Blessed by the Potato

Wow, do I feel like a dickhead. After blasting AreaMan & Baum for not updating, I went over a week on autopilot without an update myself.

After thinking that what I really wanted was a mech game, I went and got a copy of Heavy Gear 2 to play. It’s an old game, but this is my first time playing it. Back in the day, I was a big Heavy Gear fanatic, and actually got into some pretty heated arguments with one of the guys working on this project (the early screenshots were all distorted like viewing through a fish-eye lens), and Craptivision had really dropped the ball on supporting the original Heavy Gear and MW2: Mercs (they made a patch, they beta tested it, but as far as I know never actually released it).

There were a lot of other reasons why I didn’t end up buying the game at the time: I knew from the description that they were taking the story off Terra Nova to focus on a group of pilots attacking Caprice, striking into the heart of the NEC. To me, that sounded really dumb. Here we had fallen in love with Terra Nova, a fairly well-fleshed out world with a large cast of interesting characters, an unstable geopolitical situation with a simmering cold war, as well as a rich past to mine for historical campaigns… and they chose to take all the action off-planet within the first few missions. It was, simply, a betrayal.

In the intervening years, I’ve pretty much given up Heavy Gear. I’ve forgotten the characters, story arcs, and game system. My books are gathering dust somewhere back at my parents’ house. (I still have my minis on display, but that’s because they look independently cool.) So now I can accept the zany plot without an emotional response.

The other big reason I never played the game was because it was buggy and required rather steep hardware requirements for the time (by which I mean, my computer wouldn’t run it). The bugginess has actually gotten worse, as the game simply won’t run for long under Windows XP. I can play one mission to the end, and it will usually crash before the debrief screen, and always when trying to launch the next mission. I don’t know why I’ve been torturing myself with that sort of nonsense for the last few days, but there you have it.

So, with all that negativity around the game, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. The Gears did handle fairly well, and as contrived and dumb as it was, the space scenes were fun (as people said at the time “a gear would be decent in space, but a star fury would be better”). I was severely disappointed by the range of the weapons (a grenade can be thrown something like 25 m, but a mortar only goes 250), and at the lack of combined-arms or terrain use (it seems like a throwback to mechwarrior, where anything over a 30° slope can’t be climbed). I doubt anyone will ever bother to try it now, given the severe bugs, but it was more fun than I had thought it would be.

Of course, it just serves to make me want another, more modern game that much more. X-wing, Mech, Gear, I’m not too picky. Just some sort of shooter that isn’t quite the twitch-fest many FPS’s are.

Moving away from the dead horse, I saw Predator on the weekend with some friends. It’s still a very good movie (for what it is). Like Netbug before me, I really yearn for a decent Aliens vs. Predator movie. As we were talking about on the weekend, it really shouldn’t be that much to ask for: just set it anywhere other than Earth, put in some marines, and some acid blood. How they managed to screw that movie up so badly I will never know.

Finally, I read through the archives at XKCD. I don’t know how to describe it, but I liked it.

I had a chance to play with the demo for Darkstar One. It could use a lot of work still, but I liked it. Basically, it’s Privateer/Freelancer again, except instead of being able to change ships, you’re stuck with your one semi-organic ship that upgrades with you over time (though it doesn’t appear as though you’ll be able to change your mind and go back to a cargo hauler mode like you could when you sold your ship in the other games; this might be a significant limitation later). Despite the lack of originality or significant improvements over its predecessors, I think I’ll buy it just because I’ve been hankering for a game like this for a while now (or better yet, another Mechwarrior/Heavy Gear: Mercs type game).

The combat is right out of the Wing Commander games: ships are fairly nimble, and the name of the game is “ride that ass”. The physics are definitely not Newtonian (which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise — it’s a hard physics model to play in space, especially if draw distances are restrictive). Unfortunately, this game doesn’t even seem to feature weapons with different ranges and ships with different speeds like Privateer had — everything but cruisers and large freighters seems to top out at the same speed, so running isn’t often an option for you. I haven’t fully tested the weapons in the game, but they all seem to be “whites of their eyes” type affairs as seen in the other games of this genre. I know you’d hardly ever hit anything, but I’d like to see a gradual dissipation in weapons for these games, rather than a sudden vanishing of weapons fire. Even perhaps being able to tune your weapons for spray vs focus fire mode (rather than having to outfit a completely new turret at space dock, if available). The game is also sorely lacking an autopilot feature. There is a time compression one so you don’t spend all day floating around, but you can only go in a straight line — no plotting roundabout courses to avoid patrols and the like. I also can’t seem to find a system map option, just a galactic map, which I would find annoying if there were more than 2 or 3 things in any given system.

Minor things the game could really use include a targeting reticle: the mouse cursor looks like a reticle, but your shots still go straight ahead, which can be quite confusing in joystick mode. Also, there’s a cycle through targets, and target nearest enemy function, but no target under reticle option (which is needed for dogfights and also for grabbing space junk). The joystick hat function isn’t very good: instead of looking out around you to spot for enemies, it provides you with an exterior view aimed at your ship. A number of other things (especially the English translating) just aren’t very smooth or intuitive, though it is possible these will be fixed by release in a month.

The universe so far is pretty bland, but it is just the demo. It doesn’t have the depth of hidden items that Freelancer had, nor the map system for tracking them. And you can’t randomly chat with people or beg for your life like you could with Privateer.

All that said, it is still a Privateer-type game. You get a ship, you blow stuff up, run cargo, make money, and upgrade your ship. So I’ll probably be buying it come August.

It was a very quiet Canada Day weekend — yet it seemed very busy nonetheless. I had planned to read a lot, wash & wax my car, and play a few games, but mostly just played frisbee and watched movies.

First up was Mirror Mask, a film with practically no advertising that I’ve seen. It’s very esoteric and visual, probably the same group at Jim Henson that did Dark Crystal. The acting was pretty decent, but I thought the story was a little weak. Unfortunately, I can’t be any more specific with my criticism, since I can’t really think of what was lacking; as Wayfare pointed out, Labyrinth wasn’t much deeper, plot-wise. It was just that certain je ne sais quois that would have tied all the strange and dazzling visuals together more tightly.

Date Movie was playing over at Dan’s, and the less said about that piece of crap, the better.

Then I saw Superman Returns, which needs no link. I liked it, as far as Superman movies can possibly go (Netbug has a longer review on his site, where he makes a good point: Superman is so super, that it’s hard to believably challenge him. Fortunately, I have an astounding ability to suspend disbelief. I really liked the hyper-optimistic, wonderous 70’s feel to it, as well: it’s a nice contrast to the other superhero movies that have been digging for darkness recently. I really didn’t care for the flying scenes: it looked very much like it was CG (a problem I had with Spiderman, as well), and either the makeup or the computer effects made Brandon Routh look creepy, or as Wayfare so sagely put it, “like one of those marionettes from that show with the rockets on strings [Thunderbirds].” I did like the new heat vision effect, though. Finally, I think it could have used a bit more Lex Luthor in it: either a scene showing him learning more about the crystals, or actually making some kind of weapon out of them (he talked about it a lot, but never did).

I had low expectations for Dave Chapelle’s Block Party, but it appears as though they should have been a lot lower. I knew it was mostly candid footage from this impromtu concert/event he threw, and I thought it would be really cool, or maybe even inspiring to see some of that. I also thought he’d be funny. Wrong on both counts, with rare exceptions. The biggest single problem was probably that they spent a ton of time on this weird couple (the “broken angel” people) that had nothing to do with the show. They were weird, scary, and a little funny, but certainly didn’t deserve the amount of screen time they got. The editing seemed to be off, with lots of slow periods following random people, and putting the events of the day in decidedly non-chronological order (and only the first few scenes had subtitles telling us what we were looking at… they seemed to have forgotten to continue with that after the first 20 minutes), then at other times the energy seemed to be building up and things were actually getting entertaining (such as when Dave would be up MCing or telling jokes behind the scenes), and they’d cut away halfway through.

I’ve started watching Grey’s Anatomy, and I think I’m going to like it a lot. Of course, I’m a sucker for the medical shows (Scrubs, of course, ER, MASH, House, and that other one that got the Fox treatment a while back and was cancelled).

Like I said, I played a lot of frisbee this weekend, which served to remind me of two important things: first, that I am woefully out of shape still (which makes me shudder at how very out of shape I was a few months ago, because I feel great now compared to that); second, that I have the most fantastic frisbee in the whole world and must always be careful not to lose it. You will remember, of course, that it was one thing I was really hoping the car thieves didn’t take when they trashed my car’s interior and ran off with anything remotely valuable. It’s a DinoSoar neon pink fabric frisbee that we bought at Wasaga Beach about 15 years ago, and I’ve never seen one like it since. It’s basically a self-inflating rubber tube with fabric around it and stretched through the middle to give it the frisbee shape. But since it’s flexible, it doesn’t hurt when you get beaned in the head, and you can catch it by just grabbing at it and squishing it up in your hand. It floats, too. I have a standing order with my friends: if you ever see one like it, buy it. If you don’t love it, then resell it to me, so I can stop worrying so much about possibly losing the one I have. The only downside to it is that it doesn’t get the same kind of distance that many hard frisbees can give you (and you can’t do the ultimate frisbee “kick-off” over-hand throw).

I had hoped to have some time to game this weekend, too: I had a hankering for some Master of Orion 2, and brought the disc back to my parents’ house, but never ended up installing it. Soon, my precious…

I didn’t end up getting into the Sword of the Stars beta, which probably is what kicked off the MOO2 craving. Reading CTRL-ALT-DEL, I followed the link to Darkstar One, which sounds very interesting. I’m in the process of downloading the demo, but it’s going to take all night. Hopefully I’ll have time after work tomorrow to run through it.

Also talking about games, I’ve got to mention the euchre game this weekend: we started down 7-0, and came raging back to win. What was amazing was the last hand that put us over the top: I went in on my own to take all 5 tricks, and when I called that I was going on my own, my partner groaned in pain: looking after the hand, he also had a hand that would have taken all 5 tricks on his own (with a different suit, naturally).

What’s scarier than playing Doom 3 in the dark with the surround sound turned up? Playing Doom 3 in the dark with the surround sound turned up and having your cat jump on your lap out of nowhere.

Yep, so after depriving myself of a number of games until my thesis was done, I finally submitted my thesis. Someone at work immediately loaned me Doom 3, so I’ve been playing it for just over an hour now, and it is freaky. It’s surprisingly resource-intensive (I thought I’d be playing at close to max resolution with my Radeon 9800, instead I’m at 800×600 for a good frame rate, though I think it could chug through 1024×768). Some of the scares are classic haunted house stuff (like having a crane drop a bunch of steel beams beside you), and I’ve read a number of criticisms about that, but it’s still scary. It works.

The “no duct tape on Mars” phenomenon is really annoying, so after getting past a half-dozen imps, I got a mod that lets you use the flashlight with the shotgun and machine gun. It was just an annoying mechanism before where you had to choose between your flashlight and your gun, especially given how feeble the flashlight is (can’t space marines come up with something brighter than my sister’s fisher price flashlight?). Having monsters appear out of thin air to kill you is shocking, yes, but it’s also slightly annoying — I go to all the trouble of clearing out a corner and backing into it, just to have a zombie spawn behind me (and he didn’t bust through the wall either, since it’s still solid after I kill him). I know teleporting monsters becomes a big part of the plot later on in the game, but I really didn’t think it would start so soon.

Nothing I’m saying is new of course, since the game is nearly 2 years old. It is really scary though, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to continue playing it, I just don’t have the nerves anymore. I nearly shit myself when I was in the air ducts and the cat jumped on me…

With games being so expensive, myself being so poor (particularly through say high school), and the number of truly fun, long-lasting games few and far between, it’s not much of a surprise when I tell you that I’ve pirated my fair share of games. The last few years I haven’t been to anywhere near the same degree: partly because I’ve got a bit more money to spend on them, partly because instead of “trying them for free” I just don’t bother at all with games I don’t think I’ll like, and partly becuase I just don’t have time for more than the one or two games I have installed right now.

Like many others, I’ll often buy a game that I really liked after trying it out… I first got WarCraft II, Command & Conquer, and Civilization III and IV as less-than-legal copies.

But three weeks ago, I took an interesting step: I set out to get a cracked copy of a game I already owned. Yes, when it came out I downloaded CivIV since I really wasn’t too sure of the transition to 3D models and the required processing power (and it still bogs down sometimes even on my desktop system; large and huge maps simply aren’t an option for my laptop). But it was a lot more fun than I was expecting, so I went out and bought it at Christmas…

However, I don’t usually have much time to play when I’m at home here in London; a lot of my gaming now is done on my laptop when I’m visiting my parents and everyone’s gone to bed. And I’m just sick of having to keep track of where my CDs are for the games I want to play. I often break the jewel cases in my bag, which makes me afraid for the CivIV disc since it only came in a paper sleeve. Transporting it almost every weekend has me worried that I’ll lose it. And finally, the CD drive on my laptop is really loud (it drains the battery too, but I only ever play plugged in). So, I went out into the dark corners of the internet and found another cracked copy and reinstalled it on my laptop so I don’t have to worry about the discs.

I know game companies don’t generally have games that work without the CD’s, since a CD read is one of the better anti-piracy methods (it’s fairly difficult to copy a disc with something like safedisc on it, and it’s not nearly as invasive as driver-level or registration-check-on-startup methods), and without that it becomes far too easy for even casual pirates to copy games by simply lending their CDs to their friends. However, I think it might be something they have to consider as gaming on laptops becomes increasingly popular…