Awesome Upcoming PSP Releases AKA If Only I Still Had Summer Vacations
Summer!
There's a hat trick of anticipated roleplaying games for the Sony PSP coming out this Spring and Summer. When I initially bought my Sony PSP 1000, I was hoping for an awesome catalog of RPGs to play, considering the Playstation and Playstation 2. That really hasn't been the case. Armed with my Darth Vader emblazoned PSP3000, my PSP game library is a shadow of its former self. Shin Megami Tensai: Persona was fun, but even that was a remake. Beyond that, I can only remember having true PSP RPG fun with other remakes, like Final Fantasy Tactics and Star Ocean First Departure.
The Uncanny Valley of Mass Effect 2
Yvonne/Miranda
The uncanny valley is a robotics term coined by roboticist Masahiro Mori. If the familiarity of a robot was graphed over the realism, the valley expresses the area between an unrealistic looking robot and a real life person. There's a large dip in how comfortable people feel when viewing or dealing with something that is so very close to being realistic but not quite there.
As computer generated animation has improved in fidelity, animators have crept closer to the valley. Normally it's not too bad but many point out SquareEnix's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as an example. I don't feel that it's too bad there. There are however some factors in Bioware's Mass Effect 2 that definitely creep me out. The prime culprit is picture to the left. The character of Miranda Lawson is both voice acted by and modeled after actress Yvonne Strahovski most famous for her role on Chuck. Seeing the not quite lifelike animations on the not quite lifelike computer model of her was definitely strange. It was only magnified by her voice coming out of the speakers. This wasn't just because her voice is coming out of an eerily close representation but also because of her voice quality: she used her natural accent. In the role of Sara in Chuck she forces an American accent, but in Mass Effect 2 it's her normal speaking voice. I really can't say if any changes would have been for the better. EA/Bioware definitely used her being in the game as a marketing bullet point though.
A Short Walk: I Choose You!
Pokéwalker Included!
So Nintendo revised Pokémon Gold/Silver with HeartGold/SoulSilver for the DS. And in what I can only imagine is an attempt to thwart software piracy, released a pack-in hardware accessory with the version of the game: the Pokéwalker. What is this ingenious device? It's a pedometer that you beam your Pokémon to to level up by walking.
Genius.
Great Scott! Achron: A Time Travel RTS
Imagine playing a real-time strategy game. You're built up a force of tanks and are moving across the field of battle. The other player meets your tanks and by chance they've papered your rock. In swoops some ground attack aircraft and your tanks are gone. Normally you'd curse and build up a new force to counter that tactic. Not the case in Achron, a new RTS coming from Hazardous Software.
Copyright in the Digital Download Era
What follows here is just my thought process on copyright and piracy. I'm not trying to judge, just bring to light the factors at play.
A recent discussion amongst a few of my followed on Twitter brought this question to mind: how did the piracy of copyrighted works evolve to how it is today? Thanks to digital reproductions of digital products, there is rarely any difference between an original licensed work and a pirated copy. When copyright law was envisioned these circumstances can't have been imagined.
These are the Voyages
Star Trek Online
The Open Beta for Star Trek Online is finished. Here are a few collections of screen shots I've taken while playing. To end the Open Beta, Cryptic invaded Federation Space with a bunch of Borg! Lot's of fun.
I'm very excited for the upcoming Head Start that begins at 1PM EST on Friday, January 29, 2010.
I'm thinking about going Tactical Officer for my captain in an escort class ship. Full DPS at first. I did Science Officer in an escort in Open Beta and it was a lot of fun. Having the extra DPS in away missions when I'm in a full team of players might be good though!
Free iPhone Games!
It looks like the folks over at the Appvent Calendar hit it big with their promotion. This time they're not associated with any holiday, just making an app free for a day, each day.
This is the second day of the promotion and they've started out strong. The first day was Rope'n'Fly which was pretty popular for a while and today Zombie Pizza. Both are games I've wanted to try in the past but that didn't rank high up enough in my interest to warrant a purchase.
Go take a look at freeappaday.com every day to see what gift is waiting for you!
Another Free iPhone Games Review
The New Years Blowout
Another batch of iPhone Appsters has gotten together for a combined iPhone App Store promotion. Unlike the Appvent Calendar, most of these are discounted instead of free. Let's take a quick look at the games that have been discounted for this New Year's sale:
Steam Holiday Sale!
There's an amazing sale going on right now at Steam. Here's my current shopping cart:
- Zombie Driver $4.99
- Lucasarts Adventure Pack $2.49
- Time Gentlemen Please! and Ben There, Dan That! Double Pack $2.49
- Evil Genius $1.99
- AI War: Fleet Command $9.99
- Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War II $19.99
- Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned $6.69
- AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! $7.49
- Bookworm Adventures Volume 2 $7.49
- Trine $7.99
- Killing Floor $4.99
Killing Floor is one of today's specials so I'll have to pick that up today if I want it. The others I'll wait until the 3rd to see if they become daily specials.
Removed from my iPhone Today
With all these holiday promotions and sales for iPhone games going on, I've run in to the problem of maxing out my iPhone at a full 11 screens of icons. Deleting some of my web page shortcuts has helped a little, but I need to clean house.
Below are some of the games that I deleted today to help clear up some screen space. They were all free to me but probably cost $0.99 now that their sales are over.
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