Herbert1405241469

I had the hardest time trying to install Photoshop CS3 and Dreamweaver CS3 on my laptop for work... I shelled out over $1000 for software which costs way too damn much and the install takes 45 minutes... and then failed. I finally managed to get Dreamweaver working, but for Photoshop, I had to revert back to Photoshop 7, which totally defeated the purpose of spending $500 on the software in the first place....

Ah, freeware... You can type the word out with one hand Audacity... Virtualdub... VLC Player... oooh all that good freeness. Information was meant to be free

I'd have to say my vote goes for Ubuntu simply because of it's compatibility with my hardware. I'd been trying Mandrake, Redhat.. I'd always have some sort of error recognizing my sound card... or ethernet, or graphics card... something would screw up during the installation process. (I'm talking around the year 1999 or so here).Ubuntu came out, and the great thing about it was that I could burn it to a CD, and boot from the CD to see exactly what it would look like before I installed it. Worked without a hitch, and I installed it and never looked back I currently have a dual boot on my computer with Win XP on one partition and Ubuntu on the other. If it weren't for the fact that all my games needed Windows, I would have left it ages ago.

I'd like to add my vote for Battlefield 2. I picked up the expansion pack version for $39, but the cool thing about it is that it unlocks more guns when you have the "Special Forces" addon that comes with it. It's only really fun if you're playing online against people, because alone, there's no real interaction going on. I think I've logged in 175 hours into it by now haha, so I definitely have my money's worth in terms of game time, and when I get sick of it, I'll take a break for a month... Since no real good games have been coming out for the PC, I just recently started up playing it again. The good thing about multiplayer is the ability to unlock medals and weapons... Sort of gives you a sense of accomplishment when you go up a rank. With the Special Forces pack, you get 2 guns you can upgrade, instead of just 1 if you only had the Battlefield 2 game by itself.Half Life 2 is a definite game to look into. Great story telling and character development. Also, there are "cinematic mods" available for it that jack up the graphics quality and give it a little 'oomph.'System Shock 2, if you can find it, is also an exquisite game.

For all the complaining people do about Steam having to connect to the Internet, I do like the fact that once you validate your legal copy that you don't need the CD anymore to play it. That, and it's easy to get mods up and working in it.Of course, I have a broadband connection, so I don't have to worry about stuff like 56kbps

Well, this game is now officially collecting dust on my shelf. I don't know if it was the slow pacing, or the puzzles, or even a lack of motivation to finish the story, but I ended up installing Deus Ex 2 instead of finishing this game.It's not a bad game, really... The main problem I have is the lack of compassion I really have for any of the characters like I would in a game like Half Life 2 or something. I mean in System Shock 2, you listen to audio logs of passengers, and you build a sort of connection. Especially if you find an audio log next to their dead bodies, and when you listen to it, you hear how they died.... Spooky. But here, there are just a bunch of corpses and no real explanation as to why they are there in the positions they are other than to solve more puzzles. I mean, there are no signs of even a struggle. Everyone is just laying around dead as though someone let off a carbon monoxide bomb and nobody noticed.There is wayy to much reading involved to be interesting. I feel bad because they obviously put a lot of effort into the background of the story, but they need to keep it concise. One thing they could have done was give her some AI, rather than have her stand around and do nothing unless you flip a light switch. There are times she will do stuff on her own, but it's not nearly enough. I wouldn't want her running around free, but there has to be some sort of freedom on her part, I would assume.Adventuregamers.com has an article up that mentions the trust system I was expecting:"As if these tasks weren't difficult enough, adding yet another layer of challenge to the game is Lea's independence. Although reliant on you to guide her, she does not know who you are, and since she has her own notions, attitudes, and fears, she will not blindly follow your lead. So you'll need to note her reactions, anticipate her decisions, and most importantly, earn and maintain her trust. Without that trust, she will be more reluctant to take your directions or provide information you need, and may even decide to act on her own accord. Obviously placing her in dangerous situations will be one way to jeopardize that trust, but according to Kemal, there will also be other ways. In one case, Lea will ask for privacy to change her clothes. Honour her request and she'll further believe in your integrity; get caught trying to sneak a peek and her faith in you will drop accordingly."As far as I can tell, there's no way to even have the option to peek at her while she's changing. I got to that point and she covered up with some boards and said "I don't know you well enough to change in front of you" and never even gave me the option to be "polite" and shut off the camera.Oh well, I'm sure I'll get back to it eventually. There are just too many other games more exciting than this, even though I'm usually into adventure games. A good game with some twists, for anyone looking for a good adventure game, would be "Shadow of Destiny" which also goes by its European title "Shadow of Memories." It's a really cool time travel adventure game. I'd recommend that.

Personally, I'd like to see some tutorials for learning CSS. Table programming is old news, but I can't figure out how DIV tags work correctly yet

Yeah, some people didn't know he could 'come back from the dead.'They did end up coming out with a texture editor, so my dreams came true, and I got to mod the textures..One thing I noticed is that the textures they use are awfully small in file size. If they had any sense, they'd work on imporiving texture quality... Max Payne texture maps were better quality than Hitman's and Hitman was released something around 4-5 years after the fact!A.I,Textures,Physics/RagdollsIf they could patch those up for the next game, I'd be happy. In the meantime, I'll play Portal

I've been playing the game for about 6 or so hours now, off and on. Right after the demo level, in the actual game, was sort of hard as hell. They had a bunch of little objects semi-hidden in safes and on the floor I had to find, which is no fun. But after that things got a little easier. Here's my impressions thus far:Things move very slowly. The plot plays out like System Shock, by reading emails and personal logs of dead "crewmembers." The problem with the way The Experiment does it versus System Shock is that by reading emails, you stumble across other people's passwords and logins... Then you log into their emails and then you find more codes... And so on!I found one code, and literally sat there reading through his and others emails for at least a half hour and unlocked half the personnel files, while the poor girl had to stand there in her bare feet alone in that place.The game is really detailed in that you need to read everything, because most of everything available for you to read has relevance or importance you'll need at some point. For example, there was some brief talk of a traitor between two of the higher-up military ranks... You have to search the level for clues and eventually figure out that one of the crewmembers isn't trustworthy... So you eventually unlock his documents, and find that he was in fact the one who screwed everyone over on board... Then later you have to tell someone who the traitor is... I don't know the consequences of telling that person the right traitor name or not... It might warrant a replay through if it changes anything by telling him another name...Make sure you have a pencil and paper handy for writing down codes from reading... There is so much to read, I'm afraid I'd never find certain codes again. I've filled up about one and a half pages on legal tablet full of access codes and door codes, etc. I've found while just reading emails and stuff I've found within the first 3 levels...The game makes you think. They have two cyphers you need to figure out how to decode, and can be rather time consuming if you're trying to figure it out.It's also easy to get overwhelmed. The game, after the demo, is more open-ended, and is easy to stray from what your main objectives are. You try going somewhere and she refuses because you still haven't completed an objective, so there are limits, but the game really opens up after you get out of the demo level.One cool thing, as you play, you unlock bonus content (which is nicer than having to beat "achievements" to unlock stuff.) You get concept art, which is pretty cool, 2 sound clips per 'chapter' (which aren't really chapters, but rather the duration between cutscenes), and 2 music files from music that played during the levels. You can also click the cutscene name those files are under, and watch the cutscene over again, which is nice. The cutscenes are done rather well.Try not to read any info about the plot, because it's easy to see spoilers. Overall a good game so far. The game lags somewhat with 3 windows open so I try limiting the number of active cameras to 1 or 2 max. I never really need 3 anyway. I'll post more once I finish the game, to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether or not the story is worth playing the game for... because really other than the novelty of using cameras, that's all this game really has going for it at this point.The reading and her slow pace sort of make this kind of game boring unless you're into adventure games.

OHHH MAN. This ticks me off to no end.Some spoilers involved:I got through the whole game. A lot of radiation was eliminated in parts so the mod made this game a LOT more enjoyable..One Problem.I ran up all the way through to the end, trying to get the "Good" ending by taking the decoder and unlocking the door, and Refusing to enter the C-Consciousness or whatever it's called... OK fair enough. I was placed on the rooftops like I usually am. And everything is going well. I'm hopping around the blue teleports, and fighting through waves of bad guys. When all of a sudden, I find myself warped all the way back to the beginning of the level.Yep, I think I did something wrong when entering the power plant, because the game glitched and I was unable to beat the game properly. ARGH. I hate the fact I wasted so much time on that last level before I figured it out! Make sure to read any readmes talking about which way to enter. They mention the Stadium that you have to enter first to complete an objective or something.I dunno. The mod is perfect, but whatever they did to that last teleport totally screwed any good feelings I had about the mod. I mean everything was perfect until that point.Just hope my warning will save anyone else the same grief.

Anyone who has the FPS survival horror game S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl might want to dust it off if they haven't played it lately. I found a mod I think you might want to check out if you're up for some survival horror goodness... I've installed the Oblivion Lost mod http://www.gamefront.com/games/stalker and patch: http://www.gamefront.com/games/stalker I'm really liking it. I had tried Faiakes mod, but I think it changed gameplay too much. I like Oblivion Lost better because of the realism and horror elements implemented in such a way that it breathes new life into the survival horror genre. One thing that realllly ticked me off with (I believe it was) Faiakes mod was the random GHOSTS that would spawn and slowly drive my character CRAZY.... I was in the bandit's factory trying to save that Duty guy from the jail cell, and these random mutant boars and other ghosts kept spawning infinitely until I left the area...ARGH! That alone made me uninstall the game to go out and play Portal Basically what Oblivion Lost does for STALKER is make it more like the developers originally intended. Why the developers didn't just make the game they way they wanted to in the first place is beyond me It also supposedly enables Freeplay, so you can play the game after beating it, which is something gamers have been demanding since it was released. I'll list a complete list of features below... In the meantime, here are some of my first impressions. With Oblivion Lost, it makes guns more powerful, harder to shoot off the hip, and overall more realistic. You really need to use the iron sights and single shots to really be accurate. Enemies will go down if you place your shots right. More powerful guns means you lose health quicker too... Bleeding doesn't really stop until you use bandages. Food doesn't restore health ( a feature I do miss ) Driving cars makes for fast travel, but cars don't seem to brake well for me, I usually run into an anomaly and lose health because I can't turn or stop fast enough. One time, I hit some sort of tornado anomaly and the thing launched me into the air! haha, I didn't know what to think... I'm sitting there in the car, flying upside-down wondering if I should try exiting it, or just see if it doesn't kill me when it lands... Well it landed on the ground, on it's wheels, and I drove off, no problem :-D Nights are scary. It's pitch black unless the moon is out... And it's really awesome when it's pitch black and random streaks of lightning light up the area, showing you a basically a snapshot of what's around you... You are near invisible in the dark, but it's just as hard because you can't see any enemies unless you use night vision... If you turn on your flashlight, you automatically become a moving target, so the ability to sneak more effectively now is really sweet. There's some people complaining that mutants don't respawn... They claim it's a glitch... Well I think that the "no mutants are respawning" problem is really more realistic that they don't... I mean, you kill a pack of dogs... they are not going to breed a new pack overnight. You shoot something, it dies. I think it's a nice realistic feature. Overall, highly recommended if you want a good balanced survival horror game. Hasn't been too hard nor too easy if you are smart about playing it. Here are a complete list of features and what it is supposed to do for Stalker: FEATURES: FREEPLAY - New level changers (Stancia2 to Control Room, Control Room to Sarcophagus, Sarcophagus to Stancia1, Stancia1 to Pripyat, Cordon to Dark Valley and a new Radar to Bunker) - Removed the scripted blowout from Stancia1 and the dead zone from Stancia2, so you can explore the whole Power Plant - The last portal teleports the actor to the court, so the game is open-ended A-LIFE - Now almost everything can be happened, there's a chance to meet any NPC's on other levels - Sometimes the army raids, sometimes not, this is totally random, too - The mutants are making their ways through pass the Zone in big hordes - The mutants are entering places what they aren't entered before, so there's an increased chance to meet them in human-being places REALISM - All weapons are stronger and well-balanced - Almost to all weapons be able to attach addons - Added realistic sounds to the weapons, rounds, ammos, materials, environment - NPC's are bleeding, if they are hurted then fall down to the ground, and if they don't receive any medkits about a minute, then they die - Bandages and foods don't heal the actor - The average bleeding don't stop by itself, only the minor - Added realistic head-bobbing to the actor when he is heavily wounded - Well-balanced armor degradation - The crosshair is reduced to a dot - Reduced HUD and removed NPC counter STEALTH - The NPC's can't notice the actor during night if his flashlight is turned off - If the actor turns on the flashlight, then his enemies spot him immediately - Reduced the sound volume of the Knife, now it's a dangerous and invisible weapon during night, presumably the NPC's won't notice the actor if he is smart enough WEATHER - There are 24 hours cycle weathers in all levels - The night is dark and scary - Restored the Sun and the Moon - Atmospheric sky textures BLOWOUT - The blowout is totally random, you never know that when it will start - The blowout spawns mutants and artifacts in random places - The NPC's are falling down when the blowout starts, and they stunned to the ground when it explodes, also the actor is slowed and has got some minor effectors - The blowout is dark at night and shiny at daylight - If the weather is rainy, then the blowout increases the intensity of the rain, the thunders and the wind MUTANTS - Added all cutout mutants (Dwarf, Chimera, Cat, Zombie, Izlom) - They have got so many different types of skins - Added the Psy Dog as a new mutant (with attack effector) - Two boss enemy characters (Burer and Koshei) - you can kill them with special methods VEHICLES - Added all drivable vehicles (Niva, Zaz, Kamaz, Tractor, UAZ, BTR, Moskvich) - The vehicles aren't floating - Well-balanced driving properties - Added realistic engine and gear sounds to the UAZ ARTIFACT ACTIVATION - This is a method of transforming the artifacts created by an anomaly back to the anomaly they were originally created in - Each artifacts have got different HUDs MISCELLANEOUS - Replaced main menu music - Main menu from the 2215 beta - Added the "Turn on the engine" to the options/controls - NPC's can buy everything from the actor but in very low prices - All traders can repair - New stalker and weapon textures - More types of skins of stalkers and bandits - Sleeping bag - Replaced some dialog sounds to Russian - Added some songs to the camping stalkers

Just found some gameplay footage of the demo level on youtube for anyone looking to see how the first level goes. The guy is playing the original Dutch game, but he interprets parts of it. The demo you can download uses English voiceovers so no worries about actually playing it. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ The game does not take that long to load... He attributes it to recording at the same time. But I'm running a Intel Core 2 Duo (3ghz) with 2 gigs of ram, and a Geforce 8800 GTS graphics card, and it takes probably 5-15 seconds to load the level. The game should arrive in the mail by Friday, I'll post more after I playthrough a bit. I've been reading nothing but good things about it, and I'm excited

Last night, I was browsing around online, I think it was Amazon.com, and I came across a video trailer for a game called "The Experiment" published by Dreamcatcher Interactive. Since I knew them to publish the non-mainstream titles, I figured the game was probably either low budget or foreign-produced. I was right on the second count, but that's besides the point. The European name for the game is "Experience 122," and I'm truly hoping that it wasn't altered in any way like a lot of other games made outside the US such as The Witcher, whose gameplay content was cut dramatically to pass as M instead of AO rating... Stupid stuff really, but that's besides the point. The thing that got me so interested in the game was that rather than playing the adventure game first person, you actually took control of a massive security system aboard a ship, and guided a female character around to do the work for you... Think of it like FarCry or Red Faction where instead of receiving orders and getting shot at, you are giving the orders and have to keep the girl alive. I do a pretty damn good job as commander in Battlefield 2, so I thought, "Sounds pretty cool." I had heard of another game doing this before that was reviewed on TechTV, but from what i can remember, that was a console game that used a Microphone and voice recognition, and got horrible reviews. This seems to be brand new this month of February. Anyway there was virtually no publicity done for this game and no reviews on Amazon.com, so I had to search around on GameFaq's forums and other sites and overall everyone had very positive reviews about the game. I found some videos and screenshots and wasn't crazy about the graphics, since they do look slightly dated and lower budget than something like Crysis (the first thing I noticed were the fact that her feet were modelled box-like such as in the first Hitman game circa 2001). So overall, the graphics look like something out around 2003, but the shadows and environments make up for the fact. Shadow effects are well done, though there are sometimes graphical glitches, but nothing game-breaking. I downloaded the demo from the official site: http://www.experience112.com/ with good download speeds, it only took me about 20 minutes for a ~650meg file. Installed the demo with no problems, and ran it. The main menu is a little weird. Getting stuff configured took some doing, and you have to restart the game to change the resolution. You can customize menu colors with different templates, and you can customize the background wallpaper. Overall the system reminds me of the game UPLINK, which I also highly recommend if you are interested in this sort of "adventure" where you play the game on your computer simulating another computer system. Getting started with a new game, we get a cool, but rather too long cutscene of the camera flying around a cliffside at an ocean, and eventually flying around a derelict ship run aground on the beach with foliage covering it. The game then kicks on to the GUI, with 1 window open over the sleeping woman, who just happens to wake up at that moment. She pulls an IV out of her arm, and proceeds to have some inner dialog, spoken out loud, of course, so you know what she's thinking... I figure there's no way around it for game makers to do something like that, but what are ya gonna do? She complains of a headache, and finally notices that the camera is on, so she begins talking to the camera hoping I'm a good guy (as opposed to thinking I took her prisoner like any other movie that parallels this opening scenario like SAW or whatnot ) She helps me get the system online so I have more control... This is what sort of bugged me about the demo (which is in fact the first level of the game)... she talks to me as though she is a standard tutorial, rather than more realistically... I don't know how else to explain it. The whole experience seemed more like I was getting a tutorial than sitting at a computer trying to help a woman who had no idea what was going on. Once again, there's not much the game devs could do anything about it, because I did need her advice to kickstart the game, but I'm guessing things get better once I get stuff done. Onto the gameplay review and whatnot: Gameplay reminds me of Uplink, as in you are running a simulated computer system with a map, and various features on a left sidebar you can open... The problem is that it is not organized in the fact that windows tend to overlap each other especially if you are trying to do too many things at once. There are probably options to fix this, but I haven't tried anything yet but the default settings. You make the main character move by turning on lights remotely using the map interface, and you can select cameras by clicking on them. As the game progresses, she unlocks more "abilities" your cameras can do, such as rotating, zooming, and night vision, etc... Overall not too hard, but it can be overwhelming since there are tons of cameras and interactive icons to use that you need her to interact with. I've heard stories from people that played the real game saying that the game keeps track of your computer clock, so that if you log off of the game, and don't play the game for awhile (half day or a day or more) the main character actually comments when you next play "Hey! I've been waiting here for (length of time such as half a day,etc) for you?! Where have you been!?" Cool concept if it works. The sound... The intro "music" was awesome. I start up the game and I hear soothing tones, and a soothing female voice talking as though she was directing me in a guided meditation... Something totally new and unique, I thought. The music is rather generic... Just background ambient music, and there wasn't a whole lot of variation in the demo. Sounds themselves were ok. Not much to hear when you're in a 30+ year old ship. Voice acting wasn't.... bad. I mean I can sort of tell they had to translate this from Dutch or whatever the native language it was in... the sound is clear, but it's just not as good as, say, Half Life 2. Still good, but not great. As I said before, the main character talks out loud more than a real life person would do in such a situation, but like I said, there's no real way around this. Graphics, not bad, but slightly dated. They have cool and unique effects with the video cameras, including poor video feed and when she shakes the camera, there is distortion as though the cable was loose. Some video feeds are unable to focus, and keep blurring trying to autofocus. At random intervals at points in the game, the screen will white out after she collapses, and you'll go into a flashback detailing some of what's going on, and the relationships between people. About the story... Once you gain access to other user accounts, you will be able to read more files into what the whole project involved was about. Apparently, this research group found some sort of sea creature that extracts a chemical that reverses the aging process and heals diseases, but is also toxic, which sort of flubs up any commercial use for it. You get more of the story by unlocking more accounts and reading emails, and memos (sort of like System Shock). A cool but not new way of giving out story plot. I got through the demo in about an hour or so... Trying to get everything and explore... It takes some getting used to figuring out the camera system, and whatnot, but so far I like the game. I already bought it on Amazon, and it should be in on Friday, whereby I'll give a fuller review whether or not it's worth a purchase. In the mean time, do check out the website and demo. It's definitely under-marketing, which sucks because these big companies who can afford $$$ for marketing turn out the same old bullsh&t with better graphics, while small companies come out with truly innovative games and are forced to fail due to not having good exposure to the masses.

One big advantage of Dreamweaver over Frontpage.... I did the exact same page using the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) method without touching the code itself... and the Frontpage file was approximately 3 times larger than the Dreamweaver file simply because Frontpage put in so much crap code that wasn't needed. If you can't afford or don't want to use Dreamweaver, then there is an open source web page editor I found called NVU http://www.laws.com/ Seems to work ok, but I don't know if it'll do what you want. If you just want to get a basic template designed to put info in for a whole website... Dreamweaver templates work great for that. You make up one basic page with editable regions, and then you create pages based off that template.. That way, if you need to change, say a footer for all your pages, you only have to change the one file that is the template and it automatically updates all the pages based on that file, so you don't have any inconsistencies!

You might get more of a response if you post what sort of work is involved... whether you're paying for this... etc. Just sayin.... People don't like workin for free.

Couple of ways of going... One, you could take a photo, import it into Photoshop, and either using a mouse, or a Wacom (or any other brand, but I use Wacom Intuos 3) drawing tablet hooked up to your PC and draw on a layer above the photo, so you are essentially "drawing" the photo, but everything is correctly proportioned. It'd be a good start for getting used to drawing on a computer. I can't draw for crap in the "real world," but on a PC I don't do too bad a job. Another one that can be handy (also using photoshop) is using the "Stamp" filter (with some tweaks). You get a pure black and white photo that can be very cool looking if done correctly. Here's a sample of a graphic novel I started (but never finished) based on an internet radio series Tales from the Afternow... This uses the "Drawing over photo" technique in the first majority of the comic, but the last frame I worked with the Stamp filter and drew based on that... Overall, not professional, but a nice alternative anyway.

Haha, I had a dot matrix printer on my old Commodore 64. You could hear that thing printing from the other end of the house, and it would take so long to print. I had a Garfield cartoon maker where you could take Garfield characters and organize them into a 3 strip comic... I think I have some printed out somewhere actually...

I heard that Python is a relatively easy language to learn. And just working with Modding games a bit, I've come across a lot of Python files, so I know that they use em in retail gaming.PHP is more dynamic web browser code, not really for games run in windows, unless you're running it through an Internet browser.C++ is probably decent for text games. I took C++ classes in college and they never got to show us anything fun to do with graphics...which sucks VisualBasic .net is pretty decent if you want to set up Windows-based games. It's virtually point and click until you need to set up some functions for buttons and whatnot.GameMaker is also a good one, and you would be able to include graphics, though I don't know anything about it's scripting capabilities.If you want to go Ye Olde Schoole, find a copy of QBasic 4.5 (I say 4.5 because it can compile code into an exe that can be run separately from the QBasic editor). That's where I first got interested in programming text games. It's really easy and if you have no prior programming experience, I'd say it's a great way to learn Logic, because you're going to be making choices based on choices and looping and all sorts of fun stuff

I feel as though it all depends on your usage of keywords. I prefer Yahoo, because when I type in a key phrase the way I think it would be formatted in context of a website... and when I do the same for Google, I get a bunch of unrelated stuff.Image search in Yahoo is nicer. Anytime people i know are looking for a specific image in Google, and they ask me to help, I do a search in Yahoo and find it almost instantly.The smart thing, and of course this is what I do, is to utilize the benefits of both Google and Yahoo. I mean why choose just one??

Ah, so are you saying they use the "pay real money for virtual money" scheme going on? I played a MMORPG called Project Entropia, but they should have named it Project Entropy, seeing as how your money always seems to be decaying down to zero while you play it They make games basically a lottery using this system, not skill. The only way you have a chance of being any good is by paying thousands of dollars to shoot monsters to increase your skills so you can shoot monsters better... Meanwhile, each bullet costs you something like a tenth of a penny, which adds up quickly when you're playing a shooting game. Getting "loot" to pay back for killing monsters is usually a gamble... because most often than not you don't find anything... Therefore you have to keep paying to play.Oh it's a great model for a business, since you gain so much more by people paying $100 a month for virtual clothes, armor, guns, and bullets rather than having people pay a flat $9.99-$14.99 a month who don't have to worry as much about it. A+ for that.I played the Matrix Online for about 3 months or so, and I had more fun during that time than I ever did with Project Entropia. The game itself is just built better. Better graphics. You get cooler clothes for next to nothing, which is nice. Special effects were awesome, and there was way more character customization in terms of what you could do with it.... If you didn't like Kung Fu, you could specialize in hand guns, rifles, etc. if you didn't like fighting, you could specialize in coding that would heal friends or hurt enemies. Fun stuff. Unfortunately, the game itself was rather repetitive. Run into a building, kill everyone, run to another building, repeat. Eventually I just left in pursuit of new and exciting games.Getting off this tangent ha, I'm definitely going to at least check out this Gaia Online. Sounds interesting anyway.

I think I read on ActionTrip.com that they were making this game for the PC... Anyone here that's played it that would recommend it? Seems like people either love it or think it's "blah."

Just another note to be added, make sure, if you in fact have the Wii Zapper to set the controls in Umbrella Chronicles to the Wii Zapper configuration... Makes doing stuff a heck of a lot easier!

Well, I had been playing Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii for awhile, and I heard that Resident Evil 4 for Wii was an awesome game, so I decided to pick it up yesterday. The first thing I noticed right off the start how responsive the Wii-mote was for RE4 as compared to Umbrella Chronicles. UC seems to have a slight bit of lag, which makes the game slightly harder than it should be, where Resident Evil 4 aims smoothly and responsively. Controls aren't hard to get used to. You use the nunchuck to rotate your character, and the Wii aim as to where you're aiming on the screen. You can't really use the Zapper for this game, since you use the B button (The "trigger") to aim, and the A button (on top) to shoot.... You can't remap the buttons, or else you could use the Zapper "Z" button on the nunchuck as the aim, and B to shoot, but they won't let you do that apparently. Just as well, it works fine without the zapper.First thing about this game that caused me grief is the fact that it forces you to explore, and conserve ammo. Within the first 5 minutes of gameplay, you end up facing a small fraction of an entire town that have pitch forks and kitchen knives that are all trying to kill you. (That's the last time I ever bother the Spanish during a siesta!)And these aren't stumbling zombies... They can jog, and they're in groups up to 5-7 from what I can remember. You can go for their knee caps to slow them down, but by the time you hit them all, you have to reload and they're back up again... Headshots don't take them down unless you hit them perfectly in some spot, and their heads explode (Somewhat like Umbrella Chronicles).Exploration is a must if you want to find enough money and herbs to survive. Later in the game, about a half hour to an hour depending on how quickly you're going through it, you'll meet up with some strange merchant guy that you can use the spanish money you've been stealing out of people's home throughout the prologue. Seriously, the main character "Leon" could be viewed as the Bad Guy at this point in the game... He breaks into people's houses... steals their guns, money, healing plants... And kills everyone he sees... (I know that's not how the plot goes) but I would be a bit miffed myself if someone broke into my house and started crap like that!Graphics are decent, but we hooked the Wii into a HD TV, with component cables (the good quality, not composite) and there seems to be a need for some good anti-aliasing... The lines look all blurry in the distance. I can't explain it. It's not as crisp as a next-gen game ought to be. I may need to check out my setup again though.Sounds are very awesome. If you hear a far-off dog whimpering, that is usually an actual animal, not some ambient noise. The distance of the sound is realistic.I haven't gotten too far into the plot yet to make a judgment call.Voice acting is probably a 7/10. Seems like I've heard better, but it's definitely better than the original RE Good stuff.One of the things that is a bit of a downer is the weird submissions. For example, you find this piece of paper on a tree talking about blue medallions, saying that there are 15, and if you find 10 you get a "bonus." Now, this sort of thing makes sense later because the merchant is the guy looking for them, but the whole "Find em and shoot em down" sort of side mission takes away from the realism of the atmosphere. I mean I spent probably 20 minutes just wandering around an area looking for blue medallions.... Sort of lame.The same button-triggered cutscenes are in RE4 that are in Umbrella Chronicles. You'll be standing there, a cutscene triggers, and suddenly you're supposed to be waving your wiimote back and forth to simulate running.... Then without warning, it tells you to hit A+B, which is near impossible because you're waving it back and forth and don't have time to maneuver your hands to get at the right buttons. *Sigh* I hope they stop using that.That's about all I can think of for now. Pretty fun, but at this time, I actually prefer Umbrella Chronicles.

One of the big bonuses for buying a PSP is the ability to get homebrew on it. Now I don't know how capable a DS is with running stuff like that, but from what I heard, a PSP is capable of running home-made programs, such as emulators... Can you imagine playing Nintendo Super Mario Bros. on your Sony PSP? Irony! TOP SCORE! (Powerthirst reference) I even think some N64 games can be played (albeit rather slowly) on the PSP.Taking the hardware perspective, the DS just isn't as powerful. The graphics for the PSP are pretty sweet, but I'm not a console gamer (PC gamer all the way baby, where's my mouse). So I really wouldn't play a PSP unless I could get some SNES games on it My brother has a DS, and it's good for the games that utilize the touch screen. That brain training game with the Japanese guy is pretty cool. Couldn't do anything like that on a PSP... So I guess you have to go with what games are available for it. If you like Grand Theft Auto, get a PSP. If you like mostly E for everyone-type games like Mario Bros, get a DS.

Usually depends on the game, really. The older games I have require the sensitivity to be up all the way if I want it to even be playable. I guess I just go with what feels natural. It's trying to find a balance between accuracy and moving your arm around way too much.