Adam’s Cerebral Spillage

Created by Oatmeal

Technorati Tags velociraptor

Just a quick update this time. I’ve started playing Bayonetta after waiting a long time for the price to drop to bargain levels, and so far I’m loving it. They’ve got the presentation and humour this style of game deserves down to a tee, and the gameplay is silky-smooth.

The eponymous Bayonetta

I won’t bore you with the story (kick-ass witch wakes up in a coffin in a lake, tris to find out WTF is going on and kills a stupid number of angels in elaborate and gruesome ways), cos this one is all about the action. On first impression you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s just another Devil May Cry clone, and to be honest, after a few hours you might still think the same, but it’s done so well it doesn’t matter. Kicks and punches form the combos, with the addition of four(!) guns, one attached to each limb. Every combo can be cancelled into another, which means the combo count regularly goes into silly numbers, and it all looks gorgeous at the same time, ticking along at an impressive frame-rate.

A couple of angels get a taste of 'Scarborough Fair', the name of this gun-set

What I still can’t get my head around when I’m playing it, is that this is a Sega game. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not speaking ill of Sega (god knows I poured enough time into Outrun 2/C2C), but Bayonetta feels every bit like a Capcom game, right through to its core. I remember thinking ‘Hang on… this is the music from OutRun, how did they get away with that?!’ before realising that it was a Sega game and therefore their music to use in the first place. The whole game feels like a blatant rip-off of Devil May Cry (with the tongue-in-cheek feeling from God Hand), but I think it’d be unfair to call it a rip-off; it’s much more like a homage.

The lighting and atmosphere are subtle and brilliant

I haven’t come across anything I dislike about the game yet; the graphics and sound are great, it’s well-acted, the gameplay is so tight and the presentation is awesome. Whether or not I finish it is up for debate, as I famously tend to fall short of completion in most games, but for the time being I’m loving it. Oh, and most importantly, it’s dirt cheap! £12.98 in Game at the moment, and I had £2.50 on my Game card to spend. Just a shade over a tenner for a game that recently got 10/10 in Edge is an absolute steal.

Technorati Tags Bayonetta, capcom, Sega

Early on Saturday morning I was picked up by three of my friends on th way to Newquay Airport for a weekend away in the capital. We planned ages ago to go and watch some boxing, so that’s exactly what we did.

Despite being in the departure lounge as early as quarter past ten on Saturday morning, it was definitely time for a beer, so we decided to get the weekend started with some ale and Guinness before boarding the little turboprop Dash-8 to Gatwick. It was a gorgeous flight up, really sunny and with almost no turbulence. I like flying at the best of times, so it was a real treat for me, although it was odd to be sat in the sunshine in a plane, drinking a gin and tonic and listening to music and not being on my way abroad. I love the fact you’re above the clouds so it’s always glorious up there.

Once we landed it was a quick dash to the Gatwick Express for the half-hour ride into Victoria station, then a short trip up the line to Oxford Circus to find a pub to watch the FA Cup final in and get some food (and a few more beers…). Stuffed, merry and dazzled by the sunshine outside the pub (it’s weird how when it’s darker inside and you’ve got a beer in your hand, your brain assumes it’s night-time!), we hopped aboard the tube and then the DLR to Beckton and the hotel. We didn’t get long there, just enough time to freshen up and get changed, then it was back on the DLR and tube and off to Upton Park for the evening’s entertainment.

It wasn't exactly packed when we got there....

Frank Warren put on a full card of decent fighters, but we got there too late to see Billy-Joe Saunders and Frankie Gavin. It didn’t matter too much, the place was still filling at that point and the atmosphere was a bit subdued, but I did get to watch Danny Williams doing what Danny Williams does best lately – not throwing any punches and getting his ass handed to him. Chisora needed less than two rounds to finish the fight, and with a bit of luck, Williams’ career. On his day, he was a good fighter, but recently it’s been almost painful to watch him lumbering around like a walking punchbag, I hope he retires now for his sake.

Once dusk set in the stands started filling properly and we got on to the two fights I really wanted to see. First up was James DeGale taking a shot at the interim Super-Middleweight title, and he was on top form. Between him and Haye we’ve got some exciting boxers coming through now, and he went in swinging as soon as he realised that a) he was hurting Horton, and b) Horton couldn’t hurt him. It only lasted a few rounds and the combination that finished him off was awesome, I can’t wait to see how he develops over the next couple of years. Last up was the main event as local boy (local to West Ham at least) Kevin Mitchell took on Katsidis. I know a lot of people wanted to see Mitchell win, but I really didn’t think he’d be able too, Katsidis on his day is awesome. Katsidis didn’t disappoint either, he destroyed Mitchell over four rounds with an amazing display of power.

...but things soon picked up.

The atmosphere in the ground was brilliant, I’d never sat in the terraces at a big ground like that, and the Hammers fans singing and chanting really added to it. There were a few ‘tense’ moments when die-hards looked like they were looking to start something, but luckily it died out. Marching back through the streets with ~15,000 other people was an experience, and one I’m glad I don’t have to repeat on a regular basis. By the time we’d fought through the crowds on the underground and made it back to the hotel we were flagging badly; a combination of tiredness and a hangover I think. Still, the night’s boxing action wasn’t over yet, so we headed to bed with an alarm set to get up and watch the Khan vs Malignaggi fight from New York. Khan absolutely schooled him after a frantic first few rounds, it was great to watch, and I really hope he avoids any big money fights against has-beens and goes straight for unifying the division. The way he’s going, it’s looking very realistic now.

The trip back was pretty much the same as the way there, nothing to speak of really, except for just avoiding the ash cloud before the airports got shut down this morning. A massive hotel breakfast was the perfect end to a great weekend away. Being back to work today was a bit depressing, but with the prospect of a holiday in Spain just 10 working days away, I’m not going to complain for now .

My mementos from the weekend, which should really include Plymouth Gin miniatures

Technorati Tags boxing, DeGale, flying to London, Katsidis, Khan, Mitchell, Upton Park

This is quite a mundane and factual update, but hopefully it’ll help anyone who had the same problem as me and find their way here.

I switched from my long-time football game favourite series of Winning Eleven/Pro Evo last year after years of dedication because the Fifa series finally made the jump to being a great game, whereas WE/PES stayed the same and feels very stale. I’d been enjoying Fifa 10 for a long time when I started getting random crashes; the game freezes and the buttons are unresponsive. At first it wasn’t too frequent, and I put it down to overheating or an odd glitch. I started noticing that it doesn’t happen when I take the game to my friends’ houses which made me start looking for a solution.

When I first started searching online I noticed there are a lot of crashing problems being mentioned on various forums, but with no real solution. I stuck at it until recently when the predictable re-vamp for the World Cup came around with Fifa World Cup 2010, and a demo was released over Xbox Live. The demo didn’t crash once, which I took as a sign to say that they’d fixed whatever the problem was, and when I found I had some unspent Tessco clubcard vouchers I decided to treat myself to the full game…

…which crashed. So began a trying email conversation between me and EA support, who seemed completely incapable of reading anything I’d actually written, giving me such gems of advice as ‘run dxdiag on your computer’. Yeah, thanks for that, I mean, my problem’s with a completely different format, but I’m sure that’ll help. I eventually found a Microsoft guide for possible solutions to the freezing problem and worked my way through that. After a lot of trial and error, frustration and annoyance, and even some money, I think I’ve finally found a solution. So for anyone finding their way here from google, tearing your hair out and just wanting to play the game, here’s a list of what didn’t work for me, and a solution that did.

Things I tried that didn’t work, but may for you:

• Clean the disc. Pretty obvious, but just check the 360 isn’t scratching the disc.
• Delete Fifa save games and option files. This was suggested on a forum, apparently they can become corrupt and cause problems.
• Make sure the 360 isn’t overheating. Don’t sit your console or PSU in deep pile carpet, or in the oven or something – common sense people.
• Delete the 360 cache file. Fifa stores data in the cache, if this becomes corrupted it can cause freezing. From memory, from your dashboard go to System Settings > Storage > Press Y and choose the option to clear the cache.

What actually worked for me:

• Replace the hard drive.

The last suggestion on the Microsoft guide is to try removing the 360’s hard drive while the console’s off and play without it on. I did this and managed to play several matches in a row without a single problem, and to be honest I really didn’t think it would’ve been the problem. Apparently it can be symptomatic of a problem with the hard drive, so whether it’s on its way out or not I don’t know. I bought a cheap, new 120GB hard drive on ebay (which I’m still waiting for) and started looking for a data transfer cable.

Microsoft make a data transfer/migration kit consisting of a special USB cable and disc, which allows you to move your stuff from one drive to a new one. My problem was that I couldn’t find one for love nor money, and was getting annoyed. Microsoft will sell you one over the phone for £16, but if you ever need to migrate from one drive to another, DON’T BUY IT! Since the recent dashboard update, the 360 now recognises USB storage devices as storage for games and files, so I hooked up my portable hard drive, chose the ‘customise’ option from the 360 storage menu when preparing a USB device, and allocated 16GB (the maximum) to the console. I copied everything on my 360 HD to the portable one and then disconnected the Xbox’s hard drive.

Ever since I’ve been playing with my console, and more importantly Fifa, without a single problem, direct from the USB drive. There are no problems or issues with doing it, I honestly can’t tell the difference between the portable drive and the built-in one. I’ll still be using the 120GB one once it arrives, so I can download more demos and add-ons, and also so I can install the games I play a lot, but as a stopgap the USB drive is an excellent alternative.

So yeah, if you’ve got a freezing problem with Fifa 10, Fifa World Cup 2010, or any other game for that matter, try the steps outlined above. Hopefully it won’t come to the ’spending money’ option I had to resort to, but if it does at least you know there’s a good chance it’ll work.

Technorati Tags crash, Fifa 10, Fifa World Cup, freeze, freezing, problem, solution, xbox 360

My addiction to SSFIV shows no signs of dying down or stopping any time soon, and I’m glad to have a game to be properly into again. Last night I spent a couple of hours working through the Challenge mode, which is pretty central to learning how to play SSFIV as a newcomer (which is still how I consider myself).

Challenge Mode drops your character into the training area with a Dan to let loose on (poor Dan, he gets a rough ride!). Rather than being a free-for-all like the normal training mode, you’re given a set ’something’ to do on each level. It starts easy, just giving you the basic specials, supers and ultras, but it soon ramps up the difficulty with the combos it asks you to perform. I had real problems doing some of them ’til I took a step back and read a bit more online. The trick comes in being able to differentiate between cancelling and linking.

Cancelling has been in nearly every 1-on-1 fighter since Street Fighter II, and it’s basically just interrupting the animation of one move with another (usually more powerful) one. An easy example is with one of the Shotos (Ryu/Ken/Akuma etc) where an uppercut can easily be transformed into a fireball or dragon punch. Linking is something which I have no idea about really, I couldn’t tell you how long it’s been in Vs fighters, but my first real experience of trying to learn it has been with SSFIV. Linking is continuing a combo, but perhaps counter-intuitively for some people as it’s not about mashing the buttons as fast as you can to link moves together. Rather, you have to wait for the animation of the first move to end before inputting the second. It’s *really* tricky to get the hang of at first, but very satisfying when it works.

The problem I’m finding now is that playing on a pad is starting to get really difficult. For the most part it’s fine, but some of the stuff is just so awkward to do with only one thumb being used for the buttons. EX cancelling is a big part in higher-level combos and means being able to hit MP+MK at the same time, double tapping forward and then continuing with the next moves. This would be SO much easier with a few fingers working the buttons. What it all boils down to is the fact that I’m thinking about getting a stick.

I was very careful with my choice of words there, as ‘getting’ may not be the same as ‘buying’. Common sense tells me I should suck it up and buy one of the nice SF4 sticks on the market, which use decent Sanwa parts in them and are very well-built, but the part of me that loves starting all together too many projects wants another shot at building my own stick again. From what I understand, it’s more in vogue at the moment to take a shop-bought stick and to customise it with better parts and in some cases, artwork, but I remember my first and only crack at building my own stick a few years ago and I’d really like anything go at it. My first effort was very basic from a design point-of-view (think box built out of MDF), but it worked brilliantly. I’m just not sure I’ll have the time to do it now though, nor the patience. Hmmmmm, choices, choices…. For now, here’s two of the beauties I’m considering.

SF IV Fightstick TE

This one's more expensive but awesome.

Technorati Tags Fight stick, SF4

Firstly, I should apologise in advance to anyone finding this entry when searching for the words in the title, as you
aren’t really going to learn anything here. This is more about my getting stuck in head-first into a revitalised love affair with my new favourite game.

Capcom released Super Street Fighter IV to a drooling, clamouring fanbase this last Friday, and I was among those desperate to get my grubby mitts on the re-incarnation of the current generation’s darling of the fighting scene. I was one of the people wondering why on Earth they didn’t just release it as DLC over Live/PSN, but after playing it for hours and hours over the Bank Holiday weekend, I can see why. It’ more than just a lick of paint on the old game, it’s a total overhaul and a completely justifiable purchase for anyone who bought the original.

First up, the most noticeable change is the addition of a whole raft of new characters. We’ve got characters like Ibuki, Makoto and Dudley making a reappearance from the SF3 series, Guy, Cody and Adon from the Alpha/Zero series, and a couple of completely original characters; Juri, a Korean (a first for a Capcom fighter) Taekwondo fighter, and Hakan, a hilarious Turkish oil wrestler. Put those in with the roster from vanilla SF4 along with some others and you’ve got a lot (35!) of characters to learn. Or should that be re-learn?

The biggest obvious change for the exisiting fighters is the addition of a second Ultra move, selectable at the character choice screen, just like in the good old days of SF3:3S. Some are great, some are rubbish, c’est la vie. But spend more than a couple of hours with the game and experienced players will notice the re-balancing of the of the game. The characters who were seemingly hard-done by the first time out have been bolstered (Guile), and some who were just too powerful for their own good (Ryu, Sagat) have been nerfed a bit. It means a bit of re-learning for a lot of people, but it’s for the best.

I’ll admit that I didn’t get into the original SF4 as much as I’d have liked to, but I’m completely hooked now with Super. I’ve spent a lot of time in ranked battles on Live and learned a lot – not to mention having my arse handed to me more times than I care to mention. It’s frightening how good some people are, even with less than a week of practise with the new guys. But between bouts of rage and swearing, I’m sticking to it and completely addicted. It’s digital Crack. To get better I’m going to have to invest time in learning the kind of nuances the people at SRK and iplaywinner go nuts for.

That brings us nicely to the title of the post, all of which will be instantly familiar for anyone who’s into it. FADC stands for Focus Attack Dash Cancelling, which without wanting to bore the pants off you is when you charge a Focus Attack (parries most single hit moves and allows a retaliation with crumple hit) and dash out of it. It’s great for letting you chain together combos, or baiting someone into thinking you’re charging and they can nip in for a free throw. Plinking is a new one to me and one I don’t expect to be able to use any time soon. It involves hitting two punch buttons almost simultaneously to change 1-frame chaining opportunities to 2-frames…. yeah, I know, it didn’t make much sense to me either until I watched a ten minute youtube video on it.

As usual with my quasi-reviews on here, I have to insist you buy this game. Anyone with even half an interest in fighting games owes it to themself, there’s nothing out there at the moment that even comes close. For a smidgen over 20 quid online with a free t-shirt, there’s really no reason not to buy it. Utterly awesome.

Technorati Tags capcom, FADC, iplaywinner, SRK, SSFIV, Street FIghter