the-inbetween.com

The Other "Big 2"

Uh, not Half-Life 2. I am getting an estimate on a machine done now, so if all goes well I'll be able to play that in the new year. Until then I'm going to have to take every one else's word.

No. The other "2" is Metroid Prime 2. I've managed to find a couple of hours -- somehow -- between work and multiplayer Halo 2 to play this and get some general impressions of the first bit of the game.

The main point is: this game is gorgeous. I don't mean this in terms of polygons pushed or dynamic lighting and shadow or bump-mapping or any other technical stats that uber PC-nerds get wet dreams over. Other games (though not many!) do those things better, but very, very few can claim to have the environmental richness that Metroid Prime 2 has. Every area you enter is different, fresh and feels alive -- Bungie's level designers take note.

A few other things that caught my eye (and ear):

• I like the updated scanning system. Instead of the weird "floating block" thing in Prime you get whole objects lighting up. In a colour coded way. So it's hard to miss them, and it's easy to see what types of object they are before (you can easily skip everything except red trigger items, pretty much), and it's easy to see if you have already scanned something, which is good as the scanning process is still, unfortunately, kinda slow.
• the motion design / overall design of the title screen is still real good (though not as good). It's a stupidly minor thing, but I notice things like that.
• the menu interface is inconceivably annoying. It's got this weird floating 3D molecule interface that makes picking anything a chore. It's like something from a online hipster-wanker's circa-2000 flash site. Ugh.
• music is cool. Still.
• Echoes doesn't seem to be particularly sequence-breakable, but they said the same thing about Prime when it first came out.

The game's good, but it's nothing new. If you absolutely hated the original, you're going to hate this. If not, and you want to see more, then you'll probably like it. That's not to say that's bad -- it certainly is the flavour of the season this year, "more of the same" -- just not super stellar.

My only hope is that Retro Studios gets to work on a truly original IP next. It'd be a shame to see them rehash Metroid. As good as it is, the series needs an extended break.

Halo 2 Quickie

I wanted to wait until I finish the single player campaign before rendering a verdict, but I've been playing too much multiplayer to get that done. I'm close though.

However, my quick impressions: the multiplayer is varied and great, the matchmaking is meh, the campaign is weak and more of the same, the story is average, the level design is still weak, and the graphics aren't even that great (with annoying popup in the cut-scenes.) But hey, the multiplayer is still fun... so long as you aren't waiting for the matchmaker to find a game.

So, the quickie verdict: above-average. Not quite the greatest game ever.

The bungie.net stat tracking is pretty damn nifty, though. Here are mine (yes, I've played a lot of games!) There do seem to be some discrepancies with the scoring and and the stats -- I don't understand my ranking in a few of the games -- but beside that, they offer RSS feeds of your games and a cool game viewer that shows where on a map you killed and got killed and who was involved. You have to be logged in to view those two features, but here is a view of one of my best games (which was also my last game. Improvement!)

Ravages of Time

I've been meaning to play Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for a long, um, time. It's supposed to be good.

Unfortunately, the more I hear about its sequel, the less I want to play the original. Playing The Sands of Time would feel like justification for UBISoft's crapufication of the series with The Warrior Within. With every new tidbit that they release, the sequel is rising so far up on the "Not to Play" list that it's crappiness is seeping onto the original.

The most recent announcement: they signed on Monica Bellucci and Godsmack, because nothing says "Persian" better than a nu-metal refugee and a big-boobed Italian "actress".

Hooray to UBISoft for rising to a high level of prominance -- upon which it took its rightful seat of mediocrity.

Halo 2 Before the Release

So Halo 2 is to be released at midnight (I'm not touching THAT topic again), and all the ads...er, reviews for the game are flowing in. The basic consensus is that the hype makers are saying that Halo 2's hype meets their daily hype quota requirements. HYPE!!!

I'm so annoyed by the state of commercial game reviews that I'm not going to bother reading them. I have heard, through review hearsay, that a lot of the criticisms against the original Halo are repeated. Yet, despite this, they still go on and award seemingly perfect scores.

The campaign is too short, the levels are not focused, the objectives repetitive... we give it 345%!!!!

The recent reviews of GTA:SA and Halo 2 and Katamari Damacy have killed the slightest most insignificant interest I had in what these sites have to say about a game's quality.

I think I'll save those judgements for my peers, for independent sites, and for myself.

Why do I lump Katamari Damacy in with GTA:SA and Halo 2? Because it's the inverse of the same problem. They rave about the game -- the fun, the originality, the whimsy -- and then mention one or two "minor" issues. In the other two games, that meant a score in the (assinine) 95-100% range. In Katamari Damacy, that meant a score in the 85%-90% range. For no apparent reason. Maybe it would have scored more if, instead of cookies and families and cats, you got to roll over grenades and army men and tanks and when you'd rollover a landmine, it would explode in a gigantic shower of blood!!!

I'd buy that.

Walk Home

The walk home from work isn't a particularly long one, but when you are walking face-first into the wind on a cold day, it can be a difficult one. Maybe it's a bit macho, maybe a bit of a deathwish, but I walked the entire way without even bothering to cover up or buckle the jacket. My philosophy is that if you can't tough it out in November+December, then you are not going to be able to survive January+February. Get that thick skin going early.

I did stop at an Ethiopian (I think) restaurant on the way, though. Leaving the desert-y decor and the wooden camel statues and the general "should be hotter than it is" feel, I was promptly brought back to the cold harsh Canadian reality. What did I see? Very very very light and brief, but definite snow flurries. Oh yeah.

Election dollars

The American Election is over, and the people -- the ones that didn't have their votes thrown away or eaten by voting machines -- have spoken. They said "four more years." From a strictly Canadian perspective, I do have to say that it has its bright spots:

Hell, come 2008 (that feels like such a long time), our good ole Canadian dollar might even -- maybe -- break even. What a good day for imports and eBay that will be. Not that it's a bad day now, with the dollar approaching 85 cents, but the higher the better (unless, of course, you're an exporter.)

To those down south, it's not much consolation. However, to those thinking of leaving Red America for Blue Canada: don't. It's not that we don't want you here, it's just that we'd appreciate it more if you stayed there and tried to fix that mess while it's still fixable. Besides, as the joke goes, do you really want to experience your foreign policy first hand? Didn't think so.

Grand Theft Metropolis

Deja Vu.

I'm glad that Grand Theft Auto doesn't render itself within the confines of a real city (yes, I realize that there was a GTA:London game, but let's stick with the GTA3 dynasty). Instead, it chooses an abstracted approximation (and spoof) of a real metropolis for its setting. Cities that seem familiar and have recognizable structures and architecture, but are still different and fresh. Cities that are the constructs of level designers rather than city planners.

Not because of any social criticisms or gameplay effects or anything of the sort, but because of the fact that, well, real cities are boring. Or, at least, simulations of real cities.

(Note: I have not played The Getaway or Streets of LA)

Election Day

It's Election Day south of the border, and it shouldn't pass without at least a mention. All I have to say is: "Hey you! Americans! Don't fuck up."

Then I saw all the news of voting irregularities, lost votes, intimidation, fraud, e-voting failures, and I had to ask: "hey man, what the fuck?"

The self-described leader of the democratic world has a democratic process on par with the Ukraine (funny aside: before the Ukranian election, the US threatened action against the Ukraine if there'd be any vote tampering. hah! Get your own affairs in order before meddling with others'.)

Four years later, and I'm still confused as to why it's so hard to count votes in the US. Here we use a very complicated "MARK AN X ON PAPER" scheme, and we had very few problems and most everything -- enough to have a clear result -- was tabulated before the night. No stupid crashing or hackable Diebold machines. No touch-screens registering the wrong vote. No hanging chads. No bad memory cards (what are they voting on? A Playstation?). None of that. Just an "X" on paper.

Why do we do it like that? Because it works.

A Novel Weblog

Well, that whole "write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November" thing is starting again, and I shall not partake. I attempted to try last year, only to fall short by 99.5%. Basically, my story was "A guy walks into town."

What happened next was left as an exercise to the reader.

The thought of trying again in 2004 crossed my mind. The rational thing would be to set my goals low, like beating last year's output rather than the lofty 50,000 word limit. This way, if I keep it up, I should be able to get to 50k by 2050. Unfortunately, no matter how reasonable the goal might seem, writing any form of fiction remains an alien concept to me.

I can visualize worlds and systems and social structures and schemes and plots and intrigues and characters, but I can't piece them together into something interesting. Yet, in four+ years, I've managed to write thousands of words about absolutely nothing.

The final count for words written here in the month of October is around 2,500. Not bad, considering my low posting frequency. If I can quadruple my posting frequency, I should be able to reach 10,000 easy. Get it done quick enough, and that 50,000 *might* start feeling mighty close.

No one can be seriously expected to write a "good" novel in a month, and if that's the case then the main -- simple -- purpose of NaNoWriMo is to get yourself to write more. To that end, there's no difference whether the output is a historical epic or a modern tale of alienation or a discussion about what beers you bought the other day (Okocim!)

So, uh, here's the start of my attempt.

Invisible Walls and Magical Sound Showers

Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the same old GTA3 under a different disguise and with some additional welcome tweaks to the gameplay (swimming!). It's yet another upgrade rather than a sequel, and many of the core, underlying problems with the design remain. But, regardless of that, its still enjoyable.

Enjoyable, but not necessarily fun. I've spent a few hours with the game already and I have yet to complete anything more than three missions. Instead, that time was spent exploring the streets of Los Santos, the seedy ghettos, the fancy attriums, the alleyways, the countrysides, the rivers, etc.

The worst aspect of the game, to me, is the fact that your explorations of this massive three-city complex are restricted by forced barriers* -- yet again! -- until you complete X number of missions. For me, the appeal of GTA always had more to do with the sandboxed nature of its world than the actual game. The "fun" came from exploring the well designed and well laid out cities and neighbourhoods, rather than from "playing" it. GTA appealed to my sense of exploration and discovery more than my playfulness and competitiveness.

And that's fine.

And I'm sure there are people out there that feel completely different about this, and it's a credit to Rockstar's design that it can appeal for such vastly diverging reasons. To me, though, it's a good experience, but it's not inherently "fun".

So, given the chance, I've been playing more Outrun 2 over the last couple of days than GTA. I severely doubt that I'll play that as much and for as long as I will play GTA, but in the meantime it's a nice, quick, fluffy experience. Fun in short bursts.

* The thing with the bridge barriers in San Andreas is that, with the addition of swimming, you can just cross via the river. BUT, seeing the pointlessness of the barriers with this ability, Rockstar saw fit to automatically raise your wanted level to four stars when you set foot on land you're not supposed to be on. Which is about as non-sensical as invisible walls. Naturally, most of my time with GTA has been spent trying to circumvent this limitation and explore the other two towns. Every attempt has, so far, resulted in death... but I did make it close to a pay-n-spray once.

Screw the missions. I'll set my own goals.

Seems like Rockstar thought the same thing all those years ago.