Max Payne 3

Late as ever, one would think this 2012 title would be patched already.

I mean it's a Rockstar title for F's sake.

Nope - I've broken it at least twice. Once so bad my save/restart point ended with me just dropping off the world into emptiness (well, it changed to orange before it changed to a black limbo) and forcing me to start the whole level from the beginning.

While it's fun to follow the adventures of Max The Fumbling Alcoholic Nervous Breakdown (tm), the immersion is somewhat broken when you run into an enemy "boss" that is glued to a location so forcefully that rolling and dodging behind him prevents him from turning around and shooting at you. (I'm talking about you, the armored, helmeted machine gun guy in the corporate lobby!)

And how to make the game limbo?

Easy; just go past some pre-programmed place and the game slowly, slowly, slowly starts to go bonkers on you. First you'll notice everything loading slowly (the memory is probably running out because the game is not releasing resources which you already went past and won't ever see), then 90% of the enemies just won't load. And finally the game can't load anything fast enough to keep you "afloat" and you'll end up falling through the world.

And all this because I jumped a railing in a warehouse instead of going through a "control room" and triggering an event where you'll shoot a dozen guys across the hall.

Sheesh. I mean... Rockstar? Really? Rockstar Bangladesh? Rockstar Nigeria? Who made this game?

Maybe you should give it back to Remedy, at least we Finns know how to make working scripts... :P

Score: 6.5

(Bugless it would be 8 - Remedy would've probably made it into a 9 game.)

On Android kernels...

I installed Semaphore 2.9.4 on my SGS that has CM10 (ie. Jellybean / 4.2.2) - I don't there's going back. Everything seems so much smoother now.

And I love the 1% increments in overclocking settings, among other things.

Long time no blog...

Wow... What's been happening?

Not much, really.

On the gaming front I got into Guild Wars 2 for a bit, then got fed up with it's downward spiraling economy, then tried the free version of Star Wars: The Old Republic and actually got a month's sub scription after a couple of free months. (Yes, the story is OK, the game itself very "so-so" MMOG).


On console front; still have to complete Hitman: Absolution and Assassin's Creed 3 (not to mention an old used copy of Max Payne 3 I haven't even put into my PS3 yet).

I wish I had more time, but between work, kids, etc I barely have time to do "more important things" like build myself a new NAS;
old one is a 10TB (5x 2TB w/RAID1 and rsynced backups) FreeNAS server with a X2 3800+ CPU and 1GB RAM that sorely needs replacing so I bought a i3 3225, an Asrock B75 mobo with 8 SATA connectors, 8GBs of RAM and a new WD RED 3TB drive to facilitate the transfer.

I'm still undecided on the OS - I'm open to Open Indiana (pun intended) or FreeNAS or NAS4Free (I actually installed an Ubuntu 12.10 and cloned my, err... "other" server there, but I'm not too happy with it - I feel 12.04 LTS is better, but it lacks the easy encrypted install that 12.10 has)...

Spec Ops: The Line

Just ordered Spec Ops: The Line.

If the plot is as good as they say (very "Heart of Darkness"), then it's going to be a different kind of cover-based shooter -ride.

Play Asia has it cheapest (Xbox 360), surprisingly (in UK PS3/Xbox versions are both over £32, in PA just over 20 eur, 24.85 with postage). Sadly the PS3 version costs $5 more.

Modding Androids, continued.

So, should you ever brag to your relatives about modding your phone you should be prepared to mod theirs too. Of course. :P

Today sees me having a ZTE V9 Light in front of me; a tablet with pretty modest hardware specs (600MHz single core CPU, 512MB ROM/RAM, etc).

So, modding... How to root a ZTE V9? A short Googling later I'm installing the Android SDK, Java 7 JDK, etc crap on my Ubuntu 12 laptop. Much fiddling later (remember to turn on "USB debugging" kids!) I'm pushing the so called hack on the ZTE only to see it fail time and again.

Great. What now?

Hmm... I have the SuperOneClickv2.3.3 left over from my GT-5500 rooting so I might as well...

I install the ZTE USB drivers (from the tablet itself, thankyou kindly ZTE) and hit "root".

"Your device seems to be rooted already, do you want to continue?"

Huh?

The hell it is. Carry on SOC!

A little while later I'm booting into the stock, but rooted, V9 with "OneClickRecoveryV9-4.0.0.5.apk" (read: Clockwork Recovery) copied on the SD card. Next, I install AppInstaller, and install the OCR for V9 and boot into recovery to install the latest stable CyanogenMod 7 for the V9.

Only trouble I had was with the Google Apps (gb) -package - for some reason the newest 28/08/2011 package didn't install Play store but the one before that seemed to work just fine.

Status update

Final Fantasy XIII-2 for the PS3 under work. And it feels like work at times. It's one of the age old JRPGs where you have to go grind levels for your characters so you can advance the plot at certain parts - the combat is just not scaling right.

It's 2012, why do they still make that kind of crap... :P


Oh, if you're looking for a post apocalyptic fix, Metro 2033 is on sale at PA:
Metro 2033 (Classics) (Xbox360) for $14.90 at PA

Long time, again...

I guess I've been too busy playing through Assassin's Creed: Revelations (pretty good, though you can't shake the feeling of "been there, done that" and "this used to have at least a little challenge"). And more lately; Mass Effect 3 (finally around/under 30 EUR in some places).

Somehow I forgot (?) that in my ME2 save, which I imported to ME3, Garrus, Samara, Mordin and that punk chick, Jack, were all dead. At least according to ME3 storyline. Which was funny - I could've sworn Samara and Mordin were alive - and I know Garrus was dead along with Jack (who was the only person I failed the loyalty mission for). Now guess what ruined my ME2 experience in the end?

Right, the damn loyalty missions and "guess the right order for the suicide mission" - thing. I can't be arsed to replay 50% of the game just to get the end right. If I lost all my freaking pals, I still would've told ME2 to go "suck it" rather than replay that piece of "creative storytelling" (ie. bad plot and crappy, random, guess-it-to-get-it-right -gameplay).

Oh, and while I'm venting,  P-A has Dead Rising 2: Off the Record for pretty cheap (Xbox 360) & (Playstation 3), $19,90 + P&P. If anyone's interested. ;P

Finally, it works with 7.2.

Installed CyanogenMod 7.2 with Rom Manager, rebooted.

Then installed Hotfix Chooser and chose hotfix 2 (because choosing the hotfix to go with the actual CM install just gave a "corrupted zip" error) and rebooted.

Finally have CM 7.2 working with outgoing call voice.


*Now* everything I wrote in the orinal post applies. ;)



Files on the server now include the hotfix2 (galaxy5-v2.0-hotfix2.zip) and reuploaded (just to be sure) version of CM 7.2 (update-cm-7-20120206-MADTEAM-galaxy5.zip).

And also ODIN 4.28 and the OPS file I used - flat out forgot to upload those, sorry. ;)

Galaxy 5 CM continues...

... in our continuing, five year mission to install a new and strange Android OSs today sees the renewed effort to try the 7.2 version again.

Seems like the mic problem was fixed and a 2.0 version (with hotfix 2) was released.

I'll report back later if I'm mute again or not.

You know, scratch what I said about Cyanogenmod...

Nobody can hear me talk on my phone anymore with CM installed.

That's kind of an important feature in a phone, right?

And yes, the mic works, the sound recorder is just fine - nobody just can't hear me anymore... ;P


Edit:
I did a quick downgrade to 7.1 (MADTEAM V1.7.2) version of CyanogenMod (with hotfix1) and got voice now. Some features are missing, compared to the latest release. Oh well. Maybe I'll try it again when the next release rolls in.