Category Archives: Impressions

Impressions of games and stuff that I managed to spend some time with.

DVD & Blu-ray, Impressions, Movies & TV, Tech

HD-DVD Impressions

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Serenity on HD-DVD

The first HD-DVD players on the market, Toshiba’s HD-A1 and HD-XA1, have been out for a couple of weeks in the US now, and although they’re not due for release here until the autumn I’ve just been to see the HD-A1 in action. A friend got one off eBay ($800 including shipping!) so I went to his house to check it out.

While I wouldn’t pay that much, I’ve been considering importing for a couple of weeks since the early players are apparently region free, but also because that old trick of swapping out the $ for £ when setting prices has reared its ugly head again according to HDTV UK. $499 is £285: £214 ($375) less than the UK RRP. Disgusting, even for Serenity and Batman Begins in HD.

But holy crap, HD-DVD looks amazing. Obviously it looks sharper and more detailed than DVD since this is 1080p video (I saw it in 1080i), but what impressed me equally was how fantastic the colours were. It just looks colourful and vivid with a real three-dimensional quality to the picture. No artifacting that I could see either, even during scenes that push DVD like the rainy scenes in The Last Samurai. The landscapes in that movie were absolutely beautiful on DVD, and it was just accentuated in HD.

The menu system is especially cool. After the ubiquitous copyright messages and a good HD-DVD promo (including HD footage of The Matrix, amongst others) Samurai goes straight into the movie – no main menu. Pressing the menu button displays the options for scene selection, languages, and extras along the bottom, and they can be fiddled with while the movie continues uninterrupted in the background. Serenity’s slide out from the left very much like the Xbox 360 guide. Very slick.

The main thing that’s keeping me from getting on board immediately is the hardware. Besides the fact that it has the most godawful remote on the planet which becomes indecipherable in anything less than direct sunlight, the HD-A1 takes around 30 seconds to go from standby to actually playing the movie which is something that will inevitably be improved with future hardware generations. The other thing is that it’s pretty much the same size as my LaserDisc player despite only playing standard 12cm optical discs. Annoying that the only obstacle to HD bliss is my lack of space, but I suppose I’m going to succumb to a moment of credit card-induced monetary inhibition before too long.

Games, Impressions, Movies & TV, PlayStation

Silent Hill Movie

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Silent Hill's Pyramid Head

I’ve been excited about Silent Hill’s film adaptation for a while now since the early material seemed to be not-completely-rubbish and it has a decent pedigree, but when I agreed to see it earlier in the week the scariest thing about it was the complete lack of reviews. The first one didn’t even appear until Thursday and that’s generally a bad sign (as with games), but when that turned out to be positive I felt a bit more optimistic.

Still, I feel a kind of obligation to see game-based films so off I went earlier tonight, coupled with the lowest possible expectations. They generally serve me well with anything that I think might disappoint. Except that rubbish new Star Wars, of course.

Resident Evil and Silent Hill are oft-compared and the difference ultimately boils down to that RE is about jump scares and action while SH is psychological horror, and the same can be said of the movies. Resident Evil was adapted into an action movie whereas Silent Hill is a trippy and macabre film, aiming to constantly unsettle. Certain elements are borrowed from classic horror (to mention the one I’m thinking of would probably spoil things) but above anything else the style is taken from the games. This looks like the games and looks fantastic doing it, mainly because it’s frankly too dark to show the seams in the CG transitions between plain old creepy Silent Hill and its hellacious counterpart.

Those who aren’t familiar with the games may find it slightly cryptic until a sudden torrent of exposition towards the end (even storytelling methods are borrowed from games, apparently), and even then the end can leave you hanging. It’s fans who will get the most from it since, as I said, it looks like one of the games and squeals of delight are likely when old favourites like the Pyramid Head show up. There isn’t a lot of the red stuff until the end, but when it shows up it doesn’t do anything by half, with the triangled terror himself providing the gory standout.

My main criticism is the script and acting, as at the beginning in particular it’s fairly bad and Sean Bean puts on a really poor accent throughout. This aside though, it’s definitely the best game-to-movie that I’ve seen thanks to adherence to the source material and a respectful translation all around. Whether or not you like it depends a lot of whether seeing Silent Hill in film form is appealing, but as long as that’s what you expect you should have a good time.

Games, Impressions, Nintendo

Seeing The Lite (Pics!)

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I got my crystal white DS Lite on Saturday. Parcel Force take EMS deliveries when they get into this country and they don’t deliver on Saturdays, but my Dad had a package to pick up from their depot and got mine while he was there. No import duty (yay!) but I had to pay VAT (nay!) and a £13.50 “handling charge” (BOO!). £33.10 extra, all in.

To apologise for the delay in shipping Play-Asia also threw in a free copy of Shaman King: Chou Senjiryokketsu 2 for the GBA, whatever that is. It seems to be a card battle game which is absolutely impenetrable in Japanese, but I appreciate the gesture.

DS, DS Lite, and Game Boy Micro

The first thing to mention is the size difference, because there’s not a very big one. Next to each other the Lite is obviously smaller, but those expecting the same change as when going from GBA to the SP will be disappointed. It’s been slimmed down a bit and made to look much more iPod-like instead of an 80’s toy, and the glossy plastic is very nice if something of a magnet for fingerprints.

While it isn’t a huge reduction in size, the Lite seems a lot less bulky and much easier to fit into a pocket without looking like you have a deformity. It doesn’t seem to scratch easily (Nintendo are known for durability, after all) so any marks can be wiped off easily.

It’s the screens that are the big reason to upgrade, and they are possibly the best LCDs I’ve seen. I got one stuck pixel on the top screen but nothing too annoying, and having played with the brightness settings I settled on the third level because the highest one is almost too bright. The viewing angle is anothing thing which I’m sure people have seen in pictures but in the flesh is highly impressive. It’s a bit pointless for a handheld but I can look at it from a fairly tight angle and see things just as well as looking at it straight on. Due to the overall size reduction they appear bigger than the screens on the standard DS, but in actual fact they’re the same size.

The rest of the improvements are minor tweaks – the D-pad is now the same as the excellent GB Micro and Revolution one; the power switch is now a slider on the side, scuppering the fiends who enjoy pressing the front button to turn it off mid-play (I have immature friends); and it comes with a cover for the GBA slot so that the aesthetics aren’t ruined if you choose not to keep a GBA game in it all the time (it should be noted that GBA cards stick out of the Lite by about a centimetre which is annoying). The upgrade isn’t as essential as the move from GBA to SP was, but for those who use their DS a lot it’s worth it for the screens and size reduction alone.

Games, Impressions, Xbox

Oblivion First Impressions

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I couldn’t let a 360 game as big as this go by without giving some impressions now, could I? Just as The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind hit the Xbox a few months after launch, the sequel does the same thing to the 360 in an infinitely bigger way. Bigger in every way, in fact. So big that I’m just giving some first impressions since I can’t hope to capture it with only a few hours of play.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

The first thing I need to say is that I didn’t like Morrowind at all. I tried it, but after a couple of hours I could tell that it wasn’t the sort of thing I was up for pouring hour upon hour into. I honestly can’t remember why since it was so long ago, but whatever it was Oblivion hasn’t suffered from the same thing so far. It’s much the same in that it opens slightly slowly – this time with a slog through a dungeon – but once you get into the spectacular overworld the sense of awe is up there with when I first played Shenmue.

It’s kind of strange in that it’s a very deep and customisable RPG that plays somewhat like an FPS crossed with an MMORPG, but it works in making the combat feel involved and allowing the player to feel a part of the adventure. I’m sure everyone reading this is familiar with that feeling in any RPG of finding a new and bustling town to explore, and I spent most of the time in Oblivion experiencing that. I don’t want to spoil the early story, but suffice it to say that there’s a fairly early moment which goes up there with that infamous scene of Sephiroth in Nibelheim for me, and overall I’m certainly enjoying it as much as can be hoped with a swords and sorcery RPG. As much as I like Lord of the Rings I’m not often too big on playing it.

I’m going to be writing something slightly more in-depth for a first impressions feature over on Pro-G early next week, so keep an eye out for that.

DVD & Blu-ray, Impressions, Tech

Logitech Harmony 525 Impressions

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Logitech Harmony 525

The need for a universal remote became apparent to me recently because when I’m juggling so many devices it’s a real pain to change all the inputs and switch everything on with five different remotes, but research taught me that they can be really expensive if you want one with the ability to do more than switch between the TV and VCR.

Well I just bought the Logitech Harmony 525, the cheapest of the Harmony series which can be had a little under £50. It lacks the colour screen (a real necessity on a remote control), favourite channel memory, rechargeable battery/dock, motion sensor, and extra buttons of the more expensive models but otherwise is functionally identical. Plus it has one of those snazzy blue backlights of which I’m such a fan.

The aesthetics and build quality are acceptable for the price, if a bit creaky sometimes, but what I really like about these remotes are how they’re set up and keep the functionality updated. The remote connects to a computer (Windows or OS X) via USB and setup is done through the Logitech site. It asks you to select the make and model of all the devices that you want it to control – if it has an IR port, chances are it’ll be compatible – and then makes programming macros (called “activities” here) almost automatic.

Without me doing anything it had set up hotkeys to watch TV, watch a DVD, listen to a CD, play the 360, play the PS2, and watch a Laserdisc, and any of these could be tweaked further. The programs are just downloaded straight to the remote and it’s ready to go. Almost. Mine had some problems changing to the correct inputs because the TV requires you to either go through a menu system or press a button to cycle through inputs, but will skip certain ones if nothing active is connected to them, meaning that the number of button presses to a certain input is rarely the same. A little digging around showed that the TV actually does have IR commands that skip straight to a certain input that aren’t present on the standard remote, so with a bit of testing I programmed those in and it works perfectly now. It was also set by default to send a stop command to the DVD player before switching it off which would stop it saving my place in the movie, so that needed solving too.

Something that gets the thumbs up from me is that it’s infinitely better laid out than the horribly convoluted remote that came with my DVD player, which still has me pressing the wrong buttons two months after I got it. It does a great job of acting exactly how you’d expect it to, switching inputs and button functions and turning devices on and off when they’re needed. It’s very intuitive, and can all be customised if you want to change the default functions. I’ve also heard great things about the free support line, but I (thankfully?) haven’t had the need to use them.

If you’re a perfectionist it can take a while to get them set up exactly how you want, but the setup process is one of the best I’ve seen for a remote, and it’s superb once it’s working right. Definitely recommended.

Games, Impressions, Xbox

Burnout Revenge 360

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£50 for a six month old PS2/Xbox game is a bit of a joke to be fair, but I never bought Burnout Revenge on an older console and I traded in that Perfect Dark shite for it, so it was a bit more bearable. While it’s debatable whether or not it’s worth getting otherwise for the moderate graphical update (that’s not so much anything against the 360 version as a big endorsement of the graphical prowess of the Xbox one), what you have here is a rollicking game that’s huge fun in online multiplayer.

Burnout Revenge

The graphics first of all, since I don’t think there’s anyone who hasn’t played a Burnout. The update is a lot less cynical than, for example, the 360 port of NFS Most Wanted, and actually puts the hardware to pretty good use. On an HDTV the game looks absolutely fantastic – 60fps (almost) all the way, blindingly fast, sparks flying everywhere, and it all means that the spectacular crashes that the series is known for can look painfully real. The sound is just as impressive, giving great positional audio through a 5.1 system as well as tons of bass that helps out during boosting and crashing. The weak link is probably the music which is mostly pop-punk-rock crap, but admittedly it suits the fast but fairly brainless action well.

World Tour mode provides a decent amount of gameplay and enough variety to make it worthwhile, but in my opinion it’s over Xbox Live that this comes into its own. PGR3 was great with friends, but this is an absolute riot where, best of all, you won’t be accused of cheating if you “accidentally” happen to nudge someone into a tunnel wall. It’s encouraged, and with rivalries saved persistently so that the game will warn you if you end up racing against someone you took out months ago it becomes delightfully competitive against people you play regularly.

Just to take the sheen off it, there seems to be an annoying bug with joining online games that can be frustrating. More than once with different hosts I’ve tried to play with a group of friends and at least one of us has been constantly kicked without explanation several times before managing to connect for any length of time. Once they’re in it’s usually fine, but it’s still a major annoyance and I remember similar issues with Burnout 3 on Xbox Live when I bought that.

Bugs aside, this makes me want to see how the inevitable Burnout built from the ground up on the next-gen machines is going to look, because for what is supposed to be a relatively simple port this almost looks like a whole new game. Criterion’s mastery of Renderware apparently translates very well. Whether or not it’s worth the money depends on whether or not you played it last September, but it’s still as great a game as ever.