Thursday, February 25, 2010

One Liners

Galcon Fusion
RTS simplified, purified, intensified, addictified.
Jade Empire Limited Edition
Magic Kung Fu fighting to save the Empire.
Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter
Player pursues purloined president by messing up Mexico.
Braid
What if you could go back and do it over?
Persona 3 FES
How can we improve this hundred hour game? I know, let's add content!
Indigo Prophecy
It's what happens when game developers eat peyote halfway through producing a game.
Forza Motorsport 2
Race. Win. Acquire. Upgrade. Unlock. And no stinking license tests nor Kudos challenges.
Mercenaries
GTA, but with mercenaries and North Korea.
Max Payne
Dyspeptic detective depopulates designer drug dealer demographic.
Perfect Dark
Corporations, A.I. and Gray Aliens, oh my.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

One Liners

Descent 3: Mercenary
Yes, Mr. Dravis.
Descent 3
Die, Dravis!
Serious Sam II
Serious Sam, prettified.
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
Time-sink trance.
Too Human
Slide attack!
Namco Museum 50th Anniversary
Galaga!
Command and Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars
Kane is back, as are silly overacted cutscenes.
Bionic Commando: Rearmed
Hooked.
Star Wars Starfighter: Special Edition
Better than the prequel movies, though that's not saying much.
Eternal Sonata
Chopin's dying dream is a high-fantasy JRPG?

Monday, February 22, 2010

One Liners

Project Snowblind
One man army blows up Hong Kong real good.
Tomb Raider Underworld
Lara Croft blows up her own mansion??!!
Darkwatch
Old West Painkiller.
Fallout Brotherhood of Steel
Diablo, Fallout style.
Fallout Tactics
Fallout with squads.
Half-Life: Source
Half-Life plus physics.
Halo 2
More Halo, but with pop-in and an abrupt ending.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance
Diablo, with superheroes.
Okami
Beautiful odyssey through Japanese mythology.
Universe at War: Earth Assault
Five-cornered fight between humans, aliens, AI robots, powerful ancient Earth-dwellers, and dodgy framerates.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

One Liners

Ridge Racer 6
Drifting into victory.
Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney
Hob check shun!
Lost Odyssey
Dino-men vs. the pull-ring hat army.
Fable: The Lost Chapters
More fables.
Ridge Racer V
Understeers, understand?
Persona 4
Can we make this game any longer? Yes!
Prince of Persia 2008
Fun flowing free-running.
Fallout 3
Leave It to Beaver meets Mad Max.
Kingdom Hearts Re: Chain of Memories
Card combat craziness.
Banjo Kazooie
Gotta collect 'em all. Notes and jiggies and coins, oh my!

Thursday, February 18, 2010

XLink Kai, The PlayStation 2, And Gotchas

Recently I and a distant friend were trying to start a game of Project Snowblind on the PS2. We discovered that the Internet servers had been shut down long since. But the game supports LAN play, so we started looking for LAN-over-Internet solutions. At first we tried Hamachi, but discovered that nothing we could do with that tool would bridge our two LANs so that our PS2s could see each other. Next we tried XLink Kai. This we eventually got to work (and work well), but there are some gotchas which I'll list here for the benefit of others who may want to play PS2 LAN-enabled games over the Internet.
  1. As of this writing, XLink Kai version 7.4 does not work with PlayStation 2 consoles.

    Instead, install version 7.3.1.7. The user interface is far more confusing, but it definitely works.

  2. Kai's instructions are misleading on a critical point. They say that to get Kai to recognize your console, you should search for a game to join. This is true enough, for games that get their network address when they search for a game.

    What actually happens is that when the console asks for an IP address from DHCP, XLink Kai assigns the address before the router can get to it. It's the point at which Kai assigns the console an address that it recognizes it.

    In the case of a game like Project Snowblind, the game connects to the network and asks for an IP address before the user makes a choice whether to host a game or search for one.

    So it's vital that Kai already be running when starting multiplayer on a PS2 game. It's easier to just reset the PS2 after starting Kai. This guarantees that Kai will be running whenever the console asks for an IP address.

It's also worth noting that I successfully ran Kai in Windows XP, which was running in a VirtualBox virtual machine set for bridged networking.

Hamachi And Console Gaming

I tried the other day to set up PlayStation 2 console gaming via Hamachi with a far-away friend. We could never get it to work.

Since game consoles cannot run Hamachi clients, we needed some method for bridging our LANs across Hamachi so that packets sent from one console would show up on the other LAN.

The first thing we tried was using Windows Bridging to connect both our real LANs to Hamachi's virtual one. Broadcasts and pings sent from one LAN did not show up on the other.

The second thing we did was to set up static routes from one LAN to the other across Hamachi, according to a document he found on the Hamachi wiki. Again, broadcasts and pings did not go, even when we turned off (briefly) our firewalls.

Since neither of these methods worked, we gave up on using Hamachi for console gaming, and turned to the dedicated solution: XLink Kai.

One Liners

Gateway II Homeworld
More Heechee clickee.
God of War: Chains of Olympus
Kratos is angry again. Who would've guessed?
Gears of War
Look out! Cliché overload!
Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3
Manapults!
Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath
Kane saves face. Well, half.
R-Type Dimensions
Classic hardcore punishing shmup.
Silent Hill: Homecoming
Little Brother is watching you.
Enchanted Arms
Magic guns.
On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode 2
Perverted Produce Penetrators.
Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
The Joy of Sax.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

One Liners

Tron 2.0
Disk? Oh, tech!
Tribes Vengeance
Fuel dump frenzy.
Half-Life 2: Deathmatch
Gordon Freeman was killed by a flying toilet.
Far Cry
Dr. Moreau's Deathmatch Delight.
Duke Nukem 3D
Damn, I'm looking pixellated.
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Yo Adrian!
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Alien: Oh no, it's a security guard! Run!
Half-Life
Physics geek defeats alien horde with crowbar.
Frederik Pohl's Gateway
Point. Click. Explore the Heechee universe.

Friday, February 12, 2010

One Liners

Sacrifice
Soul food.
Lure of the Temptress
Pixel hunt.
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and the Damned
Do not operate motorcycle with face contacting tire. Unless it's someone else's face.
Fallout 3: Operation Anchorage
Shoot Chinese soldier. Replenish ammo. Repeat until bored or finished.
Exit 2
Taking escapology to the next hundred levels.
X-COM: Terror from the Deep
UFO = Underwater Flying Object.
X-COM: UFO Defense
SHADO war.
Castle Crashers
Merry mayhem.
Beneath a Steel Sky
Grim tale set to cheerful music. Say what?
Unreal Tournament 2004
Run. Shoot. Kill. Die.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

One Liners

Halo Wars
They're everywhere!
Halo: Combat Evolved
FPS comfort gaming.
Empire Earth
Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Mindworms! Bzzt bzzt.
Age of Empires II Gold
Lift that barge. Tote that bale. Build that army. Invade that neighbor.
Duke Nukem 3D
Damn, I'm looking good.
Burnout 3: Takedown
Yes, officer, I do know how fast I was going. Road-blurringly, cheek-ripplingly, face-meltingly, doors-blowing-offly fast.
X-COM: Interceptor
Controls as awkward as a nerd's first date.
X-COM: Apocalypse
Unremarkable Steam sale filler.
Tomb Raider Underworld: Beneath the Ashes
Undiscovered ancient tomb beneath tomb raider's mansion? Well isn't that convenient.

Tuesday, February 09, 2010

One Liners

Killzone
Server still up. Multiplayer still fun.
flOw
Eat or be eaten.
Fallout 2
More mutant merriment.
Fallout
War never changes. Humans, however, mutate.
Darwinia
Paper dolls vs. origami snakes.
Armagetron Advanced
MS Office apps ride light-bikes when they're not working... who knew?
Alien Hominid
The original Flash game. At least I can get groin-kicked for free with this version.
Tomb Raider Underworld: Lara's Shadow
Lara's more badass evil clone.
Prince of Persia: Epilogue
Doing my part to make the DLC problem worse.

Monday, February 08, 2010

One Liners

Alien Hominid HD
This game is hard. Hard. Did I say hard?
The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena
More Riddick, but with guns.
Desktop Tower Defense
Dune 2000, but more boring.
Dead Space
I dismember you!
Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
I'a Dagon!
Peggle Extreme
Half-Life 2 themed Peggle demo.
X-COM: Enforcer
What, I have to shoot some more aliens?
Mona the Assassin
Don't mess with Mona.
Half-Life 2: Lost Coast
Short tech demo.
Frozen Bubble
Bubble Bobble boosted.

Friday, February 05, 2010

One Liners

Titan Quest
Click. Click. Click click. Click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click click ...
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
I have to drive how far to get to a save point?!
Castlevania: The Dracula X Chronicles
Rondo of Blood and Symphony of the Night, all in one convenient package.
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
Eco, Brown, or Spielberg? We'll see.
Project Gotham Racing 4
Kudos! Again.
Halo 3
Bad cyborg!
Bully: Scholarship Edition
Preppie pranksters.
The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
The dark... My favorite.
Condemned 2: Bloodshot
Oil men.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
If you build it, it will go.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

One Liners

Syberia II
More mechanical mystery.
Syphon Filter: Logan's Shadow
Good PSP shooter. Yes. Good. Deal with it.
Speed Racer
Like WipEout, but with cars. And anime style talking head text balloons.
Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway
More Brothers in Arms.
Infinite Undiscovery
Infinite Unexcitement.
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII
Pretty prequel.
Devil May Cry 4
No one can escape... the claw!
Medieval II Total War
Total strategy.
Rez HD
Trippy musical rail shooter. Great aiming system for consoles.
Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions
Not a new game; just FFT, portable.

Tuesday, February 02, 2010

One Liners

Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories PSP
Fun if you like GTA. I like GTA.
Star Wars Republic Commando
Cloning around.
Mirror's Edge
Parkour bliss. Shooting not so much.
Flatout 2
Demolition derby delight.
Battlefield 1942
Fun camping the enemy spawn point with a tank.
World in Conflict Complete
WW3 strategy.
Lost Planet: Extreme Condition
Giant ice bugs and mechs.
GUN
Fun Old West shooter/RPG.
Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars
A different perspective on GTA. Still GTA. Fun.
The Orange Box: Portal
The cake is a delicious lie.

Monday, February 01, 2010

One Liners

Civilization Revolution
Pure. Simple. Fun.
Bejeweled 2 Deluxe
Endless mode? Gem-matching trance.
Sins of a Solar Empire
Epic space battles.
Frontlines: Fuel of War
A game I play to escape everyday worries about politics, economics, the environment, dwindling energy supplies... oh wait...
Battlefield: Bad Company
"Hold the phone. Did you just say I can blow up anything?"
Tales of Vesperia
Pretty JRPG.
Ico
Heart-tugging protectiveness among lonely magnificence.
Guitar Hero 2
Rock out with the band. And practice.
Guitar Hero
Rock out with the band.
Fable II
Good dog!