5/31/2003
After playing Soldier of Fortune 2 off and on for over a month now I've finally given up trying to solve this game without cheats. I run into a room and am met by pinpont accurate fire. I lean around a corner and get blasted. My character can't hold the gun steady for a three round burst and so I end up missing. I hit a bad guy dead square in the chest and he doesn't even flinch. I used some sort of thermal image intensifiers and it's apparent the bad guys are triggered to see you once you get into a certain zone. So even though I'm behind a door they see me and are aimed at me.
A buddy of mine works for Raven now and I definitely don't want to dismiss just how awesome this game is. I've never played a more immersive single player experience. The lighting, the effects, the world, the animations are all unmatched in a single player first person shooter game. But it just got too hard for me. I am weak. I could crank down the difficulty but that would require starting over. No way. Not right now. And the OICW gun? A cumbersome mess.
Anyway, that's my confessional for today.
5/30/2003
No real game news today that I wanted to talk about. Sorry. On to something else though:
I'm surprised CNN hasn't been screaming this one all day. Microsoft and AOL settle suit.
Some things to consider on this deal:
1. Microsoft gives AOL $750 <pinkytomouth>Million</pinkytomouth>dollars to have AOL drop their antitrust suit against Microsoft, and Microsoft gets access to all of AOL's customers. Advantage:Microsoft
2. I think Netscape will be shutdown. Yup, remember how AOL bought Netscape? All your browser are belong to IE. Advantage:Microsoft
3. Microsoft did this same thing with Apple a few years ago but the price tag was cheaper ($150 Million I believe). Probably because Apple doesn't have $23 Billion in debt. Advantage:Microsoft
4. Here's a nice tidbit too:
The companies will explore ways to increase the adoption and distribution of digital media, such as making more digital content available and accessible while protecting copyrights. This is also important for Microsoft, which has been pushing its own format called Windows Media for encoding and protecting music and video files. Gaining Time Warner's confidence could help Microsoft win support from other content and hardware companies.
A kick to the groin against RealNetworks. Advantage:Microsoft
5. And of course most importantly!
Microsoft will help distribute AOL CD-ROMs to PC builders around the world, which could help stabilize AOL's sagging subscription numbers. Under the deal, Microsoft will provide AOL software discs worldwide to "system builders"--smaller PC manufacturers that obtain their Windows discs from authorized Microsoft distributors.
Yes!! Now not only do we get AOL CDs in the mail but we'll get them with every new PC we purchase. Golly gee, ain't that great! Yes oh please yes, give me 1000 hours free of unsolicited totally unwanted spam!! Yummy delicious spam!! It makes a case for the benefits of software piracy. Advantage:AOL
6. And your Messenger services. No sweat!
The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate. Microsoft has sought such access for years, while AOL has advocated walling off its millions of subscribers from competing messaging products.
And just less than a year ago they were talking legal action about stealing each other's systems and not playing fair. Amazing how greasing a person's palm with $750 Million dollars can change their tune!! Advantage:Microsoft
Basically, in summary: Microsoft owns us all. Freedom is irrelevant, Ignorance is strength. Please let me continue to patch my servers three times a month. Disadvantage:End User.
5/29/2003
That giant sucking sound you hear is everyone downloading the full release version of Enemy Territory. Let's review the facts of why something so ass kicking is free.
1. The single player didn't work out.
2. Activision and id though decided to release the mulitplayer anyway for FREE and to top it off you don't need Return to Castle Wolfenstein!!.
3. There is no point three! G'dammit go download this excellent game right now! Schnell Schnell!
On a less important note, Mike Tyson is truly stupid stupid stupid. Here he is with Don King after a press conference where he said that he was so mad at that girl that accussed him of raping her that he wish he had raped her and would like to do so!
When asked how big it was when he tried to rape her, both Tyson and Don King provided visual cues.
5/28/2003
The urban legend goes that if a bunch of women live together long enough they all start having their menstrual cycle at the same time. If true, then the computing industry is just a bunch of women. First there was the hardware testing issues with Futuremark which have quickly been resolved and it seems ATi was cheating on something regarding optimization of code to potentially make their card look better on tests. This naturally caused an uproar on Beyond3D:
The extent to which Futuremark allege detections are being made and the differences that are being enabled, some seen through the developer releases and others not, are quite frightening and rock the fundamentals that a site such as us are based upon – if we can’t trust benchmarks is all of our data meaningless?
Like Twain said there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Sorry fellas looks like the wool was pulled over everyone's eyes on this one. While the performance differences were low and don't make much difference except for bragging rights, (2% difference, that'd be perhaps 2 frames per second on my machine with Wolfenstein), the fact that there's some sort of discrepency is a valid concern. Naturally Beyond3D is upset though since they're livelihood depends on showering their site with numbers and stats and sentences three lines long. Not much different from other tech sites really. Valuable to your enthusasist but to the average Joe User. Don't think so
I wonder just how much ATI or really even Nvidia cares about this. The big money for vid cards is lucrative contracts from big builders like Dell, Compaq, and HP. Would those big OEM companies really care if there's a 2% difference in performance values? I don't think so. They're wanting volume discounts on most of their systems and given the cuthroat nature of video cards, ATI and Nvidia are probably more than happy to accomodate.
No, I think all this pissing contest is for is the hearts and minds of your bleeding edge gaming geek who's willing to shell out big money for a vid card to get an extra five percent from their vid card. A vocal crowd though to be sure. But if Dell still pushes a thousand units to a company and they have a lower end ATI card in it, I don't think anyone will be too upset about it. Not ATI, not Dell, or the company buying the product.
And on another note, SCO is suing everyone for apparent misuse of Unix code into Linux. Here's my favorite part of the news article:
SCO's claims are the basis of a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM that alleges that Big Blue misappropriated SCO's Unix trade secrets by building Unix intellectual property into Linux and violated its Unix contract with SCO. More recently, SCO has claimed that Unix code has been copied line-by-line into Linux, sometimes obscured to disguise its origin, an accusation that cuts to the core of the open-source philosophy that underlies Linux.
Novell is somehow involved raising the question, "Novell is still around?" Their stock will probably jump up a few points when people realize that Novell did do something after 1995 besides get their butt handed to them by Microsoft.
And finally I know we already know this but video games help you see stuff better! No wonder most teenagers can view 30 porn sites at a time without losing track of which streaming video is at the cowgirl phase and which is at wheelbarrow. Hooray Video Games!
5/27/2003
Hello. What a great weekend I had. Holy crap can I call it or what?!?! The Carmack has spoken regarding the Futuremark issue. Read, assimilate, and accept.
5/23/2003
And now from the pissing contest world of graphics cards, Futuremark and NVidia are trading barbs. Futuremark says this:
"We have now established that NVIDIA’s Detonator FX drivers contain certain detection mechanisms that cause an artificially high score when using 3DMark®03. We have just published a patch 330 for 3DMark03 that defeats the detection mechanisms in the drivers and provides correct results."
To which Nvidia has replied:
"...we do not get a chance to work with Futuremark on writing the shaders like we would with a real applications developer," the representative said. "We don't know what they did, but it looks like they have intentionally tried to create a scenario that makes our products look bad."
I'm reminded of Hot Shots where the two characters are going, "Are not, are too, are not, are too, not not not.. too too too."
However, given the product life cycle of video cards (about six months) and the fact that NVidia has lost ground to ATI, it doesn't surprise me that NVidia has gotten all in a huff over this. Whether it's true or not, there's no telling. Either way, one of these two parties is guilty of something who's explanation probably would require John Carmack to interpret and then someone else would have to interpret what Carmack said.
Dan's Data has a write up about his venture into upgrading his box and goes into discussion about Intel's new offerings
Not much of a shock but Star Wars Galaxies for Xbox and PS2 is delayed.
More Painkiller tidbits too.
5/22/2003
Tycho over at Penny Arcade mentioned a game he saw at E3 called Painkiller. Another shooter which he describes with several important words:
- Serious Sam huge bosses
- Hitman in Purgatory working for God
Now, Serious Sam is, of course, quite the coolness and the best co-op LAN party game you can play while drinking a ton of beer and eating salty foods. I should know. But apparently you also get to be God's hitman while doing battle with said monsters? It's like still taking my medicine to silence the voices but still getting to do what the voices have told me to do along: purge the infidels and non-believers! Excellent.
5/20/2003
FiringSquad has a write up for the new ATI Catalyst drivers. The most interesting feature of the new drivers and the control panel is that you can set it by individual game. Their write up says there's a couple percentage points improvement. Woo yeah, increase my frames per second by five percent. Not like I'll see the difference. I'm not The One. Link to drivers here.
And I hate waffling reviews. Here's one. The end write up says: "Essential for Matrix fans who want the full experience. A bit rough around the edges, but it gets the message across."
Ya know, a sharp piece of glass is rough around the edges but still cuts your wrist and a quick kick to the groin gets the message across too. If it sucks, just say so! Oh wait, other sites are trying to make money writing game reviews. There's only about a thousand of them. I think if I want the full Matrix experience I'll just go buy the Animatrix DVD when it comes out next month.
5/19/2003
Good morning to all. Gamespy has a nice write up of what they saw of Total War: Rome at E3. Here's a little snippet:
"Among the most striking of changes in this version is the changeover to full 3D for the battles. Previously the Total War games used sprites on a 3D landscape to achieve their vision of mass combat, but today's hardware is finally allowing them to render each individual combatant out of polygons. Players can now zoom in, almost eye-level on the battlefield."
The 2-D sprites looked pretty good so now they're doing it all in 3-D and I can't wait to see this. No date given for the time of release though. Gamespy hopes for end of the year. I'm hoping for yesterday!
Lots and lots more E3 coverage can be found at Shacknews and Bluesnews
And a note to Apple. Seeing a 50+ year old man with a mullet singing protest songs is not a way to convince me to buy into your iMusic thing. Neither is a kid singing Eminem even if he "conveniently" forgets to include the swear words.
5/17/2003
Uh oh. Apparently, Reznor is not working Doom3 anymore. Does that mean the end of any chances for a Fall 2003 release for Doom3?
5/16/2003
Fortunately, we only have to wait six months for the answers put forth by Reloaded. Unfortunately, we have to wait six months for the answers put forth by Reloaded. My only gripe: no Tank this time. He was great in the first one.
Now this sounds like some interesting technology.
The hardware consists of a network hub that plugs into the home's cable TV line and network adapters that split the signal into a TV line and an Ethernet networking connection.
Call of Cthulhu is a game I'm looking forward to seeing the final product. Here's even more info about this horror based shooter game.
5/15/2003
Good morning. Is everyone ready for it? It being Matrix:Reloaded? Good!
Half-Life2 trailer. Looks like Freeman's got a little lady friend now. Chicks dig Hazard Suits.
5/14/2003
Well, there's been an announcement by AMD that their most recent Athlon chip will probably be their last one as AMD shifts to the 64 bit Opteron. Truly an end of a good run for AMD. I bought the first Athlon when it came out a few years ago and was in that bizarre Slot A configuration box thing. It even helped bring AMD out of the financial red and, fortunately, I profitted some off of it in the stock market. True, I didn't get rid of AMD stock soon enough, but let's not dwell on that part. Heh. Anyway, here's hoping that the Opteron truly is compatible with Win32 apps and that competition between Intel and AMD will continue to benefit us, the end user.
And the 13th is the start of CAL Competition for Wolfenstein. Good stuff and good luck to all teams. Watch out for |R|. We're watchig you. Heh.
E3 is going on right now and there's plenty of coverage. I couldnt' get out of the straight jacket to attend but Blues is providing a lot of information for everyone so go check out Bluesnews for up to date information.
5/13/2003
Good morning one and all. Picked up the Vikings expansion to Total War last night. Played with it for about an hour and this is some darn good fun! So far, the strategy seems pretty simple.
1. Get Viking horde together.
2. Take boat to nearest isle.
3. Destroy defending army.
4. Pillage for loot.
5. Leave and watch province completely fall apart.
I'm sure it'd be harder if I cranked up the difficulty beyond normal but I haven't yet.
Castle Mania! Click image for full size whiz-bang graphics
And there's a Bink video on the CD for Vikings regarding Total War: Rome. Yes!
5/11/2003
Hello to all!! Not much to report. Been out all day. I did see that the expansion for Medieval:Total War is out and it has a Viking theme to it. I need to pick it up quickly.
5/10/2003
There are two games I hate more than any ever in the existence of mankind. The first is of course Iron Storm. But would you believe I hate another even more? Well, there is and it's Black & White. Why do I bring up the unholiest of all that is unholy of games? Because Black & White 2 is coming out soon. Yup. I haven't seen it, I haven't talked to anyone about it but a looming dark cloud of despair, doom, and gloom will pervade the world after this game comes out and people will probably actually like it. They are fools.
Once again, another article showing how life is starting to immitate the Simpson's. "It was the best of times, it was the -- blurst of times?!?"
5/9/2003
Well, it's coming isn't it? Half-Life 2 is coming and the hype machine is rolling big time now. ShackNews had a good little write-up so check them out. I'm guessing that by the time Quakecon rolls into town there will be so much hype and hot air for all these big games coming out soon, that the Quakecon convention center will simply lift up of it's foundation and float away. E3 will probably simply burst into flames and anyone who goes will simply have their ears explode from all the booths espousing how their game will be the start of the Second Coming at the loudest level possible.
Sorry folks, I know that's not much on the funny. Best I can do this morning. But then again, most of the time I'm not funny .. Have a great day.
Enemy Territory coming out next week so get ready.
Star Wars Galaxies system requirements out. If you don't have a hyperdrive in your system forget about it.
5/8/2003
Metallica is back and that's a good thing. They even have a new bassist, Rob Trujillo. Let me just say that if you aren't a fan of Metallica you better be one quick orRob will kick your butt
Look at him, he's like a mix between Medussa and cement truck
5/7/2003
A Chinese company is building a Vietnam PC Game called Ho Chih Minh Trail. This would definitely be interesting to see but what kind of perspective could a Chinese point of view add? "Your mission is to be the intermediary between the Russains with their SA-2 SAM missles and the North Vietnam Government. Sell them and then meet Nixon and try to keep a straight face."
And I know most of you Matrix fans already know about this, but I never got around to visiting this site with four short animations to build up some Matrix hype (as if there wasn't enough already). So, here ya go! Eight friggin' days to wait. It's going to hurt.
Ok now, WTF here!! This week's episode of "Enterprise" is going to have the Borg?!? Bah to all of this I say!
5/6/2003
Leave it to Bluesnews to bring up birthdays related to gaming. Yesterday was the birthday of Wolfenstein 3-D's release. It was the first FPS I played and more importantly it allows any person to do those things that are important in life like shooting Hitler, killing Nazis, and even shooting Nazi dogs. So happy birthday Wolf3D!
Planetside is set to launch all across the world during the last two weeks of May. That's a good thing too. I'd hate to see the riots that would ensue if one area got it sooner than other parts of the world. Imagine the looting that would occur in technological wonderlands like Iraq. Wait.. nevermind...
Here's a neat interview regarding the fellow who created the first true console/video game. No, not Pong. Before that. Interesting he even created Simon.
5/5/2003
And a Happy Cinco De Mayo. Today marks the day that Mexican nationals kicked the crap out of the French. That makes 0-5 in the past 150 years for the French. Fortunately, the US is 6-1-1 in that same time period. Woot!
Nothing of great interest in the gaming news today so I entertained myself by posting zany topics over on Portal of Evil News. Great fun indeed. For instance, there's a story regarding how the astronauts coming back from the ISS landed about 300 miles off course. Apparently, this isn't the record though. In fact, one group of cosmonauts once landed in some dense woods surrounded by wolves. For that reason, Russian cosmonauts now carry a shotgun as standard issue. Which of course makes me wonder if they shouldn't carry a double barrel shotgun in case of imps.
If you didn't get that joke then you never played Doom and you are therefore a pantywaist. In fact, here's a link for you pantywaist. Go buy some bloomers and get in your sewing circle.
And /. had a link to this article about Internet in the stars. Apparently the planets have their IP addresses already laid out. Look, all I know is that when I get to play CTF with the Enterprise, Worf and Data are on my team. Worf's on D and Data will lead the charge.
5/4/2003
Microsoft to make port-a-potties wired. They're called the iLoo. Analysts are saying it's just another example of a company getting back to it's roots.
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Hello there folks. Ok, I just finished up playing the Elite Force II Demo. Graphics look great and that second level in the demo is a multi-layer city which I hope is more explored in the final product. I think it could use a little more dynamic lighting though. I also got a kick out of the basic AI which is quickly explained away.
Allied buddies: "They are ferocious and they attack without regard for their own well being and in swarms." Most games try to hide the fact that the AI is a bit rudimentary. So, what the heck, why not just embrace it this time! Heck yeah.
Still it's a good shoot 'em up fun time and I hope the levels become much more varied throughout the game. That's the one thing that sets SoFII apart from other recent shooters is the level variety and being a jaded gamer and probably having A.D.D. at some level, I need lots of eye candy and pretty stuff to blow up good.
The weapons look fine and you'll quickly pick up on "oh this is like a shotgun, this is like a machine gun, etc." The tricorder is that all in one device sorta like the George Foreman Grill. You'll use it for scanning and puzzle solving and finding secrets and I think it can perform a colon check. I hope they don't put that in the game though.
5/3/2003
X-Men2. Go see it. I think Rebecca Stamos put in the best performance as Mystique. Even a bit of Colossus is in there which is a cool thing.
And can it be true? It is!! Old Man Murray is back. The content is old but it looks like they are working on coming back finally. If you want funny, go visit OMM
5/2/2003
Elite Force II Demo out. Go get it.
Ok, please for all that's sacred radio stations need to stop playing that 50-cent song. Look man, I get it. You're in the club, you met a girl, her girlfriend's high, and they're ready to go. Super. Now shut up.
5/1/2003
Given that Ritual is right here in Dallas, I'll do the right thing and pimp for the local economy. Elite Force II stuff here and apparently a demo is coming.
And now for other Trek news: F-Berman! F F F F ' em! He's already reverted back to the mentality of, "if we can't get ratings, just create a war." It's what made Ds9 implode except for a few good episodes the last 3 seasons and now they're doing it for Enterprise:
"TV Guide also reveals new details about the repercussions of the finale for next season, writing that the Enterprise NX-01 will be "retrofitted for war" and that we'll get our first glimpse at the use of photon torpedos in Starfleet's history. Furthermore, the dangerous Delphic Expanse, likened to the Bermuda Triangle, causes those who enter to 'become anatomically inverted (skin on the inside, organs on the outside).' Furthermore, even Jolene Blalock's 'T'Pol', as a result of resigning from the Vulcan High Command, 'will sport a new cat suit and hairdo next season.'"
It doesn't make sense to me. Here you have a ship, the first real deep space ship in the Starfleet. You barely trust the Vulcans, you don't even know who people like the Klingons or Andorians or Orions are or even who you can or can't trust. I mean what's wrong with just exploring "Strange new worlds." It makes me realize that despite it's terrible effects, the first Star Trek was truly of pretty damn good quality and really explored issues of the day and didn't get too caught up in it's own universe of stupidity.