Temporary Turbulence in Skylanders? Re-install.

Personally, I reviewed Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure on the PC. Specifically, I tried it under Windows XP and Windows 7 on my dual-boot gaming machine / Media Center PC. The XP version played well, but reflections in some places were messed up - something I believe to be related to something to do with the graphics drivers and the new motherboard from the Media Center, but not very distracting, in any case. Most of my gameplay was on the Windows 7 version, which didn't have this issue (since I didn't have to install the drivers for the motherboard myself).

There was a bit of an initial take-off problem, when the game wouldn't launch; it would just crash on me when I tried to play the game. That problem turned out to be an issue that Skylanders has with a setting typically used for Media Centers. In case anyone else runs into this problem, I wrote up how to solve the Win7 Media Center / Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures problem.

What I did find, however, was that certain levels had a bug which caused the Spyro Portal to intermittently think that the collectible character figurine had been removed from the portal for a couple of seconds and then recognize it again and return me to the gameplay. The time between occurrences could be as long as about 45 seconds or as short as a second or less. This effect would interrupt even the in-game story dialogue, leaving me to throw in my own words at each pause, Mad-Libs-style, since I couldn't do much else. I encountered this issue on one challenge level and two story-levels in the game: Hobson's Choice, The Goo Factory and Battlefield, respectively. I talked back and forth with Activision to determine the problem, but, in the end, it turned out to be that something went wrong in the install of the game.

The Solution: Re-Install Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures

Eventually, at Activision's suggestion, I uninstalled the game using the Uninstall option on the Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure disc and choosing to not delete my saved games and then re-installed the game again. Once that was done, I tried the three levels that had given me problems earlier and had no problems whatsoever.

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures versus Media Center PC - Fight!

Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures versus Media Center

So, my current gaming machine is using the motherboard (and Win7 OS) from my Media Center PC. Essentially, I upgraded the Media Center PC with the graphics card from my old gaming rig. When I first installed Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures, It wouldn't launch. I didn't even get the Activision animation video. Just a blank screen that said, "NGL" in the top-left corner, and an immediate crash upon trying to play the game. I resolved this problem, but it was quite a pain to figure it out.

As it turns out, the Media Center computer had been set up with large icons, to make it easy to see from across the room. The "Make it easier to read what's on your screen" setting apparently wreaks havoc on the Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, however, and it will not launch when the icon size value is set to 150%. When I changed the icon size settings down to 100% (down from 150%), the game ran fine. I found that I was able to play with the settings on 100% or 125%, but not 150%.

How to solve the Win7 Media Center / Skylanders: Spyro's Adventures problem:

1. In Win7, go to Control Panel > Appearance and Personalization > Display
2. Under "Make it easier to read what's on your screen", my computer was set to "Larger - 150%". It worked when I changed the value to "Smaller - 100% (default)" or the 125% percent option.

Note: to those who find the description above to be a bit clunky, my apologies. It uses the words Skylanders, Spyro, Adventures, Win7, Windows 7, NGL, Activision, Media Center, Crash and Not Launch repetitively in hopes of making this solution easier to find.

Gaemstrom is dead... Long live Gaemstrom!

My gaming rig died on me several weeks back. That can be really inconvenient for those who play PC game, write, surf the web or develop software. Sadly, I do all of this and had deadlines to worry about, but wasn't in a position to throw a large wad of money at the problem...

Introducing, Gaemstrom 2.0:

I did a good bit of research into gaming rigs... buying vs. building, boxed PC vs. spec'ing one from a boutique gaming PC company, online vs. brick-n-mortar stores... and that will probably result in an article or two, at least. However, for the moment, I chose to cannibalize a non-gaming PC that I had in the house already... the family Media Center.

First off, it would be more accurate to say that I cannibalized my gaming rig to upgrade Media Center so it could play games, but, since there was more room in my gaming rig's PC case, everything was moved into the gaming rig case, so it looks like my old gaming rig, even though its insides are more Media Center than Gaemstrom 1.0.

Something Old...

I kept the old case, since it had more room and easily could accommodate the 850 watt power supply that my gaming rig had. The 850 watt may have fit in the Asus Media Center case, but I would have had to move the optical drive down a slot, at the very least. In the Asus Essentia case, this wasn't a small ordeal.

Also coming along for the upgrade was the XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics card. It's dated, now, of course, but I'm biding my time for an upgrade soon.

I also brought over my old hard drive, not merely as an extra drive, but as a dual boot drive. I can still summon my XP gaming rig from within this new Win7 Media Center PC, when needed. The trick, here, though, is that if I'm in XP when a TV show is supposed to start recording, the Win7 Media Center has no way to know - or do anything about it, since it's turned off. That means that I generally stay in Win7 and, when I need to venture back into XP, I check the recording schedule to make sure it's clear before going back into XP. Also, I have to make sure that I don't leave the machine in XP when I'm done.

Something New...

Since the motherboard had fried on my old machine, using the motherboard from the Media Center was essential. And, along with the motherboard came the CPU and memory.

Something Borrowed...

Well, I would have borrowed a power supply tester, had I been able to find someone who had one (and knew where it was). Since I couldn't borrow one, I picked up a power supply tester from a local PC shop for about twenty dollars or so. However, now that I've used it, I can put it into my tool chest for the next time I use  it, so it was still "borrowed" as far as the gaming PC is concerned; it's not like I installed the power supply tester in the machine.

...and Something Blue?

Um... I guess Media Center. The button is green, but the interface is OH-so-blue. Future upgrades include the addition of a Blu-ray player, but since this is intended to be a zero-dollar upgrade, that's something for later.

So, the stats of my new-ish test rig are:

• Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 220 Processor 2.80 GHz
• RAM: 4 GB dual-channel DDR3
• Motherboard: ASUS
• Power Supply: CoolerMaster 850watt
• OS (dual boot):
  • Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit
  • Windows XP Home Edition
• Graphics:
  • ATI Radeon 3000 (on motherboard)
  • XFX ATI Radeon HD 5750 1GB graphics card
• Monitors (dual monitor setup):
  • Gateway HD2201 21" HDMI Monitor
  • Sony SDM-HS73 Monitor
• Hard Drives (dual hard drives - not RAIDed):
  • 1.5 TB Western Digital Caviar Green SATA Hard Drive
  • 750 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 SATA 3Gb/sHard Drive
• Gaming Mouse (swap back and forth):
  • Logitech Wireless Gaming Mouse G700
  • Logitech Gaming Mouse G300
• Speakers:
  • Logitech Z313 2.1-CH PC multimedia speaker system
  • A30 Gaming Headset
• Network Connectivity: Cable Modem

I'll try to get some benchmarks off the machine in the (near?) future, but for now, my Windows Experience score is a 5.9, and is indicating that my RAM's memory operations per second and my primary hard disk's data transfer rate are holding me back:

Component	What is rated	Subscore
Processor	Calculations per second	6.3
Memory (RAM)	Memory operations per second	5.9
Graphics	Desktop performance for Windows Aero	7.3
Gaming Graphics	3D business and gaming graphics performance	7.3
Primary Hard Disk	Disk data transfer rate	5.9

What's in a Name? (I'm Just Sayin'...)

In Psibabe's conclusion to her upcoming review of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, she observes:

"It is amazing that a movie series based simply on a theme park ride can continue to have so much steam, but Depp and company do it again."

-Psibabe, AKA Ashley Perkins

I think that's an interesting and valid observation. It seems like Hollywood is currently in the business of looking back at nostalgic things of our childhood and then building a movie around it. Don't get me wrong - I've enjoyed all of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, but a theme park ride isn't the least that Hollywood has taken to make a movie. Case in point - Battleship. Mind you, they can go absolutely anywhere with this license, but it's a license for a game based on a board game that predates World War I. There aren't even any characters associated with the license... just ship-to-ship combat. It almost seems like movie companies should be able to do just as well creating completely new movies... Sadly, I'm not saying they would... I'm just saying it seems like they should be able to.

Initial Impressions: Spider-Man: Edge of Time DS

So, I'm currently reviewing Spider-Man: Edge of Time on the DS and the PS3. That's cool, since I'm a pretty big Spider-Man fan, but, typically, DS games (or any portable game for that matter) pale beside their console-cousins when a game is made for all current systems.

With Spider-Man: Edge of Time, however, I'm finding that I'm really enjoying playing the DS version. It seems like the game, while on a more limited system, really uses the system - and the game's premise - to its advantage.

Case-in-point, the story in Spider-Man: Edge of Time has you playing the part of the Amazing Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2099, mentally linked across time, trying to stop Sloan from meddling with time. The tampering has caused "Temporal Causality" - which, basically, means that either Spider-Man can cause changes in the environment of the other based on his actions. This is a major aspect of the gameplay on both versions I'm reviewing. However, only the DS version allows you to swap back and forth - at will - between the two. This aspect alone really adds interest to the gameplay, giving it elements similar to the sleeper hit The Adventures of Cookies & Cream, whereby each character has to take some action to allow the other to progress - which is really working for it in a big way.