Malik
(5/22/07)
I was out sick yesterday, hence the lack of a post. I'm also still
pretty sick today, and that's why this will probably be a pretty
short post. It's hard to gather and put one's thoughts to virtual
paper when one's head feels like it's in a vice. Oh well...
Blizzard did announce that
Starcraft 2 is a
real deal. They also showed off some nifty images and movies of the
game, as it stands in production. The two bits of info I really want
to know, however, are still absent and unaccounted for.
While it would be nice to have an idea of the release window for
this game, I don't see us knowing for sure until close to the game
going gold. Blizzard is notorious for keeping release dates on the
downlow as they always seem to have "just a little tweaking and fine
tuning" left on all of their projects until they see the light of
day. That's fine. I'm guessing for a release about a year from now.
I'll probably be wrong, but that's my guess...for now.
My other question is about the specs needed to run this game. While
the images and other media released on the official site make it
look not too complex for older machines, I doubt that is
true...since many other recent RTS games, like Rise of Legends, look
very simple until you get them running on your box and see how much
of resource hogs they truly are. I hope Blizzard keeps it simple, as
it's the sequel to the game of choice for Korea, which means it's
following a game that runs with pretty low system requirements. To
change this would be a blow against their largest demographic.
On a different note, I finally saw The Last King of Scotland while I
was sick yesterday. This movie is freakin' amazing. If you like
history and really great performances by Forest Whitaker (who,
sadly, is in too few mainstream movies to really enjoy), this is a
perfect movie to watch. I won't go into too much detail, but I will
say that I understand why Whitaker won so many awards for his role.
I also watched the last episode of season 1 of Heroes last night. I
wish I could be as enthusiastic about that as I was for The Last
King of Scotland. In all reality, they ended the first season of
Heroes prematurely. With how much time was used to setup the final
battle of season 1, it should not have been limited to part of the
final segment between the last commercial break and the end credits.
The episode kept building up and getting more exciting, and then the
final confrontation between Sylar and the good guys was just limited
and half-assed. That fight should have, and could have, filled an
entire episode. We only had enough time to see each hero attempt one
action before either winning or failing. Whoopity-doo.
It also would have been nice to receive a couple of simple
answers...like who the hell was alive and who died in that lame
battle? Did Parkman survive or does the pseudo-self-inflicted gun
shot wounds finish him off. Will D. L. survive that nasty gunshot
wound? I can see Sylar not being made clear, with the blood trail
leading to the sewer, but the rest should have either been answered,
or not have been left so damned vague.
At least season 2 had a nice setup. Between the mention by Molly of
the person far worse than Sylar being out there and the time shift
of Hiro to an earlier day in Japan's history, it looks like some fun
things are planned...I just hope the Sylar battle last night would
be the final one that is left with so little reward for all of the
build up.
Now to continue being sick.
Malik
|
Malik
(5/23/07)
Nintendo has now
announced that
Super Smash Bros. Brawl is coming out in 2007 afterall.
Previously, it was rumored and speculated that Brawl would come
along sometime in the first half of 2008. This is definite good news
for the non-casual side of the Wii.
That news goes in
hand with the confirmation that Nintendo keeps giving for Mario
Galaxy and Metroid Prime 3 to come along this year. In fact, this
means that Nintendo should have three major titles come along for
the Wii in a six month time frame (considering that
Metroid Prime 3 is supposedly due out later this summer) for the
less casual side of their taregt audience. It just leaves one
question; what will be announced next since the calendar for the Wii
is now looking good only through this year end, and next year has
less steam going for it?
Some friends sent
me a few emails about the
new GH3 announcement. I reading from them that Weezer and the D
are present made me happy. Reading in the link that Cult of
Personality and Paint it Black are there...I will no longer speak
crap about NeverSoft making this game (at least until after the game
comes out and I play it). In fact, this is the best teaser list for
a GH game yet. There's only like one or two songs I couldn't care if
they were in or out, absolutely no songs I'd hate to play on this
list, and many I've felt a need to play for a long time.
I just hope that
someone would get some Social Distortion on one of these games
(Reach for the Sky would fit perfectly with both GH and Rock Band,
as would Story of My Life). They do license their music out, and for
worse projects, and it has all the elements of what's needed for
these games (good rhythm, lead, and bass guitar work, clear lyrics,
and good drumming).
However, the color
scheme has me a bit worried. While it may just be color, and
placement is all that matters (or else star power would be a game
breaker..."They are all blue!!!"), I wonder if they may mess with
the buttons on the actual guitar to force you to update. What if
they rewire it so that the old green (first fret) is now
electronically coded to the third fret, just to force you to buy new
hardware? Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but it is something we've all
seen before (like how some N-64 and SNES virtual console Wii games
cannot be played without the classic controller since the button
mapping is so inane if you use a Gamecube controller).
Anyway, I
shouldn't dwell of the potential bad, when we have definite good.
This game is going to rawk!
Malik |
Malik
(5/24/07)
I always feel the most
sick, it seems, when I have obligations and fun things to partake
in. For example, right now I'm still in the middle of feeling like
crap (today is actually worse than Monday...the day I was forced to
stay in bed all day), and I am in the middle of two very busy
weekends and a busy week. I had to skip early on a friend's bachelor
party last Saturday because I felt like crap, tomorrow I'm due to
help my father build a fence (yeah...that'll be great while sick),
and Saturday is a friend's costume party that I am really wanting to
attend. However, if I keep feeling like crap, I'll probably help
with the fence tomorrow and be too dead for a party the next night.
Blah.
At least I had
enough of my thoughts with me last night to play some more Oblivion.
I also had the brain power to look up how to tweak the ini file for
a little more power. Namely, I turned on the options for
multi-threading the application and turned down the grass a bit
(even an 8800 GTS is no match for excessive grass on the Gold Coast
area).
The thing I don't
understand is why Bethesda did not release an update that would at
least simplify some of these tweaks. For example, why not, with a
patch, add a menu option for determining if a processor can handle
multi-threading and then to automatically update the ini to reflect
this? Why not add some menu options for tweaking the grass so that a
computer with high settings and high technology could run the game
without stuttering in grassy zones? It all seems so easy, but I
guess Bethesda is not exactly on the ball with Oblivion
anyway...with first the Form-ID bug (which at least they did patch),
and then the animation bug (which they disavow any knowledge of).
That's why they have such a strong mod community...to explain and
solve these type of issues and tweaks.
I don't have much
else to say as I sit here hacking up a lung or something. So, I'll
end things with two thoughts.
First off, being
sick sucks. I know it's obvious, but I need to say that right now.
However, it doesn't suck as much as a few of the things done with
the Lost finale. While many exciting things happened on last night's
episode, so did many stupid things. For one, I have trouble believe
that Jin would miss a simple shot at such close range with two
attempts, like he did when he couldn't hit the TNT setup to kill
some Others. He was able to cap a couple of Others, but he couldn't
make a prepared shot in two attempts from a prone position?
Nope...can't believe that.
Also, why exactly
did Charlie die? I know, it was "destiny", "fate", or whatever you'd
call it. However, he closed the door to prevent the Looking Glass
from flooding and killing Desmond, right? Wrong. If he left the room
and the door open, he would've still got his message from Penny for
Desmond. On top of that, the Looking Glass would need some time to
flood, during which, Charlie and Desmond could've swam away just
like how they got in (deep breath and swim...but with an easier time
out than in since they are not looking for a small opening but
anywhere on the surface of the ocean). They even would have had
plenty of time since the door to the communications room would've
been held closed with the water pressure behind it (it did open
inwards). Everyone, and I mean everyone, would've won. The cyclops
would've died (or he'd come back again anyway since he keeps
dying...), Desmond and Charlie would've survived, and those visions
of Charlie's death seem to have ended for Desmond prior to Charlie's
death.
While Lost may
have given a few interesting plot ideas for the future, I still
can't get over the obvious stupidity. There's even more, but I'll
try to avoid going into them for now (Why didn't Locke kill Ben
while he was at it? Why did Ben try so half-assed to stop the phone
call if it means it's his doom? Why can't this Jack, Juliet, Kate,
Sawyer love quadrangle bullshit end?). Blah.
Secondly, before I
depart, if you did not see
FFXIII being pushed back beyond 2007, then you are a blind
idiot. Square Enix has taken the lead for developers pushing back
titles, and the FF games are their most notorious example of this
practice. They may be hinting now at a Spring (2008) release, but I
think that this will not play out. In the end, this game may see the
light of day in 2008...but definitely not until the second half, if
not later...as in "much later" (I'd wager on 2009).
Malik |
|
For Those Who Don't
Have Flash Plug-Ins...
Rested
XP News
Reviews
Videos Features
Forums
Archives Search
This Site Links
Contact Us Disclaimer
|
|
|