sweet, sweet gaming

Even though I keep saying I’m never going to move furniture for anyone ever again, I can’t help it. On Sunday, when not busy being sick, I dragged literally every piece of furniture I owned around for a new arrangement. I get a little less wallspace out of the present configuration, but I have more centre floorspace and that gave me room to experiment with gaming peripherals.

KINECT LIVES

The furniture move was partially inspired by:

With the old arrangement, and with or without the Nyko Zoom, there was nothing I could do to get the Kinect to see me with any kind of reliability. Now, even though it looks ridiculous because I had to put the Kinect on a shelf beside and slightly behind the tv, IT WORKS. It even works without the Zoom. I might try and get the Zoom back on there again, just so I’m not as close to kicking my futon all the time, but the Zoom causes some lighting issues I’m not sure how to overcome yet (namely: there doesn’t seem to be enough of it when using the Zoom and I’m out of lights).

Not only does the Kinect work in this very ugly configuration, it works better than it ever has before. Seriously. Even when I had way more space, it’s never seen me this well. How do I know this with such certainty? Easy. Of my puny Kinect library — Konami Dance Masters, Kinect Adventures, Child of Eden, and Sonic Free Riders — I played the only one I actually enjoyed (yes, that’s the dancing game for any new readers ^_^) and was blowing away old scores, even though I remembered none of the routines.

I should also note that my Xbox is still on the old dashboard. Yes, my Xbox has been offline that long. On purpose. Stupid ugly ads everywhere. I stopped paying for Gold membership, too. So my Kinect is working this well without any new driver updates, too. And, yes, I know that I’ll have to update eventually, but I do enjoy putting it off!!

I look forward to testing out the head tracking in Forza 4 soon. Using only the Kinect to drive around will probably be, oh, less than useful, save for the “Look Ma, No Controller!” achievement :)

DDR LIVES

By ‘DDR’ I totally mean ‘Stepmania’.

Mostly. With the added floorspace I was able to push the DDR pad further away from the television, thus eliminating most of the “oh my, the tv really shouldn’t be wobbling back and forth like that”, which was why I wasn’t playing it at all since the move.

In the past, I used my ancient beloved green desk as a tv stand. It’s a little high, sure, but I wasn’t exactly sitting on the floor while gaming so it wasn’t an issue. I bought that desk (along with matching bookshelf and futon) with my first paycheque when I was 13. Yes. That’s right. I bought furniture that lasted me *mumble* years instead of every SNES game ever. I was waaaaaaaaay too serious & responsible a kid sometimes (read: all the time). I make up for that now by being entirely immature ^__^

Anyway, my ancient desk did not make the move and my parents let me use one of their older short tv stands instead. It’s almost weird to have the tv at a reasonable height now. I can even sit on the floor and see the screen now! I can also rock the living heck out of the tv by jumping up and down. There are always compromises in life. In an attempt not to piss off people in the vicinity, I will have to be reasonable about when and how loud I jump around in this new place, but learning that through trial and error is half the fun. Did I mention I’m slightly immature? ;)

GT ACADEMY LIVES

Wooooo. Everyone with a PS3 should be playing GT Academy, especially if they have a wheel. 26 days left. It’s totally free to download and you’ll earn bonus cars for Gran Turismo 5. If you own GT5, you’ll get the cars delivered to you in July (HERE is a non-facebook link), if not, you still got to horse around on a track and it cost you nothing but the download bandwidth.

Only Americans can qualify for the actual Academy part of GT Academy — one day they better let us Canadians have a go, eh!! — but it’s still fun to wheel around with my G27, annhilate the times of friends on my list (PSN: LadyGuardian), and try to eke out every last ounce of performance from the cars. Yay more floorspace since I can have the wheel set up and not trip over it every time I try to move.

Ok, NOW I’m not moving any more freakin’ furniture. Hopefully. Fingers crossed.