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Entries in Downloadable content (2)

Wednesday

Nov112009

Dragon Age: Origins of DLC (Downloadable Content)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 2:16PM

As mentioned, my experience with Dragon Age has been a little rocky, but the more I play it the better it gets. Although I'm getting the feeling that the length of the game, because of its polish, isn't going to rival the hours put into games like Baldur's Gate.

One of the things adding to this was, quite early in the game, the invention of a NPC (Non-playable Character) to get some DLC. Now I'm a little new to the paid DLC concept, although I don't really see a problem with it. But I found it a little funny as a consumer having the hard word put on me in a game, and made to feel that I was missing out on part of the story, and letting the side down.

As someone interested in the future of PC Gaming, I think that it is a excellent way to build value/make a few bucks extra. Of course I may change my mind a) When I see the price of extra content and b) if the extra content is important to the overall game and c) if the game is less than 60 hours.

I'm not buying the DLC yet. Still enjoying learning the game, although there is some neat loot to be gained, so maybe on the next character. Penny Arcade have a great comic on the subject, making the point perfectly.

Jason

...if it ain't Broken, bring in the sob story.

Jason Remnant |

Now that I'm online what can I do with the Wii?

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 at 6:00AM

Image via Wikipedia

A question came through from a friend, telling me that she had finally got her Nintendo Wii online. With the line "OK, so I've set up our Wii to connect to the Internet... now what??" bouncing around in my head, I decided to post about this, because even though I have had a Wii since launch night, the whole online part is a little cloudy.

The online component of the Nintendo Wii is, in a word, disappointing. If you have an Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3, you may be used to a rich and interesting experience full of friends, achievements and downloadable content. You may also experience the trolls, 13 year old boys and 42 year old boys, and this is something that Nintendo is working hard to remove from the online experience. To do this, they have come up with the policy that the Wii is best played with your friends in the warmth of a lounge, not the cold netherworld of the Internet. Must be a Japanese thing.

OK, that said, let's look at what we can and should do with the Wii online.

Updating

The main reason to have the Wii online is really just to receive the system updates. At this time, these updates relate to the patches and additional functionality for the console. And of course, breaking any hacks that you may have installed.

There are two ways of doing the system update, the easiest is to wait for the message from Nintendo. You can see you have a message when the Wii starts to strobe a blue light (this can be a little freaky if you wake up in the middle of the night and see the light coming from the other room).

The second is more manual:

Make sure your Wii console is successfully connected online (more info).

Access the Wii System Settings (how to).

Click on the blue arrow twice to reach the Wii System Settings 3 menu options.

Select "Wii System Update" and press the A Button.

Select "Yes," and read any messages regarding obtaining the update. If you agree to the messages, select "I Accept."

The Wii console will now search for the latest Wii System Update.

If an update is available, it will be downloaded and installed automatically (this can take some time).

After a update, I always check to see if there are any new channels on the desktop (I think that's what they call it).

Channels

Channels are described as portals into the features and interactivity of the Wii, and the online world. Some of the channels offer the latest news and weather in a cool, fun way, if you have the time to play with it. Other channels offer reasonably pointless time wasting activity's, and others show the potential of what can be done with the space.

Some of the channels are not really channels, they are fillers in my opinion. Hopefully those who enjoy voting on other peoples Mii's don't read my site. But there are a couple of good channels, and one has to be the shopping channel.

Downloadable Content

The shop channel is one of the cooler things you can do with a online Wii. Nintendo has put up a bunch of stuff that you can download to the Wii to expand the console, and a couple of the things are free. The big things for me are the Virtual Console and WiiWare, which offer a few of the old favorite games from the past consoles and WiiWare.

It is fun to download and play games like Waverace and Streetfighter, and annoy your kids telling them "how these were the games I played then I was your age". WiiWare hopes to offer lots of spanking new titles from the big and small developers alike, of course we are waiting on a good storage solution.

Online Gaming

Yes, there is online gaming for the Wii and the titles are starting to roll out. The problem is the way the online gaming works is not all that user friendly. There is a point to it being that way, seeing how the Wii is mainly marketed at kids and families, and as the "bringing people together" console.

There are a number of good titles out now with some sort of online play, and it is only going to increase as the developers rush to cash in on the install base.

There are many things to do with the Wii online, and as the channels keep rolling out, there will be more and more. But it has to be said that the Wii wasn't really designed with a online future, like the PlayStation3 or the Xbox 360. Maybe it is the cultural difference, or the place that Nintendo see for the Wii in the market, but the console seems to be firmly pitched at the broader market, and we can't say that it hasn't worked for them.

Jason Remnant

Jason |

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