
I completed Crysis yesterday, so I thought I would post a few quick thoughts on my experience:
I’m not sure if I can recommend this game or not. It’s worth playing through for the eye candy, but some of the game’s frustrations cancel out that fun. My final verdict for Crysis? C+
I just finished Half-Life 2: Episode Two again. Playing it through on my new computer was a real treat, and the ending of this episode still brings a tear to my eye. One thing jumped out at me for the first time on this play-through: the end credits. Valve has chosen to present the end credits in a short, yet elegant way. Every contributor is listed in alphabetical order by last name, with only a few notable exceptions (all the voice talent is singled out, for example). The result is a short, concise credits sequence that isn’t a bore to sit through. Compare this with the end credits for Call of Duty 4, which go on for so long that a rap song is performed to break the monotony (I believe the end credits are on the order of 3 or 4 minutes long in that particular title).
I’d really like to see more end credit sequences patterned after Valve’s design. Others may disagree, but knowing who did what on a project isn’t very important. Listing each contributor in a single group levels the playing field and gives everyone an equal measure of thanks.
I have added support for category-specific RSS feeds (actually, they were there all along; I’ve just ‘turned them on’). Each category listed in the site sidebar now has a corresponding feed icon. Simply click the icon and you’re set to subscribe to that category’s feed. I’m not entirely happy using the RSS icon here, and I may switch to using a purely text link (removing the category post count in the process).
I’m a big fan of The Office, the comedy television show on NBC (hopefully everyone else is too). Last night’s episode was great, and it provided a glimpse of what might be coming down the pipeline (there are only 2 episodes left this season). Here are a few predictions I have for where this series is headed; note the possible spoilers ahead:
The long-awaited update to Team Fortress 2 was released Tuesday evening, so I’ve only had a brief amount of time to play around with Gold Rush, the map showcasing the new payload game type. In a word, the new game play theme is awesome. Gold Rush is much more enjoyable than Dustbowl (which I love, by the way), and I really hope more maps of this type are released over time.
Here’s how Gold Rush works. A mine cart, carrying a Fat Man style bomb, must be moved from point A to point B through 3 different stages. The attacking team (BLU) moves the cart simply by standing near it; the more team members surround the cart, the faster it moves. If the cart is left unattended for 30 seconds, it begins to move backwards towards the starting point. The map is played just like Dustbowl; there are a total of 3 stages in which BLU attacks and RED defends. Once either BLU successfully attacks all stages, or RED successfully defends a stage, the teams swap sides and the stages are played again.
Gold Rush is definitely a tough map. The defending team almost always has a height advantage, making it difficult to make quick progress. A number of choke points slow things down even more. But like every other map in Team Fortress 2, things are very well balanced.
The other major change to the game comes through the new unlockable weapons and achievements. Medic is the only player class that currently supports these new features, so everyone is inevitably playing as a Medic. A total of 36 new achievements are available, and for every 12 that you unlock, a new weapon option becomes available. First up is “The Blutsauger,” a syringe gun mod that leeches health from each enemy you hit. Next is “The Kritzkrieg,” a medi-gun mod that gives the person you use it on a 100% chance of firing critical damage (instead of the standard Ubercharge). Finally, “The Ubersaw” bone-saw mod provides a 25% charge to your Ubercharge meter for every hit you make on an enemy. I’ve only gotten 4 out of the 36 achievements so far (Surgical Prep, Trauma Queen, Intern, and Group Health), so I’ve got quite a ways to go. Some of the achievements look impossible to get, so I doubt I’ll make it all the way.
If you’d like to try out Team Fortress 2, along with the new updates, Valve is offering a free weekend this weekend (May 5-6). I can’t recommend this game highly enough, and the Steam service is great, so check it out. If you do check it out, look for me; my username is jgbCodeMonkey.
Last week, I rebuilt my computer again (making this the third machine I’ve run on since this site opened up). Here’s the list of what I upgraded in the system:
I have been test driving this new setup with a few games. Call of Duty 4 looks amazing in high resolution with all the eye candy turned on, and it has elevated my opinion of the game. The Crysis demo ran great at 1280 x 1024 at the ‘High’ graphics setting, and I may be able to push it a little farther (I’ve ordered the full game, by the way; I’m very excited). Team Fortress 2 is thrilling at 1600 x 1200, and even Half-Life 2, which will be four years old later this year, looks great running at 1600 x 1200 with 4x FSAA. Half-Life 2: Episode 2 should be equally as nice.
The last few Firefox 3 nightly builds have changed the way SSL URI’s are displayed to the user. In Firefox 2, accessing a secure site results in a yellow background for the address bar (which I think is a particularly elegant solution). For reasons I don’t fully understand, Mozilla is getting rid of this implementation. In new Firefox 3 builds, the background of the ‘favicon’ will change depending on the security of the site. A blue background indicates an SSL secured site, while a green background indicates an EV SSL secured site. Moving the color to the favicon, in my opinion, makes things a little harder to understand. A heated debate about this inevitably appeared in the corresponding bug, and there will likely be more confusion over this in the future, as more public users begin to explore the Firefox 3 world. I fully expect an extension to ‘fix’ this feature, so all may not be lost. This is a very strange decision on Mozilla’s part, and it should be interesting to see what the end result is.