Category: Gaming

Any gaming post.

Man dies after week of “marathon” gaming

Folks, if you game a lot (like I sometimes do), make it a point to get up, move away from the computer, and do a little actual physical activity periodically. Look up DVT (Deep Venous Thrombosis) sometime – I recommend Google, but pick your favored search engine.

Now, armed with knowledge about how stupid it is to sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, and sit some more, you can learn how not to sit on your ass for the better part of a week and die from inactivity.

An obese 26-year-old man in northeastern China died after a “marathon” online gaming session over the Lunar New Year holiday, state media said on Wednesday.

The 150-kilogram (330-pound) man from Jinzhou, in Liaoning province, collapsed on Saturday, the last day of the holiday, after spending “almost all” of the seven-day break playing online games, the China Daily said, citing his parents.

. . .

“There are only two options. TV or computer. What else can I do in the holiday as all markets, KTV and cafeterias are shut down?” the paper quoted Xu as saying.

I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m thinking exercise, walk in The Real World outside, visit friends, clean the house, work in the yard, and all kinds of other things count as options, even when all the markets are closed. And doing such crazy things, plus dropping just a few pounds (said as a man who games sometimes too much and is at least 60 pounds overweight, but working on dropping some of that), just might save your life some day. It’s really said to see this happen to people, when this particular form of death is extremely avoidable.

[tags]Overweight man sits gaming too long over holiday week – dies[/tags]

Give your Mrs. some games

I’m sure the cause and effect tie in won’t actually work out to reward you for getting that special someone in your life into gaming if she isn’t already, but there is a good reason to seek out the gamer chixx0rz if you are currently unattached.

According to a survey conducted by Gametart, a game rental service in the UK, chicks who game get more lovin’ than those who don’t. Out of a sample of 200 ladies (or should that be “laid-ees”?), the ones who gamed got, erm, fragged 1.1 more times a week than those who didn’t.

. . .

Of our sample of 200 women, those who played video games on average had sex 4.3 times a week while those who didn’t play games only had sex just 3.2 times a week.

Although I have to go on record here as saying I’d be happy with even the 3.2 times a week model. I can wait to upgrade to the 4.3 times a week later. I’m not as young as I used to be. Although I’ll try if I can sample 200 women…

[tags]Gamer chicks get the goods more often, Get a gamer-babe in your life to get more in bed[/tags]

Halo 3 announcement

I just saw this at Joystiq.

halo3promofall07.jpg

I can see the appeal of Halo, even though I never got that into the game. So for those of you who are really looking forward to the next Halo, there is the most solid release date indicator yet. More information from the official Bungie weekly update. We’ll keep an eye on Bungie for narrowing down the release date – I’m betting mid-November to get all the holiday sales while still giving as much time as possible for bug hunting.

[tags]Halo 3 release date firming up[/tags]

Old-school gaming = hard to win

Most games these days are hard to lose.  Sometimes, though, you can find the simplest games are also some of the hardest.  Don’t believe me?  Check out all the ways to lose.

You have to be careful of the language, though.  You’ll get prompted several times to install Japanese language packs if you don’t have them installed and don’t have language pack prompting turned off.  If you don’t install the packs, your game will look a little different than what is in the above video.

[tags]Old school gaming – hard to win, A simple game that is very challenging[/tags]

 

Good news for Castlevania fans – Dracula X coming to the PSP

castlevania-dracula-x-chron.jpg

If you aren’t into the history of the Castlevania series, you won’t recognize the importance of this, but longtime series fans will. In 1993, Konami released Dracula X: Rondo of Blood in Japan for the PC-Engine console (known as TurboGraphx and later TurboDuo in America). Because the console sold so poorly in the US, the game never made it here legally (it’s a hot post in the TurboDuo usenet group and has been a highly sought after disc on Ebay). Now, nearly 15 years later, Castlevania: Dracula X will be available on the Sony PSP in the dual-game release Caslevania: Dracula X Chronicles (obligatory shorter link), which will include both Dracula X: Rondo of Blood and the associated title Symphony of the Night, originally available on the PlayStation 1.

For a bit more information on this, check out the video interview at TechEBlog (and the shorter link) that covers some of the changes and additions from the classic to the port.

[tags]Castlevania Dracula X for PSP, Update of classic Drac X for the PSP[/tags]

Rock on with the action games – they make your vision better

I don’t play the action games like I used to. The original Quake (I so pwned with the off-hand grappling hook mod) and Unreal Tournament (still the best of the bunch, although UT2004 is awesome) were my favorites. By my slowing reaction time (as a 36 year old gamer, I’m ancient by twitch-game standards) and frequent hand tremors leave me unable to compete against most of the folks that play shooters. However, if I could/did still play them, I would apparently benefit from improved visual acuity after playing (bonus shortened URL available as well).

Video games that contain high levels of action, such as Unreal Tournament, can actually improve your vision.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have shown that people who played action video games for a few hours a day over the course of a month improved by about 20 percent in their ability to identify letters presented in clutter–a visual acuity test similar to ones used in regular ophthalmology clinics.

In essence, playing video game improves your bottom line on a standard eye chart.

Continue reading “Rock on with the action games – they make your vision better”

Gaming’s most important multi-player games

Gamasutra polled people in the gaming industry what the most important multi-player games of all time are.  I was all ready to protest the article before I even read it, because one of my favorite games was sure to be missing, I thought.  Well, looks like my personal number one game for the list made it:

tribes-screenshot.jpgDynamix created the template for both team-based gameplay and “kit selection” that have been iterated on by every multiplayer-focused FPS since its release way back in 1998. Despite having a steep learning curve that scared off more than a few potential players, Tribes still managed to find a strong following that progressed the game to an ultra-competitive artform of teamplay.

Tribes‘ focus on playing as a team, filling roles, seperating offensive and defensive units, supporting flag carriers, etc, etc. pushed the future of FPS multiplayer gaming from pure deathmatch/”cowboy” gaming to one where squad play and team focus is just as important as “point and click” kills. Tribes represents a significant quantum leap in FPS multiplayer gaming…and sucked away five years of my life!

I played that game for 3 years before moving on to my current game of choice (City of Heroes).  And I kicked all kinds of ass on the map pictured above.  The other two games I felt HAD to make the list, Bomberman and Quake, did make the list.  I could go on for a long time about the multi-player games I played the most, but this short article highlights very well some of the most important.  I might consider Unreal Tournament for the list, as well, but I realize that some games have to get left off in the interest of brevity (not one of my strong points, admittedly).

Also missing is any mention of Massively Multiplayer gaming, of which perhaps Ultima Online and World of Warcraft are most important.  Yes, there were other MMOs before Ultima Online, and there have certainly been more successful ones than UO, but it made MMOs acceptable to many.  And there is no questioning the importance of the 1200 ton beast that is World of Warcraft.  It’s Ginormous.  I think at least one of these should be on the list.

[tags]The most important multi-player games of all times

Nokia tries again – new N-Gage this summer or fall

It appears that the dismal failure of the first two passes of the N-Gage gaming/MP3 phone (well, MP3 was dropped in the first re-tooling) weren’t enough to dissuade Nokia.  With an announced ship date of later this year, the new N-Gage is predicted to be more successful.

According to the Nokia sponsored semi-official blog Future Watch, by the middle of this year, “the N-Gage experience will evolve into the next generation of mobile gaming.” The blog suggests that the new N-Gage will make its debut this September and that two major publishers, EA Mobile and Gameloft, are already backing Nokia’s latest effort.

. . .

“By early 2008, we expect to have some of the biggest franchises and hottest mobile games included in the N-Gage experience,” it concluded.

Seems like I recall predictions from Nokia that the first N-Gage and the revamped N-Gage were going to be big hits, too (in case you don’t know – they weren’t).  I also seem to recall all of 1 good game and 2-3 decent games were all that were available once you threw out the crappy games.  (via /.)

[tags]New generation N-Gage later this year, Nokia says *This time the N-Gage* will succeed, One ringtone to rule them all?[/tags]

Try City of Heroes/City of Villains free -for 14 days

Occasionally, I write about things in CoH/Cov, because this is easily my favorite game on the market now. If you haven’t tried the game and want to see if it is something you would enjoy, read this post at the Co* forums about FileFront’s 14-day free trial. As an added note, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this week-end (January 26th through 28th) are double XP weekend, so any character you play this week-end will advance more quickly than normal, which will give you a chance to taste a bit more of the character’s abilities more quickly than normal.

[tags]Free CoH/CoV 14-day trial, Try City of Heroes/City of Villains for free[/tags]

Updated console sales numbers

Not too long ago, I posted some sales numbers for the new generation consoles. Since there was some concern as to the validity of those numbers, I’ve held off a few weeks commenting more while looking for other numbers. Recently, Gamasutra has posted their own numbers for December sales along with end of year totals. The VGCharts site I linked to last time shows higher numbers than Gamasutra, so I’m not sure who is correct. I just want to take a peek at the Gamasutra numbers, though, and read through them a bit as if those were the correct numbers.

According to the official hardware statistics released this afternoon, the PlayStation 2 continued to be a popular platform at retail, selling 1.4 million units for the month (37.1 million to date in the U.S.). The Xbox 360 also impressed, selling 1.1 million in December (with 4.5 million lifetime to date), while the Wii sold 604,200 units for the month, putting its total North American number sold at 1.1 million units.

Elsewhere, the severely supply-constricted PlayStation 3 was found to have sold through 490,700 units for the period, with 687,300 units sold since its launch in November – no doubt somewhat of a disappointment for console creator Sony.

I still want Sony to do well with the PlayStation 3. More competition means better value and better games and hardware for us gamers. I know based on my comments in the past, it might seem like I don’t want Sony to do well. The reality is, I don’t think Sony is doing well, but I keep hoping things will go better for the console and that the company will start performing better in handling this round of the console wars. That said, I want to think about those PS3 numbers. According to other reports, Sony was able to meet their projected end-of-year target of 1 million consoles available in North America. That means Sony failed to sell nearly one-third of their consoles available for sale in the launch period.

I haven’t spent a lot of time looking for “experts” to give their analysis, but I suspect that price might be a big factor there. I’d love to get a PS3. I’d be saving my pennies to grab one for $300. Even at $400, I’d see if I could save enough to get one maybe this summer. I just can’t see paying $600, even if I get a Blu-Ray player (which I, like many others, don’t even care about). I suspect I’m not the only consumer who feels this way.

My quest for end-of-year products shipped numbers for the Wii has been fruitless thus far, so I can’t comment on how many remain in the channel. I do know, however, that people are still reporting troubles finding the Nintendo console, and that the number sold is near the projected end-of-year numbers Nintendo had around launch. Still, it will be interesting to find and compare the numbers to what Sony is going through.

[tags]End of year North American console sales, How the new generation of consoles are selling[/tags]

City of Heroes – an almost numbers free MMO

I’m a gamer. Perhaps you’ve picked up on that if you know me in real life, have read my meaningless posts for long, or been in some of the forums where I post. When people ask me what games I play, my answer for well over two years has been City of Heroes (and along with it, City of Villains, although I’m not much for playing the bad guy). I like the super-hero theme, I have a lot of folks I know in game now that I enjoy teaming with, I find that I can have fun playing solo or teamed, I don’t feel obligated to join 120-person raids (something folks in World of Warcraft, and I believe Everquest, know all too well), and I can sit and play with my kids since it isn’t a bloody and excessively violent game. If you aren’t a City of Heroes/Villains player and you’ve made it before, you’ll probably want to skip the rest, as it only applies to folks playing those games.

Continue reading “City of Heroes – an almost numbers free MMO”

Death by too-much-water

Trying to win a Nintendo Wii for her children, Jennifer Strange dies from water-intoxication.

28-year-old Jennifer Strange of Rancho Cardova, CA was found dead inside her home on Friday afternoon after competing in a radio station-sponsored competition which pitted hopefuls against one another for the prize of Nintendo’s latest and greatest. Instead of competing on the playing fields of Wii sports or the Japanese streets of Red Steel, however, contestants gathered inside the studios of Sacramento’s KDND The End to see who could drink the most water without urinating. The ridiculously-titled “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest had entrants imbibe eight ounces of water every fifteen minutes for 90 minutes, after which they were given larger portions until a winner emerged. Ms. Strange — who did not win — left the studio in tears, and she was last heard from by her employers at Radiological Associates of Sacramento complaining of a terrible headache. Autopsy results released yesterday showed signs of water intoxication, wherein the body’s electrolyte levels are dangerously unbalanced due to a rapid intake of the seemingly harmless liquid.

No jokes from me – that’s pretty tragic. I’d never even heard of water intoxication until I heard this story on the radio this morning.

[tags]Woman dies trying to win Nintendo Wii, Death from drinking too much water?[/tags]