Nice.........

Nowadays, I'm playing Fallout 3 on the PS3 and its a great and awesome game. Its true that the game is huge in scope and you can go pretty much anywhere you want from the very beginning of the game; however, the game tends to guide you through without being overly controlling and linear. I'm currently heading in the game with the my dad to Rivet City to meet up with Dr. Li. I'll see today how that goes and update my blog as things go along.

On another matter, Super Street Fighter 4 was announced a couple of days ago. Its true that they may have provided this edition as DLC to the masses, but then again, this is Capcom and this is Street Fighter. I expect more editions to come afterwards with the same premise. This time around they did include changes to the online component, although it remains to be seen what these changes are. They'll also be adding several new characters chief among them is T. Hawk, Deejay (personal favorite) and a new character with the name of Juri (interesting character by the way if you checked the latest gameplay trailer) and several others for a total of almost eight (they still didn't decide on the total number of additional characters). They'll also be adding ultra combos to pretty much all the roster, which is a welcome addition in my opinion since Street Fighter 4's ultra combos were a bit lacking. Sure, there were super combos but they did lack the oomph you found in previous iterations. Now, one complaint about the whole "super" edition is that the developers did mention that the original Street Fighter 4 code was not developed adequately to support updates, meaning that it is practically very hard and time consuming to apply changes to the code to allow for the updates. For me, this is bullshit. In this age and era of broadband connectivity and game consoles, any developer should write a game code that will easily incorporate any updates, no matter how major they are. Another thing about the whole price issue, Capcom did mention that they will not be selling the game at full price for previous Street Fighter 4 owners. That would be great if you live somewhere Capcom cares about. In Lebanon, they'll likely charge the game as all other games, i.e. 70 USD. BUT, at the end of the day, I am going to buy the game (hope the changes they apply to the online component really improves the matches). I like Street fighter and have played it since the days of Street Fighter 2 (on the Sega Mega Drive), and if it means buying another iteration of a beloved 2D fighting franchise, I'll be the first in line to pick it up.

So, on another game-related matter, I have lately also tried playing Killzone 2, specifically the online component and came back impressed. Its true that there were no available games in the MidEast region (kudos to Guerrila Games for recognizing this region), there are a couple of available games worldwide (which will go down to zero I guess once Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out). The game was overall lag free (during the lag sessions, opponent players seemed to hope around instead of walk). It was nice but I do have Fallout 3 to complete and am completely into it.

What kind of internet connection do I use? I have fiddled with many internet connections in Lebanon. Currently, there are two broadband methods of connecting legally to the internet, one involving the use of DSL and the other using a modem to connect wirelessly. I have two connections at my house, the DSL one for browsing, surfing and the like, and the wireless one for gaming purposes. Why do I use 2 seperate connections? For starters, I want to seperate my gaming and surfing activities so that they don't interfere with each other. I do share the house with my wife and young daughter. The other important reason is that the wireless connection (Pesco connection with IDM) gives me a NAT type 2 connection (regular DSL gives me NAT type 3). Why NAT type 2 over type 3? Its doesn't have to do anything with lag or the like, on the contrary, both type of connections gave me the same ping (400-500 ms). I chose one over the other because the NAT type 2 has more open ports, meaning, more open access to the internet. This means I am able to connect to a higher number of gaming lobbies which is great. A perfect example is Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. With the DSL connection, I wasn't able to find any games online, but with the wireless connection one, I was easily able to find many game lobbies. So my recommendation, go with the wireless connection until they bump up the speeds of the DSL and reduce their prices.

This is it for today.

See you tomorrow with another update on gaming and a bit of everything else

Cheers :D