Jul/070
PC Upgrade!
So with my motherboard dead I ordered some new parts for my rig. Actually everything is new aside from the optical drives and hard drive. Here are the new specs for my rig :
-Gigabyte GA-P35C-DS3R Intel Core 2 Dou Motherboard
- EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX Video Card
- Intel Q6600 Quad Core Processor
- 4 Gigs of DDR 2 1066 RAM
With this setup I should have a lot of fun with the PC games coming out this fall/winter!
Jul/070
PC Troubles
My gaming rig has been acting up lately, doing a lot strange things such as turning my usb devices on and off on it’s own and restarting it self without warning. Tried a few things, one suggestion I was given was that it may be due to poor power support and new power supply would do the trick. So I got a new 650 watt power supply, took while to get it in with all the cables it has. I fired up my machine and for a while things were good, but then it acted up again with the same problems.
So I called some friends up told them what was going on and what I did, and then got another suggestion to check my heat sink for dust. It turned out that there was a layer of dust over the heat sink which was probably causing my CPU to overheat and shut down. I cleaned it out and rebooted, and with no luck the same shit happened. My guess is it is either a virus or my motherboard is dying. I tried to scan my system for viruses but it won’t stay on long enough to complete scan, so if it is a virus, it’s done one hell of a job to my rig.
But I guess this is also sign to upgrade my rig as well. Seeing that all these new games are coming out this fall/winter like Crysis, UT 3, Blacksite: Area 51, etc. that will need alot of power to run and which I don’t have at the moment. Not sure what I would upgrade to but been looking around and will most likely bump up to a quad core system with top end graphics card, probably something from Nvidia this time around. Currently I am running an ATI 9700 Pro, was pretty decent a few years back but now it won’t cut it for the games on the way.
Though if anyone does have any suggestion as to what I can trouble shoot on my rig to pin point the problem please feel free to leave comment about it.
Jul/071
Transformers
Last week I managed to get a pass from work to go see an advance preview of Transformers along with a few co-workers. I’ll try to keep this as short post and will not spoil anything about the movie (Actually one minor spoiler near the end, but just there for contrast). Before I begin I should start off by saying I am a big fan of Transformers, all of the Generation 1 series and characters were truly amazing and still enjoy watching the old episodes now and then.
Now another small piece of background info, I worked on the DS version of the Transformers game only for a month or so early on in production till I changed projects. Anyways during that time I saw some of the concepts of the characters and I pretty much went into shock. For the longest time I could not accept the new designs that were made for the movie. However, a few months ago I came to terms and began to like a few of the new designs, but still could not get over the fact of what was done to Starscream and Megatron. If your classic Gen 1 fan, and have seen some of the trailers or teaser material out there for the movie then you know what I am talking about. (Or you can ignore everything else in this rant and go straight to end and look at the two images)
Moving on, so now that I came to terms with a few of the character designs, I thought to my self a few weeks before seeing the movie that it may suck in terms of story and I will cringe when I see some of the robots, but in the end the action and heap of explosions would make up for it and and I would walk out midly satisfied.
Well there I was in the theater with some of friends watching one of the worst movies I have ever seen. And out of the crew that went to see it I was not the only one to say that…
I would really enjoy ranting about everything that went wrong in that movie but I won’t since I don’t wish to spoil it for anyone that has not seen it. But word of advice if you really respect and admire the Transformers as they were then don’t see this movie, it will probably kill you on the inside. However as a synopsis I’ll say this, it was a fairly immature take on the Transformers franchise, the “orginal” and only Transformers movie from 1986 was a hell of a lot more better and more focused than the live action version. Well I did hope that action sequences would save it, I was wrong on that, the action was so bloody fast and blurry most of the time I had no clue as to what was going in some of the fight sequences.
Anyways I could go on for hours about everything that went wrong. Point is the reviews and most of the general public have hailed this film as the best ever. Hey everyone is entitled to their own opinion and mine is that it sucked. In the words of comic book guy, ” Worst movie ever! ”
Though I would like close things of on a good note. Transformers the game for DS is actually pretty good. Both of them in fact are good, by both I mean the Autobot and Decepticon version. Yeah, that’s right there are two seperate games the team that worked on it pulled it off quite nicely. Well some of the online reviews think it is ok, but most of the reader reviews are pretty good. I personally have been playing the Decepticon game and have enjoyed it thus far for two reasons. First it has a lot of action, secondly it tells a much better back story as to why Deecpticons are on Earth and what their motive is as compared to the movie. Plus playing it along side the Autobot verison really adds to the story as you see similar missions and cutscenes from a different perspesctive. As for the 360 version I had some high hopes for that game but seems to getting really low scores online. But perhaps one of these days I’ll check it out it may not be as bad as the reviews say, but I sure hope it is not as bad or worse than the movie.
Gen 1 FTW !!!!
This is Megatron:
(http://images.wikia.com/transformers/images/f/f2/Megatrong1.jpg) A bit stylized but pretty much spot on.
Heap of scrap metal, A.K.A Megatron from the new movie. Not even voiced by Frank Welker. (At least Frank Welker lends his classic voice for the games)
( http://thephoenix.com/SlopCulture/content/binary/megatron2.jpg)
Jun/070
Random Update
Been while since I posted anything new, but the hits keep coming in. Thanks to all that visited. Looks like people actually read this stuff.
Anyways couple of new things about guess a good place to start would be with games. Recently I downloaded Prince of Persia classic off xbox live, and so far I am quite impressed. Though at times the game has been frustrating, it is still fun and true to the orginal design from 1989. So far I have gotten a good handful of achievements but they were not easy to get. The biggest difference that has increased the difficulty of the game is the AI. This time around they are not that stupid, and easily parry and counter-attack anything you can dish out. For the most part combat is a game of patience, taking turns parrying with the AI till you can find a weak spot to stab them a couple of times. Being in the Prince of Persia mood I dug up my copy of Sands of Time and started playing that again as well.
This past weekend I watched Ocean’s 13, overall it was pretty good, a lot better than the second one. The last two movies that I saw that had trilogy, Spider-Man 3 and Pirates: At Worlds End, were not so good. The action was there but story kind of fell flat for me at least and expected the same for this movie.Â
Jun/070
Spidey 3 DS – Game of the Month!
I guess I never mentioned it, but I worked on Spidey 3 DS.Â
May/070
New Level For Download
Finally after a while I got a new map up. I can’t take all the credit on this one, I worked on it with two other guys and really had blast making it. Overall the level turned out quite nice and plays really well.Â
May/070
Starcraft 2!!!!
Was browsing the web and usual forums and came across this, http://pc.ign.com/articles/788/788627p1.html. For second I could not believe that it was true but it is! Starcraft 2 has been officially announced!!! Some gameplay footage that is posted over on Kotaku.
For the last month or so, ever since it was reported that Blizzard would make a massive product annoucement in South Korea many rumors were around to what the new product would be. Quite a few, such as myself speculated and hoped that it would be Starcraft 2, and it is. Other ideas that were tossed around included another WoW expansion, Diablo 3, Warcraft 4, a Diablo MMO or possibly a Starcraft MMO.
I am so glad that Blizzard did not decided to ruin another RTS franchise into an MMO. Yes, I am one of the many people out there that don’t like WoW. I have my reasons, if which I explained would make for one long ass post. But honestly do we need another game that would have an objective like, “Collect 10 pieces of Hydralisk shit so I can study it and learn more about Hydralisks.” Lame…. give me a mission a real mission that requires dozens of units to accomplish, no bullshit leveling up crap, soemthing that is fun and exciting and something that actually has clear cut rules for success and failure of missions.
If you think collect x number of items and leveling up is cool, then good for you. Play whatever floats your boat. As for me I need something more entertaining than that.
If Blizzard annouced a Diablo MMO or another WoW expansion I really would have not cared that much. I have played Diablo and have enjoyed it but I am not as partial to it as I am with Starcraft and Warcraft RTS games. If another Warcraft RTS was annouced instead of Starcraft 2 I would have been equally as excited to give Blizzard my hard earned cash.
What I have read thus far and from the screen shots I have seen over at IGN it seems as if Blizzard is not messing around too much with the core foundations of the game. That’s good thing, if it is not broken no need to rebuild it from the ground up. I am sure there are a ton of new units and a boat load of improvements from the last game, they have had close to 10 years to work on it. One thing I hope that is fixed is early AI rushes. If anything got to me in Starcraft it was that, in skrimish matches if I got off to a bad start in the first few minutes I knew I would get owned soon and fast by rush of low level units such as Zerglings or Marines. Hopefully this time around the skrimish AI are more fine tuned. Aside from that Starcraft was a really solid game and I look forward to playing this game whenever it comes out. Just as with the orginial game and Brood Wars expansion I am anticipating a good backstory to the overall conflict within the game.
If you have not seen it yet there is short CGI video from the game, showing a Space Marine under construction.
May/070
My Thoughts About Spider-Man 3
It’s 3:30 in the morning, just got back from a midnight premier of Spidey 3. Overall it was good but there were somethings that really did not make it great. Just to get it out of the way my post is spoiler free so please do read on.
First off, most of the movie was spoiled for me since I worked on the game, the Nintendo DS version that is. Though during production of our game we did not get a ton of info about the movie, but got enough info and concept images to know the main plot points of the movie. So right off the bat I knew how each of the major battles were going to be played out. I guess the fun part was seeing how they did it. Of the many battle sequences I found the subway battle between Sandman and Black Suit Spidey to be really cool. Some glimpses of this have been shown in the trailers but the entire sequence was well done.
Speaking of villians, Venom was pretty decent, but was also not as cool as he could have been. Some Spidey fans, such as myself, think Venom is by far the coolest villian and is equally matched to Spidey’s abilites. Some out there seem to say that though Venom is cool, his motive of hating Spidey as seen in the comics and cartoons, would get stale and boring really fast especially within a two and half hour long movie. Honestly I would have loved to see more of Venom than of Sandman, but in the end the director has the final say. Though Venom, in my opinion, has a cameo role in this film it was done well. Some things that were noteable include the personality, emotions, and abilites. Things that I think did not work for Venom, the look and voice. Even for the ammount screen time given to Venom, seeing an “Ultimate” universe version of Venom would have been awesome compared to what was shown in the film.
In the end if I had to rank the film I would give it about a 70-75%. Hey you may like it more than I did, you may think this movie is the best of the three. That’s cool if you do, because if I had not worked on the game or knew anything about Spidey 3 my personal rating would be a lot higher. On the subject of rankings, a good handful of critics out there have gone to the extent of bashing Spidey 3! Some people out there just don’t get the point that this is a movie based on a comic book franchise, things are going to be a little over the top and in some cases, “cartoony”. Other critics didn’t like the emotional elements either, I kind of agree with them on that but in retrospective of everything that happens in the movie the dramatic/emotional elements worked. Could have been better, but they worked. One things I noticed in most of the “bad” reviews are shots at some cheesy elements in the film. I won’t say what those are but you will know it when you see it. My opinion on that, it’s comic relief, I think that is concept some critics don’t get maybe. Perhaps they were looking for a movie that was exteremly serious and not made for the general audience of Spidey fans. Some of the comic sequences may have been over done, but again it worked within the premise of the movie.
If there is one thing I can agree upon with the “bad” reviews is that that this movie did try to cram a lot into one film. In the end it worked well and was an enjoyable movie, and I will most likely see it again.
Ok I guess I went on about the movie for too long. On to the games! Wait… nevermind. There is not a single review out there yet of any of the games! That is really odd. Hopefully the reviews will show up later today (and hopefully they are good!), but as a game designer that worked on a Spidey game I can tell you that they are fun to play. All of the game SKU’s have elements from the movie that are re-enacted quite well, along with other divergent stroy arcs based on characters from the comic book universe. I personally have not played the console versions that much, but as for the DS version it is really cool. Almost three hours of interesting gameplay. The coolest thing about the DS is the touch screen controls, all the moves and combos are done with the stylus. Everything is very intuitive and easy to learn. Plus the Black Suit is a hell of a lot of fun with new move sets and what not. Also on the subject of handheld, the GBA version is pretty neat as well. I did some work on that early on but another team finished the game.
Well I ramabled on long enough, if you read all of this, I salute you for putting up with me and my rant on Spidey 3. I need some sleep… it is now 4:00 am only six hours till work!
Apr/070
New Ride!
For the past couple of month my ’01 Jetta was giving me some problems, nothing serious but costly. With 60,000 miles logged and warranty expired I decided that it was time to get a new car.
So after a few test drives I finally decided upon the Scion TC. I got in a nice metallic grey shade, looks sweet and the drive is awesome. Aside from it being new, this is my first manual transmission car.
I have driven a stick shift before, but that was a long time ago, and over the years of driving an automatic (bad move) I became lazy and forgotten how to drive stick. Kind of sad, but since my Dad has more experience with stick than I did, I let him drive back from the dealer. Once home he gave a refresher course and over the weekend I got the hang of it again, for the most part.
Been driving it around on the highway and local roads and so far so good, my shifting coordination is not solid yet, sometimes I’ll ride the clutch for bit or shift too quickly causing a very jerky ride. Hopefully over the next few days I’ll have everything down and will be crusing with ease and forget I ever drove an automatic car!
Apr/070
Grindhouse
Just checked out the double feature movie Grindhouse. Three and a half hours of pure movie going fun! Of the two movies “Planet Terror” was somewhat predictable since it was a zombie infestation type movie, but “Death Proof” was not what I had in mind. Of the two I really enjoyed “Death Proof” the most, since it was a little more plausible than “Planet Terror”.
I can only wonder how someone came up with the idea to have an amputee dancer with machine gun for a leg. You may have seen this character from the various movie trailers aired. One scene in particular, which has been shown in the trailer, is when she uses the grenade launcher that is attached to machine gun to boost herself into the air to shoot up some zombies, when I saw that I yelled out “Rocket Jump!” Not sure why, but that is the first thing that came into my mind 
Within the movie itself there were trailers for other Grindhouse type films, not sure if they will ever be made for a sequel or just added for filler material, but enjoyable nonetheless.