The Malgorian Blog

Last week I picked up a 5 Terabyte external drive for the sole purpose of plugging it into my PS4 to act as external storage for games. The 500 gigs that a PS4 comes with by default is simply in no way suitable when you have games topping 100 gigabytes. (Hello Final Fantasy XV)

Of course, the PS4 will only install games themselves to the hard drive. Your screenshots, saves, etc, all belong to Sony after all - so they only ever get saved to the internal drive.

Working on downloading the various games I got on sale over the years but either never installed or couldn't keep installed due to space concerns but it's slow going. Just doing one game a day or so on average for these larger games. I was actually surprised at how many games were showing as not installed, until I realized that a bunch of them were apparently the PS3/PS4 bundles that Sony was doing early in the PS4 life cycle. Valkyrie Chronicles 4 (Complete Edition) is taking about 11 hours to install. I started it when I went to bed and it's still got 4 hrs to go. I think the game tops probably 50 gigs in total after all the DLC is included.

Glad I have the physical edition of FFXV for when it's time to re-install that. Might spend time installing some of the physical discs I have tomorrow morning to give my net a slight break (each game typically has to download the multiplayer portion of the game as well as bug patches etc)

I don't always make serious resolutions for new years. Probably for good reason, since they don't usually last. Although admittedly my "stop eating ice cream all the time" resolution worked out pretty good... if you don't count the slushies. <_<

I think this year I'm going to try to do a two pronged attempt. For starters, I'm going to try to make a serious attempt at fixing up my diet. I eat too much crap I don't need, and not enough of the stuff I do need. Sometimes it's not really avoidable - if you're short on change you're going to buy cheap stuff to fill you up and keep you going to payday. But I think what I have to do is actually organize a bit of a meal plan. The main point here is that I have to cut back on the intake. ^_^ (Harder than it sounds, as my willpower is weak in this area compared to my ability to boycott companies that piss me off!)

The other thing I need to work on would be with my game projects and other such things. I've been more or less sticking to Atari 7800 Basic for making Graze, but it's been getting longer between updates so I'll need to refocus my efforts on that. I also want to try to play a lot of 7800 Games and try my hand at reviewing them - which of course will just be me giving my thoughts about them. It'll be a bit more complicated overall as I'm not going to be releasing most of the reviews as I make them. If all goes well then next December I'll have a big ass update/release to make. :D

I want to try to have Graze done by mid-spring. Or at least have it "feature-complete" with just bug crushing left to do. I've got like another 3-4 game ideas I want to do with 7800Basic including RPGs (that the Atari 7800 desperately DESPERATELY needs ^_^), platformers, and something that will probably play like some mutant hybrid between an RPG and that ancient BBS game Legend of the Red Dragon. That is, it'll be a RPG type game that will primarily be menu driven. Primarily. I plan on getting creative with that one but until Graze is complete I'm just going to be writing down ideas for it. I had considered porting and updating Johnathan's OWSF that he wrote for MS-DOS, but that'll depend on whether or not a bankswitching format can be done that will let me page in tile/sprite sets as needed - otherwise there will simply be no way to fit all the needed graphics into the game.

I'm not sure why they seem to think this is some kind of revolutionary new breakthrough in awesomeness. You unlock DLC by playing the game. Well... not QUITE.

By playing the game, you earn "fight money", which you can then use to buy DLC inside the game - to unlock it. This is their alternative to doing the costly approach of Street Fighter II of days long past, or Street Fighter IV - where you have the original, Super, Arcade, Ultra, or whatever other thousands of disc re-releases.

If you don't want to play the game to unlock the content, then you can purchase "Zenny" money with real money, and use that to purchase DLC in the game instead. Just between us, I don't think it's going to be a secret that you're going to be playing the game 24/7 trying to raise the necessary "fight" money to buy even a single DLC item. If this proves to be true (And someone else will have to verify it for me because I ain't touching the game.) then it shows that they balanced the value of fight money to help frustrate players enough to open their wallets and just pay for the damned things.

This approach lets them avoid having to repackage the base game and omg give out all the new content - minus new DLC - to every player. Lots of money saved, welcome to last generation Capcom where every other game series has already been doing this.

Also, this is Capcom we're talking about here. The masters of on-disc DLC unlocks. Certainly the later crap will be actual DLC, but it won't surprise me in the least to find out a lot of the initial DLC will be on the disc you paid for.

Here's what this deal really seems to be. We've gone from having games that use to have unlockable perks that you'd get from just playing the game to where you're shown all the things they're locking out and then given a choice between spending a third of your waking life trying to unlock shit which may never stop coming, or open your wallet to purchase it so you can actually HAVE a life. There's no way to wait for a Game of the Year edition with all this shit included (Which is what those Super/Turbo/Hyper/Ultra/etc editions tended to be.) because they've flat out said there won't be any. You MUST start at ground zero and work your way up. And the longer you wait, the higher the climb is going to be.

It's, as some have correctly deduced, a way to bring micro-transactions into the game. Like a freaking mobile game.

One of the commenters had this to say to justify Capcom's decision to milk it's user base:
"If you dont wanna pay you dont have to, if they set it up that way and you dont like it, then dont buy/play the game. I for one am glad that you can actually play to unlock DLC without paying, same thing with MKX, never touched the 20 dollar krypt key button and still unlocked all of its goodies. If a sucker is going to spend 20 bucks to unlock, then they are the ones you should be mad at, not the devs who cash in on that sucker."

I can certainly blame Capcom for preying upon people that don't have the time to spend 50hrs a week playing a video game (because hey, they have jobs.) but still want to access to the more yummy content which surprise surprise will be the content that's likely locked up.

Another said:
"This is actually the best thing that has happened to the series. Would you prefer it to be like SF4 with a new entry every couple years for full price with extra DLC out the ass every time that you're completely locked out of unless you fork up the money?"

If THIS is the "Best thing to happen" to the series, it should show you how badly the series was handled before. There's still going to be DLC out the ass - it's just going to be non-stop, continuously piling up and if anyone wants to jump into the game later on down the road, they HAVE to start at ground zero. This is going to cause late comers to the game to open their wallets just so they have a little bit of the content others have.

To recap, this is nothing different than how you unlocked characters in Marvel Vs Capcom 2 on the PS2. Except on that game, yes everything was on the disc (obviously), but there was ONLY in-game money/points for unlocking stuff. So those points were balanced in such a way to make it seem ok. Playing through arcade mode a few times generally was enough to unlock a character. About half an hour of work tops. It's not going to be anywhere near that quick and easy to unlock stuff in SFV - if it was, they'd never sell any of this "Zenny" money.

"so you can unlock everything in the game just by playing it.....you mean like it was in the old days when you had to completely finish a game to get the next bit unlocked ???"

No, it'll probably be closer to you'll have to completely finish a game 10-100 times per new thing you want to add. As I said, if it's going to be easy to unlock shit with fight money, there would be absolutely no point to taking the time and ... money, to write and test the code for a second fake currency that you buy with real money. We'll see how it looks when the game is finally released.

"Micro transactions are nothing new, you're kind of late to the party to be "outraged"."

And this is why you should make sure you rant and rave about things that upset you in this industry WHEN it happens. Because if you adopt a wait and see approach to see if it's going to be as terrible as you expect it to be, then people will start throwing this at you. Like you've lost your right to publicly announce your distaste/rage/whatever. It is never too late to rant at something. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

The whole reason to add "Fight Money" in this game is to derail arguments about the microtransactions since they're now "optional".

And I fully expect, in 2-3 years, like any other game, they'll just drop SFV and announce SFVI and you can all start over from scratch again. Except that all those unlockables, free as they might be if you play away your life to it, will eventually be simply gone when the DLC is taken down in the future. I can start a new game in Marvel Vs Capcom 2 and still unlock everything in the game by playing it. Wouldn't be able to do that with SFV.

So Microsoft is running that "Free With Gold"(Membership) program up until they release the Xbone later this year. Basically every 2 weeks or so a different game is made "Free" for anyone with a gold membership to download.

This is the second game of that program going up, Assassin's Creed 2. The first was Defense Grid. Before this actually started, or perhaps it was part of the program as well, was Fable 3.

Fable 3 and Defense Grid both had handy download links if you went to them in the store.

When I went to download Assassin's Creed 2... it wasn't there, despite it also saying the game was free. Took me a couple minutes to figure out why there was an option to pay with microsoft points. There was a footnote for the price. Tax isn't included in the free. Meaning you pay it yourself.

Or rather, means I just laugh, shut off my 360 again and go back to playing Minecraft.

Expecting someone to pay the tax like that is laughable if not kinda rude. In my case I'm downloading them -because- they're free. I may never actually play them. Case in point, I got Skyrim downloaded since I got it for free with my 360 holiday bundle. I still haven't actually played that either.

I noticed that the free games so far have all been heavy on the DLC, meaning they're probably hoping/expecting people to go buy all the DLC since they saved so much on the base game.

But here's the thing. If I wanted the games, I'd likely already have them. At best they can only hope that I'll play the freebies, actually enjoy it, and then actually want to buy the DLC. As it is, I don't want the games anywhere near enough to shell out money for it myself. So it's more like they're trying to give me a birthday gift or Christmas gift. You know, where it's free but not exactly something you really wanted in the first place.

Now imagine at your party, you were given a 40 dollar gift for free!

With a bill inside for a couple bucks.

I've been strongly curtailing spending shit since the start of March. Overall it's going quite well for getting me on track for saving cash. (Not quite there, but may be there on Monday.)

That being said, I did buy 5 games last weekend. 3 of them were old original xbox games which I got for a buck each. Ah the joys of liquidation.

The other two I got at 25 dollars each. They were at a weekend market in Nova Scotia when I went visiting for a day with my sister. The two games were Mega Man 64, and Xenosaga II.

I've been trying to find Xenosaga II for the last year or two. The cheapest I saw it locally was 50 bucks or so at Gamezilla. My stance against paying new prices for used product kept me from bothering with it. Pays off in the end I guess. The copy I got is near mint, and from what I remember of the copy at Gamezilla, this is in better condition. I now have all 3 volumes of the game so I may start in on it this summer. My apartment gets hot in the summer so I'm not likely to turn on the PS3 for most of it. It'll overheat quickly I'm sure. So in the summer I'll go back to the PS2, Gamecube, and probably original Xbox. Or something more retro. I dunno. You know, systems that won't melt because the room is above 20C.

I picked up Mega Man 64 since I have precious few N64 games. Actually, this is probably the first one. I do have the console already. My nephew is a big fan of Mega Man now (Yes, probably my fault. ;) so odds are I'll be playing that one when I go visit them on the weekends.

I've been thinking of getting a Wii points card lately in order to download a couple of games from Wiiware/Virtual Console. I still have to hook the Wii up to the internet however before I can do that (And it's one of the biggest reasons why I haven't been too tempted with the cards yet.) I have two ways to connect the wii up. Either using the wi-fi connector thing that plugs into my computer, or by using the usb adaptor that I can plug into the wii, then conect the wii directly to the modem via wire.

The wi-fi adapter is apparently not too reliable by some accounts so I'm not entirely sure if I want to bother with that if I can help it. But I have to buy another cord to go the other route.

My plans for purchases on the Wiiware channel are the same as my original plans. At most I'll be buying 1 or 2 point cards. And whatever I buy out of that is all I'm going to spend on it. Essentially to add some games to the console itself. Basically to customize the system a little. The same is what I'm doing on the PS3. I may get another 20 dollar card for the PS3. From the first one I bought Mega Man 9, Mega Man 10, and the DLC content for Mega Man 9. All that added up to just shy of 20 dollars.

Not sure what else I want from the store. I've done extensive searches over it a few months back and saw damned near nothing that interested me. I refuse to buy DLC for any disc game beyond avatar/theme packs. (I consider those things to be OK.) Only reason I let myself get the DLC pack for megaman 9 is because I bought 9 and 10 as a bundle, which saved me about the cost of the DLC. That being said, there are a couple of digital only games that I might consider getting, but we'll see how it goes. I'm not exactly rushing to hand them my money for these things.

As planned, I finally got a Wii on Saturday. Took my time hooking it up, but it's up and running now. Just played a bit of Wii Sports to check it out. Seems to be working like a charm.

I still have to get the internet connectivity going, but we'll see how that goes.

Yeah, here's an example of why it takes me so long to get a new computer:

( What could he be talking about?! )

Ok, it's not as excessive as the list seems. The large number of NES games are actually a shoebox of games I finally found that were lost for the last year or so. Also the large number of Xbox games on the bottom are actually all on one disc. An arcade compilation that had like 20 games on it.

Even still, that's a lot even for me in one month. The thing is the vast majority of these games cost about 10 or less with few exceptions. Most were also new.

Picked up the following today for 10 dollars or less at Wal-mart. :)

Undead Knights (PSP)
Populous (DS)
Kengo Legend of the 9 (360) ($3)
Street Fighter IV (PS3)
Star Ocean The Last Hope International (PS3)
Samurai Showdown Anthology (PS2) (Check yer msgs Rabbi!)


I was going to get a limited edition copy of one of the new Ys games on the PSP as well (not Seven. The other one) but Ebgames/Gamestop gutted both copies they had, as such, they both stayed in the store. Add another 40 dollars to the lost sales for them.)

So like. I went out on a small shopping spree looking for cheap games. I will thusly be adding the following to my backloggery later on when I wake up:

GrimGrimoire (PS2)
Lumines Plus (PS2)
IGPX Immortal Grand Prix (PS2)
Samurai Showdown Anthology (PS2)
Mystic Heroes (GC)
Devil May Cry 4 (360)

There's also a double of Project Gotham Racing (xbox) since it was 3 bucks. >_>

Also I'll be sending out the giveaways at some point this week. Give them a couple weeks to travel through the mail after that since they'll be crossing borders.

Title stolen from Kane.

GOG.com

It was a place specializing in selling old out of print games without DRM. According to the message on the website, it's "putting this era behind us as new challenges await.".

This essentially means the end of old DRM-free games at low prices.

That's a pity. Especially for me. I've been meaning to get around and purchase some stuff from them for the last few months - always putting it off for other things - and now it's too late.

People who had bought stuff but not yet downloaded them, within a few days the site will be active again for downloading. There is no indication of how long it will be available after that however so I recommend downloading anything you bought asap.

This "era" and "current form" talk on their placeholder page however leads to some discouraging paths the site will run down when it gets back.

1. DRM shop. Meaning the games will be sold with DRM. Maybe not all of them, but certainly it will become an option for publishers - and publishers tend to demand DRM whenever possible. I doubt you'll see many new games added to the site without DRM if this happens.

2. Steam Clone. Meaning it'll run somewhat like how Steam currently works. You buy games and have them tied to your account. Technically still DRM shop, only no exceptions anymore as likely all the old stuff will be added to the DRM of the site for new purchases.

I somehow doubt it's going to return without DRM in one form or another, and I suppose I'll agree with the sentiments I've heard from some people already. If they come back with DRM, is there a reason for them to come back at all?