A Sleepless Gaming Session Celebration

Since Wednesday of last week, things have been very stressful in my professional life. I had to complete a rather demanding project that took a lot of my time and energy. I think it was even able to bite off a good chunk of my soul. I was able to finally complete the task today and to celebrate the occasion, I have decided to so a strange gaming experiment tonight, just for fun! I am going to see if I could force myself to play games continuously until the wee hours of the morning tomorrow - I am thinking maybe 4:00am or 5:00am before I go to sleep. The challenge here is that the sleepless gaming event is not incurred naturally: I only tend to play games that long into the night without me noticing the time. This doesn't mean however than I am going to play the game(s) continuously without stopping. I am keeping things safe and I am going to allow myself a quick break every now and then as long as they don't involve sleeping. I will post up the result of this experiment tomorrow!

What really got me going with this though was a Culdcept Saga play session that I had with a friend online. We played the game until midnight last night but we only did a couple of quick matches tonight. If I had the option, I would just love to continue playing Culdcept Saga all night long - it feels so good to play the game again after being away from it for such a long time - but I don't have anyone else on my friend's list that I could really play the game with at this moment. I was so desperate to find someone to play with that I actually went to CuldceptCentral to look for players despite my previous experience with the elitism of its community members. But then I saw this:

Dejavu?

This, of course, took away any remaining glimmer of hope I had about giving the site a second chance. Oh well, maybe I'll spend the time playing Dirt 2 and Tropico 3 that I just got. If I could get them finally installed that is - the 10+ GB file for Dirt 2 got corrupted when it finished downloading to my hard drive. Let's hope things are going to go well for this second download attempt. I want this to be a fun night/morning! By the way, caffeine consumption will not be allowed during this challenge so the games themselves will have to keep me awake and motivated!

Update Note: 04/14/2010 - You can read about the result here.

New Games Alert: Totally Sprung Edition!

Direct2Drive kicked off their "Spring Gaming Fever" sale event this morning with tons of great selections for week number one. The prices for Dirt 2 and Tropico 3 are outstanding so I went ahead and got those two. I have been waiting for Microsoft to put Dirt 2 on sale for quite some time now on their Games on Demand service - there is still one mystery sale item to be revealed tomorrow - but it looks like Direct2Drive beat them to it. I really enjoyed the original Dirt on the X-Box 360. This sequel is less rally racing and more arcade action than the original but that's part of the allure for me. I have played the first Tropico such a long time ago and I can't wait to put on the shoes of the El Presidente again with Tropico 3. The most intriguing thing about this nation management simulation game is that it lets play around with dictatorship - oh what fun!

And that's only half of what's on sale this week!

Games Played 04/05/2010 - 04/11/2010

- 04/05/2010 -
Bonk's Adventure - Wii
Ironclad - Wii
Ninja Commando - Wii
Plants vs. Zombies Demo - PC
Zuma's Revenge Demo - PC

- 04/06/2010 -
League of Legends - PC
Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ - NDS
Plants vs. Zombies - PC

- 04/07/2010 -
Game & Watch Collection 2 - NDS

- 04/08/2010 -
League of Legends - PC
Little Red Riding Hood's Zombie BBQ - NDS
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Duelists of the Roses - PlayStation 2

- 04/09/2010 -
I was really exhausted from a very long day of work.

- 04/10/2010 -
ESPGaluda II Black Label - X-Box 360
Halo 3: ODST - X-Box 360
Homeworld 2 - PC
Plants vs. Zombies - PC
Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity - PC
Zuma Deluxe - X-Box 360

- 04/11/2010 -
Culdcept Saga - X-Box 360
ESPGaluda II Black Label - X-Box 360
Mushihimesama Futari Ver 1.5 -X-Box 360
Plants vs. Zombies - PC

ESPGaluda II on iPhone? Absurd!

Cave have actually released an iPhone port of ESPGaluda II! To think that they have considered forever abandoning the North American market and then all of a sudden, they would do something like this! The galaxy is truly coming to an end. Well, actually, this is quite an intriguing news for me and it is more so because this release is a really good port of the game. It doesn't have the crisp, HD-enhanced graphics of the X-Box 360 version but from what I can see from the official gameplay video included below, it's a great way to play the game - for a very cheap price too - for those who don't believe in owning a game console. This iPhone iteration is also lacking in play options though its exclusive "Awakening Pulse" mode makes me a bit jealous - heck, bullet cancel and score multiplier without putting my character in danger? Who doesn't want that right?

Don't have enough cash to get the X-Box 360 version? Now you don't
have an excuse anymore not to own this game... That is if you have an iPhone.

Sins of a Homeworld

As I was starting to play Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity on my Personal Computer yesterday, my mind went back to the great classic Homeworld 2. What triggered that reaction wasn't the similarity of gameplay but instead, I just found that Sins lacks any real visual punch. I remember being blown away by the vastness of space and its inhabitants that was portrayed in Homeworld 2. Things feel a bit empty in Sins even though both games technically are doing the same thing when it comes to creating a sense of galactic scale. So I decided to reinstall Homeworld 2 to check out how it would hold up today. I ran both games in 1920 x 1080 resolution and after playing back and forth between the two games, the winner is clear.

The graphics in Sins feel a bit too clean, too sterile...


The gas cloud formations in Homeworld 2 are still as mesmerizing as ever.

Let me put it this way: If Homeworld 2 was just released this year, it could get away with its graphical presentation and technology. Bear in mind that this game was released in 2003 and close to 7 years later, the 3D engine that supports it is still extremely competent. The game surely looks better than a vast majority of titles found on the PlayStation 3 or the X-Box 360, especially during the space battles. All the structures and objects still look very modern with nary a sign of the typical blocky polygons that are usually seen in dated 3D models. The light trails from the ships are still some of the best in the business. If there is any flaw to this game's graphics is that if you do zoom in too close on all of the objects, you will notice some low resolution textures here and there but they are not as bad as those found in Mass Effect 2 - remarkable, isn't it?

This is not to say that the graphics in Sins are bad. It's just that the game could have been a little prettier, especially after I have just finished looking at Homeworld 2 again. Sins does have more things happening on-screen and it's impressive how far you can pull away the camera to look at the galaxy as a whole compared to the limitation of that found in Homeworld 2. I just wish Sins is a better looking because from what I have played of it so far, it is definitely building up to be the best 4x strategy game I have ever played.