Rabbit Hole

No More Heroes - Initial Review Link
Genre: Action Sandbox
Release Date: January 22, 2008
Developer: Grasshopper Manufacture
Final Rating: 8/10

Synopsis from IGN Games: There’s only one way to the top ranks of the underground world of paid assassins and it’s going to get messy. Lucky for Travis Touchdown, he just knocked off the world’s eleventh best without breaking a sweat. The life of fame and fortune couldn’t be closer.

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No More Heroes follows the life of a newbie assassin named Travis. His ultimate goal in life is to become the number one assassin in the city he lives in, Santa Destroy. Each assassin has his or her own rank, ranks start at one (being the highest) and 11 (being the lowest); Travis starts at 11. The entire game is Grand Theft Auto style sandboxing. In order to go up a rank you must first make enough money to pay for the event, in order to make money you have to do side jobs around the city. It’s all pretty basic and easy to grasp. There is another character in the life of Travis; a hard boiled girl named Sylvia. She is the one who guides Travis through his race to the top and sets up all his matches.

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So far we are 1 month into 2008 and I can sadly say I am looking forward to NOTHING in the realm of video games and technology. 1 month in… thats 1/12 of the year I have two games that are on my list: No more Heroes for the Wii and Universe at War for the PC. At this rate 2008 will produce a whopping 24 interesting video games. But the fun doesn’t stop there… whats with this lack of technological advancements? I was for sure Apple was going to released some new BIG product for us, but instead they released a shittier skinnier version of the Mac Book Pro.

Don’t even get me started on the amount of video game delays we have experienced this month! It seemed it all started with the announcement that Super Mario Smash Brothers Brawl was going to be delayed then the rest of the video game development world jumped on the band wagon.  Just today Haze and Mercanaries 2 were delayed. I know there are tons more I just crap them out of my mouth because of how pissed I am.

On top of all this crap, THQ buys a whole bunch of development teams, cancels a whole bunch of IPs and then looses stock… EA is buying everything that is waved in front of them, christ even Halo 3 is getting beaten out by Call of Duty 4. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON WORLD?!

I guess this is good in some resepect… I might be able to do homework, and it gives me time to figure out why my 360 is burning every power supply I own. Maybe I can do something productive since the development community isn’t feeding my vegging addiction.

p.s. I have a new blog and new site…

The final installment of my journey with Apple.

Well this is the final chapter, and what does that mean? Yes I did get my Mac Book Pro. I haven’t written on my blog for a while and not because I’ve been playing with my Mac Book, but because I’ve been in detroit for the past 3 days; I’ll save that for another post.

Thursday morning I was told by purolator that my MacBook was in transit and in Toronto! How excited was I! It meant I was probably going to get my laptop sometime in the afternoon. I waited patiently all day… Colin kinda put a kink in my plans though by wanting me to watch the store for 30 mins in the afternoon. I’m a nice guy so I agreed and headed over there for 1:30, I stayed for as little time as possible and rushed home afterwards to continue waiting for my MacBook. As I was pulling in my drive way so was the postman! Perfect timing. I got my MacBook and headed back to the WGC.

When I arrived I got my box opened it up, inspected the hardware and played around with OSX. I updated leopard and then proceeded to dual boot Windows. This is where the fun began. Apparently in order to dual boot Windows, bootcamp needs a very specific Windows XP CD; one that I eventually found on the Computer Science MSDN. It took me a couple of tries to get the setup going correctly; its a really finiky process, but with the proper formatting technique I got everything down pat.

Now I am dual booting OSX and Windows XP. I am in the process of trying to figure out how to get Ubuntu installed so I can do some network security tests, but I’d rather use Parallels for that. So next step is to actually get parallels.

I’m really happy with how Apple handles dual boot installs. When you get into Windows the first thing you should do is insert your Leopard CD that came with your computer. It will install ALL the bootcamp drivers. I didn’t have to go on the net to install anything! I put in the DVD and it went ahead and made my life a hell of a lot easier.

I am really happy with my MacBook Pro, it hasn’t left my side since I got it… there are a couple of things that I don’t like, for example how the function key is the left most button on the bottom row (that really fucks up my gaming experience)… and how the microphone is embedded into the left speaker, but other than those small things this is an extremely powerful machine.

All weekend I was doing some “ethical hacking” on wireless networks so expect to see some articles written on WEP decryption and the likes! Anyway if you have the money and need a new laptop I suggest you get a MBP; its the best large sum of money I have ever spent!

Allow me to continue into the second part of the saga that involves me getting my Mac Book Pro.

We left off last time with me submitting my student enrollment information via fax. Unfortunately that didn’t work out as I hoped. Apple received the fax, but they said it was too dark and I needed an actual proof of enrollment form. They emailed me after I inquired on whether they have received my information. This time, however, I was able to email them my photo ID and proof of enrollment. I headed to the University Computer Center and got it all straightened out.

It took them another day to receive my papers and finally this morning they confirmed that I was a student at the University of Windsor. So at 7AM this morning immediately after waking up I bought my Mac Book Pro for about 2300 dollars. I was a little upset though, I mean I was expecting to pay 2300, but on the American site the laptop was only 1999… I don’t want to be “one of those people” who complain about prices when the Canadian dollar is equal to the American dollar, but when it’s a difference of 300 dollars I tend to notice. However, I realize that they must take in affect duty and our crazy taxes.

Either way I purchased express shipping because I am a sucker for it and it should be here by Friday at the earliest… YAY!

It’s not physically a dry week, in fact here in Windsor is a very very rainy/snowy week, but in terms of video games there is nothing to get too excited over. I have quickly realized that the pre-christmas rush of video games is over and now we are getting showered with lesser DS titles. I’m not a fan of the DS, at least not anymore, so here’s my “catch-up” list; along with a few things I recently received that deserve some attention.

XBOX 360:
In terms of the 360, I’m not going to get too excited; mine is still without power until Zach decides to buy me a new one (or I get my shipment from DiviNeo), and I don’t really have time to play most of these games anyway… here’s the backlog (ps. I beat Kane and Lynch this weekend with my cousin… GREAT GAME):

• Assassins Creed
• Mass Effect
• Blacksite Area 51
• Blue Dragon
• Need for speed Pro Street

PC:
Really the only game I’m working on right now is Crysis, but I am too busy to go to the WGC to play that so I am really just waiting for my Mac Book Pro before I continue anything, but this is the backlog:

• Crysis
• Blacksite Area 51
• Unreal Tournament 3

Wii:
The wii is the only thing that I might have time for this week… heres my backlog:

• Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles
• Geometry Wars
• Link Crossbow Training
• Ghost Squad
• Medal of Honour 2

I had one of these fall on me last night:

It hurt like a total bitch. The whole right side of the top of my head is bumpy and I might have sprained my right hand… not the fingers but the top of the hand; it hurts when I move my index and middle finger. I might of blacked out when it happened cause I only remember my girlfriend screaming and then her moving it off me. I was at a concurrent education party and someone ran into it. It hurt; I can’t stress that enough. Luckily though no drinking glasses or seeing glasses broke! It was very surprising because it fell right on them! Either way I made it through the night so I’m OK.

I just like to state that this entire series of blog posts is essentially be boasting that I am getting a Mac Book Pro. I am ridiculously lucky, thankful and excited… now that I got that out of the way allow me to start this story off.

It all started in art class; recently I have been doing a lot of different work on Mac’s, mainly video editing, animation, programming in opengl etc. I have been looking at getting a new laptop for some time now; the last time I got a laptop was my final year of high school which was roughly 5 years ago. The laptop I received was 200 dollars off EBaY and… well probably stolen… it wasn’t the greatest of its kind. Unfortunately as most of you already know Apple products are VERY expensive. The laptop I am getting retails at about 2799… so pretty much 3000 dollars after tax and shipping. This is a big turn down for someone like me who is really into things like multimedia development. On top of it all Mac’s now use the Intel chipset so you can fully emulate Windows if I ever wanted to play any video games on the run. This laptop is better than my home PC so I’m assuming that will soon be phased out; also means I don’t have to buy a new processor anytime soon.

My friend Pat works for Apple, he gets a 15% discount on all products so I was planning on buying it through him… its better than the 10% student discount. So I started to save money. Aparently my parents found out about this “saving of money” and decided it would be a good present to pay for my macbook. Yes like I stated before, I am lucky, spoiled even… but anyone would accept such an offer. I still have to pay for half but I basically pay my Dad 100 dollars a month. I brought this up with Pat and he said if I am getting a Mac Book Pro you might as well get whats called the ADC Student discount. It works like this:

You first sign up for a one time membership fee of 199 dollars this allows you into the developers program and student program on proof of enrollment and citizenship. After you pay this 199 dollar fee you get a one time 25% discount on any Apple based system! I did the math and the 199 dollar fee is worth it… instead of getting 300 dollars off I end up getting 400 dollars off; it helps! So I purchased the ADC Student membership and awaited emails.

This morning I found out that I needed to fax my citizenship and proof of enrollment to Apple. I did this at work, I attached a cover letter, photocopies of my drivers license and student card, and finally the course printout of the courses I am registered in for Winter 2008. I have yet to hear back from Apple to verify my account… so now I wait.

Imagine this scenario. You are headed home from school/work ready to wind down and get into one of those brand new video games you just picked up. After starting the game you notice you have to create an “account”; OK, fine… account created, many games these days have profiles. Then proceeding to click the singleplayer/campaign button you are confronted with something you haven’t seen before. There lyes two buttons before you, start LAN campaign, start online campaign; intrigued you click “Start Online Campaign” and then click “Public Game”. You are slightly confused… you’ve never seen the word “online” associated with singleplayer, but your mind is racing! Where is this going? Will you be suddenly transported to an online community based system only to scream “No!!!! NOT ANOTHER MMO!” Strangely, you start to see a cut screen, then an in game cut screen, then a mission selector screen. You say to yourself “This isn’t online at all! I was fooled!”, but you are somewhat relieved; you came home to play a singleplayer campaign and now you have the opportunity. The first level begins, you follow the objectives, you kill bad guys, you are having fun when suddenly you get owned by a bad guy is surprisingly better than you. This bad guy’s actions are not like the others, he moves quicker, he shoots straighter, he seems…. smarter. Confronted with a challenge you adjust yourself in your seat and start taking the game a little more seriously. Suddenly the bad guy speaks? He says “LOL pwned”, strange you say to yourself; the game developers have finally coded bots who speak to you. You continue, he proceeds to say “Are you there?”… you respond “Um… hi?”… he replys! This once thought bot is really a human being… one who has joined your singleplayer campaign. It turns out you have really created a mini-server one for others across the world to join, you are following your own campaign, you pick the missions, you still get to see the cut screens, but others can join! What a remarkable scenario… this is Unreal Tournament 3.

Upon playing I was stunned by the way Unreal Tournament 3 handles singleplayer. When you start a single player campaign you are actually starting a mini-server where you are the host. Players can choose to join your server or start their own, if they join your server they pick up where you are in the game. You control the mission maps, so you control which mission to go to next, and you continue to make progress on your account. Players can come and go as they wish which adds for an enjoyable interactive environment. This isn’t very hard to accomplish with a game like Unreal Tournament where every singleplayer level is essentially a multiplayer level with bots, but what if a concept like this was applied to a game like say… Half-Life?

Imagine playing your favourite singleplayer game and having someone jump right into the fray? This would be excellent with games likes Call of Duty or any war simulation where you could have multiple soldiers on the battlefield. To top it all off, imagine if it was totally random and unavoidable! Just think about it… you go to continue your campaign in the newest WW2 shooter and the game will attempt to find other people playing the same part of the campaign as you. If it does you can join up with them and help fight those evil Nazi’s; if not your client will attempt to make its own server and put you as the host.

Like anything in life there are people sure to complain to a system like this so why not have conventional singleplayer and networked singleplayer! If any game designers are reading this post then please hear my words… Coop is the WAVE OF THE FUTURE; take notes from Unreal Tournament 3 and expand upon it! Innovation people.. that’s what this industry needs to move forward into next gen!

Three great first person shooters are on my scope right now. I just got my greedy little hands on Unreal Tournament 3; I had the German version the other week, but refused to play it… but now… now my friends I have the English version and I am ready to pwn. We have been seeing media for this game for as long as I can remember and I am finally ready to make decisions on my own! The game is supposed to have amazing graphics and AI, but how does it favour coming so late into the game, against I.Ps like Crysis and COD4. Either way I am ready to mark another chapter into my Unreal book.

The release of UT3 couldn’t of came at a better time. Last night I just finished Soldier of Fortune Payback. Activision decided SoF wasn’t worthy enough for a full development team and put the title under Activision “Value” development. This really grinds my gears! Soldier of Fortune was HUGE when I was a child, with all its blowing off limbs, mindless violence and infinite bots coming out of every corner you could possibly imagine. Now its a second class citizen! A cast-a-way; something only to see in the bargain bins of Walmart! But no, this game is INCREDIBLE straight hardcore action with really good graphics and of course more mindless violence and limb blowing offing. The game starts out where you left off in the previous SoF’s; you are still pissed about your partner getting killed and now you are here for… well payback. You are instantly thrown into the fray fighting Americas favourite enemy… Iraq; trying to track down some weapon dealer and then heading to Asia to fight Americas second favourite enemy, Koreans… all very stereotypical. But what do you expect from Soldier of Fortune?! With Duke Nukem forever taking… well forever games need new Bruce Willis American Heroes. There’s nothing to say about the multiplayer of SoF:PB its just like anything you could expect from any old school first person shooter, you got your regular deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag and the subsets of the two. If you are looking to spend a couple of hours in a video game Soldier of Fortune would definitly be the way to go. Soldier of Fortune Payback has all the great qualities of the Soldier of Fortunes before it, plus better graphics and even better limb gibbing.

Lastly on my list is Crysis… I’ve been playing this game on and off for the past couple of days. I am making a valient effort to beat it, but it is a very very hellishly long game! I’ll keep you dudes and dudettes updated on when i finally do beat it, but guarenteed it won’t be for a while. Unreal Tournament 3 here I COME!!!