Sawdustprophet's Blogs

In the spirit of Zombieland, I have decided to publish my own rules of survival...this time for Game: Grand Theft Auto IV. Enjoy, and feel free to add your own.

Rule #1: Shock And Awe
It never hurts to bring a shotgun to a knife fight. Come armed to the teeth.

Rule #2: Use What You Have
Don't waste effort trying to get pull a bootleg in the middle of an intersection when you can use a nearby car or support column to achieve it quickly.

Rule #3: Seatbelts
Try not to hit a solid object at high speed. It's not a happy ending.

Rule #4: Efficiency
Why use up 30 shells to take out a dozen cops, when you can use a single vehicle to flatten them all at once?

Rule #5: No Drinking
While it might be fun, drinking impairs your driving, and therefore impairs your ability to create mass destruction on an unprecedented scale.

Rule #6: Let Your Inner Child Burn
Don't be prude about the amount of choas you can sow. Stack up a blockade of cars, and then find the most inventive way to set it all off.

Rule #7: Live the High Life
If you're going to get a wanted star, aim for six. And do it in a nice expensive Oldsmobile with leather seats. Spoil yourself.

Rule #8: No Jaywalking
This one only really applies if you're a computer-generated citizen of Liberty City, but it goes without saying that if you decide to cross the road randomly, some jackass in an SUV will make you a hood ornament.

Rule #9: (Not So) Quiet Time
Whether it's with a girlfriend or a random girl, get a little nookie every so often. It helps to break the monotony of constant killing.

Rule #10: Limber Up
It's not always easy to get right into the murder and mayhem. You might want to do some of the plot missions and unlock more dangerous (and more satisfying) means of destruction.

The MicroATX standard should be banished from this plane of existence permanently. There is no question of this.

I am working on my mother's boyfriend's computer. It is a Compaq 6420NX, with an Athlon XP 2200+ and my old Geforce 6600. This information matters not, but I know the techies out there will ask anyway.

Recently this machine started acting up. When I attempted to reboot it, it appeared to be stuck in an infinite boot cycle, hitting some point and then starting over. When I ran two different Linux distros via live disc (Xubuntu and Knoppix), it worked...technically...but the display of the GUI was all garbled and the cursor behavior was bizarre, to say the least.

So I went to the next step: field surgery. Now, it's worth mentioning here that the machine is a MicroATX form factor (if you didn't guess already). When I removed the hard drive, one I myself installed last year, I realized I'd installed it in the wrong slot and there is a hard-drive-specific slot for it. When I went to place it in this slot, I discovered that the CPU's heat sink blocked it from lining up properly.

So I have to remove the heat sink to put the hard drive in. To remove the heat sink, I have to remove the power supply as it renders access to the retaining bracket almost impossible. So now I am here with the computer almost totally disassembled.

Here is my note to computer manufacturers: Installing a hard drive should not, ever, be a project to occupy more than ten minutes. Get your heads out of your asses, cease these ridiculous motherboard configurations, and design something that's actually fucking serviceable.

Thank you for taking the time to read my note.

Yours sincerely,
Die In A Fire

My pocket reviews of the week:

Game: Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Easily one of the more innovative DS games I've played so far, which is a bit sad being that it's about gunrunning, drug trafficking, and underworld domination of the most malignant type. While using the individual screens takes a bit to master, it manages to use the touch screen to enhance the gameplay rather than try to replace it, which is a hard balance to strike. The graphics have a semi-cel-shaded feel to them, which lends itself well to the overall artistic style of the game, all giving a unique and rather fresh feel to the game. While the camera could use a little tweaking, in general controls work great--the cars automatically aligning to roads is a feature that could have been used many incarnations ago.

Game: Project: Snowblind. Yes, it's not new and shapely, but I have always had a thing for older games. This was one I missed way back when and found on the $5 rack the other day. In general it's not too bad--autoaim needs a little work and the inventory system starts to get cumbersome after you've acquired a dozen each of weapons and gadgets. But beyond that it's your pure, slick shooter, and I've no complaints about that.

Mini Ninjas. My brother had this demo on his 360, and while I've no need to be convinced to buy it (I was sold on it when I saw the first screenshots) I played anyway. Nothing bad here that I can think of. The cartoony animations are both entertaining and amusing, and the Ninja's acrobatics and superpowers are reminiscent of Game: I-Ninja...which is pretty much the whole reason I wanted it in the first place.

Game: Chrono Trigger, specifically the newer DS release. To be honest, this game's best quality is its retro-styled graphics. Rather than introduce three-dimensional polygons to an older game, such as Game: Final Fantasy III remake and its sequel-remake, Square Enix decided this time around to retain the use of flat sprites, and in my opinion it only makes the game better. The turn-based combat is given more depth with the use of tactical-style movement; most abilities are area-of-effect and therefore dependent on the placement of enemies or friendlies. This is, to say the least, a refreshing change of pace from your typical JRPG.

I don't want to be the armageddon-monger, but Sony may have just buried themselves with this latest hardware launch.

With the PSP Go, the folks upstairs seem to have taken a backward step in almost every category. Or perhaps more accurately, they have taken steps to ensure that anyone who adopts the Go becomes shackled to the restraints of their system. Ars reviewed the unit two days ago and they weren't forgiving.

Personally buying games directly from Sony via download isn't an issue for me. It would be nice to see some ability to trade or loan downloaded content, but I'm a collector and my tendency is never to sell those games I own.

What I find more concerning is that the Go apparently offers so little for so much. It still runs on the aging 802.11b spec; meanwhile the IEEE is on the verge of finalizing the far superior 802.11n specification. Sony never made good on their promise to allow UMD-game owners to trade up for digital downloads. I can understand the limitations of this concept; UMD games have no sort of unique serial number (that I know of) with which to prove ownership, and thus there is next to nothing Sony can do to alleviate the issue. They got themselves in a bad place by promising plans to do so, however...in my opinion they should have kept their mouths shut and just let it fall through.

As bad as it sounds, Sony is only making it worse by marketing it alongside the older PSP unit. Now retailers must split their PSP section in two, and with the game-retail industry slanting heavily toward boutique-style stores with no more than a thousand square feet or so of space, this is a bad position to be put in. A simple Microsoft-style cutoff campaign would actually serve them better in most regards, but over time the UMDs will be phased out regardless, and new customers going with the Go from the outset have nothing to lose.

But therein lies the rub. Only new customers will have any real exposure to the PSP Go--it's pretty much guaranteed current users won't even take a second glance at the Go. And adoption will take a while to take root, as well, as the price tag for the Go is bordering on astronomical when you consider that for $50 more you could get a far superior game system with more utility.

One other small detail that has always bothered me about the PSP's operating system is also still present: Background downloads. There are none. Still. It's 2009, Sony. Why can I not just start a download and then go watch a video or play a game? What's preventing this from happening? While the Wii and DSi also suffer from this shortcoming, the PSP has always been marketed as a multimedia system and should have something like this. Then again, its multimedia abilities have similarly always been crippled, so I guess Sony stopped caring long ago.

It seems Sony doesn't know what they are doing with their new handheld that may or may not be unveiled at E3, if indeed it is being worked on, which it may or may not be. Other than Sony's official silence regarding the object in question, their inability to decide what features it will sport shows that either they aren't working on anything at all, or they are working on something completely different. Either way, it also shows that Sony is apparently becoming quite skilled at keeping a secret project secret.

At the same time, I'm seeing reflections of Nintendo's DS and Apple's iPhone from the glossed back cover of the handheld. According to various rumors, the so-named PSP Go will feature slide-out controls, a touch screen, a new memory format to replace the Memory Stick, the omission of the UMD drive, dual analog nubs, and probably the kitchen sink.

First off, the handheld can't possibly include all these functions. Well, it could, physically, but the resulting product would be more prohibitively expensive than Intel's next-generation Core Extreme. Personally, I find it unlikely that the unit will include a touchscreen; said screen is simply too difficult to add to something like a PSP without risking it becoming damaged and unusable in a short amount of time. You could, of course, add a screen protector in the form of a hard plastic cover, but that would make the arrangement awkward. But hey, awkward never stopped Sony before.

A slide-out control set would be nice to see--it allows a much larger full-face screen to be placed on the front of the unit, and in some ways would make gameplay more comfortable, with the taller silhouette. The difficulty is in mass--the PSP is relatively heavy, and supporting the top half of the unit while still allowing it to slide smoothly is a delicate balancing act. I'm not saying it can't be done, it just strikes me as not worth the effort.

The removal of the UMD is about as inevitable as the DS losing its Game Boy slot. The UMD, while not entirely a failure, has certainly fallen short of expectations, partly due to shitty construction and partly due to overzealous property rights control, a staple strategy of Sony's. Meantime, the sale of games through the PlayStation Store has proven the viability and popularity of gamers to buy and store games on their Memory Sticks. It seems realistic that Sony would capitalize on this, as it would also save on battery life, size, and the noise that the UMD drive creates.

In addition to all this is the myraid directions the handheld could go in. Sony seems to be trying to either emulate or bed everyone in the vicinity--the touchscreen and exclusive reliance on flash memory would make the system a near-clone of Nintendo's titan DS, while Skype support on the 2000 and 3000 series systems (also combined with the touchscreen) would practically make it an iPhone, or an N-Gage if you will.

We have to wait and see. Though I personally do not feel compelled by any of these possible augmentations to the design; I'm perfectly happy with my PSP as it is and have no need to throw away my UMDs or deal with a touchscreen or G1-style slide-out. Some people seem almost rapturous at the news of the development of this secret weapon; most of them seem to be the PS3 junkies who keep the community going. This may bolster Sony's presence on the handheld front, but I don't think it will be the atom bomb some think it is.

A bit of a present to myself was a copy of Game: Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, as I've been on a bit of a retro kick lately. After this obsession in general, and playing this game specifically, I have come to a conclusion. Actually, two conclusions.

One: We need more 2D (or perhaps 2.5D) sidescrollers out there, and Two: The Wii is the perfect vehicle for this artillery. The Wiimote is a perfectly natural implementation of a simple sidescrolling, two-button arrangement, and the Wii has the power to show off great graphics with a retro touch to them. Needless to say, the Wii Shop would be a great place to market and sell these products. I've seen a few retro-style games make returns via WiiWare and DSiWare (in Japan at least, since not much is available in DSIWare for North America yet).

One thing I hope not to see show up is the artificial grafting of Wii-specific functions into games. A bad example of this is Game: Metal Slug Anthology, which while based on using the Wiimote in "classic" placement, forced the player to awkwardly snap one's wrist to throw grenades--even if the player learned to do this efficiently, they were still forced to stop moving and shooting to throw a grenade, and in a game like Metal Slug, you don't stop moving, ever.

This seems like a blindingly obvious possibility for both Nintendo and other third parties all over. Simpler, smaller games are making a comeback, and it seems inevitable that classics such as Castlevania should release new installments on this service. I hope to see some of these make their triumphant return on either of Nintendo's platforms, and soon, because rest assured I will play them.

For those who don't already know, ʊcassed is my brother. Yes, I know. It's shocking. Okay, stop gasping, before you pass out.

In slightly-related news, today is also my birthday. Happy birthday to me.

And the piece of information that links these two subjects is the gift I recieved in the dark of the night.

Apparently ʊcassed took it upon himself to gift me a copy of Game: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 via Steam. Yet another reason I love Steam's system.

Anyways, be sure to send ʊcassed thanks for me. I can't bring myself to thank him myself; being his brother and all, I'm supposed to put up this shield of semi-masculine sibling rivalry, and all that jazz.

Thanks, bro.

I've been out of the Wii loop for a month or so. I just haven't really felt inclined to fire it up and play. This is partly because I have been delving deeper into the world of tabletop RPGs, but that's a story for another time. Back to the point, I recently saw an article on Ars Technica that mentioned a Wii update. Intrigued, I promptly picked up my Wiimote, logged on, and ran the update.

Needless to say, when I saw the "SD Card Menu" icon in the corner of my screen, I just about squeed with joy. I immediately transferred everything from my Wii to the SD card that has long waiting in the slot for a purpose to existence.

To give you an idea of how radical a change this was, my Wii shows around 2200 blocks of storage empty. The 2 GB SD card residing in the slot has over fourteen thousand blocks, and that's fully loaded with Virtual Console games. Hallelujah.

But of course, like so many diamonds this comes in the middle of a mound of crap. It's appalling that Nintendo took more than three years to get around to this. It's even more blundering that their interim solution was to install a meager half gigabyte inside the unit, which at best holds maybe eight or nine N64 games. They should have seen this coming even before the design went into final stages.

I like to think of myself as Nintendo-oriented--my first console was an NES in 1989 and I've been playing their systems ever since, with the only exception of the Virtual Boy--but I'm not blind. I was painfully aware of the shortcomings of the GameCube and all too many of these blunders have been repeated with the Wii. Slowly, too slowly, Nintendo seems to be picking up on these lessons and reconciling with the reality that gaming has become. I can only hope they start moving faster and include other functions that should have been available at the start, most notably DVD playback.

I spent the weekend doing as few things as possible. Within this exclusive list of activities was the long-established pastime of downloading and playing video game demos. I do have to say, this current generation of systems can be loved purely on virtue of the ability to download game demos and play them easily, then delete them once you are done.

I have to say I was surprised by the demo of Resistance Retribution. Finally, it seems someone has perfected the shooter on the PSP. While using the four "shape" buttons for aiming is a little awkward, there's really no way around that, and it's significantly less awkward than past shooters (COUGH Game: Coded Arms). After playing this demo, I have hope that the shooter genre may at last have reached maturity on the PSP. We'll have to see where that goes.

I also demoed the very fun Game: LocoRoco 2. To be honest, I wasn't expecting much, given the mind-boggling simplicity of the first game. But I was surprised by this one, too. LR2 manages to take the original concept off a ball of happy jelly rolling around on tilting landscape and add new things to it. One of the funner new things was the ability to split my 'Roco up, commandeer a boulder, and proceed to break down every barrier in sight. It was quite a lot of fun, and I look forward to buying it.

I also flubbed about with the Game: Resident Evil 5 demo, and I'm inclined to agree with Tycho on this one, the game makes you aware, very aware, of what you are doing. My real gripe is that Chris is apparently unable to point a weapon horizontally and walk at the same time. Not to mention that his knife slash leaves much to be desired. But overall, it does look good and the AI has some merit to it.

And in the crank file lies a number of images related to a new game Stardock is working on. They call this project Elemental: War of Magic and it definitely looks interesting. As those who clicked the link can see, it basically boils down to a cel-shaded strategy game. Needless to say, this has piqued my interest and I shall be investing more future time into probing the depths of this endeavor of theirs.

I have just awoken from a few hours' nap. The dream during this nap consisted of strong references to World of Warcraft, Age of Empires, and at the end took on a FEAR/Resident Evil feel, with a lot of gunning and little Alma in the shadows.

The worst part? When I woke up the TV was still on, and Sex in the City was playing.

I have no fucking clue how that happens.

In the first ten minutes of playing Game: Prince of Persia (2008), I earned seven achivements. "Earned" is loosely used here, for when you approach an achievement-to-minute ratio of 1:1, the challenge just isn't there.

Now, granted, the achievements themselves aren't worth a whole lot--ten points apiece--but it's actually slightly condescending when you "earn" an achievement for starting the game. There are also achievements for using the compass, talking, and standing motionless for sixty seconds. There's a point where it begins to feel like you're being treated like a little kid who is playing his first console game, rather than a mature sort of business like Ubisoft said it would be. I'm not sure what the point of placing so many of these little achievements around, other than to make the player squeal in joy when even the most mundane of actions is executed.

Personally, I will enjoy it most if I make it all the way to the end of the game, only to find out there is no achievement for finishing because they ran out of slots.

Due to a decently-sized bonus check I recently recieved, I have embarked upon an adventure in the land of ultraportables. I ventured forth and acquired a Lenovo Ideapad S10. While I was originally looking at a smaller one, after actually getting to use them firsthand I settled on this one. But this isn't about the machine, it's about the grease that makes it run.

While it came with a slightly-customized version of Windows XP installed, it didn't take long for me to remove that, for reasons I won't go into because that's another story. I installed my other beta of Windows 7 to see if it would run as the rumors said it would. And I must say, the rumors don't lie.

With absolutely no modification necessary, 7 has run flawlessly on this netbook for a full day now. Boot times aren't noticeably different from my higher-end machine, and while it does take its sweet time going into hibernation, wakeup time is well within reason--usually the login screen appears within a few seconds, and the computer is back to fully-operational status in less than half a minute. While some of the hardware is yet to work properly, that is more Lenovo's refusal to distribute drivers than Microsoft's ability to work the gears.

The grand statement here is, Microsoft may actually be doing things right these days. I am geniunely impressed that I can run this OS on a netbook with no modifications needed--I never would have attempted this with Vista. Without a doubt, I'll be putting 7 on all my machines once it goes retail.

FOREST OF ILLUSION--Bedlam reigned for several hours today as the terrorist calling himself "Mario" appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, to assault the longtime ruler of the Forest, Roy Koopa, in his imposing fortress on the peninsula.

"He was like a red blur cutting through the forest," observed a Goomba residing in the nearby Forest Ghost House, which suffered heavy damage in a similar attack last Thursday. "I hope Sir Roy is alright. That man is dangerous."

A local Lakitu caught the renegade plumber's rampage through the forest as he entered the fortress grounds. Though Sir Roy recieved advance warning of Mario's approach, the fortress defenses failed to stop him from running amok within and neutralizing virtually all who opposed him, including the army of Podoboos guarding the final chamber in which poor Sir Roy huddled, helpless against the terrorist-plumber.

The Goomba, who was interviewed on condition of anonymity, expressed concern over the repercussions of the attack. "With Sir Roy removed from power, where will all these loyal guardians go? Not all of them can leave the Forest." Some of the stronger troops could move to Chocolate Island or into the Valley of Bowser to help guard against Mario's continued campaign against King Bowser. However, most of the weaker guards will be unable to return to the King's service, and will be forced to eke out a meager living in the Forest.

"How long will this attack on our way of life continue?" Cried the distressed Goomba. "How many more need to be put out of jobs before Mario will realize the damage he's done to our people? We have Bullet Bills hiding in the caves, trying to find cannons willing to fire them. What happens when Bowser himself must live like a common worker?"

Preliminary reports from fortress guards indicated that Mario was struck by a Koopa shell as he made his escape from the ruins; however the shell was later recovered with only a note demanding the return of the liberated Princess Peach. Authorities, as well as King Bowser's official envoys, have so far declined to comment on the situation surrounding Princess Peach.

So for those of you who were living under rocks or in Guatemala for the last several days, the beta of Windows 7 went live to the general public. I managed to sneak in and ninja a download of my own, and here I sit, looking at a screen that is more or less the same but for the different taskbar and the words "Windows 7 Build 7000" in the corner of the screen. Thus far, I'm feeling quite satisfied with this incremental update to Vista, but for now I will focus my attention on one specific aspect that has been in dire need of work: Paint.

I've been using Windows with at least a decent level of expertise since 3.11, and Paint has been virtually unchanged since that time. These days it can handle PNG and other newer formats, and it can manipulate more color gamuts, but beyond that, almost the entire program is the same way it was in Windows 95 (If you want proof, just glance at these screens for 95, 98, 2000, and XP, and yes, even Vista). In a few ways, this was good in that it provided a fast-executing, simple image editor for those times when you didn't want to have to launch something big and complex like PhotoShop or somesuch. But on the other hand, it was horribly crippled and needlessly outdated long ago, a section of Windows mythology neglected like Hadrian's Wall in Britain. Thusly, I was thoroughly astonished when I fired up Windows 7 and saw a completely new program.

This new Paint is...well, it's new. Seeing something like this is like going to Rome and seeing a brand-new Flavian Amphitheater having been built overnight with no notice to the public. You miss the old one at first, but it doesn't take very long for this newer, bigger, more powerful Paint to grab you by the love handles and have its way with you. What is it that's so new, you ask? Well, almost everything. A new interface shows a much more intuitive arrangement of commands across the top of the window (the so-called ribbon interface). Most of these are easily-recognizable symbols--as well as text to identify it--arranged in groups by function such as having cut and paste abilities in the "image" group. Even in the first few minutes of screwing around, I was already more efficient than I had ever been in the old Paint.

Along with the usual 20 colors and their related shades, there is an easily-accessible color wheel next to the picker that allows you to easily and quickly create more shades, which can then be dropped into empty spots in the lineup for quick use. The many functions are arranged in groups according to their common subject and represented with easy-to-recognize icons (with the exception of the line brush type chooser which only shows the same icon six times, but with different colors). One of the very nice little touches is the line drawing function: once you draw a length of line, however you want it, you can then grab the ends of the line and extend it or reorient it. I have to say, this one little detail alone just about blew my mind, after years of the dystopian, bleak Paint experience.

And to top it off, a second tab is immediately available at the top of the ribbon, showing view options when one clicks over into it. You can dynamically change the zoom level to anywhere from 50% to to 500% at varying increments--this is an exponential increase over "classic" Paint in which you basically had four levels; 50%, 100%, 200%, and 400%. You can easily and quickly rotate the entire image or sections of it, invert the selection or its colors, and move around in the zoomed image fluidly.

All told, this is something else. This doesn't even deserve to bear the name "Paint." Calling it by the label given to its burned-out husk of a program will only do this a disservice and turn people away from it. With how powerful it is now, it's definitely going to be a viable alternative to those times when I don't need to wind up Photoshop or GIMP, but still need decent image editing to do a job quickly.

Bravo, Microsoft. /applause

A friend of mine has recently acquired Game: Tomb Raider: Underworld. Over the last two days, I've been exploring ruins and solving puzzles, and I have to say the game is rather enjoyable. It feels more like Game: Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time with each new iteration, which I can't really complain about.

What I can complain about, however, is Eidos' inability to apparently make their game (or its engine) compliant with common hardware. The hardware in this case is nVidia's GeForce video card, specifically the Series 6 and 7 cards. The game, which I played on a 7600GT, suffered from noticeable stuttering and skipping. This was particularly bad in the opening scene of the game in which Lara must escape from a burning building; in the process of rendering large amounts of fire, the game seemed to bang its head against a wall endlessly in an attempt to cross the road that it has its back to.

This is a problem I've normally associated with machines running Windows Vista and its quirks involving gaming, but on this particular computer the game is running under XP. The problem relates entirely to the Series 6 and 7 GeForce cards (This machine does not lack significantly in CPU or memory or bandwidth, by the way). After playing the game myself, hearing firsthand testimony from people who have dealt with these issues, and trolling various forums on the issue, I have decided that this is a classic case of lazy programmers.

This problem wouldn't be so bad, really, under other circumstances. When confronted with their blunder, Eidos passes the ball to the only other player in the court, nVidia. Being that Eidos designed the game engine and wrote it, it's not a terribly heavy demand to ask that they ensure that their software is compliant with what is basically standard hardware. And while their response addresses laptop hardware drivers, this problem exists on desktops as well, and doesn't seem to be fixed with any first-party driver updates. To make it worse, the problem progressively grows worse, stuttering and skipping more the longer you play, until after an hour or so it becomes virtually unplayable. Even if the frameskipping doesn't kill you, the game's random crashing after a couple hours of play definitely will. Again, what makes this so annoying is that Eidos refuses to do anything about it, placing the blame on nVidia, who will only acknowledge that "progress is being made" in a recent driver patch.

Why is this bullshit, you ask? Eidos, like any other software developer, has this little gimmick called the testing phase. In theory, they make sure their software will run on what they want it to run on by actually running it on different test rigs with different hardware configurations. Apparently their test rigs lack these 6 and 7 Series cards, despite their still-strong prevalence in the marketplace. It's ridiculous when you are running a 7600GT on an Athlon X2 and the game drops thirty frames in the middle of a jump and you end up falling to your death.

Get this fixed, Eidos. For the love of Romero, make your game work, like everyone else does.

I had a good experience with Game: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth. So today, I installed and launched Game: The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle Earth II with high hopes. Okay, decent hopes. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, right?

One gripe I had with BFME1 was the game's resolution. Despite being built on the SAGE Engine, which dates from 2003, the game does not support more than 1024x768 resolution. First off, this is a ridiculously low number for its time--even my monitor from two years after this date, which was a cheap one, supported 1280x1024. Even an engine made in 2000 should have had the ability to run at fairly high resolution; why they neglected to put this ability in SAGE defies logic. Second, the game is incapable of running at an aspect ratio other than 4:3 (read: you can't play in widescreen). EA has stated consistently that they do not and will not support widescreen resolutions on their PC shooters, although curiously enough they're all over widescreen on consoles like Jack Thompson on an ambulance. Their reasoning behind this is that those with widescreen resolution and aspect ratio have an unfair advantage over those who don't, by having more LCD real estate visible to their hungry eyes. I personally think this is crap, and sooner or later EA will have to step up to the plate on this one.

Worse than all of this, however, is this next tidbit. BFME2 was released in 2006, after the SAGE Engine had been around for three years. What is the maximum resolution the game supports? 1024x768. I wish this were a joke.

Of course, this can be remedied by a determined player, but it requires digging through one's AppData folder and finding BFME2's INI file, then making a change to its resolution setting. Unlike the first game, BFME2 is capable of re-rendering the in-game interface so that it looks correct; in BFME1 the interface was incapable of this action, and so would be rendered at a different aspect ratio than the game graphics themselves and create odd visual effects.

But I digress. My point is, this is bullshit. Royal, undeniable, total, complete, whipped-cream-covered bullshit. I don't want to have to hack my game just to get it to run at 1366x768 resolution, that should have been an option six months before the interface we even conceived and programmed. There is no reason why they couldn't put this in, in fact I have to say that someone went out of their way to avoid it. I'll enjoy it now that I've fixed it, but what happens when they release a new game in 2010? Or what about Game: Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3? Do I have to play that at 1024, too? Christ in Heaven I hope not.

I'm not feeling confident with the recent activities of Blizzard. I wasn't terribly excited with their merger with Activision in the first place, fearing that big-buck corporation greed mentality would kick in...and it seems like my fears are not totally unfounded. There are several major concerns I have begun to see in the last few months.

The Dragonball Z Effect
Also known as "over 9000" on most of the 4chan boards, this refers to the exponential upscaling of item stats in Game: World of Warcraft. This was visible around the launch of Game: World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and is mainly a side effect of the way WoW works. Unlike most "true" RPGs, in which character skills and stats are innate and not derived from the items being worn, WoW is almost entirely gear-centric. As a result, the Blizzard guys have to offer new gear with better stats as an incentive for players to continue through the game. This means invalidating old high-end armor that players may have spent months to get in the name of consumer base. Ultimately, as per the curve imposed by the theory, player characters will become almost godlike in their abilities (this is actually evident in one boss encounter in which the players fight and defeat an avatar of Kil'Jaeden, a near-god in the Warcraft universe). As a side effect of this, the older zones in the game world are being totally neglected, and there seems to be no reason whatsoever to stick around in what used to be an immersive and detailed land. It's a complete waste of old content, some of which cannot even be experienced any longer due to changes made in the 3.0 patch.

Divide And Conquer
It seems, through a recent announcement, that Blizzard has taken the long-awaited Game: StarCraft II, and split it into three separate games. Each game will comprise one race's campaign, though in multiplayer all three races can be played from just one copy. I understand that these campaigns will each be as long, in terms of number of missions, as the length of the original Game: StarCraft in its entirety--if not longer. Nonetheless, this essentially constitutes selling a $40 game for $120. And it doesn't sit well with me; I get the feeling that this decision was not made by Blizzard and that the Blizzard employees (or even its management) is simply being silenced by a corporate handkerchief soaked with chloroform. I see no reason to have to pay for a third of a game, regardless of how good the game might be. The original Game: Lumines: Puzzle Fusion was a blockbuster, a great example of a perfectly-executed puzzle game. The game was ported over to Xbox LIVE as Game: Lumines Live!, which was only sold as the very core game, and other maps, game types and avatars had to be purchased separately. By breaking up the game into several pieces, the publishers attempted to milk more money out of the consumers addicted to the game, and as far as I know the attempt has so far failed miserably. This is the same thing Blizzard is proposing to do with Starcraft 2, and I can easily forsee the same fate.

Why Get It For Free When You Can Pay For It?
I have also heard that Blizzard's flagship Battle.net will be transformed into a paid-subscription service in the near future, probably at the same time as the release of Starcraft 2. Battle.net was the premier online gaming service before more recent competitors such as Steam and Gamespy. Battle.net has been a totally free service for fifteen years now, and while it might not be particularly mind-blowing, it was very good for its time and has needed virtually no major overhauls in years. (I might also note that both of these competing services are free off the bat, but offer other amenities such as video game downloads for individual fees.) Blizzard claims they aren't making enough money to continue with their projects at current. Given that they have a consumer base of 11 million paying $15 a month just to play World of Warcraft, the only way so much funds could be squandered in such short time would be if the chairman of AIG also happened to be the CEO of Activision Blizzard. I doubt this will go over well with the people who have been comp-stomping on Battle.net for over a decade, and I won't be surprised to see some sort of mass quitting to (hopefully) make Blizzard see the light.

On The Camel's Back
All of this is compromising everything Blizzard has spent the last decade and half building. It doesn't help that Activision has since announced their intention to flay the living daylights out of every franchise they get their hands on. I've already heard some people referring to Activision as the new EA, and with this in mind, that analogy might not be entirely inaccurate.

Me and ʊcassed are spending some time lampooning the Call of Duty franchise and its inability to leave World War II alone. Some of the ideas we've come up with:

Call of Duty: Germans Lose
In a twist ending, the Germans invade America and level the continent. You, as the player, takes the role of a South African mortar supply office. What does that have to do with invading America? Nothing at all.

Call of Duty: Petain
You, as the player, star as World War I's greatest hero. You must use your incredible skills to stage unbelievable acts of ineptitude, allowing the German army to invade France unchallenged. In the grand finale you betray the entire country, effectively castrating yourself morally and politically. Have fun!

Call of Duty: Kamikaze
In the midst of harrowing battles in the Pacific, you jump in the seat of a Mitsubishi Type 0 with inordinately large bombs strapped to the wings and bravely attempt to remove countless American ships from the war. The hard part: if you live, you fail the mission!

Call of Duty: USO
Step out on stage and entertain thousands of eager troops fighting for our freedom! A Wii exclusive, USO allows you to not only replicate the mannerisms of famous personalities from the Forties, but requires you do to so. The most difficult stage: You must perfectly emulate Bob Hope's ability to hold a golf club over his shoulder to within three degrees in every direction. Good luck!

Call of Duty: Battle Fatigue
Survive the long, anguishing trench sieges beneath the German artillery in North Africa. Cower in the mud ten feet below ground level; the more you hit the X button the more your Cowardice meter rises. Once you max out the meter, you get to leave the front and meet General Patton himself in a field hospital. If you manage the right button combination, administered Shenmue-style, you will achieve the final challenge of the game: a slap to the face!

I just fired up Steam for the first time in...I don't know how long, and saw they have added the original X-Com to their library.

The original.

I must have this game.

Since I do nothing else around here, I figure I should write reviews of the games I've played. Not that anyone really reads them.

Dudes.

I have decided to re-enter the world of blogging, after 2+ years lying dormant in the Van Allen belt of the internet.

I have started a LiveJournal, check the link on my profile down below.

And friend me. I have ordered it thusly.

Jack Thompson is apparently facing a 10-year disbarment.

I hope he gets his ass deported to Mars.

Honestly.

8-bit Theatre hits 1000 issues!

I bet none of you really care. But I've loved 8BT for years.

I also demand that you read it. Go. Now. Do eet!

I...have no idea what to put here. Still figuring some of this crap out. Still adding games, actually. Meh. I'll post stuff here, someday. I just feel like my page is missing part of its soul without a post to occupy space.

So far this is fun.

I know, I'll write reviews! Since I have no material for a blog...