Alien Breed Trilogy

Alien Breed: Impact, Alien Breed 2: Assault, and Alien Breed 3: Descent were part of the Team 17 Jumbo Humble Bundle, one I picked up for a few bucks because it included other games I wanted, however it also got me the complete Alien Breed series. Steam terms this one an 'Action game' but it falls firmly in the '3rd Person Top Down Shooter' category. I initially tried the first one and wrote a review, however I have since played the other 2 and found one review for the group would suffice.

The game tells a bit of a story and I appreciate the form it takes, giving a comic book panel style display:

and, to be fair, the entire game feels like reading a comic book, gameplay and all, which CAN be a very good thing if done right. This one, however, isn't. At it's heart this is a standard space shooter, albeit a 3rd person shooter, not too far removed from the Alien series (no big surprise there). You roam through a space ship finding pieces to unlock progress (a key to open a door, etc.) encountering aliens you need to shoot as you go. That should all work, but, you ever notice how questing in a game is all good and fine until you come into a quest that sends you to Point A, then tells you you need to go to Point B, before sending you to Point C, then back to Point A to continue, turns out to be the most painful ones? Yeah, that sums up this whole game. It's an endless series of run and fetch quests:

OMG, there's a fire! Quick run back half way across the ship to activate fire suppression (shoot 3 aliens)! OH NO, the panel isn't powered, find the generator and fire it up (shoot 5 aliens, 2 of them really big)! Fire out? Good, lets go back to Point B to activate the console, then all the way back to that first door and find out why we need to backtrack again (Shoot 8 aliens, assorted sizes). Rinse and repeat until your eyes and ears bleed.

I want to play this game, I'm very curious about the story, I'm pretty sure I know how it'll end, but it's about the journey of getting there, and it is one of the better visually crafted games I've played in quite sometime:

Check out that kick ass fire!

If there was more craft in the progress I'd bump this up a lot higher and I do intend to try these again in the future, but, as of now, I think I'll have to give this one a 4/10 rating. Regular price each game is 9.99, however you can save some coin by buying the Trilogy at 22.99, if, and only if, you enjoy fetch quests.

Bottom line, I'd recommend giving this bad boy a pass.

Dungeon Hearts

I have no recollection of buying Dungeon Hearts so I have no anecdote to start this off with. It's defined by Steam as a Casual Game, but I would term it more as a Casual Puzzler. Long story short, it's a single player game that has 4 characters utilized as a team, their attacks based on you matching coloured tiles that run across the board (each character is assigned a skill set and colour, matching colours activates that characters attack), utilizing all the same cascading power up attacks we've come used to in puzzlers; match 3 red orbs to make a diamond that will make the fighter attack, which cascades horizontally and vertically to cascade all red orbs on screen, more diamonds mean more attack multipliers, etc, etc. Each player has a unique skill that gets powered up and can be used, blah, blah, blah.

I can see some appeal to this game, this style is very addictive, however in order to make a game really something you need to augment gameplay with story and character(s), and this game has almost none of either. The 4 team-mates have individual attacks, but no personality; the bad guys you fight are optically unique, but nothing in the story gives you a feel for what they are or even why you're fighting them. I'll say this for what I expect to be the first of many times: gameplay is only half of a game; you need a good mechanic, but people will forgive buggy mechanics if the story/characters are good (anyone else think Bethesda when I said that?).

The biggest problem I had with this game was the sluggish interface; at always seemed like my moves were about a quarter second behind the game, this kind of lag makes a major difference, especially when you get to the higher bosses where every half second makes a big difference. I should note, this may be due to my hardware, but I played the game on 2 different computers, both fairly beefy machines, and had the similar results (although I did have better performance on Windows 7 then 8.1).

I would rate this about a 6/10, there's fun to be had here but you may fight the interface more than the bad guys. Giving me a reason to either like or dislike the in-game characters would have seriously tipped the scales on this games rating, however the low, low regular price of 2.99 makes it hard to arbitrarily dismiss the game.

Playing My Game Library

Over the last few years I have accumulated quite a library of games, mostly in Steam, but for my assorted consoles as well.With the regular Steam sales and the incredible deals offered by the good people at Humble Bundle I suddenly realized I have close to 350 games between Steam and Origin alone; of the games I've probably only installed about a quarter of them, played maybe a half of those, and completed maybe 10%.

Now, to be fair, I have gotten almost all these games at incredible deals, most were purchased at 75% off, and many of them in the 80-90% off range, so, while my game value is massive my actual investment is not nearly as high; taking Humble Bundle purchases into account I likely paid half of what the calculator is estimating for the sale price. On top of that, games I paid full price for, or close to full price, were almost always played and completed so I'm not out a great deal of , but I'm still left feeling incomplete.

I have now set a new goal for myself, I'm going to play every game in my library, starting with Steam, moving to Origin, catching anything DRM free in my Humble Library, and then moving on to my consoles and do a write up on each one, posting them here. Most of these games are older so I don't plan on doing a review of them, just a run down on my thoughts and feelings about each title. My hope is to find some good ones that I never knew I had, but mainly to once and for all feel like I'm getting value out of my purchases, and, by writing down my experience, be able to make intelligent, informed, comments when ultimately asked "Is 'Insert Game Title' game any good?"

I have no idea how long this will take to complete, some of these games are huge, and, considering the scope of my project, I may or may not replay games I've already played through, I'll take those one at a time, but I'm intending to see this through to the bitter end!

How to Drop Cable (Generally Speaking)

It's been almost 2 years since I dropped cable from my household and I've never regretted the decision. I don't think it's the right decision for everyone, it does take a bit of effort and you have to get used to a different entertainment lifestyle, but once you're in the zone I think it's fully worth it. For anyone thinking of doing the same here is the system I currently use.

I've been using a media centre for this purpose for a number of years in conjunction with cable and have gone through a few different systems, the sum total of my knowledge is this: you don't need a powerhouse for your media centre. My first media centre was a Dell P3 running 512MB of RAM with an upgraded video card, this would suffice today if I so chose; the only thing you need is to make sure your video will handle the task. Old notebooks work great for this, the built in graphics are generally up to video demands and it's great to have a built in keyboard and mouse on-board for troubleshooting.

To put it simply, I started using a full time media centre to stream content to my tv's, this content consisting of Netflix, Hulu, downloaded video, and other streaming content. In preparation for the change I also got picked up a new router with a 1GB switch, a 2TB external hard drive, and purchased a subscription for a DNS service to bypass regional restrictions that, as a Canadian, I am subject to, and upgraded my internet connection to 10Mb/s. I also still torrent, although less frequently, for those harder to find items and store them on the network via external HDD.

Specifically speaking, I purchased a Zotac mini-pc; if you clicked the link you'll see that this machine has no optical drive. This was a concious decision made due to the fact my Xbox 360 has a DVD and my PS3 has a Blu-Ray and are both an integral part of my entertainment centre, therefore a 3rd optical drive would have been redundant. Zotac includes HDMI outputs, taking care of as much HD as your TV will handle and the audio; if you need more of either, knock yourself out, this machine will handle it, but I didn't require it. Another note, this is a bare bones PC, no HDD, RAM, or OS included, not a problem for me as I have spare parts around and access to licensing, but something to keep in mind as buying these will increase the price. Finally, any mouse/keyboard system will work, obviously wireless is preferred, but I quickly got sick of having a keyboard kicking around the living room, and although remote systems work and are readily available I chose to go with a all in one solution, this one to be exact. Not perfect, but it works as both a tracpad and traditional mouse and has a built in keyboard all in the palm of your hand in a Blackberry style interface.

My networking is taken care of by a Netgear WNR3500L router. This isn't top of the line, but it was picked due to it's price and the inclusion of a USB port; these are both important points because 1. If you're serious about streaming media, local or internet, you should be wired in, you can't depend on wireless for that kind of traffic, and 2. I plugged my 2TB HDD into the USB port of the router to serve as a media share for the household. Like most people I do have multiple TV's around the house and I quickly decided it was going to be too much trouble to shuttle media around the house and require larger storage locally. The USB plug on my router allows me to download media on any computer, transfer it to my drive, then stream it flawlessly to any point on my network; I also store music and pictures here. I also bought a 1Gb switch which is used for the devices in the living room (Media PC, Xbox, PS3, and Wii); depending on your house layout and number of devices this may not be needed, but between running cables and number of devices in my house, this was the only decision I could make.

The final part of the equation was software. I'm using Windows 8 for my Media OS, a great choice for this purpose, XBMC for my media requirements, along with the NAVI-X plug-in (allowing movie and TV streaming instead of downloading), the Netflix and Hulu Plus apps (I'd recommend Plus, the free version works, but Plus is a much better solution), a DNS service (I use Unblock-US) to spoof your computer into an American IP (again, important if you're Canadian) and your pick of music services (I use Pandora, but whatever works for you). There is a setup and networking portion to this as well, but that would be handled better in a different post.

As for savings, I took my cable bill form around 100.00/month to roughly 20.00/month plus another 10.00/month for the upgraded internet. These savings aren't extreme, but I'd rather put that 70.00 back in my pocket and encourage internet entertainment as opposed to an outdated network system that is continually driving up costs and delivering less worth watching.

Watch what you want, when you want! That's my motto.

A Good Use for Windows 8

In the past I've embraced new Windows operating systems; I started using computers with Windows 98 and moved to XP, even on my old P3 processor it was a night and day difference in usability; from XP I went to Vista, it wasn't perfect, but it advanced the system to a whole new level, and I never truly understood all the hate for it, it wasn't perfect, but it did a good job; from Vista I went to Windows 7 and found myself perfectly at home, all the features and advancement I'd expect, with better performance and usability than Vista offered. Then Windows 8 hit the market.

I've made no secret of my distaste for Windows 8, it left out useful tools (Virtual PC anyone?) and hid many of the more powerful features under a layer of UI that should have never been considered for an enterprise OS. From the start I've seen the purpose of having a touch interface, and I see that's where the future is heading, but a desktop/notebook environment is the wrong place for it, Windows made a mistake by leaving desktop functionality off its menu system, plain and simple.

Having said that I found a good environment for Windows 8, proving the functionality of the OS in the correct purpose, my media center. About a year and a half ago I dropped cable in my house, upgraded my internet pipe and went strictly online with my entertainment needs; great choice by the way, I watch what I want, when I want. Between Netflix, Hulu, and a bit of downloading I have everything me and my family need on hand at all times.

When I started this I installed Windows 7 as my host OS with XBMC as my media manager, using a couple of plug ins like Navi-X, worked great, no problems. About a month ago my machine suffered a hard drive failure so when I replaced the drive and did the OS rebuild I decided to give Win 8 a shot. I've been using 8 at work for the last 6 months and once I got the Classic Shell app I was happy; it allowed me my desktop functionality that I need to do my job efficiently, while still taking advantage of the benefits of Windows 8 so I thought this would be worth a shot.

Turns out it was a great choice for a media center. Using a mouse to control a TV interface is great and the way Windows 8 is laid out makes it relatively painless. This is largely due to the limited work I'm doing on the system, as I said before, if you're not working it's a major difference. Add in to that the apps from the Windows App store, like Netflix and Hulu Plus (You need a Hulu Plus account for the Windows 8 app, but I was wanting to go plus anyway) my computer is becoming a true media center with no extra configuration. Consider me sold on Windows 8 when I don't need to work with it, possibly even to the point that I'd consider a surface with it, although I still think the surface hardware is oversized, overpowered, and overpriced for what you're getting from it.

Bottom line, if you're building a media computer I'd recommend Windows 8, I was pleasantly surprised with how well it functions.