Review – Ghost in the Shell : Stand Alone Complex (PSP)

Anticipation : 7
Expectation : 6
Initial Reaction : 7
Overall : 6
Genre : First-Person Shooter

 

I’m a big fan of the first Ghost in the Shell movie. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. So, it stands to reason that I would be interested in a game related to the movie.

 

I received GS:SAC as a Christmas present and eagerly started the game. My first impression of the game was pretty positive. It starts out with some story elements and then moves on to the mission map and character selection screens. Character selection is interesting. You can choose from 4 major characters in the movie. Motoko, Batou, Togusa, or Saito. In addition, you can choose one of 4 different Tachikoma to assist you. Think of the Tachikoma as a big robotic spider with 4 legs. You can customize the characters with 3 weapons, and the Tachikoma with up to 5.

 

This is the first FPS I’ve played on the PSP and the controls are quite good once you get used to them. The analog stick is used for moving forward and back, and sliding left and right. The square and circle buttons are used to turn left and right. The right trigger button is used to fire. The D-Pad is used to change weapons, reload, and some other stuff. Overall, I think these controls work out very well despite bad reviews from other sources. I think those bad reviews come from being used to using 2 analog sticks to control the action on the PS2…

 

I’ve played through a few missions thus far and I’m still pretty impressed. The missions, so far, have been pretty short and to the point, but fun nonetheless. I wouldn’t put this in the same category as something like Half-Life or Doom 3, but still pretty fun.

Game Reviews

I’ve often disagreed with game reviews posted on sites such as GameSpot, IGN, etc. So, since I have my own blog now, I figured I’d write some reviews myself. My intention is to rate the games on a few “at a glance” categories, rather than the entire game in one shot. Later on, I’ll add another entry to update my initial review. I think this will allow me to provide a different perspective on the game and maybe give some idea of how a person may enjoy each game over time.

 

The initial reaction categories will be scored on a scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest, 10 being the highest. The cartegories are :

 

Anticipation – How much was I looking forward to this game?

Expectation – How “good” did I expect the game to be?

Initial Reaction – My initial reaction to the game (and any gameplay) after the first 15 minutes

Overall – My overall rating of the game *after* I played it the first time. Initial playtime is usually 1-2 hours.

 

I’ll also include the game genre. I’m not going in-depth with details, but more of my feelings about the game, some basic details, and my reactions. Hopefully this will give you a good idea of what to expect. :)

 

I haven’t decided how to do the follow-up reviews yet. Nor have I thought about the final categories I want to rate. When I’m ready to post a final review, I’ll first post how they’ll work.

 

And now, on to reviewing!

phpTodo 0.5 Released!

Yesterday I released the latest version of my phpTodo project. In a nutshell, phpTodo is a todo list manager with RSS feed capabilities. I find it extremely useful, and I hope other are finding it just as useful…

 

Since this is the first entry I’ve written about phpTodo, let me give a little background information. I have things to do. Yeah, so does everyone else. And like most people, it’s hard to keep everything straight. I had my honey-do list at home, a list of stuff that I wanted to accomplish, projects for work, tasks for different projects at work I was working on, etc.. It was all a mass of confusion..

 

So, I decided to start using the todo list manager in Lotus. Well.. it works.. It’s kinda nice, but it’s slow, and a real pain to see everything in one shot. So, I started looking online for a web based one that I could use at home and work. I found a couple, but nothing that allowed me to categorize and view by category, etc. So, since I had wanted to start a sourceforge project, and I like programming, I decided to write one. And I got to thinking.. How could I ensure that I could see my todo list from anywhere? Well, a webpage is a good start, but web pages aren’t always that great on mobile phones.. I happen to have a blackberry that I carry with me, so I looked around a bit more.. I could get RSS feeds on my blackberry, so how about that?

 

And with that, phpTodo was born.. To date, I’ve had over 400 downloads of the software (that’s all vesion combined) .. The previous version, 0.4, had approximately 170 downloads. Not too bad for a piece of beta software.. :) At least, I’m happy with it.. :)

 

This latest version contains a number of bug fixes both big and small. I’ve also added some code to redirect the user properly when the login times out. Essentially, if the user is doing something and times out, it records the current information, redirects to the login page, and then redirects them back to where they left off after they login. Works pretty well… :)

 

Work continues on the project. I’m at 0.5 now and I’d like to get a 1.0 release out pretty soon. So, for the time being, I’m in a feature freeze. At this point I want to ensure that everything works correctly and iron out any bugs that may be lingering around. Once I get 1.0 out, I’ll look at adding some new features.

 

If you’re interested in checking it out, here’s a link to the sourceforge project site. I plan on setting up a formal project site for it, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet…

 

Greetings!

Welcome to my blog! :) This is a bit of a new thing for me and I’ll see if I can’t keep it relatively alive.. :P

My intention here is to post information related to technology, current projects, and the like. Stuff like game reviews, or new technology that I’ve played with or I’m interested in .. That sort of thing. Just a place to share my thoughts, hash out new ideas, etc.

I’m eager to hear any comments regarding what I’ve written as well, so please, leave comments!

Till next time!

PS…  The site layout may change a bit..  I’m still not satisfied with it..  :)