...back on nights in 50 minute's time. 3 in a row. The usual bla bla bla.
And to top it all, I'm on call Monday as well :(
Sucks.
Have fireworks to look forward to on Saturday (Guy Fawke's Day), but nothing on Sunday.
Perhaps someone could set us up for a game?
It has been said many times that games have moved on. That they're no longer about finishing an objective and getting the highest score (though there's nothing wrong with that). The medium is so powerful these days that designers can practically direct a game like a film.
Back when things were all innocent and 2D, we might have felt a little bit for the R-Type craft as it fought through The Evil Bydo Empire, and we would have chuckled at Guybrush Threepwood's attempts at becoming a real pirate, but that was about it. A good game back then was about innovation, about squeezing the most out of what little hardware there was. The original Prince of Persia (no not Sands of Times kiddies, the one way before that) was a small game with a simple premise: get out of the dungeon alive in 60 minutes. But we felt for the Prince, because of the way he squeezed the technology. His movements were so realistic that if you had a heart you'd feel every slice, every drop, and every impossible jump.
But now we have hardware that can do anything. Seeing really nice graphics is exciting for a few seconds, but then you start wondering what else this game has to offer. Nintendo has had this philosophy for a while now, choosing to remove themselves from the "my console can draw more polygons than yours" race and focus on making new ways to interact with a game. And with their DS and Wii systems, they have not only done that but have done it with so much success that they are now right on top of the console market, the spot they lost more than 10 years ago when Sony introduced the PSX.
If anything, this proves that people are willing to move beyond the "simple" game and experiment outside of the box.
Still, every now and then you get a game that on the surface looks like another worn-out genre. To the uninitiated eye the game will look no more than the ones before it. But the creators have set out with a vision, with a way to actually make their game stand out, and it is this that makes playing games such a joy. When a game chucks something at you more than realistic looking water, when it actually envolves your mind and emotions and heart, that's when you know you're playing something special.
I am writing this because yesterday I experience just that. But before telling you about that I want to mention Team Ico, the Japanese game designers are experts at making games that are nothing more than simple clones of others, but can hook you emotionally and never let go. I've mentioned Shadow of The Colossus here before. Their first game, Ico, puts you in the role of a 12 year old boy and a girl who don't understand each other. Both are trying to escape a grim fate, and without each other can't survive. Telling you more would be to ruin it, but if you do get a chance to play it, then don't miss out.
Yesterday I finished Half-Life 2: Episode 2. Delayed for nearly over a year, Episode 2 continues the story of Gordan Freeman and the resistance against The Combine forces in City 17. Anyone who's worth their salt in gaming should by now have played at least Half-Life 2. It remains one of the finest examples of FPS gaming ever made.
Episode 2 does a lot of things right: the game play is tightly executed, the graphics have been updated tremendously, and the story advances in a good, controlled pace. But it's the ending that was executed with so much style, and by ending I mean the last level. Defending a base against a very heavy attack (I won't ruin it for those yet to get there), when you finally get it done you suddenly realise that your heart had been racing, you're palms are sweaty, and your breathing was laboured. A huge sigh of relief came out of me when I finished. You genuinely feel sorry for anything destroyed during the attack.
Then just as you relax to watch the ending sequence, something happens. Something that you can do nothing about but just watch (taking control away from the player is a very effective way of suddenly turning the cards around in a game - one moment you're nearly indestructable, the other you're nothing more than a viewer) as the events unfold and the game ends. Leaving you emotionally drawn-out and anticipating Episode 3 rabidly!!
Excellent game design is what Valve are all about. Anyone who's played Portal to the end will know exactly how good they are at creating game endings, and of course Team Fortress 2 should be taught in universities as an example of the best balanced design ever created. To that, I salute you Valve and every other game designer that has the balls to drag us from the balls and not let go.
The Crysis SP demo, that wasn't meant to come out till tomorrow, is out!
We saw Stardust yesterday, the new fairy tale/fantasy movie co-written by Jonathan Ross's wife.
I'm on nights again, starting 22:00 tonight.
YABOO.
4 nights, then the week off, then 3. Week off is at a good time, I have a job till August 2008 now (and in 2 specialities I want to work in!), and so I'll be playing tons of shit this week off.
Heavenly Sword
Paper Mario
Folklore
Metroid Prime 3
Episode 2
And God knows what else.
Salam.
PS: I am changing ISPs. I hate Bulldog. I should be with SKY (hopefully at 16mb) sometime, but I don't know when the phone will suddenly switch companies, and I'll be off the grid for a while.
Tim Schafer is a legend in himself. Don't know him? OH YES YOU DO. Especially if you've played any classic Lucas Art Adventure.
The man is the co-designer and brains behind most of the wit in The Monkey Island games, Grim Fandango, and the awesomeness that is D.O.T.T.
He also created one of the freshest, funniest, and cleverest games of last generation: Psychonauts. I loved that game to bits on the Xbox.
Anyhow, the man is making Brutal Legend. God knows what it is, or how it will play. What we do know is that the teaser looks fantastic, features lots of Rock and Roll, and it's got Jack Black in it. A Heavy Metal Golden Axe perhaps? With lots of humour? Excellent!
Excited? You should be!
I have been playing a lot of TF2 recently. It all started when I was reading a forum I frequent. Someone had posted a thread about the TF2 beta (The game comes as part of Valve's Orange Box, and if you preordered it on Steam, you got access to the TF2 beta), and how much fun it all was.
All I knew about it is that it was a very cool looking game, that struck a resemblance to Pixar's The Incredibles. What I also knew about it is that it was a kind of game that I hated: class multiplayer.
Now I'm all for online gaming and MP, but when it becomes classes I get confused. Who's the soldier? and how can I tell him from the medic? or the sniper? or the engineer. Too confusing.
But, still, I preordered The Orange Box. I figured that I really wanted to play Portal and Half Life 2: Episode 2, so might as well get TF2 with it.
And that's when the addiction started. Put simply, Team Fortress 2 is THE MOST FUN ONLINE PC GAME YOU WILL EVER PLAY.
Bold claims indeed, let me digress.
TF2 gameplay is essential First Person Shooting. There are only 6 maps (but that's more than enough, as to play the game well you have to know your maps), and all but one of them revolve around teams fighting for control points; with the RED team defending and the BLU team attacking. When all control points are won/lost, the match is over.
Each map has got a series of choke points: areas that the attacking team have to pass through to get to a control point. And it is at these chokes that frantic fights and battles wage. Still though, all this stuff is nothing new, nor exciting.
Where the game really shines is in it's characters. There are a total of 9 classes to play as, each with their own uses, own strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly, their own personality and style. When you play TF2, you don't struggle to work out who just walked passed you, because you can tell a Soldier from a Heavy from a Spy just by looking at them, watching them fight, and also listening to them. As you play along, your character will call things out now and then, like thanking the medic for a heal, or jeering the opponent.
Have a look at the picture above which shows the whole TF2 family, and you'll understand what I mean.
Of course, the visual style of the game is nothing short of amazing, and, I think, is one of the boldest, bravest, and best choice valve has ever done. Essentially feeling like a cartoon, with thick edges, amazing phong-shaded graphics, and cartoony characters. It makes for a lovely, colourful and very much needed refreshing change to the dull grays and browns of today's Gears of Wars and Unreal Tournaments. A Soldiers rocket for example has a huge trail of thick comicky smoke pouring out of it, while the soldier himself looks almost comical.
The audio is great also. With great sound effects, and loads of lines that the characters can utter. Also, there's a sexy female announcer (that sounds like someone out of a 60s Bond film) that announces important stuff, like time remaining, and whether a control point is being attacked. Best of all though, is that her tone and pitch change with whether she's announcing something good (sexy, smooth voice) or something bad (distressed, almost hysterical voice. Sometimes repeats herself!).
And before I quickly talk about the classes, the game has an excellent killcam system: once killed, the game zooms in to a freeze frame of the person that killed you, about 1 second after he did. This gives them time to taunt you (taunting lasts about 3 seconds and through which the player is motionless. Therefore taunting in itself is a risk), but also they can be killed straight after killing you, so the camera will zoom in on to the body of your killer! This makes for some awesome relationships between rival players.
Also, if you kill someone 4 times in a row you dominate them. This is announced on screen with some very dramatic music. If the person you're dominating kills you, then they have gotten revenge on you and this, again, is announced with some dramatic music. Clever thing is that everyone that's playing gets told who's dominating who. So if you ever get dominated, you make it your personal vendetta to get the MoFo, just to restore a bit of pride in the server.
Now for some brief class descriptions:
Scout: A fast moving player, looks like a little boy. This bad man can run very fast, and double jump. He counts as 2 people when gaining control over a base. Not the easiest to play with due to his speed. Armed with a shotgun.
Soldier: A clumsy man, with a big helmet almost covering his eyes. He's the most traditional of all the classes, as his weapons include the good ol' Rocket Launcher. Which he can use to Rocket-Jump with.
Pyro: The most lovable of them all. This guy carries a flame thrower and is dressed in a shiny flame retardant suit, and a big gas mask. His mask makes his speech very muffled (like Kenny from South Park), and his jaunts and calls for medic are nothing more than mumbles. He is excellent at torching enemy congregations. If he can get to them that is ;) Also great at finding spies.
Demoman: A black Scotsman. This guy has a grenade launcher. Very fun to play with.
Heavy Weapons Guy: A huge Russian piece of meat. Carries a machine gun he likes to call Sasha. this guy is huge, has tons of health, and is very slow. He is great for pushing the enemy back and killing them off. A Heavy+Medic combo is nearly indestructable.
Sniper: Says it all really. Australian guy. His bullets do more damage the longer he's zoomed in.
Spy: The most difficult class to play, but if played well is very rewarding. A team with good spies is unstoppable. This guy can go invisible for 10 seconds, and can camouflage as any member of the enemy team. He carries a knife to back-stab people with, and a "sapper" to put on turrets, which disables them. Any hostile action and his disguise is lost, hence a spy has to be very careful and choose the right time to attack.
Engineer: These guys can build dispensaries and turrets that are lethal killing machines. They then spend their time upgrading them and keeping them healthy. Again, a good engineer can make or break the match. Very fun to play with.
Medic: My class of choice. These Germans have a Ghost Busters like gun that heals other team mates. Heal enough people and the Ubercharge is ready: A boost that makes the medic and his patient invulnerable for 10 seconds. All players have a button they press which calls the medic, letting him know that they need healing. A team with good medics can be very difficult to beat. The medic is easy to grasp, but very difficult to master. It is also regarding the most boring job in a team, hence not many people play it. I love it :)
So, as you can see, there are loads of things to do in the game. Bored of being a Soldier? Just respawn as something else. Stuck defending a point? Change to engineer and build a network of sentries and dispensaries. The possibilities are huge. But, like most of us, you'll have a class you'll love and play the most, and a couple more for when you get tired.
I hope you all get this game, and I hope we get to play it together soon. Trust me, you will be wondering how you were living without TF2.
I leave you with this Killcam shot that I took today: I was a BLU Soldier, trying to get to the RED's last control point. A Turret belonging to a "uk.ace" spotted me and killed me instantaneously. When the Killcam zoomed in to the turret, I saw that our BLU spy, dressed up as an enemy engineer (look at his face, he's wearing a mask with an engineer face on it. To them, he looks just like a real engineer, but to us he looks like a spy with a mask on :p) was just about to sap the turret and hence disable it!
So my killcam shot was great, cos my team were taking revenge on the turret that killed me!
Great great stuff. See you in Dustbowl guys!!
It happened. It finally happened. As much as we all thought this day would never come, it actually did.
What?
Well a certain guy called Wolf (and his friend/brother in law NBA) actually showed up online, and played Q3A with us. YES. Would you believe it?!
Saturday night 21:00 UK time and we all started getting it together. Fast forward to about 22:30 and finally most of the usual shit had been ironed out (microphones not working, serial numbers invalid, people not connecting, voice servers not responding, the usual).
There was 6 of us in total: SoB, Haniboy, Nureactor, Fuji, Wolf, and NBA.
We started it all off with a classic: CTF1 with me, Hani, and Nu on one team. We had our arses handed over to us (20-9) that match cos we didn't stick to our one-defends-two-attack plan. And they were cheating! (not really :p)
Next up was an even more classic: Doom 2 Level 7 (Dead Simple) made for Q3A. Pure madness in Deathmatch this one, frag limit 100 (I won cos I'm the king!).
Then we went to another CTF1 match, with a capture limit of 11 (took us about 10 minutes to decide on that!). This time, we stuck to our plan, I defended the flag while the others went out to get it. We won 11-3.
Last, we revisited level 7 and this time did it Team Deathmatch, with a time limit of 15 minutes. Great fun!
Best of all though, was that we had a Teamspeak server running, so we were talking and swearing at each other a lot throughout the whole ordeal!
It's great that Wolf and NBA have shown up on the scene at last. For some reason they just haven't played with us at all, even though me and Nile have been doing this since 2000. Here's hoping they'll come back again and again.
Sorely missing from today's match were Nile Warp and Blue Blood. The former had "A room full of women" in his flat (_!_), and the latter was in Aqaba celebrating the Eid with his wife and kids (yes, we're old). Next time we should have a full house, and then it'll be 4v4 mayhem. I hope.
We should also try out some F.E.A.R. combat and of course when people get the excellent Team Fortress 2, I think it will be our poison of choice. Especially if we voice while playing it as a team, with everyone doing their job correctly. The position of medic is already taken (by moi). If I were to guess, I'd say Wolf would be a soldier or demoman, NBA would be a sniper or heavy, and Fuji either an engineer or a spy.
If the Gods are listening and Blue Blood and Nile get it, then we'd have a kick-ass 6 player clan to be reckoned with! Blue Blood can be our scout, and Nile can be another engineer or the coolest of them all, a pyro.
I live in hope..............
It was Friday night. I had been up since 7am that day, had driven just under 100 miles to Norwich and back (more on that later this week I hope). BUT, it was the weekend, and I wasn't working.
No, not mine. Hani's :(
His 360 died yesterday, JUST as we were about to start a PES6 match.
Funnily, it's pre-death circumstances are exactly the same as mine: It suddenly froze with little boxes flashing on the screen. From then on, it's a rapid downhill slide towards the dreaded red rings.
Not sure what happens next. It's a UK box, but it broke in UAE. Whether there's a world-wide warranty I don't know. Perhaps just buying a new core is best.
We wait and see.
Two days ago a part of me started to hurt. Only a little twinge mind you, but it was hurting and I could feel it. I thought nothing of it, and just carried on as normal, lazy, doing nothing, Sunday.
One day ago a part of me started to hurt more. Only a big twinge mind you, but it was hurting and I could feel it. I thought nothing of it, and just carried on as normal, energetic, doing ward rounds, Monday.
Today a part of me started to hurt a lot. Only a lot of pain mind you, and it was hurting so much I had to stop every now and then for a break. This time, I thought a lot of it!
So, around 12, I picked up the phone and bleeped a certain registrar.
"Hello, ***logy registrar"
"Erm, oh hi. I'm Ali, a medical SHO. Are you free to talk?"
"Why of course. How can I help you?"
"Erm yes, well, I've got a bit of a problem"
"Yes, tell me who the patient is..."
"Oh that. It's me. A certain part of me really hurts now, and I'm getting a bit worried"
"Oh dear. Well listen I'm in clinic and I've got a gap now, come down and see me"
"Ah. OK, well yes I'll do that now. Thanks"
So I wandered over to "Clinic D" and found where said registrar was. He was a big, friendly person. After a brief history, he asked me to lie down and "get ready".
After "getting ready", he went ahead to examine me. Without gloves. WITHOUT GLOVES.
"Oh I see. Right, well I think it's ************. Everything feels fine"
"Great. Really hurts though"
"Yes it does. So you need some antibiotics"
"Ah thanks. Perfect"
"Yes. But we need to make sure it's not something else"
"...."
"So, I'll quickly pop by to the ultrasound room next door. You see, we run a ****** ultrasound service today. Let's see if they can do yours"
"...."
5 minutes later
"Yes, they can. It's the next room on the left"
So I wandered down to the next room on the left. A Pleasant woman with a big ultrasound machine told me to lie down on the bed and "get ready". Which I did.
She then went on to put this really cold gel all over my ****** and scan them, all the time while feeling obliged that she should talk out loud the scan results.
After about five minutes, I was told that it's all normal, and that I should report back to the big man.
So I did. He reassured me that that was great, and gave me a prescription for some antibiotics.
I thanked him profusely (why? don't know, after all he had examined me WITHOUT GLOVES), and wandered off to find the pharmacy.
I feel better now, whether by effect of the antibiotic, or by effect of food. After all it is Ramadhan and I was hungry. Perhaps my ****** was hungry too....
I've been stumbling a lot recently (ever since I installed Firefox on the Mac). Hence the sudden surge in crappy posts recently; and here's another one :p
Pictured below is an IBM mainframe hard drive, dated from the late 80s/early 90s. It is a HUGE 1 Gigabyte in size. Of course, back then, 1g WAS huge. Very huge actually. My XT computer around 93/4 had a huge 10 MEGABYTE hard drive in it. About 1/76 of the memory my VGA has on it nowadays.
This drive was used in the mainframes of the time, and you literally had to be an engineer to install and run the damn thing.
Obviously, the SD card pictured next to it is exactly the same size, 1 gigabyte. A lot smaller, faster, and way lighter than it's great great great grand daddy.
So who would have thought it back then, if someone had told you that one day you could hold a little card that stores 1 gigabyte, would you have believed them? Would you have believed that a small card as big as a stamp can carry 748,899 High Density Floppy Discs?
Of course, if some one had told you that a card EVEN smaller than that (Micro SD) can carry the same, then you would have classed them insane and called the mental police.
And in another 10 years time, when we'll have whole computers as big as a stamp we'll be wondering if we would have believed it today. I certainly do....
