Just a quickie blog to mention what I've been up to recently. I promise I'll do something a bit more substantial later, probably this weekend.

Firstly, I am now convinced that people in Texas get their driver's license from Wal-Mart.

I took a trip to Beaumont, Texas for some personal shopping today. This is normally a one hour drive, but almost every time I go to Texas, I get stuck in traffic because of a wreck. Today, I got stuck in TWO wrecks.

I was about ten minutes from my destination on my way to Beaumont and had to wait for 20 minutes because of a minor wreck. Then, on my way back, I got stuck in traffic for over two hours because of a TWENTY CAR PILEUP about 15 minutes out of Beaumont proper. Technically, it was two big rigs and 18 cars, but you get the idea. Christ, Texas gets a little rain on the road and everyone forgets that driving into the back of a car is bad...I then had to fight my way through some back roads to detour around this mess. I didn't do so sooner because I couldn't, traffic screeched to a grinding halt and it took me just over two hours to get to a freaking exit. In any case, what should have been only about an hour stretched into a much longer trip.

Anyway, the main reason I went was to look around at their Barnes & Noble. Unfortunately, I still can't find the main books I've been looking for. I've been trying to find The Years of Rice and Salt for weeks. At this point I'm just going to order it on Amazon sometime down the road.

Now, I did find one novel I've been looking for today. It is Tin Soldiers by Michael Farmer. As I mentioned last time, I wanted to give his books a try, but learned that the one I bought (War Dogs) was the third novel in a series. Tin Soldiers is the first novel. It follows an American tank brigade in a Third Gulf War with a new Iraqi regime that has allied itself with Iran. The story, like that of War Dogs, doesn't sound all that fantastic, but I've been hearing about these so-called "accurate, intense tank battles" in his novels. Basically, I'm expecting something like what I got out of Armored Corps: Nothing wowing in terms of characters or plot, but good tank on tank action.

In a completely spastic impulse buy, I picked up two Michael Crichton novels: Jurassic Park and Congo. I have never read his novels. I've always been curious, but I have never taken that plunge. I basically just saw those novels while browsing and said "Oh what the hell, I have the money and neither look like particularly long reads..." Indeed, the longest one is Congo, at almost 440 pages. Not only that, but the print seems a bit bigger than some other paperbacks. In any case, after reading Executive Orders, these two novels are snacks.

The reason I was drawn to these two is because I've seen both movies. I rather like the Jurassic Park movies and Congo wasn't all that bad either, so I figured I might as well check out the novels. Plus I hear that Congo is very different from the movie. There were several books that I was tempted to get, but decided not to because they were all fairly pricey books. I've logged them into the back shelf of my mind to be drudged up later on when I have more money. One was war stories of tankers "from 1918 to today."Another one was a similar book that focused on Marine tankers in Vietnam.

Finally, those games. I recently expanded my PS3 library with Ratchet & Clank Future and picked up Heroes of Might and Magic V. I've always been a big fan of Ratchet & Clank and, now that I have a PS3, I felt like picking up the newest installment. As for Heroes V, it is one of those games I wanted a while back, just never got around to actually buying. I found it cheap and decided to go for it. I haven't even installed it yet, I'll get to it after I beat Ratchet & Clank.

I bet many of you didn't even know I was gone. Well, I was, sorta. My Network Interface Card died on me. So we went to a friend of the family who has a job as a network technician and he supplied me with a new NIC. I've installed it and everything is working now. Not a moment too soon either, because I still have quite a bit of work to do before Sunday night.

One of my projects for UAT is to design an FPS control scheme based on a controller design that looks like this:

I pity the gamer that tries to play shooters on that controller. Or, in fact, ANY game.

Anyway, moving along, with my lack of Internet I had several days to take it easy, seeing as how I couldn't do any work. I used this time to wrap up Tom Clancy's Executive Orders. I must say, I think I have a new favorite Tom Clancy novel. My previous favorite spot was held by a tie between Red Storm Rising and The Sum of All Fears, which is why that movie..."Adaptation" of the novel is all the more insulting in my eyes.

Executive Orders picks up literally seconds after Debt of Honor leaves off. Jack Ryan finds himself propelled into the shoes of the President of the United States after an terrible incident, all the more creepy after 9/11 (This novel came out before the terrorist attacks).

Ryan inherits a nation in turmoil, and has to deal with crisis after crisis in addition to helping rebuild. India and China are still acting suspiciously like they were in Debt of Honor, Saddam is assassinated by a sleeper agent (Again, the novel came out before the current Gulf War), Iran is getting frisky, a new country is formed in the Middle East and starts to put the Israelis, Saudis, and Kuwaitis on edge, terrorists attacks abound, and these are just external threats. Ryan also has to duke it out with the no-good (disgraced) former Vice President, Ed Kealty, who begins trying to slander Ryan's image shortly after the book begins to further his own political ends.

Executive Orders is the longest Tom Clancy novel at just over 1350 pages in paperback, but it never really drags. Given all the events in the novel, there is something happening at almost every possible moment. The only thing that I felt was pretty pointless was a subplot involving two racist Mountain Men. While every Clancy novel has some subplots that aren't fully connected to the main story, this one just seemed like needless baggage thrown in. It never really goes anywhere, and nothing actually comes out of it. It is just sorta...there..and it wasn't even all that interesting.

Oh, and the last several chapters are just one giant tank battle in the Middle East. Upon looking at my profile you can probably guess at how much I liked that part.

Now that I finished Executive Orders, I was going to read Michael Farmer's War Dogs. I say I was going to because, upon starting, I noticed that they mentioned an event I remembered reading about when checking into his novels. It wasn't a major spoiler, you could find it on the back of a past novel, but I stopped out of fear of hitting a major spoiler later on. I was under the impression that his novels were unconnected, but I guess I was wrong.

I became interested in them because they are about tank warfare. I'll try and pick up the others and give them a try. I wasn't overly excited about War Dogs anyway because the plot just sounds totally freaking bonkers. It involves Iranian terrorists stealing prototype American tanks that "ensure victory for the nation that controls it." Judging from the cover, these "supertanks" are just M1A2 Abrams tanks with a bunch of crap thrown on, so I'm skeptical as to why these tanks are so bloody amazing. Unless of course the extra stuff thrown on allows it to summon God to the battlefield.

Instead, I picked up Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six to read before moving along. I figure that I might as well knock the last two Tom Clancy novels I have any interest in reading (Rainbow Six and The Bear and the Dragon) out of the way before moving along. I'll skip Red Rabbit and The Teeth of the Tiger for a while. Rainbow Six already has me hooked, though I haven't had time to read it today. Rainbow Six has what could possibly be the best opening to a Tom Clancy novel, throwing you right into a tense situation within the first five pages.

And with that, I'm going to get some work done. I hope to cram it all in before the day is over, allowing me to have a nice and relaxed weekend.

Firstly, I wrote a review for Uncharted: Drake's Fortune earlier tonight. Not my best review, but it is good enough. You might ask why I spend so little time discussing graphics in my reviews. Simply put, that is because I figure that anyone with even one good eye can just look at screenshots and draw the conclusion about how good or bad the game's graphics are, so I see little point in dwelling on the issue.

Now to that demo. I downloaded the demo for Haze. I was never exactly excited about this game. I remember how PS3 fanboys were calling it a "Halo Killer," while I was watching the videos and saying "Eh...that looks pretty generic..." The fact that most reviews rate it as average or a little below doesn't help. But I decided to be nice and go ahead and download the demo. If the demo is any indication, Haze really is pretty generic and drab.

The one real saving grace is the Nectar, which allows you to inject a drug into your bloodstream. This makes you move faster, shoot with increased accuracy, use a stronger melee attack, and see all the enemies as bright glowing Christmas trees of light for a short amount of time. However, an overdose means you lose control of your character for several seconds, shooting everything in sight. This is the one interesting mechanic in an otherwise average shooter. However, I already know that you don't have access to Nectar the entire game, turning an average and generic shooter with one interesting mechanic into just plain average.

The graphics are also pretty unimpressive. Not exactly bad, but I've seen far better this generation so far.

Another nail in the coffin for Haze is the fact that the dialogue and voice acting is cringe-worthy. Lots of shooters have bad dialogue, but Haze ranks among the worst I've heard this console generation. The voice acting...Ugh...it is on par with the typical English version of a low-budget JRPG. Your fellow Mantel soldiers also win awards for most annoying teammates in a while. Well, at least since the newer Turok. Apparently, being a Mantel soldier turns you into a brain dead, drunken frat boy with the maturity level of a 15 year-old who still laughs uncontrollably at poop jokes. Your fellow Mantel soldiers were even bumping chests in the demo. I understand that you were supposed to find Mantel immoral and corrupt, but "corrupt" does not mean the same as "drunken frat boy."

I never had much hope for Haze from the previews, despite all the hype that it was getting from the PS3 gaming community, and the demo didn't change my mind.

Finally, I picked up a copy of the Spore Creature Creator today. I've been really excited about Spore, which is funny because I normally don't like the god game genre. However, the concept behind Spore had me interested when I first saw it. I downloaded the free trial of the Creature Creator and liked it so much that I bought the full version. For those who don't know, the Creature Creator is a "starter pack" for Spore that sells for $9.99. Basically, by buying it you have the chance to create all sorts of creatures to populate your world when the full game comes out later this year. Even if you don't plan on buying the full game, you should check out the Creature Creator. You can spend hours just messing around with it, seeing what kind of wacky critters you can think up and see how the software figures out how to animate them.

The fact that Spore has very low system requirements is a big plus as well. In a world of Crysis and Supreme Commander, it is nice to see a development team that understands that not everyone has five NASA supercomputers networked together in their basement.

Now that I've had some time with the Creature Creator, I can't wait to get the full game and see my creations come to life and interact with one another.

Edit: Here is something I wanted to show everyone, but forgot to. I found this article last night. Stupid criminals are funny. He deserves to be in the list of people eligible for a Darwin Award.

What does that title mean? I got a PS3, that's what. It turns out that the MGS4/PS3 bundle came out today, so I ran down to the store to pick one up for my own. I'm still in the process of setting everything up right now, and figuring out how the hulking black monolith works.

Before I can play MGS4, however, I must go back to the store. I'm trading in my old PS2 since my PS3 is backwards compatible, even though I'm hesitant to lose all my progress in my PS2 games. Oh well...when I decide to play them again I'll just have a "fresh" experience. With the money I get from that PS2, I'm going to buy the proper cables to enjoy my PS3 in glorious HD. Stupid me, I figured the bundle came with those cables. I was wrong. Call me a graphics whore, but I'm not touching MGS4 until I can enjoy it in all its glory. I've waited this long already, I can wait a few extra minutes to run down to Gamestop and get the proper cables.

This leads me to one final thing I'm still conflicted with: Where to go after MGS4's ending credits roll (Besides the obvious and playing some Metal Gear Online). I'm still debating on which PS3 game to get afterwards. I've narrowed it down to Drake's Fortune and Heavenly Sword. Right now, I'm leaning a bit more towards Drake though, and I'll just wait to get Heavenly Sword with birthday money next month.

Now...time to get those damnable cables...

What does that title mean? The Battlefield: Bad Company demo of course! Now that I've had a good amount of time to sink into the demo, I'll give my early impressions.

And let me tell you, they are mixed.

I'll start with Bad Company's two biggest additions: The amount of destruction and the single player campaign. First, the carnage. DICE said that roughly 90% of the environments are destructible, and they are fairly right with that. You can blow holes in walls with your grenade launcher. Can't find the door to a house? No problem, make your own door with C4! You also pack larger amounts of explosives than past BF games to make use of this. Houses can be destroyed down to their basic frames, and for once, tanks feel like freaking tanks. In most games, Mother Nature and her damn titanium trees stop most tanks dead. Not in Bad Company. Tanks plow through most objects, though there are some stupid concrete road blocks with God mode on. The worst that can be said about the destruction is that it is all pre-made. That is, you always make the same hole when you shoot a wall with a rocket launcher, but this is nitpicking at most.

As for the campaign, it shows promise. This is the first Battlefield to include a real single player campaign with an actual story and cast of characters. Modern Combat tried this, but not to the extent that Bad Company does. Bad Company follows four misfit screw-ups that are part of the fictional B-Company, a place where the US Army puts all its screw-ups to use as cannon fodder. The guys of B-Company soon uncover gold on a peacekeeping mission in East Europe and decide to risk everything and go AWOL in their quest to strike it rich.

The demo includes a good-sized chunk of a mission, and will probably take you a good 30-40 minutes your first time. I won't talk about the actual mission, I'll let anyone interested find that out on their own. In any case, I was skeptical of DICE focusing more on the single player because it has never been BF's strong point, but the campaign is shaping up nicely. The characters, though rather cliche, all have their own charm to them, and the voice acting and dialogue is acceptable. Nothing particularly amazing, but I've heard far, far worse in games. The AI isn't exactly the brightest bunch of code either, but all of this can be ignored because the campaign is pretty fun.

Now, onto the real meat of any BF game: Multiplayer. And this is ultimately where the mixed feelings come in.

Firstly, EA has done it again. They have proved YET AGAIN to be completely unprepared for gamers having the sheer audacity of trying to play a game series known so well for its multiplayer online. EA has a little message saying that they are working on the servers, but this really isn't much of an excuse for three reasons:

1) This is Battlefield.

2) They hyped this game to high heaven.

3) This is freaking BATTLEFIELD!!

Now let me get into the issues here. For one, the ranking and unlock system was dead when the demo launched and just recently started working. Any BF vet will tell you that EA is bad about this, and hasn't seemed to improve over the years. Secondly, you must play during school/work hours or late on a school night to play lag free. Any other time and the lag ranges from very noticeable to outright game breaking. I know I'm being harsh on EA, but I find it hard to believe their excuse for this. Bad Company is one of the most hyped games in the summer season, which isn't saying much but you get my point. They should have been prepared for a lot of people trying the demo out, it is just common sense. This would have been like Infinity Ward not expecting many people to buy Call of Duty 4. Battlefield is such a popular game series. Come on EA, think next time!

To be perfectly fair, the game is fun when it works, but it is still littered with stupid design flaws. The Squad System is useless and just retarded. It is dumb luck if you manage to get in a squad with your buddies. See, there is an invite system integrated into gameplay, but when you invite a buddy, the game randomly picks a squad and drops them in. They might not even be on the same freaking team. You can't join certain squads, the game picks for you. Not only that, but the squads only have four players and you can not communicate with ANYONE on your team who isn't on your squad. Thank you DICE for killing any sort of cooperation I might have found in online matches. Then again, it has been established that Live + Teamwork = Cold day in Hell.

I'll move onto some good before unleashing more hate. The game actually IS fun when it works right. There is one huge map with lots of vehicles, showcasing the new Gold Rush gameplay mode. In this mode, two teams (Attacker and Defender) fight over crates of gold. The Attackers have a "reinforcement" bar that drops whenever someone dies, and when it is gone, the Defenders win. The Attackers must destroy two safes containing gold. When that happens, they regain some of the reinforcement bar and the battlefield expands to the next pair of crates. You do this about four times before the Attackers finally win. This mode is a fresh addition to BF, but because of the chat and squad problems, coordination is totally impossible in a mode that really could use it.

Now, as fun as this game is, I have one final set of huge complaints: It just doesn't feel like Battlefield. Go play BF2 and then come play Bad Company. They just play completely differently. Like they did with Burnout, they are drastically changing a good series to make it something it isn't. Bad Company feels like a slower clone of Call of Duty 4 with a lot of issues to work out. It just feels too arcadey for a more tactical franchise like BF has been on the PC.

For example, weapons handling is pretty bad. They are largely inaccurate and most do low damage. This is balanced out because each gun has absurd magazine sizes. In this game you are running around with assault rifles that have 30 round magazines...yet they magically hold 50 rounds. They are throwing out the old attention to detail that games like BF2 had in this regard. Just make the guns stronger instead of making them have low damage, low accuracy, and high magazine sizes. Also, the guns don't seem to lose accuracy when you walk or fire from the hip, a cardinal sin of military shooters. There is also no prone stance. So, where past BF games were more tactical, Bad Company is more of a run-and-gun twitch shooter. Most the guns also don't even have iron sights, they have that stupid "side zoom" aiming that I despise so much in military shooters when it appears.

Then, some jackass on the development team thought it would be a funny late April Fools joke to invert your direction indicator. So you will die many, many, many, many times simply because the developers wanted to confuse the crap out of you by saying you are taking damage from the opposite ****ing direction! If an enemy is hidden somewhere in front of you and shoots you, the screen will point down, indicating that the fire is coming from an enemy that came up behind you. Likewise, if an enemy to your left shoots you, the game tells you it was coming from the right.

Dear DICE, I don't have the time to remember "Oh wait, the directions are inverted!" while I'm being fired on. It would have been so much easier if you didn't do this asinine design choice. Kindly fire the dumbass who thought to add it.

One final gripe I have are the grenade launchers. Indeed, any explosive weapon. They have about zero splash damage, and serve no purpose other than making holes in buildings. Unless your grenade actually hits someone, then it basically does no damage. Same with vehicle weapons. There is a buggy with a grenade launcher and it doesn't do a damn thing unless you score a direct hit.

Now I might sound really negative here, and I am, but Bad Company can be a fun game at times. It just really needs some modifications and extra polish before coming out. But the ultimate sin that Bad Company commits is that it just doesn't feel like a BF game. Neither did Modern Combat. Why can't DICE just make a game that plays like BF2 and put it on the freaking consoles while adding to it? There is no reason to so drastically alter the game to put it on consoles.

I know, I know, new blog already. However, this was something I felt I just HAD to blog about ASAP.

As most of you know, I'm a student studying Game Design at UAT. All of my teachers have been in the industry, some of which worked on big games. My current professor worked with Totally Games and did work on most of the X-Wing games. Anyway, he discussed a game he was working on for the original Xbox that had the theme of redemption. It was going to be a launch title and was never shown to the public before being cancelled.

However, instead of the cliched idea of playing through and redeeming a character of past sins, you were redeeming your own actions. The idea was that it would be more emotional if you did the actions that needed redeeming.

Let me explain. You play as a character and commit atrocities, but don't realise it. He compared it to being like a young boy joining the Hitler Youth in the 1930s. You aren't evil or bad in any way, but you are part of something that is, brainwashed by propaganda into believing that you are a good guy. Your character (And by extension, yourself) honestly believe that you are doing good.

Then, about halfway through, you are hit with a bombshell of a truth: You have been helping commit many horrible atrocities. You weren't doing the right thing, you were helping evil hold its power and never knew it. You then spend the rest of the game trying to redeem yourself as much as your character.

The problem was that people higher than he was decided that it was a bad idea. Why? Because they felt it would be too shocking, depressing, and unlikeable. They weren't going to talk about this big twist in previews, apparently, and let gamers learn it by themselves. They were afraid that gamers might hate the game after learning what they were doing and start to hate the main character. So they were forced to "modify" the game, and it eventually got outright cancelled. My teacher was very frustrated because he liked the idea and hated that he was being forced to deny gamers, what he considered, one of the more creative game ideas around. He left the company when they were being forced to modify the game, before it was officially cancelled.

So, my fellow Gamespotters, what would YOU have done? Was the company right in their assumptions? Would you have kept playing the game after learning the big twist? Would you have hated the game and the main character? Or, by extension, would you have hated yourself for doing this?