Shield Yourselves

One final post on CES for this week, but it’s about one of the very first products to be revealed. I really had to mull this over and work out exactly what I think about this piece of hardware, and yes... I found something good to say about it, sort of. So here we go, my thoughts on Nvidia’s Project Shield.

The Shield is essentially a souped-up android device, running Nvidia’s new Tegra 4 processor. It features a 5 inch, 720p display, and a very... very familiar game pad, all wrapped up in a nifty clamshell design. Let me start on the design, this thing is sexy, it’s like a 360 controller and a F-117 Nighthawk had very awkwardly positioned love and made a babby. For a controller it doesn’t look like there’s too much extra bulk, even though this is much more than a controller, and as pretty much anything else, yeah... there’s too much bulk. This thing is not pocket sized although it is marketed as portable, but practical is something we’ll have to see about, I’ll get to that later.

Cogs be Turning

So yesterday at CES we got a decent look at what is likely to be the specs for one of the 3rd Party versions of the long hyped Steambox. Codenamed “Piston” it’s based on Xi3’s X7A mini computer. And no, I hadn’t heard of them either. I’ll just briefly go over what we know so far, but since details are all over the internet by now I won’t dwell on them too much, and just focus on what to make of it all.

So at the heart of the Piston will be an unspecified quad core processor, the X7A clocks it’s quad core at 3.2GHz, so it’s likely the console will be based around the same basic power, with minor tweaks. The X7A also has 8GB of DDR3 Ram, and a 1TB solid state hard drive. Of these features the Piston has been confirmed to include “up to 1TB of storage,” so a possible hint that there will be multiple price points for the console. The X7A uses onboard graphics that can support up to 3 monitors, and is ram packed with ports and plugs on it’s back. The X7A boasts of being modular and upgradeable (like every computer, ever) and has a tiny form factor, looking a lot like the Ouya’s badass older brother. Essentially it’s a gaming PC with a thyroid problem, however there’s no word as to whether it’ll run Windows, Linux, or a custom steam-based OS.

Gotta Catch Them Polygons

We’ve caught them all, we’ve caught them all again, and again, we caught the one that made the land, the one that made the sea, the one that made time, the one that made space, the one from another dimension, and the creator of the whole freaking universe. Yes, I’m talking about Pokemon, and if this is starting to sound pretty cynical that’s because I am very cynical when it comes to Pokemon. However I’m willing to give the new games announced today a fair hearing, and the benefit of the doubt. If you haven’t already seen the trailer (where were you?) then take a minute to breathe it all in and join me again on the other side.

Hardly a Review: Perspective

I completely forgot I had to write something for the blog for today, which to be honest is completely typical, but nonetheless. In my panic I happened across a game I downloaded a while back, and completely intended to record for YouTube, but I decided to knock back a couple of levels and do a quick review of it, seeing as I didn’t have any better ideas. SO sit back, put on your 3D glasses, and prepare to say “what the fuck” alot. I’m doing a review of Perspective!

The Death of Keyboard Mashing

So people have been asking me about the sorts of applications I use to make my busy busy life just that touch more bearable. Yeah... ok, nobody’s asked me that, but I’m gonna tell you anyway you ungrateful shits! Seriously without these apps I think my life would be far too stressful, and by extension everyone elses lives would be more stressful. So without further ado let’s jump in, I’ll be going in order working towards what makes the most difference to my experience.

Most Wonderful Time of the Year

So it’s that time of year again, when all this joy and goodwill to all men (whatever that means) seems to be floating about, and this always leads me to a couple of questions. Firstly, why can’t joy and goodwill to all men just be evenly distributed throughout the year, rather than picking two weeks to give a shit? And more importantly, what’s the deal with cards? Seriously I’ve never seen the point to Christmas cards, and I’ve always politely requested people don’t send me them, only to be met with the expression of insult on their faces. So before you share that same disapproving look, allow me to explain.

Planetside 2: What I’d Like to See

A couple of days ago, I gave you my review of Planetside 2, the unmissable MMOFPS from Sony Online Entertainment. What I deliberately missed out of that review was the game I wish they had made. Whilst I really enjoy the game, I feel they could have gone an extra mile towards making it my favourite game of 2012. As it stands I think there are a few small problems I have with the game whose absence does not detract from the game at all, but whose presence would have greatly improved the experience. So here we go, this is my wishlist for the Planetside 2 of my dreams.

Firstly one of my major problems with the game is that how you go about capturing a territory is the same in every case, with only tiny variations (such as the presence of generators) and it creates a kind of “been there, done that” feeling after long play sessions. I wish Sony had included a variety of different ways to capture territories, rather than just holding a capture point, and spread them throughout the map so every land grab felt like a different experience.

Hardly a Review: Planetside 2

Planetside 2 is one of those games that scratches an itch you didn’t even know you had. Let’s face it everything it offers has already been done before in one form or another, so why should you care? Well citizens, it’s a lot like Mac ‘n’ Cheese Pies, the result is far greater than the sum of it’s parts. Allow me to elaborate.

Planetside 2 dubs itself an MMOFPS, and whilst it is not the first game in this genre, it’s certainly the first one to truly earn the title “massive.” Each server supports up to 2000 people at any one time, and whilst that may seem like a low number for MMO’s I can assure you I have never once had a problem logging into my chosen server. It also holds true to it’s title of FPS, whilst contemporaries like Firefall try to exist within the realms of a recognisable MMORPG, Planetside 2 comes at the genre from a completely different angle. Instead, it chose games such as Battlefield 3 as it’s starting point’ and indeed it plays very much like Battlefield 3... if you force-fed the maps steroids.

Hardly a Review: Firefall

So I've been on a bit of an MMO binge this past week, it’s been the penultimate open beta weekend for Firefall, so I finally managed to get a good look at the game. If you follow my twitter then you’ll know I've been trying to get my hands on it for the longest time, and I have to say, what little I've seen of it in the past 48 hours impresses me. Before we got any further, let me put this out there, this review is based on my very first impressions of the game, I don’t claim to know the game in intimate detail, I don’t claim that anything I talk about will be in the final release of the game, and I don’t claim my experiences will be the same as yours. If you disagree with what I have to say, or want to bitch at me, send it all care of Nosh cos I don’t give a good goddamn. Right, now that’s out of the way, to the review!

So the story behind the game, essentially we’re in the distant future where the world has solved it’s clean energy problems with the discovery of a new element called Crystite. That’s right folks, no shale gas here, if you’re gonna do it do it right. However, during the testing of an FTL drive powered by Crystite something goes wrong, and the resulting catastrophe (known as the Firefall) releases a tear in the fabric of spacetime known as the melding. This mutates wildlife and renders a lot of the planet uninhabitable, and also led an alien race known as the Chosen to Earth, where they launch an invasion. Wow... I mean only an idiot thinks shale gas is a good idea, but it never released some crazy alien race on us. Anyway that leads to the start of the game where your gang of mercenaries allies with what's left of Earth's government to force back the invasion and save the day.

Horny Racing from a Limitless Perspective...

I've been on a kickstarter binge again, and I know what you’re thinking so I’ll cut to the chase, no, the intervention didn't work. So with that out of the way, I’d like to walk you through a few projects that caught my eye, (some have funding, some need funding) and what I liked or didn't like about them.

Shoulders of Giants

Now as you’re probably aware, I'm big on the Ouya, I think it’s got the potential, and the interest, to be a fun addition to everyone’s already overcrowded TV cabinet. However as good as the hardware sounds, and as good as the message of openness sounds, the console and OS are just the blank canvas that developers use to craft the worlds and experiences that imprint themselves in our memories forever. To further the hype, I’d like to look at the ideas and games that already exist, and show what Ouya developers need to have in mind to fully push the boundaries of this little box.

Pushing my buttons

So the other day on Reddit I came across this image simply titled: “The problem I have playing multiple FPS the same day.” Grammar aside the poster makes a very important point I’d like to go into in more depth. Something which has plagued the consoles for a long time and something which is long overdue for change. I'm talking specifically about button mapping, or more clearly the lack of choice when it comes to mapping your buttons the way you’d like.

The Redditor who posted this (KyleGlen) clearly has a problem adapting to the different controller layouts of the different games he plays. It’s understandable, we’re creatures of habit. I've already talked about how difficult I found adapting to a new keyboard layout, and I still trip up if I have to switch between layouts several times. It’s especially difficult if all the games are of a similar genre, and so all the actions you can perform are the same. The obvious solution that spring to mind is simply to allow users to set the controls any way they want. I'm about to explain why more freedom is always better.

Steam Group

Would just like to let everyone know that we've had a Hardly a Channel steam group for some time, but I'd like to see it do a bit better than it's currently doing. It's open to anyone to join and we're looking to see if we can use it to get a couple of gaming sessions together every so often. Just look for the "Hardly a Channel" group on Steam. We look forward too seeing you there.

Jamie out xoxoxo

Flat-Pack the World!

So if you know me then you know I love the idea of 3D printing, I have no idea what I’d go about printing, but I want it... lots of it. There’s a lot of really practical uses for 3D printing, cheap prototyping, easy replacement of parts, quick fixes, and creative hobby projects. However I don’t want to talk about any of the industrial or hobbyist uses, I want to talk about 3D printing as the product, and as a method of distribution.

This weekend I came across the artwork of a guy called Tomoo Yamaji, whose work consists of statuettes of characters from Buddhist mythology, with a modern twist. These characters are 3D printed, and then hand-painted to create one off statuettes that he sells on his website. If you want to see more of his work, you can head over to his Youtube page and show him some love. (don’t forget to subscribe to ours while you’re over there wink wink)

New YouTube Series!

After a longer than planned hiatus from posting YouTube videos we return this week with not One but Two! new series for you. They are Shank and Batman: Arkham Asylum both being played and commentated by the talented Jamie. A new episode of each will be available on YouTube at 9pm and 9.30pm respectively GMT each day this week with hopefully more of the same going forward over the coming weeks.

We also are hoping to have a new Nosh plays Retro Series starting this week if he ever gets of his lazy ass and does some recording, so you should hopefully have that to look forward to as well.

We hope you enjoy them and please like them and comment to tell us what you think (or most likely why Jamie sucks at these games!)

As always we are Hardly A Channel, Wasting our lives so you don't have to!

Video Links:

“A major mindfuck, a stroke in the making.”

So I’ve been meaning to do this experiment for a long time, but there has never been the perfect opportunity. Now however that I am *ahem* between jobs (read: an unemployed bum) I have the perfect opportunity to try this out without letting any other work suffer. So, Friday morning, I stepped into the void, and started pulling the keys off my keyboard like a lion guts its prey.

Let me take a pause in the story to explain a bit before I start to sound like a madman. Look down at your keyboard, did you know that the ordering the keys dates back over a century? It was developed in the 1870’s by a dude called Christopher Latham Sholes,and it was originally developed for his typewriter. His first typewriter had two rows of keys and everything was basically in alphabetical order. The problem was that typists would often jam the hammers together when they typed common letter combinations too quickly, e and r were close to each other, and so was t and h. To remedy this Sholes arranged the keys so common combinations were further apart, and thus so were their hammers, reducing jams and thus solving the problem forever! ...except it didn’t.

Hardly a Review: H+

I came across this interesting little web series last week, and after devouring the episodes so far I decided to share it with you lovely people, oh aren’t you lucky! H+ is a post-apocalyptic survival crossed with the sort of conspiracy laden drama you’d expect from the likes of J. J. Abrams. The show deals with the concept of post-humanism and the story centres around the H+ implant, which is essentially a smartphone in your head, and the inevitable pitfalls of technology that have been explored by authors dating back to Frankenstein. The show is set at an unspecified time in the future, with the only reference point being how long it has been from or to the day when “it happens.”

The main driving plot element is a computer virus infecting everyone with a H+ implant and killing them instantly, hitherto referred to simply as “the incident,” for simplicities sake, and because calling any event “the incident” just makes it sound infinitely more badass. Only a few survivors survive through the virtue of either being out of wifi range, or being one of the rural poor without an implant (the one time either of these is a good thing). The show then goes on to show the survival of the human race after the incident, and feeds a drip of information as to why and how the incident came about. The method of telling the story however, proves to be almost as inventive as the story itself, being distributed in extremely small chunks, sometimes only two or three minutes long, on a very regular basis. The ordering of the episodes seems very deliberate, however viewers are encouraged to watch the show in any order then like, to see if they can gain an additional understanding of events.

The simulator, simulated.

So a few weeks back I came across this post on reddit, basically telling the tale of a game of Minecraft gone terribly terribly wrong. Like putting a bunch of kittens in charge of a tank kinda wrong. The story tells of a minecraft game between friends, where the one rule of the server is to not leave the play area, which was only a few hundred blocks long. Since the world of Minecraft is infinite, and resources (even rare ores) aren’t that hard to come across, normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but make that infinite world into a finite one, and the problems you eventually face will be very similar to those the real world faces. Needless to say, once there was a demand for scarce resources, a power struggle broke out and the group descended into factions, using open warfare, subterfuge and trading to get what they needed.

Now I’ve been on reddit long enough to question the validity of this guy’s story. I’ve also been on reddit long enough to know that crazier shit has happened. Either way it’s a nice story but regardless of the truth it raises an interesting question. Can we use video games like Minecraft to simulate real world occurrences, and predict the outcomes of potential events via such a method? This played on my mind for quite a long while, so I decided to do some digging. (excuse the pun)

Hardly a Review: Revolution

This week’s going to be a fairly big week for post-apocalyptic reviews, but seeing as we’re in 2012 did you expect any less from tv show writers? I mean they need inspiration... and if it’s not 12 feet in front of their face it doesn’t exist! Yeah, that was a pretty low joke, but let’s face it, the worlds ending in three months, there’s no way they’ll find me in time. Anyways onto a show I’ve been looking forward to for months, and I’ve finally had the chance to catch the first two episodes.

Revolution is a post-apocalyptic adventure story set 15 years after pretty much every invention and major discovery made since 1850 mysteriously stops working. In the intervening decade and a half, the governments of the world have collapsed and been replaced by the militia’s who were sensible enough to grab the guns before the food. Remember citizens, in a survival situation, always go for the guns first. The story follows Charlotte Matheson and her posse as she tries to rescue her imprisoned brother from their feudal overlords and discover the part her father played in the blackout, and how it can be undone.

Vita Blockers

Late last week, Kotaku posted two news articles, within five hours of each other. The first was titled, “Thousands of Developers Want to Make Games for the Ouya,” and the second was titled, “Sony Was Surprised How Few People Wanted To Make Games For Vita.” Now look at those two titles, look at them again, and tell me your first impression wasn’t the same as mine. What the fuck is going on here‽ How can an untested company without a single released console to it’s name have developers lining up out the door, and a well trusted, big name with such a history as Sony get barely any interest in comparison? Well bear with me, because the answer takes a little bit of explaining.

Sony attributes its failure to the fact that there are “so many options for publishers now that we cannot take [developed games] for granted.” Ouya, on the other hand simply says that “over a thousand [developers] have been in touch with us since our Kickstarter ended.” That’s it from each company, so we’re on our own from here on out, but I have a couple of theories I want to run by you, and let’s see what you make of them.