- AirDog80
- Level: 26 (78%)
- Rank: Cyber-Lip
- Member since: Apr 17, 2005
- Last online: 12/14/09 4:44 pm PT
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- Virtually There: E3 2009 Microsoft Conference
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AirDog80's 15: Minute Blog
"The job of a storyteller is to pull the audience into a world and keep them there. The job of the audience is to stay there until they get bored."
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4Mar 09
Sub heading: using offensive grammar, run on sentences, and some made up words.
I never really enjoyed Counter Strike. I acknowledge it's grade A beef with one of the top ten persistent player communities of all time for realz. I won't even argue against it being the ACME online shooter of all time, but with the caliber of players in CS, the time it takes to get good enough to, you know, have fun, is eerily similar to getting a second job and I already have one of those.
For the past year I've been looking for a replacement shooter for the price of free, yes free as in less than any suspicious item you'd buy in a dollar store. In this pursuit I went through boot camp with Americas Army but eventually grew tired of having ten minutes sucked out of my life never to return every time I died. I subsequently went through shooty arcade shooter land with Combat Arms, which I loved until I grew to loathe gun rentals and repetition. I'm now making up for lost time with, stay with me, in air quotes, the "True Combat Elite Mod" for "Wolfenstein Enemy Territory." Bolth Wolfenstein and Combat Elite are free downloads at GameSpot.com and despite being old school they are just a hell of a lot more fun than many modern multiplayer shooters.
What does Combat Elite do right I ask rhetorically so don't answer..?? The answer is it takes the best bits of Americas Army, Combat Arms, and Counter Strike. The firefights are intense mixes of run and gun and belly crawling, the maps, lots of them, are balanced and full of ways to flank an enemy, and the graphics are exactly what you want from a shooter, detailed enough to entertain, but not so detailed as to make your server jump out a fifth story window. Actually some of the levels look retro which will give you a hint of nostalgia as you put two into your foes chest. I encountered little to no lag during matches of 28 players or more. The intro interface is intuitive, the weapons selection before each round is simple, and at any given time there are a multiple great games running on the servers.
Combat elite includes an impressive selection of maps, from wrecking someone's party cruise boat, to deserts, warehouses, and urban warfare. The maps have functional doors, ladders, and crawl spaces plus various materials with various bullet stopping abilities or lack thereof. There are nice visual touches such as graffiti and static military vehicles. Maps come in all shapes and sizes to satisfy everyone from the shotgun junkie to the dirt sucking sniperzz. Respawn times are reasonable and maps change as often as your attention deficit mind can handle. The maps are multistory and often firefights will rage from one side of the map to the other as teams continually flank and snipe at one another. Friendly fire is on but being shot in the back by a teammate will trigger a complaint window that lets you vote towards the offending player's ejection, they can do the same to you if you revengescrew' them back.
There are a large variety of weapons to choose from in Combat Elite and they all sound absolutely incredible. The assault, spec ops, and sniper classes all have unique weapons, but they are well balanced and all classes are competitive. What's enjoyable about Combat in Elite is that the air in front of you is absent of the magic floaty aiming reticle. Iron sights, dot sights, and scopes are the only way to fly. This largely eliminates the redundancy of shooters where sights slow down aiming. The best touch is that many of the assault rifles and sub-machineguns have fluorescent dots on their iron sights which make fast aiming a charm. Weapons are not customizable but you will definitely find yourself switching through a sizable variety depending on which side of defeat you're on. Also of note is how players get their lean on. Leaning is a core component of Elite and due to the speed at which bullets will end your pathetic bunkering attempt, is highly recommended/satisfying. The best compliment I can give Combat Elite is it's balanced, nostalgic, and a hell of a lot of fun.- Posted Mar 4, 2009 5:18 pm PT
- Category: Opinion
- 1 Comment
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20Jan 09
I have to say a fond farewell to Circuit City. Goodbye and farewell to the creepy older uncle of Best Buy. Somehow you always made me feel as if buying electronics was somehow akin to buying a used car. Your store layout was always terrible, your employees often looked as confused as I was. You always made me feel a little uncomfortable. You had games locked away in a small corner cage as if they were reptiles at the zoo. I'll miss tapping on the glass. I'd get an ipod jack put into my car for old times sake, but with no accountability due to your closing, I'm afraid I'd find my car up on blocks in the back lot. I have so many fond memories of wanting to leave your store to go to Best Buy. You will be sorely missed. I am comforted by the fact that I can always drive to Canada to be visually molested by your dull grey interior design.
- Posted Jan 20, 2009 12:02 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 14 Comments
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6Jan 09
I likes me some Combat Arms but I have a big dilemma, the game is free, but it's kind of needy. This online arcade style shooter with some of the best and most balanced maps I've ever seen wants me to play it more than two hours a day. This is largely due to Nexon's gun rental system were you start with 9,000 game points that you drain on renting gear and equipment each day you put lead downrange. This means your purchases are gone in a fixed amount of real time, usually 24 hours. You earn points back through kills and wins. A good weapon, say an AK-74 with scope, or fan favorite G36E, will run you 950 gp/day (game points per day) or you can play this game on the cheap by popping a 150 gp/day scope on your trusty yet mediocre M-16. The better rifles are more fun since they enable long range kills and better chances of high kill ratios all around. The problem is at 950gp per rifle per day, and earning only an avg of 150gp per round, it takes more than six rounds, or two hours per day not to bleed cash, and bleed cash you will. You can fund raise by playing for a day and only purchasing a scope, but this is almost reminiscent of grinding in MMORPG's. Don't let other bloggers fool you, you can have fun doing this on the Grunt servers. But as a Combat Arms player you are perpetually in a race to loose less than a few thousand gp per rank. If you make it to the next rank you will receive gp bonuses and in theory as long as you only bleed a few thousand gp per level, you're ok. Warning, this is easier said than done should you have a job, fiancé, dog, or child.
There is something to be said for having to earn your way through a game. I feel as if the trend has been going in the opposite direction for the past two years. By forcing you to earn your keep, Combat Arms challenges you to become a more efficient shooter. Wanting higher kill ratios and more game points per round, without spending real life cash, I found myself studying maps constantly for new sniping ledges, tactics, and advantages. But if you're wallet is dedicated to unleaded 87 octane like me, or you just don't want to spend real money on a free game on principle, then this rental system is both a mood killer and motivation to play.
I respect Nexon for having a business model in the first place. If there is one thing I've learned since leaving the guarded halls of torture, ahem, academia, it's that nothing is free and in order to bring you Combat Arms for free, someone has to be paying. If you should like to support the poor and needy gamers of the world you can avoid much hassle by shelling out some real world cash to pick up powerful weapons for 90 days for under ten dollars. But by those standards if you play Combat Arms for more than six months you're buying the game and then some. But hey, you're keeping it free for me and as I said, I likes me some Combat Arms. So gun rentals, bane or boom? I'm conflicted.
- Posted Jan 6, 2009 4:28 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 3 Comments
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19Dec 08
For the longest time I didn't care about kill ratios in multiplayer shooters. I think I developed a complex from my counterstrike days in college where I was mercilessly slaughtered by, judging from the amount of genital jokes, pre-pubescent children. At some point I think I started to consider myself a human bullet detector for skilled players on my team. But now I realize that games like counterstrike were enablers for my low shooting self-esteem. Quick round times and fast re-spawns let me get away with a lot of crud and still have fun.
Americas Army changed all that for me. AA is an abusive, abusive, abusive, drill sergeant for new players. You die fast and you stay dead for a long time. You probably won't even have fun, but for some inconceivable reason, you will desire in the height of your agony, to be the guy who is shooting you, to seek revenge and make sure he's the guy sitting there twiddling his thumbs on the sideline while you make the rest of his team your bi-hatch. It is a painful journey in which you will end up, thanks to indistinct looking friends and foes, shooting your own team in the back and loosing hours of progress before making progress. When you finally get to the point where you have the luxury of having fun in this game, you will be a better shooter for it. Here is what I learned so you don't have to.
Top ten lessons of a Newb shooter: other than don't join the Army unless you enjoy boredom and getting shot.
10) If you're loosing every round change games or you'll keep loosing every round.
9) Keep moving or someone will shoot you in the back, seriously.
8 ) Know your effective range. If you don't have a scope, don't get into long range sniping battles, you'll loose.
7) Never be where they think you are. If someone spots you, anticipate how they are going to come at you and be somewhere better.
6) Shoot from the dark recesses of a building, never be in a window, corner, or on an open roof position where your outline is easy to spot.
Know when you're about to loose a ranged gunfight and disengage, then follow lesson seven.6) Move smart, don't get caught out in the open period. If you have to cross out in the open, scan the area first, then run like hell. (You'll still die but less often.)
5 ) Aim low and to the left with machine guns because they kick up and to the right.
4) If someone gets the drop on you, duck, turn fire. It works on a really lucky day and if they're holding a machine gun it will be kicking up and away from you.
3) If you find yourself in an inferior position, i.e. shot and survived, maneuver to a better position before re-engaging, don't just go back to the same corner and get shot again. If you need to go back, wait at least ten to fifteen seconds to make your opponent think you've moved on.
2) If you are unfamiliar with a map, spend an entire night going one direction until you learn it, then spend another entire night going another direction until you learn it.
1) Hold your fire until you know you can make a kill so as not to give away an inferior position. Don't shoot at everything that moves.
- Posted Dec 19, 2008 3:50 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 8 Comments
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24Sep 08
Pain: Amusement Park highlighted two issues that I hope the free market wraps in a burlap sack and dropkicks into an oncoming roller coaster. Pain is a game that combines the futility of fake achievements, "yay, you found the x button," and obnoxious micro transactions, "please insert six dollars to advance to the next level." For six dollars the latest installment of Pain gives you access to one gen x ragdoll character and one level, of which you can unlock only one other launch pad located ten feet from the first. Pain claims you can unlock two additional costumes but you have to be a cryptologist or have psychic powers to figure out how. Pain then awards you with copious amounts of pats on the back and then regrets to inform you that all additional content, in the form of new characters, is ninety nine cents and additional time in the game is therefore pointless. How unsatisfying, however cheap, to buy game progress, it defeats the purpose of, well, doing anything. This is a game that should have been sold for ten or fifteen dollars, with more than one level, and a large variety of forward moving progress.
Part of the reason I'm so frustrated is that a game like Pain: Amusement Park could have been so much more. If you pick it up on PSN you'll see the genius in the first half hour before you realize you bought the equivalent of a looping animation. This game should have been designed to reward players for playing and I can think of a million ways this could have been done. They could have given you more ooch, a jetpack to control yourself in flight, new areas that unlock, or secret rooms you can only reach in special ways. Pain could have given you awesome weapons to use, or special in flight poses with special powers, or pogo sticks, or let you drive vehicles you land on, or anything to reward you for throwing your gen x character through his paces. Instead you blow up a few barrels, smack a few monkeys, yawn, and then go back to playing something else. In my humble opinion, micro transactions and meaningless achievements have revealed their true value to players.
- Posted Sep 24, 2008 4:48 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 5 Comments
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27Aug 08
Star Wars Battlefront Renegade Squadron for PSP is worth a second look at $17.99 from EB and with a score of 8.0 from GameSpot. This titles single player campaign takes place during the original trilogy and revolves around a band of rogues struggling to keep the Alliance alive. Renegade squadron allows you to customize your character in unique ways, for example creating a Wookie from the Black Sun crime syndicate. The first few missions throw you directly into the action and you'll find yourself trading hot plasma, on the ground and in space, with the likes of Boba Fett , IG-88, and Darth Vader.
What's incredible about Renegade Squadron is just how many ways you can prosecute missions. This is a continuation of the Battlefront series meaning weapon loadouts are customizable and combat non-linear. Just when you think your Blaster Rifle, Grenade Launcher, Wrist Rocket, Personal Shield combo is the ACME of Storm Trooper stomping, you'll run into a mission where a Sniper Rifle and Remote Rocket Gun will give you twice the bang with half the effort.
Layered over the ground combat is space combat, which will leave you excited in ways you haven't been since the original X-Wing. You'll enjoy missions such as retrieving a Holocron from the exploded remains of Alderaan, or destroying the gravity well generators of an Interdictor Cruiser so the Alliance can escape. Flight controls are dumbed down for the PSP, but you could never land in a Star Destroyers hanger and assault on foot after blowing up its shield generators in the original space sim. Each ship class, A-Wing, X-Wing, Y-Wing, and Transport have different flight characteristics reminiscent of older X-Wing titles.
Last but not least, the cut-scenes in Renegade Squadron are excellent. Each sequence is presented web comic style with beautiful concept art conveying the gritty Star Wars universe from dusty backwater bars to high tech briefing rooms on capital ships. These cut-scenes are something to look forward to because they add to the Star Wars Cannon while setting up each mission.
Renegade Squadron is a step closer to my Star Wars dream game which would be a GTA/X-Wing/Freelancer/KOTR mash up. I want to be able to pickup a mission in a bar, fly from ground to space, eject and board someone else's ship, shoot my way to the bridge, and fly that ship to another solar system. George, you can have my idea for free, or hell, I will pay you to make my game. In the meantime, on your way to work, everyone should check out Renegade Squadron, you'll enjoy it a hell of a lot more than pretending to check your Iphone.
- Posted Aug 27, 2008 6:11 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 1 Comment
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19Aug 08
Now that your hands aren't at ten and six due to gas prices, food prices, and the pay cut you take every year from inflation, you owe it to yourself to get your hands on something to make your commute enjoyable. The underrated PSP is now as low as $170 and the bargain bin at GameStop is your friend. Since I deal with gameplay at GameSpot, I thought I'd go back and dig up a game or two that we loved but previously didn't have footage for. Also, if you haven't played God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP), that should be your first stop.
First Game
Chili Con Carnage is a shooter focused on one thing, slow motion blasting fools. The action is spicy and so is the south of the border humor. The targeting system is elegant for the PSP, right bumper plus trigger kills people, left bumper plus trigger kills objects. There are a number of highly entertaining special moves that do anything from stacking your hands with guns like a Looney tunes character, to giving you machine gun guitar cases much like Desperado, to a bull attack that lets you run around at high speed smashing dudes. The music goes in tune with your killing streak so by the tenth body you'll be feeling it. Watch me tornado some fools.
Next I'm playing Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
- Posted Aug 19, 2008 4:43 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 4 Comments
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10Jul 08
Remember 3d? Hint, it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
- Posted Jul 10, 2008 10:02 am PT
- Category: Movies
- 3 Comments
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19Jun 08
Cheaper by the Dozen is up.
- Posted Jun 19, 2008 10:26 am PT
- Category: Games
- 2 Comments
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17Jun 08
Looks like the hotly anticipated Spore has released a Creature Creator this week on its main site (http://www.spore.com/). This creator is a well made, albeit highly limited, appetizer. The creator comes in a free trial version or a purchase version for about ten dollars. The pay version will allow players to import their creatures into the final build of spore once it's released. The creator uses highly intuitive controls which allow users to drag and mold creatures to their hearts desire. It's worth killing twenty minutes to build your Frankenpet that may some day take over the galaxy. Long live LobsterRevenge!
- Posted Jun 17, 2008 12:37 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 7 Comments
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11Jun 08
Is the NeoVisus Gaze prototype the next Narbacular Drop? In 2005 a couple of senior students at DigiPen released a game involving a princess, puzzles, and the ability to bend time and space. By October 10th, 2007 that game had been snazzed up to become the now critically acclaimed Half Life-Portal. Portal was admittedly the first truly "out of the box" development in the first person shooter genre in a decade. Fast forward to 2008, Martin Tall, a master's student at Lund University, has developed a simple UI interface to go with eye tracking software that allows computer users to navigate their desktop with a steely gaze. This concept applied to gaming has potential, lots of potential, industry take notice.
One genre in particular that hasn't sat well in the console's stomach is real time strategy. Playing RTS with a standard controller is like trying to eat Chinese food wearing oven mitts. You can do it, but it's sloppy and leaves a mess. Two RTS games I've played lately Universe at War, and Supreme Commander, were intensely bogged down by controls. Currently, on the fly mixed unit selection in the heat of battle falls under the category of in your dreams. What if players could select units with a glance? What if screen scrolling and map navigation were hands off? Being someone intensely looking forward to Starcraft II but not wanting to buy a PC that could run skynet and bring down the entire western seaboard, I would relish new technologies for the Xbox 360 and PS3 to make RTS more accessible to console developers. Technologies such as NeoVisus could be the first major innovation in RTS this decade. Inevitably, new technologies are always regarded with caution, the industry is still trying figure out how to apply Portal to the common FPS, and virtual reality STILL hasn't caught on, but innovation has proven itself in this generation of games and consoles. Gamers overwhelmingly supported fresh ideas with their time and money. Games are the new frontier of entertainment and I'm looking forward to gaming with my eyes in a few years, maybe even shooting portals with my eyes.
- Posted Jun 11, 2008 12:08 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 4 Comments
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9Jun 08
Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Conspiracy (X360) is one built for the couch fighter MMA generation with focus on watching a guy dismantle another guy in the most awesome way possible. Bourne has a memorable series of matchups including, face vs. neon sign, face vs. jukebox, spine vs. door, and of course the crowd pleaser, face vs. concrete pillar. Probably the biggest bane/boon to the simplified three button fighting system is the cheat called a "takedown." As Bourne fights he builds up adrenaline to be used in the event of getting his arse handed to him. About three quarters through any given fight Jason can unleash this adrenaline attack for an instant/many instant kills. Normally this fighting style could be considered cheap, but in Bourne's case it's good because the guy throwing down fisticuffs usually has a buddy with a shotgun. Even though the actual fighting system is about as advanced as Rock'em Sock'em Robots, involving two buttons back and forth or simultaneously, or even holding down one of those two buttons for more than a second, the settings on Bourne, "Trainee, Agent, or Assasin" are inflated to make up for it. "Trainee is actually the normal setting for the average gamer while Agent is similar to a hard setting. Expect to die often. The last worthy mentionable in Bourne style combat is the sucker punch cut scene reminiscent of Dragon Quest in which after being lulled into a false sense of security players are asked for a random button press and given what could only be described as an attention deficit second on crack to respond before dying/failing. I suppose the developers felt it was only fair that the bad guys get the cheap takedown every once in awhile. The overarching point however, is that Bourne is a solid casual fighting game that stays fun because of it's changing environments in which the fighting takes place. Players will want to lead their opponents around each level, embassies, subway trains, airports, etc. just to experiment with how the takedown button will combine a bad guy with a random object. It certainly made me want to get back to the gym and start throwing elbows.
- Posted Jun 9, 2008 12:55 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 2 Comments
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22May 08
Ok, so I finally did go back and play through Rainbow Six Vegas. For starters, combat in this game is freaking awesome. The advent of the cover system completely changes the flow of gameplay for the better. There is a large selection of weapons and a lot of satisfying ways to shoot baddies. Watching cars and trucks blow apart around you while terrorists curse and fire wildly is only topped by watching the bank robbery scene from the movie Heat while drinking red bull.
That being said, the game is excessively repetitive. Kill a guy, look under a door, kill a group of guys, repeat. New weapons and gear are not unlocked as you progress and ultimately I just wanted to finish. The storyline in Vegas is non existent, she is bad kill her, the bomb is bad diffuse it, this guy who was supposed to be good who you never saw before is bad, shoot down his helicopter. Lazy, lazy lazy. A lot of this is made up for by gameplay elements but a better solution is to HIRE A WRITER. I'm going to wait a month or two to play the next one which is equally awesome plus some of the customization largely missing in the first one.- Posted May 22, 2008 2:24 pm PT
- Category: Games
- 1 Comment
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8May 08
I went out and plunked down my forty quarters for Iron Man, this past weekend, which was collecting rave reviews faster than doughnuts at a weight loss seminar. What I saw, was a shallow video game storyline that was totally bland and uninteresting. The film should have been about collateral damage and Tony Stark coming to grips with the fact that his inventions maim and kill people. This film could have even gotten into the fact that there are people out there who rightly hate Americans because we sell weapons like cheeseburgers and are complacent to the fact that those weapons are out there killing innocent people. The film started going in this direction for about twenty minutes, but instead Mr. Stark built a shiny suit that was supposed to distract the audience with its shiny shininess and make them forget the plot had gone AWOL. In lieu of anything that would be memorable, the film went on a tangent building to a boss battle which belonged only in the subsequent video game release. I'll admit that Robert Downy Junior was genuinely funny at times, but this film could have been so much more, sigh. This week I also played the Iron Man, videogames, plural, for X360, PS3, and PS2, in which you basically fly around shooting at imperceptible ants, while being raped by missiles, and forced to fly the same map multiple times. The developers felt if they re-skinned the map with Ice or Dirt you wouldn't notice it was the exact same level. Overall, I expect a lot more from my Comic book turned films. As a matter of fact, I think the last Hulk film with Eric Bana, the one everybody is trying to forget was ever made, was one of the best examples of how to actually get into the mind of a conflicted super hero. Let's hope the sequel gets it this time. I'm cringing at the Incredible Hulk trailers because I'm afraid they fell into the same videogame boss battle storyline hole that Iron Man fell into. I don't like my villians in black and white and judging by the ratings of shows like The Sopranos, most people feel the same way. We are long past the days of G.I. Joe, give me some creme in that coffee.
- Posted May 8, 2008 2:29 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 2 Comments
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24Apr 08
So my girlfriend and I are coming up on our one year anniversary. No, I'm not coding a marriage proposal into bejeweled, that takes way too much effort and my girlfriend doesn't play videogames, and we're not quite there yet. But we are celebrating our anniversary and the idea of gifts came to mind. My family forwent surprises a long time ago for the much more effective, "what do you want for your/our
__choose a noun__," strategy. So when my girlfriend asked me what I wanted for our one year, stones, rocks, rings, nope, I jokingly replied, "how about an X360."Apparently she took this suggestion to heart, so now I'm giving a romantic getaway and a "relationship," ring in the form of a claddagh. I am receiving a "relationship" Xbox 360. Being a gamer I think this is the most damn romantic thing I've ever heard, especially because she knows it means I'll spend a little, and I stress little, less time with her because of it. Now of course our families had some opinions, mainly leaning on the, "that's not very romantic" side. So sue me, she can draw a heart on it. I'm wondering if other gamers out there have successfully mixed love and gaming. Hey there's always banking on multiplayer.
- Posted Apr 24, 2008 2:00 pm PT
- Category: Relationships
- 2 Comments
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9Apr 08
The economy isn't the best it's been in awhile, so what? Gamers always play games, especially in recessions. But maybe you're down to choosing between filling the SUV, your kid's college funds, or your upcoming games queue. Maybe you're thinking your kid can pay for their own education, or that you can start biking to work. Worthy sacrifices for a $60 copy of Force Unleashed and a $90 copy of Grand Theft Auto IV Special Edition. To this I say, bad gamer, bad, be more creative!
Here are three games we've given ratings of 8 and above, games you can afford because they are free at GameTap. Dust off that 3GHz Alienware PC you've been using for Facebook, then go download Thief: Deadly Shadows (PC), Hitman 2: Silent Assassin (PC), Psychonauts (PC), all freaking brilliant games of yesteryear. Since PC's are always a step ahead of consoles, you won't find the graphics dated and you might feel some nostalgia as you experience the influences for games like Assassin's creed. I had forgotten that Rainbow Six Vegas modified door looking mechanics from Hitman.
I was able to get good performance from each of these games on an office PC, not built for gaming, with onboard graphics, ie, no dedicated graphics card. Gameplay wasn't perfect but for the cost of free, it was damn good. Each download was around a gig to a gig and a half, chump change on modern 500gig hard drives.
Adamant about using your console?
Try subscription based services such as GameFly, the NetFlix of games. This will run you around $16 a month for one game at a time. For $60 a game, let me get my abacus, if you beat a game every month or two you come out way ahead. Follow these tips and you could ride out the recession as a gamer, hey, maybe your kids can go to college after all. - Posted Apr 9, 2008 1:03 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 5 Comments
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26Mar 08
The Wii has arguably done more to broaden the market for casual gamers than any other console in the past twenty years. With that market also comes a casual understanding of technology. Just because you can throw down a mean game of WII Sports doesn't mean you can set up and configure a wireless router. A host of other factors can further complicate wireless gameplay, your TV and computer being out of range for example. In the GameSpot office I have noticed the ease with which one can bump into and break off Nintendo's Wi-Fi USB connector. Enter casual internet for the casual gamer, the Net Connect USB Network Adaptor. This is available in some stores or online for around $19. Plug one end into an Ethernet cable, the other USB end into the WII. I was battling online with Super Smash Bros Brawl in a couple of minutes as opposed to the half hour of head scratching it took me to locate, download software for, and set up the Wi-Fi USB. No worries about Firewall/Antivirus/Antispyware/Adware complications that can arise with wireless and can be seen on Nintendo's wireless troubleshooting pages. Plug and play, we tested it, your grandma could do it.- Posted Mar 26, 2008 2:03 pm PT
- Category: Technology
- 1 Comment
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18Mar 08
I spent about an hour and a half this week with Viking: Battle for Asgard and let me just say, this is what Beowulf should have been but wasn't. There are no giant crustaceans to fight, just gruesome baddies. Viking is bloody and visceral from the opening cutscene onward. What Viking does best is flush out an intriguing Norse world full of gods, ruins, and dragons.
The main village is full of rough and tumble characters pursuing their own interests, the sea rolls violently along the shores, and dead corpses litter the land from recent battles. Wandering around the world gives you the distinct impression that big things happened long before you arrived. A good example of this, is a castle ruin your men occupy that you get to platform on for gold and mead. To make traveling easier the game also includes Leystones that let you teleport between areas you've already liberated. You have to do a little button mashing to get through them which again, keeps the game mechanics in the tone of the world. The main focus of the combat in Viking is hacking and slashing. Fighting felt God of War esque, but in its own flavor unlike copycats such as Heavenly Sword. The main hero can learn new skills at a battle arena directly linked to Azguard, the Norse version of the Elysian Fields. What's great about this is that the training stays in the context of the game rather than pull you out of it. These skills immediately come in handy such as a jumping slash required to break through higher level enemy shields, I know, God of War, trust me this feels very different. The main hero also quickly acquires some magical area effect spells in the form of sword runes, that freeze, burn, or electrocute enemies.
By the time I had to walk away from this game, I had just made it into the first large battle. I had a little bit of trouble keeping track of where my character was in the fray, but nonetheless had a great time tearing through gaggles of enemy troops. It's too bad I didn't get a chance to get into the Dragon mechanic but I'm itching to get further into the game to try it out. There were some small issues with what I could and couldn't jump over. Sometimes a rock would stop me but the main character wouldn't hesitate to throw himself off a cliff or high bridge to his death. Also the main character can drown faster than any mammal on the planet. Overall I really enjoyed the short time I had with Viking: Battle for Asgard and became totally engrossed in the world.
- Posted Mar 18, 2008 1:50 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 1 Comment
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11Mar 08
At first glance the Novint Falcon looks like the portal gun from Half Life. I immediately pictured bliss filled days on the living room
couch only to reach an arm through my wall and into the fridge for a refreshing beverage or sandwich. But that's not what the Falcon actually does. The Falcon is riding the tip of the consumer spear in the field of Haptics, commonly knows as force feedback. The proof of concept demo that came with the device let me feel textures ranging from molasses to sand paper. One of the more exciting demo screens gave me trigger time with a slingshot. The scary thing was, having dispatched many an innocent soda can in my youth, it felt so real it was scary. The rubber band gave a sense of escalating tension as I pulled it back and that satisfying thunk at release sending a digital globe downrange. The demo felt a hundred times more exciting and innovative than a Wii controller. The Wii is safe for now with the Falcon price tag hovering at $189, but watch out when these things go mass market.
I can see a huge range of uses for the Falcon, puzzle games where you can feel the pieces, animal games, hell dinosaur raising games, where you can pet and feed your creature, surgery games, driving games where you can feel the g forces, and best of all games like Zelda where you can actually fire your slingshot. I can see first person shooters where you can feel the weight and heft of your gun and the performance will behave sluggish or quick depending on the same factors. All I can say is drool.
Finally there are tons of applications beyond games. I won't get too deep into it but popular mechanics has an article on UGV's
(unmanned ground vehicles see Frontlines: Fuel of War) which described the newest military killer robot MULE, as being controlled by an X360 controller and believe you me, the military is working on Haptics. Other military and civilian applications are remote surgery sweets; stick someone in and a doctor on the other side of the planet can operate.The other great thing about the Falcon is that it is actually pretty hefty. The device feels solid and if you try and force it too hard the curved actuators just slide to one side or another. The only downside I can see is that the ball shaped controller is a little awkward to grasp, but nothing an ergonomics professional can't fix. My money is defiantly on this device. Of course my money was also on VR ten years ago, but I swear it will come back with a vengeance someday, sigh. Lets hope the Novint Falcon is right on time.
- Posted Mar 11, 2008 11:57 am PT
- Category: Editorial
- 3 Comments
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5Mar 08
So I read an article in Wired magazine about Griefers. I was both horrified and at the same time totally fascinated at the idea of internet goombas whose sole purpose in life is to ruin yours. When you sign off in frustration and smash your internet router, the Griefers mission is complete. I'm not totally innocent having had my fun with AO-Hell in the 1990's. But Griefers will ultimately loose to their own strategy. Remember how MTV was counterculture until it became culture, yea
like that. The problem with Griefers is they share the same philosophy as the FBI and the IRS. Mainly, virtual worlds are not a real place to be taken seriously. Never mind there is a real conversion rate between the Linden Dollar of Second Life and the U.S. Dollar, never mind the sweatshops in Asia cranking out virtual property for sale in MMORPG's, never mind the one million dollars made by Ailin Graef in virtual real estate last year. And forget the economists hired to handle inflation in online worlds. The U.S. government isn't about to recognize something not firmly planted on Tera Firma, and no, the Wachowski brothers didn't change their minds, wooooooah.
But Griefers are no longer innocently messing with people, like in the AO-HELL days, they are messing with peoples real wallets and real hours. The Titan ship destroyed in EVE Online was purported to be "worth more than $10,000."(Wired Magazine Article.) Basically it's as simple as this, if Griefers keep up, well griefing, eventually/already they are going to cross into the grey area that is virtual property law. Example, if they screw with an MMORPG, they cost the company players and thus cheddar. How long until a Griefer says, "pay me or else."
Threatening real life business will merit investigation by the IRS or FBI. If one of those organizations gets involved, they will inevitably have to start recognizing virtual space as a real space to be policed and taxed as such. An inside source at Linden Labs confided to me in 2005 that the IRS was already confused about how to deal with virtual real-estate. When Griefers finally get into that lawsuit, the public will be forced to begin dealing with virtual space in Matrix terms, i.e. another place as real as any piece of land. When the reality hack is finite, Griefers will have convinced the public that the internet is a very serious space and thus, counterculture falls to its own success as it always does.
- Posted Mar 5, 2008 2:16 pm PT
- Category: Editorial
- 7 Comments
