Malik
(10/29/12)
So, once again I've been
pretty absent from here and pretty absent from games. I'm still
working with two of my friends on the Infinite Lives Podcast,
complete with
a
new domain. So, while working a real job and then working on
learning Tiki Wiki, I'm pulling down what can feel like two back to
back full time jobs. Sadly, only one pays, but at the same time, the
other one is fun.
On a quick note, Tiki
Wiki has to be the best PHP or wiki style web design tool I've
played with. However, it also has to be the least intuitive I've
ever seen for the admin controls. Sometimes I feel like the Tiki
Wiki system is designed to make me fail...but then it surprises me
with a sudden amazing victory. However, while working on
infinitelives.us, I can easily say I will not be updating this site
from old school HTML. In fact, coming around here is like a breath
of fresh air after fighting permission settings and trying to make a
working rss feed (and then resorting to another program for the rss
feed generation since Tiki Wiki lacks iTunes tags).
With that out of mind,
for now, I did get some time with XCOM last week. In the end, the
time was little and not well spent. I wanted to have fun, but I
really think XCOM needs a patch...or ten. I mean some issues are
just a little hard to deal with. The altitude of the camera changing
while in a spaceship is not fun. The stuck cameras and reaction
shots can be weird. However, when you see enemies that are out of
sight (behind a wall and a closed door), then cannot open the door,
it starts to be annoying. Add in an enemy hitting your sniper for a
critical hit when she is not just behind cover, but behind
structures (like a raised section of a ship), and the shot must make
a 90 degree angle to hit, it gets really annoying. Now, going back
to the enemies I shouldn't see, I then cannot open a door (I'm
adjacent to it with two guys, one on each side) and it only goes to
firing mode with "no target" when I click the door, I'm getting
really pissed off. Then I decide to save, rush through the door with
run and gun and then see no enemies anywhere on the other side of
this door. Now I'm pissed. So, I reload and find all my saves are
gone, except the last auto save. I'm just enraged now. I start to
delete old saves (maybe I had too many saves?) and all of my saves
return. This is when I save one more time, prior to bum rushing the
door, and turn off XCOM.
It's such a great game
when it works, but I'm hitting just too many bugs. I'll try, this
week, to clear that damned large UFO I'm currently still in and then
tackle the alien base. After that, I'll probably shift to Sleeping
Dogs for a little while before returning to XCOM (maybe a patch will
come out in the meantime). I did get Sleeping Dogs, since Steam had
a random 50% sale a week back.
However, for now, most
of my time is going into learning rss feeds. If I can make the feed
work, I should be back to gaming and this site a bit more. Until
then, I just hope Firaxis is as hard at work as I am and their work
is going to some XCOM patches.
Malik |