Odds and Ends

Skipping one day’s posting is okay when I’ve got nothing specific to blather about. Skipping two days in a row is just something it seems I am incapable of accepting as a good idea. Let’s see what’s rattling around in the ol’ skull bucket.

-Looking forward to next weekend! Another audio recording session…be there or be lame. I’m actually going to try and come up with some good ideas for topics on which we can speak, and hopefully others will come up with some conversational ideas as well. I’m even looking forward to the construction of another podcast…actually, the actual making of a podcast and cutting music samples and stuff like that wasn’t a problem in VA #2, and was something I quite enjoyed. The EDITING process, THAT gets a little old. Then, I’ll haul my ass out of bed at 8:15 on Sunday morning for the first Fantasy Football draft of this year. Yes, the draft is at 8:30…that’s not even sleeping in for people on the East coast! Cruel.

-I have officially opted out of continuing to beta test Distant Worlds. It turns out there were many, MANY months of development and testing time still to come, and I just couldn’t find any motivation to keep going with it. Hell, I own Stardock’s excellent Galactic Civilizations 2 with both expansions and want to play it about as much as I feel like driving nails in to my pupils. I hate space. Stars can blow me. And don’t get me STARTED on those damn galaxies! However, I may soon end up doing some beta work for Football Mogul 2010. I’m not worried about that…I’m a pigskin freak, and the game looks to introduce historical rosters and leagues dating back to 1970. Sweetness could result.

-Now I can actually play the games I’m INTERESTED in. My Good Old Games collection continues to swell…Republic : The Revolution being the latest get. A game where I foment rebellion against a corrupt government by any means necessary? Yeah, I’m in! Plus, I finally went ahead and got myself The Witcher.

-I’ve been playing a LOT of game demos this past week…for some reason, a ton of them emerged in a short period of time. Demigod finally got a demo…I couldn’t see myself playing the full version of that game more than 3 days before I’d be bored of it. No depth, no REAL options, no point. WW2 : Time of Wrath is yet another WW2 game with yet another overly dramatic title. It’s also a nice, simple strategy game with a lot to offer, AND it’s $30 brand new. That’s a buy for down the road. Batman : Arkham Asylum…holy fuck was that fun! Good combat mechanics, good stealth mechanics, good game. Comes out in a month and looks REALLY good. East India Company is like they took a basic economic game and slapped a tactical sea combat game on to it…actually, that IS what it consists of. Kind of disjointed, and possibly the slowest tactical combat I have ever seen…it could put someone to sleep. Hearts of Iron 3 is the latest in the Paradox series. There were certain aspects of 2 that annoyed me enough not to get on all that well with it, though I may have to give it a revisit. On the one hand,l the AI can be given a lot of responsibility here, the new command hierarchy is excellent, and the custom combat divisions are a great idea. They also brought back a lot of micromanagement that pissed players off LAST time, used a map apparently drawn up by a 9 year old retarded chimp and managed to create a strategy game so badly optimized it suffers slowdown on a modern computer. Utterly disappointing mess that can HOPEFULLY be fixed. And finally, there was Order of War. Square Enix of Final Fantasy fame go ahead and make yet another WW2 real time strategy game, cause the 567th time will be the charm! I like that you order platoons around, rather than every individual moron with a rifle. I like the giant level maps. I don’t like the general sense of boredom as I watch armies slug it out with each other. Not bad, but definitely within the cookie cutter.

-What is with inconsistent ‘censorship’ policies in entertainment products? You can have a movie featuring numerous shots of heads being blown apart like over-pressurized ripe melons of blood and bone and get an M rating, but so help you if you show a tit! Have a violent game filled with realistic splatter effects, but you’d better not have a character drop an F bomb if they got shot in the leg! What the fuck is that?!

-I’m enjoying writing the Guild AAR so far. It’s been an interesting writing experience. Not as good as I’d like, but I think that’s due more to the fact that I’ve let my creative writing stagnate and atrophy for awhile than anything else. It’s weird having a central character whom I can’t really make long term plans for simply because I don’t know what’s going to happen in the game world down the road. I could come up with a bushel of ideas, only to have another character completely screw them up with an action of their own. And if Republic turns out to be fun, that’s a possibility for a future one methinks. Anyway, I’ll get cracking on Part 3 this week with a goal of getting it up here sometime over the weekend.

-On many occasions in the past, I’ve posted several lengthy posts about my issues with DRM on software (and really, on consumer products as a whole). However, I don’t think anything annoys me more than the tin foil hat wearing conspiracists with their insane ideas for what it’s really doing. Note to fuckwit retards…you’re doing more harm than good with your ridiculous theories that MIGHT make a lick of sense were I fucked up on smack. Do everyone a favour and shut the fuck up. This article on SimHQ pretty much sums up my feelings on the subject, too. For me personally, there are only 2 things I won’t deal with.

1. Anything that works like SecuROM, installing secret shit all over my system that I can’t delete without extra software, that doesn’t uninstall with the damn game I jumped aboard my hard drive with, and that runs actively any when the game it’s supposedly defending isn’t running.

2. Anything with installation limits. You wanna tell me I have to BUY a game from you, but then treat it like a rental agreement? I don’t think so.

Anything else is above board. I have numerous games with online activation requirements and/or with a quick check run against a server whenever I load it up. I don’t care about that stuff. I have no issue with activation limits (which covers the number of active installs you can have at one time for that serial key, NOT the number of installs you can have with that key EVER). Hell, I bought Combat Mission Shock Force from Paradox during their sale, and it uses the new version of Starforce…I have no problem with it because it’s actually a reasonable program. Some may have a different opinion, and that’s totally fine…just don’t start passing off stupid crap you made up as fact.

-I think I’m going to steel my resolve this week and go see GI Joe. The reviews seem to be of the either/or variety…either you come out thinking it wasn’t half bad or you come out feeling like you’ve just been freed from a gulag. Marlon Wayans’ inclusion is not a good omen. And so help these bastards if they’ve fucked up the ninjas…

Got a movie I can ruin? I'll work for plugged nickels!

-I’m reading an historical account of the Allied invasion of Sicily and Italy in 1943-44. What a completely underrepresented slice of WW2 history, ESPECIALLY here in this country as Canadian troops did very well in that particular theatre of the conflict! The Battle of Monte Cassino is the single most under covered battleground of the entire war. It went on longer than Stalingrad, with HIGHER casualties than that Eastern Front meat grinder, yet you never, ever read about in anything mainstream history wise.

-Speaking of books, I purchased Pride and Prejudice and Zombies! It’s probably next on my reading list. Apparently, it may also contain ninjas. This could be the best book ever written. And who knew that Jane Austen’s boring collection of trifling emotional crap and pointless meandering were public domain?

Fin.