Social Networking for Gamers

I like most of you, use twitter, facebook and occasionally pop on to myspace to see how many bands want to be my friends.

Anyway, on the 4th of October, through total fluke read through a twitter conversation, and noticed a load of twitter entries from @squ1r3ll, with updates on his gaming status….linking to a site called raptr.com.

Being a bit of a gamer I’ve tried for months to get my gamertags, achievement, out to my friends and virtual friends, but the only way I’ve found to do this is manually.

I tried a number of facebook apps, and had varied success, they would either change my status to “Darren is playing…..” after a couple of hours of gaming, or just not bother at all. The achievements would post to my feed, however this was a manual process, I belevie the app is called “Xbox 360 Live GamerCard”.

Anyway, raptr.com, what is it…well let me tell you, it’s fantastic, and what I’ve been looking for, for ages. You sign up (using Facebook connect if you like) and add your gamer profiles, eg Xbox Live, PSN, Steam, Warcraft, etc etc, what it then does is monitors and reports on your gaming activities, eg which game your playing, on which platform, and records how long, and any achievement you may get.

Xbox live is monitored through the feed that Microsoft so kindly provide, and updates almost in real time (can be a 5/10 min delay), PSN tracking is currently broken due to Sony putting a restriction on their data. Everything else is tracked by the client.

The client is a custom messenger type client that can also run your msn, gtalk, aim, yahoo, xfire and icq, however this is the key to tracking the stats on your PC/Mac. On initial install it will scan your hard drive for games, and add them to your collection (both on the client, and on the website), any new games installed it will pick them up and also add to your collection.

When your ready to play a game, just start as normal and this will change your messenger stats to “Darren is playing xxxxxxx”, as it does with your online raptr status too, and logs the time played. When finished, it calculates the time you were playing and adds this to your tally on the website.

With the site you also get the option of a couple of signatures with varied information, all updating in real time, varying from currently playing to, the last/most played with you longest played 6 games.

Once you start to build up your friends, it will give you a ranking out of your current friend on a particular game (bases on the number of achievements you have), you can also compare achievements on a game with upto 3 friends at a time.

Finally one very cool feature of Raptr, is that when you get an achievement, it will tell you what percentage of Raptr users who have that game, have gained that achievement, giving you an idea of how hard it was.

The only downside with Raptr, is that it is unable to check your PSN stats, now this is through no fault of their own, it just seems Sony is being a little protective about their data. You can update your playing time, but this is manual, hopefully some day in the future, they will allow this.

From googling the PSN issue, I stumbled on a number of other social networking for gamer sites, GamerDNA, Playfire and Giantbomb.

I haven’t used any of the sites as much as I’ve used Raptr, however they all seem to be kinda tracking my stats.

GamerDNA, does seem to track PSN stats, and pull through the trophies, but there seems to be around a 2 day delay

Playfire, Love the layout, but again doesn’t pull through the PSN stats/trophies, doesn’t track time, and also about a day behind.

GiantBomb, I only signed up for this last night, but it’s already tracking my Steam, Warcraft and XBL, but again, no PSN.

All in all, it’s good to more and more of these sites popping up, I remember the day when gaming was deemed as geeky, however seems every man and his dog is doing it now, and it’s now socially accepted.

Personal recommendation, give Raptr.com a try, it just works and if you do, feel free to add me as a friend

My ID’s for the sites are as follows

Raptr

GamerDNA

Playfire

Giantbomb

and no, Raptr isn’t broken, I’ve actually spent that much time playing Borderlands

Tags: achievement, apps, client, com, couple, Darren, day, facebook, fluke, game, gamer, gamer profiles, GamerDNA, gaming, gaming activities, Giantbomb, hard drive, mac, Microsoft, monitors, msn, new games, number, pc mac, Playfire, psn, raptr, real time, restriction, site, sony, status, steam, time, twitter, virtual friends, xbox, xbox 360, xbox live, xfire

Wolverine finally beat

About 2 months ago I downloaded the demo of Wolverine on my PS3, and loved it !, However with not seeing the film, I wasn’t willing to buy the full game in case of spoilers.

About a month ago, I finally got my butt into gear and and went to the cinema, and say Wolverine…which was an ok film.

About 3 weeks ago, I was in my local Tesco’s and noticed that it was available on the Xbox 360 for £25 !…Bargain. Luckily I have both consoles so bought it.

How is it ?…It’s fantastic !, I read many reviews, and it averages rating was around 7/10, but I personally think it’s worth more that this. The game play is very much like God of War, it’s a good hack and slash game, and really action packed, with some really gruesome cut scenes.

I did get annoyed by a few things, there were 2 points in the game that stand out where they were stupid timed jumpy bit, whereby if you didn’t time it perfectly, you ended up either falling to your death, and then have to wait around 30 seconds for the save game to load, or having to start the chain of events again, so the little platforms came out so you could then get to the beginning, and jump across them again…very frustrating.

The combat in the game was awesome, very fast paced, and as you go through the game and pick up and slot power-up, it only gets better.

The end of game boss annoyed me, in total took me 28 attempts at killing him, and not due to the fact that I’m bad at the game, it’s due to the fact that the 3rd stage of killing him, he fires the red laser at you, which destroys the ground beneath you, which then makes you fall to you death. The majority of the time you couldn’t jump out of the way in time, so had no choice but to die, so you have to load your previous save game which starts at the beginning of the 2nd stage, which then takes you 5/10 minutes of battle to get back to stage 3 again, only to have the ground blow from under me, and have to load the checkpoint again.

I feel I’ve been quite negative above, but the rest of the game more than makes up for it, it took me around 14 hours to beat the game of which I was only annoyed for around 1 hour of this, so 13 hours of mindless blood fest.

I’d give this game a 9/10 and if it wasn’t for the annoyance at the end boss, this would have got a 10/10 from me.

Tags: 360, attempts, bargain, Beginning, boss, butt, case, chain of events, checkpoint, cinema, consoles, death, demo, end, fact, film, full game, game, game play, Gear, God, god of war, ground, hack, month, platforms, PS3, stage, stage 3, Tesco, time, wolverine, xbox, xbox 360

Belkin Powerline AV 200Mbps Networking Adapter (F5D4072uk)

Anybody who watches HD content, will know that streaming this across a wireless network is virtually impossible.

My upstairs network is wired, however downstairs (my Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3) are all wireless. This has been fine for gaming, web browsing, and everything else I normally use the Internet for downstairs, however it’s just not quick enough to stream HD content.

I’m a bit of a AV snob, and like the Video and Audio quality to be the best I can get. I like most people download TV episode from the web (just seems easier than recording via Sky, plus if you get them from the web, they tent to be a couple of days in front if the UK). I normally download the 720p version, granted they are over a gig in size, but the quality is so much better.

As you know from my previous posts about my Acer Aspire Easystore box, it’s got a Upnp Media server built in, which allows me to stream the content, and I normally watch these on my PS3 in the bedroom. If I do feel like watch the downloaded episodes downstairs, it normally means copying to a memory stick, then plugging into the PS3, then watching. This process has been fine up until recently. As I’m starting to build up a collection of Bluray Disks, I decided to look at converting these to mkv files, so I could stream these across my network, job done, a couple of films sat on my NAS Drive, converted into a readable format for the PS3. I’ve ripped these in full 1080p, and they are 11Gb+. Now my problem is, a, I don’t have a memory stick with 11Gb on it (8Gb is the largest I have), b, as you need to format the memory stick in FAT32 for the PS3 to be able to read it, I could only get 4Gb on it, and c, if I’m copying the film to a memory stick, I might as well put the bloody disk in, lol !

I’ve tested the films in the bedroom, and these work flawlessly, downstair was “play a couple of seconds, stutter, freeze, play a couple more seconds…….so decided to upgrade to the Powerline adapters (I know, I’ve finally got to the point !)

I spent Thursday morning reading through reviews, if I should go for the cheaper 85Mbps or splash out for the 200Mbps (Go on, have a guess which ones I went for, lol).

A lot of people dependant on their house hold power electrical wiring were getting on average 40Mbps connection speed through the 85Mbps ones, which wasn’t really much improvement on my Wireless, however the reviews for the 200Mbps were suggesting the people were getting 100Mbps, so went for the 200Mbps.

The strange thing is, even through the adaptors are advertised as 200Mbps, the built in NIC adaptor is only an auto sensing 10/100 card, after reading further at the specs, its 100Mbps each way (send and receive), making them a 100Mbps Full duplex.

Anyway, I got home, plugged them in, I end into a 10/100 Switch downstairs (which I then plugged in my PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii), and upstairs I plugged into the router. That’s it, done !, it worked straight away.

I plugged my MacBook into the downstairs switch and got a full 100Mbps transfer rate when copying from my NAS drive.

The ones I bought were £80, however well worth it for me, no drilling, no running cables, they just worked, I can highly recommend.

What’s in the box

Official Overview from Belkin

Powerline AV allows you to reliably transmit content from your Internet directly to your computer and other network devices through the electrical wires in your home. Transfer speeds of up to 200Mpbs makes Powerline AV ideal for streaming media to your home entertainment devices such as gaming consoles and set-top boxes.

Powerline is a great solution for areas in the home that are hard to reach by wireless connections, Powerline is the most reliable solution for providing secure Internet connectivity to these remote areas.

Setup of Powerline is simple with its plug-and-play connectivity. Connect one adapter to your router and plug it into an available electrical outlet. Plug the second adpter into an available wall outlet and connect the other end to any device with an available Ethernet port such as a gaming console, set-top box, or computer.

Official Features from Belkin

• Includes extension power cables for the optional placement of powerline adapter away from the electrical outlet
• Data speeds of up to 200Mbps
• Ideal for surfing the Internet and reducing online gaming latency
• Security: 128-bit AES link encryption with key management for secure powerline communications
• Operating range: Up to 300m in wall powerlines
• IEEE 802.3/802.3u
• HomePlug® AV-certified

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