Gangstas

Rapper vs helicopter. Rapper wins, apparently

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. I mentioned I bought (and was intending to play) this horrendous sounding game a couple of posts back. I did actually follow through on this - and the game was about as good as I expected.

Actually, that's a lie. It was actually much better than I expected.

I'm sorry Rena, please don't kill me!

As I mentioned the other day, the storyline is A M A Z I N G. You probably don't care about spoilers for this particular game, but if you do, I suggest you be very careful about reading this post!

The game opens with 50 Cent finishing off the last show of his tour in an unspecified Middle Eastern country. His promoter guy can't pay him the $10 million he promised, so Fitty pulls a shotgun on him.

At this point, I was wondering where he got the shotgun from. I mean, he walked in empty handed, wearing his usual gangster stuff, which is easy enough to conceal a pistol in, sure. But a SHOTGUN?

Anyway, the guy eventually gives in, and gives Fitty a jewel encrusted human skull (apparently priceless) as payment. On his way out of the country he sits in a hummer, arguing with the guy about which gangstas are more gangsta - New York or unspecified country's. At this point I was bored and didn't care - until explosions and gunfire exploded around them. In the chaos, some random woman steals the skull and escapes.

"Bitch took my skull!"

You spend the entire game shooting lots and lots of gangstas, until you eventually run out of gangstas to kill, it seems.

The gameplay is fairly standard fare - third person cover based shooting. Except that I didn't need to use cover until the *very* late stages of the game where I was consistently facing off against snipers, gun turrets and helicopters. Until this point, I didn't so much as hide behind a rock. It appears our buddy Fitty is bulletproof (unsurprisingly, Bulletproof is the title of 50 Cent's first game. Yes, THERE IS MORE THAN ONE OF THESE GAMES) - also a fact he mentions in a cutscene at one point. He also proves it - taking a bullet at point blank range late on - then getting up about 5 seconds later to fire rockets at a helicopter.

The game is quite rough around the edges in terms of gameplay though. Some things just aren't done well, some things completely clash, and some things make no sense whatsoever. For example, the weaponry types are colour coded. Grey for pistol (which you can never run out of ammo for), yellow for assault, blue for close range (shotguns, SMGs etc) and red for heavy weapons. This is fine, visual cues on the ammo boxes are handy.
The part that doesn't make sense about this is the fact that the enemy gangstas are also colour coded the same way. They wear brightly coloured tshirts which make it easy to see where they are, and give a general idea of what weapon they're carrying. It seems oddly out of place that there are so many gangstas packing weaponry that seem to be part of some kind of sick Wiggles impersonation group. Except much more violent. And now, much more dead.

When you kill an enemy, they drop money. You pick up their money, and spend it on more weaponry, "counter kills" (which is a fancy name for Quick Time Event melee kills), and taunts. I spent some money on taunts - they were less fun than the taunts you began with. You can also find cash in boxes (stashes I suppose). What doesn't make sense here, is that THE MONEY IS CEL-SHADED. Nothing else in the game is. This leads to a strange incongruence in the art style - though I really would have been happy if they'd just made the entire game a cartoon - its close enough already.

Also, 50 Cent has gangsta powah. There is literally a gangsta mode, which slows down time for a little while. I'm not sure if all of these things were Fitty's idea, but gangsta mode sounds like it could have been.

By far, the most annoying thing about this game is that its coop. Its a coop shooter in the vein of Gears of War. However, you can't actually play it coop on a single console - if you want to play this coop game in two player, you have to do it online. If you play solo, you choose one of Fitty's boys to follow you around, shoot at things, continuously yell at you to get into cover (because I never did until the end sequences), and occasionally help you open a door or give you a boost up a ledge. This annoys me - and its not the only game to do this (Crackdown, I believe, made the same mistake). If you're going to make a coop game, then let people actually play it coop on one console! Surely it's not that difficult to add a split screen!

Anyway, its over, and I have returned to Final Fantasy XIII. Woo!

And you'll be glad to know - he gets his skull back

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The backlog has been updated - since last mention, two games have been finished, and a bunch more added. It's getting ridiculous now...
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Gaming Backlog

This post now has a separate page of its own. Mainly because it makes more sense that way. To reach it, either click here, or just look on the sidebar!

Video Game Music

I have a long history of listening to video game music. Probably because I have a long history of playing video games - and listening to its music simply goes along with it. Sure, you could mute it and play something else (or not), but what's the point of that? It seems detrimental to the experience.

On occasion I'll play a game without sound or music, but this is usually in a situation where the game I am playing is one I can safely play without sound (either its some kind of puzzle game, or an RPG where the soundscape hasn't really grabbed me, or a game with no music at all - although a game without music is a sad thing indeed), but more often than not, I need my game musics.

What pops into your head the moment you hear this? Yes, the guy in that video is playing TWO guitars, but that's not the point. The point is, the game is instantly recognisable from the song. Well, to people from the generation who would have played the older games anyway (do the new ones even have that song? It would hurt my soul if they didn't!)

Of course, there are lesser known song and game combinations that are just as awesome, for other reasons. One of the boss battle themes in Ys 7 sticks in my head every time I hear it. It just fits the tone of the game so perfectly that it just works. I can't really explain it any better than that.

I went to see a show a few years ago, in the Sydney Opera House, titled "Play: A Videogame Symphony". It's pretty much exactly as it sounds like - the orchestra played a bunch of videogame songs, spanning multiple generations. They opened with Mario, played through a variety of songs from games including Halo, Silent Hill (they had Akira Yamaoka there to play the guitar section of the Silent Hill 2 Theme!), Blue Dragon (which convinced me to buy the game, although that turned out to be a horrible purchase), and, of course, Final Fantasy.

This man is better at making music than you ever will be at anything

Nobuo Uematsu (for those who don't know, the composer of almost all the music, for almost the entire Final Fantasy series) is a god among videogame music composers. Hell, simply put, his music makes me happy. Very, very happy. Lately, his tunes have been sticking in my head more so than usual, likely due to a whole bunch of them being remixed and put into Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy - a mashup game where many of the heroes and villains of the Final Fantasy series come together to bash each other. Kind of like Smash Bros, except with an overblown plot, and a more... well... "proper" fighting engine is the best way I can think to put it.

Face it, Smash Bros isn't a real fighting game. Its a game where you kick each other off cliffs. Possibly while shouting "This is SPARTA!"

Your average Super Smash Bros. player

Fortunately for geeks like me, who recognise the true awesomeness of Nobuo's efforts, there is a worldwide touring show, titled "Distant Worlds: Final Fantasy", which features a symphony orchestra playing a selection of Final Fantasy music for the enjoyment of all. Well, the enjoyment of all who turn up to the event, having purchased tickets anyway. Of course I'll be there, are you insane?

And even better, Nobuo is in attendance, and holding a "Meet n Greet" event afterwards. To which I have purchased tickets for.

I will be meeting Nobuo-sama.

So, so happy :)

Horrible, horrible purchases

Everybody makes horrible, horrible decisions sometimes. Particularly regarding purchasing certain items. The real question here is, are these horrible decisions mistakes, or are they intentional? Because sometimes, you can't help but make a terrible purchase, because of the hilarity of it.

I did this myself the other day, but let's back up a little bit to the beginning of this story, shall we?

The story begins on Saturday Morning. I had stayed home that Friday night, due to needing to be in my home electorate for the state election - I needed to be able to vote. Hence, my girlfriend and I decided it would be best for me to go home on Friday, instead of the usual ritual of heading to her place then for the weekend. That way, I could vote on Saturday, then head on over to her place where we do... well, whatever we feel like for the weekend (this weekend we watched Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni)!

Oh yeah, it's cute until they start mercilessly slaughtering each other

So, after staying up to 2am playing Dragon Age (what can I say? It had me hooked!), I went to bed, only to be woken up at around 8.40 by my mother. "Wake up, we need to go and vote!"

I was allowed to return to bed, since I was going to walk down to the local school and do that on my own later, but the awakeness and noise from the rest of the house convinced me that trying to sleep was a horrendous idea, so I got up, showered, and proceeded to vote. Afterwards, I packed my things, got a train and a boat to Manly, and met up with Sarah.

We decided it would be a good idea to go to the mall, since neither of us had eaten anything that day, so food was high on the agenda, and she was interested in getting a second controller for her somewhat-newly-acquired PS3. We entered EBGames before grabbing our food.

And that is where I saw the sale. In typical EB fashion, there was a "3 preowned games for $50" deal going on, and I always make a point of looking at those, since you can occasionally find hidden gems.

I managed to find Resistance: Fall of Man - a game I had been looking for cheaply for a while, mainly because I'd bought the sequel cheap, but being OCD when it comes to games, refused to play it until I had found and conquered the prior game (This burning need tends to get relaxed in certain situations, like Final Fantasy, where the games have nothing to do with each other, or in Metal Gear, where the original couple are inaccessible to me).

I desperately began to look for two other games of note, to justify the purchase. I managed to find a game called "Eat Lead - The Return of Matt Hazard", a game which, by all accounts, sucks. Except that it parodies other games. And has a character voiced by Neil Patrick Harris. OHMYGODAWESOME.

Everyone's favourite suited-up womaniser

Satisfied by that decision, I began to look for a third game. Something to round out the $50 deal. It didn't have to be amazing, it had to be bearable, to make it worth picking up the other two. I almost bought Blacksite with it (rounding out three generic shooters - two of them featuring aliens), but then, I saw it. What has to be the worst game ever.

Can you pick what is it? I'll give you a hint - its real value is likely to be about 50 cents.

Have a minute thinking time.

OK, time's up.

50 Cent - Blood on the Sand. I bought a game about a rapper, who fights terrorists (apparently). The plot is so awful that I needed to purchase this game. The following is quoted from the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia.

"The game is set in an urban warzone in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, where 50 Cent and G-Unit have been hired to play a rap concert. After the concert the promoter refuses to pay them the US $10-million in cash he promised, but relents after being threatened. However, instead of the cash they were promised, he gives them a diamond-and-pearl encrusted human skull as collateral. This is promptly stolen by a paramilitary group. 50 Cent (with the help of a selected G-Unit partner) decides to get it back at any cost."

So there we have it - a purchase that is so bad, it's amazing. Once I'm finished with Dragon Age (another day or two), I will play this to take a break before I head onto FF13, or Dragon Age 2. I just don't expect I shall be sane by the end of it.

I will probably look something like this

So, I put it to you, loyal readers (all three of you). What horrible things have you purchased intentionally. I don't mean buying something that you thought would be awesome, but it turned out to be the most horrible thing you've ever experienced (Assassin's Creed, anyone?). I mean things you know are a bad idea, but you bought it anyway. Either BECAUSE it was a bad idea, or because you wanted to torture yourself. Let me know in the comments!

Ubisoft Failwin

Some of you may know, last Friday, Ubisoft had a bunch of games on their Australian online store marked with a 100% discount. If you did not know, don't waste your time looking now - you won't find any free games. It ended a few hours after I saw it. These games were marked as a "promo" on the site itself.

I nabbed 22 games from this.

Yesterday, I received an email from the Ubisoft shop. The text follows, unedited.

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TO OUR UBISHOP CUSTOMERS

Last week, the Australian Ubishop site was showing that nearly all of its games were available for a 100% discount. This was obviously a systems error that has now been fixed.

As you were quick enough to act on this error, we would like to advise that Ubisoft will honour this sale at the full discount. We hope that you enjoy the games, and invite you to visit our website again to view our upcoming PC lineup, and our regular promotions. Admittedly, they probably won’t be quite as generous as the one you have just taken advantage of...

Best regards,

The Ubishop team
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I find this:
a) Hilarious
b) Awesome

Ubisoft is far from being one of my favourite game publishers. They began their downhill slide (in my mind) by over-hyping a game to the point where I was legitimately excited and really wanted it. I then convinced my parents to get me it for present, in lieu of anything else. (At the time, I was a Maccas worker, and not exactly able to afford every awesome game that came out)
I then played this abomination - finding it to be the biggest steaming pile of repetition I have ever encountered. Everything unique in the game was covered within the first hour of play, and the rest simply repeated it. A lot.
I am, of course, referring to Assassin's Creed.

Aside from that, their reputation lowered even further in my mind when they introduced their utterly draconian DRM system, where PC gamers who legitimately bought the software are required to remain online while playing the game that they paid for. Router dies while playing? Too bad, now you can't play the game at all.
I have just read that this system has been removed, but the fact that they implemented it in the first place (or that this got through into the "let's build it" phase in the first place) is a huge black mark from me.

On the other hand, one would expect such a company - one willing to piss off every legitimately paying gamer in order to attempt to protect their property (and in the process providing the people who pirated their games with superior game experiences due to, well, not being cut off from an offline game when their Internet died) to recall every digital copy. How exactly do you do this? By invalidating the CD keys that were generated during that time period when you do your online authentication (which they still do, its just not every 5 minutes any more).

Bravo Ubisoft, for at least doing something right. Now release some games worth playing and we'll talk :P

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions

Final Fantasy Tactics is a game I have a love-hate relationship with. It's also a game that's been bugging me for YEARS. That's right, years.

Yes, the game that has been haunting me for years is a box of tic-tacs

My first encounter with Final Fantasy Tactics was years ago in a gaming magazine (in the days before I had reliable Internet access), in a small article which lamented the fact that there was a new Final Fantasy title (this was after the wild success that was Final Fantasy VII) that wasn't going to make it to Australia. Of course, importing at the time was all but out of my reach due to being young, not having knowledge of how or where to import games from (again, lack of Internet would have me rely on a physical shop that was willing to import a niche title), and not having knowledge on how I would make the damn game work once I had it (because region locking sucks giant donkey balls, and is completely unnecessary).

Cue someone at school handing me a copy of Final Fantasy Tactics on a disc a few years later, after I had offhandedly mentioned that I wanted to play it. This person had a chipped PS1, and a burned copy of the game. I borrowed it, acquired a PS1 emulator for my computer (by then I had amazing dial-up interwebs), and played. 10 minutes later, after the game playing really really slowly (due to the computer being unable to handle the pressures of emulating the Playstation), and a fairly boring (for me at the time) combat system. I returned the disc, and let it go.

Come 20xx, when Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions is released for the PSP. A re-release with new cutscenes, a few extra quests, and an extra new cameo character is released. At the time, I have other PSP games to play, and I had remembered how bored I was by the combat when I was younger (and less patient), and so avoided it.

2011, I caved in and ordered the game off PlayAsia. I played it, frustrated the hell out of myself repeatedly, and then eventually finished the game last Friday evening.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a tactical RPG. This makes combat much slower than one is used to from playing other Final Fantasy titles, or (more recently for me) the Tales series. Instead of simply getting control of a character, and telling them to make the magics, or hit the dude with the sword like the other Final Fantasy games, you control a larger party, tell them where to move, if in range you can attack or use magic, etc. Much slower paced, but also much more... well... tactical. Hence the tactics title, I suppose.

This also leaves things more open to confusion early on. The first few battles are ones where you are only able to control your own character - the others are guest characters. This means you spend the majority of the first few battles watching sprites run around and kill each other - while you get to maybe move a few squares here and there. Not much of the battle system is explained to you in-game unless you watch the tutorials separately (which is boring, but it definitely helps).

Eventually when you learn how to play, and get a bit into it, its quite fun. You can switch jobs at will, and every time a character makes a successful action, they earn experience for themselves, and job points for their current job. Experience is a general thing for the character overall - higher level means higher stats to do better at the killing and surviving and the healing things. Very standard.

Job points are used to learn abilities for the current job. For example, 200 job points as a Black Mage can teach you Fira (the level 2 fire spell). Or you can learn Fire, Blizzard and Thunder for a total of 150 (they're 50 each). You also can learn equip abilities, move abilities and reaction abilities for a variety of abilities. Once you learn an ability, you can use it in any job, although there are some requirements (for example, equip the Black Magic skill to be able to use your Black Mage spells in any job other than Black Mage), and certain jobs are better suited to some abilities than others. You'll find that a Knight will tend to do little damage with Black Magic, for example, while a White Mage will likely have a better time using Black Magic as a secondary skill, since their job uses the arcane arts already anyway!

There are quite a lot of jobs in the game, some are specific to certain characters, and a lot of them need to be unlocked by reaching certain job levels in other jobs. For example, the Arithmetician job requires levels in Black Mage, White Mage, Oracle and Mystic to unlock.

The Arithmetician job is also one of the strangest of the lot - when you are using it you get to keep all the spells you learnt as the four aforementioned jobs. You get an ability called "Arithmeticks", which allows you to cast a spell instantly with no MP cost. The catch is that it will hit everyone on the map that is covered by the algorithm you pick. You need to pick a multiple (3, 4, 5 of prime) and a statistic (level, experience, charge time or height on the map), and everyone who matches the particular multiple in the particular statistic that you pick will be hit by the spell. This makes Arithmeticians especially powerful, since they don't even have to move anywhere near danger, as long as you select the correct algorithm and spell combination, you can annihilate an entire squad if you're lucky (in that enemy stats allow you to hit all of them, and not your own side!).

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions features three cameos from other Final Fantasy games. Two of them were in the initial release of the game, and may look somewhat familiar if you look at the screenshot below.

Aren't you supposed to be dead?

Cloud and Aeris - although Aeris is in the game only briefly, Cloud can join your squad. However, he is beyond useless. He comes with no weapon at all, can only use his special skill (which emulates his limit breaks from FFVII) if you equip a certain hidden sword on him, and starts at level 1. When you recruit him, your group is likely to be at least level 40, making him the most useless character I have seen in an RPG to date.

The other cameo, the one introduced especially for this re-release, is much more useful. In fact, he saved my party on numerous occasions, and has been known to end boss battles in a single turn. I blame this on horrible balancing occasionally, or just the fact that he is too much of a badass for everyone's good. He is able to shoot enemies from quite a hellishly long range, sometimes 4 times per turn. He has quite a decent move range (unless you make him a knight or something, which would be STUPID since his original job is better, and special, and once you max it out then Chemist is great to back his killing power with the ability to heal people - and retain the ability to equip guns), and he steals stuff from people.

Because he's a GODDAMN PIRATE.

Also, for some reason, noone in FFT has a nose

Balthier from Final Fantasy XII makes an appearance. I haven't played much of FFXII, but if he is even half as bad-ass in that as he is here, then he will be my permanent party in FFXII.

The entire party. On his own. Because we don't need anyone else. Well, except maybe his bunny-girl partner. Gotta love fanservice!

Thanks Japan!

Zombies

I have been asked by Spritza (one of you three readers out there) what my Zombie Apocalypse plan is.

There are many potential plans, and many facets to most of these plans. Of course, this all completely discounts the fact that an apocalyptic zombie outbreak is nigh on impossible, but its a fun one to think about.

Of course, any zombie plan of mine starts out with getting out of whatever unfortunate hole I'm stuck in at the time, and making my way to whatever unfortunate hole Spritza happens to be in at the time to ensure her safety.

Once that is done, well, I have very little idea since zombie plans seem to change like the wind nowadays. Although a very good idea that I've heard is to get somewhere extremely cold. Like Alaska or something.
This is because zombies, as we all know, are dead. They do not create their own body heat as a result, and so they freeze solid. They might still be alive, but they're harmless if they're encased in ice.

Another idea brought up by the afore-linked article is that zombies can't take heat either, since they're essentially sacks of rotting meat. As such, moving to the desert would also work. On the other hand, its the freaking desert. If I had to pick between a frozen tundra and a burning hot, waterless hellhole, I'll take the tundra every time.

Besides, I'm allowed to start fires in a tundra - it helps people keep warm. Admittedly it'd be much more difficult to start said fire, but I doubt that it'd be impossible.

A friend of mine from back at QANTM had a more interesting zombie plan - the plan was to essentially colonise the top of Centerpoint Tower (in Sydney), cordoning off the top floor of the shopping center, and living at the top section. Hack the lift to ensure it stays at the top, and have a zip line over to the nearby malls and such for emergencies.
I fail to see how you would manage to secure food safely in said plan, but I do not remember the details perfectly well (this conversation took place about two years ago, after all).

A year or two ago, I played a Zombie RPG with some friends called "All Flesh Must Be Eaten". Unfortunately, I played a pivotal role in completely destroying the campaign in the second session, in that my character, who was of the "Hacker" archetype (and was essentially me, if I was smarter) started a sizeable vegetable patch on the roof of the bar we had cleared out (which was essentially the Winchester from Shaun of the Dead). Following that, we ventured out into the city to look for supplies - a veture which, in some ridiculously awesome manner, I managed to find a minigun. When we returned to the pub (with more seeds for the veggie patch, barbed wire to make a perimeter with, lots of guns, and plenty of dead zombies in our wake), I turned said minigun into an automated zombie-destroying turret.

Game over, survivors win. Forever. We actually decided to halt that campaign there since there would be no point in continuing.

Failing all of this in a real life situation, I suppose we could all just plant a lot of plants on the front lawn, move on up to the roof and watch them shoot the zombies for us.

Country Coding - A Workday Bookended With Love - Tiger

Kalgar was, as you (his most loyal readers would know) having some problems coming up with topics for blogs, and so I (his trusted companion from a totally different town) took it upon myself to provide him with some...shall we say...inspiration. Okay, so I just suggested that we do a "blog swap", where we write a guest post for each other - the topic of which we decided should be our work days (I was just trying to be dramatic, jeeze...) What follows is that blog post - Tiger.

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I work as a programmer at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, a small city surrounded by the country. I used to work at a kind of boutique software house called 'The Project Factory', where I wrote iPhone applications. That was until I was swiftly replaced by Kalgar (of course, I had expressed my intent to leave Sydney, and I thought it would be incredibly rude to dash off before I was replaced, so you know - huzzah for him, and all that.) At the university I pretty much make the applications that allow the admin staff to carry out their student crushing duties, as well as making sure that people have access to our online services and things like that. Interesting stuff!

I wake up in the morning sometime between 7am and 7:30am, depending on what time I got to bed the night before, and I usually start the day by cursing the fact that I stayed up so late playing D&D with my friends again. I then consider what I just thought, and berate myself for decrying the wonders that are out gaming nights. After this I shower, have breakfast, and generally get ready (a process which takes about half an hour) and by 8:00AM I am heading out the door to catch my public transport.

Public transportation in Bathurst is pretty sparse. If you wanted to get up to the university in time for work without enduring the 40 minute uphill walk then you are either limited to a taxi or a bus. The bus up to the uni costs $3.10 for a 10 journey that lasts roughly ten minutes - the prices are not proportional to the service offered, and the bus driver is often late leaving the stop. I would normally not complain about such a trivial matter, only the bus comes once per hour, at 25 minutes past 8. Catching a taxi is significantly more convenient, however a taxi up there would, in Bathurst, cost you $11 on average. I know this, because I have missed my bus on more than one occasion.

Pictured: unrelated, but much more awesome method of transport - Kalgar

Upon arriving at my destination (a full 25 minutes early for work...) I rock up to my cubicle and log into my machine. This is then followed by me banging my hands on they keyboard for three to four hours, in the hopes that the file I'm working on will magically become fixed if, mayhaps, I could just type the correct combination of characters. If I manage to get an easier job during this time, such as restoring someone's access to their uni homepage, or granting a manger request to a forum, then I am incredibly thankful - I am not a morning person. Cannot brain. Have the dumb.

At some time between midday and one in the afternoon, I start my hours lunch. This is, for me, the most glorious hour in the history of hours. Each day is a new culinary adventure based upon what I've prepared the night before. Today, for instance, I'm having leftover sushi that I prepared on the weekend. Sushi, miso soup, tuna, and some tea. That, my temporary readers, is the lunch of kings! Kings of bento!! I usually take my lunch downstairs to hang out in the gaming laboratory with the nerdlings, and watch them play something like HoN or TF2 or something. It's an awesome hour, and it really brings me to life as far as 'starting the day' goes.

After my affable hour of amazing awesomeness and alacrity, I return to work for the remainder of my day. This time, however, I spend until either 4:30 (if I only want to do 8 hours) or 5:00 (if I want to build up some flex time) churning out the most awesome SQR scripts that your being hath ever lain eyes upon. It is during this period that I have done things like stopped half the Distance Ed students from missing their exams because they couldn't change their exam centre - also I'm pretty sure I stopped all war and solved world hunger once.

When the work day is done I pack up my Bag of Holding (or backpack, depending on my mood when I got ready in the morning) and start the 30 minute, downhill walk home. Usually I will stop off at the shops on the way, in order to pick up some stuff that I'll need for my coming evening (including what I'll be using to prepare lunch for the following day) and then head off home to unwind by either watching copious amounts of television, or by playing some kind of tabletop RPG, before going to bed way too late for my own good.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

The moral of this story is that work should really consider letting me set my own hours. I mean, I'd still work 8 hours, but if I could maybe work some of them from home I might get a bit more done during the day. Alternatively, if I could work for a bit in the morning, and then return home for siesta or something, before coming back, that would also be quite cool of them. Actually, come to think of it, the uni should totally have rooms for staff members who need a bit of a nap during the day - it would let me try out polyphasic sleep, and finally perform that experiment on myself...

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The above post was written by my special guest, Tiger. Who is Tiger? The answer to that, and more of his words of wisdom are available on his blog. Read it, you know you want to.
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xCode 4.0 and Me

Last week, the new iPhone OS update arrived. iOS 4.3, to be precise. This brings in a whole slew of... well... bug fixes and a couple of minor new options. I call them minor because they are things I won't use. For example, the ability to turn my iPhone into a personal Wifi point. I rarely use the tethering, and when I do, one computer is enough, thankyou very much (unless I'm grossly misunderstanding the point of this new feature).

Geek alert: This post is about to get technical, of a programming nature. I will try to explain some of the terms I use, but if this isn't your thing, well, you have been warned!

What is of more interest and importance to me, as a result of iOS 4.3's release, is the fact that the new version of xCode has been released. xCode 4!
(For those who don't know or understand, xCode is what we code monkeys call an IDE - an Integrated Development Environment - which greatly simplifies the task of programming by providing tools for program creation, testing, and fixing/repairing).

I got to spend a large chunk of Thursday programming in xCode 3 while waiting for xCode 4 to download, along with the new iOS SDK. I think its ridiculous how Apple runs their SDK updates - forcing their developers to redownload the entirety of xCode and the development SDKs (Software Development Kits - tools that allow us to create software for a specific platform, such as the iPhone)! This was a total of 4.3 GB. Not everyone has that kind of bandwidth to spare - and in our office, that meant 6 hours of solid downloading.

Then came installing and getting used to the new IDE. This was interesting, since there are quite a few changes from xCode 3. I'll cover just a few here.

#1: Looks.
It looks quite different now. I'm not sure I like it, but I'm also not sure if I hate it either. It now has a LCD-esque panel in the center-top of the screen, exactly like iTunes. Therein lies the first problem - I am inherently opposed to making ANYTHING more like iTunes, since iTunes is the bane of my existence. On the other hand, I can now get a quick and easy look at exactly how far through the task of compilation I am, although the old xCode provided this on the icon at the bottom of the screen.
Oh, and the bottom of the screen icon progress bar? Gone. Sad.

#2: Oh My God Where Is Everything?
Everything has been moved. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. I couldn't find my code navigator when I first loaded up xCode 4. The console? Now that's integrated in the same panel as the code navigator. So is the debugger. And the breakpoint navigator. You get the idea.
I really don't like this - now everything is in one window! I cannot alt-~ between the console, debugger and my code any more!
Well, I probably can, but then I need to double click and get horrible looking windows for it, as opposed to the old defaulting to windows. They're not even in the menu's any more!
And whose idea was it to put Interface Builder INSIDE xCode? I understand the want to integrate things, and some of this change is a good thing (being able to drag connections from my interface to the code itself AS I TYPE IT?!? Sa-weet!)

#3: Schemes
Schemes are a (seemingly) new addition to xCode 4. Now, you can set up schemas for your different types of builds. This seems to be slightly different from before, where you could just set up build targets, in that its is another level up. I don't pretend to understand it fully, except that it allows me to just click a few buttons (once its set up) and suddenly I have a build archived, backed up, and ready to send to the app store so Apple can be snobs and reject it.

I have begun to get a bit of a handle on some of the new layout and things, and its definitely made me faster in some respects (its auto-complete is all of a sudden absolutely godlike), but slower in others (I can barely use Interface Builder any more).

The biggest criticism (from me) is that anyone who has a small screen (or is restricted to a laptop, like myself for the time being) is in big trouble here. They cram a lot of stuff onto the one screen, which is great if you have a big screen that can handle it. If you don't, prepare to spend a fair bit of time opening and closing side panels as you need them.

Also, it runs quite slowly on this laptop. Blah

My Ears Actually Work... sometimes

I tend to watch a lot of anime, and play a lot of video games. This is what I do. However, there are times where it tends to trip me out a little bit - in particular relation to the voice acting.

Occasionally it so happens that when I'm playing or watching something, I will recognise someone's voice, and practically jump out of my seat. Then, at the nearest opportunity, I will run off to Google, Wikipedia, and occasionally IMDB if things get desperate to double check. And more often than not, my gut feeling on who actually did the voice is correct.

For example, last night I was playing Dragon Age, as is my want nowadays so that I may play Dragon Age 2 - of which a certain review I read tells me in no uncertain terms that playing it is something I want to do.
For anyone who hasn't played Dragon Age, and doesn't care, this next part will sound like gibberish.

I was in the Circle of Magi Tower, trying to deal with their demon problem, when a demon put me to sleep and entrapped me in The Fade. For those who don't know, the Fade is a dream world from which stems all magical power, dreams, emotions etc. Nothing there is as it seems. In there, I met another mage named Niall. As he spoke to me about being trapped by the Sloth Demon, I recognised his voice from elsewhere. It eventually dawned on me that it was Ieyasu from Sengoku Basara!

Same.

The problem with this kind of thing is, it tends to create a stigma in my mind, character-wise. I discovered the other week that Trishka from Bulletstorm - the somewhat psychotic, foul-mouthed female space-marine from Bulletstorm had the same voice actress as Sheena from Tales of Symphonia. Now when I return to playing ToS with Sarah, Sheena will be typecast as someone who should really have a machine gun!

Though, usually, this subliminal typecast relies on what material I saw first. Another one I picked up on is, again involved with Tales of Symphonia. Ambiguous "is he good is he evil" swordsman Kratos happens to have the same voice actor as Liquid Snake, from the Metal Gear games - a fact I picked up on within seconds of the introduction video! This immediately typecast Kratos as an evil badass, in my mind. I have no idea if he is truly a bad guy - even at the late-ish stage of the game that I am up to, but he just seems that way because he's not Kratos, he's Liquid Snake.

And he should be in a HIND so I can shoot him down with Stinger Missiles.

A few others I picked up on:
- The character which got cast as Yoda in Family Guy's Star Wars parody is Bob from Bob's Burgers (which I saw first. So now, I have a legitimate reason to rename Yoda to Bob).
- Date Masamune from Sengoku Basara is Dante from Devil May Cry. Surprisingly enough, the typecast in my head here fits perfectly!
- Sanada Yukimura from Sengoku Basara is a lot of people, notably Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Lelouch (Code Geass) and Ichigo (Bleach). He sounds most like Ichigo though - in fact I never picked up on Vash until I did some research.

Of course, this effect gets much, much more creepy when it starts happening in a language other than your own, that you barely know. Which is why it creeped me out when I started picking up on a few voice actors in this way while watching anime. IN JAPANESE. Particularly when I picked up that (yet again, Basara) Date Masamune in Japanese was voice acted by Mugen from Samurai Champloo. Or that Isaac in Baccano is actually Vash the Stampede (a fine choice, actually - the character typecast made in my head by this one is actually accurate).

I could mention the Konata vs Haruhi one, but really, I didn't pick up on it without having known beforehand that it was the same actress - besides, half the joke in that series is that its by the same people.

I realise that voice acting is like any other industry, and that the same people get around because its what they do for a living. However, it still tends to freak me out that I can recognise someone I've never met, and seen only in highly unrealistic cartoon/3d model forms, purely from their voice and prior roles.

Too Many Games, Not Enough Time

Before we get into the actual post, I am taking this space to ask for help. I'm running out of topics, it would seem. Either my brain has fried completely, or I'm just failing. Usually I'll write up something about a game I've finished recently, but due to my playing through of Dragon Age - a game that takes a hell of a long time to get through, I'm not going to be finishing anything any time soon.

So, I want YOU, the reader types, to ask me questions. Anything you want to know. Awesome questions / topics may lead to a full post in reply. Smaller questions will be combined into a larger answernating post. Just leave them here as comments, or email them to me at:
djnatols (at) hotmail (dot) com

I will now return you to your regularly scheduled bloggernating
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Its becoming increasingly clear to me, that I should really, really stop buying games. I'm caught in a vicious cycle of buying a game or three, then never getting the chance to finish them, since I'll buy another one before I'm done. Its almost like a form of gaming ADD or something.

What follows is a list of games I'm either playing at the moment, or intend on playing, and the reason why I want to. Hopefully, it'll help me get my thoughts together on what order to play them, and drive home that I should stop buying games. At least, until Dissidia Duodecim gets released anyway. What's that, 3 weeks? Gah!

Dragon Age: Origins
Reason to play: It's like Baldur's Gate, but newer!
The reality is, its like a severely dumbed down Baldur's Gate, and the characters quite often decide they don't like the orders I've given them when I switch to give orders to another character. Quite frustrating when I tell my melee characters to stand back because I'm about to unleash a tornado of fire at the enemies, and they ignore me, then wonder why they're on fire! Regardless, I am quite enjoying the game - even though it took me almost a year to get past the early stages (I blame this on the game consistently reverting my save game to the beginnings of Lothering - even when I left the town). I better hurry up, Dragon Age 2 is out tomorrow!

Marvel vs Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Reason to play: It's freakin Marvel vs Capcom, that's why!
I like fighting games. However, I tend to not be amazingly awesome at them. The exception to this would be Soul Calibur, though I still wouldn't call myself awesome at it - simply "somewhat skilled". I've always wanted to be good at a fighting game, and I see MvC3 as an opportunity. However, I still have the tendency to panic and button mash when I'm getting annihilated (which is almost constantly). I really should practice, but I tend to lost patience, and also have a quadrillion other games to play.

Enslaved: Journey to the West
Reason to play: Critical reception
Reviews for this seem good, and I picked it up quite cheaply. The problem? Finding time to play it!

Alan Wake
Reason to play: Critical reception, interesting plot
I'm part way through this, having spent some time playing it at Sarah's while she watched (she was interested in the plot). I really should get around to finishing it.

Final Fantasy XIII
Reason to play: Fanboyism
I'm a Final Fantasy fan. I need to finish FF13, so I can play FF13-2 when it arrives. Plain and simple.
The battle system is... interesting. Jury's still out on that one, though the lack of dungeons and general time to explore is giving me pains in the brain.

Final Fantasy III, IV, V, VI
Reason to play: Fanboyism, history, Distant Worlds concert
I am going to the Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds concert in Sydney at some point in April. I am also one of the people who bought tickets to meet and greet Arnie Roth and Nobuo Uematsu (!!!!!) after the show. This makes me want to play the Final Fantasy games I have not yet finished in order to gain some context for some of the songs that will be played. Unfortunately, the one of these I most want to play (VI) doesn't have a port on a portable device yet, which makes it tough for me to find the time for it among the other, newer games (I finished FFI on the PSP, and FFII on the iPhone, and am currently playing through FF Tactics: War of the Lions on PSP).

F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin
Reason to play: Surely it can't be worse than F.E.A.R Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate. I want to have my faith restored in horror shooters. It might not be the game to do it, but it will hopefully be a step in the right direction - away from those two games which tore my soul to ribbons.

Lord of Arcana
Reason to play: I bought it and its sitting on my shelf.

Machinarium
Reason to play: as with Lord of Arcana, except that it looks ridiculously cool.

Baldur's Gate I, II and expansions
Reason to play: Its freakin' Baldur's Gate! I don't need any more reason than that. Although there is the point where I never cleared the first one, and want to do so, and also to finish the expansion of BGII.

Caaaaaaaape!

A good chunk of Saturday was spent on the beginnings of my cosplay costume - Suzaku Kururugi from Code Geass. The plan is to head to Supanova and SMASH! dressed as Suzaku, along with my girlfriend who will dressing as Euphemia. Aside from that, we have quite a large Code Geass group who will be there doing... well... anime convention-ey things I suppose.

So the first part of the costume that I was to work on (with Sarah and her mother's help) would be the cape. It is the most noticeable part of the outfit - as well as likely the simplest. Having spent some time a few weekends ago measuring and cutting the material, and Sarah having spent some time sorting out the yellow design to go over the blue, all I had to do was cut out the yellow design, sew the cape into its cape shape, and then pin the yellow designs to it - Sarah's mum will be handsewing the yellow onto the cape, although I will be doing at least some of it (I have to learn somehow, right?)

Ow, ow, ow, ow owowowowowow!

Sewing was weird... I kept having mental images of me managing to hurt myself in the process - but somehow I managed not to, and even did a fairly decent looking job!

I'm glad I wasn't made to do the ironing. The yellow parts needed the ends folded over (so that they don't look crap when sewn on), and so Sarah's mother did the ironing. An utter godsend, for multiple reasons. For starters, I've never ironed anything before, and so would likely start a fire. Let it be known that I do enjoy a good fire, but I would rather not burn their house down!

Also, Sarah's mother is in possession of the worst ironing board cover ever. As in, it is a dude (named Mark) wearing nothing but a towel. Apply heat, and the towel comes off. I am NOT MAKING THIS UP.

Why? Oh God why?

Avoiding that ironing board cover by concentrating on the sewing, I managed to come up with something fairly decent looking. All that's left for the cape is to actually get the yellow sewn on properly (all they are at the moment is pinned), sew the purple lining on the inside, and create and attach the awesome Elvis collar.

Not quite there yet, but you get the idea

Then comes the hard part - the suit.

Storm's a Brewin'

I bought Bulletstorm last Thursday. I have since, finished the game.

TWICE. The second time being on Very Hard mode.

It is rare for me to finish a game twice nowadays - I have so many games to play that usually once I finish one, I'm done with it, unless its multiplayer is good, in which case it becomes a fallback MP game.

Bulletstorm's multiplayer isn't that good. It had an interesting idea - team up with other people to aim for as many cool "Skillshots" as you can. However, it is implemented via Games for Windows LIVE, which is a piss poor excuse for an online platform. This immediately removes the possibility of dedicated servers, or even getting a choice of server to play on. There is no chance to select a server with a low ping - you just hit connect and hope like hell you don't get screwed. Not to mention the login kerfuffles. I kind of feel sorry for the people who bought the game on Steam - they probably have to log in TWICE to play the game.

I hate Games for Windows LIVE.

Once you get the game running though, its quite fun. You spend the majority of the game running around looking for the most interesting and awesome ways of killing the mutants that are hunting you. Typically that involves things like impaling them on giant cacti, kicking them into exposed electrical wires, using your electric leash's "thumper" attack to send everything sky high before impaling multiple enemies using your drill gun - a gun aptly named the "Penetrator", and other such atrocities.

Quite a brutal game in terms of body count, graphic violence and potty mouth. Every character in this game has a bad case of potty mouth. Admittedly, its what you expect when you play as a Space Pirate, and I don't have a problem with coarse language in the slightest, but it can get tiresome sometime. Especially when, take away the word pirate and replace it with marine, and your character suddenly becomes ridiculously generic again. Who am I kidding, the character is very generic. There is even the sequence early on where you flash back to his time as a space marine!

However, where the game shines is the gameplay. Admittedly, the levels are linear, but I'm fine with that. Too much freedom tends to result in my getting lost anyway. In this game - the goal is clear. Follow the path to where you need to be - killing everything in your path in the most inventive way possible with the environment around you. Blow up that hot dog cart, with the resulting explosion killing nearby mutants, for the "Sausage Fest" skillshot. Find a bottle of booze, down it and kill a mutant while drunk (which can prove quite difficult sometimes due to blurry-screen and the game refusing to aim where you want it to) to get whatever skillshot you just earned, with the addition bonus "Intoxicated". Find some enemies in the cargo bays of a spacecraft, pull the level that opens the door behind them for the skillkill "Ejeculated".

Yes, very crude, but oh so enjoyable.

Also, at one point you get to control a giant robot dinosaur. And it shoots lasers out of its eyes. It gets the best name ever too.

Waggleton P. Tallylicker.