And the Sign Says.. » Park
written by owen, published 2025-Feb-11, comment
That bicycle is rushed in that spot. I should have taken some detail shots. In this case I am just matching colours. June 2023
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Video Games » Xbox Game Pass is a FOMO trap
written by owen, published 2025-Feb-11, comment
Just like many subscription services one has to ask themselves; "is it really worth my time or am I paying for something that is just sucking me dry?". If you compare Game Pass (GP) to Netflix you might think that games are just like movies but there are not. A game is an interactive story often 20+ full hours long - depending on how you play. The time spent is up to your involvement more than the director/writer's skills at wasting the viewer's time. Games are a directed form of "choose your own adventure". Some games can be 100 hours if you really want to dick around. Since you have to keep paying for the service in order to play the game you might as well buy the game and be done with the relationship. But it might not be that simple.
Access to a large library of games
It is true that you have alot of choice, similar to when we had game demos in the past(free) or game rentals from blockbuster(paid). I guess making a game demo became too costly for the developers so they stopped doing it - I am not really sure why they stopped. A game demo is usually smaller than the full game which is good for consoles with limited data storage and slow internet transfer speeds. Why download the full game if there is only a 50/50 chance you will buy it? Small demos seem like a win-win for everyone involved.
A paid demo service
Many advocates say that the GP is a good way to test out games that you have never played before and would never get to play - most likely because there are no demos or rental services or ways to borrow physical games - because you never buy games. So who is really to blame for this? GP is actually worse than game demos because instead of downloading a small version of the game you need to download the full game in order to test it out. With the current file size of modern video games you are looking at a huge download which may take some time depending on how fast your internet is and also how fast xbox lets you download the game (yes its limited). So there is this lag time between finding something you are interested in and actually getting to play it. A GP game can range in size from 20gb to 150 gb in size so you could be waiting a little while before you get to play something new.
I just like new games
Games are not like movies. It usually takes about an hour or 2 before a game gets really interesting and before you get full access to its features. Movies tend to front load themselves to try to catch your interest in the first 10 minutes - plus movies are shorter than games. Even multi-episode mini series are shorter than most games. There are even game trailers you can watch - for free - that allow you to get a taste of what a game is like before you actually play it. Some people get game recommendations from friends but at that point they could just lend you the game if they already bought it. There are game reviews, podcasts, and many ways to find interesting games, GP is probably the worst and most time consuming way. it might even be a trap for unsuspecting gamers. Unless gaming is your only hobby
Hidden limits
If internet speed and file size is not an issue (which you will never know until you are in the thick of it) there are other things that limit what you can actually do on GP. Storage is another major concern If you like huge, graphically intense games like COD or MW you are looking at a 150gb download per game to save on the console's limited data storage of 512 gb. You could delete each game after you test it out or spend extra for additional data storage.
So there are only so many GP games you can have on console at any one time, you can swap between them but never share them with other friends or family. No multi-tv, multi kids, multi-room setup. Let's say in the best scenario you download 6 GP games; you need to slowly search through the list, pick them, you wait for them to download, you play each for a couple hours. By the time you actually get around to trying something else the month of GP would have already expired and you only played 6 games.
It is like having an "all you can eat buffet" but you only have one mouth. A full supermarket but small shopping carts. Of course this is all part of the FOMO. Xbox knows that you can only do so much in one month. Having access to 420 games at one time only seems good on paper. You are fighting a losing battle
Let's say you find a game you like, but then it rotates off the service - what do you do then? You have limited time to play it! So either you buy it or take the risk that it doesn't get delisted and replaced with something random or another old xb360 game.
The FOMO trap
So here is the kicker; you have access to all these games but you cannot play them all - not even 10%. At most you can probably play 10 in a month - but you still get that fever rush because your brain is fooled into thinking you can actually play all of them. You blame yourself for not spending enough time to find the needle in the haystack. It's not totally your fault, because the haystack itself is shifting around slowly in order to mess with your brain - every month there is a new thing, a new day one drop that you must play. It is a similar situation with mobile gaming; there are a mountain of choices but all of them are basically different ways to waste your time. Look out, your month of GP is nearing its end. What do you do? You spent half the month browsing the game list, looking at thumbnails and adjusting filters. Maybe next month you will find that one interesting game or 2 or 3. The cycle repeats.
Conclusion
If you want to put yourself into that kind of situation where you are trapped in a fomo cycle then go right ahead - misery loves company. It's often a case where you are not the one trapped but someone else has unknowingly recommended you into a trap - such is the case with these services. Someone might go in thinking they only going to test out a few games and quit but then flash forward 10 years later you are still paying for a service that you are either not using or keep active just in case something pops up that you "might" like. FOMO = Fear of missing out
Video Games » Review - Hitman - Absolution - Xbox 360
written by owen, published 2025-Feb-08, comment
I was playing Assassin's Creed 2 but my Xbox350E started acting up again - shutting down everytime it tried to read the disc drive. So I popped in a new disc and gave the power supply a few quick taps and it stayed on. I think something is wrong with the power supply - I need to buy a new one at some point.
HitmanA is good. The graphical style is nice and the UI has more buttons that I remember from the PS2 versions. I haven't played them in years so my memory of them might be a bit foggy. I loved HM:BloodMoney and this feels pretty close except with quicktime CQC events. I am playing the game on easy as I mentioned in my overall xbox360 game play strategy. Easy mode makes you a tank but you miss out on the ingame challenges so I will replay each stage on normal after I beat them on easy.
What can I say about Hitman:AB? It is the bomb. The large crowds, cinematic set pieces, shadow filled rooms, the lights, the sound, the chaos when things go sideways, everything really gets turned up compared to the limitations of HM:BM on the PS2. Currently on level 3 but I am fully enjoying this game. So much so that I switched the difficulty to Normal so that I can take advantage of the optional in game challenges in each level. The controls are initially a bit confusing but all the elements are there for a great time. I have replayed the stages a few times and I love that when things go south you can still shoot, salvage or soft reset the level.
I had heard complaints about the more controlled "movie like" nature of this game in comparison to the previous entries but I do not mind it at all. The segmented sections allow for setups that were not possible in the older games. Setups which are like mini-puzzles in a bigger level.
One thing that is annoying is how the xbox achievement pops up at key moments during the game play taking you out of the game. Sometimes the popup even overlaps and you do not get to read the description text before another one appears. Maybe this is just an xbox thing. I eventually turned off xbox notifications of in the system settings - I do not miss them at all.
Conclusion
This is a 9/10 game. Nice and neat. Loads quickly, restarts are quick. Play hitman for the doors and corners. Normal mode is fine. If you love slow paced stealth games this should definitely be in your collection.
overflow_ commented: What's the make and model of the three smartphones? ... read 1 more
Video Games » Review - Borderlands 1 - Xbox 360
written by owen, published 2025-Feb-04, comment
After finishing Rage I felt like continuing my dystopian-mad-max lifestyle so I decided to play Borderlands 1. After hearing about this game for years I was surprised at how "janky" it felt. The game feels "old" right off the bat. You have jank enemies and rabid dogs which are both bullet sponges. Enemies dont react when shot in the face or legs. Considering that the game was released in 2009 versus Rage which is 2011 alot could have improved so I may have played the games in the wrong order.
I started out aiming to play the most recent version of every game series but this game was packaged in a multi-pack with BioShock + Xcom: EU so it was hard to resist combo deal. I probably should have started with BL2(2012) instead but it is too late now. Unless I sell the multi-pack?
The game play
The game is full of stats and random bloat everywhere and NPCs talking over each other if you move around while they are talking. I imagine that this was how it was in the old days before modern games started to lock you into one place whenever you interact with a NPC. The UI for the game is like an old DOS GUI from 1990 - too many lists and sub categories for things that could be icons. There is no obvious way to put the game on easy so I guess I will have to play through this as it is. It starts out with the basic fetch quests in an uninteresting cell shaded wasteland with lots of little collectible chests with $10 or 5$ inside. Total busy work even worse than the bottles in Rage. At least in the case of Rage they were sprinkled lightly around the level instead of in every corner or pile of shit.
I realized early on that there were limits on everything; limits on grenades, weapons you could carry, bullets. Everything is tied to your level progression. I was getting mobile game vibes. Combined with the lack of stopping power from the guns, random drops of slightly better guns, enemies that get harder as you level up. I was getting bad vibes from this game. Returning to the same person after every quest just to get another pointless collect-a-thon in the same place is likely to get boring really fast plus I had to deal with the annoying dogs. Then the dogs started jumping, spitting goo, and creating radial explosions.
I also notice that there is something off about the in game map or how it corresponds to the level layout - its weird and doesn't flow well.
So I played for a couple hours and have come to conclusion that this game is looter shooter-grind fest. The quests are boring and everything is tied to the leveling system. The enemies are always a level or 2 higher than you are and I end up looking for tactics to cheese them instead of approaching them head on. I used the soldier class and even then I found that I had to be very careful when approaching encampments, sniping the first couple enemies then throwing grenades (which are also limited to your level), then camping as the dogs bomb rush me. There is no way to surprise enemies, they magically detect you as soon as you are close.
No way to avoid enemies as the map layout forces you down a narrow path. Frequent stops are further hampered by the clunky interface for collecting loot - because its clunky its very hard to collect the fetch quest items while enemies are in the area. You can accept multiple quests but the questing system is set up in such as way that some items do not appear if you are not on that assigned quest - so you end up visiting an area multiple times, switching from quest screen to map screen, back and forth. I may have mentioned that the map screen is kinda weird. The map is like a representation of the game world but not exactly so causing confusion.
The real kicker for me was when I got a gun that I could not use because its level was higher than my current level. At that point I was done. Not only were you limited in how much you can carry but also which perks you could use and at which point in time. The game is a carefully crafted "waste of time" progression system where you collect random trinkets for NPCs that never move from their assigned location. It is a ancient game loop, this game might have been the original sin. who knows.
Conclusion
I am going to put this game on the back burner. 5/10. Ain't got not time to waste grinding levels for minute rewards and boring enemy Ai. Skip this game, try Borderlands 2 instead.