Nehemia, if you remember from the “Lord Cheney” figure post, has made some pretty interesting art using beer bottle caps and managing to make miniature images of Buddha on them; Buddhist art, done light. You can check out more of Nehemia’s work and progress at The Neon Inquisitor forums (click here)
I’ve been going through the backlog of games, that I have said at the start of this year that I would go through, finding that, really, I like all of them a lot. So much, in fact, that I think these games that I’ll go back again and again because they’re really fun to play. I remember when I used to have a Hewlett Packard Pavilion PC that I would often use to play Half-Life, DeusEx, Quake III Arena, Serious Sam: The Second Encounter and even Soldier of Fortune (thanks GUNGHO917! I have not forgotten!). And the common thread about the games is that they were all really fun and brought you to their world despite the genre (first person shooters that were not really known to give story very well at that time).
So far I’ve managed to finish the following games which I’ve included a small two-bit review on:
Alice: The Madness Returns – This game is said to be like the first where it visuals are great despite the flaws found in the camera, controls and weaponry. The leveling design and the overall atmosphere of the game is undeniably good as it really sucks you in to the world that won’t let you stop looking at and admiring it. The story continues off from the last game where Alice, after a series of unfortunate events, comes back to end up at the care of a psychiatrist who can be described as nothing more than a mere psychological groomer and laxative of children that are to be sold to pedophiles. Violence, macabre, and black humor are to be expected in this title as it does not disappoint in delivering.
L.A. Noire – A game about a man that goes through a seemingly okay transition from being a World War II veteran to one of the Los Angeles Police Department’s finest, only to have the twist and turns that make him into a pariah while going after the largest scam that hits all facets of the ruling and executing classes of Los Angeles’s emerging and booming society of the late 1940′s.
Star Craft II – A space cowboy opera, complete with just about every Southern stereotype that you can imagine thrown in for good measure. Whether you identify yourself as the archtypical “good ole’ boy” or not, this real time strategy title is definitely for you. That or a person that happens to love real time strategy games; a genre not exactly up my alley – Myth: The Total Codex anyone?.
Tomb Raider Legend – This just might end up being among the last of the linear 3D action adventure platformers because no one is making games like this one anymore. The game takes you on the role of Lara Croft, the “healthy” looking British archaeologist who, in this installment in the series, is going out to pursue Valhalla by investigating the artifacts that open to the gates to Valhalla and try to find her mother. The game is kind of bland…but in a good familiar way that was understandable given that, when this game was made, the game development industry still were competing for who had the best graphics in their game for the most part and not innovative gameplay per se.
Bastion – This game is the only indie game that I can gives complete approval, but also recommend from a soft spot of my innards (your cue to say “ewww”). The RPG elements incorporated into this isometric platformer is just great. The animation and art style that is almost that of the manga/anime character designs but with more attitude and flare that is quite unique. I would highly recommend playing this game along with your favorite beverage because this game makes drinks of whatever kind interesting enough for you to want to have one while playing this game.
Batman: Arkham City – If you have ever played Batman:Arkham Asylum, then you know that it is one of the best Batman video games ever as it made up for years and years of very bad Batman video games. And you would also know, those among you that are Batman comic buffs, that the story behind both Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City are made up of a a few comic story lines that parallel to the official current Batman timeline. Which means I ended up playing a game that revolved around a story plot that pretty much came from the writers at Detective Comics which is quite exciting and is the biggest selling point for me to tell anyone when recommending this game.
Currently I’m tackling on Deus Ex: Human Revolution which, in a nutshell, feels and acts like the very first Deus Ex game of the series. I really do like the aesthetics and the cyberpunk action that really reminds me of Ghost in the Shell: Innocence . Despite the story not being as intricate as the very first Deus Ex game with the multiple party backstabbing and whatnot, but this game really sets forth the linchpins that would later on result the circumstances found in the first Deus Ex game story. Update (5/9/12): I finished this game and I might write a quick review on it to give my impressions of the game in the near future.
After this I have only three games in the backlog: Witcher I, II and finally Fallout 3: Game Of The Year Edition. So how long will it be before I’m completely and utterly done with the games that I have currently? I give around 5 to 8 months really. But all in due time…all in due time.
Around three months ago, I mentioned of a large backlog of games that I had to go through and finish before I would give myself permission to go buy any new game. After going through my backlog list I began to think why I had not finished some titles that I had listed while I did for others. It turns out that I just did not like them or found them particularly fun to play so I dropped them.
But to go into more detail about the subject matter: I found that some games are just not feasible to even be counted on the backlog since they are games that either don’t have real closure to them or have not fit my taste in games.
The first category is really games that are just meant to be played over and over again until absolute mastery is achieved to enjoy thoroughly such games related to a sport of some kind (racing or martial arts) or maybe related to some particular eye-hand coordination conditioning to be good at (like bullet hell games). And then there are games that just never got me interested or I thought that the game was designed too poorly that I just did not bother to continue and drop them.
It could be that perhaps my supposed initial count of 47 games waiting for me to tackle are really going to be slimmed during the next months of playing through the games so it will end up with me just having around half a quarter of the original size of the backlog. Resulting in me having wasted money on games that I never end up playing at all; lesson learned when it comes to game impulse buying: don’t do it or it’s going to make gaming suck for oneself.
to check out the backlog in progress(click here). I should also give note that for Firefox users, the CSS Skew rules don’t work anymore (at least with the nightly builds they don’t anymore).
After messing around with XML for a few hours and fiddling around with the skew feature in CSS 3, I ended up making an, almost complete, xml document of my entire game backlog that I’ll update every now and then after finishing a game or two.
The idea is to get a list that is written in XML that is linked to an XML Stylesheet (XSLT) that is linked to a Cascading Style Sheet written up with some fancy CSS 2.1 and 3 effects and then passed through a web browser (any browser will do that anyone happens to use to access the XML file as all modern browser can parse xml, css, process xslt files and output the XML in HTML form) to then be seen in the manner as shown in the image above.
A work in progress as the CSS rules will be worked on a bit more, the XSLT file will need more fine tuning, and last, but not least, have the XML document itself finished and ready to go.
What is interesting for is the file-on-file access and cross technology of static code that can be taken from a single desktop application program (the web browser) to have everything come together.
It should get more interesting if I should start basing tags, attributes, and expected values found within the XML document itself on a document type definition (DTD) so that way there’s a more formal manner of defining the tags, attributes, and potential values so as to form, not just a solid XML file, but also a very small XML-based markup language for this game backlog list XML document.
Update on 3/26/2012 I’ve completed the list in the base xml file so any future changes will likely to pertain to the CSS or XSLT file. And as always you’ll find on the right hand the link to the list to check out any updates that I’ve done and where I’m at with my backlog.
Billy Ocean, The Trinidad-born English based R&B singer that really broke out full success in the U.K. and State-side with this breakout song in 1981 along with the “Suddenly” in 1984. The song’s compositions have their roots without question to funk question given the back-beat signature that the song carries out and especially evident during it’s breakdown sections of the song. And although this is one of those songs that utilized synthesizers, electric drums, and with some use of sound effects, the song’s entire performance does not feel cold or foreign from the acoustic instrumental performances from funk acts from the 70′s.
So you have the song be clean in its delivery and the beats feel solid without giving the impression that the artist is taking itself too seriously. And this is perfect since the primary focus is entirely on Billy’s voice which works well within these parameters – again, another characteristic of 70′s funk music acts. So if there’s a song that you have been wanting to know that was definitive for defining the 80′s then this one is definitely one of those songs.
There are many peripherals that exist out in the market for computing that many gamers go for are mouses, monitors, graphics cards, mouse pads, headphones with speakers, and anything that can assure as much audio/visual accuracy for their gaming experience as much as possible, but there is one peripheral that is so crucial and fundamental that most overlook: it’s the keyboard. Before I start my review I’d like to give a quick crash course in the difference between a mechanical keyboard and what keyboards most people have come to be used to using in recent years (rubber dome). If you remember back in the old days of computers when you had these loud heavy keyboards that would be part of the computer set ups. Originally of IBM engineering design, these computer keyboards were composed of electronic switches that would make use of gold plated contacts – so as to assure proper electronic signaling of the particular key switched pressed. This made sure that you had every key stroke register with the computer. At the same time it was design to make sure that there was little finger fatigue, and by extension, hand fatigue with long periods of use. So functionality and ergonomics were in mind. The only set back was that that keyboards were loud with the individual key “clicks” and “clacks” that it would give in use.
Many of the games of theThe Elder Scrolls series, at least the main numbered titled installments of the series and not the spin-off titles (such as Battlespire and Redgarud), have all been about open-world RPG gaming with the emphasis in immersion and believeability – something that is a big deal given how Bethesda, the game developers of The Elder Scrolls game series, go about achieving this with each series installment. And out of all the possible examples to go pick to demonstrate this, I’m going to be talking about the second most recent installment – which I just finished recently – of the series, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
Released in 2006 and quickly being the darling of the PC and console gaming world for it’s incredibly large gaming environment, vast story arcs, customizability, and large questlines. The game, at the time during release, was not making promise or offering anything that was starting to become “standard feature” in PC games such as multiplayer or co-op gaming. It was nothing more than your standard, offline, single-player video role paying game but what it did promise was improvements from it’s predecessor, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, such as an intuitively designed menu and quest navigation system that allowed the player to be able to manage quests and go through the world of which your character plays in (this time in the Tamerialic province of Cyrodill for Oblivion) without losing direction or hair and/or mind (in that order).
Of course there was the expected graphics improvement and shifting from the old Gamebyro game engine to the new Gamebyro Lightspeed game engine – the latter featuring some milestone technological advances that allowed for even further modularity and extensability for game developers and designers which means that the world of Oblivion was guaranteed to larger, have more depth, and would surely kill hours of your free time.
A slight pulsing glint of ruby started in one of her eyes to the beat of every syllable of her words.
And it was for the first time in my existence that I started to hate her for those words – just genuinely hate her.
Garbage can be said in this day and age to being a sort of a “super-group” but without any veteran musicians. It’s more like Butch Vig’s project where they try to sound like a group of veteran pop-rock artists banded together like a supergroup with the funny ongoing self-evident joke that they’re not. They started out in the state of Wisconsin and have ended up as of late doing most of their work in Los Angeles. The band has, and more importantly it’s front-woman, Shirley Manson, just been quite influential within the rock industry and has allowed many women from different parts and from different sub-genres in rock to come out and be common place as it is today (although room for more would be nice). Garbage’s sound is really slick and there’s nothing to complain about it because, even to this day, it’s not traded off it’s signature sound from the 90′s to veering into influences that most other artists within and out of the rock music have – in particular influences from the hip-hop sound and culture. They maybe not as active as before, they may be no longer the talk of the town among the music magazine pages, but they are still kicking…and taking names one song at a time. Oh fun fact of this particular hit by Garbage: it was featured in the official soundtrack of Grand Turismo 2! Happy trials.