Entries from October 2005 ↓

Over the weekend I decided to finally give ‘Guild Wars’ (http://www.guildwars.com ) a try. I haven’t played ‘WoW’ since it went gold. Playing in the beta test was fun but, not fun enough to get me to pay $49 for the game AND pay every month just to play. No amount of added content is worth that to me. Maybe I’m just cheap. *shrug*

Anyway, so I made myself a character, a necromancer/warrior, named Shindakun Koji. You have to have a first and last name in the game so I used my nick as a family name and ‘Koji’ comes from Suzuki Koji, author of ‘Ringu’. Anyway, I’ve been half playing today at work so I could finish the intro section of the game and move into what I guess is the main story arch. I did every quest I could find and got my character up to level seven. Now, it’s time to get started on some new quests.

So far it’s a pretty cool game. And I’ve got a couple of hours left here in the office so I’m going back to playing.

A couple of days ago I was talking about the Pandora ( http://www.pandora.com ) music service that Brinstar ( http://acidforblood.blogspot.com ) brought to my attention. Well, I’ve finally had a chance to get back and take a deeper look at it. It’s a nice little package which uses Macromedia Flash to download and play songs that match with my request. The matching back end is awesome! It does a great job of finding similar tunes. The last.fm ( http://www.last.fm ) system can’t touch this at all.

Well, after checking it out for a couple of days it turns out that I used my ten hour free trial. What to do? There are two subscription choices: annual (12 months of unlimited use for $36) and quarterly (3 months of unlimited use for $12). I think we can see where the deal is…

So, in the interest of exploring the web application that makes this tick I started digging. I knew I wasn’t supposed (well according to the terms of service anyway) to disassemble the flash file they were using to play the MP3s. Since that was out I decided the easiest thing to do would be to use a proxy server on my local machine to watch the ‘conversation’ between my computer and *.pandora.com. I have to admit after watching it work for a few seconds I already knew I could trick the flash application into thinking I had logged on to the service. The flash seems to be coded to only expect a couple of different answers from the server so with two small changes to the reply from the server I was ‘logged in’ and to my surprise the rest of the application continues to work flawlessly - the music plays on.

During the dig I was able to see the method that they get the MP3s to the computer and it’s just a web address - all of the files are world readable with any web browser - if you know where to look or the url to type. Of course, it’s not nice to steal MP3s from poorly coded web apps now is it?

I’ll probably go into some more detail later but it’s time to go to the bar.

During the Prologue section of ‘Dark Corners of the Earth’ I took the time to jot down a couple of notes so I would be able to post my first impressions. Later on, I went back later and took some screen shots to put up with this post. In an effort not to spoil too much I won’t talk about the story if possible. One thing of note that I some how forgot to write down at the time was the fact that the game takes several minutes to cache a bunch of stuff to the Xbox hard drive so be prepared for that. Thank god it only does it once.

I’ll go through this in the order of my notes - the first note was “OMFG it’s out!”. If your read the other post about the game you can see the warning screen that comes up in the beginning. Believe it! Play the game in the dark. The game title screen is very cool with the sea in the background and some fitting music to round it out. Upon starting the game you are treated to a sequence which takes place in Arkham Asylum. The first thing I noticed was that the models well not perfect are passable and are decent. The ‘dust and scratches’ film effect gave it the nice old quality I think the developers where going for. The graphics aren’t anything special but they get the job done.

Jacks cell in the asylum looks terrific. There are bloody runes everywhere and Jack sits writing in his diary. After the asylum movie ends we change locations and here is the first time that we get to hear the voice actors. The voice portion of the game isn’t going to win any awards but it’s ok. Once the opening movies are over we are finally in control of Jack. It’s a pretty standard default controller setup, with the left thumbstick for movement, right thumbstick for camera movement, X for jump, A for action/use, and B for crouch.

One thing I noticed that doesn’t come across well in the screen shots is they included the effect of water hitting the screen and rolling off of it - nothing new but it’s a nice touch.

The first time you get to experience a sanity effect is pretty interesting. The game changes almost everything: sounds are drawn out (slowed down), the screen has all sorts of different effects (zooming in and out, fading in and out, colors fading, etc.). You really have to play it for the best experience.

That’s it for part one of my first impressions list. I’m on my way to the g/f’s maybe I’ll post the second half from Albany…

Maybe I’ll come up with a proper ‘review’ later. For now, though, it’s late and I have to work tomorrow. So, everyone go buy ‘Dark Corners of the Earth’ as soon as possible. Till then here is a teaser picture.

Everything is so dark my screen shots haven’t been coming out the best. I think I need a new monitor or I better tweak my video settings a bit.

And all it took was five years… This link was sitting in my e-mail this morning:

*edit - broken link*

Sometime back in 2000 a friend of mine was very excited to tell me about an upcoming game he’d just heard about. It seemed someone was finally going to make another game based on HP Lovecraft’s ‘Cthulhu Mythos’. Being a huge Lovecraft fan I couldn’t wait! And to make it better a few days (if I remember correctly) later I found out that the developer ( http://www.headfirst.co.uk ) also had the rights to ‘Battle of the Planets’ aka ‘G-Force’!

It was almost too good to be true: a survival horror game base on Lovecraft’s writings with co-op multiplayer?!
( http://pc.ign.com/articles/074/074960p1.html ) And to make it better there would be sanity effects and a hud-less display. This game sounded like it was going to be a winner in my book! After the initial excitement wore off the game slipped off my radar, I figured I’d hear a ‘Gone Gold’ announcement.

Fast forward to May of 2002 when news came out that then publisher Fishtank/Ravensburger had been purchased by JoWood. They announced that CoC was seriously delayed ( http://www.shacknews.com/extras/cthulhu.x ). A few months later, in June of 2002, Headfirst announces that the Ravensburger is no longer the publisher due to ‘breach of contract’ ( http://pc.ign.com/articles/362/362849p1.html ).

In May of 2003 (just in time for E3) Bethesda Softworks steps up and says they will be publishing the game
( http://www.bethsoft.com/news/pressrelease_050703.html ). All is right with the world again. CoC excites the gaming press and gamers alike. The buzz was hot even with the delays the game has suffered already. At this point the game is scheduled for release sometime in the first quarter of 2004.

I’m not sure of the exact date that it happened but as Q1 2004 approached the release date slipped further back and eventually the game became one of the “most anticipated games of 2005″. Where have we heard that before? Around this time ( http://www.bethsoft.com/news/pressrelease_020305.htm ) announces a co-publishing agreement with 2K Games ( http://www.2kgames.com ). May of 2005 landed the announcement that Headfirst was also now busy not releasing another Cthulhu game this one called ‘Destiny’s End’.

So here we are - October 2005. The game was supposed to be out several times already this month and it keeps slipping by a couple of days. On the forums Headfirst says they can’t say anything about the release. When asked about the release date Jason Bergman over at 2K Games couldn’t give much more information. “For anything Cthulhu related, please contact Pete Hines at Bethesda” he said. Pete Hines over at Bethesda has yet to answer my e-mail so I sent a note over to press@bethsoft.com in the hopes that someone would be able to share the word. As of now I still haven’t received a reply. Not surprising since the e-mail isn’t coming from a big name game site/blog.

People on the CoC forums say they have been in some game stores and have held the display box - which should indicate that the game will be out any second now. But when it will actually hit the shelves no one knows for sure.

‘Duke Nukem Forever’ dev cycle aside, I am still looking forward to playing this game. Although, I bet it’s not going to be the great experience that I was looking forward too five years ago.

Sadako is back as the header for Halloween. Don't forget to make a copy of the video for someone.

I'm going to see 'Doom' with the crew. I hope it's not as bad as 'House of the Dead'…

Lates.

This weekend Brinstar ( http://acidforblood.blogspot.com/2005/10/music-in-box.html ) posted a link to the Pandora ( http://www.pandora.com ) ‘music service’. The concept is simple - tell them an artist you like and they will play similar music. The back end to the site probably isn’t quite that simple but I digress. Anyway, I was up in Albany this weekend away from my pad and music collection so the site came in really handy. Since it was raining I really didn’t mind sitting in the apartment working on a database listening to music. I suggest checking it out if you’ve got some time.

I’ve looked at the Pandora website and the Flash used to magically transport mp3’s from Pandora’s seemingly endless catalog to my computer and it’s some interesting stuff. Hopefully, when I’m not quite so busy I’ll be able to do more research into the web application… It looks very interesting.

Yesterday saw the release of ‘Rag Doll Kung Fu’ ( http://www.ragdollkungfu.com/ ) on Valves’s Steam ( http://www.steampowered.com/ ). I had a chance to check it out on Monday and it just wasn’t my cup of tea I guess. Well, it is true that RDKF is a new and interesting concept it just doesn’t feel that fun. I was only about to keep myself playing for about a half an hour before I called it quits. The games starts out with a training level so Master can teach you the basics. I heard that multiplayer was the best part of the game but I didn’t get a chance to check it out. Not that I wanted to anyway.

Is it worth 14.95? Not to me but I really suggest trying it out - oh that’s right there is no trial version. To make a long story short - there are much better games to be found over at the indie site Game Tunnel ( http://www.gametunnel.com/ ).

This is an old story of theft ( http://www.mmodig.com/?p=155 ) but it helped get me interested in ‘Eve Online’
( http://www.eve-online.com ). I signed up for the 14 day trial last night and this morning at work I’ve finished the tutorial and have started on the first of the training missions. I was just going to skip out of them but I was told they are worth the effort.

And these missions are great for doing during work since I’ve got the three computers in my ‘cube’! I can just set my way points and hit auto pilot. It takes a little while to travel so I can work well that’s going on. So now I’m blasting back and forth through space basically delivering stuff like a courier. But it’s getting me some good funds and allowing me to train up my skills. Of course I’m currently training a skill that will take 16 hours to complete. It’s cool though cause when it finishes I’ll be able to buy a new ship some time tomorrow.

Well, I finished ‘The Ares Operation’ missions and now it’s time to look for some more…