Oh no, it's a console gaming post!

PC gamers, please don't hate me :)

Sure, I've blogged about Star Trek Online, Aliens Vs Predator, Champions Online, Supreme Commander 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2, and they're all on the pc, but there's something else; something unique that, every so often, I just enjoy returning to... and it's on a console.

My friends, I present Rock Band 2 (on the PS3).

I got into drumming in that game in a big way. I imported from the US all the addons you could think of; drum pad covers, metal pedal covers, trigger sticks, stools (sorry, thrones)... you name it, I bought it. Eventually I picked up the premium ION drumset, and then got a proper Roland setup.

Christ, you can spend a lot on this stuff. And I thought graphics cards and subwoofers were expensive :)

I have to admit, though, that it doesn't honestly get a lot of use these days. But it's like, it just sits there, ever patient. "When you want to come play me, I'll be ready".

The reason I'm motivated into an update about Rock Band (of all things), is that I've just returned from a 15-song setlist, and I had a great time. Ok, so it's different, and yeah, sometimes you just want to play a game where you get to shoot someone or blow something up, but there is a serious amount of fun to be had if you give it a chance.

Champions Online

I took the liberty (read: made the mistake) of re-activating my Champions account about a week ago.

I don't hate the game, but I don't consider the notion of having to pay by the month to play it to be a particularly good deal.

One of the main problems I have is that I'm just not a champion. One of my mains is a hero based on the Hulk. Built like a brick shithouse, blue/green skin colour, ripped like a mofo. Some kind of experiment gone wrong.

The travel power I chose for him is way cool. You activate it, and then your jumps are super jumps. I'm talking about being able to jump over buildings. I can cover ground faster than a hero with flight, and when I land, it leaves a crater in the ground.

When I move about the city, I get people come up to me to say thanks. I repelled an Alien attack, and they're grateful. It's not uncommon to walk past pedestrians making sweet comments, and if I click on someone on the phone, they pop out a "oh my god, you won't believe who's right here" to whoever they're talking to.

So what's the problem, you ask? Just about any random group of thugs just chilling on top of a skyscraper can kick my arse. Without breaking out a sweat.

So yeah, it's an ok game, but you're no hero. I'm not asking to be Superman, for fuck's sake, but then, I'm not getting killed by Lex Luthor, either.

Another problem I have is with the powers. You see, they're just about all the same. You can shoot fire out of your mouth, ice out of your hands, or electricity from out of your chest. The point is that the abilities are damned near identical, it's just different methods of delivery.

I kinda like my hulk-a-like, but after having experimented with many different power sets, my favourite is munitions. This stinks, because my idea of a superhero is not a guy running around with guns. But there you have it. So I'm having the most fun playing the skill set that feels the least like actually being a superhero.

A lot of the travel powers are pretty cool, but ultimately, I don't think it's a whole lot better than City of Heroes. I think I should have re-activated my account with that game, instead.

Supreme Commander 2 initial review

Ok, so I've played three skirmish games of Supreme Commander 2 now, and I'm going to post my initial impressions. The first game was against a normal AI, and the second and third both against a normal and a hard teamed up against me.

For starters, the game's definitely a lot more action-oriented. Like it's just really in your face. Everything builds a lot quicker, and there's no tech 1, tech 2 and tech 3 stuff. You research stuff now, and you gain research points by either building research buildings or with combat. You have different categories, like air, navy, land, structures, etc... and you spend the points to unlock things like bonuses and new units.

Yeah, forget almost everything you know about the series, either from Supreme Commander or even Total Annihilation that came so many years ago. The book has been re-written, somewhat substantially. Whether or not you like that, is up to you; I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad.

You don't have to build mass and power storage now either, what you acquire is yours to keep. This comes with a catch; you have to have the resources now to build anything. It's very much like Command and Conquer now in that respect, and if you don't have the resources available to build that super unit, you won't be able to begin construction until you do.

The new way of doing things makes a big change to how you would use the shift key to queue up commands. If you queue up an engineer to build three anti-air turrets, for example, but you only have enough current resources for two, he's only going to build two, because all the resources for all queued structures are taken straight away. This is something I'd prefer they changed.

Come to think of it, the game is littered with technical issues like this. If you have one engineer assist another, it will only assist with the first structure in a queue, then it goes idle. You can't have engineers assist buildings like factories until after they're built too. Speaking of factories, you can put them on repeat, and they'll auto-pause if you run out of resources, but they won't auto-resume if you have enough resources once again.

These may be minor-sounding issues, but they're serving to make the gameplay a lot more frustrating than it needs to be. There's a lot more micromanagement that's needing to be done now, which feels like one fuck of a giant leap backwards.

I do like the game, don't get me wrong, but I don't know if I like it more than the original. That's not to say that I don't, mind you.

The jury's still out, but if they can fix the sort of issues that I've brought up, that might just win the case for them. I'm not hopeful though, Gas Powered Games make decent enough games, but they're not known for their post-release support. Cross fingers.

Steam price fixing

One could argue this should've been assumed, given man's tendency to be greedy, but here's a picture I've just put together demonstrating how us Australian customers are paying more for our games over Steam:



The list on the left side is a capture direct from my Steam app, and the right side is a capture from my having browsed the Steam store via a proxy website (so they'd think I was living in the US of A). And believe it or not, both sets of prices are listed in $USD.

So yeah, let's look at what we've got here; among other differences, that's an extra $30 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision), Napolean: Total War Imperial Edition (Sega) and Bioshock 2 (2k Games). Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (EA) is an extra $20, AvP (Sega again) an extra $15, and Warhammer 40k DoW2 Chaos Rising (THQ) an extra $10.

So yeah fellas, what's the deal? You taking the piss or something? Makes me laugh, when I think about it; yeah, piracy is wrong, but this shit is fine. Huh? What, it costs them more having an Australian download the game instead of an American? Of course not.

What a pity. The opportunity was there to do it so right and so well. After all, the goods are non-tangible and the internet makes the delivery. One store, prices listed in US dollars regardless of location, and all the rest of us pay is whatever the going exchange rate is at the time. Brilliant.

But no, as usual, human greed has to go fuck it up once again. Yeah, there's a switch!

Oh, and check out the dates too. Not only does the average Australian have to pay more, he's also got to wait longer before he can play it. The Yanks can start playing Supreme Commander 2 tomorrow (Tuesday March 2nd), but for reasons unknown, I've got to wait until Friday 5th.

That said, I'm grateful Supreme Commander 2 has the same price, and it's nice to see Valve themselves not engaging in this activity. At least there are a couple out there trying to do the right thing. They're the ones who'll be getting all my business from now on.