Cheap Ass Gamer - Blogs - widow123

Dingoo A320 Review

widow123 — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 19:03:27 GMT

A lot for you probably haven't heard if this device before but i garuntee there will be many of you that will interested in it after you have read this.

I should probably start by explaining what it actually does, the Dingoo is a device that emulates the following:

NES
SNES
GB
GBC
GBA
Megadrive (Genesis depending on where you're from)
CPS1 & CPS2 arcade system boards

And with a bit of tinkering you can do Sega Master System also.

Now you are probably thinking "Meh i can do that and more from my PC", which is totally true, the amazing thing about the Dingoo is its size and portability. As you can see below compared to a DSlite.

As for the emulation itself, its a bit iffy at points. I would rate the quality of emulation as follows:

NES - 99.9% - Almost flawless, 1 game crashed 1 time. (micro machines)
SNES - 75% - Fairly good, starfox/star racer dont load and a few framerate issues and screen tearing with other games.
GB - 100%
GBC - 100%
GBA - 75% - Same as SNES, playable with some frame skip adjustments
Megadrive (Genesis depending on where you're from) - 75% - As above
CPS1 & CPS2 arcade system boards - 75% - As above
Sega Master System - n/a

The interface works fine using a PSP-esque menu. There is a system menu for every emulator, from here you can do pretty much all the tinkering you would want, such as fram skip options, save/load states, volume as well button config. It has L and R buttons for GBA/SNES games and the all the buttons you would expect from a SNES controller.

Again, below shows how small and pretty the damn thing is.

Can do basic mulitmedia stuff also but i dgaf about that so.

I bought mine 8 months ago from eBay, I love it, many of you will say "You could have done this on your PSP", and yes I could have, but there is something nice about having a system dedicated to these old games I used to play as a young'un.

Its a bit pricey, about 90 bucks, If you want to upgrade memorywise, (even though you probably wont need to) you can get micro SDs for pretty cheap.

There im done, I <3 my Dingoo and now you all know.

MAG - First Impressions

widow123 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:47:58 GMT

yeah so while i dont own a copy of the game myself i went round a mates and played his copy for a good 3 hours and come to the conclusion the game is worth me buying also.

Il explain.

MAG doesnt look great, the shooting doesnt feel great and most of the games features feel average.

MAG's saving grace its the scale of combat, which is surprising as everything i saw about MAG up until its release made me feel the 256 player combat was a gimic, its not.

Thankfully my friend already was at level 7 so i was able to see the difference between the 128 player mode and the full shabang.

My FIRSTFirst impressions on this game were not good, like i said above the game as a shooter alone is average, i also didnt feel too compelled to continue before i unlocked the 256 player mode.

Il back up a little, you start the game and join one of 3 PLCs, cant remember the names of them all but lets just call them Yanks, Russians and Terorists. so my mate had already joined the S.V.E.R (the Russians), the main war screen that you see makes you feel you are actually part of the PLC you joined with ribbons telling you which PLC is winning the war.

Character customisation is neat, not as in-depth as i might have liked but hopefully they will introduce more items via DLC, so you choose actual armaments instead of the almost set in stone perk system you see nowadays, while it works on a similar basis the asthetical changes to your character between loadouts make the character feel more like your character. (thank god for italic i was digging myself into a hole with that)

While none of what im saying makes you want to run aout and grab it, the one moment playing MAG that made my mind up for me was as follows, so i was defending the last objective, in this case some cargo container in the middle of a warehouse, the entire round had been made up of little tedious battles across the huge map, aside from this last objective where every single player was culminating into some bullethell of a warehouse entrance, it was insane, just spraying like crazy with like waves of player controlled enemies are flodding in just felt awesome.

As for a techical standpoint the game handled fine, its impressive im able to say this with the shear scale of it all but yeah, good job zipper.

ach i should also mention how there is an actual chain of command within each battle, with commanders delagating orders to squad leaders, and then the squad leaders to people in the squad but i wasnt high enough level to have a go at that.

So the games decent, it feels good to play a shooting game that isnt or at least trying to be Modern Warfare, if you have the patience to stick at it and level up.....go buy MAG

Why am i so cynical(it appears i cant spell this word) over every game i play now?

widow123 — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:06:59 GMT

Im so insanely critical about games i play to the point where its almost impossible for me to sit and play happily without the smallest of flaws sticking out like a sore thumb, this has all started since i got a job like 18 months ago and able to buy every new release on the day.

I think that old saying of too much of a good thing plays its part here.

The last game i remember enjoying most, oblivious to any of its faults was littlebigplanet, that game was just fun as hell, to the point where i was apologistic over the floaty feel the game has and the three layers of background and with mess up that was.

I almost miss the days when i was little and would just play some broken ass game happily for hours oblivious to what was a terrible game purely because i would only get a new game every 6 months or so.

seriously, ignorance is bliss

Mass Effect 2 - First Impressions

widow123 — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:34:35 GMT

so im about 3 hours in.

Immediately you can tell that its technically a better game than ME1, so far apart from a few texture pop-ins i havnt seen much hitches in the framerates or any of the godawfulness i saw in the first game.

Before release i was worried that they would make ME2 feel too much like a shooter and remove a lot of the RPG elements, turns out thats exactly what they did.

So yes the shooting is better, and the combat is a lot more enjoyable which is all good, but i dont like how they have removed loot from the game entirely, i dont know i just feel they flipped the switch too far over into the third-person shooter genre.

Story is good so far, you meet a few old friends from the first game, i wont spoil anything but when you get to explore freely you have to begin assembling a squad, like the first game, exept there are a lot more characters this time, about 8 - 10 i think.

Yeah so the game feels really polished and all that but im not warming to it as much as i thought i would, maybe i just dont have my Mass Effect head on but we'll see.

Ratchet and Clank: A Crack In Time - First Impressions

widow123 — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 00:21:34 GMT

I think im about 6-8 hours in now and beggining to realise writing first impressions when ive nearly completed the game is not the most clever way of doing this.

First of all, I am a huge fan of the Ratchet and Clank series, i would rate the second game as in my top 5 favourite games ever and have completed every one of them multiple times, apart from Gladiator (Deadlocked if you live in the US) as that game was a real disappointment compared to 2 and 3.

So i already knew what i was getting into with this, it continues the story from Future Tools of Destruction and Quest For Booty DLC, Clank is captured by the Zoni - Ratchet must go get him, simple. The story is not too important and i dont want to get too into it, but yeah this one seems to be a little more meaningful, as opposed to stopping world destruction(which also happens in this game too) the bulk of the story is the simple one of Ratchet searching for his bro, Clank.

Everything good about the previous games are here, the parts where you play as Ratchet alone(which is the majority of the game, at least i think it is) are far more enjoyable than in any other game, this is due to some small but really noticable change, like the hoverboots you get never make you feel you are missing Clank's glide ability.

Other small additions that i appreciate include the fact that they have moved the gadgets you aquire to the d-pad, after too many games having to put them in your quick select or going through the gadget menu - this was definatly an improvement. The weapons are the same mixture of ridiculous and awesome as they were before, bringing back some of the favourites from previous games.

Space exploration adds a few more hours of gameplay if you want to collect everything, its pretty good, the various moons scattered across each system are reasonably fun to complete and well, they are optional so unless you are like me and cant help but collect everything they will just sit there and do nothing i suppose.

Im rambling, so in all this game does great fan service, i get the feeling they were playing this real safe with this and i am totally satisfied with the treatment this game got, this game is really like the best parts of every game in the series refined into one of, if not the best Ratchet and Clank yet.

I think I might just transition from these impressions into actually reviewing the game, but we'll see.

Bayonetta - First Impressions

widow123 — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:31:57 GMT

So im about 6 hours into Bayonetta now and probably a little too far into it to be giving first impressions, but i honestly couldnt put it down for long enough to write this.

Combat is fantastic, linking combos together is easy to do and you'll be chaining together different ones within minutes of playing, however that does not mean that theres not much depth to it.

So you have two sets of weapons for both hands and feet that are interchangable, each with their own sets of combos so there a lot of variety to different playstyles, also you have to search for some of the more exotic weapons which i havent gotten round to.

The mechanic that sets this apart from any other action game like this is witch time, by dodging attacks at the last second you activate witch time giving you a brief advantage over your enemies, during this time you pretty much have a free combo to lay down on an opponent, using this is absolutely vital towards the second half of the game and you wont be getting very far without mastering it if you want to complete hard mode.

The difficulty is pretty high, normally when i start a game i skip straight to the hard mode if there is one, on this there is very easy, easy and normal mode unlocked from the start, to think i would be able to fly through normal mode was a mistake on my part, the game on normal is probably about as harsh as any game on hard nowadays so dont feel a sense of shame if you feel the need to turn it down a notch.

Finally, the game is just downright ridiculus, in every good way imaginable, the bosses just keep getting more and more insane and im not even on the last one yet, the story is so ridiculus you probably wont be able to follow it, the game also has some of the best cutscenes ive ever seen, every one of them stylish, sexy and just plain awesome.

Must buy - on any console, i have been playing it on a PS3 and even though i do notice the framerate dip and the pretty terrible loading screens it does not detract from the game as a whole as there is just so much good that outweigh the technical faults.

P.S Fuck you Sega for not porting this properly and giving it the proper treatment it deserves.

Bayonetta Climax Edition /w replica gun

widow123 — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 01:42:21 GMT

woot, its finally here and i couldnt be happier

One thing, the painting is a little off, but you can only notice it when you get it close, which i wont cos its now on my shelf looking pretty :)

so yeah thats the artbook, 1 reg copy of game, 1 climax edition, 1 soundtrack and the replica gun, cost me �80 pounds in all.

money well spent

-and yes im still using xp

List of games played/completed in 2009

widow123 — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 18:26:33 GMT

games released in 2009 that i played, there would be more from 08 that i played in 09 but im not doing that, just want to archive this somewhere, completed (C), played (P)

360Forza Motorsport 3 (P)

XBLA
Peggle (P)
Trials HD (P)

-short list due to me buying multiplat on ps3 and the 360 not having many good exclusives this year, will get round to ODST and shadow complex maybe if i have the time

PC
Modern Warfare 2 (C)
Warhammer 40k - DOW2 (P)
The Void (P)
Eufloria (P)
Trine (C)

-another short list - diablo 3 where are you?

PS3
Assassin's Creed II (C)
DJ Hero (C)
Borderlands (C)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (C)
FIFA 10 (P)
NHL 10 (P)
The Beatles: Rock Band (C)
Batman: Arkham Asylum (C)
Fight Night Round 4 (P)
inFamous (C) - my only plat trophy :) - fucking shards
Resident Evil 5 (C)
Killzone 2 (C)
Street Fighter IV (C?)
F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (P)
Skate 2 (C)
Demon's Souls (P)
Bayonetta (P) - cmon this counts

PSN
Battlefield 1943 (P)
Braid (C)
Fat Princess (P)
Flower (C) <3 - got love for this game
Pixeljunk Shooter (C)
Shatter (C)
Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (P)

PSP
Patapon 2 - (P)

Wii
Madworld (P)
Wii Sports Resort (P)
New Super Mario Brothers Wii (P)
Resident Evil Darkside Chronicles (P)

WiiWare
Bit Trip Beat (P)
Bit Trip Core (P)
LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias (P)

DS
GTA Chinatown Wars (P)
Scribblenauts (P) *sigh*

DSiWare
ArtStyle: Boxlife (P)

all done :) - Totals - Played 43 - Completed 17
god damn i missed so much by getting thru the best of 08 looks like il be doing the same next year getting through the stuff i missed in 09 :/

Pixeljunk Shooter - First Impressions

widow123 — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 23:08:59 GMT

these are only my first impressions as i bought the game about 2 hours ago but..

this game is a must buy.
honestly for just under 7 quid its a absolute bargain

if you know anything about the pixeljunk series already it goes without saying that this game's artstyle is just plain awesome, the water and lava effects look fantastic and the way they react to other objects and your bullets are just beautiful to look at.

so far ive played trough about half of the game, but theres good incentive to go back and collect the miners and treasures so you will probably end up playing multiple times if you are playing solo, but if you want the best out of this game you have to play it coop, its a blast (excuse pun).

I only got the chance to play 2 player with my 6 year old brother, the games controls are real simple so hes a pretty good coop partner, like take this for instance, there was some part where i was firing my magma gun all over the place and got hit by some of it, so i was falling and about to die, i tell him quick to catch me with the claw you use to collect the miner guys and he does it perfectly and throws me into a pool of water, i was like "HELL YEH THAT WAS AWESOME!", high fived him and carried on.

i could go on about how the water gun and lava gun combo plays, but by now you should be downloading it already

seriously you gotta get this

-widow

Laundry list. :)

widow123 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:05:32 GMT

this probably wont be a regular thing i just wanted somewhere to post my laundry list for the rest of the year.

Granted i only have 22 days do do this, it would be some feat to get through all of them

Definatly want complete:

little king's story
super mario galaxy
demon's souls
castlevania por
zelda ph

If i get through the above:

fear 2
GTA chinatown wars
phoenix wright
resident evil (GC remake)

its possible, and i have started all of them, i just missed out on these when other games were released :/

wish me luck, and feel free to post your own lists as well