Shit happens...

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

2011-11-12T05:52:00.000-08:00

The game I have been anticipating for a good six months arrived a little over four days ago.

I'll be honest about where I'm at. I've only completed three or four missions from the campaign, and I haven't touched the Spec Ops missions, nor multiplayer.

What I have done though, is achieved the rank of level 49 in survival. For those that don't know, there are 50 all up.

The game's Spec Ops survival mode is, of course, what I bought it for. I mean, I bought Treyarch's World at War, and then Black Ops, because of their zombie survival mode, so it seemed to make sense. I get a lot out of these sorts of game modes.

At first I was chuffed that survival was playable on all 16 of the game's multiplayer maps. It seemed like great value. I'll admit though, that I'd have preferred to have been able to choose the level of survival difficulty on each map, rather than them having difficulty levels already assigned.

I can live with that though, but what I'm really not keen on, are the maps themselves.

They may be quite good as multiplayer maps, but in survival for me it's all about making use of a map's choke points, and many of them don't really seem to have any. Everything seems to be setup so that there are always a number of ways to get to any one location.

Survival has three resource crates available in each map; weapons, equipment, and air support. Unfortunately, they've chosen to position them in each map as far away as possible from each other. I've figured out that the best thing to typically do is pick a spot that's reasonably close to one or two; the flipside being, of course, that the third will be fucking miles away.

Granted, I think survival is really meant for two players, and while I've dabbled in coop play, my teammate's shaky internet connection all but ruined the experience. Considering just about everyone else on my Steam friends list seems to just want to play Skyrim all the time, it looks like solo is all I've got.

It's a great mode though, and there are several maps where I just know I can better my current best, so I'm often tempted to have "just another go". There's been quite a lot of tasty stuff to unlock, and the variety of different mobs types do spice things up in there.

If there's one thing I'd like to see though, it's a map or two designed specifically for the survival experience. Plenty of choke points, crates not deliberately placed as far apart as possible, and the ability to choose your own difficulty on it.

Now that would be something.

Battlefield 3 vs Zombieville USA 2

2011-10-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

We've had a long weekend here in Perth, Australia, and I haven't spent my free time playing the $90 Battlefield 3 game, no...

I have spent it playing a $0.99 App Store game for the Ipod Touch and iPhone called Zombieville USA 2.

Over the last couple of days, I've hardly touched Battlefield 3. I was close to having finished the campaign, but came up against a showstopper bug that literally would not let me proceed.

The train sequence at the start of the game is something you will actually go through again later on, and like many of the sequences in the game, it's full of annoying quicktime events. Something happens, usually a melee struggle with a terrorist, and at the prompt, you have to press the right key at the right time. If you're not on time, or you accidentally let loose with another key, you die, and have to start the section over.

Anyway, this event required my pressing the space bar (as prompted), at which point my character would then die. This happened over... and over... and over again. When I think about it, my own personal Groundhog Day.

I couldn't even figure it out by googling it, and the last time it happened, I was so frustrated with the game, I forced it down with Alt+Ctrl+Del.

That's when you know I'm not happy.

It's ironic sometimes, though, how things happen, because I ended up browsing the Ipod App Store once again, and noticed the sequel to one of my old favs, Zombieville USA, had been released.

$0.99 later, I was ready to rock and roll, and I'll be damned, but it has occupied my time so much more than Battlefield 3 was. It's got a number of different levels to fight in, zombie types to slay, and weapons and skills to both unlock, and level up.

Great, great game, and at the price, an absolute steal. Battlefield 3 at $90? Not so much.

As it turns out, however, I once again googled the problem preventing my ability to continue in the Battlefield 3 campaign, and this time, actually found the solution. Yes, apparently if you have rebound your jump key to something other than the space bar, you have to press both that key AND the space bar.

Once again, some great game testing going on over there at DICE.

It's academic really, because like most of the campaign, the bit that I had left to do was utter rubbish.

Battlefield 3

2011-10-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah I know, I said I wasn't going to get it.

What can I say, I've been so very bored. Waiting for MW3 has been driving me positively insane, and there are only so many times you can play the MW2 campaign over and over.

Granted, thanks to a nice trade-in at EB, Battlefield 3 didn't actually cost me anything. As it turns out, that's just as well, because if I'm being honest, I'm not really having the time of my life with it.

That's partly my fault though, because as you know I'm not really a multiplayer gamer these days, so it was arguably pretty stupid of me to invest in what is primarily a multiplayer game.

They have gone to the trouble of creating a single player campaign this time around, along with a couple of missions that you can actually coop with a friend, so you could argue there's now something for everyone.

I must be about 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, but I'll admit that I'm really not enjoying myself all that much with it.

I'd have to say the biggest problem I have with it is that the game's AI completely sucks. For both the bad guys, and also my teammates.

Teammates have not been programmed to adjust to what you're doing atall. A number of times I've actually been pushed out of a cover location by an AI teammate who has just decided that it's a spot he will be occupying instead.

This complete indifference also includes running out in front of you while you're busy shooting at bad guys.

Speaking of which, most of the bad guys will pretty much only ever shoot at the player. I've completed a number of escort quests during the game, and I've lost count the number of times they've focused just on me.

Basically, each and every play is a setup, and a rather obvious one at that. We advance to a certain area. Bad guys show up. They take cover, my teammates take cover.

At this point, they could all shoot at each other until the cows come home for the difference that it will make, because advancement is only ever made when the player caps all of the bad guys. A number of times, it's actually been obvious that my teammates aren't even really actively trying to kill anyone in particular. The job's always up to me.

And that's pretty much how it is. That ever constant reminder that you're just playing a videogame, it breaks the immersion every time. Takes you right out of it.

I don't know how else to describe it, and it's such a pity, because it's a great, great engine. Nothing else looks or sounds quite like it, and I should be having the time of my life.

Something went terribly wrong.

Modern Warfare 3, hurry up!

2011-10-05T05:47:00.000-07:00

I am chomping at the bits, so to speak, for Modern Warfare 3.

Call of Duty, you ask? What are you, a 'console kiddy'? No, I'm a married 37yo gamer, and I do the vast, vast majority of my gaming on the pc.

Check this out. It's the trailer showing off Modern Warfare 3's new survival mode. That might be me you can hear in the corner, drooling.

It's pretty popular these days to hate on Call of Duty. I've been seeing a lot of that. Either it's got something to do with the fact that it keeps smashing its own sales records, or that it's made by Activision, and people just love to rain shit on Bobby Kotick.

I kept an open mind though, I promise you that. You may remember that, back at E3 time, it was all about MW3 vs BF3 for me.

I tried, really, but following E3, it all went to shit. Every news item that has come out about Battlefield3 since then has sucked. Firstly, no bots. Well, I knew that already. What with not being a multiplayer gamer, there goes any kind of longevity I was hoping for. What am I going to do, play the campaign over and over?

Then they announced it wouldn't be on Steam.

I remember first installing Steam back when I bought Half Life 2 on release day. It was a necessary evil, granted, but in all fairness, it was worth it to play that game.

Since then, Steam has just gotten better... and better... and better. I now have over 30 available games for it, and it's great being able to uninstall games knowing that they're always available again, if I ever want to play.

Battlefield 3 not being on Steam is a pretty big hit for me, and the game requiring EA's Origin service, well, that shit certainly ain't helping.

By about the time they announced that Battlefield 3's co-op campaign was only going to support two players, I had long since stopped caring.

No, it's all about Modern Warfare 3. It doesn't help that survival gameplay footage has just been absolutely rocking my socks.

No, I even preordered the fucker.

*gasp*

Do you have any idea how long it's been for me since I did that? It's been at least a couple of years.

And I'm not talking the preorder where you pay a $20 deposit or some shit, I'm talking about having paid in full.

I'm making a commitment to myself, with this. My wife and I may be buying a house, and our funds may be stretched to the limit, but nomatter how tight my funds are, every year come holiday time, I'm buying a game.

This year it's Modern Warfare 3, and it'd better not suck.

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon #2

2011-08-27T06:39:00.001-07:00

I had to do this.

The truth is, there's a pattern emerging here. With every Michael Bay movie I watch, my IMDB rating of it starts off high, and then drops over time.

I'm now at 7/10 for Dark of the Moon, where after my first showing, I was at a full 10/10.

I think I'm going to stay at 7/10 here, but even though ordinarily 7 is a great rating for me, if it's all I'm giving the latest and greatest Transformers, you know that means I'm bitterly disappointed with it.

Yeah, I raved about the movie in my previous post which was just after I'd just seen it, but you know what, I did the same thing with Revenge of the Fallen after I'd first seen that too, and that's now at 7/10 aswell.

So why the change? Well, when you have a deep interest in something, it's really easy to get caught up in that first (or even second) showing. My hunger for Transformers, hunger to see more of Optimus Prime, boosts my enjoyment of a show.

Time passes though, you watch it a couple more times, feel like you're able to look at it more objectively... and that's where it all falls apart.

There's so much that just doesn't make sense. I really liked the character of Sentinel Prime, but would someone who had evidently been leader of the Autobots for so long have been able to betray them so easily? To shoot Ironhide in the back?

Speaking of which, why wasn't Ironhide's death mourned? Hell, why wasn't it even mentioned? I realise they didn't have a whole lot of time to think, but would it have killed Bay to have included something like Prime kneeling over the remains? He wouldn't've even had to have said much, perhaps a line about revenge, or at the least, goodbye, old friend.

While I'm at it, what were all the Decepticons doing on the moon? How'd they get there? Correct me if I'm wrong, but considering it was a long lost Autobot ship that crashed there, if anything, shouldn't it have been Autobots out there? That or, I think I figured out exactly why the Decepticons keep losing the war, because one of them apparently summised that the best way to stage an attack on Earth was to hide underground on the moon and wait for a portal to be opened.

As far as Bumblebee being captured later on, there really needed to be a scene showing exactly how that happened, if just because of how that was used to inject so much emotional content into the proceedings. How many of the ladies weren't at the edge of their seats when it was looking like they were actually going to assassinate him?

Which of course, leads me to another point. Every time the Autobots get a chance they'll kill a Decepticon, but the Decepticons take prisoners? It felt like the Shanghai op from Revenge of the Fallen all over again, as we have the bad guys basically keeping to themselves, while being systematically slaughtered by the good guys.

Now, I love Optimus Prime as much as the next guy, but Bay's Optimus, I'm fucking glad he's on our side, because truth be told, he'd make one hell of a Decepticon. Some of the things he was doing, don't tell me he wasn't enjoying it. It's a CGI treat, of course, but does it always have to be at the expense of the character?

A lot of people have raved about the building sequence, but I hate it. I hate it because it only exists because of Bay's idea to have a building cut in half. There's no point to it. They go up because they've only got one rocket and they have to get higher to be able to use it, but then they get shot at, escape in spectacular fashion, and then... I don't know. They don't try again, or anything like that. No, Sam and Carly get separated from the rest, and then...

Sam kills Starscream. This sequence was like, the epitome of what Bay's movies are all about. So long as it looks great, to hell with common sense. It's just so fucking implausible.

And then there's the humour.

If it was a step up from that found in Revenge of the Fallen, it was only just. The whole thing with the Asian guy in the bathroom stall, I could do without, as I could also do without the parents lecturing Sam about how he's not gonna land another hotty like Carly unless he's got a big dick.

Urghh.

I still do like Michael Bay, and Dark of the Moon's very impressive CGI guarantees my purchase of that Blu Ray on day one, but a 10 out of 10 movie, it ain't. If I'm being brutally honest, I wouldn't rate it a whole lot better than Revenge of the Fallen, and as it stands now, I would more than welcome another director taking a shot at reviving this franchise.

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

2011-07-01T04:07:00.000-07:00

Fucking awesome!

What can I say, definitely my cup of tea. CGI action for the win, baby!

It ain't perfect, mind you, but no movie has been. That said, it's closer - for me - than anything I've seen thus far, and it will definitely be my number one Blu Ray when it arrives.

Sentinel Prime, voiced by Leonard Nimoy, rocked. So damn good. Awesome character, and an absolutely shocking betrayal about halfway through on his part. Anyone who says they saw that one coming is a fucking liar :)

Pretty cool really too, because Michael Bay had us all thinking Shockwave was going to be the main badass in this one. Nicely done, Mike.

That said, 'ole Shockwave could've used more screen time though, I'll admit to that one. Like Megatron basically sitting on the sidelines during much of the show, he was a bit underutilised.

I didn't think much of Sam's new girlfriend (outside of having a great set of legs and an arse to die for, of course). While I wasn't a big fan of Megan Fox back in the day, this new chick actually has me missing her. I'll admit that I think the chemistry between Shia and Megan was better than with Shia and Rosie.

That's not necessarily fair, mind you, because Sam started with Megan and was with her for two movies, compared to Rosie being the newcomer in just this one movie.

There have been a couple of long threads over at IMDB about the death of Ironhide. I always really liked Ironhide in the cartoons, tough nut that he was, and up until this third movie, it's fair to say he hadn't gotten anywhere near his fair share of screen time. Most of the combat that took place in the first movie showed him getting his arse kicked, and in the second he did absolutely nothing.

He redeemed himself though, and I felt good for Ironhide fans, because he was involved in a huge fight just prior to his demise, and we did get to see him finally kick some arse. He went out like a boss, and it's not my favourite expression, but it is fitting.

At the end of the day though, I'm always rooting for Optimus Prime. At first I didn't like how Bay made him so different from G1 Prime, but now, I fucking love him. And I've come to fucking love that truck.

Part of the reason I'm still so fond of Prime is that he continues to be voiced by the great Peter Cullen. He captured my imagination 23 years ago in the animated cartoon, and the son-of-a-bitch is still doing it now. There's a reason why Peter Cullen has made a living out of voice acting, and his game is as good as ever in Dark of the Moon.

I just fucking love him, too. If Peter Cullen knocked on my front door right now, there's nothing I wouldn't do for him. He wouldn't even have to speak like Prime.

Like I said though, there are things I didn't like about the movie. I don't care for Sam Witwicky and his personal life. You have a new girlfriend? Don't care. Trying to get a job? Don't care. Don't like your girlfriend's boss? Don't care.

Overall though, great. Pretty much exactly what I wanted.

Which brings me to my next point...

I got home after the first showing, and logged straight into IMDB. And the movie's rating was at a rather abysmal 6.9 out of 10. What the fuck?

People love to hate Michael Bay. As I've said before, I don't think it would matter what the man could put out.

I see IMDB ratings for movies typically start high when they're released, and then lower, and my guess would be that it's because the more passionate fans are among the first to register their (typically higher) votes.

Bay movies don't follow this trend though, and I think that's because there's always a legion of haters just ready to swarm. If anything, they see the viewing of the movie as a formality, because they've already decided they don't like it.

Just because it's Michael Bay.

So the quicker they can get the actual viewing out of the way and get that 1/10 vote registered, the better. Some even have more than one account ready to go, so that they can make their opinion weigh more than yours or mine.

I don't really care about their opinions. I mean, it's all subjective anyway, and just because I like Dark of the Moon, that doesn't mean I expect anyone else to.

The difference between us though, it would seem, is that I don't feel threatened by their opinion.

Transformers and Michael Bay

2011-06-24T03:44:00.000-07:00

We have Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon movie tickets purchased for Wednesday evening, and we also have another set for Thursday lunchtime.

'Thursday lunchtime?', you ask. Don't you work fulltime? Of course, but I took the day off in anticipation of its release. It's just how I roll.

As a home theatre enthusiast, I fucking love Michael Bay. Really, I do. I've seen the shit people say about him, all the no-plot gags about his movies, but I've gotta tell ya; I've spent as much time watching his movies on my theatre's big screen as I have any other director's movies. Without a doubt. Or do you think I dropped a little under $3000AU on a subwoofer to watch dramas?

Hell no.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a movie I often enjoy discussing. It has an average IMDB rating of a low 5.9 from over 114,000 voters. Ouch. It's also absolutely dripping with special effects, and sports one of the most intense, jaw-dropping fight scenes, that I've ever seen in my life.

In other words, you may argue that as brilliant as it is, it is also as flawed.

I won't sugar coat the issue, I've criticised the movie in the past. Some of the things that were added to it demonstrate nothing short of an adolescent sense of humour. Autonomous robots from another planet shouldn't be talking like those twins, they certainly should never be sporting a pair of testicles, and they shouldn't ever hump an attractive human female's leg.

I'll be honest, part of what made the first Transformers great for me, particularly when I saw it for the first time, was the mystery surrounding them. The Decepticons, particularly, used their own language, which was translated for us on-screen and everything. The secret and covert can be very cool like that, and it's something that was sadly lost with the sequel.

I didn't start this blog with the intention of bashing Revenge of the Fallen though; if anything, quite the contrary. It's a movie I was able to watch straight through from start to finish on my big screen barely a couple of months ago, which is saying something. Yes, I know, I mentioned there's a lot of crap in it, and a plot that just about falls apart, but sometimes I just want to be wowed with dazzling special effects and plenty of explosions. And for that, it does not disappoint.

I don't know why, too, but I find them a lot more re-watchable than most other action flicks released at around this time. Avatar, 2012, Terminator Salvation, Inception, The A-Team, I've got Blu Rays of them all, and yet... I so often find myself coming back to the Transformers franchise.

I will watch both of them again on the big screen in anticipation of Dark of the Moon's release next week, and then when it hits and I've seen it twice, I will no doubt show back up here to post my impressions.

Bad Company 2 and Frostbite 1.5

2011-06-21T01:27:00.001-07:00

Ok.

I'm now definitely leaning towards Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3, when they hit at the end of the year. A week ago and you'd have had a very different answer.

Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was a lot of fun, and Frostbite is indeed a very capable engine. Destructable terrain can make for very interesting gameplay, especially when you're going up against tanks or even just a lot of soldiers with RPGs. I took shelter in a house against a tank mid way through the campaign, and by the time I'd gotten the tank taken care of, there was very little of that house left. I'd like to see all shooters end up going this way, because it's realistic but doesn't negatively impact the gameplay.

I'll admit that there were a couple of sections in which frustration set in, because for one or two areas, the difficulty really ramped up. When I got to the ninth mission, Sangre Del Toro, a couple of the passages proved very hard to get past. Not that challenging can't be fun, but when I breeze to an area just to get repeatedly spanked, the thought occurs it could've been balanced a little better.

While it's nice that Frostbite can do cutscenes well, there were way too many of them. They break up the gameplay too much. If I want to watch a movie, I'll watch a movie, and if I want to play a game, I'll play a game. Bad Company 2 is a bit like trying to do both at the same time, and I hope they go easy on them for Battlefield 3.

All in all however, I've had a great time with all of these first-person shooters. If there's anything I've missed that deserves to be included with these greats, someone please, let me know. What can I say, after 8 hours a day where I work, I always come home in the mood to shoot somebody!

Australian Aborigines

2011-06-18T22:08:00.000-07:00

I don't consider myself an overly racist person. That is, I'll give everyone a fair go, regardless of appearance.

Still, I'll be honest, I've lived in Australia for about 23 years now, and during that time, I'll admit to one or two things having become apparent.

It didn't take long to realise that Australian Aborigines can be a nasty bunch. No shit, the level of hostility that they can rain on you, unprovoked or otherwise, is absolutely second to none.

You can be just driving down the road, for all intent purposes, minding your own business, and there'll be a group on the street hurling abuse at motorists passing by. And what abuse. They are loud, and filthy. You don't even have to be looking at them.

Now, I'm not saying they all behave like this. No way. But if you were to add up the percentage of crimes commited by an Aborigine in this country, and marry that up against the percentage of the Australian population being of Aboriginal descent, well... I'm betting those numbers wouldn't add up.

There's a reason I'm blogging about this, and it's not because I feel the sudden urge to blog about these people. No, the reason I'm blogging about them is because yesterday...

...we had a visitor.

It was all very atypical really, we had the landlord over to do a bit of maintenance. Some of the washers needed replacing in the bathroom, and the basin needed new tap fittings. The usual stuff.

So the landlord was coming in and out a lot, and it wasn't an unpleasant day outside, so we just left the front door wide open.

Myself and my fiancee were in the main living area, immediately to the right of the front door, just talking. The house has a pair of nice elegant internal doors separating that room from the entry area, and even though I couldn't see the entrance from the front door directly, thanks to the doors being made of mostly glass, the reflection cast actually allowed me to see the area completely.

At one point, I look up... and the reflection presents an image of this face at the front door, peeking in. Just... looking. I remember thinking how strange it was, because I assumed it was our landlord, except for the fact that I could still hear him working away in the bathroom.

So I walk over, and there's this guy standing there, staring in to the house. He was Aboriginal, in his late teens/early 20s, and as is often the case with them, hadn't quite gotten around to having had his monthly shower just yet.

"Can I help you?"
"Err yeah, I need a taxi".

Clearly, that's my problem.

"You want me to call you a taxi?"
"Yeah could ya? I need to get to Burswood"

At this point, I don't know why I didn't just point him down the road to the local gas station, or the shopping centre, but I just thought... yeah, ok. So I go for my phone.

"What's the number?"
"13 13 30"
"What's your name?"
"Steveo"

So while I'm on the phone with the taxi company, he starts to walk away. He points to his left, mumbles something about "just being over here", and then disappears from view.

Of course, by the time the taxi showed up, he was long gone. I went out to explain the situation to the driver, who just sort of nodded, and took off. Steveo was nowhere to be seen.

While Australian Aborigines have complained over the years that they've been treated unfairly, and that they should be respected, something tell me that getting a taxi was the last thing that Steveo actually wanted.

First-person shooter roundup

2011-06-18T18:25:00.000-07:00

Thanks, in part, to my having gotten all E3 hyped about Battlefield 3 vs Modern Warfare 3, I have played through the campaigns of three of the more popular real world FPS games that are out there over this past week or so.

This is quite unusual for me, as it's rare these days that I finish any game, but that's getting besides the point.

The Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 campaign was fun as hell. The engine may be showing signs of being a little dated these days, but bear in mind, this is a game that's actually about a year and a half old now. I think it's fair to say that, as was said about them during E3, these Modern Warfare games are akin to being in the middle of a Hollywood blockbuster. Everything is designed to be going on around you, and whether or not that makes for a truly accurate depiction of warfare is largely irrelevant, as the goal is to entertain the player. This is something it pulls off very, very well.

I will say, however, that if you choose to play the game on the hardened difficulty setting (as I did), you may experience some frustration. I fully completed the campaign in hardened mode, but there were many areas in which I died repeatedly before being able to progress, and they felt somewhat cheap. Of course, in real warfare where it would take pretty much one bullet to incapacitate you, there may very well be times where your demise is unavoidable nomatter what you do, if just because of how much the odds can be so stacked against you.

The Call of Duty: Black Ops campaign I did not enjoy nearly as much. While there will be others that disagree, Black Ops having one of the lowest metacritic ratings of any of the Call of Duty games on pc would certainly seem to suggest that many others feel the same way. It's not a bad game, I mean, it's still 80+, but there were times, for example, where the interactivity really wasn't well done. It will have cinematic moments that require you to be at precisely a certain point, so if you get there early, the game places an invisible wall up to prevent further movement until the moment is ready to start. That sort of thing comes across as being positively amateurish.

I would also have to admit that Black Ops didn't visually impress as much as Modern Warfare 2, despite being released a year later. That and, I really wasn't the least bit interested in the story. What do the numbers mean? Who cares! I'll be honest, I wasn't playing through out of enjoyment, but just because I wanted to see him finally get out of that damned chair.

This isn't a rant against Black Ops though, and I want to make it clear that this game is so much more than just the quality of its campaign. It also has the zombie mode and full multiplayer practice with bots, something I've always been very fond of. Single player gamers have so much more they can do outside of the Black Ops campaign, which of course, is really my only criticism of Battlefield 3 right now.

Anyway, that's getting a bit off-topic, so...

Medal of Honor was the most surprising of the three. At first I thought the engine was DICE's Frostbite, but then, actually learned that it's Unreal 3 technology. That said, it came as a pleasant change from what I'm so used to with the Call of Duty titles. Among other improvements, I really, really like the hit recognition, like when you're shooting, you can see where the bullets are landing. Awesome stuff. You're also made well aware of when bullets are striking the area around you (including different sounds for them striking different types of surfaces), and I've always been really big on that one.

As has been noted, the Medal of Honor campaign is a little short. I finished it in about a day or so, which is saying a lot because I typically only play for a couple of hours at a time. I'll admit that I thought the voice acting was a bit of a letdown; it was satisfactory, you might say, but there were times where I felt there should have been more emotion in the lines.

I did like the setting though, I mean, Afghanistan, bring it. The story was, for me, tenfold better than that with Black Ops. I didn't get into it hugely, or anything like that, but it didn't bore me either.

I am redownloading my copy of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 via Steam, and I'm going to force myself right through the campaign this time, whether I like it or not. I've tried a couple of times over the months following its release, having actually bought the game back around the time it was first released (which is unusual for me), but I couldn't bring myself to do it both times.

This time I will though, and I will be paying a lot of attention to the quality of the engine, which of course, is Frostbite 1.5. For EA's sake, I would hope that it compares very favourably to the abovementioned titles, because Frostbite 2.0 is the only incentive for me to buy Battlefield 3 over Modern Warfare 3 at the end of the year.

e3 2011

2011-06-10T03:06:00.001-07:00

I'll start by going over the press conferences from the big three, in the order in which they happened:

Microsoft
Well, they've gotten a lot of flack over their conference, and I do think a lot of it is justified. That Star Wars Kinect game was actually generating a bit of hype; that is, until everyone realised the fucking thing's just rubbish.

I'll be honest, I don't think Kinect has much of a future. The idea is great, but it's just too damn laggy, and I think it's a waste of time and resources to try and improve the software lineup given its current state. It's a great first step however, and I'm all for evolving gaming off of the couch and away from the gamepad, but this isn't the answer. Not yet, anyway.

That all said, there's one more thing about what was shown in Microsoft's conference, which I will discuss at the end of this blog.

Sony
I'll be honest, I like Jack Tretton. Really, I think he's a natural on stage, I like listening to him, and I think he's very much down to Earth. I might not always agree with what he has to say, but when watching him at e3 at any rate, I can't help but like the guy.

Poor Sony had some apologising to do this year, and Jack did it about as well as anyone could. Despite it all, I came away feeling sorry for them. I couldn't have cared less about the network's downtime, because I'll go months at a time without firing up my ps3, but the perpetrators having potentially gotten away with our credit card details also, well, that's very serious business indeed. For a company that was just about humiliated, they rebounded extremely well.

Outside of buying the odd app for my Ipod Touch, I don't care for handheld, portable gaming, so I have no interest in their new PSVita portable device. I will probably see one at some point, and be impressed in it's processing capability no doubt, but there's no way I'd ever buy one.

I'd have liked to have seen more Playstation Move demos, particularly that Sorcery game they demoed last year (that almost seems to have dropped off of the face of the Earth). It wasn't to be seen though, and while Medieval Moves looked alright but not particularly impressive, NBA 2k12 was just much too gimmicky for my liking.

Thanks but no thanks.

Sony really impressed in one way though, and that's with their new Playstation-branded 24" 3d screen. Two players, each with a pair of glasses for 3d, will be able to both watch that screen but both also see completely individual unique images. Brilliant.

Nintendo
The Wii-U is a huge gamble. It's an about-face on their strategy with the Wii; going from a great small controller shaped like a racquet handle, to a huge controller with a 6.2" screen slapped in the middle.

If you think about it, the Wii-U is just an evolved Wii. It can use Wii remotes, and it will play all the Wii games, but it does 1080p over hdmi and has a controller with a big screen built in.

There's some potential there for some clever shit, but as per the usual, it will only really be Nintendo themselves bringing out the goods. All Activision, Ubisoft and EA seem to know what to do these days is make one title and port it across. Unfortunately, that's a practice that doesn't exactly allow for much in the way of innovation.

Time will tell on the Wii-U, but I think it's a pretty good bet that it's not going to sell anywhere near as well as the Wii has done. I'd like to see it be a big hit though, because I do love how Nintendo are so often thinking outside the box, but I do imagine them losing a lot of money on this one.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 vs Battlefield 3
Assuming I have the money to buy just one of these at the end of the year, I'm pretty much 50/50 at the moment on which of these it will be.

Battlefield 3 was looking good heading into e3 (thanks largely to the faultline footage), but then Modern Warfare 3 hit with some very tasty footage, both at the start of Microsoft's press conference, and also while watching the stage demo being played.

It was a bit surprising, to be honest, considering the mass exodus that took place a while back at Infinity Ward, but it looks like they're putting together a damn fine game all the same. Kudos to them.

That said, Battlefield 3's new Frostbite 2 engine is sexy. I didn't think much of their tank run demonstration at the end of EA's press conference, but it's arguably an extremely capable engine.

The Battlefield franchise has lost me of late however. It all started going downhill from Battlefield 2 onwards, when it was becoming apparent that bot support wasn't nearly as important to them as it used to be. I even bought Bad Company 2, despite the removal of bot support, not to mention the ability to create your own servers altogether.

While I don't really regret that purchase, I can't stand it when features that are once considered staples of a franchise are completely removed down the track. Many will not care, but I did, and it felt like they were giving me the finger. This is how you reward me for my loyalty all these years?

The excellent Call of Duty Black Ops, by comparison, is the first Call of Duty that I'm aware of in which they actually added in bot support. Not to mention, the full campaign and the awesome zombie mode. Talk about fully featured.

So yeah. 50/50.

But... shit happens?

2011-06-01T03:58:00.001-07:00

Oh yeah, and I don't have a fucking clue what to call this blog.

I mean, it's not like I just ever talk about the one thing. Gaming, home theatre, life, it all gets a look in.

It's unlikely I'll settle on the name "Shit happens" for this blog. Not that it doesn't, but for now, consider it a temporary name until I can come up with one better.

I'd ask for recommendations, but I know nobody's reading anyway :)

A second welcome

2011-06-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. This is day one...

...except that it's not.

You see, I ran a blog up on my personal website, venturai.com, for about a year now. I didn't mean to buy a website, at least not at first, but my VQuest modification for Warcraft 3 needed a home following IGN discontinuing their hosting services, and even though it's a mod just about nobody was still playing, I figured I couldn't just let the website die without it having a replacement.

Those times are long since gone though, and when the contract for venturai.com runs out, there's no way I'm going to pay to extend it.

I've quite enjoyed blogging though, off and on, and I didn't want to just let it all vanish when the website does, so I've copied quite a lot of it across. That's why it looks like I've actually been blogging here for a year or so, when in actuality...

...this is day one.

So yeah. Welcome :)

This is an exciting time, anyway. It's E3 time next week, and I will be blogging the hell out of that one. Nintendo's conference should certainly prove to be more interesting than it was last year, on account of them apparently demonstrating the successor to the Wii.

Bring it on!

Absorb

2011-03-04T04:31:00.000-08:00

I always love the use of the word 'absorb' when it's thrown in while discussing matters of a financial nature.

Our landlord wrote us a letter a couple of months back - just before Christmas, incidentally - and he used it to justify another rent increase with "Unfortunately we are no longer able to absorb the rising costs associated with the property".

Brilliant. I love that word.

It reads like he's been doing it tough letting us have the rent at the price we've been having it, but now he's losing money, and it's just got to stop.

Unfortunately, it's all bullshit.

You see, we had a great meeting with that Homebuyers Centre rep, and as it turns out, as far as they're concerned we can afford to buy. Ok, so we're borrowing about $400,000, and it's going to take about 25 years to pay it off, but it's doable.

The interesting thing is that we're going to be looking at repayments of around $550 a week, but that shouldn't be a problem considering we're already paying $350 a week in rent.

This is what leads me to believe our landlord is full of crap. We've been here since 2005, and we've received letters from tenants he's had before us too, so it's a good bet he's owned this property for at least a decade. Back when he bought it, he probably dropped half what our loan's gonna be, which occurs to me his repayment for this property is going to be in the neighborhood of, ooh I don't know, about $350.

He ain't absorbing crap, he's using us to pay this place's mortgage for him. Nobody absorbs anything these days, they just filter it down to the poor bastard at the bottom.

Same old, same old.

Does it scare anyone else working out just how much you may have dropped in rent over the years? We started here at $180 a week, shifted to $250 in 2008, and are now on $350. Assuming two and a half years at $180, the same at $250, and a couple of months at $350, it's pushing a whopping $60,000.

Never mind that though, by the time our house is built and we move out in a year's time, we'll have surpassed $70,000.

Holy shit.

Australia, the lucky country... not!

2011-02-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Owning our own home never seemed quite so far away as it did today.

About a week ago we had a call from a nice fella working for the Homebuyers Centre. We'd entered a competition of theirs online to win our own house, and he was calling to find out all about our financial situation.

After I told him how much debt we have, along with the pittance I get paid, he tells me that they might be able to help us out, and we set up an information session for tomorrow night.

Exciting stuff.

Exciting enough to have us enquire today at the National Australia Bank about what it would take for us to be able to get a home loan from them. The NAB are, for the most part, Australia's best bank (IMO). I realise that's a bit like having four piles of shit in front of you and claiming one of them smells a little less than the others, but I digress.

So we sit down, and their home loan chick hits us with it. Typically a home loan from them is for 80% of the property and requires a 20% deposit, so for a standard $400,000 house, we'd have to cough up around $80,000.

It's lucky I was sitting down, because if I hadn't been, I'd have hit my head pretty hard en route to the floor.

We laughed, and then figured out that, if we started saving now and really behaved ourselves, we could get started around the time I turn 44. As a point of interest, I just turned 37.

Pretty much never going to happen. Seriously, who has that kind of money in savings?

One option that's apparently quite popular these days (no doubt because so few people actually have EIGHTY FUCKING GRAND in the bank) is to have your folks set their home up as security for the loan. I'm not quite sure how that one works, but I think the idea is that the value of their home is used to help secure the financing.

Yeah... nah. I don't think so. Those without morals or values of their own (of which there are many) would no doubt be more than willing to have their folks put their own home on the line, but not me. My testicles work just fine, thank you very much.

I mean, really, if something bad happened and our place had to be sold but the sale didn't cover the loan amount, our folks' place would have to be sold to cover the difference.

Not in this lifetime, Jack.

I couldn't believe it, but the lady actually finished up with a line about doing the lotto, which is like admitting that their archaic way of doing business isn't really designed to help the everyday people out. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and if everyone could afford their own home, who would rent from the rich?

Welcome to Australia.

I don't know what this guy is going to say when he shows up tomorrow night, but he's going to have to pull a rabbit out of a hat.

The airline off-loaded packages.

2011-02-10T04:31:00.000-08:00

So I came away after my post last night feeling really good about myself. I'd given credit to some of the finest shipping companies on the planet, and my current item had just arrived in Singapore, giving it plenty of time to make it here to Perth ahead of its scheduled delivery date on Friday.

Then I went to bed, woke up, and refreshed the UPS tracking page, only to be greeted with the following message: "The airline off-loaded packages". That and, the big bar at the top of the page, which was previously green and said "in transit", was now yellow, and said "exception".

Uh oh. Going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing my package was one of those that was off-loaded, and that your package being off-loaded is not good.

They couldn't really be any more vague if they tried, so I googled the phrase, and ended up reading forum comments from other folks who had it and didn't really know what it meant either. The best guess seemed to be that the plane was full, and that some packages had to be left behind.

I'd like to know who chooses what stays and what goes, you know what I mean? I was picturing some Singaporean guy laughing at my name as he places my package aside into the "doesn't matter when we ship this" tray.

As it turns out, it was a temporary inconvenience, because another update a couple of hours later said something about it having been released by the clearing agency and was now in-transit for delivery. I'll admit that I considered this update quite peculiar also, on account of my not actually living in Singapore.

Up until a moment ago I was still reasonably happy though, because throughout all of this, the scheduled delivery date remained Friday. Friday is the best day to get packages, of course, because if gives you the whole weekend with it.

A recent refresh, however, and my heart sank. Sure, it has finally left Singapore, but the scheduled delivery date has now been pushed back to Monday.

Thursday afternoon, and at the last minute, UPS delay delivery from Friday to Monday? Are you trying to piss me off?

Ordinarily I wouldn't care, because it will still have been delivered a lot sooner than I was originally led to believe when I placed the order. The purchase website originally said something like 8-16 business days, and I'll actually be getting it in 5.

The problem is that, for the past few days now, it's been saying the delivery date would be Friday, so I've been prepping myself for that. Isn't the idea to set the customer's expectation and then meet that expectation? If it'd said Monday all along I wouldn't be fussed, but to make me feel like it's going to be Friday until right up at the last minute, and then delay it?

Not happy, Jan.

A thanks

2011-02-09T04:30:00.000-08:00

Over the years, I've bought a lot of goods online, many of which have come from overseas. I've had packages sent by a vast number of shipping companies; anywhere from USPS to UPS to Fedex to DHL to the UK's Royal Mail. Even Australia Post *shudders*...

As most are likely well aware, you usually only hear about the horror stories. You could Google problems with each and every one of those, and you'd get hit after hit from customers complaining about how their packages either became lost or took ages to arrive.

You'll even read posts from those who claim they've worked for these companies, and how they recommend staying away from them.

I have a different story to tell.

For starters, if I'm being honest I'm probably one of the more anal customers one can get. When I'm expecting something, I'm refreshing that tracking website just about all the time. As it happens, I'm waiting for something at the moment, and it's getting done just about every opportunity I can get.

So if they put a step wrong, they hear about it from me. Entertainment is my life, and when my purchases don't arrive on time, it's like Doom 2 Hell on Earth all over again.

Thankfully though, the vast majority of shipping companies have never put a step wrong by me. USPS, UPS, DHL, I have nothing bad to say about any of them.

If I'm being honest, Fedex annoyed me once or twice, but an extra day here or there is nothing to really get in a knot about. All things being equal though, I can see why they're not really all that big out here in Australia. I wouldn't not recommend them, but then, I wouldn't go out of my way to use their services again either.

Australia Post have, without doubt, pissed me off the most. I have a PO box with them, and it's annoying enough that junk mail finds its way there, but what really got my knickers in a knot was when they didn't put a slip in the box to let me know the packages I was anxiously awaiting had arrived. And yes, that's packages... as in, two of them. One I could maybe understand, but two?

All in all though, I'm happy with the lot of them. They are doing marvellous, marvellous work. Yes, even the clowns over at Australia Post. Thanks!

The Australian flood levy

2011-01-28T04:30:00.000-08:00

The Australian Federal Government has decided to impose a flood levy to help with the clean up in the wake of all of the flooding that's happened over in Queensland. Here's the news:

The Federal Government will impose a one-off flood levy of 0.5 per cent for middle-income earners, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

A levy of 0.5 per cent will be applied on taxable income between $50,001 and $100,000 and a levy of 1 per cent will be applied on taxable income above $100,000.

"Anyone earning under $50,000 will not pay the levy,'' Ms Gillard told the National Press Club today.

"In other words it is not like the Medicare levy, which for most taxpayers applies to all their income - it is like income tax rates which apply only above certain income levels.''

Someone who earns an income of $60,000 will pay just under $1 extra per week under the levy, Ms Gillard said.

"A person earning $100,000 per year will pay just under an extra $5 per week,'' she said.

The levy would apply only in the 2011-12 financial year and was expected to raise $1.8 billion, she said.

Ooh, I'm going to blog about this.

And for starters, I don't hate it as much as you might think.

You might argue that's because, as a low-income earner, I'm exempt. Yes, I'm on about 35k a year, so I don't have to pay a cent.

My missus does, however, but she's not far over 50k, and we're only looking at about $40 or thereabouts for the year. I can live with that.

A lot of people hate it though. When the news broke, the main story on perthnow.com.au generated more than 400 comments, most of whom were having a whinge. I spoke to a few people at work about it, too, and they said they weren't happy about it either.

If you don't live in Australia, movies and media might have you thinking of this country like we're a bunch of laid back folks, generally happy to help out a neighbour in need. G'day mate, and all that.

Yeah right. We care about our fellow person about as much as everyone else on this rock does - that is, hardly at all. Unless something is actually happening to them, most Australians don't really give a shit.

To be honest, there's a part of me that actually likes this levy. Don't get me wrong, I don't like the Australian government atall, they're as corrupt as they come. They could fork the bill themselves, it's not like they don't have the money, they just don't want to.

No, I like it because they're going after the rich. The selfish bastards at the top, those for whom people like me have worked their backsides off for, finally they've gotta cough the fuck up. Bosses like so many I've had, they're as self-centred as they come. They wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

The only way to get people like that to give to other people is to make it law, because the cunts wouldn't do it otherwise.

This all said, I do feel sorry for the few who have already helped out, perhaps by donating in some way. Good on you, guys, people like you who have given voluntarily make the world a better place to live. I can understand, completely, how this might dissaude those types from doing so again, and don't believe they should also have to pay this levy.

Still, some of the comments people have been making sicken me. Seriously, some guy who gets $100k a year chucks a hissy fit because he's going to have to pay about $250 towards this. What kind of a wanker are you, really? $250 is like loose change to someone like you.

People like that, I don't much enjoy having to share this world with. We'd be better off without them.

Microsoft, for fuck's sake...

2011-01-06T04:29:00.000-08:00

I'd been meaning to make the shift from a 32-bit Windows 7 installation to 64-bit for a few weeks now, but I hadn't quite gotten around to it.

Among other reasons, I was never 100% happy with having Windows running off my solid state drive. Yeah, so solid state is probably the future, and it's certainly faster, but my experience was plagued with blue screens at random times. As far as I could tell, I'd made all the necessary adjustments, and even returned one solid state for another, but the blue screens continued to exist.

Traditional drives may be slower than solid state, but it's the drive technology that's been used for decades now, and there's something to be said for that. Maybe I'll give solid state another few years and then try again, but I've also got to be honest in that I really didn't find it a whole lot faster than my WD Velociraptor.

Another benefit is that RAM for my system is cheap as chips (get it? chips? yeah baby!), because I'm still back on DDR2 memory. I was able to get a couple of 1gig DDR2-PC6400's for $25 ea. Twice the memory for just an extra $50, I'm down for that.

Anyway, I could resist no longer, and last night, I got started on it. I cleaned up my computer's internals, put the Velociraptor back in, slotted in the new ram, and started installing Windows 7 64-bit.

That's when Microsoft showed up.

See, Vista wasn't that great an OS, let's be honest, but I gave them a go, and shortly after its initial release, bought the full Home Premium Vista. Because of that, when it came time to move on to Windows 7, I was able to buy just the upgrade version. Sweet, looking after the customer that looks after you, that's what I like to see.

Only, I shot myself in the foot.

I got almost all the way through the installation of Windows 7, and that's when it asked me for my product key.

...and then told me it was invalid. Just for kicks, and yeah, I tried, it told me my Vista key was also invalid.

I knew what it was trying to say, that it couldn't find the OS to upgrade, so it was looking for a "full version" key. Just, it would have been nice if it'd told me that right at the beginning, rather than having to make me wait for it.

So - and I can't believe that I have to do this - but every time I want to reinstall Windows 7, I have to install Vista first. Wow, that's user friendly... not.

Honestly, would it kill them to have it ask you for your full version's product key if it detects you're running the upgrade cd? Is this where we're at here in 2011? I realise we don't want people abusing the upgrade version to get the full version in it's place, but is this really the best we can do?

This all said, everything's running really sweet right now. Granted, it might've taken a couple of hours, but I'm loving it. My solid state is now the drive I install games on to, and even though I've got Wow and half a dozen games on Steam on it, it's still under half full.

It may have been at least 15 years since I bought my first desktop, but gaming on the pc is still where it's at for me. There is nothing better.

Ricky Gervais, part two

2010-11-23T04:29:00.000-08:00

I blogged a while back about Ricky Gervais here, where I criticised him for taking the piss out of fat people. I've seen him do it during his stand-up routine, while on Letterman, and also on his blog. Basically, everywhere he can.

Anyhow, I've just gotten done watching his latest stand-up routine, Science, where, once again, he's having a go. Surprise surprise.

Before I continue, I want to make it clear at this point that I like Ricky Gervais. Really, I do. I quite like his style of humour, the way he tries to follow up statements with humorous bits of clarification that just seem to get him deeper in the shit. He doesn't take himself too seriously, and he's not worried about being politically correct, which is a big plus in my book.

That said, I wouldn't quite say he's setting the bar as far as comedy goes; if anything, I'd consider work like The Office and Extras more dramas than comedy shows. Still, I did laugh out loud a couple of times while watching his Science routine, and that's high praise.

He does continue to go on about fat people though. Says he's trying to help. Huh? When you're up on stage mate, making a joke about buckets or some such shit, you're not out to help anyone, you're having a laugh at their expense. Really, who are you trying to kid? You don't give a fuck about them, they're just filler because you don't really have enough material to fill the show. How else can you explain why he's doing it all... the... fucking... time?

Seriously, have you ever seen him have a go at smokers, or drug addicts? Or the smelly cunts out there who think nothing of showering and spraying a bit of deodorant on themselves before leaving the house every day?

No, never.

I get it mate, we live in an image-fueled world. What you look like is much more important than how you behave. Morals? Fuck em, just eat salad and go for a jog. That'll keep Ricky Gervais off your back, like as if he had any business being on your back in the first place.

Fuck you, Bethesda! Fuck you very much!

2010-10-19T04:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, I have no interest in the Fallout: New Vegas game that's just been released, but this is fucking horseshit:

On the top, is the game listed in Steam for US residents, and the bottom, in Steam for Australian residents. Both are in $US currency.

I've blogged about this before, here, and here, but I consider this a particularly messed up example by virtue of it being a new release that's almost double the price.

If I were even nearly half-interested in this game, I'd torrent the fucking thing in a heartbeat. Fuck em. You're not doing the right thing by me, but you want me to do the right thing by you? Are you having a laugh?

It's not just PC gamers getting the shaft. EB Games list the 360/ps3 versions on sale for $59.99US for US residents, whereas EB Australia actually has it listed for a staggering $108.00AU. Do they not realise our dollar is currently buying $0.99US right now? Or do they seriously expect us to believe shipping costs bump up the price by about $40 per box?

Either way, Bethesda are definitely not getting any of my money this holiday season.

Onkyo TX-NR1007

2010-09-30T04:28:00.000-07:00

The Onkyo TX-NR1007 is a 9.2 channel A/V Receiver, and by this time next week, it will be the receiver powering the venturai.com home theatre.

Out with the old Pioneer 1019, and in with the new Onkyo.

When it comes, I'll up new pics, and will advance the home theatre another iteration. We'll be at v1.3, woohoo!

Playstation Move

2010-09-17T04:27:00.000-07:00

I've had Playstation Move for about 24 hours now. I bought the starter pack, an additional controller, Sports Champions, Start the Party and a charging station.

We spent the first evening with Start the Party, and this second evening I've just unlocked the bronze trophies in table tennis and gladiator duel. I've also played completely through the demo from The Shoot that came on the starter disk that's with the starter pack.

Impressions?

It's a bit of a double-edged sword. I'm not having the time of my life, but I think the combination of the camera and the controller makes for a much, much bigger step forward than the Wii remote was. Maybe it's because the camera has the ability to track the controller in 3D space far better than what's possible with the Wii's sensor bar, I don't know.

Shoot the Party is a game where you have to perform party tasks on camera. They use the position of the Move camera to attach a device to your hand, like a hammer or a tennis racquet. The game then has you perform things like swatting flies out of the air or popping balloons. It's gimmicky, but excellent, if just because for the first time in the game you're actually doing it yourself, rather than just controlling some avatar. It's not the best game you'll have played this year, but the potential is there to do some crazy fun stuff with the technology.

Sports Champions is Sega's take on Wii Sports. The table tennis experience is at least on par with that in Resort, which I consider a huge compliment considering the excellent job that Nintendo did. There are times when it doesn't quite do what I want, but that's an issue I've experienced with both games. The gladiator game is reasonably well done, especially when you're using two controllers, one for your shield and the other your sword.

I quite enjoyed The Shoot too. I'm definitely going to have to get a gun attachment for this controller. After a quick calibration, I found the aiming to be much more accurate than I was ever able to get shooting on the Wii. This had me enjoying the game a whole lot more. Assuming it also retails at $49AU, which is under half the price that normal new release games launch at down here, this is one game I'll have no hesitation in grabbing when it lands next month.

Much like with Wii Sports, then, I found the Move's launch titles to be excellent hardware demonstrations. There's not a lot of depth in anything, but the technology behind it all has some serious potential.

Coupled with Microsoft's upcoming Kinect, I really like how each system is now going to have its own motion-capture technology. With any luck it will force the big companies, like Activison, Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, to have to think outside of the box (for once). No longer will they just be able to make the same old shooter and port it across, having it work pretty much exactly the same way but on slightly different gamepads.

Outside of the Rock Band franchise, which I will continue to support, and of course, my recent return into World of Warcraft, I'm officially done with normal games. I'm not shooting using some fiddly thumbstick thing on a gamepad when I can just point the Move controller at my target, no way! :D

World of Warcraft & more

2010-09-15T04:26:00.000-07:00

Yes, you can assume that I'm still playing World of Warcraft :)

Less than four months I've been back into that game, and I'm now my guild's main tank. I've been main tank for both 10 and 25-man raids. I have a gear score of 5765 and I've got just over 41 thousand unbuffed hitpoints.

All things considered, for someone new to the endgame who also has a fulltime job commitment, I've come a fuck of a long way in a very short amount of time.

It was great at first, because it felt like there was always something to do, but now, like so many other people I know, it's become just about the raiding.

There's just nothing in it for me doing anything else anymore, because only getting together with a lot of other people and downing big bosses is going to net me gear that's better than what I already have.

In the meantime, you stare at the screen, sitting around in Dalaren, pretty much waiting for something to happen.

So I went and pre-ordered Playstation Move.

The Playstation Move is Sony's answer to the Nintendo Wii, and it comes out tomorrow. You hold a remote with a light bulb on the end, and a camera plugged into the ps3 picks thats up.

Initial reports are that it's actually very precise, and the wife and I were watching a Youtube video on the "Start the Party" game that had us laughing about halfway through.

I was particularly impressed with the sorcery game they demonstrated at E3 this year, but that's not due until next year. Bah.

If I don't write about Playstation Move ever again, you can assume it sucks more than Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen.

Assuming anything could suck more than that :)

Level 30 Storeman

2010-08-07T04:26:00.000-07:00

Woot, I just hit level 30! To celebrate, I feel that now's a good time to reflect on the past.

When I first started working in this industry, I was a level 1 storeman. This is going back almost a decade now. I was so bad, infact, that when I began, I was walking around with these:

For the longest time, I wore those fucking boots. I didn't know how much they sucked, how stupid they made me for putting them on. That's the thing about items that take from your intellect, you end up too stupid to realise the effect they're having. I actually believed that hard work was the key to climbing the ladder, if you can believe that shit.

Over time, however, I have gained much experience. The loot drops have been crap, only ever scraps, but still, enough to have provided a roof over my head.

One gets smart over a long period of time though, and about two years ago, I completed a handful of quests in succession. The money rewards were shit, as has always been the case, but I did get lucky looting this:

Epic loot! I put it on, and the difference has been remarkable. My back hurts less at night from all the heavy lifting, and I'm finding I have more energy for my leisure activities.

I'm getting hardcore now though, as a recent quest turn-in awarded me the following piece:

Now that's what I'm talking about! Wearing this jacket is really helping me out here, especially in the zone that I'm questing in, if you get my drift.

It's at this point, that I'm looking towards the future. I don't know if I'll ever be able to get it, but I'm striving for the following piece:

I've seen some phat loot in my time, but finding that one in the workplace database had me positively drooling in anticipation of ever being able to own that beauty.

Just out of curiosity, however, but I thought I'd do a search on legendary pieces, and I have to admit, this is the one that really caught my eye:

When it comes to that thing, I'm like Wayne from Wayne's World; "one day, you will be mine. Oh yes, you will be mine".

The connection

2010-08-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

So yeah, I was thinking about World of Warcraft, about why it's so successful, and I was also thinking about workplace exploitation, and how much it sucks when you get screwed over IRL.

And then I caught on a connection between the two, which I'll admit, really made me laugh.

In my experience, commendable traits like integrity don't amount for much in the real world. They really don't. Work hard, and use your initiative as much as you like, it doesn't matter. Any extra money you may make who you work for, the boys at the top will just pocket for themselves. Quietly.

World of Warcraft, on the other hand, is a different story. Demonstrate an eagerness to learn, show up when you say you're going to show up, and put in the time and effort towards improving your character, and you'll go places. You'll see things you've never seen before, do things you've never done before, and be decked out in gear you'd never have dreamed of owning.

World of Warcraft, my friends, is a better judge of character than the real world. You read it here first.

World of Warcraft

2010-07-21T04:25:00.000-07:00

Yes I know, it's been a while. You can blame my returning to World of Warcraft for that one.

For the longest time I'd had enough of MMO's. Like they said in an episode of Pure Pwnage, the only thing that matters is how long you play the game. Which is, of course, the point to it all.

More recently though, I've been able to hear and see my fiancee over the other side of the room enjoying it up. She got into a good guild, really enjoys her Shaman character, and even got into the raiding. Every Sunday evening they hit up 25-man ICC, and then she's part of a 10-man raid Monday or Wednesday or something. Then there's dailies, which of course, are things you do every day.

At first it didn't bother me, I couldn't see the appeal, but there's only so much home theatre one can watch. Really good movies are at a minimum, 3 months apart, and as much as I've enjoyed working on VQuest in the past, there's just nothing in it for me anymore.

Over time though, I found myself wanting more and more to be a part of that world of hers. When you've had a partner who hasn't been the least bit into computers and games, it helps you appreciate having one that is, that much more.

So I re-activated my old account a month ago, and decided I'd get my level 31 Warrior to 80 as fast as possible. A month later (yesterday), I finally made it. Not bad, if I do say so myself, for someone who has to work fulltime and can't generally do much on Tuesdays because of the weekly maintenance.

So yeah, that's where I've been. I've booked next Tuesday off; yes, that would be July 27th, and I will likely post my impresssions of Starcraft 2 :)

Gamespot FTW

2010-06-18T04:24:00.000-07:00

I have to give a big kudos to Gamespot for providing, as far as I'm concerned, the best e3 coverage this year. Sure, other websites have also been adding their fair share of videos, but as far as I'm concerned, for sheer ease of use and video quality, their coverage has trumped the competition.

Sony, one and only?

2010-06-17T04:24:00.000-07:00

Alright, bar a couple of hiccups with Gamespot, I was able to watch Sony's e3 2010 press conference in full.

First off, I don't know where they think they're going with the 3d thing. It's almost like they're blissfully unaware of how prohibitively expensive 3d screens are. As has been said, too, a lot of people will have only recently forked out for a hd set, and it's a good bet they're not planning another upgrade anytime soon.

I don't know who's running the show over at Sony, but until they get their heads outta their arses, they're going to lose a lot more money if they're banking on 3d selling Playstations. I see a big shakeup in that company in the months to follow, because sooner or later, they're going to start running out of money to lose.

That said, their Sorcery demo, utilising the Playstation Move, impressed the hell out of me. I really liked the look of that. I came away more impressed with Move than with Microsoft's Kinect, to be honest, if just because Microsoft's demonstration of their adventures game showcased some seriously nasty lag. If I jump IRL, I want to see my avatar in the game jump immediately.

Outside of Sorcery though, Move looks just like what Nintendo introduced with the Wiimote so many years ago. That's not good.

Nintendo are still well ahead this generation, and all e3 has really proven is that Microsoft and Sony are much more jealous of Nintendo having tapped that casual market than they'd ever admit.

Nintendo, sigh

2010-06-16T04:23:00.000-07:00

I'm at the arse end of watching Nintendo's e3 2010 press conference, and I put it like that because, as per the usual, their press conferences bore me to tears. They've made so much money, both with the Wii and the DS, that I'd think the least they could do is hire someone who speaks tangible English (and I don't mean that annoying Reggie fella).

Ok, so in a word, they're boring.

That said, Nintendo are owning this generation. If there's anything to be gained from Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Playstation Move, it's that they want to be Nintendo.... sooo bad. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all.

Their botched Zelda demo made me laugh though; "please, everyone, turn off your wireless devices". How many fucking devices these days aren't wireless ones?

Their upcoming 3DS will sell a gazillion copies, but I'm not terribly enthusiastic about it. That's not to say it's not a great, great idea, but there's just no place for it in my life. I work, rest and play. At work, I'm working, at rest, I'm sleeping, and at play, I'm either on the pc, watching a movie in the home theatre, or playing Rock Band on my ps3. That's pretty much 95% of my life, right there. Sad, I know.

So yeah, much of it sucked, but there was one bit of excellent news; there's a new NBA Jam coming, and it's coming for the Wii. In the absence of it also showing up on the 360 or the ps3, you can rest assured I'll definitely be buying that on release day.

Alright, now it's time to watch Sony's conference. Wish me luck.

Microsoft Kinect

2010-06-15T04:23:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching Microsoft's 2010 E3 Press Conference (thanks to Gamespot).

There's no denying that I'm going to buy their new motion-capture peripheral, Kinect, the day it comes out. I will even preorder that sucker.

As always though, I'm concerned about the lag. It was very evident during some of the demos that they played at the show, most noticeably the adventures pack where the guy was jumping over and crouching under barriers, and collecting coins. Compared to how brilliantly Nintendo did table tennis in Wii Sports Resort, it's positively embarassing.

Still, it all looks smoking hot, and coupled with Rock Band 3, I anticipate actually having some games to play this coming Christmas. There's a first.

Oh yeah, and for anyone who doesn't know, at the end of the conference Microsoft announced a new, slimmer 360, and then gave everybody in the audience one. While this was obviously just designed to curry favour with the attending press, I question the need. Really, if you have the money and/or connections to be able to afford to actually be at that conference, it occurs to me you should be among the last on the planet eligible for such a handout.

Being an Australian consumer pretty much sucks!

2010-06-11T04:22:00.000-07:00

I'm going to give you a great example of where I'm going with this one.

Among other purchases, one of the titles I recently picked up from Amazon UK was Surrogates on Blu-Ray, and I got it for £8.50. The Aussie dollar is currently fetching £0.57, which means that, in my currency, I paid approximately $14.91AU for it.

The only problem is, Surrogates is still selling for $40.00AU over here, and I put that in italics because that's pretty much the price it released at.

So yeah, the situation blows over here. I could hit you with a lot more, like how corrupt the banks and the government are, but you get the point.

Out of curiosity, the Aussie dollar would have to drop from buying £0.57 to buying only £0.21 before I would be better off just getting it from a local store. I don't think it's ever been that low.

iTunes, I'm so over you!

2010-06-07T04:22:00.000-07:00

I bought a shiny new third-generation Ipod Touch to replace my ageing old first-generation Touch about a week ago, and iTunes has been nothing but a headache ever since.

My iTunes install on my desktop would refuse to sync across any of my applications. I tried replacing the cable, restoring my device, deleting and redownloading individual apps... nothing worked.

It's fair to say that my first two hours with it were met with nothing but frustration and purchase regret, and that's a really bad way to get started.

I ended up installing iTunes on my laptop, and at first, everything was ok. It would actually sync across my purchased games to the device, which was exactly what I wanted.

That lasted a couple of days. Then it would never actually finish sync'ing. Replacing the cable (again) has fixed the problem, but I must admit, I'm starting to find myself wondering just what the next problem with this shit is going to be.

Apple's hardware is great. Truly, very great. It looks good, it's well-designed, fast, comfortable... all in all, it's great to own. Unfortunately, the software team are definitely letting the side down, and it's made what should've been a pleasurable experience a right pain in the arse.

How it went with the Room Eq Wizard (REW)

2010-05-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, calibrated EMM-6 microphone... check. Art usb dual preamp... check. XLR male to female cable... check. Looks like it's finally time to take some measurements.

So yeah, I took the seating out of the home theatre room, moved the subwoofer to where the seating was, placed the calibrated mic on a tripod at various locations throughout the room, and then took readings with REW to determine the best bass response (from 80hz down). Where it's at its best, is the best spot for the sub to go.

First off, the right wall (where there's the big window) was total shit. Here's how that one looked halfway along that wall:

As you can see, that one goes to hell in the early 50's, and it ain't that crash hot to begin with. I then proceeded to try the front of that wall, with results that were pretty much just as bad:

Yeah, that's another epic dip around the mid 50's. I figured anywhere near the window was crap (as I've read others have generally experienced).

At this point I took a reading of the original spot, which was behind the seating position to the left:

That actually ain't that bad a spot. It does dip in the late 30's early 40's, but not by too much.

This next reading is along the middle of the left wall (just past the door):

I knew this would be bad, because I'd done the traditional subwoofer crawl playing the Ironhide flip from Transformers 1, and that had sounded terrible.

Next I moved on to the front of the left wall:

Much improved, although still something of a nasty dip in the early 50's (I figure still a bit too near the door). So here's a shot of the mic up to the left side of the front wall:

This is the money shot, if you ask me. The best spot in the house. It dips only a few dB's in the early 40's, aside from that it's just great.

Unfortunately, with the SubMersive on the table, it's height actually ends up a little above where the screen goes (wouldn't you know it), so I've had to put it closer to the front left corner, which looks a bit more like:

It dips a little in the early 40's and 50's, but once again, only by a few dB's. Nothing near the -15 to -20dB drop I was witnessing earlier.

I'll let you know how it goes after I've had a chance to recalibrate and then check out some bass-heavy content :)

Dragon Wars baby!

2010-05-17T04:20:00.000-07:00

I finished my first-watch of Dragon Wars not long ago (purchased earlier today).

I don't ask for much, really I don't. Just give me some fighting, some action, something to stress out the Seaton SubMersive subwoofer a little bit, and wrap it up in a plot that doesn't suck. That's a pretty simple set of pre-requisites.

Dragon Wars did not disappoint. Yeah I'd seen it before, but not at that quality. I was always impressed with its fight scenes, but not impressed enough to splurge out the $40 or so they'd have been asking when it was a new release.

If you're into the sort of thing I'm into, I would recommended it. I suppose you could say it has the Venturai seal of approval then. Or something like that :)

Grand Theft Auto IV

2010-05-14T04:19:00.000-07:00

I got quite a bit into GTA IV when it first came out on the ps3, but I always figured at some point after it's release on the PC (which was released a little later), I would pick it up on that platform. As usual with every game that has any kind of a shooting element, I figure I will enjoy playing with the mouse that much more.

As it happens, today is the day I have finally stepped into the world of Liberty City on the PC platform.

I'll open with this much; it's a great, great game. It's immersive, the world is huge and there's so much detail, so much you can do. You can sit back and watch telly, go pick up your girl and take her bowling, log online and buy a new ringtone for your phone. Hell, the independent radio station will even play your mp3s as you drive.

Right about now, you're probably wondering why I'm writing this like there's a great big BUT coming up. Ok, well, the fucking thing has been freezing on me. Everything was going great until the last couple of hours, but it has since frozen twice. And by frozen, I mean the video and audio just hang, and you have to alt-ctrl-del and force it down with task manager.

Granted, it saves your progress after every mission, but that's not really the point.

I googled the problem, and have tried a few suggestions, but it's late, and I'm not going to fire it up again until tomorrow.

Cross your fingers.

Oh yeah, and there's a pretty good chance I'm going to trade in a handful of old DS games I've got here for Rockstar's upcoming Red Dead Redemption that's coming out next week. Yeah I know, I'll have to get it on either the ps3 or 360. Nothing's perfect.

Gold Class vs La Premiere

2010-05-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

The two major cinema chains in these parts, Event and Hoyts, both have luxury cinema solutions available to the moviegoer. Event have Gold Class and Hoyts have La Premiere, and they're like going to the movies, but on crack. The seats are a lot more luxurious, and you can buy food from a menu and have it delivered at any time during the movie.

We have frequented both establishments several times over the past few years, and I'm going to tell you all about them. I've done a lot of thinking about which is the better of the two. Bear in mind, I'm commenting on the Western Australian versions of these, and your experience in a different location could well be a completely different one.

I'll start with Gold Class. The setup there is exquisite. It feels more like you're dining in a posh restaurant than going to the movies. Everyone's very professional, polite and well-dressed. The food is pricey, and nothing's complimentary, but the seats are recliners, and the screen is always exclusively yours. It's cheap during the weekdays, but expensive in the evening, and very expensive anytime during the weekend.

La Premiere is something more akin to a makeshift setup. It's as if they took an old room upstairs, and made it into the lounge. It's reasonably well done up, but you know you're still just "going to the movies". The young guy serving you will be dressed the same as the one checking the tickets downstairs. Only one of the La Premiere screens is an exclusive screen, too, the rest are actually just balconies built higher up behind people paying normal price. The seats are comfortable enough, but they're not recliners, and the price is expensive and doesn't change nomatter when you go.

It's not all bad for La Premiere though. If you want a drink at Gold Class, you've got to pay, but La Premiere offers up complimentary soft drink and popcorn. The cups are small, but there's nothing stopping you from going back for more while the ads are showing. La Premiere food is better value for money too, you pay slightly less, for what feels like slightly more.

Despite all of this, I can't help but feel like La Premiere is the poor man's Gold Class. I don't know if it's just because La Premiere hasn't really caught on, but if you want Saturday night Gold Class tickets to the latest blockbuster and you've left it even a little too late, forget it. They get snapped up in a right hurry. La Premiere though, we've never not been able to get tickets.

That said, I couldn't really blog about all this without mentioning how the Gold Class experience has become something less than what it started out to be. The food prices have stayed the same, of course, but serving sizes have gotten smaller and smaller; you're getting a lot less than you used to. The pizza is a great example; way back when, you'd get a big ole' 12-slice round pizza. Then it was 10. Then it was a rectangle 8. Now it's a square 6. The dimensions, not to mention number of pieces, are shrinking and shrinking. I've also noticed it with the chunky chips, which I've always particularly enjoyed, but they went from a big bowl to a smaller disposable paper cone, because it saves on the washing up. The service has gotten a little sloppy too; on occasion we've been brought out the wrong stuff, sometimes it's been late, and (with the pizza we had recently) not even really all that warm. Incidentally, they used to offer a service where you could ask for a blanket, but not now; just the other day, I got "sorry, we don't do that anymore".

A lot of people might read this and think I'm mad for spending the big bucks to watch movies this way, but I live for this sorta thing, and I just can't do the normal thing anymore. Granted, IMAX is an ok alternative, but you're still just waiting in a queue while your drink gets warm.

Ultimately though, I've got to admit that the only reason I go to the movies is because they get it first. If they were released on Blu-Ray on the same day as they showed up in the cinemas, I'd never go back to Gold Class or La Premiere ever again.

Upcoming Home Theatre improvements planned

2010-05-09T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'm going to run through the list of home theatre improvements I have planned over the next couple of weeks (while on holiday).

Tomorrow morning we're heading out to Ikea for an hour or two to have a look at shelving units (on our way to seeing Iron Man 2). The projector has been sitting on a couple of boxes for much too long now. I'm thinking, then, that something spacious, tall, and with at least 4 adjustable shelves should hit the spot. The projector will sit on the topmost shelf.

At first I was also planning on storing our Blu-Rays on this unit, but that's not going to happen now. For starters, I was never keen on housing them on a simple shelving unit (that's what bookcases are for; less deep and with backing).

It occured to me though, while watching Iron Man tonight, that I'd really like to get the receiver and the Blu-Ray player back there too. The Blu-Ray player isn't so bad, but with the room's lights out, the receiver's front panel is lit up like a Christmas tree. It will be really nice to be able to look straight forward at the screen and not also have that bright light staring you in the face. Granted, I'm going to have to follow this change up with quite a bit of rewiring, but hey, I live for this shit!

The other change involves the front wall itself. We're renting, so we can't exactly mount up a projector screen, but a workmate (who watched my Seaton SubMersive Youtube video) recommended sticking up some dark wrapping paper on the wall around where the image hits. Getting some of that should be easy enough, and I like the thought of such a change bringing some much-needed emphasis to the screen itself, but I am a little concerned about double-sided tape taking off the paint when I try to remove it down the track.

We take pretty good care of this house though (have done so for years), and if such a change can make our experience that much more rewarding, it's a chance I'm willing to take.

The shelving unit is first in line though, and with that said, I'm outta here. Wish me luck :)

Steam, still blowing chunks!

2010-05-08T04:17:00.000-07:00

I'll start with a picture:

For anyone who's wondering, I convered this sort of thing not long ago.

This time around, the top half of the picture is the Steam price if you're connecting to the store from the US, and the bottom half is if you're connecting from Australia.

Unbelievably, both prices are in US dollars.

There's not a lot more that needs to be said about this. It was disgusting then, and it's disgusting now. The upcoming Civilization V is $49.99 vs $79.99, which is particularly disappointing because, unlike Red Faction Guerrilla, it's a title I was actually considering purchasing.

Not now though.

Fucking Australian banks!

2010-05-01T04:16:00.000-07:00

If you kinda like money, you know, value the necessity of using it to buy food, pay the bills, put a roof over your head, all that kinda stuff... I wouldn't go to Australia anytime soon if I were you. I swear, we have the worst fucking banks on the planet.

Not all that long ago they introduced a fee where you're charged $2 if you have an account with one bank but use another bank's ATM to withdraw funds from it. So I'm with National Australia Bank (the gay!) and I use a BankWest ATM (the even gayer!), I'm charged an extra $2 on top of my deposit amount. So I can withdraw $50, and pay $52. Sweet deal, huh?

More recently, myself and the missus thought we'd set our savings accounts up with the same bank so that transfers would be more instant between them. Or so we thought. Because a $400 transfer from her account to mine that was done 30 hours ago still has not arrived. I feel like I want to ask; where's the money now? I mean, it's not in her account, and it's not in mine... so where is it?

Yeah, I know the answer. It's in a temporary account of theirs, earning them interest. Fucking unbelievable how they get away with this shit.

Humanity; being a cunt to one another since... forever.

Avatar

2010-04-29T04:15:00.000-07:00

We picked up Avatar on Blu Ray yesterday (Wednesday 28th), and watched the first 2/3rds of it that evening.

And fuck it's good.

I'll be honest, I wasn't really all that interested, at first. The damn thing is still showing in cinemas over here, for fuck's sake. I didn't feel like it'd been long enough since we went (twice) to see it in 3D.

What got me interested though, was this comment that was linked by Sony Playstation on Twitter:

Good BD's have an average weighted bitrate around 22Mb. "Avatar" has an average weighted of about 34; peaks at over 40! (40.8), and never drops below 25. The DTS-MA track is also near perfect. with it's base rate at near 3.6Mb, high rate of 5.2!

Both of these absolutely press the boundaries of spec ... it is a very bare.. but very high quality, production.

Then I started reading reviews, and I'll be damned, but it seemed like everyone was giving it 5 out of 5 for both video and audio.

I was sold.

Granted, they're milking it. Rumour is they're adding another 6 minutes and then putting it back on the big screen. They made like 2.5 billion or something... what, that wasn't enough?

That said, there's two sides to every coin, and this Blu Ray is an absolutely stellar release. No stupid documentaries and all that crap taking up valuable disk space, just the movie at the highest quality possible.

We'll be watching the rest of it tomorrow night. I apologise in advance, Perth, for the noise that my Seaton SubMersive will be generating when the shit hits the fan.

Infinity Ward vs Activision

2010-04-28T04:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's no secret now that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 made Activision a ton of cash. Like, over a billion dollars.

In typical bosslike fashion, very little of that money made its way back to those that actually did the work. In this case, the developer, Infinity Ward. So little, infact, that the two co-founders of Infinity Ward left to form another company, Respawn Entertainment. As it happens, these guys must be quite good to work for, because about a quarter of the rest of the company have also apparently jumped ship.

This bit, I can totally understand. I know as well as anyone how good bosses are like, a needle in a haystack. If I actually found one, and were in much the same situation, shit, I'd follow that son of a bitch to hell and back.

Exploitation is the name of the game these days, and in my experience, if the average boss doesn't have to pay you more money, he won't. That said, I really hope these guys had a contract all written up, because if they did, now Activision's going to fucking pay.

Go get em, fellas!

Low self-esteem

2010-04-22T04:14:00.000-07:00

If you have low self-esteem, do that poor bastard at work a favour, and leave it by the front fucking door before your next shift. Pick it back up on the way out when you're done, if you must, but for god's sake, give the poor cunt a day off.

I am done with fellow employees picking nits about my work to make themselves feel better. I'm fucking over it. If you have low self-esteem, go see a counsellor, a shrink, whatever, but leave me out of it. I've got my own problems.

Here's a thought; using the mistakes of others to make yourself feel better about yourself is a bit like what they try and teach you in school about doing drugs. You'll get a high, but once it wears off, you'll be in worse shape than you were to begin with.

This bitch, Karen, has been riding me for months. She's middle-aged and she's completely miserable. Frankly, it's amazing how many of these I'm meeting out there. They've generally pumped out one or two kids, have come to the conclusion they're not happy with how their lives have turned out, are depressed because of that, and somehow it's my fucking problem. I'm like... what?

Karen, happiness comes from within, sweetheart. No amount of trying to make yourself feel better at my expense is going to help, ok?

My new resume's mission statement

2010-04-15T04:13:00.000-07:00

I'm just putting this out there for all to see. It's not like anybody's reading anyway, so it's pretty much my own personal space.

The thing is, I haven't had the best career ever. I started in a supermarket, then went to work on a farm, came back to the city and studied, had casual work, then did an "apprenticeship" (I put the quotes around that because the only thing it had in common with what I'd think an apprenticeship should be was that it was called one).

Following that, I was then unemployed for a long time, and have since spent about the last decade working in warehousing.

And through it all, there's been this one universal truth; those in charge are selfish. It seems to be the case so much in these parts, it's like it's damn-near law. If you're the sort that likes to reward those under you that are deserving, get the fuck out!

The last boss I had that was worth writing home about was in the aforementioned supermarket. If I recall correctly, that was back in 1993. He was the manager of a Coles Supermarket where I worked, and management fired him because he didn't fit the bill. That is, he was hands-on, approacheable, and wasn't a kiss-arse.

Fuck me, I wish I could remember his name. He'd make my Facebook friends list in a heartbeat.

For the longest time now, I've given up trying to find another boss like that, but I think it's time to tread the water again. There must be more out there somewhere, I've just gotta find the bastards. Talk about a needle in a haystack; for my benefit, they could at least post a sign or something.

So with that said, I'm doing away with the traditional resume-writing style, you know, where you just write the professional motivational crap that they want to hear, and I think I'm going to start sending out my resumes and application letters telling it how it is.

That said, I present the first draft of my new resume's Mission Statement:

To work with and for people I can respect. Where teamwork and cooperation are actually practiced and are experienced first-hand, rather than just talked about or pretended upon. Where 'leading by example' isn't just something that's googled to find out what it means, and where those that set the rules sport enough integrity to realise how important is it that they too, must follow those rules. Where the quality of the work being done by an individual is more important than that individual's appearance, where expecting employees to work like adults means not treating them like children, and where friends are made because people get on well and not because of the promise or possibility of preferential treatment.

The vast majority will have turned away by now, but if your workplace actually satisfies the above conditions, I'd love to hear from you, because like me, you're one in a million!

Splinter Cell: Conviction and Ubisoft

2010-04-11T04:13:00.000-07:00

This looks quite good

I'm thinking about getting Splinter Cell: Conviction when it comes out, but it doesn't have a price on Steam yet, and then there's the fact that it's Ubisoft and they have that online DRM thing.

Ok, I don't have any experience with that thing, having bought Assassin's Creed 2 on the 360 and then passing on both Silent Hunter 5 and Settlers 7, but it must be pretty bad if they're admitting there's been some problems with it.

It's a pity, really, that Assassin's Creed and Splinter Cell are both reasonably good franchises, because at this rate, I don't think they're going to bother with pc releases for much longer.

This will, of course, severely impact the number of Ubisoft titles I'll be purchasing, because there's no way I'm going to even attempt to play my shooters with a gamepad.

Why I like Home Theatre

2010-04-05T04:11:00.000-07:00

I was reminded of exactly why I'm so much into Home Theatre last night when we went to see Clash of the Titans in 3d.

For starters, forget about bothering to get there at least 30 mins prior to the start of the movie, as per their recommendation. Give yourself a little bit of time if you're going to want to get snacks, but outside of that, there's really no point.

We showed up just over half an hour before the movie started, got our tickets and snacks, and then proceeded to wait at least 20 minutes before we could go inside. I really didn't enjoy that bit.

Once we were in there, we were then treated to about 15 minutes worth of adverts. Jesus Christ on a stick! I paid $44 for two tickets, another $30 for two drinks and two popcorns, had to stand around for 20 minutes, and now I'm being sat down to watch adverts??! Where the fuck is all the money going?

The funniest part is that their setup isn't even really that good. There were some parts that I felt would be heavy on the bass, but I wasn't getting any feedback whatsoever. Maybe they should use some of that money, and import themselves a couple Seaton SubMersives.

As for the movie, it wasn't bad, wasn't great. I wouldn't pay to see it again at the movies, but I'll definitely buy the Blu-Ray when it comes out. At least then, I'll be able to watch it on the best cinema in town; my own :)

Sometimes, I really don't like Ricky Gervais

2010-04-02T04:11:00.000-07:00

I've been following Ricky Gervais for a while now; basically, ever since my old man got me into The Office. For the most part, his stuff has been reasonably clever. Ok, so The Invention of Lying was a load of shit, and he has an annoying habit of repeating jokes, but The Office and Extras are both worth watching.

That said, he has to seriously stop bashing fat people. It's demeaning, a bit hypocritical (leading by example FTL), and I just saw him do it for the upteenth time on the David Letterman show.

For the record, I'm no stick figure myself, but I'm not really carrying any more weight than Ricky himself. I could stand to lose a few kilos, but I have a physical job and I'm on my feet all day.

In any case, we live in a world where nobody gives a fuck about anybody else. Period. Most of us are struggling to pay the bills, and we ain't getting any kind of support from anyone else. Yeah, call me crazy, but the last time I checked my bank account, there'd been no funds deposited in there from Ricky Gervais, and I'm betting the same is true for the two fat women he bagged on that show.

So why the fuck do they have to live their lives according to his standards? You don't give a shit about them, you ain't helping them out, they don't owe you jack, mate. Do you think they give a damn what you think about their appearance? Sorry, should they? They don't fucking owe Ricky Gervais anything. As a matter of fact, they don't fucking owe anyone anything.

Christ, I'm so fucking sick of this shit. Ricky, seriously, drop it already. People are doing it hard enough in this day and age as it is without some overweight comedian stranger publically flogging them.

Honestly, who takes a personal insult about people they don't know, and turns it into a joke in order to get a few laughs on a tonight show? How fucking low can you go?

Oh no, it's a console gaming post!

2010-03-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

PC gamers, please don't hate me :)

Sure, I've blogged about Star Trek Online, Aliens Vs Predator, Champions Online, Supreme Commander 2, and Battlefield Bad Company 2, and they're all on the pc, but there's something else; something unique that, every so often, I just enjoy returning to... and it's on a console.

My friends, I present Rock Band 2 (on the PS3).

I got into drumming in that game in a big way. I imported from the US all the addons you could think of; drum pad covers, metal pedal covers, trigger sticks, stools (sorry, thrones)... you name it, I bought it. Eventually I picked up the premium ION drumset, and then got a proper Roland setup.

Christ, you can spend a lot on this stuff. And I thought graphics cards and subwoofers were expensive :)

I have to admit, though, that it doesn't honestly get a lot of use these days. But it's like, it just sits there, ever patient. "When you want to come play me, I'll be ready".

The reason I'm motivated into an update about Rock Band (of all things), is that I've just returned from a 15-song setlist, and I had a great time. Ok, so it's different, and yeah, sometimes you just want to play a game where you get to shoot someone or blow something up, but there is a serious amount of fun to be had if you give it a chance.

Champions Online

2010-03-25T02:36:00.000-07:00

I took the liberty (read: made the mistake) of re-activating my Champions account about a week ago.

I don't hate the game, but I don't consider the notion of having to pay by the month to play it to be a particularly good deal.

One of the main problems I have is that I'm just not a champion. One of my mains is a hero based on the Hulk. Built like a brick shithouse, blue/green skin colour, ripped like a mofo. Some kind of experiment gone wrong.

The travel power I chose for him is way cool. You activate it, and then your jumps are super jumps. I'm talking about being able to jump over buildings. I can cover ground faster than a hero with flight, and when I land, it leaves a crater in the ground.

When I move about the city, I get people come up to me to say thanks. I repelled an Alien attack, and they're grateful. It's not uncommon to walk past pedestrians making sweet comments, and if I click on someone on the phone, they pop out a "oh my god, you won't believe who's right here" to whoever they're talking to.

So what's the problem, you ask? Just about any random group of thugs just chilling on top of a skyscraper can kick my arse. Without breaking out a sweat.

So yeah, it's an ok game, but you're no hero. I'm not asking to be Superman, for fuck's sake, but then, I'm not getting killed by Lex Luthor, either.

Another problem I have is with the powers. You see, they're just about all the same. You can shoot fire out of your mouth, ice out of your hands, or electricity from out of your chest. The point is that the abilities are damned near identical, it's just different methods of delivery.

I kinda like my hulk-a-like, but after having experimented with many different power sets, my favourite is munitions. This stinks, because my idea of a superhero is not a guy running around with guns. But there you have it. So I'm having the most fun playing the skill set that feels the least like actually being a superhero.

A lot of the travel powers are pretty cool, but ultimately, I don't think it's a whole lot better than City of Heroes. I think I should have re-activated my account with that game, instead.

Supreme Commander 2 initial review

2010-03-05T02:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I've played three skirmish games of Supreme Commander 2 now, and I'm going to post my initial impressions. The first game was against a normal AI, and the second and third both against a normal and a hard teamed up against me.

For starters, the game's definitely a lot more action-oriented. Like it's just really in your face. Everything builds a lot quicker, and there's no tech 1, tech 2 and tech 3 stuff. You research stuff now, and you gain research points by either building research buildings or with combat. You have different categories, like air, navy, land, structures, etc... and you spend the points to unlock things like bonuses and new units.

Yeah, forget almost everything you know about the series, either from Supreme Commander or even Total Annihilation that came so many years ago. The book has been re-written, somewhat substantially. Whether or not you like that, is up to you; I'm not necessarily saying it's good or bad.

You don't have to build mass and power storage now either, what you acquire is yours to keep. This comes with a catch; you have to have the resources now to build anything. It's very much like Command and Conquer now in that respect, and if you don't have the resources available to build that super unit, you won't be able to begin construction until you do.

The new way of doing things makes a big change to how you would use the shift key to queue up commands. If you queue up an engineer to build three anti-air turrets, for example, but you only have enough current resources for two, he's only going to build two, because all the resources for all queued structures are taken straight away. This is something I'd prefer they changed.

Come to think of it, the game is littered with technical issues like this. If you have one engineer assist another, it will only assist with the first structure in a queue, then it goes idle. You can't have engineers assist buildings like factories until after they're built too. Speaking of factories, you can put them on repeat, and they'll auto-pause if you run out of resources, but they won't auto-resume if you have enough resources once again.

These may be minor-sounding issues, but they're serving to make the gameplay a lot more frustrating than it needs to be. There's a lot more micromanagement that's needing to be done now, which feels like one fuck of a giant leap backwards.

I do like the game, don't get me wrong, but I don't know if I like it more than the original. That's not to say that I don't, mind you.

The jury's still out, but if they can fix the sort of issues that I've brought up, that might just win the case for them. I'm not hopeful though, Gas Powered Games make decent enough games, but they're not known for their post-release support. Cross fingers.

Steam price fixing

2010-03-01T02:42:00.000-08:00

One could argue this should've been assumed, given man's tendency to be greedy, but here's a picture I've just put together demonstrating how us Australian customers are paying more for our games over Steam:

The list on the left side is a capture direct from my Steam app, and the right side is a capture from my having browsed the Steam store via a proxy website (so they'd think I was living in the US of A). And believe it or not, both sets of prices are listed in $USD.

So yeah, let's look at what we've got here; among other differences, that's an extra $30 for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision), Napolean: Total War Imperial Edition (Sega) and Bioshock 2 (2k Games). Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (EA) is an extra $20, AvP (Sega again) an extra $15, and Warhammer 40k DoW2 Chaos Rising (THQ) an extra $10.

So yeah fellas, what's the deal? You taking the piss or something? Makes me laugh, when I think about it; yeah, piracy is wrong, but this shit is fine. Huh? What, it costs them more having an Australian download the game instead of an American? Of course not.

What a pity. The opportunity was there to do it so right and so well. After all, the goods are non-tangible and the internet makes the delivery. One store, prices listed in US dollars regardless of location, and all the rest of us pay is whatever the going exchange rate is at the time. Brilliant.

But no, as usual, human greed has to go fuck it up once again. Yeah, there's a switch!

Oh, and check out the dates too. Not only does the average Australian have to pay more, he's also got to wait longer before he can play it. The Yanks can start playing Supreme Commander 2 tomorrow (Tuesday March 2nd), but for reasons unknown, I've got to wait until Friday 5th.

That said, I'm grateful Supreme Commander 2 has the same price, and it's nice to see Valve themselves not engaging in this activity. At least there are a couple out there trying to do the right thing. They're the ones who'll be getting all my business from now on.

Star Trek Online

2010-02-07T02:46:00.000-08:00

If I could sum up STO in 3 words it'd likely be:

SERVER NOT RESPONDING

Ok, so that's a bit harsh, but over the course of a few hours, it's something I did encounter several times.

It's actually not a bad game. you get a quest, warp to a certain area, and investigate. Investigations usually come in several parts, one typically involves some sort of ship combat and the other planetary combat. Hail starfleet, hand in and collect reward, then either head back to Sol to upgrade or do the next quest.

But I like it.

Granted, I only probably like it because it's coated in Star Trek, but hey, that's what they're going for, right?

Star Trek Online - what was I thinking?

2010-02-06T02:47:00.000-08:00

A few hours ago I caved, and purchased Star Trek Online on Steam. My bad.

I've always loved Star Trek, despite finding it hypocritical that a species of our selfish volatility would do a show in which we're the peaceful explorers of the galaxy, surrounded by the aggressive, warmongering types.

Oh the irony.

It's academic, at any rate, because Steam is reporting that "your purchase is still being processed", and I can't do anything with it. No, it won't even let me start downloading the client files.

I can log into my bank's internet banking though, and I see the transaction for it listed, clear as day.

Money I wish I could get back, truth be told.