December 2011 – broom's blog

2011年游戏总结

[PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 3。这个游戏从12月底开始玩，2月份就村毕业了。游玩时间比mhp2短了不少，主要是因为Wii上的mh3 tri玩惯了吧。之后又断断续续的玩了很久，可能还差四五个勋章的样子。现在两个PSP接灰等mhp3g了。
[PS3] 战神1+2。PS2时代的代表作在PS3上的复刻，玩起来仍然觉得挺好玩的。
[PS3] FF13。到通关感觉还都挺不错的。放了几个月又捡起来做了一些冥碑任务，还差几个的时候觉得不练级打不过去了，就扔下了。
[XO] CoD7。一般般，通关就算了。
[XO] Vanquish。出乎意料的好玩的一个作品。对于较喜好ACT又不排斥FPS的玩家来说这个应该很好玩。
[XO] Dragon Age 2。Hard难度通关。小队战术的感觉挺赞的。
[PS3] 战神3。很爽快很容易白金。
[XO] L.A.Noire。我觉得这是个雷。开头感觉特别好，后来越玩越不爽。勉强玩到通关了。
[PS3] Uncharted 2。借了渣古的玩。还可以吧，我对这个不是太感冒。
[3DS] Zelda OOT。在3ds上补上了这个神作，的确很nb，不过3d效果基本上可以忽略。。
[XO] 一小堆Kinect游戏。挺好的Party game。跳舞游戏尤其适合女生。
[XO] Dark Souls。开了个头就搁置中。。这设定太bt了。
[XO] Skyrim。进行中。

其实今年最主要的变化还是翻墙。临走的时候卖掉了电视，PS3和XO。来了这边之后买了电视，XO + Kinect和几个游戏，老老实实玩正版好了。

More Furnitures, and Guests on Floor

Went to IKEA yesterday with xw, because there was an one day only sale! 1$ for 8 wood hangers… we got 4 packs, lol

And a metal TV stand, my big TV finally has some place other than floor. A nice armchair, which reminds me of my first visit to Beijing IKEA, I laid in a chair, so comfortable that I dropped my wallet there. A small metal cart for bathroom. A clothes rack in bedroom. And a big weaved box as a small table with storage. xw and I spent around 2 hours to setup all of them, before dinner. Really fast!

Then sly, fruitcc and a friend of theirs arrived. They came for a tour in NYC, will live in my place until new year. These guys just borrowed one sleep bag and one blanket from Jack, and slept on the living room floor. I have no idea how they spent last night.

Returned Apple TV

After using Apple TV for 3 days, I bricked it and returned it to Amazon…

Before buying it, I thought the main function of Apple TV was to play downloaded movies on computer. Then I found this was totally wrong. Apple TV is designed for buying/renting movies, either from iTunes or Netflix. Another selling point is its AirPlay integration with iOS devices. However videos from ppLive usually only have 480p quality or worse, so they look terrible on big TV. And AirPlay randomly broke after 1 hour use… It’s not that nice.

Then I jailbroke Apple TV, installed XBMC, hoping it could stream movies on my laptop. Experiences with XBMC were quite frustrating. It’s too like a developer toy, not a “product” at all. It was a pain to input anything, a huge pain to connect it with OSX system, and it crashed all the time. Eventually I got it work (broken intermittently though), but it still had so many drawbacks: poor subtitle support, poor seek function, and slow buffering.

I tried Netflix on Apple TV then, it worked pretty well and finally gave me a bit satisfaction after I got this thing. Because Apple TV started to support Netflix subtitle since 4.4, I tried to upgrade it from 4.3(jailbroken) to 4.4. Then it became a brick… Even restoring in iTunes couldn’t fix it. Considering the hours I wasted on it, I decided to return it. Amazon’s customer service is great. I got full refund very soon.

XBox 360 also has Netflix/YouTube and it worked pretty well. I don’t really see the reason to keep both Apple TV and XBox connected to TV. Microsoft is catching up pretty fast in the living room war, maybe already ahead of Apple?

Skyrim，Dark Souls和Kinect

这几天XBox和电视陆续到位了，于是又可以继续玩主机。

Kinect比想象中的好玩，虽然准确度并不是特别特别高，有时候也会感觉稍有一点迟滞。不过也是可以通过游戏设计来掩盖的问题。多人同乐的效果还是很不错的，跟Wii刚出来那会儿的感觉差不多。需要的空间确实挺大，至少到电视得有2~3米的距离，左右还得能站开两个人。推荐的方法就是玩的时候把电视前面的家具搬开……

Dark Souls名不虚传，太自虐了，我就没见过这么虐玩家的游戏。第一个boss在我还没看到它的时候跳起来一棒就把我拍死了。重试了n次终于过了这个之后，我攻击了一个NPC，然后悲剧开始了。这个NPC疯狂的追着我打，我跑出去好远他还追得上来，然后两刀就能把我剁掉。我死了之后一重生他还继续打！在被他砍死十几次之后我愤而退出游戏，读盘再进来他居然还追着打！无奈之下我只好重新开了个存档，然后就小心翼翼的不敢碰任何NPC了。然后在某个地方被一个拖着棒子的小兵两下拍死，回到了一个巨远的存盘点，ORZ。。。然后这游戏不管怎样都不给你暂停，无论是开游戏菜单还是XBox菜单……我决定等想自虐的时候再继续玩这个。

Skyrim就是今年大大大受好评的游戏，也是中箭体的源头。我选了猫族（其实是豹族啦）开始玩了一会儿，发现确实很好玩的样子，潜行+射箭很爽……嗯，虽然之前的Fallout和Vegas什么的我都由于各种原因没玩下去，不过这次的Skyrim看起来是会玩一阵子了。

Subway in NYC

I live in Brooklyn now. It costs me 30 minutes or so to commute by subway, one way.

NYC is the only city in US that ppl rely on subway heavily and seldom drive. Subway here is over 100 years old, much older than Beijing’s, but more comfortable in most means. It is crowded in rush hour, but not as much as Beijing or Japan, maybe because US people aren’t used to touch each other in cart. The scent is far more better. I remember its hardly breathable in Beijing’s subway cart, that’s why so many ppl drive there, even jammed.

NYC subway is old. So some parts are not clean, for example, rails are disgusting. However no one really cares that. Carts are not modern, some of them don’t show station names so you have to watch closely or listen to drive’s broadcast, if you can recognize their speaking. And ad posters here are usually covered by giraffe, such as mustache on every face or a single black tooth in a smiling mouth…

NYC subway is pretty expensive actually. It costs 2.25$ for a single ride. And weekly or monthly unlimited ride doesn’t give you too much discount if you are just a commuter (twice a day). Beijing subway is really really cheap, indeed.

Oh, and NYC subway doesn’t have cellphone signal at all. I’m drafting this post on my way home, but have to post it when I’m back to surface.