Macha

Many gamers will point to some video of a game on Youtube, and go "Look at how great the graphics are, this is so much better than game . In your face 360/PS3/PC gamers (delete fanboys platform of choice). You've lost.".

This always makes me laugh for a number of reasons:

1. A lot of those videos are pre-rendered. They might be the intro clip, or other movie clip, not actual gameplay.

2. Youtube isn't exactly known for it's high quality. Most of these videos are encoded on the default quality. If they come from the company, they might just be high quality, which is still inferior to the video quality actual gameplay on whatever game they're saying it's better than. To see just how bad it is, look at the pictures from this blog post.

YouTube

Standard Definition

And remember, most games nowadays are 720p, twice the quality of the second picture, and scaled up to 1080p by your console, nearly 3 times the quality if you have a full HD telly.

Sometimes with video games, the pricing can be ridiculous. Not always ridiculous as in too high (but it often is) but ridiculous because they defy logic.

One example of this was around 6 months ago, the Orange Box for 360 was priced at €30 pre-owned, the same store sold it new for €20. Another example was during Zavvi's closing down sale. They claimed to have amazing offers. They did but not quite in the sense they meant. Mirrors Edge reduced from €60 to €59.99. Quite underwhelming.

Another case of bad pricing is on Steam. They converted $10 to €10 for Garry's Mod. Another page has a TF2 + Gmod offer at $25 or €25. $1 is not €1. A quick google reveals the current exchange rate is $1 -> €0.71 .

For reference, at the time of this post, €25 is equal to $35.

Combine this with the poor broadband connections in my area (1 meg) and Steam's frequent downtime, and digital downloads don't look very appealing any more. And Gamestop's PC game prices are far more reasonable now than they have ever been before. €40 for the Sims 3 or E:TW, PC games are now cheaper than even Wii games.  When I bought E:TW, that was cheaper than the price on Steam (€49.99) . And Steam is supposed to have lower costs to distribute these games... Like duty-free shops that can charge much less, but mysteriously don't.

So yet again, I am starting a blog. I've tried general blogs before and never stuck at them, but since I've done a few smaller blogs, internal to forums and stuff, and managed to stick with them, I think the time is ripe to have another go. I'm not limiting myself on topics which I'll post on, but they'll probably all end up being on the same topics.

So I suppose I should start with a bit about my interests.

• Gaming. I play a wide variety of games, nowadays mostly on PC, but I still have a good few 360 games. My current favorites are Team Fortress 2 and Runescape. Team Fortress 2 is a really polished and humourous game and with the recent updates, has gotten even better. My favorite addition? The sandwich.

  It wins the award for most epic video game sound effect ever. As for Runescape, well, you either love it or hate it.

• Programming. I am a hobbyist programmer. I've done a lot in PHP, Javascript, C# and Java. My favorite language to program in definitly has to be Javascript, especially when paired with jQuery.
• Reading. Sci-fi mainly. My current favorite book is either Time's Eye by Arthur C. Clarke, or The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

So that's about it for now. Enjoy the blog, anyone who decides to read it. The title is Macha Mackha, after the username I wanted, Macha (based on the cat in .hack//sign) and the username I took (Machka)¹ because Macha was taken. I'm not usually a fan of anime, but I really liked .hack//sign.