So, Army of Two: The 40th Day for PS3. I play almost nothing but co-op games these days and as Borderlands (by far one of the best games I’ve played in years) was starting to taste a bit too grind-tastic after 100+ hours of gameplay, I was really looking forward to playing The 40th Day co-op campaign.
Except that it’s nigh on impossible to enjoy the experience. Regardless of how good your internet connection is, co-op campaign throws you out of EA’s server every 10-15 minutes – totally at random. After that happens, you need to restart the co-op campaign, select your character and difficulty level, re-invite your buddy and start again from previous checkpoint. You lose all progress, all money and all weapons modifications you did before the disconnect. At the end of our first co-op session I told my friend I refuse to touch this piece of crap game until EA releases a patch which fixes the disconnection issue.
Oh, and while I’m at it, why on earth do we need to stay in constant connection to EA’s servers while playing the co-op campaign? Two players against an army of NPCs, you know? Why the need for anything but peer-to-peer connection, huh?
Anyhoo, EA released a patch for the game a few days ago. I downloaded the patch earlier today in anticipation for our 9 o’clock session. And off we went! Neither of us could remember what controller button did what, but a few minutes of experimentation soon sorted that out. The mission ahead was pretty tough, we effed up a couple of times and had to restart from previous checkpoint, you know the drill. Eventually we reached a point where we had cleared the immediate area of enemies and were planning our next move.
And suddenly… *KA-DONNGGG!!* “You have been disconnected from EA’s server.”
EA, what the fuck? Honestly, what the fuck? EA, surely you realise that the co-op campaign happens to be the reason why people bought this game? With that in mind, shouldn’t you, umm, you know, maybe have had a couple of guys playtest the co-op campaign in PlayStation Network before releasing the code for replication? Don’t say you did, because I know that’s a blatant lie. Check out your own forums and you’ll find umpteen players complaining about this issue. If you had tested co-op in PSN, you would have noticed the problem within ONE hour!
Or maybe you knew? Maybe you thought, “Hell, we need to make our Q1 figures look good for the shareholders so we’d better put this puppy out there! Yeah, co-op players disconnect from our servers all the time which kinda completely ruins the game, but we can fix it later by putting out a patch. Right? Right. Now let’s make some money – and fuck those gamers!”
No, Electronic Arts. No. Fuck you.
Artist: Babylonia
Title: Motel La Solitude
In brief: Well-produced electronic rock/pop from Italy, obviously influenced by DepMode
I don’t remember exactly where and how I first bumped into Babylonia. I probably heard their rather fantastic single “(If U Want) My Love” which spurred me into blind-buying their first album “Later Tonight v2.0″ from a German online retailer. I enjoyed the album immensely, especially “A Spreading Infection”, one of the v2.0’s extra tracks which was noticeably harder-hitting than the rest of the rather poppy, at times bordering on cheesy, album. In fact, it made such an impression on me that I had to contact the band.
One of the rare niggles I’ve had with the mostly fantastic HTC Hero has been it’s thirst for power. And by power I mean battery power, not influence over nations. A while back I read a tweet about Mugen Power’s new 3200mAh battery for the Hero. Back then I still had some money set aside for impulse purchases so I ordered one. It took almost three weeks to arrive and came with a new battery door, i.e. a replacement plastic rear cover for the phone.
That’s because the new battery is a lot thicker than the original one, and practically doubles Hero’s girth. My previously slim Hero now looks like it’s about to give birth. Oddly enough I found the new fatter Hero feels somewhat more comfortable in hand than the original slim one. It doesn’t feel more comfortable in a trouser pocket, however.
According to the instructions, I was supposed to first charge the battery in the phone for 12 hours… so I did. I know, me following instructions!? It’s a crazy world. Furthermore, the instructions also say that after that first charging I should use the phone until the battery is running very low, then recharge. By repeating this procedure a few times I should have a longer-lasting battery, I suppose. To my surprise, it took the battery almost five days to run down to 15% which is when Hero starts making a fuss about recharging. The phone was on 24 hours a day and saw lots of heavy use, including 12+ hours of talking and plenty of browsing the internet via HSDPA. The original battery wouldn’t have lasted a day in similar conditions. Despite adding weight and volume to the Hero, I have to say I’m very pleased with the new battery and how it has transformed the way I use my Hero.
I’ve been scrambling to clear my workload all weekend and started to feel pretty darn exhausted, so I fired up my RSS reader. Francesco Marciuliano showed perfect timing with his post How to Make the Most of the Time between Losing a Job and Finding Yourself in Another Job. I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost 10 years now, and this part of his post had me rolling on the floor:
Start a business! If unemployment will teach you anything it’s that you can’t count on others to keep paying you (and that most physical injuries seem to occur the second your health coverage lapses). So why not make your own money?!
By becoming an entrepreneur you not only get to be the captain of your own destiny but also the crew, the shipbuilder, the dockhand and the one who first comes upon the wreckage on the beach. Hours once spent on one mind-numbing job can now be spent on countless heart-racing tasks, from drawing up a business proposal to conducting a market analysis to ascertain the viability of your idea to deciding on whether it will be a general partnership, limited liability company or sole proprietorship to securing the necessary permits and licenses to determining whether or not to file for S Corporation status to selecting and reserving a company name to developing a capitalization/borrowing/debt service plan to obtaining all required government forms to drafting all employment contracts to establishing check-cashing procedures to having an independent appraiser calculate the replacement value of your property to shopping for the best loan terms to identifying all trademarks, patents, copyrights and service marks you must register or purchase.
And that’s just the first ten years! Soon you’ll be working three jobs just to secure the initial capital and expenses reserve you’ll need to operate a full-time business that you can now only find time to keep open between midnight and five a.m. You may not make a fortune. You may not even live to see forty. But you will have certainly made the most of your time off by ensuring you never, ever have the chance to nap or even sleep again.
Perfect, just perfect. My hat’s off to you, Francesco.
Allow me to introduce a small-ish application which has saved me a lot of grief in the past year or so. I stumbled on HD Sentinel by accident, and it was one of the luckiest accidents I’ve ever had.
Indeed, Saitti.org has been very quiet for a longish time now. There’s a simple reason for this: I’ve been incredibly busy with work. That usually goes away in December, with Christmas drawing nearer, so expect to see a review of Tvix 6600 media player and a couple of CD reviews, at the very least. Toodles!
It was only very recently that I finally had a moment to hook up the Logitech G25 to my PS3 and to really get to grips with Codemasters’ Colin McRae Dirt. It’s a lot of fun – especially on a 3-meter-wide screen sitting at a distance of 2 meters. I was really looking forward to DiRT 2. It arrived from Amazon.uk today, and I stole an hour off work to try it out.
PlayStation 3:n uusi, aiempaa pienikokoisempi ja vähemmän virtaa kuluttava malli saapuu kauppoihin syyskuun ensimmäisellä viikolla. Sain pelikonsolin näpelöitäväkseni muutamia päiviä aikaisemmin. Tässä alustavia mietteitä parin illan testailun jälkeen.
Kävin tänään noutamassa postista Elisa Viihde -paketin. Se sisältää 24/1mbps ADSL2-yhteyden, ADSL2-modeemin ja DVB-T/C+IPTV-digiboksin. Minulla oli ennestään Elisan ADSL2-yhteys, joka toimi parhaimmillaan 16 megabitin nopeudella. Kun tilaamani Elisa Viihde -yhteys kytkettiin toimimaan, pimeni modeemi täysin. Elisan tekninen tuki kertoi, että Linksys AM200 kuuluu modeemeihin, jotka eivät toimi Elisan ADSL-yhteyden Viihde-profiilin kanssa (yllätys!). Ratkaisu? Profiilin muutto IPTV:ksi ja yhteysnopeuden pudottaminen 8 megabittiin. (Päivitetty 1.9.09)