Music to my ears

02:00pm 15 Feb 2012 7 comments

I've never had a really good set of gaming headphones.

For years when I've had to game while Mrs Game Junkie is in same room as the consoles/PC are, I've generally hooked up my wired headphones - which think I bought for $60 a few years ago - and thought that sound didn't get much better than what was being pumped into my ears.

Well, after getting my hands on a set of Turtle Beach's PX3 wireless gaming headset last week I'm thinking it's about time I retired my several-years-old wired set: they just don't cut it any more in the aural stakes. The difference in sound quality is like chalk and cheese. Seriously.

Of course, lilke most top-end equipment, the Turtle Beach PX3s don't come cheap - RRP is around $275. That's a serious investment and out of the reach of most people, but I really can't express how much better the sound is coming from these things than my current headset. Quality doesn't come cheap, it seems.

Even the microphone on the PX3 does a much better job than the current headset/mic I use for my weekly radio segment on Kiwi FM.

Road trips and mobile games

02:30pm 13 Feb 2012 13 comments

I've got a road trip later this week as we're taking Ms Game Junkie down to Dunedin on Friday to get her set up for Otago University (yes, I am that old) and it's about this time to start thinking about what games to take with me to play during the down time at night.

I'll take my Nintendo 3DS, of course, to play more Super Mario 3D Land and some of the Raid mode in Resident Evil Revelations but I'm also going to take the PS Vita this time and continue playing the handful of titles I've already downloaded for it, including Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Wipeout 2048. I'm sure Mrs Game Junkie won't mind.

The worldwide embargo on coverage for the Vita lifts at 3am tomorrow so I can't talk about anything in too much detail now but handheld gaming plaforms are worth their weight in gold when you do road trips. I see no point taking a home console on a two-day trip - that would just be pointless - but handhelds are just perfect as they don't take up much space in a backpack and they provide a great gaming fix when everyone else is asleep or watching TV at night.

My handhelds are primarily for gaming on the go, but I still play them in the evenings sometimes as they let me sit on the couch next to my lovely wife mashing away while she's watching some reality show on TV. It's the best of both worlds, though because I'm wearing headphones it often means I miss parts of conversations!

Game-wise, most of my gaming over the past few days has been Uncharted: Golden Abyss on the Vita and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (I've given Final Fantasy XIII-2 a break for the time being), and so far I'm sitting on the fence about Reckoning. Sometimes it feels like Fable with its exploration and monsters and other times it feels like a full-blown RPG with the ability to craft weapons using special tables and use magical powers. I've played around six hours so far so will put a few more hours into it then make a call.

Is Tim Schafer a genius?

10:00am 10 Feb 2012 17 comments

Yesterday, something quite extraordinary happened from the man behind Grim Fandango, Full Throttle and Psychonauts.

Tim Schafer announced that if he could raise US$400,000 through the Kickstarter fundraising programme by March 13 he'll make a "brand new downloadable point and click graphic adventure for the modern age".

Well, Schafer needn't have worried: as of 8.12am today, 19,940 people around the world had pledged US$794,659 - in less than 24 hours. That's just crazy but it's kind of exciting to see.

Speculation, too, is running rife as to what the graphic adventure will be: will it be a sequel to any of Schafer's former games, such as Grim Fandango or Full Throttle, or will it be something completely new? So why did Schafer decide to go down the Kickstarter route?

Spec Ops: The Line hands-on

10:50am 08 Feb 2012 5 comments

As promised, here's my impressions of 2K's Spec Ops: The Line, which I spent time with last week.

Sand is full of surprises.

Pack it together tightly in a bucket and children can turn it into sandcastles with moats and towers. Pack tonnes of it up against a floor-to-ceiling window in a luxurious Dubai hotel, though, as Yager Developments has done in 2K's Spec Ops: The Line, and it's a means of escape: an escape plan consisting of millions of tiny golden particles.

In Spec Ops: The Line, sand is the unknown quantity.

Players take the role of Captain Martin Walker, a special forces soldier sent to investigate the disappearance of soldiers from the 33rd Division after a devastating sandstorm hits Dubai, dumping thousands of tonnes of sand on the futuristic city of glass and steel on the edge of the Arabian desert.

Digital copies need to be cheaper

02:00pm 03 Feb 2012 35 comments

Gameplanet reported this week that digital copies of PS Vita titles in the US and Japan look as if they'll will be cheaper than their retail counterparts - an eagle-eyed NeoGaf reader had spotted a 10 per cent discrepancy between digital and retail copies at US retailer Best Buy - but for digital copies of games to become the preferred option for gamers, publishers are going to have to do better than cheaper by 10 per cent.

Game prices are a subject of contention for gamers, especially in New Zealand, where it's not unusual to pay $130 for a console game at a bricks-and-mortar retailer. That's a lot of money for a game so it's not surprising that some gamers buy only two or three new games a year. 

But if digitally distributed games were cheaper, would you buy more games?

With distribution services such as Steam, Origin, Xbox Live and PlayStation Network offerng full-priced games, more and more publishers are pushing for digital distribution as a means for gamers to buy their games. For publishers, it means less cost in terms of packaging and producitin costs. For gamers it means you can get the game pretty much immediately (depending on the speed of your internet, of course) and you don't have to leave the comfort of your home to get it.

I believe that retail games will be around for a good while longer but for publishers to persuade gamers to buy more digitally distributed games they need to be much cheaper than their retail copies: much cheaper. I reckon 25 per cent cheaper at least.