tempest in a teacup

Just saw this piece on the BBC website:
Eat less meat to combat the effects of human activities on the global climate, says the UN’s top climate scientist.

Disclaimer: I’m a vegetarian.

The scientist’s position focuses mainly on greenhouse gas emissions without pontificating about the superiority of a vegetarian diet, which is good, I think. If anything I know that ideas tend to be more favourably received when argued logically, not when preached by someone on a high horse. I’m actually quite interested in seeing the text of the speech Dr Pachauri will give on Monday, if only to see how he tries to sell this idea.

---

In other news, I’ve been taking advantage of the 50% discount offer on all id software games on Steam to try out some old FPSes that I missed out on - Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Doom 3. RTCW is pretty good so far, but I played partway through the Doom 3 demo before going ‘fuck this shit’ and deleting it. The people complaining about the light levels in this game aren’t kidding in the slightest. I couldn’t see what the hell I was shooting at half the time, and the fact that I needed to drop my existing weapon to use the flashlight only aggravated this. Yes, you play a marine a century in the future when we’ve colonized Mars and created teleportation technology, but you don’t have access to a flashlight that doesn’t tie up one of your hands.

Long story short, I probably won’t be buying that one.

No comments

I spent most of the day at PAX today, since I’d never been to a gaming convention and there were a few games I wanted to check out. I actually didn’t get to play too many of them (the lines were way too long for me to be standing around) but I did get a reasonable idea of how some of the games I’m looking forward to are shaping up.

Read more

2 comments

…of why I play the airblast Pyro in Team Fortress 2.

The backburner can be great fun in pure ambush play, but the ability to just run up to a control point and BLOW PEOPLE OFF IT is just too awesome. Bonus points if said point is suspended over an instant death pit :D

No comments

Here’s last month’s edition.

Games that have been knocked off the list due to completion:

• Devil May Cry 4 - Beat it on Devil Hunter, although honestly I don’t think I’m really done with it yet. I can’t say that I’ve really mastered any aspect of the game (except maybe Nero’s Devil Buster but it’s LOL EZ anyway).
• NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams - I’ve gotten all my C ranks and unlocked the true ending to the game, so it’s leaving the list. I’ll still keep trying for A ranks and better scores from time to time, though (it’s a freaking score attack game - who wouldn’t). Maybe I’ll put some footage up here when I try it out.
• Zack & Wiki - I’ve beaten the main story quest, but I haven’t found any of the hidden treasures yet. Still, that’s good enough for me for now.
• Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition - Beat it shortly after my last list of doom post. I’ve fiddled around a bit with the other modes (the Ada side missions and the Mercenaries minigame) but I haven’t gone back to the game yet.

Games still being played:

• Super Mario Galaxy - Would you believe I’m still stuck on that one Luigi purple coin mission?
• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin - Really haven’t touched it at all.
• Sonic Rush Adventure - That last Sol Emerald is a bitch.
• Mass Effect - I’ve just finished up the Noveria story quests. It seems that there really aren’t that many main story quests which is a little alarming, but I’ll see what happens. I’ve started to get a good feel for my final opinion on the game, too…and it’s a little uneven.
• Beyond Good & Evil - Still fun - I’m right after the part where Pey’j gets kidnapped (spoiler).

Games that were started and beaten over the course of the month:

• Metal Gear Solid - Great boss fights, great sneaking areas, terrible gun controls, WALL OF PLOT is annoying.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance - Boss fights are somewhat less great, sneaking is much more fun, gun controls are better, WALL OF PLOT is still annoying.

New entries on the list:

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence - Not too far in. I can’t say I’ve gotten the hang of CQC yet - for some reason every time I try to grab someone from behind I end up throwing them and setting off an alarm.
• Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword - this is surprisingly good for a handheld conversion of Ninja Gaiden. There are some cutbacks (simplified combos, only one melee weapon and two ranged weapons) but otherwise it’s fast and furious just like the console versions.
• Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune - my first PS3 game! Think Gears of War crossed with Resident Evil 4 with a minimal bit of Tomb Raider splashed in for good measure. Very polished and slick - nothing to complain about so far.
• Bionic Commando: Rearmed - I never played the NES version, but even so this game is pretty cool. While the levels and bosses themselves are pretty well-designed, I particularly like the Portal-style Challenge Rooms.

And that’s it for August!

It just occurred to me that my Wii backlog is basically empty now (except for Galaxy). Any Wii game recommendations? Keep in mind that I’m a lonely bastard who plays games by himself all the time.

No comments

Amazon is going to be having PS3 deals all day today (August 27th), starting at 12am PST for the big daily deal and then lightning deals every four hours starting at 6am PST. Just a heads up in case there’s some PS3 game or accessory that you’ve been on the lookout for.

And no, I don’t know what the deals are going to be in advance, so don’t bother asking. You can usually make a pretty good guess from the clues on the Gold Box page anyway.

EDIT: The list of deals is up - the daily deal is Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. The lightning deals haven’t been revealed yet, but here are my educated guesses:

6AM: Resistance: Fall of Man
10AM: Ridge Racer 6
12PM: Ratchet & Clank Future
2PM: Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune
4PM: Devil May Cry 4
6PM: Warhawk

Looks like either games I have no interest in or that I already own. Urgh…

And now to pad out this post a little more, here’s what my desktop currently looks like (click to view full-sized version).

Why yes, I am rather obsessed with sandviches at the moment.

2 comments

Valve is holding its third Team Fortress 2 free weekend this upcoming weekend - I would strongly encourage anyone with a decent PC to check it out. It’s easily become my favourite multiplayer pastime.

On top of that, it looks like they’ve been giving out guest passes for the game, and I have one that entitles the recipient to three days of free TF2. I’m putting it up for grabs here, so if anyone wants it, let me know!

(If you want to know what I mean by “decent PC,” the system requirements for TF2 are located here: http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=app&AppId=440&cc=US)

2 comments

I’m a regular watcher of Zero Punctuation, the five-minute review series started by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw on Youtube and later continued at The Escapist. His reviews are basically highly cynical, sarcastic looks at various games and their idiosyncrasies. He’s usually quite funny, but as of late I’ve come to realise that it’s hard to treat much of his work as “reviews.”

The first sign was his review of Super Smash Bros Brawl. He prefaced his video with a claim that he didn’t understand fighting games. That made me raise my eyebrow, but the rest of his review raised some valid points, so I let it slide.

Until today’s review of Soul Calibur IV.

Let’s get one thing straight - I’m not a Soul Calibur fan at all, and I have no idea how expert players regard this latest installment. Yet Yahtzee’s review, prefaced with the exact same disclaimer about not understanding fighting games, rags on inconsequential nonsense like the story, single player modes, AI and create-a-character modes. Unfortunately, the standards he uses to measure the other games he plays are simply irrelevant in the case of fighting games. They’re nice window dressing, but they shouldn’t take attention away from the fighting system, and more importantly, how the game holds up in versus play.

Needless to say, Yahtzee mentioned neither, therefore making his review another footnote (a humorous one, but still nonetheless a footnote) in the history of people who try to review fighting games without actually knowing anything about them.

That goes for all genres, really. Yahtzee’s best reviews tend to be the ones where he reviews games from genres that he likes, like FPSes and action games (although even these have some duds among their ranks).

Maybe I’m taking his efforts too seriously, but Yahtzee has indicated at times that he wishes to be taken seriously as a critic of videogames. However, without the necessary expertise, his videos are nothing more than humorous bile.

There’s a much more comprehensive and better-written take on the same subject here.

DISCLAIMER: I’m not singling out Yahtzee for doing this - he just happens to be the most recent example of a thoroughly irritating phenomenon present in just about all mainstream reviews these days.

24 comments

Meet the Sandvich!

(No, that is not a typo)

The Heavy update has finally arrived, and I took the opportunity to put a few hours into the game to see what had changed. I’ve already seen Heavies running around with all three unlocked weapons, so the achievements are definitely quite reasonable this time around.

I haven’t tried Arena Mode yet, although I will eventually. I did get to play a few rounds on Badwater Basin, the new payload map. I like the fact that there are now several side passages and back alleys that I can rely on for my Pyro ambushing. On the other hand, it seemed like the last cap was just as entrenched as the last cap on Goldrush tends to get on full servers. Time will tell, I suppose.

I didn’t see any servers running cp_steel, which was a little surprising, given that it was a community map that was overwhelmingly recommended to Valve for inclusion in the update. I did, however, see my TF2 client either crash or boot me out of the server I was playing in for no apparent reason. Others seem to be having similar problems - a patch will be needed.

Still, the abundance of Heavies means ample opportunities to get those Medic achievements - or improve my Spy skills.

On an unrelated note, I nabbed the PC version of Bionic Commando: Rearmed off Capcom’s digital store last week, and so far I have to say it was worth the money. I never played the original NES Bionic Commando, but this seems to be a decent recreation (although by comparing footage of the NES version to the remake it looks like some of the physics might be different). On top of that, the developers have taken a page out of Portal’s book and added challenge rooms for people to prove their mastery of the bionic arm.

Also, because I turned on my Wii for the first time in weeks and noticed that Mega Man was available on the Virtual Console, I bought it, and played it for a few minutes. First impressions: this game is just as challenging as the Internet says it is.

7 comments

The next TF2 update is inbound!

The inclusion of cp_steel is very welcome, but I’m wondering what this ‘new game mode’ and ‘five new arenas’ are all about. Hopefully it’s not something retarded like a deathmatch mode.

Then again, that would filter out all the idiots who pick Sniper and hang out on the 2fort balcony all the time…tough choice.

As for the Heavy unlocks, hopefully they won’t be something as overpowering as the Pyro’s backburner. I’m more or less resigned to the fact that there will be class spam until people get their unlocked weapons, but that gives me an incentive to play some of the Heavy’s counter-classes until it dies down :)

No comments

Check out this neat piece of machinima that uses Team Fortress 2 character models (as well as a few other interesting ideas):

It’s not great, but there are a few funny bits.

Really good TF2 machinima has been in short supply for some reason. You’d think people would have had plenty of ideas by now…

No comments