Well, it's finally happened - Marty Blog's 50th blog post is here! Not too shabby for a project that sprang to life as a mere experiment to organize my thoughts on gaming, art, developing, and the rest of that fun stuff. I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of Marty Blog so far, and I've got some neat stuff planned for the future, so I hope that you'll join me as I add more content and features to the growing pile o' stuff here.
To help celebrate the continuation of Marty Blog, and to give back to everyone who's helped make the blog fun for me, I've put together a little raffle - which I've dubbed Post & Win!
What can you win?
The grand prize for the raffle is a brand new (digital) copy of Valve's über fun frag-fest Team Fortress 2!
If you've already got a copy of TF2, or if it's not really your thing, I'll also let you sub in any other single game of equal or lesser value that's currently on Steam.
Additionally, two runners-up will be able to choose from any single game currently on Steam for $5 or less. This includes such classics as Commander Keen, Day of Defeat, and Silent Hunter III.
How do you enter?
Simply post a comment below (make sure to enter an email address I can contact you with in the appropriate area of the comment form) and tell me what you think about Marty Blog. Suggestions, criticism, and long manifestos of support and encouragement are welcome!
Your name will only be entered into the raffle once, no matter how many comments you leave, and registered users of the site who comment will have a slightly higher chance of being chosen.
Entrants must have a Steam account or must be willing to register for one if they win. Steam is free, it's a great service, and I am happy to promote it. If you win and I am unable to award you your prize within a reasonable amount of time, the item will be re-raffled. Apologies to anyone who lives outside of the U.S. or who doesn't have access to Steam or its catalog of games.
Attempts at entering your name into the raffle more than once (or any other kind of cheating) will result in your name, and all aliases thought to be associated with you, removed from the drawing. And of course, Marty Blog reserves all rights to make the final decision on the validity of any entry.
Entries close at the end of the weekend - Sunday, August 3rd at 11:59 PM PST - so be sure to make your comment before then! Winners will be announced the following day.
Thanks again to everyone out there who reads Marty Blog now and then. I truly appreciate your visits to this site, and I hope that the site remains fun and enjoyable to you as we move into the future!
Sad times are here again as the weekend draws to a close and the usual grind picks up again with a week full of work looming ahead. I didn't get a whole heck of a lot done this weekend, but as always, I managed to have some fun, so here I am to share my adventures.
Game Maker Robot AI Programming Competition
Though I haven't had as much time to work on this program as I'd like so far, I have made some decent progress on getting the engine ready for a new contest. First proposed a few days ago on the Reflect Games forums, I'm hoping the new robot AI programming comp proves to be a more fun replacement for the old, more involved contests.
The idea is that I will create a base application which everyone can download and play with - essentially just a room from top-down view, and a simple "robot" object - and anyone wanting to participate in the contest will write an AI for the robot that will compete against others' creations. Movement and attack variables/objects will be the same across all entries (I'll be coding those in scripts), and once everyone's AI script is finished, we'll draw up a tournament tree, I'll have the bots compete, and then record the results and broadcast them, via either YouTube or some kind of live Podcast.
One of the goals of the new competition format is to encourage creative coding without forcing entrants to commit to an entire game, which can be both difficult and frustrating at times. I think that with an AI programming tournament, people will have more opportunity to show off good coding without being bogged down by the need for other assets, they'll have a more interesting method of feedback (watching their bot compete with another, as opposed to a "secret" judging), and expansion of the competition can evolve more naturally - if the contest proves to be fun and engaging, we can add more weapons to the bots' arsenal, more customization, etc.
Though it's taking me a long time to get things rolling, I'm very excited about this project. We've already got lots of feedback about how this competition should work - be sure to visit the Reflect Games forums to voice your opinion too!
World of Warcraft MVP
Over the last few days, I've managed to grind my way to Exalted status with two (more) factions, the Shattered Sun Offensive, and the Kurenai, netting myself a new title, some sweet additions to my gear, and a new mount that I'll probably never use.
Gaining exalted with SSO, even without visiting any instances, is pretty easy - it only took me a few days, and I only had to visit the Isle of Quel'Danas and complete all the daily quests there a handful of times. I liked the variation and overlap in the quests there though, and going from that back to grinding the other factions' reputation was a pretty rough transition. By contrast, the only quest I could take in Nagrand to gain Kurenai rep was the repeatable Obsidian Warbeads quest, which meant enduring the monotony of killing hundreds of ogres. Not exactly my cup of tea, and I will probably be looking for different quests when I start my quest for Consortium rep... even if it just means a simple change in scenery.
One good thing about grinding in Nagrand however, is that I was able to pick up a lot of mining nodes that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise. I've now got a mining bag (20 slots) almost full of stacks of Fel Iron Ore and Adamantite Ore - which I'm not sure what I should do with yet. Selling at the auction house will net me a huge sum of gold, but my blacksmithing skill is only at 300, so it might just be better spent on leveling.
My chances for scoring some decent raiding increased significantly last week as well, as I was inducted quite unceremoniously into Encore, an awesome guild which a few friends from college are pretty well-entrenched in. Though I'm not always up for 5-6 hours of raiding, the occasional run through the higher-level dungeons should be new and fun.
Ubuntu Test Drive
Though I've played with the live CD version of Ubuntu before, I finally took the plunge this weekend. I dug an old hard drive out of the closet, popped it into my older computer, and installed it. I've taken some time to play around with it this weekend, and I've mostly enjoyed my time with it.
Downloading Ubuntu and installing it was a piece of cake. All you have to do is get on the official site, download the CD image, burn it, pop it in the preferred computer, and boot from it. The live CD will load Ubuntu just like it would from the hard drive (a bit slower, of course), and once you're in the OS and you've played around with it, you can choose to install directly from a link on the desktop. The only confusion I had during this process was with which file system I should format the drive, but after doing some quick research, I settled on ext3, which seems to be holding up just fine.
So far, I am impressed with Linux. Though I couldn't see myself switching over to it for good, I like many things about it, and I will probably continue to tinker with it. The customization Gnome/Compiz provide is great, and being able to move around virtually every button on the desktop is just plain awesome. The extra effects you can perform with capable hardware are not only fun to look at - they are often genuinely useful. And although there are a few bits of oddness here and there, the OS feels mostly cohesive and with a few more generations of work, I think it really could rival the quality of similar Unix-based OS's, like Mac OS.
Another thing I am particularly fond of is that fact that Ubuntu comes with just about everything you need pre-installed. From the "Faux-toshop" (yes, I made that up), GIMP to the entire suite of OpenOffice.org tools, there's really not much aside from games that need to be installed after loading up Ubuntu for the first time. And of course, that's where the problem lies.
Ubuntu has an impressive number of built-in games, like Solitaire, Blackjack, etc. but if you're like me, you want more meat on your games. Unfortunately, not many games are currently being written with a native port of Linux in mind. There are options available however, like WINE, which can run Windows applications nicely, and can even throw around a growing list of games (it ran my installation of Guild Wars flawlessly, if only a tiny bit slow).
But whatever - running my games in WINE is silly when I've got another hard drive in the same computer with Windows on it, so I'll be dual-booting my older computer on Windows and Ubuntu for now. I'm sure Linux will continue to be fun to play around with, or at least a good diversion from working on my projects and playing games.
Odds & Ends
Aside from all that stuff, I also got to spend a lot of time with my girlfriend, and we finally found some time to start researching home loans. Hopefully we end up qualifying for a decent loan, and we can find a nice place to live - I'm a little sick of the apartment life!
Oh, and it was also my brother's 24th birthday!
Anyway, it's about time I wrapped up this weekend wrap-up. Hopefully everyone else out there had a good weekend too. Thanks for reading!
I've mentioned this in a few other places around the internet, but up until tonight, I've gone mostly unaffected by it. I made every attempt to avoid it, and it was all in vain. Tonight, I was attacked by the Trojan browser, and I am angry about it.
It all started with a simple software update I've been putting off. About a week ago, iTunes complained about updating - but since I don't use it all that often, and I don't have or want an iPhone, I had no reason to update. I also hate it when Quicktime installs with iTunes, and I have to go into the settings and disable the tray icon. So, I ignored the update, and the reminder didn't come back up for me until this afternoon.
I was in the middle of some gameage when it popped up, so I continued to play, ALT+TAB-ing back to Windows when I needed to. iTunes loaded, and told me I needed an upgrade. I clicked Okay, signalling my willingness to download said upgrade, and got back to my game. A second later, the Apple Software Update utility pops up, does a quick check, and informs me that it needs to be upgraded before my iTunes upgrade can go through. I probably should have just stopped here.
Instead of stopping though, I allowed the program to update, and after it got done, it told me I needed to restart my computer. I usually ignore these messages, because half the time they are complete lies, and continued on to check for updates to the software on my computer with it. It returned with two items on the software update list, Safari and iTunes/Quicktime. Oddly, both were defaulted to being checked for update. The problem? I don't have Safari installed on my computer, and I don't want it installed on my computer. But there it was, bold as brass, and ready to try to install itself on my computer.
I unchecked the box next to Safari and went ahead with the upgrade. 10 minutes later the package had finished downloading and began installing, and I was taken out of my game again for a warning from the Apple Software Update utility: the upgrade experienced some errors and could not continue. It needed to be performed again. I set it to do the upgrade dance again, got back to my game. A few minutes later, the same warning sound played, and I jumped back into windows. Sure enough, the same error message had appeared above the Apple Software Update utility. I took a brief moment to look at the program window more thoroughly; there didn't seem to be any way to find out more about what was causing this error. Typical Apple.
I told the update program to try again, went back to my game again, and got the same error again. Frustrated, I closed the Apple Software Update utility, re-opened it, and tried again. I made sure to uncheck the Safari install again. The program went about on its fourth attempt at downloading the update, and I got back to my gaming.
10 muntes later, some frantic hard drive activity cued to me that the upgrade had actually worked this time, and I ALT+TAB-ed back to Windows just to make sure. Everything appeared fine, iTunes was updating. Back to gaming for me.
An hour later I stopped playing games and finally closed out to inspect my newly upgraded iTunes installation, and clean up the usual mess that an Apple software upgrade makes on my machine. Imagine my surprise when I not only found three unwelcome icons on my desktop, but when one of them was a shiny little compass icon...
The Safari icon.
I know I unchecked it. I did it every time I attempted to install the iTunes upgrade. And yet there it was, laying right there on my desktop, taunting me in all its smug insolence.
I popped open the Control Panel and as quickly as possible, uninstalled that piece of crap.
Seriously - this is bullshit. A software updater should not sneak in an unwanted browser masquerading as a software upgrade. You should not have to "opt-out" of the Safari browser by unchecking the box for it. If the only Apple software I have installed on my computer is iTunes and Quicktime, then those are the only programs that should even have the possibility of appearing in the Apple Software Updater's list.
This is a sneaky, deceitful practice on Apple's behalf. It's a cheap way to try to shore up market share for an unnecessary piece of software, and it insults my intelligence that Apple would assume that I am too stupid to look over a list of software before installing it on my computer.
I've sung praise for Apple before, most notably for their excellent handling of a bad PR move involving South Park and iTunes, but this makes me regret that. It's pathetic to me that Apple acts so smug about how great their products are, all while trying to sneak some of them onto your computer through a Trojan Horse of their very own design. If your stuff is so great, you shouldn't need to silently drop it into a software update and hope nobody notices.
I checked my email this morning and found a nice little nugget of goodness deep within: a message from Caligari informing me that the newest version of TrueSpace has now been made available for free!
You can use this link to register at Caligari.com, after which you'll be able to download the program, the manual, and some quick start videos. Make sure you've got your downloadin' gloves on; in total you'll be grabbing about 313Mb of stuff.
There are a good collection of free video courses available here as well.
I've not even used version 7.6 yet, but from what I have read so far, it seems to be a huge upgrade from 5, which is what I currently use for everything.
I finally had a chance to play around with version 7.6 this morning, and though it is very different from 5, it's also much more powerful. The editor features a realtime rendering engine that can do shadows, reflections, and a lot of other neat effects as you work in the editor... which opens up some great opportunities for fine tuning scenes to look just right before doing a final rendering. I've not been able to get the included offline rendering engine to load up in TS7 yet, but when I get home from work later today I'll play around with it some more and see if I can get it to work.
You'll probably need a pretty decent computer to run everything in real-time, but I've been running the program on the laptop we have here at work, and it seems to run reasonably on that, so most near-modern desktops should be fine.
All in all, this is very exciting for fans of TrueSpace, newcomers looking for a powerful, free 3D package, or anyone who's just yearning for a new design experience. If I wore hats, my hat would be off to Caligari for making such a wonderful tool, and then making it free. Hopefully this is the start of something big (and good) for the company.
On the recommendation of my buddy Geoff (and pretty much every movie review website out there), I saw the Dark Knight this weekend, and I am pleased to report that it is not only an awesome movie, but that it stays in step nicely with Batman Begins, and succeeds in taking the action/drama to an entirely new level.
Dark Knight officially has my stamp of approval, so if you happened to be waiting for me to endorse the movie before seeing it yourself (and let's face it, who wasn't?), you're now good to go.
There were a few things I thought that were worth mentioning, aside from how excellent the movie is. I won't go into great depth, since I don't want to ruin the movie for anyone, so you won't read any spoilers here.
First of all, and on a more somber note: Heath Ledger. It's such a shame that the man is gone, as he really seemed to have been starting to find his groove as an actor. I liked him in 10 Things I Hate About You, and I felt that he gave a strong performance in Brokeback Mountain as well. But all that stuff pales in comparison to Ledger's portrayal of the Joker, which brings a feeling of terror to the movie that I really don't think would not have been possible with a different actor. If there's any singular 'dark' element of Dark Knight, it's there because of the Joker, and it is better for it.
There are so many angles to Ledger's Joker, it's hard to sum up the act without revealing too much about the film. On the whole, not much time is spent on the back story of the Joker, but I like it that way - instead of having a moment of insight where you rationalize why the Joker does what he does, you instead share the same feeling of dread the rest of the movie's protagonists feel as they try to cope with the ever-growing chaos he inflicts on Gotham. Indeed, we learn more about the Joker from Ledger's performance, and it makes the character much deeper than it ever could have been with cut-scenes and flashbacks. The Joker was Heath Ledger's finest performance, and he deserves recognition for it.
That's not to say that the other members of the cast didn't do their jobs well, including the film's lead, Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, Aaron Eckhart (Gotham's new D.A), and returning cast Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine. Each and every one of the cast did an amazing job with Dark Knight. And without the incredible work by the stunt and effects crew, there would be no movie. From explosions, to gun fire, to quick fighting scenes, just about everything in the film looks to have been carefully crafted by the crew, and there are many breathtaking moments to be had throughout. In fact, there's really only one small beef I had with the movie.
The last point I wanted to talk about also has to do with a member and ex-member Dark Knight's cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes, respectively. In Batman Begins, the character of Rachel Dawes, the up-and-coming assistant D.A. and childhood friend of Bruce Wayne is played by Katie Holmes. In Dark Knight, she is played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And while both actresses lend good performances to Ms. Dawes, it's a shame to me that Holmes couldn't be tapped again for the role, at the very least, for continuity's sake. It's really only a minor annoyance, but it's an annoyance for sure.
Nonetheless, Dark Knight is a great movie, and is one of those rare cases where the sequel outdoes the original film. Here's to hoping that the 'three-quel' continues this tradition in the coming years!
It's been a long time in the making, but Too Human is nearly here!
For those of you who aren't familiar with Too Human, it can be described fairly simply as a Diablo-ish dungeon/loot-dropping game, set in a futuristic Norse mythology-inspired world. You choose a character class at the outset and battle your way through hordes of enemies with swords, hammers, guns, and other weapons in order to collect experience points and gear, which you can use to upgrade your character, and ultimately unravel the game's plot.
To kick off E3, Silicon Knights released a demo of the game on the XBL network, and it's been available for about 3 days now. I went in with an open mind, and not expecting too much, and I was pleasantly surprised at the game. Beyond a few small quirks, Too Human is looking to be a fun little dungeon crawler that just might satisfy your lust for loot (at least, for a while) as we wait for Diablo 3 to come around.
Graphically, Too Human is good, but not quite on par with other games of similar style, like Gears of War. The characters and enemies are all very detailed, and the combat is filled with lots of neat effects, which serves to add some color to the sometimes bland palette of the indoor environments. There's even some nifty "organic" environments located in the area called 'cyberspace.' Too Human misses the mark in a few of the details though, most notably in animation. Honestly, things aren't animated all that bad, but the movements of characters, both during playable and cinematic sequences, can be a bit stiff at times - it's just not the graceful experience other games, again, like Gears of War, have lead me to expect from "next-gen" titles.
It's not all bad though, so as long as you aren't expecting something on par with the latest offerings of Pixar or Dreamworks, you should be fine. Overall, I'd say that in terms of graphics, Too Human falls somewhere between Halo 3 and Gears of War.
Unfortunately, I can't comment much on the sound for the game, because during the one opportunity I've had to play it so far, I wasn't able to turn up the volume very high. The voice acting didn't seem all that bad though, and the sound effects seemed spot-on.
Gameplay for Too Human was what you'd expect from a game like Diablo - there's hordes of enemies, lots of fighting, and various rewards that usually end up upgrading your character in some way. Occasionally you'll run into a sub-boss, which is a tougher variation of the other normal enemies you've already fought, and eventually, a bigger, badder (and usually larger) boss. The boss enemies drop the best loot, though all enemies have the potential to, and you'll find an assortment of weapons, armor, etc. Too Human also rewards players with experience points that can be used to spec your character down a certain line of the three branches of the skills tree, and you can also receive points that go towards crafting items and re-speccing your character, should you decide you want to take a different route.
I enjoyed the fact that Too Human employs an item-naming scheme similar to Diablo, where you find items whose names imply what they do (for instance, and not a real item at all, "Fred's Cardboard Sword of Major Justice"). It lent the game some familiarity, even though the items and descriptions were worlds apart from the medieval weaponry of Diablo and its ilk of competitors.
Another thing that I liked about Too Human was that, although the levels themselves were mostly very straightforward, there were certain points where you were required to enter "cyberspace" (an alternate world of sorts), and interact with items there that influence your path in the dungeon you're running through. These segments broke up the action in the dungeons nicely, and were a welcome reprieve from the dark corridors of the main dungeons.
As with any Diablo-type game though, you should expect some repetitiveness as far as fighting goes. If you're like me though, and you're always in it for the loot, you probably won't mind grinding hundreds of monsters for a chance at capturing a coveted item... even if only for bragging rights as you play co-op with a buddy.
At one time, I was one of the naysayers of Too Human - I thought that any game which has been in development for almost 10 years, and which kept jumping ship from platform to platform was pretty much doomed to mediocrity (or worse). Over the last few months, I've learned a bit more about Too Human and I got interested, and now, after playing the demo, I am seriously considering buying the game. I'm a fan of dungeon crawlers, and I in my time with the demo, my problems with its quirks were minimal; I found most of the emerging complaints of the game to be rather petty. No camera problems or horrible framerate issues here.
If the rest of the game turns out to be as good as the demo, I think Silicon Knights can count me among any new fans it might have accrued over the last week. I highly recommend you try out the demo if you've got an Xbox 360, and you're interested in this type of game. It might not be your cup of tea, but I think that if you give it a chance, you might just find something you like.
As many of you already know, E3 is officially underway, and many of the top companies in the games industry are busy pushing announcements out of airplanes and watching them fall on the unsuspecting crowd at the show. Unfortunately for me, I am not at the E3 show, but as a faithful fan of the Xbox 360, I feel it my duty to talk about some of the more amazing reports that have come back from Microsoft's side of the show.
Read on for my list of awesomely unexpected Xbox 360 E3 announcements!
Microsoft partners with Netflix, NBC / Universal
Thanks to a new partnership with NBC / Universal, TV shows and movies under these companies will be coming to the XBL Marketplace. This is great news for fans of movies like The Bourne Trilogy and TV shows like 30 Rock. Hopefully The Office (my favorite show) will see some Marketplace love as well!
Netflix will also be supplying its streaming movies service through the Xbox 360, and those of you who already have a subscription will be given access free of any additional charges. It seems Microsoft is really pushing the 360 as a more universal media device. So long as they keep the primary focus on games, you won't hear any complaints from me.
Massive Dashboard Update, Avatars, the whole nine yards
Rumors about a dashboard redesign, including a new avatar system, have turned out to be true.
I've not investigated this very deeply yet, but it seems that the blades system currently in the OS will be the new in-game dashboard, and the normal OS screen will look more akin to the screenshot above. Avatars will be the new way to identify players. The many other new features are included:
8-way chat
Social functions, photo sharing,
Ability to watch Netflix movies with others
Optionally install games to the hard drive, for faster loads (and quieter gaming?)
Purchase / queue content on the web for download with your PC, automatically starts on Xbox
Xbox Live Primetime announced, which incorporates achievements, leaderboards, and real prizes into a TV / game hybrid
There are probably a lot more updates as well - these were only the larger of the ones I've read about. These changes all reflect the (slightly) new direction Microsoft is taking with Xbox Live, dubbed the Xbox Live Experience.
Exclusive Content & Pile O' Games
Among the many Xbox Live Arcade titles announced, a few stood out among the rest:
Banjo Kazooie (of Nintendo 64 fame)
Puzzle Quest: Galactrix
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2
Fable 2 Pub Games (earn money for your character in Fable 2 before the game is out)
Portal: Still Alive
The exclusive downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto 4 was also mentioned briefly - purportedly as what will be a huge event. It was also announced that Fallout 3 (by Bethesda) will have exclusive content via XBL as well.
Not to be left out were the usual slew of big game announcements for the upcoming months, including one massive bombshell (at the end of the list):
Fable 2 (October 2008)
Gears of War 2 (November 2008)
Halo Wars (First Half 2009)
Final Fantasy XIII (excluding Japan, same day release as PS3 version)
Mind you, all of this was only announced in one day - it seemed for a while as if the internet might implode from all the awesome news, and the buzz surrounding it. And then, since we always want more, demos for Too Human and Tales of Vesperia were placed on XBL for play.
I've already tried out the Too Human demo, and though it does have a few odd quirks (including a slightly story that's impossible to follow with the TV volume turned down), I had some fun with it, and I think I just might buy the game. More on that later though - I'm going to go take some time to digest all this news (and maybe a little midnight snack as well).
One thing's for sure - it's a very good time to be an Xbox 360 owner!
I'm pleased to announce that Team Wanderlust has finally unveiled a 'public' demo of Wanderlust: Rebirth, a game that many (myself included) feel is already one of the richest experiences crafted with Game Maker to date.
The game, a solo / online action RPG, represents a re-imagining of the original Wanderlust game, of sorts. Upon starting, players can choose from a handful of classes, and can level up their character with points as they progress through the game's chapters. Each chapter that is completed unlocks the next, and can be repeated again in order to obtain a higher rating, and earn more points.
Rebirth also features an intuitive dialog system, killer retro 16-bit style graphics, customizable controls, and of course, online play. Using the Reflect account system, or by connecting directly, players can join up with each other and play through chapters as a party of up to 4 players. The co-op gameplay is actually encouraged, as the game awards alternate scores for different group sizes, so if you want to complete the game in its entirety (and have some fun to boot), gather up some buddies and have at it!
I've really enjoyed watching this game as it is developed, and it's great to see it finally released to the public and finding a warm reception therein. A lot of work has been put into this game by just a handful of talented people, and I hope to see it finished in the time to come.
Matt, Rebirth's chief programmer, has also given me some great ideas to expand the functionality of Reflect as well - you'll see some of his suggestions come to fruition in future updates.
Anyway, I highly recommend you take the game for a test drive. I'm sure you'll agree with the growing consensus that the new Wanderlust is truly an epic game, with lots to do, and lots of rewards for both the casual and the dedicated alike.
Wanderlust: Rebirth's topic at the GMC can be found here, or you can download the game directly here.
Driving to work today, I only passed by one Cingular store, but I could see a small throng of people standing outside of it, waiting for it to open. Listening to the radio, I heard that the frenzy had reached a higher pitch in the bay area, where some people have been waiting outside of Apple stores since Wednesday, and lines have extended to span almost a block of city streets.
What earth-shattering, ground-breaking, head-exploding new product are all these sad souls waking up early for?
The iPhone 3G, of course. A slight upgrade to the iPhone.
As a somewhat frequent visitor of Digg during the work week, I'm actually quite sick of hearing about it, if you want to know the truth. Almost every other story submitted has been about the iPhone 3G, and each one seems to try to make something as mundane into something interesting more so than the last, and not coincidentally, insult my intelligence more.
Want to watch someone activate their iPhone?
Or navigate an application store?
Or take it out of the bloody box, and handle it?
All covered, courtesy of fanboys, Engadget, and the piece of trash that is Gizmodo. And it makes me sick. How pathetic has our society become that we waste minutes and hours of our lives standing in line for an upgraded telephone?
It's gotten to the point where I feel like I'm about the only man in his mid 20's in California who doesn't shit himself every time someone mentions the iPhone - a sad reality. I even had the displeasure of listening to KGO interview a guy who was first in line at one of the Apple stores in San Francisco, who admitted he already had an iPhone, but wanted a second version phone as well.
Yes, in this time of economic downturn, people are buying a second version of the same phone they already own because it has a few more features than the last. At the time of this writing, Apple's stock is down 1.9% - on a big product launch day, no less - and people are still casting away their barely-year-old old iPhones so they can browse the internet on it slightly faster. And people wonder why our economy is tanking.
This foolishness must stop. Currently, I'm using an LG Chocolate 2, and I really like it - it's easily the best phone I've ever owned. It does everything I need it to do, and it looks cool. But I am not going to rush out and buy the LG Chocolate 3 when they release it, especially not if my current phone is working fine. In fact, the next time I buy a phone will likely be when this one stops working. And I'm not going to participate in the ridiculous douchebaggery that permeates the iPhone crowd, and take videos of myself opening the box, using the phone, or buying applications. I'm a tech guy, and even I find this crap completely neurotic, obsessive, and just plain disgusting.
Being as interested in games as I am, it's hard to keep from playing them. I do play quite a lot of games. And even though much of the time I spend playing games amounts to nothing so far as actual, tangible achievements go, I do consider at least some of the time spent useful as far as my knowledge of graphical effects and current gaming trends goes. I've got to stay on top of this gaming thing, after all, especially if I'm making games of my own!
The trouble is, I've accumulated a pretty large backlog of games that need finishing, or some other attention of sorts. In order to help myself organize this list, I've posted each game on my to-do list below, along with a progress report. Read how behind I am!
Diablo 2
Status: Just started
Following Blizzard's recent announcement that Diablo 3 is in the works, I re-installed and began playing Diablo 2 for a little bit of nostalgia, and to bring myself more up to speed with the series. I'd played Diablo 2 before, but never got too far through it, and I figured that now would be a great time to pick it up again. It's an old game, so it loads and unloads fast enough to play casually whenever I want, and though the graphics are a bit dated (the resolution is locked at 800x600), it's still a lot of fun to play. The only problem is that the game is just as I remember it - incredibly addictive.
Just as long as I don't wear out my mouse with all the frantic clicking, I should be okay.
Grand Theft Auto 4
Status: Somewhere around 30-40% complete
I'm not sure what happened with GTA4, but for some reason, I stopped playing it for a while. I think it was a combination of my re-ignited love for PC gaming, and running one to many failed missions that involved a lot of driving at the outset. Seriously, when I press the button on the in-game cell phone to retry the failed mission, I shouldn't have to drive all the way there again!
Team Fortress 2
Status: Need medic and pyro achievements
I've not spent as much time with TF2 as I've wanted over the last few months - I just haven't had time. Every time I pick the game up, I don't stop playing for 3-4 hours, and that's a hard chunk of time to try to fit into my busy schedule. As noted above, I need the achievements for medic and pyro, as I have yet to even try out any of the new weaponry. Hopefully I'll have some time one of these weekends to sit down and work through it all, without becoming hopelessly addicted again.
World of Warcraft
Status: Grinding for PVP gear/rep
I've hit the level 70 player cap, I've gotten my epic flying mount, and I'm guildless... what should I do? Play PVP battlegrounds for gear and grind enemies for reputation, of course! Fun sometimes, and boring the next, there's always something to do in WoW.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Status: Halfway through the final case
This one's almost finished - I just haven't had time to play it much lately. Looking at the list above, and taking the rest of my real life obligations into consideration, that's reasonable, right?
Half-Life 2: Episode 2
Status: About halfway through
I really like HL2 - I even pre-ordered Episode 2 and had it the moment it was released. And yet, as with so many other games, I started doing something else halfway into the game, and never got around to finishing it. This one should only take a few hours to do, and I really should just set aside some time and do it.
Mass Effect
Status: Finished multiple times, just want more achievements/gamer points
I'm an achievement whore, what do you expect?
So where do you stand on your games? Got a lot of games that need some loving?
