voyage to mars
Okay, so the deed is done, and I've switched hosting from HostMe (not good) to Lunarpages (hopefully very good). StartLogic was a bit cheaper, but Lunarpages appears to have excellent FAQs and forums to help helpless newbies like myself, and they also come highly recommended.
Expect downtime in the next few days as things are switched around, poked and prodded, and I screw up everything by clicking the wrong button. Twice.
Hopefully I can make everything link up correctly so that Voyage To Mars remains in the same place, but with a new TypePad look, and all the old Blogger pages are still accessible on my site. Any suggestions?
(I'll also be doing a bit of double-posting while the transition is happening, so that existing links to this page will still remain valid. Like I said, during these times of chaos, you'll want to check out my
TypePad blog.)
Argh! Blogger must die!
Let's try this one more time, and pray that the post doesn't get devoured by Big Bad Blogger. Because that just happened. Again.
I'm most likely going to make some big changes around here, so if RagnarTornquist.com stops working during the next week or so, point your browsers to the following address:
http://ragnartornquist.typepad.com/voyage_to_mars/
This is a
temporary solution that I'm testing out, but it may end up being a
permanent solution. In that case, www.ragnartornquist.com will be redirected to the TypePad address. Or something like that. See, I'm Mr Stupid when it comes to this stuff, and if anyone out there has the Mad Skillz - and the time - to help me out, let me know. I honestly don't know what I'm doing, and I really don't have the time - nor the brain cells - to learn everything I need to do it right.
Time to cross my fingers and click 'publish'. Eek.
Edit: Nope, it ain't working. I can't publish anything, and I've made my final decision. Bye-bye Blogger, hello...something else. For the time being, TypePad's where you'll find me.
Blogger has gone completely loco this past week, and I've been unable to post anything from anywhere. I have a few posts in the pipeline, but unfortunately I cannot access them at the moment. I'll probably be switching to another blogging tool in the near future - as well as a new web host - so if you arrive at this site and find, well,
nothing, don't be alarmed. I'll be back.
It's been a while since my last round of bullet reviews, so here are some brief thoughts on the games I've been
wasting my time on playing lately:
God of War (PS2).
Devil May Cry meets
Prince of Persia. On acid. The kind of acid that makes you really surly. There's violence, there's sex - interactive sex, even - there's some annoying platforming bits, and there are
Dragon's Lair type boss encounters. It's gotten some
amazing reviews, and while it
is a ton of fun (in small portions), I feel the hype isn't completely justified. I don't know, maybe I'm just too old to get a kick out of bare breasts, buckets of blood, and a surly anti-hero. Why-oh-why must Kratos be so angry all the time? Where's the love?
Brothers in Arms (Xbox). I was really looking forward to this one, and while it's certainly not a
bad game, it's not one I've been itching to dig back into. I don't quite know why. Maybe it's because, despite the setting - fields, roads, forests - it feels very restrictive. Low hedges and rickety fences work like solid walls, and you are, in effect, still running down corridors. There's no more freedom in this game than there is in
DOOM 3. I will return to it one of these days, and hopefully I'll be able to get into it more, but for the time being: eh.
Lumines (PSP). More addictive than crack. Great back-to-the-basics gameplay, great visuals, great music. Worth getting a PSP for, especially if you travel a lot.
Ridge Racer (PSP). The best portable racer
ever - although that's not saying much. It looks, sounds, and feels like a proper console game, and wouldn't look amiss on the PS2. It's the best installment in the series since the original PlayStation version...but I'm not totally convinced that a game like this works well on a small screen and with the PSP's somewhat twitchy analog 'joystick'. As a tech demo, it's fantastic. As a game? I would've preferred to play this one on my TV. But it's still an amazing thing to behold.
Wipeout Pure (PSP). This is a tough one, because it's a very unforgiving game, and it's not casual friendly. It's hard. You bounce into things. You lose. A lot. You need to invest time in this one before it gets good, which seems sort of counterproductive to that whole portable idea. Traditionally, handheld games were supposed to be quick to pick up, get into, and enjoy.
Wipeout isn't. But it looks and sounds stunning, and the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, so I guess I need to put a bit more time and effort into it. And the PSP ain't a GameBoy. The rules have changed.
Tiger Woods (PSP). I loves my golf games - hell, I even enjoyed the DS version - and this one's pretty good. Little has been lost in the translation, and, again, it does look very nice. It's not the game I curl up on the couch with, but it's perfect for those looong plane rides, transfers, and rainy days in hotel rooms. Recommended.
All in all, it's been a good couple of months for gaming, and the PSP's launch lineup has been nothing short of stunning. Few consoles have ever launched with so many must-own titles, and Sony's done a bang-up job with their little prodigy.
Next time:
Gran Turismo 4,
Jade Empire, and the Xbox version of
DOOM 3.
Fortunately (or
unfortunately?), yesterday's post was a Big Fat Lie. While I would love to see a portable
Dreamfall (the PSP would probably be a better fit than the DS, considering the visuals and the audio), I cringe at the thought of Dr. Boll getting his disturbingly incompetent hands on our universe. A
Dreamfall movie might happen at some point - there is interest - but not now, and not from the man who put the final nail in the coffin of Christian Slater's 'career'.
I'm really, really excited to be sharing some awesome
Dreamfall-related news with you today. I've been sworn to secrecy by our PR department for several months now, but I've finally been given the go-ahead to make a couple of really cool announcements, so here goes:
First off, in addition to the PC and Xbox versions of the game, our recently established production office in Beijing has just begun development on a Nintendo DS version! Due for release (hopefully, fingers crossed, etc.) before Christmas, the portable version will be a classic 2D adventure game utilising the DS's dual screens to their full effect. The touch-screen will display the location and the characters in an isometric view, while the top screen will be used for dialogue, cinematics, maps, quest journal, and other pertinent information. The game will feature a unique and revolutionary 'point-and-tap' control system, our patented focus field feature, and even a voice recognition interface. The DS is the perfect fit for a classic adventure, and purists should definitely check this one out.
Secondly - and this is a biggie -
Dreamfall is headed to the silver screen! German auteur
Uwe Boll, the mastermind behind such classics as
House of the Dead and
Alone in the Dark, will write and direct the adaptation, which (for budgetary reasons) will be set in modern-day Berlin, and shot in Romania. It's still early, and the script is being written as we speak, but Dr. Boll is courting
Michelle Rodriguez for the role of Zoë Castillo, while April Ryan might be played by none other than
Milla Jovovich! The second I know more, I'll post it here, so keep checking back.
The official announcements will be made on Monday, but I just wanted to give y'all a heads up, just 'cause. Keep it real, people, and check back tomorrow for more breaking news!
Aaand I'm back in Norway. Again. I am the human yo-yo, and the Atlantic Ocean is my string. I'm staying put for over a month now, which feels like a luxury. A weekend at home! I can finally vacuum!
The trip was great, despite the mostly awful 'spring' (pft!) weather in New York. I wish I could have stayed another week, but work beckons, and the road to E3 is getting shorter by the day.
Dreamfall will have a sizeable presence at the show, and the game needs to look absolutely top notch. More on that later.
I promised to say a few words about
Monty Python's Spamalot, but I never got around to it, so here goes: The show was great, and I laughedalot. The first half stuck very close to the original movie's script - the movie being, of course,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - but the second half was a bit more adventurous, and all the better for it. (After all, I've seen the movie a dozen times, and know the funnies by heart; there's only so much amusement you can get out of seeing the same sketches re-enacted on stage.) The spoofy musical bits were, for the most part, right on the mark, and the actors were suitable Pythonesque. It's absolutely worth catching, if you're into that sort of thing (musicals and Monty Python, that is).
On the negative side, they left out my favourite line from the movie: "On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place."
So I got my hands on not one, not two, but
three Sony PSPs yesterday, as well as a solid selection of software. The best of the lot was
Lumines, a Tetris-like puzzler that has proven to be very addictive.
I secured the first PSP by standing in line outside Best Buy for one-and-a-half very chilly hours, which wasn't half as bad as it sounds. The other two I purchased at Circuit City, where the lines were a lot shorter, and where they still had some in stock yesterday evening. Lesson learned: Go to Circuit City. Apparently, no one else does. Those who tried their luck at either GameStop or Electronics Boutique were out of it. (Luck, that is.) They'd pre-sold every single unit, and laughed mockingly at anyone who dared to walk in and ask for one.
So how is it? The screen is magnificent. It's sharp and clear and oh-so-susceptible to dust, fingerprint, and scratches. The whole unit feels very expensive and high-end. The buttons are solid, though the analog 'nub' will take some getting used to. The speakers are adequate, but headphones are a prerequisite. The games? They look like PS2 games, no question about it. This is one powerful system. The DS will, unfortunately, languish in handheld ghetto - at least until Nintendo come out with some better games. I don't know if I'll be using the PSP for movies; I'm definitely not going to buy any on UMD, though I might transfer TV shows to a Memory Stick. (If you have a Mac, I can recommend
PSPWare. It's a great - and cheap - applet for transferring music, videos, and photos to your PSP.)
Ultimately, the PSP's future will depend on the games, and it looks like that's as close to a sure thing as it gets, with games like
Grand Theft Auto on the horizon. Nintendo must be shaking in their pants.
Firefox is really starting to piss me off. It's become my browser-of-choice on all my computers, PCs and Mac, and it's a world beyond Explorer in functionality and speed...but it keeps hanging. Whenever I hit a page with lots of Flash and/or Java applets, Firefox gets bogged down, and eventually it doesn't respond to input at all. If I leave it alone for a few minutes (minutes!), it usually recovers, but unless I navigate away from the troublesome sites, it'll just hang again. And again. And again. The IGN sites, in particular, seem to trip Firefox up, and those are sites I visit every day, and most of them need Flash enabled in order to function properly. So what to do? I don't want to switch again, since I've grown to like the way Firefox works, but it's frustrating to see a piece of software that prides itself on stability being so fundamentally unstable.
It's sort of snowing, in a weird New Yorkian way. First it drizzled, then it hailed, and now there are big and wet - but scattered - white flakes falling from the sky. It's like the weather gods haven't quite made up their minds about how to torment us today. Nevermind, I'm staying inside until they settle on one of 'em.
Yesterday I kept an eye out for
Parker Posey's dog while she bought her latte at the Starbucks on 2nd Avenue and 9th. I don't know why Parker Posey asked me to look out for her dog, but there you go. Only in New York. And I mean that in the fondest way possible.
Tomorrow the PSP launches, and seeing as a) I'm on vacation, and b) I'm a game geek who travels a lot, I'll be heading over to the 86th Street Best Buy at 8 AM sharp to try and get hold of one. I'm actually excited about the PSP. The Nintendo DS has, so far, been a huge disappointment - where are the games? - but the PlayStation portable is getting some fantastic support, and the first batch of games actually contains some must-haves:
Ridge Racer,
Wipeout Pure, and
Lumines. And I can stick TV shows on a Memory Stick (hah!) Duo to while my airborne hours away.
Speaking of airborne, on my way over here, KLM upgraded me to business class, and I've never been so upset to land an hour ahead of schedule. Damn you, strong cross-Atlantic winds! Working for a budget-conscious company - and living mere inches above the poverty line - I'm always stuck in economy seats, and being able to stretch my freakishly long legs as far as I could was heaven, pure heaven.
All right, it's snowing heavily now, so the gods must have decided: Winter is returned. Crap, etc.
Oh, and tonight I'm seeing the new Monty Python musical
Spamalot, which should be fun, seeing as it's been getting some solid
reviews. I'll offer my own thoughts tomorrow - after exhausting myself on the PSP, of course.
