I’m finally back from my Thanksgiving holiday at my parents’ house, and I can hardly believe it’s already December!  Where has this year gone?

Anyway, I had a couple of things I wanted to post today, the first being a duo of clips from The Simpsons, found earlier on Engadget (and which I assume aired last night), where Apple becomes the target of Matt Groening’s irreverent humor when the Springfield mall gets its first Mapple store.  The funniest part of the two clips is when Bart hijacks the audio system in the store and puts some (quite truthful) words into Steve Jobs’ Mobs’ mouth.  Good stuff!

Update - Well, the YouTube videos are down, but if you live in the U.S., you can watch for free on Hulu.

The next thing I wanted to post, also a video, is a new trailer released yesterday for the Black Mesa mod - a Half-Life 2 mod that is looking to recreate the original Half-Life with the Source engine, but with more content, higher resolution textures and models, and environments that take better advantage of the engine than Valve’s original port of the game.  Normally I don’t get too excited over Source engine mods, since they rarely make good on their promises, or even get finished for that matter, but the amount of polish that has gone into this trailer makes me hope otherwise for Black Mesa.  You can view the trailer below, and find out more about the mod at the official site.

I played through a huge chunk of Half-Life 2 this holiday weekend, so I guess I’m a little bit excited about Half-Life in general again.

I’m glad to see that people found my recent set of examples interesting too, and I hope to get a fixed GM6 version of the 3D Rain example up sometime tonight.  Sorry about the slow rain example, I’ll play with it and see if I can get something up that’s a little easier on the older machines soon as well!

That’s all for now - thanks for reading, and I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving (or just a good weekend if you’re not from the U.S.)!

Update - I’ve made a new GM6 file that should run better than the previous rain example, and which should load correctly in GM6.  The area that the rain covers is a bit smaller than the original example, and the rain is a bit more sparse, but you should get the idea.

You can download the new example here (1.26 mb).

My apologies for the delay between this and my last post - I’ve been at jury duty for the last two days, was sick for about a week before that, and have begun the long, arduous process of moving all my material possessions from old apartment to new.

I’ve also been working my way through Fable 2 for a second time, having a blast playing co-op / horde mode in Gears of War 2, and slowly leveling Totino up to 80 in Wrath of the Lich King.

So yeah, I’ve been a little busy.

As I’ve made my way through all the new games though, I’ve been feeling more and more like getting back to some of my older projects and making them into something new, and better than before.  Chiefly, Hover Tank 3D 2 (as Yourself urges me to make a multiplayer mode where you steal resources from enemies to build up a base) and Falcon Squad, which I feel like I am almost ready to return to with a complete engine rebuild and graphics injection.  I’d also like to get that robot battle engine finished, so we can finally have a new competition over at Reflect Games.

I know I keep returning to these projects over and over, but one of these days…  well, you know.

Anyway, I’m going to get going so I can start moving more of my junk.  Just wanted to check in  and let everyone know that I’m not dead, just wasding through the mire of many planned, random, and seasonal events.  Thansk for reading, and I hope you are having a healthier November than I am!

I logged in and updated my games list to represent my recent game-buying spree.  I added the following games:

• Audiosurf (only $2.49 this week on Steam, thanks for the heads up, Xot!)
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3
• Commander Keen Complete Pack
• Fable 2
• Gears of War 2

I’ve still got one or two more I want to pick up, and like I’ve mentioned before, a couple others I’m putting on my Christmas list, but I’m really starting to get progressively angrier at game publishers for this mess.  Seriously - I know everyone wants to have big sales for the holidays, but pace yourselves please!  We can’t all go out and buy a dozen games in one month, and many great games are going to suffer from poor sales because of this ridiculous overlap.

Penny Arcade summed it up pretty nicely here.  It’s eerie how similar this comic looks to my Google calender where I’ve marked all the upcoming games I’m interested in.

Oh well.  That’s all for now.  I’m feeling a bit under the weather and I need to recover…  which means less time spent blogging, and more time spent laying on the couch, complaining to my girlfriend, and of course, playing games.  Just gotta make sure I fit some rest in there somewhere!

Yup, that’s an actual screenshot above (and below).  Gears of War 2 is officially the best looking game ever.

And though I’m only part of the way through the game right now, it’s obvious to me that Epic went out of its way this time around to deliver gamers from the dull grayish browns that so many have complained about as the cliche of “next-gen” gaming.  Color has been infused into the war-torn atmosphere of Gears and coupled with the incredible detail has helped make Gears 2 the best looking game of all time.

I should mention that it’s also fun.  The few new guns that have been added, a flamethrower, minigun, and mortar, along with the new poison grenade and mobile cover system are welcome additions to the game.  There are new enemies to blast, huge levels to explore, and more story and cut-scene elements as well.  Many parts of the game that remain from the original game have been re-tooled, and the game has a much more grand (”Epic?”) feeling to it than the first.

The only thing I’ve been disappointed with so far (aside from a small plot point which would be a slight spoiler so I won’t mention here), has been the game’s music.  It sounds great, and I love that Epic stuck with the orchestral tunes, but it doesn’t have the character the music from the first game had - it seems more like background music, rather than part of the action.  To me, that kind of sucks.  To others, they may not even notice it, or they might appreciate the change of pace.  It’s a small irk to be sure, so I wouldn’t worry about it if you’re planning on buying the game and you still haven’t gotten it yet (for shame!).

Anyway, I’m going to get back to playing…  as well as to a few other domestic tasks.  A pile of dishes in the kitchen is calling my name, and I’ve got a few things I want to box up tonight - I’m moving to a new apartment soon!

If you have the game and you’re on my Xbox friends list, drop me an invite sometime - I’ve been ignoring them up to this point, but I think I’m ready to play online now.  Thanks for reading, and maybe I’ll see you in-game!

Images courtesy of TeamXbox

Taking the new demo for a test drive.  Pun intended.

After a long evening of dishwashing, laundry-doing, and paperwork-filling-outing, I finally got a chance to fire up my Xbox 360 yesterday to try out a demo for a game I’ve had my eye on for a few months now: Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts.

I have to say that so far, that this game looks like it will be completely awesome.

For the uninitiated, Nuts & Bolts is a sequel of sorts to the original duo of 3D platform games for the N64.  The first game in the series introduced the oddly paired Banjo (the bear) and Kazooie (the bird in Banjo’s backpack), and had players exploring a large non-linear 3D world collecting jigsaw pieces.  The game played very similarly to other games of the period, like Mario 64, only with an added emphasis on story and humor.  Banjo-Kazooie was a fun, ground-breaking experience, and won two awards at the 1999 Interactive Achievement Awards, for Console Action / Adventure and Art Direction.  The original Banjo-Kazooie was released in 1998.

The second game, Banjo-Tooie (see what they did there?), followed two years later in 2000.  And though the gameplay mechanic was not dramatically different from the first game, Tooie was met with great acclaim.

Ten years later, Nuts & Bolts has finally landed as a demo on Xbox Live, and the full game looms in the distance, only a week and a half away.  I’ve been anxious to try this game out, as I’ve always enjoyed N64 era 3D platformers, and I’ve been wanting to check out the vehicle creation system Rare crafted.

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