James Skemp's StrivingLife

If you enjoyed The Saboteur, you'll enjoy this

While I was playing Mafia II I was constantly reminded of The Saboteur (2009), and since I enjoyed that game, I would consider that a good thing. The game features much of the same, with gun and hand fights (the latter of which plays an important part in the story) and driving.

I experienced no technical issues while playing the game, and the hard difficulty featured some cheap kills, but after a bit of practice everything worked out just fine.

I came into this game without knowing having played the first Mafia game (and I honestly have looked into whether there's any tie-ins), and found the story to be fairly good and engaging. I certainly felt as though the main character was understandable, but I do wonder how much pressure they may have gotten to make the ending what it is. I don't necessarily believe it was forced, but ...

Having finished it on hard, I may pick up some of the trophies I still need, however I don't believe I'll platinum this (due to one collectibles trophy that seems like a pain, and a couple others), and don't see myself replaying the story again. It was good, but now that I know it there's nothing deep to get me to go through it again.

I'm on the fence about it, but after some thought have decided to give it 3 of 5 stars (I'd give it 3.5 if I could). It's a fun game, but I'll probably trade this in before too long.

A *lot* of quick time events, but an overlooked gem

God of War was a pretty good game, but the game made popular quick time events, which I absolutely despised.

When I saw Ninja Blade at a used media store I was taken back by how little it cost, for what seemed like a fairly enjoyable game, similar to Ninja Gaiden (note: Ninja Gaiden 2 for the Xbox 360 is kicking my butt, but I fully plan on finishing it, have picked up Sigma for the PlayStation 3, and am semi-interested in picking up others in the series).

When I popped it in I was impressed with the visuals, and then the quick time events started. And they never stop. If you're as poor at quick times events as I am, expect to have approximately half your time taken up by them. Of course, I kid, but only slightly.

However, after finishing Ninja Blade, I was actually rather happy with the game, and can absolutely see myself putting it in in the future to pick up some of the achievements (less than half) that I'm missing. Sure, the quick time events are harsh, but the ability to replay them with little ill-effect tones the frustration down.

I also rather liked the story, which reminded me of The Third Birthday and Drakengard (keeping in mind that I read an English translation of a Nier book).

With the exception of weapon switching, which is mostly due to the 360's inferior d-pad, the game was also rather fluid, suffering from only a bit of slowness at extremely 'intense' periods of activity.

If you like Ninja Gaiden's game play, and aren't afraid of fairly intense quick time events, definitely give Ninja Blade a try.

4 of 5 stars for a difficult, but rewarding, and replayable, game.

As I develop my first Windows Phone 7 application, My Video Game Tracker, I want to make sure that the many games I've added won't accidentally be lost (as I'm deploying test versions to my physical phone).

Taking screenshots of the application's data

When you install the Windows Phone SDK the Isolated Storage Explorer Tool is also installed. This tooll allows you to easily explore isolated storage on both emulated devices and any plugged in devices.

First you'll want to go to the directory where the tool is installed.

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\IsolatedStorageExplorerTool"

You can now enumerate devices if you want, but there's two parameters that you can tend to rely upon.

.\isetool.exe enumeratedevices

To continue, you'll need to have the guid of the application, which can be found in the WMAppManifest.xml file, and it's the ProductID attribute in the App element.

First, make sure that the application has been started, and any necessary data items have been setup.

Next get a directory listing, so you have an idea of what it looks like.

.\isetool.exe dir xd 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000

This would return something like the following.

       131,072 AppData.sdf
<DIR>          Shared

Now you can take a screenshot to any directory you like. For example, to grab it from your phone (de = physical device):

.\isetool.exe ts de 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 D:\projects\JamesRSkemp\WindowsPhone\isolatedstorage

When you run this command you'll have a directory created in the above called IsolatedStore. This will mimic what the dir command above returns.

To take a screenshot of the default emulated device (512 MB emulator), run the above except with xd instead of de.

.\isetool.exe ts xd 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 D:\projects\JamesRSkemp\WindowsPhone\isolatedstorage

Restoring screenshots of the application's data

Now if you want to restore the screenshot you want to make sure you append IsolatedStorage to the end of the directory path.

.\isetool.exe rs xd 00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000 D:\projects\JamesRSkemp\WindowsPhone\isolatedstorage\IsolatedStore

Depending upon what you're storing, if you want to move data from one device to another, you can take a screenshot, replace the necessary file(s), and then restore the modified screenshot/directory.

Possible errors

As I've been developing I've run into two errors. The message and resolution are below.

Error: The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process.

To resolve this error you need to close the application (back button from the home screen).

Error: Failed to connect to the device. Ensure that the device is completely booted and is connected to the PC.

To resolve this error you need to make sure Zune is running and the device is connected, and unlocked.