See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
See / Rehash / Recreate / Publish / Improve / Degrade / Rinse / Repeat
Pass / Erase / Remove

Just fired up Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising and took a quick spin to check on what’s new and what’s gone. I know it’s not a real sequel, as that would be ArmA, but I’ve heard of ArmA’s bugs and performance. Besides, Dragon Rising is shiny. I like shiny.

One thing I notice as soon as I start is that the menu is slick and tactile. Dragon Rising uses the same engine as GRID (which also had an excellent menu), so the first thing you learn by this game is that if you want a great main menu for your game, you need to use the Ego Engine.

Despite the consolized menus, I’m pleased to see that there’s attention to detail even before you start a mission. Briefing comes in two varieties: an advanced briefing and a to-the-point objectives list. You get to see (but not customise) the equipment loadouts for your squad and then you’re thrust right in.

Being used to mute protagonists, I was confused at first as I wondered where the traditionally-black-squad-leader is talking from. Then I realised that it’s supposed to me. Good. Moving around feels heavy and there’s quite a movement bob, which gets dizzy after a while. Your gun looks gun and even feels heavy, so that’s good. They also sound great, meaning that I’m back into my old habit of firing random rounds as I walk across the island of Skira.

At the same time, differences from the original game become apparent to me, one-by-one. The game retains the third-person view of the original, but only in vehicles. In first-person, you’re forced into first-person. Not that I’m a fan of third-person combat, but I kind of liked watching my character run. Really, knowing Operation Flashpoint, getting from Point A to Point B isn’t going to be a grand adventure full of intriguing characters and scenery – it’s going to be a long, arduous walk. Just like in real life.

The scale of the island is much larger than any of the three islands in the original game. The map is helpful here, and it’s also a whole lot more readable than the one from the original, where you had to struggle to make out which of those little rings is yours. But going back to the long walks, the number one, and I mean Number One thing I miss from the original game is time control. In the original, a well-ignored little control allowed you to change the very speed of time. Not very realistic, but it sure as hell made your long marches and drives a whole lot shorter. No such thing this time. You’re going to have to bob your way all those kilometres.

Another thing I don’t like: being the commander. I’d very much prefer being the lackey following the commander and the original game offered plenty of that. Here, you’re thrust right in as a squad leader on the first mission. Being the leader means that you also have some responsibility in the way of ordering around members of your squad. This isn’t nearly as tedious as it sounds – not because of the new radial command system, but because they rarely need any orders at all.

Your squad members are intelligent folk, and know well enough to take cover, take out the enemy and do what must be done, to be general. Still, the command system allows you to execute flanks, supressing fire and other such life-saving gimmickry, so I don’t think ignoring it is a very good idea. It’s a pain to use, that’s for sure.

Hitting the Q button takes you into the command mode. You then use your movement keys to navigate the weird radial menus and find the command you’re looking for. It’s not an especially bad idea… for an average shooter. When you’re facing fire from six Chinese soldiers and have a bleeding wound, navigating five menus to search a command is not a very appealing proposition.

Even if the original game’s communication (and I mean communication because you had to relay information using it back then) system was based on the number keys, at least you could remember numerical patterns to throw orders around. The radial command is highly distracting, breaks the game’s flow and is also annoying when you forget that your order is placed wherever you’re aiming. Overall, the biggest design blunder in this game.

Combat is good ol’ Flashpoint flavour. Your enemies, usually several tens of metres away are little more than dots on the horizon. They’re smart enough to hide behind bushes, take cover and look very professional. As before, you can’t go in hero-style, and have to be especially cautious about your moves. Of note, however, is that shooting feels especially easier this time. This may have something to do with the modern weapons. The scope is a whole lot more helpful than aiming down the sights in 1985.

My second biggest gripe is the colour. What is it with all the brown? It quickly gets weary to watch, brown hills, brown building, brown grass, brown water, brown friends, brown enemies, it’s tiresome. Judging by the game’s screenshots, there should be some more colour in the other missions, and there better be.

I also tried the mission editor, easy-to-use as always. I assembled all the game’s vehicles in a row to try them out (as a certain General Zheng), and they all handle quite well. The ground vehicles are fun to drive, and I especially like the Hummer. I also didn’t know the M1A1 was as flexible as it is. The air vehicles have changed a lot, and controlling them is going to take a bit of time. Also, you only get to play as either the gunner or the driver (or commander), never both (which the previous game did allow). This kind of takes away the fun of using air vehicles, because one of my favourite strategies in the previous game was hunting out and hijacking a jeep, driving it to an airbase, stealing the chopper and bringing it to the battle. Nothing like a bit of homebrew air support.

Noticed this issue on my new computer where the voice in Mirror’s Edge sounded way too low-volume. I could barely make out what Merc was saying, but figured it was a game issue. The cinematics had the same problems too, though. I think the issue exists with all UE3 games, because I noticed the same thing in Unreal Tournament 3 (that is before I uninstalled it on account of its horrible campaign).

And turns out it’s not a game issue, it’s in the drivers. You need to update your HD Audio Codecs for your Realtek sound device, which you’ll find here.

Happy Parkour-ing, or whatever it is they say.

Arcanum’s a delectable little RPG gem. It was developed by Troika Games before they made the awesome Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines and then had to drop dead because they didn’t get any funds.

It’s probably the last major D&D-style 2D RPG in the vein of Fallout, Planescape or Baldur’s Gate, and I personally think it plays out better than any of these (it could be the age, and besides, I’m playing a patched version, I hear the original is very buggy). The interface is slick, gameplay is stylish and while I’m no fan of combat of this very genre, Arcanum handles it suitably.

What I like best about the game is its Steampunk art style, despite being set in a fantasy world populated by elves, dwarves etc., we see the marvels of the Victorian age – blimps, lanterns, flintlock guns and dapper suits. The UI has a very Victorian aesthetic, wood and polished metal, the dialogue is lovely with its 19th Century trappings.

I think this is largely the handiwork of Leonard Boyarsky, who also worked on creating the story, setting, aesthetic and dialogue of Fallout (the story, setting, aesthetic and dialogue happen to be Fallout’s shining points, the rest of the game was fairly passable).

The character-creation is reminiscent of D&D, but fairly different. Using character points and such, I’ve created a spiffy Half-Orc, skilled in Charm and Stun and Spike Traps as well as some prowess in prowling and pickpocketing.

Wikipedia

Disabling AVG’s Resident Shield made my PC so much faster, I almost want to cry. I was fiddling around in AVG settings today after getting a License error and reinstalling AVG to eliminate it.

Something strange crawled up to the back of my skull as I read that Resident Shield was checking every file I used. Every single file, that’s must be like 20 files per second or something, assuming standard usage. Could this be what was crippling my system?

I disabled it, but Windows gave me a nasty message telling me that my Anti-Virus has been turned off. Despite my best efforts to convince it otherwise, it didn’t budge. I disabled its monitoring instead, which is good riddance as it sometimes lied that AVG wasn’t running when the AVG icon was right next to the goddamn Security Alert in the System Tray.

So things feel very fast now, it’s great! Not sure if this is temporary or what, repeated usage speeds things up as always, but really, things are much faster with the resident shield off. And while checking every file I use is a nice offer, I think I’ll rely on the old-fashioned firewall-and-scan approach, in addition to the classic internet-common-sense technique.

One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in his bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.

must… get… out… of… bed…

Found the trailer in a Marathi paper. I don't even know what the movie is or about (it doesn't even have an IMDB listing, which is very weird), but all I could think of when I saw the poster was xXx. Jeez, if you have to plagiarise a poster, you could at least steal it off of a movie that doesn't play on HBO every other month.

Edit: Saw this in the papers a couple days after posting this. Pretty sweet if whoever wrote that up saw this post, I’m doing pretty good at coming up on top in Google these days. >_>

Despite being a zombie myself, I have only a passing interest in zombie movies and zombie media in general, largely because modern zombie media is unscary and also, very often, stupid.

But not this, not [REC]. I didn’t even know it was a zombie movie at first really, because it isn’t advertised as so. No, it’s advertised and appreciated as a horror movie because that’s what it is: a horror movie.

I got this film from 4chan’s /x/ board, where it’s very popular as the scariest film evar and stuff, and they ain’t kidding. [REC] is a very scary movie, and it achieves this effect via intensity. You don’t have Hollywood special effects and other fancy shiznit, it just grabs you by the eyeballs (or bites you by the eyeballs, as one scene would have it) and doesn’t let go.

This is how horror movies are made, Hollywood, sheez. I’m not going to watch the less-scary Hollywood remake of this, called “Quarantine” because I don’t want to see it bastardized like that. [REC] is a horror masterpiece, you don’t remake it.

Goddamn, two scenes near the end: absolutely incredible. Insane.

This Production IG anime has my attention. It’s one of the few anime with a completely original plot, and it’s pretty cool. What’s important I guess, is that it stays cool and doesn’t fall from promise like Xam’d did.

Set in modern day (without, surprisingly, any bizarre changes), Eden of East follows a girl sight-seeing in America who comes across a completely naked guy without any memories of himself, and only an unusually high-tech cellphone and a pistol in hand.

After a couple episodes in the US, the action shifts to Japan as Akira Takizawa (the former naked dude) tries to find out who he was, how he ended up where he did, and pretty much what the hell’s up. This wouldn’t sound so intimidating a concept in itself until you bring into the picture the possibility that Akira is a terrorist, and having committed mass murder, and that the situation he is in, is all a game.

A pretty screwy plot that’s still being unfolded (only 4 episodes so far, and I’ve finished 3). I love the visuals: Production IG means that the animation quality is top-notch and the OP and ED, while not particularly memorable tracks are the most visually beautiful I’ve ever seen (okay, the OP still only matches Ergo Proxy).

I see some Ghost in the Shell themes (the project is written and directed by Kenji Kamiyama, director of GitS), like heavy use of imagery and references. Probably the biggest reference to GitS is the Falling Man-style logo of what I think is the Seleçao System (which is, I believe, the game.

The quote on it reads “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoints remorse from power“. Google tells me that’s Shakespeare, said by Brutus in Julius Caeser, to be precise. I’ve spotted a number of other literary references in the OP, most likely Shakespeare again (the only one I care to remember is “The King has come!” and something more).

I thought Beatrice Keedsler had joined hands with other old-fashioned storytellers to make people believe that life had leading characters, minor characters, significant details, insignificant details, that it had lessons to be learned, tests to be passed, and a beginning, a middle, and an end.

As I approached my fiftieth birthday, I had become more and more enraged and mystified by the idiot decisions made by my countrymen. And then I had come suddenly to pity them, for I understood how innocent and natural it was for them to behave so abominably, and with such abominable results: They were doing their best to live like people invented in story books. This was the reason Americans shot each other so often: It was a convenient literary device for ending short stories and books.

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper facial tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their madeup tales.

And so on.

Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done.

If all writers would do that, then perhaps citizens not in the literary trades will understand that there is no order in the world around us, that we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead.

It is hard to adapt to chaos, but it can be done. I am living proof of that: It can be done.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions