I used to use Norton Antivirus, 2006, 2007, etc… but it gradually became a resource hog to the point where I’d be disabling it just to copy some files. The interface was nice, but that was part of the problem – this lovely interface was eating my CPU cycles and RAM for breakfast. Obviously that isn’t good as this is one of the situations you DO want your “on-access” scanner running. I also became increasingly alienated by the hand-holding approach that Norton was taking – assuming I was too stupid to be able to look after my own computer by popping up a relentless stream of notification bubbles, update this, scanned that, quarantined blah, blah, blah.

My workplace uses McAffee Virus scanner enterprise. I’ve never known any other ligitimate program to be such a pain in the arse. Update dialogs pop up and grab focus while you’re merrily typing away forcing you to click on your original app to go back to it and then it will grab focus again to tell you its finished – stop pestering me! After the update the computer would act like it had just been hit by a tonne of bricks, the performance plummeted and was only corrected by a reboot.

I looked around for a while and tried various others in demo form or free scanners such as AVG Home (which, if you’re looking for a free alternative, I would recommend) but I eventually opted for Eset NOD32 Antivirus which I now run on all of my own computers, my girlfriend’s and my family.

It just does its job. It’s unobtrusive, it’s quick, the interface is nice, intuitive and it’s not a resource fiend! New virus signatures are released daily and install silently, only popping up a little bubble from the system tray to let you know its finished updating. You pay one subscription and when new versions are released you’re invited to download and install them. It hasn’t let a virus onto any of my machines and does a good job of telling you when it notices one approaching.

So, there you have it, for what its worth, NOD32 is the virus scanner I prefer.

Anyway, with the cost of an XBox 360 Wireless adapter coming in at around a scandalous £50 I thought to myself, there must be a cheaper way to hook up my XBox to the internet, and there is!

For a while I’d heard about this special firmware you can put on the (supposedly famous) Linksys WRT54G (and its GL and GS variants) called Tomato. There are a few third party firmwares out there which are all made possible by the fact that Linksys built the original firmware using a Linux kernel and released the code as open source.

Tomato, and a host of other firmwares, allow you to put the router into a client status, effectively making the WRT54G/GS/GL a wireless bridge. Once that’s done, it’s simply a case of plugging in your XBox 360 via the provided ethernet cable and, shazam! Online access on your XBox and anything else you happen to plug into the four ports of the WRT54G. A nice setup I like to call Tomato360.

So, here’s a guide on getting a WRT54G/GS/GL and Tomato up and running.

1. Firstly, get a hold of a Linksys WRT54G/GS/GL – I managed to snag one from eBay at £25 and, as a guide price, I wouldn’t be paying any more than this if I were you. That’s a 50% saving on the cost of a comparatively inflexible XBox 360 Wireless Adapter. One very important detail is that you have to pay attention to the hardware revision of the WRT54G/GS/GL that you’re going to buy. The necessary versions vary between models, for a full detailed list refer to Tomato FAQ: How do I find my Linksys WRT54G/WRT54GS/WRT54GL’s version?. Remember, only bid for it when you know the hardware revision is compatible – some auctions won’t specify – so ask the seller! Here is an example of a message you can send to them to give you an idea:
   

   Hi there, could you please tell me the hardware version of this router? This should be located on a white sticker on the underside of the router. Thanks.

2. Once your WRT54G/GS/GL comes through the post, do yourself a favour and avoid any previous user’s configuration problems by plugging it into the mains and doing a total reset to knock everything back to factory settings:
   1. First, plug it into the mains – the lights on the front of the router should flash, wait until they are steady;
   2. Locate the little button at the back of the router – where the ethernet ports are – it should be labeled Reset (if the text hasn’t worn off)
   3. Press and hold the Reset button for 10 good long seconds, the front lights will turn off then back on again to indicate success.
3. Figure out the IP address of your main wireless router. You can find this out by doing an ipconfig from the command line. The router’s IP address will be labeled as the ‘Default Gateway’ address – write this down for future reference.
4. Download the latest version of the Tomato firmware onto your computer (from the Tomato website) then get an ethernet cable (just  a normal patch lead, not a cross over) and attach it to your computer via your ethernet port. If you’re connected to any other network, wireless or otherwise, disconnect from it (this is so there are no IP conflicts when connecting to the WRT54G/GS/GL).
5. Ensure your computer is configured to have it’s IP address assigned automatically via DHCP.
6. Extract the appropriate bin file from the tomato archive, e.g.: for a WRT54G router, extract the WRT54G_WRT54GL.bin file. Pay attention to all of the options here and make sure you’ve picked the right one!
7. Open a browser and type in the IP address of the router, which, according to the manual, should be 192.168.1.1, provided your hardware reset worked ok in step 2. To login:
   

   Username: <blank>
   Password: admin

   Username is blank – as in – don’t enter anything for the username.

8. Click Administration > Firmware Upgrade
9. Be patient, the process will take up to 10 minutes, perhaps longer depending on the hardware revision/connection. If you interrupt this process you risk ‘bricking’ your new router, meaning you might as well use it as a doorstop for all the use it’ll be, so it’s important that you let this process finish in its own sweet time. Remember – I take no responsibility for any problems – its up to you – all I’m doing is telling you how I did it!
10. Ok, when its all back up and running you should see a message stating that the ‘Upgrade is successful’.
11. Click continue and login with the following:

Username: admin
Password: admin

Then click on the basic header on the navigation bar.

12. Change the router IP address under the LAN section to a unique address on your network, as an example, my primary wireless router has IP address 192.168.1.1, so I set my WRT54G to 192.168.1.2 and set my machine’s IP addresses to be assigned addresses from 192.168.1.100 and upwards from the DHCP pool (on my primary router).
13. Turn off the DHCP server, as this will be used as a client, essentially a conduit, you don’t want it assigning addresses to connected machines, thats the responsibility of your primary router.
14. Leave the wireless enabled and set the wireless mode to Wireless Ethernet Bridge, set the SSID to the SSID (name) of your primary wireless router, this is needed so that your WRT54G/GS/GL knows which wireless router to connect to for its internet connection. The SSID is the name of your primary wireless router – its the name that you’ll see on your computer whenever you’re connecting to your wireless router.
15. Set your security up to whatever it is your use on your primary router.
16. Click the save button and the router will restart.
17. Once the router is back up again, you should be able to open a command prompt on your computer and ping something, say, google:

ping www.google.com

That’s it! Next thing you’ll want to do is to plug your XBox into the WRT54G/GS/GL and go through the whole connection test process. You’ll be nailing noobs in no time!

If you decide to embark on the Tomato360 journey, please let me know how you get on in the comments.

Sorry.

Not too long ago I acquired Prince of Persia on the XBox 306. I’m just over half the way through it so I thought I’d share my experience up till now. So, let me just start off by saying that I really wanted to love this game as much as I did Sands of Time on the Gamecube and, while it’s not a complete disappointment, I am left somewhat deflated by it.

It starts off well enough, fantastic graphics, large expansive vistas, fluid game play (except the combat) and overall, it’s very well polished. The music captures the atmosphere well and fits with the whole Arabic fantasy theme. I was initially dismayed though to discover that the prince is a wise-cracking American. I don’t have anything against American accents, I just didn’t expect it from a game set in Arabia. Anyway, I did get used to it and found that I was becoming more immune to it as time went on.

The whole running and jumping thing is something that takes some getting used to (and I’m a fan of the previous POP games), knowing exactly when to press certain buttons to chain the moves, allowing you to reach higher areas or just for travelling between areas. It can get a bit irritating when you’ve fallen for the umpteenth time. Usually though, it’s a combination of scoping ahead before you set off and/or falling when its not obvious what to do in that crucial split second, then going back and doing it again.

The prince and his light-loving sidekick Elika

Another huge part played is that of the princess, who follows you around wherever you go. She helps out by saving you when you fall, giving your longer jumps a bit of a boost and by being the main proponent in reclaiming the corrupted lands. Despite all of her usefulness, it’s the parts of the game where the princess helps out that you really start to wish didn’t exist.

In such a huge world, with such a massive scope for falling it’s definitely useful to have some sort of ability to quickly correct any slip-ups that lead to certain death at the bottom of a dark precipice. Sands of Time used a rewind capability which worked seamlessly and didn’t make you feel like you were cheating. The new game uses the princess to save the prince if he falls too far, by means of grabbing his hand and lobbing him back to the last flat platform that you were standing on. It’s a bit of a clumsy mechanic, better by far than merely ending the prince’s life and giving you a game over, but still. Perhaps there should have been more focus on, 1: how the environment could have eased this and 2: a more compelling risk-reward device.

The combat isn’t quite there either, it feels lethargic and a bit of a lottery at times. There are simple minions dotted about here and there who don’t prove too much trouble but its the boss fights that are the most irritating. They seem to have adopted God of War’s QTE events for parts of the fights – said boss enemy will manage to land a couple of hits, triggering tedious  sequences where you have to mash a button to avoid getting your head rammed into the ground. It really doesn’t take too much imagination and I guess that’s why many developers are using it more and more often. God of War’s implementation was fantastic, but POP just leaves you feeling cheated.

About a third of the way through the game, the monsters you fight become covered in ‘corruption’, which really just looks like an oil slick with tentacles. This ushers in what I think is the worst decision in the game – to render the sword useless in fighting corruption-covered foes, defaulting to the feeble efforts of the princess.

There’s never any consequence of making mistakes in fights – the princess saves you and the enemy’s health goes up a bit. You’re left feeling that the developers just made the fights deliberately frustrating to somehow balance this out. The result is that, despite your best efforts and research of the combo hierarchy, you never really feel like you won convincingly or deserved victory.

I think the best way to describe the new Prince of Persia is bitter-sweet: you’re glad the princess saves you when you fall, but you’re pissed off that the next move was so obtuse you couldn’t have guessed it on the fly, you’re happy you managed to land an acrobatically dazzling combo on an enemy but pissed off that every other attempt was thwarted by the enemy’s unhaltable QTE events.

I’m gonna stick with this one and play it through. If this is your genre then go for it but if you’re more of a jack of all genres, I’d suggest spending your valuable gaming time elsewhere.

There are 8 cups in all, with 4 tracks each, giving an impressive total of 32 tracks. The new tracks that have been bought in for the Wii version are fantastic, each as original and attention-grabbing as the next. Then of course there is the mind-boggling Rainbow Road – a fixture in all mario kart games; Nintendo have really gone crazy with the Wii’s Rainbow Road!

Mario Kart has always been a challenging game, one that rewards skill and mastery. As with all Mario Kart games, there is a heavy degree of ‘computer interference’. You may start calling that ‘cheating’ after the 8th time Peach smashes you with a red shell just as you’re about to cross the line on the last lap! Although, naturally if you’re not an amazing player you’re not as prone to the Blue Spikey Shell (otherwise known as the ’spikey bunnet’) and other various flukes, courtesy of the NPCs, such as three red shells in a row or pricision aimed bananna throws.

As always, theres the 50cc, 100cc and 150cc races which can be translated as the difficulty settings;

• 50cc – pretty easy to come first (if you know what you’re doing);
• 100cc – bit of a jump up the difficulty curve (aka ‘these guys are cheating b******s!’);
• 150cc – I hope you’re already bald because you’ll be tearing your hair out (aka ‘crouching girlfriend, flying Wiimote’ mode).

As you progress through the difficulties and cups you’ll unlock new karts, bikes and characters, some of whome seem pretty useless, but the more masterful may find a use for them. There’s also the battle mode which originally featured in the N64 incarnation, which is alright with four people, but the fun really lies in the racing.

I’ve so far managed to finish the 50cc cups and I’ve started into the 100cc cups, there’s a marked difference in difficulty and I reckon the majority of players will be happy getting half way through the 100ccs and dabble in the more difficult ones.

The online mode is fantastic, it’s really seamless and easy to use. If you have friends registered already (see playing your Wii friends), you can join games with them and the remaining slots will be filled with other random players from around the globe. Provided you have a decent broadband connection the latency is pretty good and unnoticeable for the most part. The best part of the online mode is that it totally removes the NPC cheating element, meaning if someone beats you, they were the better racer. There remains the random element, of course, as you’re never sure what item you’re going to get and sometimes it all comes down to just that – a golden mushroom can be a lifesaver on the last lap!

Lets not forget the split-screen multiplayer mode which is where Mario Mart Wii really shines! There is nothing better than feeling the anguish from your buddy as you knock them off the track and down a dark. pit. Mario Kart will truly bring even the quietest of players out of their shell. You can also have a maximum of two players in split-screen mode playing online.

There’s a lot more besides and I could ramble on and tell you about it but I won’t, lest to say that this is the most pure gaming experience I’ve had for a while and is, without doubt, the best Mario Kart since the original appeared way back in 1992.

Yes, thanks Mr Wordpress. I finally managed to get round to starting my own blog!