Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 vs Fifa 2008 (Xbox 360) Feb 24 2008
So once again this year a decision was required as to which of the annual football (soccer for some of you) video games I’d get for the 360. I didn’t particularly fancy getting both, and I’ve traditionally always sided with Pro Evolution Soccer titles - despite the lack of licenses meaning many of the teams haven’t got the right names, kits and players etc, the actual dynamic within the game means it’s a better, more fluid football game. This year was different though, and after playing both demos, I went with Fifa. I was very impressed with the full game, and besides the presentation and polish that I’ve come to expect from EA sports games, I was happy that in fact EA had finally nailed a decent football dynamic within the game. The excellent commentary, the full league and team licenses, and the superb online leagues only add to what is essentially a great football game. Each game played is a delight to play, and the football often looks like I’m watching a game on TV. The graphics are exceptional, but the flow is like the real deal, and it means that sometimes you’ll struggle to break down a defence, and other times you’ll find a way to smash in a 30 yard screamer. Momentum is a big factor, and you’ll often find yourself under frequent attack, finding it hard to get the ball, and having to play on the counter-attack. A few decent interceptions later though, and the momentum might have shifted, leaving you able to mount a barrage of attacks yourself. It’s a joy to play.
Which brings me to Pro Evolution Soccer 2008. I decided to rent PES 2008 a week or two ago, to give the game a quick go, see if I had made the right decision in choosing Fifa, and also to grab those all important achievements. While I thought Fifa had the edge this year, I didn’t realise until I played the full version of PES 2008 just how big the gap was - and how badly Konami had mangled the latest version of the game. Playing the game is frustrating, as it no longer feels like fluid football as in previous versions. The passing is awkward, and the overall play disjointed. Your team-mates often make silly mistakes with their runs, making it hard to break open a defence with a decent through ball without being caught offside. The AI for the referees and linesmen is also bad, making frequent mistakes, which while not completely unrealistic, is frustrating because of just how often these errors occur. These errors include deflections off of defending players being missed, with goal kicks being given instead of corners. Fouls will often be given for little or no reason, while opposition players can sometimes mercilessly bring down one of your guys without intervention. And even despite the dodgy team-mate AI, sometimes you will put through a perfect through ball, only to find that it is called as offside anyway. This is all before going online, whereby the problems get worse. I’m not quite sure how the netcode for this game got so bad in just a year (PES 6 wasn’t perfect, but it was playable). Most games online that I played were almost unplayable, meaning that each game ultimately resulted in luck. That’s fine when it goes your way - but to be dribbling towards the opponents box, suddenly for the game to jitter, and find that the opposition player has just rounded your keeper and stuck it in the back of the net, is verging on the ridiculous. It seems as though the network code is so bad, that the game will literally drop five to six seconds of play before syncing back up, meaning one player is generally left completely vulnerable. I played through a number of games to get some of the basic online achievements, but I’d find it hard to stick with it for any length of time without destroying my Xbox 360 controller with rage.
So to sum up, it seems as though this last year’s Pro Evo was definitely a step back. The creator of the series I believe came out and said that it wasn’t ready, but Konami pushed for it to be released, and that the next edition in the series will be a complete rewrite, which sounds like a good idea. However there’s no way that a rewrite could be finished by October/November when the next annual version generally surfaces, and so unless they choose to skip a year with Pro Evo, I think the series will struggle to get back on track. Meanwhile, Fifa have got it all right, with a brilliant, fluid football game, combined with superb presentation, all of the licenses you could want for a football game, and some really fun online features. I think it’s inevitable that the games have to look more to online play as they evolve, but Fifa is in pole position, while Pro Evo needs to go back to the drawing board to attempt to win back players like me.
Thoughts on the Apple announcements Jan 17 2008
Here are just a few thoughts on all the gear that Apple announced on Tuesday - I meant to jot this down yesterday but didn’t get chance.
I think overall, the keynote disappointed me and interested me in equal measures. First up, the Apple Time Capsule was announced. This is quite cool - it’s basically their 802.11n AirPort router re-worked to include a hard-drive. As I currently run an all-in-one ADSL modem/router, it’d be a bit of a pain, as there is no built in DSL modem in this bit of kit, so I’d need to buy one separately and hook it up. However it is a clever idea, as wireless backup is going to be infinitely more useful than wired backup for the legion of Apple MacBook users (myself included). I’ve been on the lookout for a while for a decent NAS, preferably wireless, although above and beyond Time Machine backups, I’m not certain you can use any other space on the Time Capsule drive for run-of-the-mill storage. I’d also be looking for some decent media capabilities from any NAS I pickup (DLNA compliant, iTunes streaming etc). So while the Time Capsule idea is interesting, it has to be said that it’s feature set seems somewhat limited - it seems to be firmly targeted at doing just backups, whereas I think there is definitely a market for a similar product that adds some clever media server and NAS functionality.
Next up, was the iPhone and iPod Touch updates. As an iPhone user, this seemed quite cool - I was however hoping for a beta of the SDK, or some early 3rd party native apps to be announced too. The iPhone update (1.1.3) adds some nice features, although it looks like the cell triangulation doesn’t work over here in the UK (I’m guessing it’s USA first, rest of the world later). We do have the ‘my location’ button however. Perhaps it works in certain areas of the country, or they are thinking it’ll come online fairly soon. The WebClips are a great idea, and being able to organise the home screen really reminds you that the iPhone is so much more than a phone - it’s a brilliant little machine, and even without the SDK, some great apps can now be written to look native to the iPhone, and with a WebClip shortcut, you’d be hard pushed to tell the difference (unless the phone is offline, of course). The iPod Touch update seemed an obvious one - the $20 charge wasn’t quite so obvious. I think that’s a tough sell really, and it’s hard to see exactly why Apple have done it (other than perhaps to give iPod Touch users a reason to save the $20, and save for an iPhone instead maybe). It’s certainly a silly price to put on an update that’ll let you check your mail - but only when you’re in a WiFi hotspot. I’m sure the update will be useful for some however.
Thirdly, was the movie rentals and Apple TV 'take two’. On the movie rental front, this was largely useless being in the UK and all - apart from the obligatory sentence 'US for now, international later in the year’. Outside of all the hype, it’s important to remember that us Europeans that happen to have Xbox 360’s have been through all this before, with the Video Marketplace first coming to the US around 18 months ago, before finally coming online for us shortly before Christmas. I think it’ll really come down to the content that each service offers when iTunes movie rentals finally launches over here, but seeing as I’m yet to use the Xbox 360 video marketplace, it isn’t a particularly big deal for me regardless of when they get their act together. I like the idea of downloading movies, but I’d far rather download to keep, than rent (something that seems to only be available again, in the US, through iTunes). And the movie studios are going to have to realise that people aren’t going to pay the same they do for a physical DVD, to download the movie, especially when it’s released AFTER the DVD. Downloading movies over the net is effectively cutting out physical media and distribution costs, and a retail middleman - it’s high time that this was reflected in the prices given to consumers.
The Apple TV 'take two’ does seem like a good idea, and I like Apple’s rather refreshing 'we made a mess of it first time out’ stance. I also like that it’s simply a software update, and that there’s a price reduction (although more on price later). However I still think that there’s a couple of things that could help it really take off. They should provide 'Apple TV’ as a software-only package to install and run on other Mac’s - many people custom build media solutions using beefier Mac Mini’s, so that they can include more storage, a quicker machine (for things like HD decoding), and TV tuners. On top of a 'software+hardware’ bundle, they could effectively offer 'Apple TV’ as a piece of software on DVD (or available via digital distribution?) for order on the Apple store as usual. This might increase the take-up on the software itself, and would get more people looking at using iTunes movie purchase and rentals, as well as buying iTunes music straight from their TV. Seeing as how they’ve just radically overhauled the product without touching the hardware, I think it’s obvious that the product is the software itself, and decoupling it from the hardware could push the idea over the edge.
Lastly in the keynote, and most disappointingly - the MacBook Air. Don’t get me wrong - it looks incredible, and from a design standpoint is great. I also think the specs are about right, and think that the multi-touch trackpad is a great idea. However with all of the rumours in the build-up, there was definitely a sense that something really radical could be announced - not just a marvel of design, but something that technologically pushes the boundaries. I think that being able to cram a computer that powerful into something so light and thin is brilliant, but with the 'Air’ name, and the slogans surrounding 'cables not included’, I sensed that Apple was about to do something special. Something like induction charging, thereby waving goodbye to the power cable. Now of course this kind of technology is still very early stage, but if anyone was going to take it and run with it to drive innovation and consumer adoption, it would be Apple. Imagine not having to run a power cable to your laptop! The other potentially gamechanging rumour that was floating around was having a wireless broadband solution built-in to the machine, either EDGE (like the iPhone), or even 3G, or perhaps even a way to share the iPhone’s EDGE connection over Bluetooth. This would have been groundbreaking, and it would have meant that the new laptop they were announcing, like the iPhone, was usable anywhere. With the iPhone connection sharing option, it could have driven iPhone adoption too. That doesn’t mean that at some point I won’t look at getting a MacBook Air - I think it looks like a decent piece of kit. But I just think with the hype that they knew the rumour mill would crank out prior to MacWorld, having something with one or both of these incredible technologies in might have pushed the keynote over the edge - instead, with the lack of a 'One More Thing’, and the economy as fragile as it is, Apple stock took a tumble. It’s also worth mentioning that the Air does have a few hurdles - notably, it’d be interesting to see how hot it runs (remember the original MacBook’s and MBP’s?), and also with the lack of an optical drive (not including the optional, clunky external superdrive), the 'remote disk sharing’ feature touted needs to work really well.
That was it for the keynote, although there is one other bit I want to touch on - pricing. I mentioned while talking about the Apple TV price reduction that I’d come back on to pricing, and the reason is because once again it seems that us in the UK are getting a raw deal. Now it’s possible that it’s the same elsewhere internationally, but speaking just for myself when browsing these new goodies on the Apple store, the price difference between here and the US is staggering. For example, the base MacBook Air over in the States can be pre-ordered for $1799. At the current exchange rate (1.891), this would put it at £951.35. However, on the Apple UK store, pre-ordering the MacBook Air costs a whopping £1199! That’s a difference of £167.65, on the base model alone (and an increase of around 26%). And to doubly illustrate my point, how about the cheapest Apple TV, shortly to be updated with 'take two’? In the US, the 40 GB Apple TV is available for $229, which is the reduced price. This equates to £121.10. In the UK, we will pay £199 for the same thing. That’s an increase of 64%, for the same item! This has been going on for years with Apple gear, and they usually give some excuse about VAT and the added cost of doing business in Europe. But the notion that that has to result in a 25% to 65% increase in various prices is crazy. The bottom line is that as a fan of Apple products, I definitely think that they could do better to bring prices down over here so that comparing the UK and US stores wasn’t quite so frustrating :-)
So over-all then, the SteveNote at MacWorld this year had some good points (innovative Time Capsule, cool looking MacBook Air, iPhone update), and some bad points (lack of innovation on new MacBook bar the design, movie rentals being US only for the time being, new gear being completely over-priced over here). Still, the circus that is Steve Jobs giving a keynote (this year completely bringing Twitter down) is always fun and worth following. Looking forward to the announcement of the iPhone SDK next!
rsync Jan 14 2008
Switched to using rsync to deploy this blog now. Since I re-wrote the blogging software to generate a simple static html site, I needed an easy way to deploy. I was using a Capistrano-esque method of deploying the entire site to dated directories (‘200801142252’, for example), and then I was simply symlinking the public web directory to the most recent release. This has the benefit of being able to quickly roll-back to previous releases (handy when doing major template changes etc), but having to re-deploy the entire site every time I wrote a post wasn’t really very efficient. So I’ve changed it to use the rather brilliant rsync to maintain the site on the webserver now. From my ruby code, I just shell out to rsync as follows:
`rsync -avzr -e ssh #{LOCAL_PATH}/* #{REMOTE_USER}@#{REMOTE_HOST}:#{REMOTE_PATH}`
This runs rsync in verbose, archive mode, using compression, and runs recursively. It specifies the local path, and the remote path for use over ssh (I was using scp over ssh before anyway). It’ll prompt for the password on the command line (although you could setup and specify a key to use with the ssh connection to avoid that). This solution will then keep the local and remote paths in sync, and will mean I can update the blog much more easily and quickly. Hopefully that’ll mean a few more regular posts coming soon… :-)
Updates Dec 21 2007
I’ve decided to stick with the static html for this blog, as it has made the site nice and quick, and let’s face it, the content doesn’t change all that often :-p Seriously however, I will be attempting to post a little more often that I have recently, and I’ve now finished a simple command line publishing tool to enable me to blog and push out changes to the site. I’ve made a few changes already, and re-implemented comments using the Disqus comment system (http://www.disqus.com/), so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll be using Twitter for more regular, shorter updates (http://twitter.com/edraper), and am hoping to stick more technical articles up here over the coming months, time allowing.
CommentsLong time no see Oct 24 2007
So it’s been over seven months since my last post. I’ve been pretty busy since then, planning the wedding and honeymoon for a number of months with my bride to be all the way up to the big day back in September. We had a fantastic day, everything went to plan, and my wife looked absolutely breathtaking. We then spent two incredible weeks in Hawaii, which was perfect. We’ve been back a couple of weeks and already it all seems a distant memory as I’ve been busy non-stop with alsorts of stuff going on. I’m loving married life though! I’ve moved this blog to a different host (more on that in the next post), and I’m hoping to drop the occasional post here, summing up some of the cool stuff from the last few months, as well as anything else that pops up. In case I don’t get around to putting a post up here though, I’m now twittering (who isn’t?) at http://twitter.com/edraper. Feel free to follow me there for more regular updates. That is all.
CommentsBlog move Oct 24 2007
As some people may have noticed, the blog is now a lot quicker and more responsive. I have moved it to Joyent shared hosting, from my dedicated server, however I’ve generated all of the pages to static html, which makes the whole thing a lot faster. I can then just write a new post, like this, and re-generate the site… Not sure yet if I’ll keep it running like this, or re-write a dynamic version that’s a bit speedier than the last one. Watch this space.
CommentsFlying High Mar 19 2007
Looks like 37signals latest product is up and running, although no official announcement yet so I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be. Looks pretty sweet though, and the main product site is as professional and swish as all of the other products. Highrise, check it out.
CommentsHot Routes Feb 10 2007
Last day or so I’ve come up against a couple of intriguing Rails problems while trying to knock up some plugins for an app I’m writing. I’ll write up the second of the two problems later, but here goes the first…
Put simply, I wanted to define a route within my plugin. My plugin implemented a controller (and also contained a view for that controller, see one of the latest features to hit edge Rails ahead of Rails 2.0).
I searched to try and see if anyone had come up against a similar task, but didn’t see any concrete answers. My testing led me to realise that every time a call to ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw is made, it completely clears and re-generates routes based on the block passed to that method. So simply calling draw with a new block containing my required route wouldn’t work; it’d overwrite other routes, or end up getting overwritten by other routes later in the chain.
I then figured it was time to get cracking with some meta-programming, and that I was going to have to re-define and extend the draw method in order to be able to map the routes I want, and do it in a way that’d be flexible and fair to the original Rails routes file, and other plugins that wanted to toy around with routing. I came up with the following:
module ActionController
module Routing
class RouteSet
alias draw_old draw
def draw
draw_old do |map|
map.connect "controller/action", :controller => "mycontroller", :action => "myaction"
yield map
end
end
end
end
end
Let’s give this a quick run-through… I’m re-opening the ActionController::Routing module, and specifically the RouteSet class where the draw method exists. I’m using alias to copy the existing draw method to a method name “draw_old”, before re-defining the draw method itself. Within my version of the draw method, I’m calling the old one and passing it a block that firstly defines the routes I wanted to add to the application, and that then yields the appropriate mapper object back to any block passed in to the draw method itself. Dependent on where you want your route to appear in the scheme of things, you could always map your plugins custom routes after you yield the mapper to the calling block, so that they appear after any other routes. Another tweak would be to alias the existing draw method to something like “draw_old_APPNAME”, where APPNAME is the name of your application. This would ensure that if multiple plugins implemented something similar, that they then wouldn’t clash.
There may be a better way to tackle the problem, but after half an hour of working the problem over (mad props to my boy Mike for helping me tweak the solution into something useful and re-usable), I think I came up with a pretty solid answer, and with a bit more time, something that could probably be wrapped up into a module or plugin all of its very own. Bottom line? Ruby as a language rocks, the dynamic nature and meta-programming features opens whole new doors of functional programming to me, and I’m having to really think outside of the box to see some of the amazing things you can do with it.
Debuggering Feb 5 2007
This is a pretty nice idea, and looks like a really useful tool. It’s in a fairly early stage, but it is shaping up to be quite nice. Think I’ll grab it, take a look, and see if I can help out somehow…
CommentsReview: Xbox 360 Feb 2 2007
A couple of days ago I said that I had gotten an Xbox 360 for Christmas. I have quite a few games for it, and plan on reviewing the best of the bunch over the coming days, but I thought I’d start with a brief review of the machine itself.
First, a disclaimer. I hadn’t really been interested in the 360 at launch. The PlayStation 2 walked all over the original Xbox, but that was all so last-gen. Before internet play (no, seriously - you can’t count the PS2s meagre ‘network play’ or the original Xbox Live). Before hi-definition gaming. Before the consoles turned into media center behemoths.
The fact is, as I was eagerly awaiting the PlayStation 3 towards the end of last year, I started to seriously consider the Xbox 360 as a contender, whereas previously I had discounted it. I was a Sony fanboy, but after finding out that the so-called worldwide simultaneous launch had been forgotten and replaced with the more traditional USA/Japan first, rest of the world later approach, I was disappointed. I consoled (pun intended) myself with coverage of the US and Japanese launches - which didn’t make me feel much better. The launches went horribly for Sony, with next to no supply, scuffles and fights outside the few stores that did have stock, and a pretty terrible game line-up. With problems abound on the firmware front, I suddenly thought to myself - do I really want to wait until March, and pay a huge amount of money for the European equivalent? I started looking at the Xbox 360, and realised that after a year, it had settled at a far more reasonable price, had an excellent game line-up, most hardware and firmware issues had been resolved, and there was a superb collection of online content. With Christmas coming up, I dropped a few hints, and sure enough under our tree on the 25th was a nice shiny Microsoft Xbox 360…
So I’d done a u-turn, and got myself a hi-definition media center gaming machine to go with my hi-definition TV. I hooked it up, connected the wireless adapter so it could get on my network without cat-5 cable everywhere, and powered it on. The fabled ring-of-light whirled round, and I steadily worked through the setup and configuration. Typing in my WEP key with the keypad was fun, but once I’d done that, setup a profile, and then setup an Xbox Live account (with two free months on Xbox Live Gold!), I was now ready for some serious gaming. I had gotten a fair few games with the console as part of my present, so it was tough to know where to begin… I popped in Rockstars’ Table Tennis, and began.
Immediately I knew I had made the right choice - the graphics were crisp and gorgeous looking, and the gameplay itself was fantastic. More on this game, and the others, in later reviews - but let it be known that every game I’ve played has graphics that far exceeded my expectations. Coming from my experiences playing Wolf3D, Doom and Quake on the PC as a kid, this stuff is mindblowing. It’s truly immersive to have graphics that good…
So what else is good about the Xbox experience, bar the games themselves? The Xbox Live service is fantastic, and it’s so relaxing to be able to simply pop in Pro Evolution Soccer 6, flick the Quick Match button, and be playing against someone from around the world in just seconds. The matchmaking is second to none, and the central gamertag idea that ties it all together, alongside a decent review/reputation system, makes it a very enjoyable experience.
But the most impressive idea of all, is the notion of achievements, and gamerscore. As Gears of War guru CliffyB said recently, “it’s nerd cred”. You get nothing for the score per se, however that doesn’t stop you working through games like a task list, picking off achievements and racking up your gamerscore. It brings real structure to your gaming sessions, as you “just try to win one more game” to reach an achievement, or “get ten headshots in a row” for another achievement. It gives your gaming a purpose, and while it may not be for everyone, I enjoy the challenges each game poses immensely.
So for those who haven’t guessed already, I’m impressed. It’s a great console, and exactly what I was looking for. After a hard day’s work faffing around with computers, it’s refreshing to have a true plug'n'play gaming experience. I can go online and play some dude at table tennis, run around with seven other guys wielding chainsaws, or take a gamble on a 4 and 1 play at my own 21 yard line, and nail a giant reception for the game winning touchdown. Anything and everything is possible, and the Xbox platform as a whole has a very, very bright future.
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