertaining and involving gameplay? I don't think so.

I'll let you know what I think of the Wii though. I'll also try and convince Kahoona7 to give a more in depth review as a real owner of the thing. Dean too. He got one on launch day (along with every other console ever released it would seem). So we'll try and coax something out of him - assuming he hasn't already exhausted all the Wii puns over at his other job.