Archive for January, 2007

197+ words on Halo 2 and Perfect Dark Zero

Halo manages to do what any good fanatasy or sci-fi game should do: it comprises a world that’s appealing. What’s appealing about Halo’s world? I have no idea, much like Star Wars it’s really just the way the whole things meshes together into a coherent and believable whole that makes it work, nothing feels pretentious, it just works. Halo manages to touch on a dreamscape that’s authenticity draws you back in. Halo 2 also manages to have a pretty decent story line for a video game and one that surprisingly multidimenstional and has depth.

Perfect Dark Zero however should be banned and consigned to the horse’s cup before the earth’s body was born. It consists of a lot of stereotypes that never really gel (anyone else like the little Asian dude with the gunk going into his head?) or the overweight researcher or neon haired goons. Man is this game awfull. What makes it worse is that if PD Zero didn’t have a storyline it would actually be an OK game, but becuase it has a storyline it’s truly awful. Not only does it grate on me, but it actually makes me not want to play the game.

Hence, we again have the movie problem Halo is an OK movie (it could use a little work, but I enjoy it) PD Zero is a hideously awful movie, and while I know the stereotypes are meant to be tongue in cheek, dude it’s just fucking beyond bad.

January 30, 2007 at 3:40 pm Leave a comment

links for 2007-01-30

January 30, 2007 at 3:21 pm Leave a comment

Why I love Hong Kong

It’s a romantic comedy about a vampire that has to eat a virgin’s brain with in 7 days of it being born.
Right now, the vampire is a secretary trying to seduce a power broker while stirpping down to her bra and panties and fleecing folks of their blood in her spare time. Immortatilty will be hers.

January 29, 2007 at 11:20 pm Leave a comment

links for 2007-01-28

January 28, 2007 at 3:17 pm Leave a comment

Some thoughts on the Xbox 360

1. Xbox live is a fairly diverse place and surprisingly shows a good helping of females deathmatching (most games of Lost Planet feature them).

2. Microsoft has done a good job nailing two of video games biggest growing fields the cinematic experience of Halo and the repetitive always on multiplayer of Pc games + downloadable content. The xbox is essentially a PC made easy, but MS has shown good insight by providing exclusives with solid story lines and decent multiplayer.

3. The xbox live service is cool. People are ranking me.

4. Lost Planet is fucking incredible and I love the multiplayer. Won 4 out of 5 matches today.

5. Finally finished Halo 2 today after starting it almost 2 years ago after christmas on my younger brother’s xbox. Was impressed with the story and the play.

6. MS might still lose because the xbox feels like the dreamcast an incredibly fun system to play, but not quite ranking in with the big boy, but then again Nintendo has opted out on the graphics department hence they might be in the running still and the system is fairly upgradable too.

7. The experience of games is changing, once upon a time deathmatching just meant killing people, it’s now an experience complete with voice over ip and ranking systems plus feedback. As it stands this might hurt of help the experience, after all I don’t feel socially connected to many of the people I play online, it’s kinda like walking into a sports bar when you wanna listen to pysch rock and drink Boddingtons down the street. I think, if they don’t already exist, we’ll see clans come up with niches similar to high school. The indie-rock clan, the jocks clan, etc. etc.

8. The experience of playing against people with their voices cast upon virtual characters is different, when dismebodied sometimes it can be surprising ( a 16 year old girl in Arkansas might be better than you) or dissapointing, finding out that some player you like watching is a total jack ass etc. By bringing socializing into the mix the aesthetic of the game is interupted by the reality of how crass people can be. Example: motoring a mech around an ice fortress to dramatic background music in the last minutes of a game while some girl makes fart noises into the microphone.

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January 25, 2007 at 4:30 pm Leave a comment

the exactness of happiness

So how exact does a desire need to be? Do we need exact fullfillment? i.e. I want a chocolate ice cream with seventeen cherries, a whipped like topping, and nuts or would merely receiving one make you happy? I know Dan Gilbert and others theories less is more, repetition etc, but let’s imagine the brain has pattern recognition that only perceives patterns at a certian scale. So for instance if our sense of taste was low-res then the number of things that would make us happy would be more and if our tastes are more exacting then we might dislike more things or perhaps experience them as more naunced and hence more flavorfull? But my point is, the brain can tease patterns out of anything, does that maker the brain happy? perhaps not all the time, but what is the resolution of your senses? after 15 fps we can’t tell the difference between if something is moving on a tv or not (if you get up to 60 fps it doesn’t really matter either). I’ve lost my original thought, but let’s imagine life as experiencable objects that you can savor, what are the best ones? to what scale do their propoerties make you happy?

January 23, 2007 at 11:52 pm 2 comments

closing in on nirvana

xbox 360 with lost planet multiplayer demo + wizard of the crow.
is it merely the management of information that makes us happy?
is it changing from socializing to games to reading that in turn keeps
the mind occupied (and perhaps unlonely?) that makes life worth it?
Will I still like lost planet tomorrow? probably. anyway, beating halo 2.


January 23, 2007 at 11:45 pm Leave a comment

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