zerolight

Now my impressions of the 360’s E3 showing are nothing but positive. I’m going to be selling off a lot of games to fund my post E3 must have list. Assasin’s Creed looks exceptionally promising. Mass Effect is essential. PGR4 looks glorious. Although I have no desire to go online with Halo 3’s multiplayer component, the recent footage of the single player campaign (possibly online co-op) has confirmed that as a necessary purchase. So Halo 3 and PGR4 in September, Mass Effect in November, and of course GTA IV in October – all for the 360 – not to mention Pro Evo Soccer before the end of the year too. Perhaps GTA and Pro Evo might be PS3 purchases. Perhaps the PS3 will go to fund the habit? We’ll soon find out.

I just love Forza 2, and not just for the superb physics engine, I’m having a right good time painting my cars too. I acquired a nice Anime style cartoon paint job (curiously unlocked in the Auction House) which I’ve heavily modified (layout, colours, shading, gradients, the whole shebang…) such that it barely resembles the original now. It’s become my paint job of choice on most of my cars… in some form or another.

I was bidding on an absolutely stunning little Mini for a while in Forza 2’s virtual equivalent of eBay until the price went beyond my means, ditto on a 350z that was bonkersly pretty. Then along came a nice little Mini, which granted, isn’t as pretty as the one I was after, but I got it for a song whilst everyone else was chasing the other 2. Not long afterwards I found the more expensive (but still affordable) Dragon Ball Z Skyline. I’ve added all my upgrades and car setups to each and taken snap shots on Tsukuba. Check out more of my cars here.

edit:

As a big fan of Stussy T-shirts (I have many) I decided to try my hand at a custom paint job using Stussy’s Arc Skull design as a base. I’m pretty happy with the result, which I think is a fairly accurate representation of the Arc Skull design. It can’t compete with the Japanese Anime inspired cars I bought from the auction house, and as such isn’t something I’m going to be able to sell – I’ve tried. However, given my love of all things Stussy, it’s an appropriate design to apply to my own cars.

So I’ve had the weekend to get the single player experience under my belt… it’s very very good. Not sure what planet IGN were on. I’ve focused on the offline career mode because it’s unusual for me to have so much 360 time these days, certainly won’t as of Monday, and so figured I’d get some cars bought, modded, and tuned, ready to race the lickers – some of whom will have plenty time to quickly amass a garage far bigger than mine.

Offline, some of the races are challenging, others a bit easy. Depends on the race restrictions really. Often, you just cruise off into the distance and chase lap records. But them, I bought this for the long term online prospects. I’ve been playing medium difficulty, all aids off, full sim damage.

A modded car has radically improved braking, better cornering, and more stability than those cars available in the demo. Those of you worried about driving without aids, don’t worry. It’s also easy to setup a car… I usually just shorten the gear ratios, tweak the rear anti-roll bar (especially in a FWD car), and soften the tires. Works for me, most of the time anyway.

It initially takes time to earn money, especially since your “prize cars” are worthless. You can’t even get rid of them in the auction house, as all regions get the same prize cars, so nobody wants them. Thankfully, some of them are worth keeping. Tip: Take care what you buy in the auction house, as I say, it’s full of “prize cars”… I have two Sparco Evo VIII’s after winning one.

Quickly you’ll amass cars… I have at least 6 tuned to perfection, and another dozen in prize cars waiting for mods. Once up at level 10 or so and things start to open up bit… races worth more money come thick and fast.

Graphically, most of the tracks are excellent, with Suzuka being particularly gorgeous. All are excellent to race on, as are their many variations which create numerous Tsukuba length tracks. The only weak track in the game is NYC. All have great draw distances by the way, even Silverstone. Jaggies aren’t as bad as the demo, and certainly nowhere near as intrusive as IGN would have you believe.

My favoured cars thus far are my tuned A class Gallardo, B class Impreza, A class Sparco Evo, and D class Mini Cooper S. Infact the Mini is better than anything I’ve built in C class, so I’ve just made a second Mini specifically for C.

Audio is especially impressive… the noise these cars make when modded can only be described as awesome. Modify your car, and the audio changes with each addition.

All in all, best racer ever. No question.

I was fairly excited about this new firmware update for the PS3, but it turns out to be a bit of a let down. Sure, Blu-Ray playback now supports 720p saving me switching resolutions betweem games and movies. Sure, it upscales DVDs (my Xbox360 has been doing that since day one). But what of the media streaming?

DNLA? I’d never heard of that until yesterday. UPnP? Yep, you need that too… shame it clashes with my NAT settings for Xbox360 and PS3 online gaming. So I enabled UPnP on my PS3 and router, then installed and configured TwonkyMedia’s UPnP Media Server on the Mac, because you need some form of DNLA/UPnP Media Server on your PC or Mac to make it work. Finally, I tried to stream media from the Mac to the PS3 – simple stuff like photos, mp3s, the odd movie. Did it work? Nope, but as expected, UPnP fudged up my NAT settings on the Xbox360. And I’m pretty tech-savvy. This is for the masses?

Hopefully Nullriver will update Connect360, to work with the PS3. Should we really have to buy additional software to make these “connected” consoles connect? XBMC, a homebrew application for the old Xbox, is still the best option for streaming content from a PC or Mac to the TV. Is there really anything wrong with plain old Windows or Samba File Sharing?