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.
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!
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.
So we’ve got a lot of good games on deck, and even a few that were just released. Over the last few months, I’ve been getting progressively more excited about a great number of these games. The problem is, I don’t know when I’ll have time to play through all these games, and I really don’t want to rack up a huge bill by buying all of them at once, either. Christmas is right around the corner, however, and so is my birthday, so I’ve decided I’m going to separate my hotlist of games into a few groups: must buy, gift request, buy later, and undecided.
Following is the list of all the games I’m looking forward to, and how I’ve split them up (and if you’re reading this, Mom, this might be a good place to start for my Christmas list).
Gears of War 2
Must Buy - Though I’ve been careful not to spoil any of the surprises of the Gears sequel for myself, each time I get a glance at any new information on the game it seems better than before. This game is going to be awesome, and I’m really looking forward to playing through the campaign with my buddies, as well as jumping back into Gears multiplayer. Grenade sticking FTW!
Fable 2
Undecided - This is another game which I’ve been anxiously awaiting for some time now, and in only a few days it’ll be on store shelves. It’s garnering good reviews so far, and like Gears 2, each time I do some research on the title, it seems that much better, and I get more excited about it. Albion never looked better, and it’s going to be hard to wait until Christmas or my birthday for this game, if I can go that long.
Left 4 Dead
Must Buy - The co-op multiplayer for L4D looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun, and come on, it’s a great-looking new Valve game. The only trouble I’m going to have with this decision is which platform to buy it for: PC or Xbox 360.
Fallout 3
Gift Request - Don’t get me wrong here; I’m really looking forward to Fallout 3. I like the whole idea of a more modern Oblivion-ish RPG, and all the tweaks Bethesda has made to the game engine in order to create Fallout look both interesting and well done. But since, to my knowledge, the game doesn’t feature any multiplayer action, I can shelve it for a few weeks while I play the rest of the games, since the world will be just the same when I decide I’m ready to enter it. And that’s why I like single player games.
Wrath of the Lich King
Must Buy - Only 3 weeks are left until the long-awaited second expansion to the World of Warcraft universe is released, and after spending two days at BlizzCon and experiencing all the big changes to the game introduced in last week’s 3.0.2 patch, I’m more than ready to start working my way up to level 80, and maybe even turning my main character into a Death Knight. I won’t be one of the people who gets in line a few days before the release, and I probably won’t even pre-order. But I’ll definitely be picking this one up within a day or two of it’s release.
Dead Space
Buy Later - Initially I wasn’t too excited about Dead Space, as it looked very generic and Doom 3-ish to me. Since I’ve read a few reviews however, I’ve changed my mind on the game, and I might just pick it up at some point. I’m not sure if I want to buy it or ask for it as a gift - it probably depends on how long I can hold out on buying all the other titles in the list. This game looks pretty fun though, and I am sure that at some point it will become part of my games library.
Banjo Kajooie: Nuts & Bolts
Undecided - The vehicle-crafting platformer gameplay in the new BK game looks like it could be a lot of fun, and pre-orders for the game nab you the original game (updated with a better display resolution and higher resolution textures) on Xbox Live Arcade as well, all for only $40. I’m going to have a hard time passing this game up if it gets good reviews on release.
Chrono Trigger DS
Gift Request - It’s Chrono Trigger, but on the DS. I shouldn’t even have to explain how awesome that is. It’ll take a good gift request though, because it’s cheap, and like Fallout, is single player only.
Saint’s Row 2
Buy Later - I wasn’t too hot on the original game until a few years had gone by and I gave it a second chance. Much to my surprise, the original Saints turned out to be a lot of fun, and was a great deal at only $20. Saints Row 2 looks pretty similar, only with more mayhem. The good reviews have convinced me that I will have to pick the game up sometime, but we’ll see if that happens before this one hits $20 as well.
Call of Duty: World at War
Undecided - I came to COD4 a little late in the game, but still had a blast with its multiplayer and a good time working my way through the campaign. I’m hoping COD:WAW will be similar, but I want to see how the game turns out before I make any final decisions on it.
Other games I’m interested in, but weren’t worth mentioning in the list yet: Tom Clancy’s Endwar, Spore, VIva Piñata: Trouble in Paradise, Need for Speed: Undercover, Far Cry 2
Oh, and on a completely unrelated digression, I spotted this video clip on Digg from last night’s WWII-themed Family Guy episode. It’s surprising, funny, and just a little bit true. Enjoy!
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