Last Ray of Hope

After completing Dead Space, I finally got around to wanting to complete Mass Effect. Up until this point, I had found it really boring, with an impossibly large galaxy with planets to explore, and many quests which made no sense. The navigation didn’t make sense, but after putting some effort in, I figure everything out, and made us of the quick alternate transport methods when in the Citadel, since using the elevator was as spontaneous as dead frog in a fly farm.

The story started to grip me, and I finally figured out how to complete the mission on the snow planet with the laboratories, when I realised the car had two guns, which made taking out shields a lot easier. One thing I did notice though when driving around planets I landed on, no matter what I did, I couldn’t get the car to turn over, I could drive off mountains, and not even take a hint of damage. Still I’m sure that would have annoyed me more than the relentless driving across rough terrain to discover every listed on the map, plus additional things I found along the way on the minimap.

Nearing the end of doing lots of pointless missions which helped me level up vastly and gain superior weapons, armor and upgrades, I soon realised I wanted more story since this was starting to get boring, and began to play the storyline rather than side missions of “killing someones sister since they made them look bad”, which gave me a morally grey reputation. I had fun with this on the first planet I went to, where I gave up the name of a guy who had information about someone breaking the law, and then using the points I had gained to improve my charm talents, and getting the guy with the information to convict the one who had just rewarded me for helping him out.

The story gets deeper until you find out that this galaxy is like the Matrix and its not the first time that a superior race has gone extinct, and now the same is destined for the humans too, and is long overdue, due to a secret facility made by the Prometheans. Finally a showdown ensues, and you get to decide who lives and who dies (I chose them to die, apart from the love interest who I failed to make have sex with me, it was probably the weird blue alien consort who Shepherd bedded earlier that put her off).

The game was overall very fun, and I look forward to the sequel to find out what happens next. Though I hope they add more to do, doing missions that involve travelling to other regions of space, then entering buildings and killing the same basic enemies over and over, just isn’t as fun as it use to be, and the rewards are little. Though I did like the weapon and upgrades system when I worked out how it worked.

Dead Space is the first survival horror I’ve played since the Silent Hill series. The game starts as you, an engineer sent to fix a ship that apparently has a technical problem with its communication array. Only to find out after you dock, that the dead crew have somehow morphed into necro-something and want to kill you. Unlike usual shooters, unloading entire clips in the chest of an enemy doesn’t kill them, and if it does, you’ve wasted a lot of ammo. The correct method is to shoot off their limbs, and not their head (which it turns out makes them more dangerous since despite being blind, still manage to find you in a 100 foot square room).

One thing that really must be mentioned about this game, is the amazing menu system, which appears in front of the character, and doesn’t pause the game, which can be annoying when you want to heal, but its nicely done. Despite the story being practically like Aliens, only with a zombie virus that mutates the dead and makes the living go mad.

After fighting the enemies a few times they become predictable, you can tell that if a room is empty, it soon won’t be or a brute is nearby. And if there is someone on the floor, it is best to shoot them anyways, just to be sure. One thing I didn’t expect was the fact they can survive in the vacuum of space, which would make sense since they are already dead, but if that was true, why would removing their limbs stop them, but when you first enter and vacuum and then return via the same route, you don’t expect to see one in front of you, as well as not being able to hear them (one nice feature I like that is in there). And for some reason, everytime you enter a quarentine room you can always bet that the doors will lock, and despite being designed to keep things within getting in or out, they have surprising amount of air vents that allows enemies in but hold you there.

Not even babies were safe from this thing, and for some reason this ship either carries one hell of a slutty crew compliment and the worlds largest abortion clinic onboard where they store the dead fetus’, or they were transporting a breeding colony since when you enter the medical area, you suddenly notice all the dead babies on the wall, and the necro-baby version of them running on the walls.

The game is very linear, there is not much chance to explore, and I did not realise I had to shoot the green XBoxes boxes to gain what was inside of them, or that anything that glows blue contains something I can use till I got to the second level, at which point I got on the tram to go back, only to realise that I couldn’t. However it is easy to get around thanks to the lazer you can project on the ground to show you were to go, and the game makes good use of the ambient sound, so much so that walking around usually I keep the gun ready, even when going through areas where I had already killed everything.

Occasionally you come by crew members that have somehow survived, that have either gone mad and worship these necros as life after death because of some weird religion based on a guy who said he saw a UFO, or they die the moment they meet you since your bad luck apparently.

The one thing thats annoying, but in a good way, is the lack of ammo up until near the end of the game, most of the time I’m spending my money to upgrade my character so I don’t die as quickly. When I reached the barracks on the solider ship, I knew I was about to be bombarded by hordes of enemies, mainly super fast necro zombies.

The last boss was too easy in my opinion, just a combination of knowledge of enemies already faced, I felt the indestructable necro zombie was more of a challenge, and even he was easy to hold back when you realise that the time-freeze gun is what to use against him. Still there was a great choice of weapons, though I stuck with the basic starter one to get the achievement for completing the game only using that one. A lot of the achievements available seems impossible to get on the first run through, but as usual you get an achievement for every chapter you complete, which I don’t count, you might as well get an achievement to kill every enemy you come by in the game, not like you have a choice anyways with the stupidly long delays in opening a critical door when a boss is chasing after you.

Still, I really enjoyed this game, and it scared the hell out of me in some places, with enemies jumping out that I didn’t expect. I recommend you also watch the mini film, Dead Space: Downfall, which gives the backstory mory padding when you’ve completed it, at which point you will will understand everything (if you didn’t read all the logs lying around).

After getting back from work today I decided to port some applications I made many years ago to Mac OS X, and that is when I came across this gemstone.

I didn’t realise how impossible I had made it, but once you get to the end, its almost impossible to kill Chuck Norris (the villain of the story).

I completely forgot I made this, and the stupid story I made up to go along with it. As well as the stupid comments I put in the background of the map. I can’t remember why I didn’t made the railgun charges animate though, there was a good reason, but for the life of me I can’t remember.

During the fight, I wish missiles did -10 damage instead of -5, the amount of health I gave him was ridiculous. Probably did it because of the whole Chuck Norris quotes I had been reading that night.

It was originally wrote in SDL for use on the PS2 Linux Kit, but my first and only side shooter I’ve made, as you can tell from the graphics, I made them in paint. I had some issues with XCode, still can’t go from an empty project to something I can use like I can with Visual Studio yet, but I’m getting there.

I keep accidentally making it so that it compiles for the iPhone (my key hasn’t arrived yet so I keep getting codesign errors since I’m not using the simulator).

I’ll probably give it a clean up, maybe some nicer graphics, and better spawn algorithms and upload it since I now have it compile for Win32, PS2 Linux and Mac OSX.

Some nicer music would be good to, I might talk to my friend Dave to see if he can whip up some awesome battle music, he did some nice town music for my RPG (The Legend of Bob and the Phantom Sandwich).

It certainly did give me a good chuckle trying to kill Chuck Norris with all my might, only to be destroyed by his vast spawned army of UFOs and Asteroids.

I eventually found a bug with invincibility that allowed me to be invincible long enough to suicide bomb him enough to take out his health.

I recently purchased a MacBook Pro laptop to go with my iPhone (The iPhone is a new environment for me to develop for), and although I’ve critised mac users for most of my time as a PC user, I can understand why they use it now, I prefer it over Windows now.

I think the latest advantage of the new MacBook Pro range is that they are Intel cores, meaning they can now dual boot Vista, so if I want to, I can still use Windows (which I only really use now for Microsoft Visual Studio and SVN.

Advantages to MacOSX

• For a start, Mac OSX supports multiple desktops through an application known as Expose/Spaces. There are things you can get for Windows to do this, and Linux does this natively, but the Mac is the smoothest transition i’ve seen.
• The battery life for a Mac is AMAZING. On my way to Bolton to return some library books, I was using Vista, it said I have 20 minutes left, I rebooted into MacOSX, I now have 50 minutes left. I’ve got this running for 5 hours unplugged with constant use programming. I’ve had it running even longer when not using it, with the battery barely losing any life. Not only that, but if you put the Mac to sleep by closing the lid, you can hot swap the batteries supposedly if you do it in 30 seconds. I have had reason to try this yet, but I’m looking forward to see if this is true.
• No shoddy plastic/tft screen, the MacBook Pro uses tempered glass, which is a hell of a lot easier to clean smudges off.
• The screen is backlit evenly by LEDs.
• The keyboard is backlit based on the amount of light from the webcam. During the the keyboard is not light, but if I move my hand over the camera it turns on and get brighter the more I cover.
• Interface Builder – what an amazing tool which just kicks the ass out of Microsoft’s VS window tools. Not to mention with objective-c it can become very powerful.
• Networking, no having to screw around for hours to get things to work, to share files in a folder, I just add it to the shared list. Looking up networks is practically instantaneous, compared with the 5 minute wait Windows gives to check 255 addresses. I’ve had one problem with the WiFi in Bolton, and that was my MSN didn’t work in MacOSX, it did in Vista, but that was it.
• My new laptop has a better Vista score than my PC.
• MagLock power cable. So many motherboards for laptops get broken because of them chunky power adapters getting stood on or bent or pulled. The Mac laptops use a MagLock power cable that is held in place by a powerful magnet.
• Cooling: I cannot believe still how cool the laptop runs, they really do use power efficiently and yet you wouldn’t notice to use one. I left it on overnight to download something, and in the morning it was only slightly warm on the bottom, yet freezing on the top.
• Style: They are nice looking, especially the integrated cdrom on the side, they use things such as MiniDisplay or something to that extent, and some tiny ethernet to retain their low profile, but I can live with it (it supports WiFi n).
• Dictionary: Anything I type is has automatic OS spell checking ^-^.
• Updates: No more Microsoft Updates telling me to restart every 4 hours (or 10 minutes on XP). I choose when I want to update, it notifies me once, and thats all, I can update whenever. And when I do update, if I choose not to restart, I do not constantly get told that I should restart, it understands that I’m busy, that is why I’m doing things, unlike Windows when typing suddenly it pops up and if you type a word with a Y in or press enter, oh no looks like it restarting.. again.
• Terminal: I like how it comes with gcc, and I can just make a Makefile and source file and just compile in terminal.
• Multitouch pad: I love this one, one finger is left click/move, two fingers is scroll in the direction I move and right click. And three fingers when in finder, allows me to move backward and forward (like alt+left/right in windows explorer). Not to mention the pinch maneuver to stretch and squish images.

Advantages of Windows

• A lot of software is made for Windows only, which is annoying, I have to find either cross platform or Mac only downloads that are comparable, which isn’t as hard as it may appear, but is a nuisance. Like TortoiseSVN, I haven’t found a decent Mac version yet. I can always boot into Windows, but I do prefer MacOSX environment.
• Maximize, I love the maximize button and miss it a lot when in MacOSX, I hate everytime I open a window I need to stretch it to fill my screen. Is it too much to ask to have something that does it automagically. Maybe I’ll write a program to do it…
• Print Screen, I hate the key combo for print screen on MacOSX, and I miss home/end.

Really there is good and bad things about both, neither will get it right since they want to be different from the other, but at the moment, I’d have to say Mac is slightly in the lead with design for the user. Microsoft let itself down with Vista by trying to make it more shiny than useful. If anything they made things more difficult, like going to the place where you can disable network adapters, etc.

Sometimes I wish I could draw, just so I could make a web comic, then again xkcd is just stickmen. I can just imagine my first comic, it would be a scene from Star Trek where Picard and an away team beaming down on their first mission, talking about how the last time the Federation came to this planet was around 80 years prior, only then to find the inhabitants all look like Kirk.

Athiest Jesus would be another great one too, though I can’t take full credit for that one, me and Brian came up with that one in the first house we live in at uni I think.

I finally got around to completing this game. It is a nice concept, I do love the free running, which they did very well. I found that after a while, I didn’t need to the red runner vision stuff, I could just blind jump and plan once in the air (although sometimes falling to my death). Some paths appeared to be fixed in how to get to them, whilst others seem to be more flexible. Falling seemed a little dubious, I made a 4 story fall and survived, I’d still like to know how that happened, and I find a pipe I could fall on top of, then shimmy backwards enough to fall down and grab the pipe. I think there may be a way to street level if I tried so I might go back and have a go.

The combat annoyed me, even with time slowed down, disarming police/guards seemed near impossible, even though I pressed Y when their weapons were red, it just didn’t seem to work, to the point where I just gave up, got their gun and decided to shoot them instead. I don’t understand how you are suppose to stop the machine gunnist on the hard mode, they’re hard enough to get to as it is, and if you want that Complete the game without killing anyone achievement, that will just make the game a whole lot harder.

The ending seemed rushed, I didn’t get the big battle I like, or having to do an epic free run chased after the helicopter, but at least it left it open for a third.

Visually I loved the contrast of colours, how the world either appeared or did turn white when in pursuit, and even the evil runners from Project Icarus. I loved to read the little messages when in the elevator too, like how to tell if your child is a runner, which reminded me of how to tell if your child is a hacker. Do they have a fondness of the colour red? Despite the annoying combat, and the repetitiveness, I look forward to a sequel, hopefully they’ll flesh it out more, and maybe give more of a free roaming city, rather than levels that tie you to one area.

I loved the first Gears of War, although not my usual kind of game I buy and plan, I liked how the story was progressing, and the combat situations. Even though linear, it is fun. Gears of War 2 expands and leaves off from Gears of War 1. The lightmass bomb from the first one didn’t destroy the locusts, it just pissed them off more.

One thing I liked about the new one is that there is clippings and articles, explaining the origin of the locusts. In the first one, I thought maybe they were an invading alien race, or possible COG was invading their planet. But turns out they are actually genetic experiments gone wrong at a COG facility, possibly to create a master race.

In this one I found I run out of ammo more, so I got use to using the chainsaw whenever I could, and despite keeping an eye out for clippings, I have missed a lot of them which I plan to go back and get. There are some really fun weapons such as the flamethrower which is great against weavers. A lot more reaver attacks too.
The game seemed more focused on vehicle combat near the end, first on the bastile or whatever its called, and the reaver fights, and the awesome gun tank.

I can’t help but think if the real army chainsaw guns and badass gears for you to wear, more people would join up. Killing the worm was an enjoyable storyline, when I was watching my friend John doing it, I remember saying “wait don’t worms have multiple hearts”, at which point after destroying the first, a second one working twice as hard could be heard.

The ending left it open again like in GoW, so I guess I have a few years before GoW3, but I look forward to it.