Well, I turned 26 years old on Friday. GOOD LORD, I'm getting OLD! And I don't look my age. For example, I recently won a prize in a school raffle, and one of the items in the prize was a bottle of wine. But my teacher offered an alternate prize because she thought I wasn't of legal drinking age yet! Yeeeesh.

Being young looking blows. Obviously I don't want to look like Gandalf the Grey, but it can be hard to be taken seriously if people think you're still in high school. I mean, dang, I'd love to be considered for a Test Lead position at a game company some day, but who's gonna want to promote a tester to Lead when he looks like he just got his driver's license? :-P

Anyway, on to my impressions of CAPCOM's Lost Planet. Lost Planet puts you in the role of a guy, who has lots of cool guns that make cool explosions, on an ice planet full of aliens, who, when killed, freeze into ice then explode in cool ways. This gun-toting guy also has a cool grappling hook that lets him grapple up to higher areas. He can also climb into "Vital Suits" which are like 10 foot tall robot suits that have a lot of firepower and armor. Mmhmm. Good stuff.

So what's so great about it? Well, while the storytelling is a joke, the production values are really high, and the audiovisual experience is great. It's an exciting game, and has a lot of diverse and demanding challenges that I've rarely seen in shooter-style games. Each level has a boss fight which will remind you of the boss fights of CAPCOM games like MegaMan or Resident Evil 4. The bosses each have a unique pattern of behavior that require a great deal of concentration, reflexes, and memory to defeat. This is a big contrast to the combat of Gears of War, IMO. In Gears, each battle pretty much plays out in the same exact way every time: Take cover and shoot, repeat.

D'oh! Been two months since I last posted. I haven't been up to much. Mostly been watching lots of old Gundam shows, playing Lost Planet, and Command and Conquer 3. I also got hired by EA again for some more game testing. And of course, been going to school :-)

Gundam's an interesting series of shows. It's described by its creators as a humanist show, kinda like how Gene Roddenberry envisioned the Star Trek shows.

Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia's entry on Gundam:

The narrative revolves around the emotions of the characters, who are usually thrown into conflict without much choice and faced with the death, destruction and dehumanization inherent to war. With few exceptions (mostly in side stories), there are no absolute heroes and villains; all have their motives, failings, and virtues. Political battles are as likely to determine the outcome of battles as the heroes, as it often is in real wars. Gundam also features debate on various important philosophical issues and political ideals - both historical ones, and some of those likely to crop up in the future. Of particular note are the frequent explorations of the nature of war, the ideal of pacifism, and the continuing evolution of humanity. These are often framed in the series as a debate between the protagonist and antagonist over the course of a duel, as they try to convince each other of the rightness of their causes.

So, Gundam usually takes on a strong anti-war stance. What's interesting is that the show is full of violence and explosions. So it kinda lures you into the show with its violent, visual spectacle battles. Giant robots and capital ships float around space and/or Earth and blow the crap outta each other. Great stuff!

It then mixes in some romance and other space opera elements, and finally some anti-war humanist political views. A primary goal of the show is also to sell Gundam merchandise to the fans. Each "Mobile Suit" featured in the show can be purchased as an action figure or model kit.

So it's a strange show. On one hand, it celebrates war, war machines, and aims to profit off of young people's fascination with all this. On the other, it condemns war as cruel and always leading to great evils. In the end, I guess I enjoy watching the show for all these traits, in the same way I enjoyed watching Star Wars Episode 3. That movie tried to step away from the generic "good vs evil" dynamic we saw in all the other Star Wars, and I thought the series was made better because of that.

Welp, that's all for now. I'll come back later and give my reviews of Lost Planet and Command and Conquer 3.

PS - here's a couple Gundam videos. The first is a trailer for the PS2 game, Gundam Climax U.C. The second is a music video for the Zeta Gundam film.

Yellooooooo.

School started last month so I've been sorta busy juggling that with my gaming addiction.

I've been playing Super Robot Taisen Original Generation, Gundam OMNI vs Zaft Plus II, Rainbow Six Vegas, X-wing Alliance TIE Fighter Total Conversion, Freespace 2 Source Code Project (amazing!), and Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Warcraft 3. Gadzooks that's alotta games.

Freespace 2 Source Code Project is incredible. It includes both Freespace games with rewritten code, upgraded graphics, the works. And it's all free to download. If you don't own Freespace 2, you can get it for free here. If you've never played Freespace, I highly recommend it. While I prefer the X-wing series' game mechanics, Freespace is still a great game to behold :)


It's a shame the team behind this project aren't making any money off such a AAA project. If only they could figure out a way to port it to the 360 and/or PS3... maybe make it a downloadable game, ya know? Ah well, I hope they all get great game jobs at least, for having this in their portfolio.

Here's a youtube trailer..


Here's a cutscene from the FS2 campaign..

I'm playing Final Fantasy 12 right now. I'm like 32 hours into the game and... I don't like it. Yes, that's right. I'm addicted to a game that I don't even like. Bizarre.

It's like a Diablo-syndrome all over again. Did I actually enjoy Diablo? Not really. But I couldn't stop playing. Ugh. I'm starting to think that many RPGs, thanks to their gambling-like mechanics, form the same addictiveness that real gambling does. There's always that chance that an awesome piece of treasure will come out of the chest and make the world an easier place to live in.

FF12 is like the total opposite of NWN2 in every significant way. FF12 is hard, aesthetically pleasing, professionally-polished in every way, but the story and dialogue is sparse. You run around slaying things for hours for every few seconds of story/dialogue you can get. NWN2, on the other hand, is so easy that it's practically not even a game. It's fairly hideous to look at. It's sloppy. But it has story and dialogue and personality up the wazoo.

But what game comes out on top, gets all the fame? FF12. Final Fantasy gets live sold out concerts, while NWN2, based on D&D, which brought about FF to begin with.. gets nothing. The circle is complete. The student is now the master. Heh :-P

We need mouse and keyboard support for R6 Vegas!

Here's my post on the official Rainbow Six Vegas X360 forums requesting support for mouse and keyboard. I make the argument that the mouse is far more familiar to the mainstream consumer than the gamepad and joystick is, therefore adding mouse support will likely increase sales and profits of FPS console games. I use the examples of the highly popular Nintendo Wii and DS systems to illustrate my point, describing their mouse-like "point and click" features.

If you agree that FPS games on the 360 need mouse and keyboard support, please go the forum and state your support.

Everytime I hop into the 2142 APC, I hum the Aliens track "Ripley's Rescue", which plays as Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) takes the controls of an APC and runs over a buncha aliens in order to rescue some Marines ;)

If you've seen the movie, you'll probably recognize this track:
Click here to listen to Ripley's Rescue by James Horner.

In case ya haven't seen it before, here's the best machinima I've seen. Counter-Strike: Militia 2. They need to remake it for CS Source !