

Blog RSS Feed Report abuse Game Reviews are fun..

0 comments by TwinShadow on Sep 14th, 2010

Little known fact, I do review games here and there. Actually, I post these on GameSpot, but I have plans of posting elsewhere that allow user-reviews for games.

I review games just to give my own personal side of things, but of course, opinions differ, so I don't expect everyone to agree with me. I plan to re-visit a couple earlier reviews I did and see about improving on them. If y'all want to see my reviews, you can click here. If it wasn't apparent, yes, Ryan is my first name and no, you will not know my last name. That is private info.

Metroid: Other M was my latest review, my first two reviews aren't that great and I hope to improve them at some point. I also intend on reviewing some other games here and there as I play them. I'll probably use my ModDB profile for gaming rants or something if I need to, or whatever. I'll find a better use eventually. Unless y'all have some suggestions for me, then that works too.

Report abuse This Proposed Battlezone 3

2 comments by TwinShadow on Sep 13th, 2010

For all of you who visit Battlezone Universe, BZ2MD, and the liking, y'all have probably already seen these posts on the "Project Genesis", or.. BZ3 that's been going on. I'm very skeptical for a couple reasons and I'll tell you why. But I'll first say this: I don't think it's going to work out as well as they would hope for. I'm not trying to downsize the project, but merely giving my opinion on the matter, and what you take for it is up to you.

1. The primary reason would be the use of the Unreal Development Kit which uses the Unreal engine. I'm not saying its a bad engine, it's really great at what it does... for first person shooters. The Unreal Tournament games are great at what they do and they are pure FPS action (with some vehicles, but those are not necessary for fighting) at its finest. Battlezone is a hybrid of FPS and RTS, a very minor niche to most people. The Unreal engine hasn't been the best in terms of using vehicles and they don't handle as they would in the actual BZ games. It would just feel weird to play a BZ game on the Unreal engine. Now, having played Unreal Tournament 3 for a while, I can say this: UT3 isn't that great of a game as I'd hoped, and like all the other UT games, commanding vehicles just doesn't feel... 'correct' for a lack of a better term.

2. Another reason is because of all the copyright and intellectual property rights and such. This would be the major hurdle to get through because it would cause quite a bit of havoc to get something released and only to later get a C&D notice. There are some work-arounds and such, but it is a matter of finding them and knowing how to not make any references to the original games.

So now you might be asking as to why I don't like this project. Or.. you just think I'm hating the idea from the start. No, not quite... Let's just say I don't favor whats being done right now. There's only what... barely a hundred of people left in the BZ community on both BZ1 and BZ2 combined? I don't think the time, effort, and possibly money is really even worth it in the end if only so many are going to see it. You can do all the advertising you want, but games like these don't sell well because it requires gamers to think when they don't want to, or have to be in the action when they don't want to. I just don't think its a good idea to try and continue an old game franchise and just leave it as it is. Battlezone is just one of those games that were golden at the time, but popularity will die out one way or another. Then with legalities getting in the way, it is getting harder and harder to find legal copies of the game itself at an affordable price.

Grill me all you want, but I do have my own opinions and I'm not afraid to share them. If you agree, so be it, if not, I don't care. I just don't want anyone flaming me because of how I see things in todays gaming world. I have gained a harsh attitude with gaming of today because developers no longer know how to make a *GOOD* game anymore and all they care about now is making them pretty. Sadly, I believe this Project Genesis may turn out to be the same way. I can be proven wrong, but people have to work very hard at doing that, otherwise, I stand by what I say.

Report abuse So, why did I leave BZ2?

1 comment by TwinShadow on Aug 3rd, 2010

Some of you are wondering why I left BZ2. I'll explain in the entirety as I can.

The past couple months, I've had some major problems trying to get a GED (for those in the states, y'all will know what this is, to those who do not live in the states: General Education Diploma - something less than a high school diploma, but is a diploma none-the-less. Also, I swear do NOT believe that its an equivalent to a High School Diploma, it truly is not. Most jobs will see it as a "Get out of school quicker" diploma, but my reasons for getting one don't even qualify as that, and I'm not going to explain that here.)

Ok, that rant out of the way, let me explain why I'm having issues. The school I tried to contact ignored me not once, but twice to take my call and answer a question I have. My wrist is hugely screwed up, I no longer can write as well as I used to, and writing causes pain in my wrist that requires me taking a break for half an hour or more. I can't take the GED if I can't type the English Essay portion, otherwise I'm screwed from the get-go. Online sources are mostly a no-go. Why? Because some jobs don't see these online sources as reputable ways of getting a GED or a Diploma either. I don't believe the hype on TV about these diplomas online or anything. I plan to, at some point, ask the college here and hopefully they'll answer my question, unless they want to ignore me again. Because I don't want to waste my gas for my truck just to ask a damn question.

On top of the GED, I'm also trying to get a job. I need money, and I need it now. But with the economy the way it is, it is extremely difficult for me to get a job, and I highly doubt anywhere is gonna bother with me because no one appreciates a person for who they are anymore. I've tried several places in my area, not even a call back. And even then, I'm still limited as to what jobs I can do because of my wrist. (its been like this since my early years of high school)

But that's not really the primary reason as to why I left BZ2, and for good. I've been looking at the community for a while from the side. I've seen some occasional good stuff come out, but other stuff not so much. With everyone not having time to complete their mods either due to school or jobs or something, and then some leave them for good and not come back. Its a little frustrating to see some good ideas for mods go to waste for one reason or another. BZRAP was something I was looking forward to for a long while, but with no good updates in the past year, I gave up on it. BZ Classic has been in the works for a good long while as well, but that hasn't caught my interests much really. The UEP is moving very slowly recently, with a lot of things packed in it, but with not much activity.. the release date would be pushed back quite a bit for a while. Guess it can't be helped with the jobs and all. FE for 1.3 is moving a snails pace IMO right now, and lost interest in that. Uler for 1.3 hasn't gotten descent updates in a while.. G66 I've not been interested in much personally. So yeah, there are a lot of things that have either slowed or stopped, and I'm just not interested anymore.

The community itself.. where to begin... When I first started BZ2, my cousin showed me this game. Some months after that, I started playing a bit of multiplayer and met some interesting people. Then I met a couple from the SFP (Starfleet Platoon) clan, and after doing a little deathmatch with the two of them, I became a member myself. I've been with SFP ever since then until they became a fan club. Afterwords, Sonic closed SFP and is now just a static page. I have never considered associating myself with any other clan, but SFP. Maybe I'm too loyal or something, but oh well. I've seen many people come and go.. Some friends I've had left BZ2 a long time ago and I lost touch with them, some of which I'd like to talk to again. As it stands right now, the community, IMO, is on a downhill course, and its only a matter of time before the community is only just a few tens of people.

BZU was a place I didn't mind for a while, but over time, I got tired of the place. I'm working out something right now to have my BZU account deleted as I have no use for it any longer. The day I announced my leaving of both the 1.3 Private Beta Team and the UEP Beta Team was also the day I was removed from the 1.3 Private group as well. I have a disliking to the community right now not only on BZU, but BZ2 in general. People don't want to learn things on their own anymore and there are plenty of things on BZU and BZ2MD (I've long deleted my account there) for tutorials and some basic strategies on doing things. But no... people want you to do everything for them now...

Adding to that, I've also started getting bored of BZ2. I took a 2-3 year long hiatus from BZ2 since nothing was going on at the time. I come back to see a bit of 1.3, G66, the UEP, FE for 1.3, and a few other things. Well, its now time to store my Warrior somewhere to collect dust. I was an avid Scion player, one of the few on BZ2 that didn't like the ISDF in general. Today marks the last thing I will post anything related to BZ2, because I am done with this game. I've seen a good long fight for 8 years on this game. FE will always remain as my top favorite mod, or expansion, with the BZ2CP team doing an amazing job with voices and the Hadean units. It is now time I started doing other things in other games.

It was a good fight, and a mighty long one... Maybe I'll see some of y'all in another universe on another planet. One can only imagine what will turn up. I'll update my banner when I get the chance to something that's more appropriate to what I do. This depends on when I get a free moment to think of something and all that..

Aug. 4 - Edit:
In case y'all start to worry about the SVN for the Battlezone 2 UEP project, don't worry, I'm not closing that. The SVN is a private thing and only specific people need access to it. That will help development continue along at least since I suggested it some time ago for faster access so I didn't have to use Hamachi. (I don't like using programs that might have the remote possibility of screwing up my networking - my friend suffered something from it after Hamachi screwed up his networking on his laptop)

Lately, for anyone who might actually know me from other places, possibly anime-related, I was recently put on staff for a group called Retrofit. What they do is that they take anime AVI's or MKV's that have hard-subs, or subtitles that you can't turn off and are embedded in the video stream. We either type up the subtitles themselves, or use OCR for a more automated process. Me, I type them up. Afterwords, timing needs to be done and some basic styling. Nothing fancy or anything, no karaoke as that's too much effort for so little reward. This is what brings soft-subs to the anime world. Most anime groups now provide soft-subs by default now, and has been for the past few years. But, there's plenty of anime that could use soft-subs, and I'm just helping bring more out with new DVD encoded videos, rather than TV sources.

You can visit the Retrofit Website to see more info. My first series is Rizelmine, episodes 13-24 (as 1-12 were already done). I also took over some of the work for Sister Princess Re Pure so more can be released. You could say that the work I'm doing with Retrofit is sucking up some of my time and left little to game with on occasions.

Report abuse So here's the deal...

0 comments by TwinShadow on Jun 21st, 2010

Nope.. not forgotten, just stuff happening lately. I've been having to fiddle around with my desktop and laptop a bit recently and other things to take care of. Plus, been taking a bit of a break from gaming too much. (even I know when to quit sometimes...)

There really isn't much that I've done in the past couple months. With the start of summer, I'll probably be on and off because I really hate the heat and I don't like being hot in hot weather. Yes the AC works, but most of the time I'm using fans and those just barely help at all.. >.> I blame my mom for the AC bit. Apparently our tolerance is at opposite ends of the scale. XD She thinks its right when I'm burning up, but complains that its cold when I mess with the thermostat. Go figure?

Report abuse Yawn, quite some work to do...

0 comments by TwinShadow on Apr 19th, 2010

I got farther with the Dogfight news post and all that, but it still lacks info that its missing. I'll get TJ to help me out some if N1 and I can bug him enough to get on for once... Far as the actual content is done, I got most of it in, I got the vehicles, a bit of the menus, and all that. I may probably go into detail on a few maps, even though it wasn't quite the initial intention. I'll leave other maps as a surprise when and if more are made. So, I guess I could say I'm about 57% done with the post, so yeah, still some stuff left to put in and all that.. fun stuff.

In other news, I might be able to get a new video up later this week. But, don't hold me to it because I'm gonna be slightly busy off and on most likely for some personal reasons. There's also some stuff that happened that might need a bit of attention with, but depends on how things turn out Monday.

Report abuse Busy busy busy...

0 comments by TwinShadow on Apr 13th, 2010

So the past week or so have been extremely busy.. Had to help a friend's friend fix her computer by telling her exactly what to do and such, took the better part of 30 hours to fix, but got it taken care of. Fake anti-virus software are a pain to get rid of...

Then that same friend (not the girl =P) came to me about some stupidly simple reason since he can't seem to figure out that his speakers are always muted which is the reason why you won't hear crap come out from the microphone. XP Seriously, not that hard to look in the volume control, be it Windows or Linux. XD

Then now, I'm having to fix yet another computer that had fake anti-virus software on it. Though, this computer apparently had other stuff on it as well, which was preventing core Windows files from running at all (Ex: rundll32.exe, regedit, msconfig... even dxdiag). This was a pain because I couldn't run any program at all, not even an installation file for a more updated anti-virus or something. I just couldn't run a single thing on that system... So, I basically had to just format the entire thing after doing a scan with a bootable anti-virus.

So yeah, that's why I haven't done much as of late. I do a little bit of fixing around with computers and such when friends ask or something, and I'm just exhausted from doing it at the moment. Hopefully tomorrow (from this post in particular) should be fine once I do some last things and get everything set up. I'll do some more work on the Dogfight news post I've been working on, because some updates require me to change a few things, and I want to make sure that by the time the post is ready, everything should be ready for Dogfight mode itself.

Let's just say, I've got some things in mind now, just a matter of typing it all up and changing things and it all should be good to go once I get some final checks done and such.

Report abuse Video editors are a pain..

0 comments by TwinShadow on Apr 4th, 2010

Seriously, video editors can be a pain to use. I don't do fancy things much, I hate to be flashy...

Anyway, I'm working on a new video, plus got a news post to work on as well. I also have other stuff that need to be taken care of (I have a cat that loves my attention) and other things as well. This also on top of the fact I'm a 1.3 Private Tester as well, but I have to be more secretive about that, so sorry, no inside info for y'all. =P

I'll actually leave the next video I'm doing a secret from y'all. I'll get it up later this week, but I won't be able to get it done for a couple days due to various reasons. Mostly because I'm trying to keep as much quality as I can in the video, and the editor keeps sapping it away for weird reasons. Driving me insane.. >.<

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