After a lifetime of dedication to PC games I have finally bought my first ever games console. It's not actually for me - it's for the wife and kids. Most parents lament the excessive amount of time their kids spend on the playstation. My family on the other hand shows almost no interest in computer games leaving me a very lonely gamer. Partly this is temperament, they prefer other pastimes and partly this is due to type of game I play on the PC. My lovely wife and girls just don't like the violent often complicated PC games that I go for. So I've bought a games console in the hope that an infusion of Japanese monkey hopping and banana collecting will give my family a small appreciation of my own hobby. I bought a second hand Nintendo Game cube for €40. This is a console that was never very popular and has in fact just become obsolete. Only a few game stores even sell games for the cube any more. Before you accuse me of total miserliness I must counter with the fact that the game cube was always recognised as a superb console for kids. It has a number of first rate jumpy banana type games and much fewer video game nasties like the GTA series. The fact that the console was cheap and that games can be bought second hand for as little as a tenner is a bonus. I amn't too hopeful that this will catch on - I expect the girls will play it for a day or two and get bored so a €500 investment in an xbox 360 would have been totally pointless. I got three games with the console: Donkey Konga (complete with Bongos) , Sonic Mega Collection (which is a port of some old Sega Mega drive games) and Monkey Ball adventure (Monkeys, Bananas, bouncing). The Monkey Ball game just confuses me but perhaps the kids will make something of it. Donkey Konga is already proving a big hit. Not too sure about the Sonic games - perhaps these are a bit past their sell by date. In fact all of this has cause me to think about what happens to older games and older gaming hardware. Why is a game that was considered terrific four years ago a complete bore today? Material for another post I think.
I bought a gaming mouse yesterday a Logitech G300, here my initial thoughts. What is a gaming mouse? There are a wide variety of devices available classified as gaming mice but a few features seem common: 1. Wired rather than wireless: Although some high end models are wireless wired connections are just better and faster than wireless so most gaming mice stick with wired. As a bonus wired mice don't need batteries so the mouse is lighter. 2. High response rate: 1 to 2ms response rate so the mouse immediately responds to input. 2. High DPI. Gaming mice invariable boast high DPI numbers from 2,000 DPI upwards. This makes the device very responsive to the smallest movements. 3. Adjustable DPI . High DPI improves responsiveness but reduces precision so gaming mice generally allow you to adjust the DPI down for precise work such as pulling off headshots in sniper mode. Generally the mouse allows dpi to be changed on the fly by pressing a button. 4. Extr
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