May 2009 Archives

It turns out that the demo of L4D showcased about 80% of the full game, which (imho) failed to offer a dynamic range of gameplay elements. Killing Floor is the latest effort by Tripwire Interactive, which made the gritty WWII simulation-FPS Red Orchestra into a stand-alone product. I bought RO hoping to play it with my friends, since it was like multiplayer Ghost Recon in WW2... which should have been a triple-dose of hot keywords.

Instead, the game failed to hold our attention and we stopped playing it at large after like, two weeks. I went back to play it again, several years after the fact, and found that it was a husk of what it used to be, which is very sad.

The game itself is really fun! ... but a majority of the servers are now empty, or filled with bots along with software mods that falsify the number of players in the server list. There was one server I found that was full with 22 players, but the only other game I found was an 8v8 populated by bots and at the highest count, 4 human players. The mechanics of it were really fun, though, and approaching it with the mindset that this was a war-sim rather than it being DOD:S really brought out some of the fun.

So, I like Red Orchestra, and I had to uninstall it because I couldn't find anyone that played it anymore. It was some nostalgia that Killing Floor made me think of.

With the release of KF (and a pre-order at the price of $15), I unlocked the game when I could at the CSULB cafeteria and plugged away at a round with some random blokes off the internet. The game is leaving a nice impression, and I'm happy with it- but wondering how long it will last. There is more depth in this game than L4D and the weapons feel much better to handle. I also like that there is a variety of weapons, including melees, and each one (even the starting Beretta) has a solid feel to it.

Girls:

Sonata

Aria

Remi

Cadence

Harmony

Allegra

Lyric

Boys:

Beat

Riff

Cadence (Caden for short?)

Ostinato (Austin for short?)

The boys' names all sound very fobby. Haha.

I wasn't quite expecting such a cool movie. It was a big release, and my main personal draw to watch the movie was to see Zachary Quinto as Spock, but the fascination of seeing Sylar on the big screen quickly faded. I think I decided this movie was awesome about 2 minutes into it when the huge ship came out of warp and totally dwarfed the Starfleet vessel.

Windows 7 RC1 is awesome. MacBook Pro still freezes while browsing websites on it, but performance in general seems to be up. My emulators are running better than before... or so it'd seem. I was able to go through 6 run-throughs of SFIII - 3rd Strike without freezing, so I see it as a good sign.

Star Trek was way way cooler than Wolverine. >:( and the first movie since like... 300 that I feel is worth owning. But even 300's glamour faded away after some time, especially since all the awesome scenes in it were on Youtube. Star Trek's draw to me is the scenery and characters, and continues to be entertaining throughout the entire movie (vs. 300 which was mainly about the action pieces). I totally want to show this to my mom, who used to watch Star Trek.

Macs are amazing products and well designed around the consumer experience. They're good, just expensive. PC's are more robust in terms of computer hardware and software compatibility. So they are both good things.

There's no reason to be an "elitist" on either side, aside from pride. And that's ridiculous.