Archive for June, 2008
Last week I picked up the game Mass Effect and it’s been an awesome adventure. I’ve been able to complete the main campaign due to not doing all the side quests. The story is engaging and has its cool moments. The NPC companions you get have their own unique personalities and regularly interact with each other and your character. Their abilities are as varied as their personalities and compliment your character well regardless of the class you’ve chosen.
Speaking of classes, the one I’ve chosen to play at first is the Soldier class. While this class doesn’t have access to Tech (affects weapons, shields and mechanical enemies) or Biotic (similar to Star Wars Force powers) abilities, it’s pretty robust and can lay out some nice damage. It’s the only class that can train in all the weapons used. The weird thing is, even if another class can’t train in, say, assault rifles, they are nevertheless equipped with it and can use them. This confused me at first and I had an NPC use a weapon it could never train to use better, and that lead to quite a few needless deaths.
In combat, there is a cover system but it’s more unwieldy than any other cover system I’ve played with. All that’s needed to take cover, is to press up against a hard surface while you have a weapon drawn, you’ll snap your back against the cover and can move to any side to lean out and shoot. If the cover is low enough, you could also stand up and fire. What’s unwieldy about the cover system? It’s easy to get to cover, whether you want to or not. Also, many enemies tend to rush your position just as often as they try to outflank you and it’s a bit sluggish to get out of cover status so it can get a little frustrating to have enemies pound on you while you wait the second or two for your character to leave cover.
Aside from the weird mechanic that every class is equipped with all weapons, even if they can’t train to maximize their use and the slow cover system that’s not all useful, combat in Mass Effect can be pretty fun. While hit and miss rolls are handled in the background, the fighting has a good real time feel and with the ability issue commands (like attack, advance, take cover, etc.), there’s a neat tactical feel.
Combat’s not the only thing going for Mass Effect. The stories within the game are well created. While you’d expect the main story line to be well done, side missions are also well crafted and provide more information than just “go here, kill this, retrieve that” bland stuff. The graphics and sound are also top notch and with all of this packaged together, Mass Effect is well worth the money and wait as it was ported to the computer. It has great replay value as you can explore different classes and can even restart the campaign with a character that’s already completed it, maintaining his/her weapons and equipment and experience. At the moment, I’m starting over with another Soldier, intent on completing at least 90% of the side quests this time around.
Ever since I started blogging and adapted to a CMS system, I’ve always used the built in editor of the systems themselves. The only time I didn’t was during my Alaska cruise since the ship had really crappy satellite internet, not to mention it was expensive. So, I ended up using NeoOffice to write my blog entries and waited until I got home to post them and that was sufficient for me.
But now, I’m interested in using an offline application to write up my blog posts, save them and publish them whenever I want to (and if I’m connected to the Internet). Copying and pasting the entry is all well and good but why not have a one click solution? So here I am, using a weblog client called ecto and so far, I like it. While I don’t have any means to manage comments, ecto’s pretty full featured by allowing me to not only write a post and save a draft, publish posts and delete posts, I can also lay out my posts if other elements are used (like images or flash movies), whereas I couldn’t if I used NeoOffice. I must admit, getting an image positioned just right through a WYSIWYG editor is still a little finicky but when I encounter such difficulties, I can just go into HTML edit mode and conduct my fine tuning.
ecto’s been able to retrieve my posts successfully as well as my About page and I can go through and view or edit them. When creating posts, there’s automatic spellcheck and I can also get a word count. Preview doesn’t show the posts in my blog theme but rather a basic view state akin to Microsoft Outlook’s preview pane. However, I did notice a template feature in one of the menus when I took a cursory glance. Perhaps I can modify the template to match my blog’s design? I’ll have to look into it further or read up on some support material. I am trying to see if I can send a draft to the server without modifying the Publish button to do so as I’d like to keep that functionality the same as my WordPress interface.
It’s not without its flaws however, and I find myself using the HTML editor quite a bit (besides the aforementioned image finickiness, there’s also problems with editing link text while trying to keep the hyperlink reference intact). All in all, though, ecto is pretty darn nifty. and with a license being sub-$20, it’s very affordable and I think worth the price of admission.
While there are other clients out there (like MarsEdit and even TextMate), ecto is the first one I’m trying and I’m really pleased with it.
So, my HD crashed on my Macbook Pro. My digital life was potentially stripped from me like a foot length of duct tape on my chest. But, thanks to Time Machine, I was able to restore (nearly) all my data to the new drive. The only casualty that didn’t make it was my copy of Untraceable. However, since I bought it on iTunes, I made the cute anime eyes and wrote to the support group about what happened. Not even 24 hours later, I get the reply that Diane (the rep) understood my troubles and made the movie available for download again. All felt right in the world, until I realized I needed to build my Vista Boot Camp install again for gaming night.
Now that was torture.
Hanging out with some friends was the soft fluffy cake of the night. The icing? Video games. We played TetriNET and while I was far from dominating in the game, I did well enough to survive for a bit. The best thing about TetriNET is its unpredictability where you could be doing well, then suddenly you get swarmed by the other players, jacking up your well thought out tetris with block bombs that blow up your pieces and send them scattering, or the ‘ole switcheroo replacing your neat little stack with their near critical one. The added screaming of anguish is something to relish upon hearing from others and a dreadful thing when it comes from your mouth.
The next game we tried to play was Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds. Unfortunately, we had a few issues on some computers and it took a long time to set up. Then, while we were in the process of playing, our rigs went out of sync and the session crashed. After trying to recover the session, we decided to try another old game we used to play, which was Quake III Arena. Man, did that bring back memories. One of my friends and I would jockey for domination of higher platforms to use our rail guns. Rocket jumping and blowing people up in mid air were all the old encounters. Even shooting our own teammates while they were jumping to get them killed from either a further landing or missing the ground entirely.
The final game I played (I had to leave earlier than the others) was a few rounds of poker. I did okay but still lost as I know nothing of playing poker, other than what combinations there are. I was hoping to give Team Fortress 2 a go with them but only two of us was able to buy it and set it up before game night. Maybe next time?
And for the record, I was the only one on a Mac (with boot camp and Vista, of course). 
So it seems that not all is perfect in my little Mac bubble. For some strange reason I’m getting Finder crashes/freezes. I did have some problems like that on my other drive but doubt it contributed to its crash. I’m thinking the freeze/crash of Finder is either attributed to VirusBarrier X5 (which was the cause of making my Time Machine browsing irritatingly slow) or my plopping in Firefox 3 RC1/2. I didn’t do a full overwrite and probably did the installation wrong. Still, I don’t have definitive proof that either of these two is the culprit for my less than stellar experience.
I’m going to have to do some experimenting and see what other apps might be the cause of these irritating bouts of unresponsiveness.
I love my action flicks, but I’m also a sucker for romance films. The Lake House is a romantic comedy starring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock. Both are lonely individuals trying to make a fresh start for themselves. Complete strangers not really separated by space but by time and only connected via a glass house on a lake and a scruffy dog.
The story takes place in two timelines. For Alex (Keanu Reeves) it’s 2004, while for Kate (Sandra Bullock) it’s 2006. The two meet by correspondence through the lake house’s mailbox. As the shock of what they’re able to do wears off, they begin to open up to, and fall in love with, each other.
There are very few “time bending” themed movies that I like, particularly due to the ease with which time paradoxes occur and the equal ease that they are unobserved by the writer. However, I found The Lake House more enjoyable than not. I have many friends who are unimpressed with the acting talents of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock, but I feel that they did a good job with their characters in this film. The cinematography was also very good; the imagery and colors were vivid and impressive.
There was a niggling at the back of my mind that this movie was a remake or adaptation and I was quite pleasantly surprised to discover that The Lake House was, in fact, a remake from a Korean movie (Il Mare). Yet the thought in my mind was referring to The Love Letter.
Although I really enjoyed the film, if one was perceptive enough, s/he could guess the various plot points, which is probably one of the reasons I liked it; my guessing the events leading to the ending before they were revealed.
All in all, I’d recommend The Lake House worth renting.
This coming Thursday, June 12, 2008, is the launch date for Metal Gear Solid 4. I had already reserved a copy of the Limited Edition at Gamestop quite some while back and it’s been an bearable wait. I didn’t spend a lot of time fawning over the previews of the game and only recently lost a good chunk of time watching the latest trailer and video advertisements for the ingame PMCs (Private Military Company). From all that I’ve seen, MGS4 seems to take elements from the previous installments and make them better. For example, the cumbersome, and irritating, camouflage mechanic from Metal Gear Solid 3 has been streamlined into the Octocamo, which is an electronic camouflage system that when activated, automatically blends with whatever surface Snake is next to.
Other changes also helps ease gameplay, like allowing Snake to walk/shuffle while crouched. It has always pissed me off when I had Snake crouched in previous games and tried to move, only to find him going into the prone position. But the best part, for me anyway, is the near certainty that MGS4 won’t do the switcheroo on us like what happened in MGS2.
After watching the trailers, I already have some expectations on the quality of the graphics, which isn’t really a good thing, but with the quality that was in the previous games, I have faith that I won’t be disappointed.
With the introduction to the new iPhone, I figure many folks will be picking it up when it gets tossed into the wild on July 11. Why? Well, not just because of the increased speeds, GPS capability, actual native applications developed for the device or its impressive battery life. The most outstanding feature? Its cost; $199 for the 8gig model and $299 for the 16gig one. A two year contract with AT&T is needed, but personally, it’s not like I’m going anywhere (I don’t like the other carriers, except for T-Mobile, but we’ve moved on). The data plan will be $30 for unlimited data. If unlimited text messaging isn’t included, I’m going to be a sad panda.
When I bought the first generation iPhone (and its still kicking… never had to exchange or repair it), I promised that the only way I’d buy a new model was for increased storage capacity. I couldn’t care less about GPS (unless there’d be an app like TomTom). I even didn’t really care much for 3G (although I admit, EDGE is hella irritating). However, a friend of mine did bring up a good point about 3G, which was that we could use our iPhones in Japan; just need to get a local SIM card. Other hardware features didn’t really matter to me (my N80 took really oustanding photos… the iPhone’s camera doth sucketh), mainly because I was focused on the software/firmware stuff. While most phones, smart or not, have hardware (buttons) tied to their software, the iPhone doesn’t have these limitations. Many new features can be added to the iPhone, even if they’re the first gen models. That impressed me and got me to buy one. It’s also a strong point for not getting a newer model just because it’s new.
But now, I wouldn’t complain if the new iPhone came with GPS capability. I don’t mind the fact that 3G has been incorporated, because Apple purports that the battery life hasn’t suffered, in fact, it’s improved even with the new candy. Most of all, none of these features have increased the cost of the device itself. For me, I’d get one because every point of interest seems to have aligned just perfectly.
Would you get one? Why or why not?
A ship of reason has finally sliced through the waves of whackiness. The involved whacky? Video clips of people cooking popcorn with cellphones. I never believed it could happen, else we’d have reports of teenagers frying their brains as they chat on their handsets. And at least now, if—I mean, when relatives send me spam links with these videos, I can spam them right back with this evidence that they were taken for suckers.
A few days ago, I was at the conbini near work to get a bottle of Hawaiian Punch and succumbed to an impulse buy of a pack of 5 gum. I’m not usually a gum chewer as I rather prefer hard candy to crunch on. However, I figured I’d give this snazzy packaged pieces of chewable rubber a try. The flavor I picked up? Cobalt (spearmint). Mainly because it was blue, but anyway! So, I liked it; reminded me of Wrigley’s Double Mint gum and of course, the gum is manufactured by them. This is about as close to fashion consumables as I’ll probably ever get. Unlike those across the pond.
Losing myself in Metal Gear Solid 4. Going through my second playthrough. More info to come later as I’d hate to spoil things for people who have yet to beat or buy the game.
This is pretty easy and I don’t know why I never thought about it before, but I just added Twitter and Brightkite SMS numbers (40404 and 80289 respectively) to my contacts on my iPhone so whenever a new message comes in, it’ll label as the name and not the number. I never really thought about doing that until I had a momentary lapse in recognizing Brightkite’s SMS number.
If I had to sum up The Incredible Hulk in one word, it would have to be “action.” There seemed to be nonstop conflict in the movie, whether it was from locals in Brazil hating on Bruce Banner or armed forces trying to take down the Hulk. I don’t recall there ever being a dull moment where I was left thinking, “What’s next?” However, it wasn’t on-the-edge action, it was just palpable; stuff you’d expect to see in any superhero movie.
The CG was impressive, much like the previous Hulk. What I enjoyed about this “reset” though was the fact they didn’t blow the mutation out of proportion. They kept it as real as you could expect from such a concept. And honestly, it seemed that the CG and action was what really kept this movie together, with the acting being a bit on the lower threshold.
Edward Norton did a good job as Bruce Banner, but I think Eric Bana did better. Edward Norton’s physique in the movie really accentuated the colossal difference in relation to the Hulk and he did pass of as a nerdy scientist, but it just didn’t feel right. Liv Tyler, as much as I think she’s hot, just didn’t fit as Betty Ross. I kept thinking, “Arwen.” Of course, the previous Betty was Jennifer Connelly and she’s my all time favorite actress, so perhaps I’m just being biased. The actor, William Hurt, playing General Ross did very well coming off as a jerk and Tim Roth did a great job as the main antagonist, Blonksy. But I’m thinking, take this movie’s CG and storyline and the previous movie’s actors and you’ll get something superior.
I also appreciated some of the comedy elements in the movie, particularly a scene at the tail end. All in all, I’d say The Incredible Hulk was a 6 or 7. It’s worthy of a rental and I’d even bump it up to matinee level, just because any action film is best seen on a huge screen with loud speakers.
Zohan is an Israeli counterterrorist soldier and darn good at his job (as well as pleasing the ladies), but has a dream of becoming a hairstylist in New York, even working at the Paul Mitchell Salon. Faking his own death, he sneaks into America and finds out that materializing his dream job is a little more difficult than beating up terrorists.
You don’t mess with the Zohan was a pretty good movie. It induced a copious amount of laughter from my friend and I, as well as the other viewers in the theater. It’s not necessarily a must-see movie, but if you’re wanting to watch a movie out, I’d recommend it.
Most of the comedy range from dumb humor (for example, that slo-mo flying kick you see in the trailer) to sexual jokes (things like hidden nudity scenes akin to Austin Powers), but no matter as most are appreciably funny. And of course, there are some jewels that come out from left field and cause an uproar of laughter. “Teh funneh” is in no short supply.
It’s amusing to note that there are real life people that Adam Sandler took inspiration from for his role. Three brothers (Nezi, Shaoul and Shalom Arbib) are former Israeli soldiers and have become hairstylists in California.
If you can appreciate the humor, there really isn’t any drawbacks to the movie. However, if you’re looking for intelligent comedy, you won’t find much of it in You Don’t Mess with the Zohan.
