Fuck you Street Fighter 4, fuck you Seth, and fuck you Chun Li

Good god, why is it that nowadays, real fighting games require that you have a dictionary-like knowledge of how to play them? By real fighting games, I mean fighting games that require some degree of skill. And by dictionary knowledge, I mean memorizing frame advantages and… uh… all that other crazy crap that a hardcore player is expected to know.

I am not a hardcore player. I don’t want to become a hardcore player. But I’d still like to be able to play these deep games and get some enjoyment out of them.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Still broken, bwebs be damned

Just got the Xbox 360 version of Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, and while people have been saying its a big improvement over the original release, I still think the game has a lot of jarring problems. Mind you, I haven’t played a Ninja Gaiden game since the original release on the first Xbox, but this one is just so horribly flawed in comparison. My biggest complaint has to do w/ the boss fights, b/c they’re cheap as hell (QTE’s need to stop – NOW!), but the story itself is damn stupid – Ryu Hayabusa is a ninja, so why the hell is he babysitting a little kid?

Been playing Tomb Raider

After playing through the newest Tomb Raider, I finally picked up Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light on sale via Xbox Live. While playing through the game I felt a strong wave of nostalgia, b/c it reminds me a lot of early PSX games. Besides that, the graphics are great and the game play is fun (love the flame thrower), but it’s not w/o it’s flaws: sometimes the controls felt wonky (either too tight or too sensitive), and the isometric view could be confusing at times. Needless to say, I died a bunch of times b/c I suck at platformers. =P

Oh, and the real bonus? Costumes! Lara’s default tank top already looks great, but they give you a handful of her past costumes as well (Underworld, Legends, etc.).

Ubuntu’s biggest problem? Lack of good documentation

Well, I guess this can apply to a lot of projects out there, but I’ve spent the past 2.5 hours trying to get a simple email checking program working in Ubuntu 12.04. I originally wrote it in python but wanted to try redoing it in C for practice/fun, but good gravy, Canonical really needs to work on their documentation for all their distro-specific APIs. All my python script does is hook into the messaging menu and displays how many unread emails you have, and it runs every 15min. using a simple GTK backend (timeout_add() to be precise).

Running wireshark w/o root

Geez, this has turned out to be a real headache: configuring wireshark to run properly on linux (re: capture packet data) w/o having to run it as root. Obviously, the easiest thing to do is just run it using sudo, but as wireshark will tell you in a pop-up message, that’s not a good (re: secure) way of doing it. Instead it says to modify dumpcap, the small program that actually captures packet data, to run as root only, leaving the rest of wireshark proper to run w/ normal user privileges.

Finally put my old laptop out to pasture

Years back when I was starting college I saved up my cash to buy a Dell Inspiron B130, which served me well back then. Admittedly, I probably used it for watching movies more than anything else, but I got some school work out of it. Off the top of my head, I think the specs were to the tune of a 1.6GHz Pentium CPU (no idea if it was dual core or not), 256MB of RAM (yikes!), a 60GB(?) HDD, and a 15-17 inch monitor. It originally came installed w/ Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6, which worked fine for me… until the battery died.

Finally beat Final Fantasy 13

Was 2 years in the making (I quit near the end in my original game), but I’ve finally beaten Final Fantasy 13. Man, I can’t even remember the last time I beat an RPG… back when I was in college, I guess. Anyway, I was very surprised by the last boss fight: if you try to play safely, then you’ll have a hard time. However, if you just throw all caution to the wind and start wailing on it, the fight is actually pretty easy.

So cheers! And I guess bring on Final Fantasy 13-2?

Less sleep, more coding, and roadblock after roadblock

I’ve basically been wired for the past week, as I’ve jumped head-first into writing my second Android app (a comic viewer). Seeing as how I’m targeting android 3.0+ but want to support back to 2.2, I’ve had a lot of trouble trying to wrap my brain around the new development paradigm: fragments. Needless to say, I’m still not sure if I like them or not.

Key to android development: don’t let yourself get rusty

Ok, ok, so you can say that about pretty much anything, but having spent the last 2-3 months not doing any android development, it’s hard finally coming back to it. I’m working on my first android 3.0 app (a comic book reader), and I’ve just spent the better part of the evening wrapping my head around the use of fragments.

Turning out to be a big year for videogames

Here I was trying to kick the old videogame habit, and they go and announce a bunch of new games that I’m interested in! So far my picks for the year are:

1. Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City
2. Resident Evil: Revelations
3. Resident Evil 6
4. Lolipop Chainsaw
5. Onechanbara Z: Kagura
6. Persona: The Ultimate in Mayonaka Arena
7. One-Piece: Pirate Warriors
8. Code of Princess

And games I might consider once they hit the bargin bin:

1. Soul Calibur 6
2. Final Fantasy X-2

Now to get a PS3 and 3DS…