Creepy bastards, when you get down to it

Has anyone ever watched an insect, or more specificly an Ant, crawl around? They're bloody fascinating!

Few things I want to get to your attention,
Thor's Kitchen - Little 5 minute (if that) skits. Quite funny.
Oblivious Films - WoW Machinima. The 'The Grind: Halloween Special' is especially funny.

Finally, Tomorrow (Unless I'm mistaken) is the official release for Minecraft Beta Survival Mode.

For those who are wondering at home, I'll leave the 'what's the title referencing' question up to you. The options are:
- Ants
- Thor's Kitchen cast
- WoW Machinima makers
- Minecraft players

UPDATE
At the time of writing, my Warrior is finally fully Plated out. Even better, he's finally gaining some serious experiance. I suspect if I keep up the good work he could well be 53 by the end of the night.

...And here lies the problem.

So, I'm running around as my Shaman, and come across a Warrior who just so happens to be doing the same quest as I. So I said to myself this is good.

So, we get to Northwatch Hold and start cleaving our way through the many squishy humans, and I think, "Great, he's compentent. Rare these days."
But then we get to one of the towers (holding Fairmount I believe) and he stops short of the entrance.

Seconds pass and it dawns on me - He wants me to go first.

Now, ordinarily I have no problem with this, but he's two levels higher than me. Sure enough, when I ran into the tower and got all the aggro, he went in and starting attacking the various enemies.
Now, I'm not an oxford scholar.
But I'm not a bloody idiot, either. You never, ever let the healer go first, with he possible exeption of a Paladin. I sure as hell wouldn't make the guy who's job it is to keep me alive go out in front and get a nice big helping of damage in his/her face, because that's the sort of thing that gets you healer-less and it's really difficult to do a instance without one.
So, stupidly, I played his little game, taking all the damage and having him arrive a few seconds into combat, when I had my health vurtually halved by the time he got there. I kept thinking, 'Sorry i died, i've never played with a tank who didn't do his flakin* job'. Thank god I'm a resto Shaman, because the reduced time to cast Healing Wave on myself really helped. It's mind boggling to think what someone could possibly achive by sending the healer out in front. Nobody else can res or heal (except maybe Warlocks), so they dying really isn't a good thing. And most of them also buff, so you lose that too.
You know what the deal was? He was talking to his goddamned GM. I wanted to scream. And not the normal kind of male scream, the kind of scream that makes the neighbours call the police because they think a woman has been murdered.

So, this little incident has prompted me to write a "What a good ____ does and doesn't do" for a future post/s, which should, hopefully, give (I'm hesitent to use the word 'stupid;, but i'm going to do so anyway) players, especially those who rolled Healers, an idea of what your job is and isn't.

* 'Flakin' is courtesy of Oxhorn, of Oxhorn Brand Movies.

Discovery Time!

I just realized something.
This is the only planet that we have as a race. We can't just fire off onto distant planets, because A, we don't have the technology and B, we don't know any other planet that can properly sustain human life.

So, humanity, we fuck Earth up, we lose. Forever.

Veering off the dark and edgy path for just a moment, I would like to start a new semi-section I like to call, "Don't you hate it when...?"

Don't you hate it when...
- Your freind threatens to steal your blog posts?
- You die for the upteenth billionth time in WoW trying to kill this ONE GUY?
- The private Minecraft server is never up?
- The Alliance kicks your ass in the Battleground for the thrid time in a row?
- You return to the Crossroads only to find the Flight Master dead?
- You don't play WoW and can never truely understand what I'm talking about?

Update
I don't get it, Blizzard. What's with the new patch? I remember when you had to work for your mount. Now, it costs a measly 5 gold training, and that isn't counting reputation. And whats with the ammo deal? Yes, letting the ammunition stack to a thousand was a well deserved improvment, but making Quivers useless? I dread to think what's next. I just hope they don't make it too easy, because then the fun goes away, but even more the sense of accomplishment goes away. They should have lowered the price for flying mounts. 5,000 fucking gold for a flying training? Who has that kind of cash lying around?

Can't wait for September 1st. Yes, I have joined the legion of people who bought Minecraft. I gave my character green tinted goggles I drew in paint. I feel so special.

On another subject, I'm working on things for WoW. Being a lifelong dream to work at blizzard, over the years I'm slowly going to build up a portfolio of work related to that of a games designer. It makes sense when you think about it. (All 'work' posted here copyright of me, and if you steal it I have a skinnin' knife in my desk drawer that needs sharpening.)

I suppose I'd better find something worth posting. Umm...
Oooh! Fresh from Slashdot, 'Swedish authorities attempt Pirate Bay shutdown. Yes, the swedish government wanted to fine TPB's primary bandwidth supplier with a fine most hefty. Now, I don't know what they where hoping to acheive with this, because TPB has evaded getting shut down for so long, why would they let themselves die now? so, they simply relocated (I still assume in Sweden, although they may have moved to it's southern reaches) and is back on it's feet. And just to show the people who tried to shut them down how proud they are for trying, they plan on sending them t-shirts mocking them. It's all explained in the article.
And apparently, Starcraft II Beta signups! Hell, it's about time. The Beta assumes that blizzard are starting to get underway with SCII, and that we may see it in the not too distant future.

And for your listening pleasure;
Something for the Pain - Bon Jovi (One of my current top 5 songs)
Fast & Furious Score Soundtrack
Transformers: ROTF Score Soundtrack

UPDATE
Gotta love Google. I just posted the, um, post, and saw a Yellow Pages ad that directed me to a list of knife sharpening services in wellington. Bookmarked.

CATACLYSM! HOORAY!

Just in case you where living under a rock, World of Warcraft: Cataclysm is happening. I got the news late, so I can hardly say you heard it first from me. For those who don't know, Cataclysm is hurling the world of Azeroth down a flight of stairs. The entire planet will undergo a massive change, and it's going to be fucking awesome. Reserve your names for Worgen characters NOW, or they will go. I have, and I already have a Tauren Pally name. Also wouldn't be a bad idea to secure a Goblin name, too.

I have nothing to put here at the moment, so I'm going to list my favourite Webcomics.
1. Qyestionable Content - Slice of Life. Well drawn and usually funny or witty. Good read.
2. LFG Comic - Some may mistake the comic to be set in WoW, but I can't say that it is. It's set in it's own universe, with similarities to WoW, but after reading it it's clearly not WoW.
3. XKCD - I can't really describe it. It's just awesome.
4. Penny Arcade - Always fun to read, especially if your into a gamer.
5. Cyanide and Happyness - Great fun. Always a joy to read just to see what boundry they'll cross next.
6. Concerned - A comic made with Garry's Mod. Quite funny, if you know how the Half Life 2 story goes. Otherwise non fans will find it hard to understand.
7. Ctrl Alt Del - This use to be higher, but it, in my mind, degenerated into a shameful Slice of Life comic.
8. 6X9 College - This used to be quite a bit higher, but then their archive screwed itself over and they lost it all. It's (probably) dead, but still a good read and surprisingly high quality art.
Aaaaand thats it. I'm sure there's another one there, but i can't for the life of me remember what it's called.

New WOW Expansion?

Let me get the uninteresting thing out of the way first, found my old collection of Bon Jovi song. Love that band.

Now...

The new potential speculated WOW expansion, or TNPSWOWE, for short. For those who haven't read it, Here it is. Now, I will applaude Blizzard if they do this. It is an awesome idea, revamping Azeroth, and the new races will be an absolute joy to play. If they do it. And if listening to Yahtzee has taught me anything, hyping yourself up for something that might not actually exist sets yourself up for serious dissapointment. I think Blizzard have sort of shot themselves in the foot here, because whether it makes it to the stores or not people will leave, either because they don't like the idea of Azeroth screwed in the rear or whatever their pathetic excuse is, and if it never makes it the people that where anticipating the expansion will terminate their accounts and their lives, and not even the Scroll of Ressurection can bring them back.

One of the things that caught my eye was some old classes introduced to the old races. Let me run you through them:
Human Hunter - This is the only one I'm one hundred percent on-board with. Personally, it's about frickin' time the humans got hunters. They get Elwyn forest, and for what? To have all those wolves and bears go untamed?
Orc Mage - Waiting for the punchline? So was I until I realized they were serious. I remember reading somewhere that Orcs have really low starting Intellect, so they aren't very good casters to begin with. An orc mage could probably work from a Lore perspective, but maybe not from a game perspective.
Night Elf Mage - This is a stupid idea from someone who didn't bother reading up on Night Elf lore. The Qeul'dorei (a fancy word for High Elves or Blood Elves) used magic carelessly and let the burning legion into the world which really fucked Azeroth up somewhat, to the Kal'dorei (Fancy word for Night Elves) decided they were gonna turn away from Arcane power and focus on important things. I guess it could work, maybe, from a lore perspective. It could probably work from a gameplay perspective, too.
Dwarf Mage - I don't see much of a problem with Dwarf Mages. It makes sense when you think about it; Dwarves live next to Gnomes, Gnomes teach arcane magic to Dwarves, some Dwarves learn it further, etc.
Blood Elf Warrior - Why they didn't come out with BE warriors eairlier sort of surprised me, but I don't think anyone really cares. BEs have Paladins which are better anyway.
Dwarf Shaman - Absolutly. Most likely the Dwarf Shamans in question hail from the Wildhammer tribe. Sticking with that story, it could easily work.
Forsaken Hunter - This only makes sense because Humans would be hunters. Look closely at the Forsaken classes and you'll see they have everything that the humans have save Paladins. They get hunters to continue that trend.
Tauren Paladin - Now, from a lore perspective, Tauren Palis probably couldn't and wouldn't work. But, from a gameplay perspective, they totally could. Tauren would just need more Intellect items than everybody else to make it worth while. Tauren's are my favoutire race, Paladins are my favoutite class...
Tauren Priest - I can see this working from a lore perspective. Tauren 'healers' exist somewhere in the Warcraft universe, so it isn't much of a problem. Again, the Int problem might screw them over, but no reason why they couldn't, EXCEPT these few things:
1. Tauren already have Shamans and Druids. Do they really need a third healer class?
2. Tauren have the track record of the only race that doesn't have to wear cloth. Do Blizzard dare take that away from them?
3. The image of a tauren standing in the background healing everybody just strikes me as stupid. The tauren has the most health (starting health, at least) of any race, so why not let them use it?
Gnome Preist - Refer to comments about Dwarf Mages, but switch the races around and make it The Light, not Arcane magic.
Troll Druid - At first I thought 'This is the stupidest idea yet!' But then I dwelled on it for a while, and thought if they changed druids enough, maybe, possibly, it could work with trolls. But to offset it, they would have to give an Alliance race druids. Maybe the Worgen get druids. Would be interesting to see.

Speaking of which, I can't wait to see what they do with the Worgen, Worgen being the new alliance race. Now, a lot of people where confused by this. Worgen are badass werewolves, they don't belong with the puny alliance. This can be explained with two reasons:
1. Worgen are essentially humans, they can just go into 'Worgen' form, and
2. The alliance despratly needs some more Badassery. The draenei wasn't quite enough, I'm afraid.

The whole revamping of Azeroth is a bit exciting. Especially if their going to change Orgrimmar. And apparently their going to screw with the barrens, Durotar, Thousand Needles, and I imagine all the other places we know and love. Or hate, depending on your situation and alliegance.

Malgebra, Pod Racer and Evony, oh my!

Well, I've learned lots of things. For one, I've learnt that I hate Algebra (even though, for some demented reason, I'm somewhat good at it) and that most of the more 'advanced' equations are extremely confusing and in some ways unintuitive. Even worse is when people who know Algebra go 'Oh look at that pissant, he's trying to do Algebra,' and then they all collapse in poncy laughter. So, I have decided to make my own semi mathmatical subject: Malgebra.

Here are some example Malgebra equations.
1. Microwave6 + Oven3
2. Toaster(Squared) - Hair Dryer5
3. -Laundry Basket8 X -Wall Clock(Squared)
Well, it makes sense to ME.

Moving right along...

I have recently stumbled upon an old copy of Star Wars Episode 1: Racer. Now, my machine being a XP, my graphics card being reasonably new, ect, when I ran it it worked smoothly. I was as surprised, if not more, than you. But then I got to the actual race part of the game and it threw up a blank screen and froze the instant the countdown finished. It's a real shame, because this just so happens to be on my 'favourite games ever' list, sitting in the last five segment, but still.

So, I was stoked when I found This. This site contains a file called 'SWEP1RCR.EXE'. Replace it with the one already in the games folder and BAM your back in the game.
Now if only I could get MDK (Also in my top 10, sitting snugly on 5) to run...

On an unrelated note, Has anybody seen those ads floating around the net for a game called 'Breasts', otherwise known as Evony? well, if you had been paying attention over the last few months, you would have seen a constant decline in it's advertising. Originally, it had a guy in armour. Pretty original, considering that it's what most of these free-online-browser-based-games-set-in-medieval-times use. So consequently, they probably wern't getting much traffic. So, the team at Evony decided they needed a more attention grabbing ad, and decided to rough up a 3D model of what I imagine was a queen and had a sword point focusing directly on her... um, cleavage. But that wasn't enough, so they axed that ad and brought out one with two women, probably 16 to 20, posing not in a seriously unwholesome way, but in a way that would probably grab some pubescent kid's attention. BUT, that still wasn't enough for the Evony team, so they rolled out an ad with some woman wearing little to cover the sacks of flesh that she was parading about, and even worse it was sporting the words "Start your journey, my lord." That was bad, and you can still catch these ads today. BUT OH NO, it simply couldn't stop there. The next ad included a woman (may have been CG, I'm not sure) wearing a nightatire far, far to tight for her sporting the same words. Up to that point, if you looked past the main selling point of the ad, you could see that it was advertising Evony.com. BUT THEY DIDN'T STOP THERE, because the next ad they released featured a shot of a woman cut just above the waist wearing a tight-ish white thing with the 'start your journey now, my lord' words, but tragicly not actually advertising the fucking game the ad is supposed to be advertising. I guess I missed the memo that stated that ads need not advertise the product and can just show a chest of an attractive woman, because that's clearly the way Evony is handling it. The last 'new' ad I saw was one that looked similar to that of the previous one but simply pictured the chest of something wearing a 'leopard skin' bra with a clearly oversised chest. It was at more or less this point that I gave up following the ads because I was afraid at what might come out next. And if you were wondering, no, I'm not kidding, a friend archived all these ads (from the first to the last) and all the examples I have presented you actually exist or existed on the internet.

Log entry #1

I would love to know what went through the heads of the people at Redux Beverages when they were making Cocaine. Yes, the drink Cocaine has graced NZ for the last, what, 5-6 months? I went on their website – and this is the funniest part – the slogan is “Cocaine: Energy Supplement”. Energy supplement? Give me a break. That’s like saying… actually, I don’t know what that’s like saying, but you can see where I’m coming from. Clearly, they decided on a ‘energy drink’ that would cause controversy. Either that or they where just being stupid like all humans are. You decide.

So, I’ve been playing Crysis recently. It’s actually pretty good for an FPS. I think the biggest thing the Crysis team worked on is the jaw-droppingly awesome graphics. On a scale to one to ten, the Crysis graphics are sitting on twenty. Lush scenery, detailed faces, water actually looks like water should. Then, we come to the combat.

As tradition with Cry games, the scenery doesn’t actually conceal you. It conceals the enemy pretty well though, especially at night when you can’t see a damn thing. The first thing I noticed is that the Koreans have hideously big health bars. I still have fond memories of Call of Duty 4 where enemies needed only 3 or 4 shots before they went down, if that, and a headshot was an instant kill. Crysis didn’t seem to grasp that, so trying to get a headshot or kill someone is extremely difficult. The enemies always duck under your targeting retical, and they must be wearing full heavy combat gear because body shots are about as effective as running up and spitting them in the face. Bear in mind that this is with the standard rifle you inevitably have to switch to. The shotgun is a one-hit-kill at close range, and the Precision Rifle is a one-hit-kill from any distance.

The suit powers are the only thing between you and certain death. Armour lets you absorb damage through your energy, which is critical in most fire fights because the enemies seem to do so much damage it’s the only thing keeping you alive. Strength lets you through further and harder (Basically the Musclemass power from Prototype), punch harder, and jump higher. Jumping higher becomes quite necessary in many places. Speed passively improves how fast you run, but when you sprint – my god you are fast! Unfortunately it only lasts for about 1 ½ seconds, so you can’t just charge around everywhere. Cloak is the last power you have, and it lets you become invisible while you sneak around everywhere. Be aware though, it’s only useful if you’re crouching, and I don’t recommend it for trying to lose a pursuer, ‘cause they already know where you are.

- - - UPDATE - - -

Ok, just finished Crysis. Damn, that game can be a bitch sometimes. Once you get inside the core, you never see another Korean. You combat the huge alien threat that the idiot Koreans uncovered.

Veering off course for a moment, I just had a look at our copy of Crysis: Warhead more closely. Turns out your not playing as Nomad in this. No, you’re playing Psycho, and I think it’s an entirely different story, not even remotely linked to the Crysis storyline.

People often ask me why I hate EA. Well, this is why. (Spoilers!) They end Crysis with You, Psycho and the woman (Can never remember her name) getting a call from none other than Prophet, and turns out he’s alive and well. Then Nomad goes “Turn around. We’re heading back.” And I was like ‘Awesome! I get to go back into the island in Warhead!’

I don’t think that’s the case. Certainly not with Nomad, I could have easily misread the blurb but it looks like I’ll be doing something totally different than what I wanted to do. Fuck you, EA.

Anyway.

I’m not too sure what I think about Crysis. It has some really difficult sections in it, even playing on Easy, and at least in two places you’ll run out of ammo and there’s very little to stock up on.

Having said that, the Island environment and overall graphics left me gawking in front of the screen, and the combat… actually the combat is a royal pain in the ass. Korean soldiers that have helmets deflect any headshot attempt (unless you have a Precision Rifle, but a Precision Rifle is more likely to instant kill them wherever you hit them), and trying to get a headshot with any weapon other than the Precision Rifle is nearly impossible, since I’m not aware of any ‘Hold Breath’ buttons. And as I probably mentioned earlier trying for body shots means spending a full magazine trying to take just one of the many, many bastards down. And as much as you think your suit is awesome and futuristic, that doesn’t make it any less resilient to bullets. Speaking of which, sometimes you die for absolutely no reason. Often you walk into fire without noticing (yes, apparently your Nanosuit doesn’t like fire. Or electrified water. Or fast moving projectiles) or perhaps you got hit by an enemy you just can’t see, or run over a mine that wasn't pointed out.

The aliens, believe it or not, are actually easier to fight. Not in the zero-G part of the Core they aren’t, but the aliens you fight outside of that, the biological machine aliens. A couple of well placed shotgun blasts will eliminate the smaller, ground-based aliens, and a few well placed shots from the Gauss Rifle will eliminate the larger airborne ones. Even the big bastard on the Aircraft Carrier can be taken down with several hits of the Gauss Rifle, or a few missiles as I best remember it. It is best to save the missiles for the really big bastard at the end of the level, though. The Gauss, while it does eventually punch through the armoured hatch on the… things underside. Then send a mini tactical nuke up the hatch, and KABOOM one roast boss about to come crashing down on the aircraft carrier.

I had trouble with the next bit, so let me help you out. Since your surrounded by fire (meaning you can't see straight ahead without looking upon towering flames), look straight at the boss. Are you looking? Good. Now, turn 90 degrees. Now switch to Speed mode and RUN. Be sure to save up a bit of sprint boost for leaping on to the VTOL aircraft ala Call of Duty 4.

So, in retrospect, I enjoyed Crysis. For all its flaws, there’s just something about it that makes me glad I bought it. (Well, I didn’t buy it, but shut up I’m trying to make a point here.) It’s definitely better than some FPSs out there, but I wouldn’t recommend it to unseasoned chicken veterans. As I may have said before, it isn’t an easy game by any means, and unless you’ve played several FPSs and gotten the hang of it (Bonus points if one of those FPSs was FarCry) you’ll be quitting to the menu screen before you can say Major Strickland.

On one last note, the new computer was working flawlessly up until about eight hours ago. It had it first crash today. I guess we are talking about a computer loaded with Vista here, so it wasn’t too much of a shock but it didn’t make me any less pissed off. First time was through Crysis, second was, again, through Crysis, third time was playing Assassin’s Creed. So now the new computer is stuck with an image of Altair in mid Leap of Faith. Goddamn Windows.

Heya bloggers, people who read blogs... and other people.

I've decided I'm going to start writing a blog as of thirty seconds ago. I've already written a log, but that's not online for all to see, wereas this is.

I suppose I should update the blog with all my log posts up to now. Yeah, lets do that.