• 27Aug 08

  Good bye Gears of War, hello BioShock!

  Well I have done it, I have finished Gears of War for PC. It took me 33 tries on hardcore difficulty but I finally managed to kill General Raam!

  

  What a bastard of a fight. Dom, your mentally retarded squad mate, is worse than useless in this battle. I don't understand why squad mate AI, which wasn't exactly awe inspiring to start off with, would degenerate to lemming like nihilistic idiocy in the final minutes of the game. OK...deep breath...it is over and done with.
  
  Allow me just one more slight gripe, if you are still reading that is. After such an epic and frustrating battle I prepared myself for a grand concluding cut scene. Well, all I can say without revealing any spoilers, is that I was left very much underwhelmed.
  
  OK, on to work: I was roped into doing a MOSS 2007 (that is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the uninitiated – keep it that way if you possibly can) project for a local telecommunications company. It requires a lot of custom aspx pages that must integrate with existing SharePoint functionality and use the SharePoint master pages. I can honestly say that it is probably the most exasperating development I have done in recent memory. Functionality that would take a couple of minutes in a custom web application takes hours to complete if you bring SharePoint into the equation. The vast majority of that time is spent debugging SharePoint's little idiosyncrasies.
  
  Browsing on one of our (South African) online vendors recently I saw BioShock (PC) on special offer. Now this is a game I always wanted to play, but didn't purchase due to its draconian DRM policy. It limits the game to just 5 activations! Well, all such considerations flew out of the window when I saw it offered at half its original price. So, without any further hesitation, I pulled out my trusty credit card and bought it. It made its appearance at my office on Monday morning, the rest of the day just dragged by before I could complete my drive home, in a somewhat reckless and hasty fashion, to install it. I can now honestly say, after an almost sleepless night, that it is one of the best games I have ever played! It reminds me, with fond nostalgia, of System Shock 1 and 2. That is not too surprising since it is the spiritual successor to System Shock and the brainchild of Ken Levine, a co-creator of System Shock 2..
  
  To say that BioShock exceeds all of my highest expectations is an understatement of gargantuan proportions. It has caused me to almost totally give up sleep, which is perhaps a significant contributing factor to the SharePoint frustrations mentioned above. I can highly recommend this to anyone looking for an fps with a story, soul, depth... I am running out of adequate adjectives here again probably due to lack of sleep. Just buy it and play it, you won't be disappointed. I will write a full review as soon as I complete it... the second time

  • Posted Aug 27, 2008 4:59 am GMT
  • Category: General
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• 21Aug 08

  Gears of War (PC)

  A friend of mine recently lent me his copy of Gears of War for PC. Apparently, and I am using his words verbatim, it is "freaking awesome!"
  
  I was somewhat hesitant to waste my precious and limited gaming time on a console port and from my previous experiences they usually disappoint. Mass Effect, for example, did not live up to my very high expectations. Bioware produced a gem like Star Wars: Knight of the Old Republic and I expected them to raise the bar for Mass Effect, but they somehow failed to do so. There isn't a single aspect of Mass Effect that could be considered a failure or even close to bad but the whole inexplicably failed to scratch my RPG itch.
  
  But I digress, back to Gears of War. It has an impressive pedigree, 2006 Game of the year irrespective of platform, hordes of adoring fans, fantastic reviews at every game site known to man and a recommendation from a long time friend whose opinion I value. So... I am trying very hard to enjoy it, it is supposed to by "freaking awesome", but I am just not.
  
  The duck and cover system is amazing and groundbreaking for its time, the graphics are still good even measured by today's high standards, the story is OK (I seldom expect much in the story department from action games) and the game play is surprisingly good. Now on to my biggest gripe and the crux of my lack of enjoyment: the guns are astonishingly inaccurate and I find it a really frustrating endeavour firing them. Wouldn't the arms manufacturers of the future produce weapons that can hit the broad side of a barn at 20 meters (roughly 65 feet)? Except for the sniper rifle and the pistols the accuracy of the so-called assault rifles borders on the ridiculous. Current assault rifles are optimised for accuracy between 50 (164 feet) and 100 meters (328 feet), the range at which most fire fights take place. Now in Gears of War you can forget trying to kill a locust at even 40 meters with your assault rifle! Apparently in the future they have lost the art of making rifle barrels with rifling, much like our current inability to make Toledo steel, and opted to regress back to antiquity and use smooth bore barrels. That is the only possible explanation for their atrocious accuracy. It is no wonder the Locusts overwhelmed the human forces so easily. You have a better chance of hitting them with a well thrown rock at 50 meters than with your assault rifle!
  
  I have invested enough time in Gears that I will probably push through and finish it, but I will not commend it to anyone.
  • Posted Aug 21, 2008 3:36 am GMT
  • Category: Games
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• 20Jul 06

  So-so day

  On the gaming side:
  I finished Space Rangers 2 last night and I must say it is one of the most addictive and enjoyable games I’ve played in the last couple of years.

  The graphics are not anything to write home about but on the other hand they are far from repulsive. The amazing thing about Space Rangers 2 is the game play and the very creative, challenging and sometimes downright bizarre quest available throughout the game universe. Building up and upgrading your ship(s), killing off the Dominators (the main antagonists in the game) in their tens and hopefully hundreds, trading, killing pirates or winning the inter-galactic burger making competition, I have seldom before seen such a wide range of interesting and disparate missions/quests in one game.

  On the work side:
  I have been tasked with the conversion of one of our software solutions from using MS SQL server as a DB to using Oracle. Thus far it has been an endeavour fraught with swearing and setbacks, but oh well, such is life.

  Games on the horizon:
  I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of Dark Star One and hope it lives up to my expectations. I loved the Elite series (yes, I do realise that most people are too young to remember them), the Wing Commander Privateer and Privateer 2 series and to a lesser extent Freelancer and the X series so you can see why I would be interested in Dark Star One.

  • Posted Jul 20, 2006 8:10 am GMT
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