Category: video games

It’s Not Supposed To Do That (O.o)

When I got home, mom showed me a “self-rising, self-crispening and browning” microwaveable pizza. I opened it up and it had 3 parts to it: a tray, a lid, and the pizza. You stuck the pizza on the tray, which did something, and put this little ring-lid around the edge of the pizza, seemingly to make the crust work. 5 minutes, and voila, I had a pizza that I didn’t work at all for. Laziness has reached another peak, and it is good.

[rant]

Today was the laughable event of the Day of Silence, a day in which those who “support gays and lesbians” don’t talk. I don’t laugh because it has specifically to do with gays and lesbians, I laugh because it’s just retarded. No, really. Case in point: people are trying to make a ‘statement’, by doing something as passive as not talking. Doesn’t matter what you’re trying to make the statement for, it’s stupid. All this does, and I support this as a fact, is say that you’re trying to make a statement, and even that might be a stretch. Most people don’t notice.

Another aspect of this is that no other “group” has a day in which people state they support said “group”. Don’t try and tell me gays and lesbians are being persecuted – so have Jews, so have Christians, and to a far worse extent. This is life, deal with it, without making akward ‘statements’, that accomplish nothing in the first place.

EDIT: i must admit, upon reviewal of the evidence, the method works. but, this does not end the discussion on homosexuality. post on!

[/rant]
[geek]

I’ve gotten into the habit of leaving my computer on while I’m at school, so I can listen to the music on the server during Programming (and occasionally PoE). I tested it out for the first time today, didn’t work well because the PoE computers don’t have speakers, so I may bring one (singular) in for that purpose. We’ll see.

As for Chaos Theory, I’ve gotten four of the levels beaten on 100% so far, about to start the fifth momentarily. I’m hoping for some kind of special reward here, but, I doubt it. I haven’t heard any mention of it before, so, chances are slim. One can hope.

[/geek]

School was generically okay, nothing special to mention. Today did mark that I officially have 2 days of school left before Spring Break. I haven’t needed a break this much for a while, although I could probably operate a few weeks more on my current level of motivation. The only other thing of note in school is that we took a survey today, mostly on drugs/alcohol, with a short bit on sex. Supposedely, the results go to a national average. I was kind of surprised, that the school would do something as pro-active as this, as in, getting some answers from the 1500-2000 students. The survey itself wasn’t very interesting – the first 50 pages of questions (the amount per page varied, they were grouped by type of answer) were ALL on drugs and alcohol, and there were app. 70 pages. It was kind of interesting as a whole though, considering I know a handful of people who are heavy on the drinking, and know of dozens of people who, uh, seem to be stuck on the weed, as it were. We also have a group of people (hicks) that stand outside on the corner of IHS, smoking cigarettes. How stuff like this happens, and continues to happen, I don’t know.

On to Hokkaido!

Dude, That Was EXTREME!! (O.o)

I am muddy, hungry, and have not started my homework. Church was normal – Greg had a good lesson, as usual. Oh, and Paul? I have some answers for you *grin*. (oh dear…using emotes in blog posts…I’m becoming like Daniel!!) It was on the internal reliability of the Bible (consistency, themes). Pretty cool stuff, especially as he’s doing external next week. I might even take notes.

After Church Benjamin, Jesse, and Nolan came over, and we had pizza while watching Olde English videos. Jesse and Nolan were being bums most of the time, playing on the Xbox, so Benjamin and I started making up some EXTREME!! sports involving EXTREME!! trash cans, EXTREME!! poles, and EXTREME(ly deflated)!! soccer balls. We were playing EXTREME!! ping pong for a while, but that got boring so we moved on to playing it with bats and wiffle-balls on the EXTREME!! picnic table. It didn’t really work, because the picnic table wasn’t wide enough, so we degraded to smashing a deflated soccer ball back and forth. This transformed into a strange form of EXTREME!! minigolf-croquet, and then onto EXTREME!! bowling, which didn’t work, because we couldn’t knock down the trash cans using just an EXTREME!! shovel and a soccer ball.

We eventually got Jesse and Nolan outside (the time it took almost put me to sleep). We were hitting balls back and forth, and eventually found an EXTREME!! bouncy ball in the brush, and I SO pwned Nolan with a headshot from 20 feet with that thing (sorry about that!). They left maybe an hour or two ago.

Last night was Ben’s LAN party, which I attended for 4 hours. Since I was only there for 4 hours, I didn’t get to play a lot of anything, but, among what I did get to play was Halo 2, Chaos Theory (man, it sucks, you can’t do 2v2 with 2 xbox’s), and…that was it. Other people were playing Worms, Gauntlet Legends, and Burnout 3, though. Church conflicted with staying overnight and not sleeping.

As for me, I dismantled that computer that was to be my server (alas, not enough RAM), and took out everything that was of use. Hopefully, the hand-me-down computer I’ll be recieving from my dad will suffice. Hopefully.

And now, a shower.

EDIT EXTREME!!:

Benjamin has a much more EXTREME!! write-up of our activities on his blog.

DOUBLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

Apparantly, extremophile is a word.

TRIPLE EDIT EXTREME!!:

You can’t get more EXTREME!! than THIS.

…or I Shall Taunt You a Second Time! (…)

I am sick. As in, actually sick, not the “oh, i feel abnormal, TIME TO STAY HOME!”. I went home around 3rd period yesterday, although my mom didn’t pick me up until 6th period. Kind of defeated the purpose, although I did get some sleep in the nurse’s office. I stayed home today, and my sneezing’s gone, but I’m coughing a little more, and my head feels akin to cotton. I would have actually preferred to have gone to school, not for the fun of it, but because I still haven’t finished all the work in chemistry. Hopefully I can get it all done in the two days left. I’m going to school tomorrow, sick or not. Staying home has been boring (not completely boring, but I beat Chaos Theory, and nobody’s been around to play online with). Speak of which, I think I’ll give my thoughts on Chaos Theory’s Single Player.

[geek]

So, Chaos Theory. I’ve talked it about it a lot before, and I have to say it lived up to it. The SP is amazing in general. There’s always three or four ways to solve things, but that makes the game easier, since the designers can’t predict what you have to do. Compared to the first and second’s levels, these are a good bit longer (they usually take an hour to beat, but once you know them, you can run through in about 15-20 minutes easily). There’s more enemies, the enemies are smarter, the graphics are better, think of whatever you can and it’s better. With one exception. But I’ll get to that in a minute.

A short BULLETED!!?!?! list of what’s improved:

  • New Weapon: Knife….the indestructible coolness goes on…
  • Level Complexity: As mentioned before, the levels are longer, and more complex. There’s always 2 ways to get to one destination, if not more, and usually 3 ways to kill any given guard (besides shooting or running up and knifing them). The game allows you to play however you want, now that alarms only increase the difficulty of taking out any given guard. In pandora tomorrow, 3 alarms meant you failed, but here, 4 alarms is the limit. It just means the guards are super-alert and fully equipped with rifles, body armor, and helmets.
  • More Maneuvers: You can kill people from just about anywhere, in any direction. The new moves include neck-snapping from a pipe, pulling over edges, shoving over edges, 4 non-lethal attacks, 5 lethal stabs, the list goes on. In addition to more moves, there’s WAY more chances to use these moves. Remember in the first SC, where you got to use the split jump once? I used it three times total, and probably used the edge grab half a dozen times, at least. Ah, the satisfaction.
  • Smarter AI: Multiple enemies will breach rooms from multiple directions, move between cover, switch from pistols to rifles as they find more disturbed items in the levels, notice broken lights, opened doors, etc..
  • Opportunity Objectives: These are always simple, but add just a little more interest to the levels. It’s always about finding an X number of something (weapons crates, microphones, phone lines, whatev). While simple, they usually don’t make you go searching the entire level again once you’ve gone through (with one exception, heh), it’s just a nifty little touch. Obviously these aren’t required to beat the mission.
  • Success Rating System: At the end of each level, you are rated on your stealth skills, based on whether you killed enemies or incapacitated, alarms triggered, bodies found, and number of times identified as an intruder (as opposed to being suspected). A 100% requires no killing, no bodies found, no alarms, and never being identified as an intruder, as well as getting the opportunity objective. The non-killing objective is the hardest, as it takes longer to knock someone out, and nearly impossible to do when they’ve identified you.
  • OCP: The pistol is equipped with an alternate fire, which is an electrical distruptor. It distrupts electrical objects for about 15 seconds, so you can keep moving past. This is important, because cameras are now indestructable, and is also useful for attracting guards without them identifying you.
  • Gadgets Simplified: Certain gadgets are combined into one (like the noise camera and the sticky camera).
  • Better Graphics: Like, a lot better, these are some slick polygons *bonk*.
  • Better Sound: The sounds are a little bit better, but what I really mean here, is that sound plays a bigger role in sneaking around. There’s an ambient sound meter which tells you how loud the surrounding area is, so you can adjust your speed accordingly.

But of course, with the good, comes the bad

  • Plot Retardacity: I don’t know how to say this…but the plot? It sucks. It’s filled with a lot of unnecessary holes (things stop making sense after the 4th or 5th level), and it just doesn’t flow. The first two had an identifiable villian, you felt like the levels had a purpose. In this case, however, you just kind of do whatever the objectives are, instead of intuitively knowing what you should be doing. In addition to being overly complex and filled with contradictions, it also doesn’t make sense logically. A lot of key elements to it just would not happen in today’s warfare, or even 20 years ago. They invoke technology that we’re far from gaining, and vastly underestimate the technology we have now. EXAMPLE: You are transmitting data to the NSA, via a plane flying by. For some reason, this plane is flying directly above a war zone, barely missing the skyscrapers. In addition to this, the plane, still going x-hundred miles and hour, is shot down with an infantry’s bazooka. This wouldn’t have happened in Vietnam, let alone 2007. The connection cannot be so weak as to require the plane being inches away from the source. Gah, I won’t go on.
  • Poor Cutscenes: They may have been the same before, but I remember the cutscenes from the first two versions being far smoother. The model animations this time around are very robotic. They aren’t convincing, and add to the level of vaguery in what’s going on. The cutscenes are also usually cut short as a character is saying something, to try and give a “rushed” sense, but it just adds to the confusion.
  • Sporadic Retardacity: Two levels are very, very poorly designed. Level 8 and 9, to be specific. They both start out nice and fun, but towards the middle, something happens to completely change the goal of the mission, and you’re tossed into a situation that is not logical or fun. Example: after the plane crashes, you are faced with North Korean UAVs, invincible, flying, infrared-scanning cameras with spotlights and a turret. They follow you wherever you go, and they can always follow you because the level has only 1 direction to go. Another example: after fighting breaks out between the Japanese ISDF, you need to reach the main target, the instigator of this outbreak. Because these men are all combat-ready, they are wearing helmets, body armor, are super-alert, and have infrared nightvision goggles on. Three of these men are in one room, with two doors. One door in, and one door out. That’s it. It is impossible to not kill these men, or do it by stealthy means. I tried, for over an hour. That’s the kind of situation I mean, where the game’s purpose is stolen by an obstacle that cannot be bypassed stealthily. This were probably the product of crunch-time, and last-minute attempts to get 10 levels in. The last level almost redeemed them, but was slightly dissapointing in the level of fun it was. SC 1 and 2 both had incredibly fun final levels. Why were they fun? I don’t really know. They just were.

Beyond that, the single player alone was probably worth 50 bucks. If I’d gotten the collector’s edition, I’d still have the three original bonus levels from SC, but, such things are not meant to be, I suppose. Once I play through the Co-op I’ll post some thoughts on that, but as is, I have nobody to play it with. I probably won’t write much about Versus for a long time, if at all, because of the extreme complexity. It’s taken me about 4-5 hours of playing just to get fluent with the controls, but the strategy on what to use and when to use it is the real key, and the levels are so complex…you get the idea. Hopefully I won’t forget to write it up, though. Hehe.

[/geek]

My throat feels like a lizard.

EDIT:

I got the server set up (with considerable amounts of help from Benjamin). Go explore the files I have up at the moment! What does this mean to you? I no longer have to use photobucket, which was semi-unreliable, downgraded the picture size, more annoying to link to, yada yada yada. This also means I can resurrect the random templates, unless, of course, you do not want them. If I were to bring them back, it would be be random, it would start on blue, but you could set it to whichever color you prefer. I’d also improve the colors and backgrounds and such for the red and green, and maybe introduce a few other colors. We’ll see.

The Server Location

No. You Can’t Have A Sip. (…)

Or so the mug sitting on my desk says. This mug was used in the acting of our Macbeth scene in English today, for the porter. We did alright, but not fantastic. We all stumbled on a few lines, but we had “mad propz” as I like to say. Karel had a beard made of cotton balls, Karel and I had robes on, ben had a blanket, Jared had keys and the mug I brought, and a bell. It was kinda fun, I guess.

I have an orthodontic appointment tomorrow. If all goes well, I may get the braces off, I might not. We’ll see. Tomorrow is actually shaping up to be a good day. I shouldn’t have to stay after school (Wednesdays are department meetings), so I’ll have a lot less school than normal. Or at least, normal as of late.

Daniel has, for the first time in history, beat me to the chase in getting a new game. How this happened, I cannot tell, but it did, and I am left in pure jealousy as he plays Chaos Theory to his heart’s content. Woe, woe, woe is me.

And now, more homework.

Why Doesn’t Food Rhyme With Good? (…)

That was a serious mistake, to whoever invented the English language.

So, Friday I did not attend school. Not because it was Good Friday (I find it bothersome that so many people do take the day off with that excuse), but to do 5 hours of make up work. I got all of my backlogged math work done, got more practice in on my English performance lines, and didn’t actually get to sleep in Friday. I figured since so many people would be gone, I could take the day off without drawing much attention. Hopefully that is the case. Anyways, this officially means Chemistry is the only subject left with work to do. I’ll be spending all my remaining days off working in Chemistry.

Saturday. The church youth (led by Greg) went to Lindseth at Cornell and did some climbing. It was pretty fun, despite my prognostication beforehand. I got to know Lincoln and Andrew a little better, which was cool. There’s a few kids at church I never really talk to, I dunno why, I just don’t. As for the climbing, I think I did okay considering I suck at it. I got to the top in two different places, but spent most of my time bouldering. My arms are pretty sore right now, but they’re almost back to normal.

Today was Easter (obviously), and the church, as usual, doubled in attendance. It’s kind of weird to see all these people come out of nowhere to church on Easter, and Easter alone. Dad actually taught a really good sermon, though. I normally don’t care for his style and presentation, but I definately learned something today.

Tomorrow? Not only is it Monday, but, Chaos Theory comes out. Speaking of which I need to go harrass my dad about Daniel’s money. If you haven’t read up on Chaos Theory, you need to. It’s gonna rock. 99 from OXM, 98 from Team XBox, 96 from IGN. Definately gonna rock. (btw Daniel, i just asked my dad, he said he lost the credit but will get more money for you tomorrow, i should have it by the time Scouts rolls around)

Finally, I’ve been experiencing a rather strange phenomonon recently. Food, in general, has stopped tasting good. Too much sugar? Not enough sleep? General stomache problems? They probably all contribute, but even my more preferred foods have ceased tasting as delicious as they should. My best guess is just a lack of sleep, because whenever I don’t get enough sleep, I find myself not seeing food as attractive. We shall see.

Trucker Hats and Zelda (O.o)

This week in general is not a good one. Productive, but not good in the least. The crappy grades which I’ve spent so much time fixing, Jonothan leaving, none if it’s cool. I had a glass of champagne with Jonothan and Brian Wednesday night. I’m not a fan of most alcoholic drinks, but it wasn’t too bad, nothing I would drink of my own accord, though. Jonothan left Thursday morning.

Friday was really nice and relaxing, exactly what I had hoped for. Saturday was too, but I had Kerry, Paul, Ben, and Jennie over around 7:30 to watch a movie (we couldn’t decide what movie, but Paul just shoved Zoolander in while nobody was watching, which sort of decided it for us). For whatever reason, Kerry was wearing this really large trucker hat, which she left here. Ben and Paul ended up spending the night, and left in the morning, and I walked down to church. For some reason, my mom’s been in Wisconsin. I can’t fathom what’s worth seeing in Wisconsin, but maybe some things are better left unanswered.

[geek]Beyond that, I’ve just been playing a lot of ZSNES games. I’m a good way through Yoshi’s Island, Mario RPG, Lufia II, Mario 3, Donkey Kong 1 and 2, and I already beat Zelda. I enjoy playing classic games a lot, it’s nice just to be able to sit down and enjoy a game without waiting for other players or dealing with complications and crashes and such. Playing the older games has resurrected my respect for Nintendo, which I lost upon release of the Gamecube. The Revolution may or may not be good, I can’t know, but one can hope. Speaking of which, I was enjoying the spoils of the GDC (Game Developer’s Conference). There was an Empire Earth II demo (sucked) a Chaos Theory Demo (looking good!), reports on a whole bunch of new games – Spartan: Total Warrior (from the makers of the Total War series, and I’m presuming using the Total War engine), Lego Star Wars (looked kinda funny, maybe one of those rental games), some stuff on Xbox 2 features (I was not left enthused), the PC version of Fable (didn’t look fantastic, but it said it had more quests, might be worth a download at least). E3 is on the way, though, which is supposed to have playable prototypes of all 3 consoles. I’m not really into console-hyping, but it’s good to know which system to go for first.[/geek]

At the moment, the house is empty and I’m blasting the Rome soundtrack at as high volume as my ears will allow.

The Chaotic Theorum (O.o)

I’ve experienced a rather excellent week, and next week promises to be equally excellent, as it is Regents, meaning two days lacking anything related to school, and two short and relatively painless tests.

After a full 2 weeks (approximately 150 hours of downloading) I got the first 31 episodes of Fullmetal Alchemist downloaded (I uploaded over 50 gb worth of data), and I’ve watched them all (it only took me 3 days), and the next 29 episodes only have 43 hours more left to go (keep in mind, each episode is 175 megs, it makes for 9 gigs total for the series). I introduced it to Daniel last night when he was over (he strolled in as I was watching it) and he ended up watching 12 episodes (remember that these things are 25 minutes each). I have deduced this to be the best anime, and even show ever created. The unique and creative genius of the plot, characters, and the world is astounding. The animation style and quality is akin to Trigun (which I should also download). Sick of the parenthesis yet?

I’ve also gotten around to playing Rome: Total War, and it is, to my delight, the best strategy game ever created. Ben and I keep talking about playing online, but we never get around to it, but it isn’t as if I don’t have things to keep me occupied. I still have yet to beat Neverwinter Nights, and all those SNES games.

In the mean time, I’ve also been tracking Splinter Cell 3 and Elder Scrolls IV (three new screens came out today, in fact). I had been on the look out for Jade Empire and KotOR II, but after having played KotOR and NwN, I’m not sure if the same formula of game would still be all that fun, as I tend to get over-manipulative of the system. I’ll stop talking about games now.

I was thinking to myself earlier about Macs in general – and why they’ve become comparable to PCs in the recent year. I did myself a Google, and discovered a number of things, from reading the most intelligently disguised Mac-PC flamewar, on a Linux forum.

Linkage

I have long argued over the inferiority of Macs compared to PCs, but recently much of my argument has blown up in my face, due to the de-retardation of Macs. It still hasn’t answered as to why I find them so awful (I use G4’s at school on a daily basis, just so my experience is not in doubt EDIT: apparantly my experience is in doubt. i’ve also used powerbooks on multiple occasions, and OS9’s fairly regularly, but i admit that i have not used a G5). A number of posters on the previously stated site brought up extremely valid points as to why the experience varies.

  • Macs are preferred for the software capabilities. PCs are preferred for the hardware capabilities.

An owner of a server put it quite well. His needs do not revolve around multimedia. His three PCs don’t even have sound cards, and use very low end video cards. In place of those, he needs massive storage. PCs allow you to do that infinitely, they don’t have a cap on how much of what you need. Macs cannot be built from scratch (technically it IS possible, but the amount of work and experience involved surpasses that required for a PC by far), you have to buy a pre-made from Apple. You CAN upgrade it, but that does not allow you to specialize in certain areas, but not sacrifice economics. Macs simply have superior software. Some of their formats have better, faster, higher quality compressions and decompressions (for video or pictures). That’s always been true.

  • Macs are inevitably more expensive for those who have special wants or needs.

Because you cannot just sacrifice in one area to add to another, you have to go for the more expensive package. PCs end up being cheaper for those with special needs. PCs may or may not be expensive when it comes to a rounded-out machine. Generally, if you build a PC from scratch, it’ll be cheaper than an equivelant Mac or pre-built PC. Macs have been known to be more expensive since the beginning – this has been studied dozens of times, results are neutral according to bias, but for the standard machine, Macs will cost more.

  • Benchmarks and power comparisons are inconclusive.

I’ve had several people tell me that the newest Macs would rip apart a Pentium 4 – this is meaningless, as the power of a P4 can range immensely, from < 1.0 to 5.0, and the clock cycles per operation between mac and PC procs vary as well. This also doesn't consider that AMD chipsets are far faster the P4's, (I have the evidence to back me up), and most benchmarks are run on Dells, which certainly do not run high quality hardware. Anyways. Skiing was cold. It was about 5, possible 0 degrees out, with a wind chill of like -5 or -10. Fun, but cold. The bus rides to and fro (the irony has just now struck me) are actually one of my favorite parts, I have to say. I was wearing so many layers – I had 6 on my body, three on legs, two pairs of socks, two pairs of gloves, two goods, a turtleneck, and earwarmers. I still froze. I had no goggles, so every snowblower was like “OH SWEET HEAVEN THE PAIN! AHHHHHHHHH!”, but was otherwise, just cold.

Now with a Smooth Marshmallow Core! (O.o)

This week can’t end soon enough. At this time, aI’m frustrated at the utter lack of time I have. I’ve been taking the bus home just so I can get more time at home (it gives me about an hour more), but that has a side effect of disconnecting me, but of course all my time at home is spent working or vegging as I play Halo 2 or my other newer games, so it’s a ruthless cycle of disconnectivity.

Speaking of Halo 2, I’ve gotten back into it recently, but I’ve found I have a 1/2 chance of either doing insanely well or sucking. I can’t figure it out – there are those games where the battle rifle is my baby – all my kills are headshots and no deaths, and then I have those Banshee moments, where I’m evading the rockets. And then I have those Banshee moments, where I hop in three times in one game only to be rocked by the rockets. And then I have those games where I can’t get the Battle Rifle, and I’m stuck with an SMG. I think I need to work on my strategy. I THINK the problem is my skill is too reliant on my team. If my team mates keep the rocket out of play, the Banshee is my home. I’m not sure though, as that doesn’t quite make sense when it comes to some weaponry (the battle rifle in particular). It’s taken me this long to realize it’s a team game, though. For all practical purposes, it’s a tactical shooter – you either work with the team or against the team. It’s actually that simple, too. If you aren’t sticking together and talking with your team, you end up dying, giving the enemy valuable weaponry, vehicles, and easier shot at the objective, more points, the whole basket and kaboodle. For so long I’ve been frustrated at how I can be better than the guy I’m fighting by a long shot, but still die, and now I understand. Anyways, no more video game talk.

Speaking of which, I wrote a report on video game violence for English. It’s technically the 1st draft, but it’s close enough.

Report – Video Game Violence

[2012 edit: lost forever]

I believe I sufficiently pwned that argument.

Speaking of pwnage, I had this crazy killing spree with the sniper rifle on Ascension. It was 4v4 Team Slayer – I had a fully loaded Sniper Rifle at my disposal, and they just kept on coming up the ramp, and out of the base, they didn’t stop coming. I was kind of toast when one of they shot me with the sniper after all my team had died at point-blank. I had two of those experiences actually, one on Burial Mounds at the base tunnel. I wish they had the headshot sound from UT. It would make it so much more satisfying.

Speaking of satisfying, I discovered my mouse has a battery life of like 5 days, with just one overnight charge. I am quite pleased, to say the least.

Also speaking of satisfying, we finished season 3 of 24. It was, to say the least, not satisfying. The biggest problem was that instead of twisting the plot, they kept extending it. The last 5 or 6 hours were completely unnecessary plot-wise, they just stretched things out for the last few hours, which is why they were far less interesting than the rest of the season. The season started off weakly. The first two discs were poor. The next two were excellent, but then the next two were poor. I have high hopes for season 4 though, especially with such a gigantically new cast (that should be a hint to how many people die). On a positive note, Kiefer Sutherland (the one that plays Jack) is an incredible actor. His skills really shine when you have a lot of bad extras and minor characters running around. I mean…bad. I could act better than some of these people. Oh well.

The Final Fantasy (O.o)

[edit]Oh, and Merry Christmas everyone![/edit]

Ah yes, Christmas. I truly enjoyed mine, I hope you enjoyed yours. Christopher’s here, he’s been giving me all kinds of phat l00t for my comput4r. He’s loaded a few thousand dollars worth of programs, music, and stuff onto my computer in his few days here so far. He still has yet to supply me Nero, some Moby, and Windows XP Pro (it’s isntalled, but we need a serial key). It’s pretty amazing – his song collection outgrew his 40GB mp3 player – he now has a 120GB External USB2.0 (Seagate) for his song collection, which is clocking over 16,000 at this moment. Yes, that’s a whole lot of songs, with which I am partaking in the love. My cousin John (28?) just arrived, which is cool. He’s not a geek, he’s actually an actor, or rather, in theatrical college of sorts. He’s pretty cool.

I woke up at 11:00 today, did the presents routine, ate our tradition Christmas breakfast (we don’t do Christmas dinner, we do Christmas Eve fondue, which beats any Christmas goose by a mile) of Sour Cream Eggs (best breakfast ever, it may sound gross but it really is good). We watched a few episodes of Arrested Development (hilarious) and some Season 3 of 24 (so far it’s the worst of the three, but still quite good).

Yesterday Christopher and I went to get my present, which happened to be in the vicinity of Best Buy. We were originally getting a hardrive, but my dad called Christopher in the middle of the searching process to inform him that he already got me one. So we decided to go for the Logitech LX700, the sexiest peripheral to ever exist. It’s a wireless keyboard (About 2 dozen extra programmable buttons, black, soft-keys, solid, all around awesome) and mouse (7 buttons – technically 5, as there are only three “buttons” that are extra, persay, but the mouse can press down and tilt from side to side, useless, but hey, whatever. the battery is rechargable – you just stick it on the charger when you’re not using it (most important to do when you turn it off), it has at least a 12 hour life, if not more, i have no clue, but it’s Logitech, so, i expect a lot). These rock, which is good. To make life simple I’m making a bulleted list.

  1. Logitech LX700
  2. Western Digital 80GB IDE Hardrive
  3. KotOR
  4. Doom 3
  5. Rome: Total War
  6. 2x Sour Altoids – Apple
  7. Blue S-Type XBox Controller
  8. Barnes & Nobale $25 giftcard
  9. Blockbuster $50 giftcard (this came from my grandparents, which is actually probably a miracle of epic proportions. you see, my grandparents are probably the worst giftgivers known to the world. their most famous gift was a plastic statue of liberty AM radio – that’s ALL it did. it was that nasty copper-green. they gave them to my parents before I was born, so I never got to see them. the next year they got the same thing. in the same way, my grandparents have completely failed in getting me logical gifts. for the past 5 years, i got model cars. they came in variations, sometimes like hot wheels, or sometimes in wooden versions. suffice to say, i don’t even like cars. i never told them I did. we could never figure this phenomonon out. they also have a 15 dollar limit. my grandparents aren’t poor – they aren’t rolling in the green, but they aren’t strapped financially, so it was always amusing to see what they managed to do within those limits. we were disapointed in a sick sort of way when we discovered my present to be, well, good. even if we don’t have a Blockbuster within 15 miles of us, it’s definately a milestone for my grandparents.)
  10. Every album from about 10 or 15 artists (I asked for Coldplay and Modest Mouse, but Christopher gave me a few others he thought i’d like).
  11. A lot of programs (Microsoft Office 2003, Outlook 2003 [which, for the record, is better than Thunderbird, Eudora, or any other POP3 client], SSH Tunneler, PGP Encrypter, and eventually Nero, Visual Studio.net, XP Pro, and the Pro version of ZoneAlarm)
  12. Fuzzy Slippers!!
  13. Fleece Robe
  14. A picture frame + scarf (from Colette)
  15. ZSNES + a bunch of games (from Ben)
  16. Two chocolate turtles (from Jared)

My Uncle will be here tomorrow, and apparantly is bringing his gifts along to save the expense of unnecessary shipping.

Now, about this whole Final Fantasy business, I’m gonna have to smack a few people up who don’t think FFVII is the best of the Final Fantasy series. Best game ever? Purely my opinion. The thing about FFVII is that it’s not actually overrated. The fact that 5 people just said it in my comments proves me point. Outside of the RPG realm, the entire Final Fantasy series is looked down upon, even though most people have not played them. The strange thing about Final Fantasy and RPG’s in general is their scope is limited, hype is minimal, the general audience of small. Despite this, they receive no less shame and humiliation from those who have not even played them.

Why is FFVII the best in the series? Graphically, it’s visual diahrrea. The cutscenes and battle graphics were good, but most of the time you were in the world map or running around and such, and none of the models were rounded – everything was at right angles. It was good in its time, today it just sucks. It was THE FIRST 3-D turn-based-combat (TBC, also referred to as classic) RPG ever. Few people grasp this, but it was not done before FFVII. That’s why the graphics sucked – it was an experiment visually. If you STILL try and knock the graphics, go back to your hole. It also had the disadvantage of being an early release on the console. The PS, if you remember, came out before the N64, and lacked certain anti-aliasing technology and other minor things that gave the N64 a graphical edge.

Moving on. The thing about FFVII was the plot, the characters, character development, and mood of the game. Unless you’re an FPS or action-ish gamer, you can agree that FFVII had a near-perfect plot and implementation of the storyline. The plot, if described to you in person, would not make sense, it would seem corny and silly. Play the game, my friend, from start to finish. Tell me you weren’t sad and surprised when Aries died, tell me you didn’t find at least one of the characters really cool, tell me you didn’t get bored of the game at any point. If you’re a gamer who doesn’t like Final Fantasy or RPGs, don’t go and tell me you think otherwise, because I don’t really care.

To be a little more specific, let’s look at the choices you have with each character when it comes to magic, equipment, and attacks. For only have three equipment slots, the system is highly complex. Your armor and weapon both have “slots” which can hold materia. Materia are magical items that are either a spell, skill, or stat modifier. You put the materia in these slots to use the materia, or allow the use of the materia. That’s not the complex part. It starts getting thicker by the fact that all materia change your stats. Magic materia make you physically weaker, and magically stronger. Skill materia will increase a stat related to the skill. The stat change doesn’t do much until you get stronger materai – which end up changing stats by 15%. That’s still pretty simple, right? Here’s where it starts really getting cool. The materia have levels of growth. They grow by gaining AP from battle (just a different form of exp). Growing allows you to use the magic more times in a battle, gives greater stat bonuses, or just allows you to use the spell. Weapons or armor may be set to let your materia grow at a double rate, or at no rate, so some weapons may seem better but not actually be. Now, here’s the final piece that makes the materia system awesome. Each slot is set one of two types – linked or single. Single materia are unaffected by other materia and do not change the result of other materia. Linked materia can add to the other materia, or change what happens. For example: If I have the “Counter-attack” materia, and i put it into one of two linked slots, and put the “Poison” materia in the other slot, I have a chance of poisoning the enemy on the counter-attack. The rate of success is dependant on both materia. If they’re both mastered, I’ll always counter, and the counter will always poison (succesfully or not is dependant on the enemy). You can come up with extremely complex combinations – it’s what makes the magic system so cool. It’s really complex.

Battle in generally really rocked (I can safely say, that if you really played the game, you would agree that it’s better than FFVIII or FFIX, again, I cannot speak for the PS2 games). As for the plot? Play it. The characters? Play it. Just play the game. Another specific thing I should mention is the length of the game. You could probably beat the game from beginning to end in 25-30 hours, if you really wanted to. However, you would miss out on 90% of the game. The game has tons of stuff to do, explore, and find everywhere in the game. Even at the very end, there’s loads to do. You can breed chocobos, you can race chocobos, you can play dozens and dozens of little minigames, you can level up your characters, get the ultimate weapons and final limit breaks for your characters, you can find all the materia, you can get the Knights of the Round Materia, its hard to describe how much there really is to do just at the end of the game. There’s just as much during the middle – you can get characters early, you can do side quests, the game easily has 100 hours of stuff to do in it. I have the clock maxed in my game to 99 hours , 59 minutes and 59 seconds. I aint joking.

Why would GameFAQs have more FAQs and guides than any other game, some of which have been added THIS YEAR (this game was made in 1997, folks)? Go find out, and play it.

As for FFVIII…

I consider it a black sheep of the series. Why? The characters were highly unoriginal and extremely unlovable or stereotypical. The plot was fine, I hold nothing against it, but it wasn’t superb. The combat was boring, as was leveling up. That’s actually what I hated most. The combat was so slow, so boring, leveling up was just so easy. I had Squall to level 80-something on the third disc. Why do I find that wrong? Leveling up should be a challenge, it should be hard, I don’t want it handed to me on a silver platter. Not to mention, there was no reward for leveling up. If you got stronger, the bosses got stronger, meaning you weren’t payed off for your work. There was nothing “inventive” about the gameplay – I saw nothing new or innovative about the implementation, only a poor attempt at mixing things up. The graphics were at times, more frustrating than FFVII. The textures were so low-res, so pixelated and bad, I can’t describe the amount of squinting I did. It hurt my eyes. At least FFVII was simple. The game was overall okay, but I really just did not enjoy it at all. I got to the third disc, and decided I had put up with it long enough.

And FFIX?

I consider just behind FFVII. It was a good game – the graphics were solid, the movement and feel nice and smooth. The general gameplay was akin to FFVII, in that you had a main, driving storyline that you could jump onto at any time, but there were always minigames you could go play or you could go level up or just have fun. That’s what I look for in an RPG – leisurely, go-at-your-own-pace gameplay. FFVIII forced you to jump ahead at points, simply out of boredom or otherwise. There were no side quests or minigames, for the most part. They had a bad version of the card game that was made in FFIX (which i still didn’t really enjoy, but I had a little fun with it), and that was about it. FFIX had a lot of funny moments – it was the lightest, most humorous of those I’ve played (FFVI – FFIX). I especially enjoyed the chocobo quests – I had a LOT of fun playing Chocobo Hot&Cold. The FFVIII version was also far more boring and didn’t even reward you for it.

I’ll end my rant now, but I hope you understand my view on the Final Fantasies a little better.

Woof Woof (O.o)

I have spent my week almost completely seperated from my friends, excepting those that have been playing Maple Story. I can say for sure that this is the best free game I have ever played, beating even the incredible Infantry. Yes, even Infantry. For those of you aghast at my lack of Halo 2-ing, I must state a fact that has remained true throughout my life: I am, at the core, not an FPS gamer. The first game I ever played and truly understood and enjoyed, was FF7 (this at the age of 7). I play FPS because I’m good at them and thus can enjoy them. I still maintain that FF7 is the best game ever created, and thus the upcoming movie FFVII: Advent Children has peaked my interest. I have found no easily accesible trailers to be downloaded, only streamed, unfortunately. Just do a Google for Advent Children. The CGI is outstanding, although the file itself or the actual animations suffer framerate issues for obvious reasons. In any case, I patiently await the arrival of the movie.

I feel like reminiscing about Infantry, so I’ll do that. Infantry was a third-person (bird’s eye) shooter. It was simplistic, yet really awesomely cool. It was set in the future, so you had your special doodad-taculars. Originally it was really boring – there were vehicles you ran around in and you just tried to hold these points in a boring King of the Hill form of a game. This changed once they introduced a very loose RPG system – you gained money and rank from kills and flag captures in these CTF-type games. You used the money to buy weapons, armor, or ammo. Most importantly, was the class system. There were dozens of classes, all unique. There were Heavy Weapons (not demolition, they used higher-powered rifles and grenades), Infantry (they were boring and noobular), Jumptroopers (Fast, Maneuverable, Light), Scouts (i think i may have the name wrong, but they were capable of being invisible and used the sniper rifle most), Engineers (they built turrets and defenses, which got their kills), Medics (infantry with healing), and a few others, as well as leveled up forms of those guys. Unfortunately, a few months after that version came out, it went p2p. It rocked.

O.o

This week has been pretty good. It started out meh, but it gradually just got better and better. Gwen’s, Paul’s, and Ben (Feldman)’s birthday party was last night, which was pretty fun. Other than that, I’ve spent a lot of my time doing make up and retakes for school. On Wednesday I discovered I had an F in Chemistry (this was gonna go on the 5-week report, and that just wasn’t gonna happen) which I resurrected to a B, possibly a B+ depending on the grade of an extra credit paper I did. I was frustrated many times by my English teacher. I had to make up this essay we did that I missed, so I told him I’d come after school on Monday, and then he wasn’t there. I told him I’d come after school on Tuesday, but he wasn’t there again. Even on Wednesday, he wasn’t there, but he left the door unlocked, so I had to go through the papers on his desk to find mine (he finally let me do it during class that day, for a whole 20 minutes *grumble*), which for some reason was labeled “never showed”.

Anyways, that’s about the peak of the excitement I experienced. In other news, due to an anonymous tip from Mike, I learned of a secret game that everyone plays called Maple Story. In essence, it’s a free MMORPG, with Gunbound-style visuals. It’s mucho fun, especially when you’re running around with a party of people and stuff. It’s well balanced, and all character classes are unique from eachother. Definately worth the 170 MB download, IMO. My Halo 2 fanatacism has waned for the moment. I still maintain it’s the most fun multiplayer game I’ve palyed, but my mood recently hasn’t been suited for it. As in, I haven’t been in a good enough mood to handle getting owned from time to time. I don’t like the ranked games enough to really want to play them alone, either. I just don’t enjoy the settings. I much prefer custom games, they’re more laid back and enjoyable.

My first Christmas present has appeared under the tree! Not a clue what it is, as my parents are really good at disguising stuff. They’ll usually stick easily guessed items (CDs, games, movies, etc.) in bigger boxes with lots of padding. Oh well.

O.o

I was in a great mood, until, randomly, I recieve this.

[15:00:12] TheMysteriousMrZ: www.gamerankings.com so, i see that half-life 2 has remained in the top five while halo 2 is conspicuously absent from the top ten altogether.

[15:00:25] *** “TheMysteriousMrZ” signed off at Sat Dec 04 15:00:25 2004.

THIS is why Half-Life 2 sucks. THIS is why Half-Life sucks. I didn’t want to have to make a post about this, but I’m gonna have to if I’m gonna get my point across.

Sure, four weeks ago I was confident that, according to Gamerankings, Halo 2 would have a higher score. In reality, I didn’t care, it was just a fun bet with BEN (not Zach, mind you). I would have liked to see Halo 2 stay up there. The retardacity of this is that somehow the ranking score has turned into a numerical value of how good a game is. It’s a summary, not a statement. I find it enough that IGN, Gamespot, and GMR all found Halo 2 to be a better game. I could care less about “Boomtown” and “eToyChest”‘s ideas. You know why Halo 2 has such a low score? Because 6 sites, none of whom I’ve ever heard of, decided it’s a bad game. I read them. As reviews, they SUCKED. If quality of reviewers could be measured, they wouldn’t be included. Nonetheless, they are there, pulling Halo 2’s score down a full percentage point or two.

That being said, HL2 has a higher score, fair and square, I suppose.

As for MY opinion of HL2 and why I think it sucks, I’ll try and convey that now. I’ve seen HL2. I watched Zach play it for an hour, and to be honest, I was not amazed. From what I’ve read (I’ve read 3 or 4 reviews on it) and seen (I’ve watched a number of movies and screenshots), I can make some pretty fair statements here.

Graphics: Yeah, they’re good. That is, if you have a good rig. Zach’s machine definately isn’t bad, (It’s like 2.2 AMD with a 9600P, right?) but it didn’t look outstanding on his rig. Good? Yes. Personally, I don’t find the recent graphics of Doom 3 and HL2 all that amazing, they look dreary and dull. Elder Scrolls IV? Now that’s beautiful, and it’s not even a finished engine.

Physics: Get ready for this: Halo 2 and Half-Life 2 use the same physics engine. They both use the Havoc engine – HL2 uses a slightly more advanced and souped up form that allows some water effects (bouyancy) and just a little more detail all around. Personally, I could care less if the world I’m playing has realistic physics. The physics in Halo 2 are detailed enough that I can have loads of fun just screwing around rolling barrels and rocks around. Ben said something about the ragdoll not being good in Halo 2 – I beg to differ. Watching myself die is almost a treat – it’s like a reward for doing badly. If I’m sniping and I get sniped back, my guy will fall backwards (not doing the flailing thing) and roll down the stairs slowly. So far I’ve never seen any unrealistic poses (think back to when ragdoll had just come out) or anything annoying and stupid. Yes, every now and then when you get blown up your guy will flail around, but so what?

Storyline: Keep in mind, I speak from ignorance and base what I know off of the Gamespot review. According to them, the storyline was weak, and not very good in general. The end was anticlimactic and ended with you fighting a weak enemy with an overpowered weapon. This is just what I read – don’t look at me for innacuracies. Halo 2’s storyline owned. I have to say, it was really good. Did the cliffhanger ending suck? Absolutely. I wanted the game to keep going very, very badly. That just raises the bar for Halo 3 – I expect a lot from its story now (Bungie has unoffically announced it in the recent Q&A). Apparantly HL2 still doesn’t have any cutscenes, or third-person events for that matter, and Gordon Freeman never speaks. That doesn’t seem like much room to make a plot. I don’t think I’d like the entire story being told by people talking to you.

All that being said, there is still more to mention. Halo 1 had a higher average review score than Half-Life 1. When I compare HL1 and HL2, I don’t see much difference. They look the same, they feel the same, they even SOUND the same (they didn’t even put in new sounds for some parts of the game). HL2 = HL1 + graphics and physics. That’s all I see. When I look at Halo 2, I see worlds of difference. H2 = H1 + much improved storyline/single player in general + huge gameplay changes (new weapons, vehicles, maps, dual wielding, no health, I could go on and on about the fundamental differences) + xbox live + graphics + physics. When I say HL2 sucks, I don’t mean it’s a bad game. I mean that by my standards, compared to what I enjoy playing, it is not a fun game that is worth my money. Steam alone is enough to push me away – I read the Game Revolution review, and that was a big enough factor to really change their score. Anyone with a non-state-of-the-art computer will have to deal with loading times and general annoyances. The implications of Steam are awful – if every company did this, PC gaming would go down the tubes.

That’s just what I have to say.

O.o

In light of Half Life 2 being released, I need to make a statement.

Half Life 2 is not compareable to Halo 2. Halo 2, while intended to be a single player game, is really a multiplayer masterpiece. Half Life 2, while it has mod potential, is in essence, a single player game. Halo 2 has the most amazing mutliplayer I’ve ever seen. Half Life 2 will probably have the most amazing single player I’ve ever seen.

I understand the extreme mod potential, but in reality, most of these mods will suck. It’s a fact of life. Maybe a handful will be pretty cool, but in reality, none can compare to a system that has a) been tested for bugs b) been tested for balance and c) been tested for everything else you can think of. The fact is, Halo 2 MP combines anything and everything that’s been good about any other multiplayer. Voice, the party system, dual wielding, vehicles, assymetrical maps, and hijacking. You can’t beat it.

Half Life 2 has the graphics, the physics, the story, and the mods to make the SP equally mind-blowing. Neither of the games introduce much anything new – it’s all improvement on what’s already there.

I’m sure both games are worthy of a 10.0. But my Halo fanboi-isms remain, and in my mind, Half Life cannot redeem itself of Counterstrike.

O.o

Oh goodness, the only reason I’m sitting here typing this is ebcause none of my friends are online to play HALO 2 with. I’ve made about a dozen or two dozen friends playing online, the voice chat really makes the game more personal. I don’t have a headset to chat with, but I’ll fix that, hopefully tomorrow.

I’ve beaten the campaign (I beat it last night), so I can finally give some form of a final word on that. The cutscenes, as I mentioned in the comments, are not outstanding. The earlier ones have gigantic texture pop-in problems, but that gets better after a few levels or so. The plot itself is better than the first, it’s highly involving and pretty interesting. As for the levels, they’re far, far better than the first. No more hallway crawls (excepting the next to last level, which is slightly reminiscent of Doom 3, it’s quite freaky). For those of you that car (absolutely no one) there will be some story spoilers up ahead.

All the levels are highly fun. There are only two levels which have anything close to repetitivity or a hallway crawl. And they’re still fun, despite that. You only spend a short time on earth, then you kind of romp around on another halo, a gas formation, and the covenant homeworld. You switch roles into a coveneant heretic, who does not join forced with the humans, but serves his own purposes until the end. Speak of which, Halo 2 has the biggest cliffhanger of all time. Knowing there will not be a Halo 3 for a very long time, it was quite painful as endings go. The last level is quite fun, so you’re all pumped, and the cutscene shows the master chief flying back to earth, and the Arbiter (covenant heretic) is with some of the humans and stuff, it’s all crazy, and then it just ends, cut to the credits, bam. It hurt.

Beyond that, the single player was still really fun. The multiplayer, on the other hand, is perfection in action. All the maps are incredibly excellent. The variety of weapons is huge, they’re ALL unique, but still balanced. Dual wielding is intricate and balanced, as well. The way the game plays discourages camping, as standing still means you just get owned, no matter what. The no health system is so liberating, it’s incredible. I dunno if I can ever go back to the old system. The new vehicles are akin to the weapons in variety and improvement. All the vehicles are fun to use, and none of them are too powerful, and that includes the banshee. Boarding vehicles is awesome. It puts so much more strategy and thought into using vehicles, as well as how to fight them. XBox Live is also perfect. There’s never lag. I’ve had a spurt now and then, but only in big 16 player games. Once you get above 10 people it gets stressed sometimes, but never anything bad compared to the standard lag playing PC games. Voice chat and proximity owns too.

This was just a summary, I’ll make a real detailed breakdown and review in a week or so.

O.o

Mmmm, I woke up at 11:30, and it felt good. I’ve been planning out the next two weeks a little bit, as there’s only 9 days left until Halo 2 comes out (so far it’s gotten 3 perfect 10’s), and at this point there are two LAN parties on the horizon, both of which Daniel informed me of. Apparantly the administration is allowing a LAN on the 9th in the cafeteria, for three hours. How awesome is that? Yeah, well, you be quiet, because it is awesome. The other is a standard Halo 2 party over Thanksgiving, but as things are setting up, we’re gonna have more than 16 people, but maybe we’ll have an extra box set up so two people can play co-op? Anyways, that’s got me pumped up. I actually had a dream last night that I got my hands on the full, English, NTSC version, and I had invited a couple friends over to play, and I was screaming insanities from being so excited. *cough*

Another slight thing that has me worried is that my XBox has been getting more and more disc errors – Daniel found a few forum threads saying it was cause by the type of drive in my XBox. Apparantly the lens slowly slides out of place. I’d work on replacing it right now, but with Halo 2 coming out in a few days, I really don’t wanna be left without an XBox on that day. 🙁

I hadn’t made a gaming post for a while, I figured I was obligated.

O.o

For those IE users among my readers that either have not noticed the change in my blog or were too lazy to read my comments, I’v fixed the blog up for you. It looks slightly worse in Firefox (just the margins) but it’s a price I suppose I’m willing to pay. I’m now confident enough to leave links to my blog strewn about the internet in my emails and forum signatures. Burnout 3 and XBox Live should arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday (I was quite frustrated, I remember reading that I was getting free shipping and 10 dollars of Live (I ordered from EA directly instead of EB), but it turned out it was just the ten dollars off. I also thought I was getting a no tax deal (not all sites charge tax), but my hopes were failed on that. I probably should have gone with EB (they had free 3-day shipping and free 2 months of Live, which would hold me over until I could get a 12 month package. I also could have avoided shipping on Live by getting it in store later on…yeah, now that I think about it, that was a definite mistake. *sigh*), so maybe I’ll change the order if I have the chance tonight.

I have a fair amount of homework – German, Math, Chemistry, English, (i think) Global, so i’ve got a full night of homework up ahead. I gotta do a small retake of a test tomorrow after school for Chem, which, should bring my average just up to a 90. (it was a B today, they had my homework average at 66.7% even though I did all the homework, so I fixed that) I’m glad for this 4-day weekend though. *breathes sigh of relief*

O.o

School was pretty good for a Monday, almost no homework, and a fairly windy day makes for a pretty good package all around. My grades are slowly creeping back up, but I don’t think it’s in time for the 5-week report. Chemistry struck another blow to me in that I screwed up, again, on this lab, because I didn’t check the letter of the solution we took, meaning we don’t know the accepted value of what we measured. Anyone in Smith’s class would understand. Chemistry, even though I keep trying and trying just doesn’t wanna yield. I just need to keep sharp in there, it’s a lot different than my other classes. I can really just lay back and keep an ear out for something I don’t know most of the time, (this doesn’t work when I’m tired, I fade out too much).

I sold three Nintendo games to Jared, for 20 bucks (we agreed 15 but he gave me 20 anyways), meaning I have enough to get Burnout 3. I’ve found a deal on EA’s website to get 10 bucks off XBox Live and get free shipping, so I think I’m gonna take that. I’m planning on doing all my final mowing this Friday – It should be nice since it’s cooling down (It’s supposed to be 20 degrees tonight!), which I’m really sorta looking forward to, getting a little exercise, being outside, no school, I dunno, just seems like a nice prospect. At the moment I’m really chilling, all I have for homework is a short bit of reading for English. I kinda wish I could sit in a hammock with some techno (I really need this stuff on CD!) and nap. But I have no hammock, it’s too cold outside, I have no techno on CD, I could spend all day boring you with that nonsense. Anyways, I’m hoping I can order Burnout and Live tonight or tomorrow, using a little loan from mah rents.

O.o

Measuring the fame of a game is a hard thing to do. Everyone has different opinions, good and bad. But I think I’ve found a way to really get a basic measurement on a game’s fame. I call it the google. Measured in millions of search results, you can quickly find exactly how famous a game is. The key to this is using the exact phrase operator – “(insert query)”, it automatically removes all the DEFINATELY unrelated search results. For example, it changes the query ‘half life’ from 11.4 to 3.61. Those other 7.79 all just contained the word half or life. Obviously unrelated. But on to the point – I’ve measured all the games I own in googles, and some of you may find the results interesting. What you see (excepting the colon) is the exact query, only without the “_” operator.

Halo: 2.54 (see comments)

Total War: .929 (“Total War” game OR PC OR RTS OR rome OR medieval OR shogun)

Ninja Gaiden: .306 (“Ninja Gaiden” game OR xbox OR tecmo OR team OR ninja OR ryu OR hayabusa OR nintendo OR microsoft”

Fable: .667 (using “Fable” game OR xbox OR molyneux OR lionhead)

Dead or Alive: .551 (“dead or alive” game OR xbox OR fighting OR nintendo OR playstation OR Ultimate)

Grand Theft Auto: 1.92 (“Grand Theft Auto” game OR ps2 OR xbox OR PC OR tommy OR vercetti)

Starcraft: .7 (using “starcraft” Blizzard OR RTS OR PC OR game OR protoss OR terran OR zerg OR brood OR war) (also remember this thing was made in 1996, so the popularity of it faded before websites were as easily made/maintained)

Warcraft: 1.34 (“Warcraft” blizzard OR RTS OR game OR PC )

Rainbow Six: .749 (“Rainbow Six” game OR PC OR xbox OR FPS OR tom OR Clancy’s OR ubisoft)

Splinter Cell: .904 (“Splinter Cell” game OR xbox OR PC OR ps2 OR gc OR gamecube OR sam OR fisher OR stealth OR ubisoft OR tom OR clancy’s)

Final Fantasy: 1.85 (using “Final Fantasy” game OR playstation OR ps2 OR PC OR square OR RPG)

Keep in mind that some games don’t work under this method. Ex: Mario. That will give you approximately 11, but the vast majority are about actualy PEOPLE, so you can’t count that as accurate. Halo and Half Life both have a healthy chance of being inflated, due to the names. Halo is gonna bring up stuff about, well, halos, and Half Life is gonna bring up sites on chemistry and radioactive substances, so it evens out, essentially. Here are some other interesting queries I did.

Half Life (as a note, this did also include the hyphenated form of the name, so those weren’t omitted): 2.76 (see comments)

Zelda: 1.33 (using “Zelda” game OR link OR miyamoto OR Nintendo OR gamecube)

Metroid: .486 (using “Metroid” prime OR samus OR Nintendo OR gamecube OR game)

Diablo: 1.21 (using “Diablo” game OR Blizzard OR PC)

Gran Turismo: 1.15 (using “Gran Turismo” game OR ps2 OR playstation OR racing OR cars)

Myst: .562 (using “Myst” game OR PC OR xbox OR ubisoft)

Metal Gear Solid: .986(using “Metal Gear Solid” game OR ps2 OR playstation OR snake)

Resident Evil: 1.47 (using “resident evil” game OR playstation OR ps2 OR PC OR gamecube OR gc)

Unreal Tournament: 1.27 (using “Unreal Tournament” game OR PC OR FPS)

Let me know if I left any big franchises out, I think I got most of em. I didn’t try Doom because of the horrid innacuracy it will bring up, there’s too much other stuff you can pull out of that. Just on the first page of results there were two unrelated links.

EDIT: I’ve changed all the searches with said queries, I think it really represents everything MUCH more accurately.

O.o

Ah yes, I do love Fridays. Spent the afternoon down at the Apple Festival with Ben and Colette, then walked home and played some Ninja Gaiden after Fable continually gave me the dirty disc error. I’ve realized the Ninja Gaiden soundtrack is excellent – it’s an awesome combo of techno and classical techniques. Along with a good game. I’m hoping to get enough money for Live sooner or later so I can get those upgrades for Ninja Gaiden (new weapon, more outfits for Ryu, handful of new enemies, improved graphics, new music, improved AI and increased difficulty), and then Burnout 3, and then Rome: Total War. So many games, so little time! *glee*

In other news: HALO 2 IS ONE WEEK OR LESS FROM GOLD STATUS. Frankie announced today in Bungie’s weekly update that they just shipped the game to final testing, where it will be double checked for errors and glitching, and from then on it’s just production and compiling of everything. They have over 2 million pre orders to fill, and that’s not even including Best Buy, Amazon, FYE, Target, Walmart, etc., and all those stores. They’ve got some work to do still, obviously. That psyched me up a little bit.

In even better news: Sam may be coming over next weekend. He hasn’t confirmed it with the dude he’s hitching a ride with, but if all goes well, he’ll be here for three days next weekend. Cool, yes? Yes, it is.

EDIT: Sam isn’t going to be coming after all. It turns out the guy he was coming over with doesn’t have enough room in his car.

I really love Ninja Gaiden’s soundtrack.

O.o

Zach and Paul came over here for a little bit, Zach left to do homework, and Paul and I ate pizza and I owned him as Sweden in a soccer game. Hehe. Fun.

I was particularly interested by today’s Penny-Arcade ramble. I am not not normally fond of Gabe’s semi-spastic ravings, but he really nailed a popular misconception about charity. I’m not gonna explain it here, just go read it. The other part of the post that perked my interest was the mention of Splinter Cell 3. Obviously the webmaster there is grammatically deficient, but we’ll look past that. I have been checking in on SC3 every now and then, and it’s looking very nice. Gamespot has a fair amount of gameplay movies showing off the new combat knife, a lot of the new abilities, but none of the co-op play or versus play have been demonstrated. The release date got pushed to March, which is jsut in time for my birthday. I’m set for games for a very long time – I’m gonna get Live soon (meaning I can get the new content for Ninja Gaiden, supposedly quite good) and also do SOMETHING with Fable over live (not really sure what). That should entertain me till November 9, and so on. And I thought I could save up for a computer – HAH! OH WELL.

O.o

My reflections on Fable: was it worth the wait, the hype, and all that jazz?

EDIT: You better appreciate this. It took me two hours. Enjoy all 6 pages, 20 paragraphs, 232 lines, 3,730 words, 20,627 characters of it. Enjoy it, or you owe me two hours of my life back.

I blabbed to you people about Fable for nearly a week in a row a month ago, and now that I have it, I’ve beaten it, and am already halfway through the game again, (I’ve spent almost 30 hours on the game thus far, I’m sure I’ll suck more out of it) I’m pretty sure I can give some accurate reflections on how the game really came out. When I first played the game I didn’t see the problems I had as the fault of the developer (Big Blue Box), but as I progress, I’m seeing more and more that really just seems like they spent too much time on parts that need not be attended to. The general feel you get when playing in Fable is that of being a hero. They accomplished that – you do feel like you’re controlling a hero that you’ve formed and created, however, it’s what you can do with that hero that really matters. I’m gonna make this easy to understand by using bullets. All the positive points I have about the game will be +, and yeah, you get the idea.

+ Character Customization (Clothing): It’s very apparent that they spent an enormous amount of time on this – and I’m glad they did. Your character has a choice between 23 different suits of clothing – and they all look significantly different. If you wanted to be picky, you might say there were only 6-7 suits of clothing. This is because there are always three variants of one model of clothing. Example: Chain-mail has a normal set of armor, and then a bright set, and a dark set. These bright and dark sets have differing modifiers to attractiveness, scariness, and alignment. The coloring is much different, but, the model is still the same. However, the coloring is different enough (to me) not to worry about that. The thing that astounds me about all the clothing is that everything but three suits (plate-mail) has perfect collision detection – there are no visible errors or clashes with collisions between your weapons, body and armor.

– Character Customization (Weapons): I was rather dissapointed in this category. The weapon types are rather basic, and the sheer number of weapons is very small. They made approximately 50 different weapons – in total, no more. There were a few levels of weapons which were simple and nondescript. Iron < style=”font-style: italic;”>liked about the weapons was augmenting. You could find or buy gems to augment into your weapon to produce a certain ability, most of which were fairly basic. There were fire, lightning and silver augmentations (no need to explain, RIGHT?) as well was sharpening, piercing , mana, health, and experience. Sharpening just increased basic damage, piercing reduced your enemy’s armor effectiveness, mana continually restored mana, health did the same, experience increased your experience intake. Kinda cool, but all weapons have a limit on how much you can augment (the best weapons had a max of 3 augmentations, and the legendary weapons were already augmented). Augmented weapons would glow and glitter based on what you augmented into them. Arrows would also reflect the augmentation, which was cool to watch in first person.

+/- Character Customization (Appearance): This was one of the prime features presented when the game was in early development – you could go to a barber and get a haircut, get a mustache, or a beard, as well as get tattoos from a tattooist, either on your leg, arm, chest, back, or head. Each barber or tattooist has a basic set of tattoos or haircuts they can give you (around 8 or so), and if you want more, you have to find barber or tattoo “cards”. Finding these cards allows you to get the specified tattoo/haircut from any barber or tattooist. It’s not a bad idea, it just doesn’t really make sense. It would really be much cooler just to be able to have the entire list at the beginning of the game. I believe I’ve found all the haircut cards, and there are approximately 7-8 mustache cuts, 7-8 beards, and 11-12 haircuts. The tattoo selection isn’t as good – probably 4-5 arm, 4-5 leg, 7-8 face, 9-10 chest, and 9-10 back. Considering tattoos have much greater room for creativity, I would expect at least twice that amount. I wasn’t terribly found of the majority of the tattoos, I only liked 3 or 4 enough to ever apply them. I suppose also fitting into this category are scars. If you are hit, you will develop a scar, which reduces attractiveness and increases scariness. This is a fun addition – it’s cool to see how well your skills have maintained your character. I am not sure whether scars reflect actual hits, or just area of strike. Age also plays a big factor. As you grow older, your hair may grow gray or white, and your skin will wrinkle. Being a heavy magic user will cause your hair to gray or whiten much faster, or investing a lot into strength abilities will cause you to become taller, more muscular, and hairier. Skill abilities will cause you to become more lithe and agile. Its all in how you play, and that’s the part I like most about appearance.

+/- Character Customization (Alignment + Renown): The cornerstone of what made Fable so famous in the first place, it came under very heavy scrutiny, and it sort of held up. It depends on what you’re looking for. The good and evil system is fun and well-done. You gain evil points by killing innocents, stealing, breaking doors and windows, and certain plot elements give you a choice between good and evil acts. You can also donate to the evil temple by sending them sacrifices of blood! Good acts are mostly just killing enemies – I don’t know of any other way to become good, besides donating to the good temple with lots of money! I think they could have been a little more creative, but it’s not a big deal. People will react to you different based on alignment – they won’t necessarily fear you if you’re evil, or love you if you’re good. But if you’re good, you’ll receive comments like “I wish everyone were like you!” or they might clip and whistle for you. If you’re evil, people might cringe and go” Eww!”, (all depending on attractiveness and scariness, still) or run away, or scream, it’s all pretty cool. Some reactions are a little over-used, but I suppose If I don’t change alignment for two days of playing and wear the same clothes, too, I shouldn’t really expect much else. Renown is based largely upon quests. Renown isn’t changed by alignment – people know you or they don’t. Unfortunately, I never noticed a real change in reactions as I became more renowned with my first character. You initial status is “unknown”, and after a while rises to “familiar” then to “well-known” “famous” and so on. With my second character, I noticed many audible changes in reactions to me as I grew more famous – people would call out my name (well, my title, at least. you cannot have a name, only a title, which I chose to be Piemaster) and randomly clap, it was rather satisfying. You can boost renown by showing off trophies you gain from quests. However, both systems were rather shallow. They didn’t really change much, and renown was easily maxed before the end of the game. Even though I played through the game as evil as possible, I could donate enough to the temple and because a saint. What’s with that?! It would be one the if I could somewhat change my alignment, but there should be a limit, considering I killed my OWN SISTER so I could rule the world. Oh well.

+ Character Customization (Leveling Up): The system for leveling up in Fable was extremely well done. It’s definitely a different system. There are 4 categories in which you have experience – General, Strength, Skill, and Will. Any time you kill an enemy, it drops General experience. Strength, Skill, and Will are gained by using skills specific to each category. For example, using a sword will give you strength experience each time you hit the enemy, because melee attacks are under the strength category. When you want to level a skill up, it uses its specific category first, and then uses up the reserve of general experience. This really makes it easier to make a less-specific character. Personally, I prefer to make Strong, Agile heroes, so I’d invest in Strength and Skill, and this system lets me do that easily. All the different skills you can get from each category are well made – the spells for Will even have a visual demonstration of what you’ll get. Overall a solid system. Unfortunately there are level caps, so that prevents truly area-specific heroes.

– Mobility: This is probably my greatest grief with the game. You just don’t have mobility. If you’ve ever played ANY Zelda at all, you know that you have a lot of room to breathe and explore – it’s a part of what makes it fun and replayable. The problem with Fable is that you don’t have a choice in how you go about getting to where you want to go. At best, your choice is a) go around the left side of the rock or b) go around the right side of the rock. It’s not an exaggeration. The towns are not quite this constrained, but I often find myself sighing as I cannot explore. My nature is to go check every nook and cranny for a chest or item or whatever you please, but you really can’t explore. I can probably guess at the reason they did this – the graphical quality was too high. I’ll get to that in a minute, but they could only make the area so big or the framerate would drop. Back to the point – there’s also an excessive amount of loading times. Notice I said loading times, not loading time. The loading times in themselves are short – never more than 10 seconds. However, they are very common. If you decided to run from one end of the world to the other, I count at least 15 loads, possibly more. This is why they created teleporters from town to town, but, that sort of takes away from the feel of being in a living, breathing world. The only plus side for mobility I can mention is the speed at which you run – they allow you to run at a rather brisk pace, so you don’t have to snore as your character runs from one end of town to the other. Rather refreshing, but definitely does not cover for the loading times and strict borders.

– Quests/Storyline: This is a major pitfall in how the game feels. The plot is very….uninvolving, uninteresting, uncreative, it really just doesn’t suck you in like the rest of Fable can. The plot (don’t yell at me for spoilers, ok?) is about, well, you. You start off with your home and village burned, and you’re rescued and taken to the Heroes Guild for training. Once done, you go out into the world and discover your sister is alive, and that she’s a seeress, and had her eyes cut out when your town was burned. You then discover that your mother is alive, so you set out to rescue her (no choices here, for some reason) and you get captured (no choice again) and the only way to get out is to steal a key from the warden (woo for lack of choices) and then you set out again to stop the evil dude who imprisoned you, and you race around the world stopping him from activating these “focus” sights (which were never mentioned before, you saw them, they just looked like ruins, really kinda random) and you fail (guess what, no choice!) and then you chase him until he kills your mother (guess what I’m thinking!) and you kill him and then FINALLY you get a choice – you take the uber powerful sword and kill your sister….or throw it into a vortex randomly created by the dude you killed. Now remember in all of this you never get a valid reason from the dude as to why he wants the world to burn and have a lack of living things on it, he just does it. Overall, a boring and not well thought-out plot. As for the quests themselves, they’re not as bad as the plot. You have an option of “boasting” on most quests, which makes them slightly harder but gets you more renown and money, if you accomplish them. Most boasts are either too easy or too hard. There’s always two or three that are available for any mission, these being “Fist Fighter” (fight with just fists and no aggressive spells), “No Protection” (do the quest naked), and “Without a Scratch” (never get hurt), none of which are fun or interesting. There’s usually 1 or 2 others which are easy to accomplish. In total there’s between 40-60 quests, it really depends on what you count. There are about 15 main quests (AKA “gold” quests)which are all plot involved, and then about 20-25 side quests (AKA “silver” quests)which you can do whenever you please – most of which are more fun than the main quests. There is a final branch of quests which are found by talking to people throughout the game, things like finding a hidden treasure, completing various tasks to marry a mayor, and these are “bronze” quests. They do not significantly boost renown or money and cannot be boasted. They are mostly what you do at the end of the game – there are about 10-15 of these. With all these quests alone there’s easily 40 of them, so I don’t understand where some reviewers get the number 30 from. My approximate guess is 50, but I would add a few quests they didn’t directly list (like finding “demon doors” and unlocking the silver chests, minute stuff like that, that when added together forms a sizable task as a quest). But I degress. Quests are all handled by going to the Heroes Guild and getting Quest Cards. Kind of akward, as there’s supposed to be this dire situation, and you have to go back and grab this card…very weird. Could have been handled much better. The quests are fun, and since there’s approximately 50 (to elaborate again, by my standards, if you did all 50, you would be 100% done with the game and nothing more could be done at all to further or advance your character in any way shape or form, so, yeah) you can have a good amount of entertainment. Not to my satisfaction though.

+ Visuals/Audio: The game is simply beautiful – you can’t top the graphical quality you’ll see in Fable. As I mentioned earlier with collision detections – they did a tremendous job on that. The lighting is astounding, the world is just a sight for sore eyes. However, I feel that this beauty is the cause of restricted environments. Personally, I’ll take a crappy generic ground texture for some room to explore over a beautiful, linear…path. At this rate, games will end up being a box. It will be the most beautiful box you’ve ever seen! You can do anything at all in this box, anything you can think of, except, well, leave it. We obviously won’t ever reach that point with games, but, I’ll still take expanse over restriction any day. As for the frame rate, it ran rather well. (My guess is about 35 FPS) The only noticeable drops were before and after load points, cut scenes, basically anything that switched from standard view. There was also one point where there were 15 people on the screen, it dropped to about 10 FPS there. Beyond that, it was solid. As for the audio – equally astounding. The ambience is just jaw dropping at some points. The music is very pleasant, I’ve found myself stopping and just listening to it once or twice, and fits the feel of the game very nicely. The voice acting is surprisingly well done – at least, all those outside of the cutscenes. (I found all plot related dialogue to seem kinda corny/fake, for some reason) The surrounding people’s reactions are very well articulated and the variety of responses is also good – my rough guess is that if you just walked up to any old person, you’d get 20-25 different reactions just off the spot from using expressions and talking, perhaps another 20-25 by changing armor (and using expressions afterwards), and probably another 20-25 by changing alignment, and then you can probably get about 10 new responses from each title you can buy (There are at least 25 titles available to buy, so, you do the math). Certain characters have too few – traders being the worst of the lot. A short-sighted mistake on their part, but minor. In any case, all of it sounds good.

+Combat: The combat was well implemented – it looks good, it doesn’t get old, it’s satisfying, it really just pleases all around. Melee combat has a few elements – blocking, rolling, and (duh) attacking. There’s a targeting system much akin to Zelda’s, and you can block which will stop all damage coming to you (back and front, but there is an animation for deflecting a back attack) and you can roll around your enemy. You can’t block arrows, only dodge, which I kinda liked, but can get annoying in big battles. If the enemy blocks your attacks enough times, you’ll gain an attack called a flourish, which is really just more powerful blow than goes through your opponent’s blocks.Ranged combat is all bows, you can go first person and try decapitating your enemy with a headshot, or use the targeting system and power up your shots and all. It’s nifty – they made use of the touch-sensitive buttons so that pressing harder allows you to do more damage and such. Very few games utilize that. Magic is pretty self explanatory – I would like to note that all the magic is EXTREMELY fun to use. All the spells have very unique animations, and in themselves are not standard (aside, from of course, lightning and fireball). Slow time is a fun one – at mastered level everyone nearly stops – you can run around your enemy, smack them up a bit, run to another enemy, smack em up, it’s really great fun. The system for using magic is also good – I’ll cover that in a second though. The variety of enemies is a little low for an entire game. Compared to the size of the world it isn’t, but for the length of the game it is. I think there are only 18-20 different enemies, but, in defense, they’re all different and require different fighting techniques to battle. The final thing about combat that I liked was the “combat multiplier” feature. Each time you hit an enemy, you would get a higher combat multiplier. If you were hit, you would lose the multiplier, or it would round down to the nearest number of 20, 10, or 5. The multiplier multiplies how much experience you gain, and really challenges you to do well in the battle. The amount your multiplier goes up is based the number damage you do to your target. Ex: If I do 500 damage to any enemy, my multiplier will go up to about 5 or 6 instantly. After that, It will probably take 4 more hits to get to 10, about 10 more hits to get to 20, and from then on it increases exponentially. For an idea of how hard it is to get above 20, my highest multiplier is 26 – and I fought for 5 minutes straight, with a lot of hits to me, but my point still stands.

+Interface/Other: As I frantically try and wrap this up (I’ve been writing for two hours), the interface was good. Very functional, not too cluttered, and displayed everything you wanted to know, The spell system was good, you had 6 sets of three spells you could quickly scroll through, and the functionality of using the D-Pad for expressions and items was very nice. Very well thought out. Interactions were made easy by having enemies outlined in red, important characters in green, and standard characters in blue. Other things I wanted to mention but don’t fit in the other categories are the statistics menu, marriage, and pubs. The statistics menu records TONS of stuff – how many of each enemy you’ve killed, your farthest chicken kick, your favorite spell, how many houses you have, the list is huge. Very nice. Marriage is possible and is all based on the attraction system. Girls (and guys, ugh) can fall for you and if you give them a wedding ring, they’ll marry you (if you have a house). Rather short and weird, but, just another thing to note. Bars are cool – you can get drunk, drink till you throw up, get other people drunk, or play bar games which are all little mini games in which you wager money. You can play stuff like blackjack or coin golf, kinda cool, not super interesting, but cool. FINALLY, you can also buy houses. If you kill the owner of a house, a for sale sign appears out front, and then you can buy it for a marginal amount of money – you can own an entire town.

My gosh. This took me exactly two hours.

My score: 8.9/10

Positives: Fun, easy going, soothing, generally just an enjoyable play.

Negatives: Limited, not fully creative, superficially based.

Most comparable to: Zelda, Vice City

Time Value: For someone with an imagination and enjoys RPGs, probably 30-40 hours. The average Joe will probably get 15-25 hours.

I AM DONE.

O.o

Contuining in my rants, I have a little blurb on Fable, and about the outcries of dissapointment most audible of Penny Arcade. Fable ahs turned out to be a big dissapointment to many because of the extreme hype thrown out about it. The problem is, they had to drop so much stuff due to time and budget restraints. Mostly time, though. They spent 4 years on the game, so..

Here is a bulleted list of sutff they dropped:

-Two player co-op

-Heros as adversaries (heroes would eventually track you down and fight you for reputation and stuff)

-A whole lot quests

-A bundle of various/minor things (like taking clothes from people you kill, kids getting haircuts after you, etc.)

In short: Fable’s vision didn’t live up to Fable’s reality. (Stolen from Tim Buckley)

O.o

*reflects upon today’s date*

*realizes it’s past midnight*

*discontinues reflecting*

Friday afternoon I walked home with Ben, Paul, and Zach, and we temporarily parted ways so that Paul and I could get pizza. It was good pizza (sammy’s) and we walked to my house, chilled, and we all spent the night at Zach’s, though Ben walked home just before midnight, so technically he didn’t. It was fun, we watched TV, played Apples to Apples, and ate pizza, watched videos and sort of played games. I got home about noon and Paul left my house about 1:00. Twas all good.

I’m very hungry for pizza right now.

EDIT: I guess as any diehard fan is obligated to do, I must mention that new screenshots and several more previews of Halo 2 have been released. No, I’m too lazy to give linkage, but I will say I was tricked by those fools. It’s all the product of a media embargo that was lifted 12:01 AM Friday, which I failed to realize was under Pacific Standard Time. So Thursday night I stayed up till 12:30 AM wondering why the new previews and shots hadn’t been posted. I was rather sad to hear they ditched the ATV (APC) for multiplayer, at least. I was also slightly irked by the symmetry between the Covenant and Human weapons (carbine/battle rifle, beam rifle/sniper rifle, plasma rifle/SMG, brute shot/rocket launcher [the differences for that one is obvious but the point still stands]) but I trust Bungie enough to smooth it out. Plus, the build they were demonstrating is at least three months old….very, very comforting.