You can’t have everything. This is especially true with a finished product, like a video game. Once it’s out, your ideas will only be seen in a mod that you might make, and even then the mass public will probably not stumble upon it by chance. It’s the sad truth. Luckily (at least where I live), you can still dream up these ideas.
People like Team Fortress 2. You can tell, because us guys here are obsessed with it. And a game as, for now, minimal as this deserves some more intracity. You may wonder, “What about the casual players?”, and I say; they don’t have to worry about it. Team Fortress 2 as a game doesn’t exactly cater to the lowest common denominator either. So here our some of my personal ideas, with a few illustrations.
Letting a spy disguise as a dispenser or other stationary object.
One major element of the spy is that adds strategy to him is that he cannot stop moving, or he could be caught. He has to act fast! One of the major elements a spy has that is missing here is some kind of surveillance on the enemy team. Spies, in real life, are there to gather intelligence, not kill people. And I realize what I said there; I mean in the non-literal game sense. I don’t mean to go to the enemy intelligence and return it to yours. What I mean is to see what the enemy is doing; who is where, who is what class.
Since this game is based in the early 1900’s, tech like bugs and tiny cameras were not around, so here I think you should do it the old fashioned way, without so much risking capture; disguising as something still, like a dispenser. Of course, this isn’t a fool proof plan- if touched, you don’t flicker, but you don’t give off ammo. You glow like a regular one; you just don’t do anything. People would grow keen and kill you, but if you put yourself in a good location, you could buy some time to survey the enemy. To build on this idea; you wouldn’t be able to move or shoot; you could, however, run at any moment, after undisguising for a brief moment.
Now I’m sure someone will say, “But what about feigning dead, like in Team Fortress Classic!?”. I miss it very much, but it wouldn’t be practical in this game most likely. With the mostly narrow spaces in the game, you would actually die while feigning quickly. There is almost always a constant exchange of bullets in the best places you could feign in TF2, and your body would look out of place elsewhere. I’m sure the Valve guys would be able to do something like this and balance it well; but I want to move on to something decidedly much more creative.
Giving the spy some kind of time bomb like explosive.
Yeah, yeah, more spy. This is the last time I’ll talk about it in this post, at least.
The spy can’t really do anything offensive unless he’s sappin’ mah dispenser or in my base backstabbin’ my dudez. Shouldn’t we have some kind of (minorly) effective way to kill from afar without a gun? The perfect solution is a bomb.
The spy would have a small bomb; maybe the size of a demoman’s sticky bomb. It would be an inconspicious grey, and have one small, almost unnoticeable flashing light on it. You would have only 2 of these in your inventory, and they would need to be resupplied. Also, only 1 can be deployed at a time. In order to prevent spamming of any kind, they would have a slight delay, maybe 1 second or so, and make a loud noise to warn people nearby that they’re about to die. You could activate them while disguised, dispenser or regular disguise, and when you use them you lose the disguise.
They would have a decent damage, but it would be a percentage based rate, like the health pickups in the game- -90% health to the person afflicted by the explosion. This avoids an instant kill, except for a crit. I say this should be done because with a fixed rate, it makes you a killing machine if you leave them everywhere. This gives you an assist point, which should be good enough for some.
Some other quick ideas:
A non-health support class of some kind. Bonus: Decent SMG as the main weapon.
We need ammo sometime, no?
Give the medic better weapons.
The syringe gun isn’t bad, per se. It’s just unpredictable.
Interchangeable map layouts, like CP_Well and CTF_Well.
Update 1: Josh continues to deny allegations that he stole things from others ites. He said he never even looked at the tips on the TF2 Wiki, which are nigh identical in wording. Not to mention a picture he used was smack dab in the middle of these tips he never saw. He says he just had a good idea and someone else had an identical idea. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how this is completely impossible and idiotic (see links below)
This is something I haven’t done in awhile. I’d like to get a bit more personal with you, the reader(s).
You may have noticed that a decent chunk of content has pretty much permanently vanished from the site. Now, this is no magic or a move on my part.
I made two mistakes this past Sunday.
1) I didn’t back up the site to a file like I should every day.
2) I didn’t let a spoiled person get what they wanted.
You may say, “whats with number 2 mr. alek?”, and here is what I say.
Josh was a decent writer. He could fill in a good chunk of post content. So I said, “Eh, why not just let him be an admin. He won’t stop saying “let me be an admin” anyway. Harmless enough, right? Wrong.
In a matter of days he wanted everything changed. And when he faced an disagreeing opinion? Bitching and whining. He didn’t get what he wanted? Well, he would try to get it somehow. It went to his head, all this power he had recieved. He wanted everything he couldn’t have.
To his credit, I will say he sometimes had valid ideas, but the fact that he always made a fuss that there was another side to his viewpoint always drove him nuts, which is just absolutely insane. He wants to change the name and forces it to be our only decision. Guess what, just no. There are some things you just don’t do in a second. Sadly, we don’t live in a world where you get everything you want. Some things just don’t happen, end of story.
You may have recently heard that we co-opted a deal with advertising agency M80. We now occasionally receive free games from the publisher THQ. All they want in return is some form of opinion at some time.
Of course, yet again I get another pointless headache. I want to get a copy of Drawn to Life to review, so I take it in, but come review time, I get writers block. Hm, I’ll try a few more times. Then comes Josh. (paraphrased below…)
Me: “Eh, can’t write anything for this, I’ll hand it off to someone else.”
Josh: “Keep trying. “
Me: “Sorry, I think I will give it to someone else”
Josh, later: “I’m very angry that you didn’t fulfill your responsibility and that you probably will never let us get any games again. Because of this, I can never trust you to review a game we get ever again, so I’m going to probably change the shipping address of our games so that I can get them. I’ll just review them. I should be allowed to handle this, not you.”
That had to be the biggest fucking joke I’ve ever heard, for several reasons.
1) What are you, my mother? Responsibility? One of M80’s employees personally stated:
“No worries about timeliness - we realize that some things take time, especially if you want to craft a well-formed opinion about something. So in the end, there wasn’t any trouble at all”
See, there’s the big picture. Josh assumed something was true without fact checking and made an ass of himself. It lead to him not getting what he wanted, so he was pissed.
2) You think you should get to keep all the games to yourself? Not a chance, get real for once. You think you can just get all the free games you want because I have writers block on one thing? Same for a Call of Duty 4 review I had that never materialized. I have my days, accept it instead of taking it as a sign of things to permanently come.
3) He doesn’t even have realistic expectations for anyone who wrote here. Of course, he can post as much as he wants, and of course that’s fine with us. But when we have lives to attend to, he doesn’t give a shit. He just wants us to post as much as we can. Personally, no way dude. No way am I going to neglect family and work for some little site. There are more important things. Not to mention, he says he’s the only one who ever does anything. And to this I reply:
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
There were other people there, and they did things. Just because you have like 200 posts doesn’t grandfather you in to be an ass.
In another conversation, Josh also mentioned that he specifically “deserved to be an admin because I do everything” when I demoted him in response to his somewhat out-there behavior. Well, hey, guess what, but I’m gonna pop-up the ego balloon you have increasing in size rapidly. You don’t get to do everything just because you throw out a ton of content. It’s nice.. but it doesn’t mean that you are always right or that you are better then everybody else. It means that you threw out a ton of content. End of story. Don’t expect a reward all the time.
He always complained that he never got gratification for all that he did, and guess what? Are you that much of a narcissist that you constantly need to be told “you’re awesome!”? We already liked what you were doing. You just asked us to praise you more and more. And that’s simply ridiculous.
Josh always assumes. He assumes we have responsiblities, that this and that has to be done… but again, get back to Earth, buddy. I’m writing a fun little site. You’re pretending to run a business. You’re not 24 with a fresh business degree and a suit, you’re a teenager who plays video games and writes for some cool little site I had as an idea one day. If I have to get little bullshit headaches from one of my writers on something that should be fun, you’re out the door. I don’t care what you do or what happens without you around. Go and skip around in your spoiled little fantasy of getting whatever you want.
He left, and made his own little site, so he could do whatever he wanted. And that’s fine. He wants it to be big? See you in about 7 or so months, which is how long it took us to get on stable legs consisting of a decently sized reader base. If you want to copy all of your old content and post it on your site.. go ahead. Steal the show. Remove all the work of the people who helped you, including in joint reviews and removing pictures, and steal content from other sites(this post) (note that he also always deletes comments pertaining to this issue). So good luck starting from the beginning. At this point you have maybe one writer who will post at all, because your friends, no offense to them at all, don’t do much post wise. And here’s the only thing I care about. Don’t yell at them for not doing too much like you did to us.
You say I’m a rude, irresponsible, childish asshole liar and then expect me to believe you hide your new site from us to be nice? Nice try, liar.
Don’t make others miserable (or in my case, laughing at you, Josh) because you didn’t get what you wanted. Get back to earth before you choke from lack of air in space.
Final note: You know why we removed you from groups, josh? Because you don’t work for us anymore, and we don’t like jerks. We don’t want to deal with that.
I went out today and set us up a FeedBurner feed. You can still use the http://seriousnerd.wordpress.com/feed Feed, but this one is a bit more robust and awesome. Hopefully people will find it through FeedBurner as well. Feel free to subscribe to it using your favorite feed reader!
By the way, an explanation of all the TF2; we don’t have any new games or movies worth reviewing right now, so content has been stagnant. If it wasn’t for this, the site would be a bit emptier and less updated at this point.
We here at The Serious Nerd are big fans of Team Fortress 2, the team based multiplayer game by VALVe. We play it frequently, therefore we know it quite well. Along with limitless amounts of knowledge on how to play well, we also know how to grief the hell out of you. We avoid it, but sometimes, we do it for the lulz. And we apologize.
This happened recently on a pub server- a few determined people got together and we turtled the intel in 2fort. Good times. Dancing too.
(Ah, crap. I spelled “technique” wrong. *facehand*)
Welcome to a (hopefully) new series of articles! Josh has expressed interest in contributing; so there is more to come!
As you may or may not know, I find myself addicted to the spy in Team Fortress 2.
Sadly, few people find themselves playing him; or to be specific, playing him well. Sneaking generally doesn’t come across as a favorable tactic in the online world, especially considering that in every single other online game, a sneak attack means a well placed snipe shot to the head. This is a rather fresh idea; disguising and cloaking in multiplayer (expect maybe in Splinter Cell).
This is one of the game’s toughest classes to master; you are weak, armorless and your only good weapon is a 6 round revolver. Doesn’t sound super appealing, huh? Your only great advantage is a butterfly knife that, when used from on an enemy’s top, side or back, will result in an instant kill. It’s a satisfying class to play, if you play it right. The *kachink!* you get whenever you get a good backstab and the easily stackable, screen filling kills make this class a rarely killed death machine; but again, if only played skillfully.
If you know nothing about how to play this guy, then view the video below first. EvilDaedalus luckily shares my sentiments and will give you some basic education on the class. Thank you, I say.
But now, what you’re here for; how to kick ass and take names; in the most masterful way I could do it. You may disagree with my points here, and by all means feel free to comment as such, but they work. Just ask any of the several people I have back stabbed in the last month.
1. Don’t think disguising as someone on your own team is stupid.
You may wonder, “Why would I ever need to hit that ‘-’ key to disguise as my own class?!”. This is a very, very useful technique being ignored, mostly because of arrogance and ignorance. If not such negative traits, maybe you simply don’t know it exists or has a use. If you find yourself as the only spy on your team, you can make the enemy team believe, simply, that your team doesn’t have any spies at all! This is a great way to get the team thinking, because if you wait long enough, the team will be devoid of any kind of spy defense. Then you can cheerfully go in, backstabbing Snipers and Heavies galore.
This technique has one drawback however; you still draw enemy fire and must stay to the shadows until you find a suitable time to disguise and attack.
2. Constantly re-disguise and cloak.
Having played on several servers, the most common thing I hear is “Spy disguised as (class)!”. This statement is usually repeated with the same class, over and over. This is because many Spies subconsciously affirm an allegiance with a particular disguise. I would advise you take a circular approach to disguising (while of course avoiding the “bad” disguises); first disguise as a soldier. After a kill, disguise as a demo man. Continue this cycle. If you do this, no one will be able to predict who a spy will be disguised as. But, a cautionary word; randomize this circle each time you pass through it! If your enemies are crafty enough, they’ll know to shoot a sniper when they have been recently killed by a demo man.
You can also change how you move; occasionally I’ll jump around like a bunny just so people are sure that it’s a different person running around, and not the same spy they just caught.
Of course, sometimes this is impossible; like when caught in a convenient chain, like 4 snipers on a battlement in 2fort. Just keep going methodically, unless faced with a particular vicious sentry gun.
Also, don’t be afraid to cloak. This one sounds so obvious, but many use it like it’s a one time thing. Patience is a virtue with this feature; if you have to sit in a blind spot or empty room to recharge, so be it, because this feature will get you out of so many sticky situations. If you stab a medic, but the heavy catches you, just cloak and run away. Don’t force a confrontation, unless you have no cloak!
Sadly, this technique can be useless in crowded territory; a cloak is easily visible unless you are in a blind spot.
3. Keep moving.
Try not to kill people in a predetermined area. If you form a predictable “circle of death”, such as killing mostly snipers, you will soon face an impenetrable defense in that area, with your targets becoming paranoid and building a defense. If you constantly move to different areas, and attack different classes, along with constant re-disguising you will be keeping the enemy on their toes, and you will be as hidden as a needle in a haystack.
The only situation I can think of where this wouldn’t work is in a bottlenecked area; where the defense is strong around area, but a small weakness exists that is safely exploitable. In this case, simply wait on a situation to attack a different area. Like I said; long waits can be the only way up the ranks.
4. Avoid dominations.
This goes along with what I just said; don’t try to form a circle of death by getting a guy several times in a row. He’ll become, more likely then not, a crazed spy hunter until he revenges. If you let this build up, you’ll have a whole team on your back that has you on their watch; making attacks impossible.
5. Don’t always be the spy.
One of the best defenses as a spy is to not play him the whole round. I’m guilty of this; let’s just say they know you’re there, and will set everyone on their team on fire to check. If they suspect you, play a high-profile class like the Heavy to get attention; not as the “really good Spy” but as the “really good Heavy”. Then you can sneak up on them when they least suspect it.
6. Adapt your play style accordingly.
On every map, there is a defense or offense play style. On some maps, these tactics are useful or useless. But you need to adapt to whichever one you are using, especially if locked into it, like in Gravel Pit.
On the defense, being the Spy becomes incredibly difficult. Since it is the enemy advancing and you pushing them back, you must be incredibly vigilant and act like a Pyro; stab everyone in the back until you rid the team of the cleverly cloaked spy.
Your job is made harder by the enemies backing up these spies; if you stab someone in front of a heavy, you have little chance to escape. In this case, you must simply remove the stronger enemy first, and then eliminating your quarry. Another way to handle this is the “Bait and Eliminate” approach; disguise as a team-mate, appear to clear the area ahead and then lure them into enemy fire.
7. Stay modest.
Don’t be arrogant. Don’t taunt every single person you kill, and don’t announce it either. You look like an idiot; are being a jerk, and you are leaving yourself open. Not to mention attracting attention.
8. Some classes are bad, I’m not joking.
Some people, no matter how much they are poked, will go as a medic, and get mercilessly shot when the nearest heavy realizes that you refuse to heal him.
The point of the spy is to assume a role; and to fill it. If you are a sniper; you should be in the battlements; not on the front lines! That’s why the Spy, Scout, Heavy, and Medic are such bad roles; as a spy you could be mistook as the enemy. As a scout, you move too slow; as a heavy, you move too fast. And, as a Medic, you can’t actually heal people who call, and you lack a Ubercharge indicator above your head. All of these problems are nigh impossible to hide.
9. Just because the sapper is there doesn’t mean you should abuse it.
You don’t have to sap every single teleport and turret you see. It attracts attention, because everyone can see you place it and the sapper itself. The engineer especially will alert everyone to your presence. It also leaves you without a weapon briefly; the sapper has only its one technology destroying use. Of course, you can switch to the revolver or knife relatively quickly, but if you have been trailed by a spy, the only possible thing left to happen is you getting backstabbed.
If it will help your team, by all means go ahead and destroy it, but don’t try to battle your way through a turtled area.
10. Have an escape plan.
By no means is the Spy a suicide bomber class; the point is to eliminate key opposition and survive long enough to push back the front. You will frequently find that you have missed your backstab, or that you were seen being cloaked. The only way to survive is to get away from the front-lines, or at least your pursuers, for as long as possible! The enemy base in particular is a dry well; you have no access to healing or ammo besides dispensers, and these leave you standing idle, ready for a lone flame to catch you. In order to survive, you must frequently trek back to a distant but reliable source of health and ammo; your own base.
It all depends on location; on some maps it is easier then others to get back to home. For example, on 2fort; if you are spotted on the battlements, you can simply jump into the water below and get back to the base via the sewers, assuming that a) the sewers are clear, or b) you have the ammo/health/cloak to get rid of enemies stopping your escape. It is all based on map; simply learn your own reliable and safe ways home is all the advice I can give.
11. Loneliness is a good thing!
Don’t have other people with you when you spy. This rule applies tenfold to other spies on your team. The problems that I try to solve in this guide are compounded, and doubled by another spy. This also applies to a situation where one spy saps a sentry, and you happen to run by; you get slaughtered, the spy who placed the sapper does not. Try to make sure that the only mistakes and techniques that will kill you are your own.
Medics, obviously, are a bad companionship; although they solve some of the problems presented in 10 by providing a semi-reliable health source, they are too obvious and blow your cover. Unless the medic has a place to hide to occasionally heal, which is incredibly unlikely, you will need to abandon him back at home base.
Engineers, who can build dispensers, are also a bad choice of a companion. The contraptions they make, if placed conveniently by your kill zone of choice, will most likely be destroyed quickly. They also attract enemy spies; soon you will be getting back stabbed yourself. Also, the teleporters Engineers create can also create an incredibly severe detriment to your disguise; when used they make you leave an appropriately colored trail, depending on team. If cloaked, this makes your position obvious and makes you soldier bait.
Everyone else is really just a big giant sign pointing to you saying “Kill this guy before he stabs you in the back!”. The big drawback to any kind of companionship is this; if you are disguised as the other team, why aren’t you shooting (and killing) your “enemy”? So just for now; be a bit anti-social if you wish to survive.
12. You have a revolver.
Sometimes, you will find yourself with an enemy who has outpaced you, and you tried a backstab. You’re uncloaked; they’re aware of you. You’ve got your knife and you’re still pretty close. What do you do but stab? Sadly, this is the quick decision others may make hastily. You need to remember that you have a pretty decent gun with you! If you can draw it, you can get up to 60 damage close range, and with about two quick shots, you can possibly have a kill, and have your life intact! The only drawback to this is that you will leave yourself undisguised and open to enemy fire; but if the situation is desperate you may be able to sneak off just in time.
Sinister has some tips of his own!
1. Don’t be a hero.
“As a spy, it may be easy to get to the enemy intelligence; but getting out, and getting back to your base, is difficult for several reasons. You can’t cloak or disguise; your weapons are not too effective against large crowds/powerful enemies, and you’re slow enough to be easily shot. When I’m a spy, my goals are to back stab at an opportune moment, and disable sentries. If you like getting the intelligence, scout is your best bet.”
2. Backwards walking can work.
“If you come running in though a door, out of nowhere, a smart player would realize that you were coming in to attack. Come in going backwards as if you were shooting at someone, then take cover. You can stay in disguise as long as you want, so take your time.”
3. You are not Neo.
“If there is a lot of bullets being traded at a time, completly avoid it, no matter what. If you are invisible or in disguise you are bound to get hit by a bullet which will reveal your location.”
4. More tips about blending in.
“Don’t make it look like you’re up to something; like running around for no reason. Something I do is call for a medic, so I have an excuse to not be at the battle front. If you are at the battlefront, busy backstabbing people, and not firing down at your own team you look suspicious. Your best bet is to disguise as a sniper; they tend not to go shoot wildly, so you could get away for not shooting for a short while.”
So there you go! Basically, my play style, and Sinister’s as well, in a nutshell. Patient, quiet and methodical. If you want to turn the Spy into a kamikaze, Crazy Go Nuts University, suicide bomber; go ahead. Just don’t expect a pretty Kill to Death ratio. Now put it to use, and help your team out. They’ll be needing it!
Crysis is a strange title. It looks like an over-hyped tech demo, with absolutely mind-blowing graphics and psychics that seemingly don’t belong in this day and age; but it plays like a great stealth shooter. This may seem over-exaggerated, but you can do absolutely whatever you want to get to your goals, and this is the game’s greatest, most innovative, and definitely most awesome feature. You may think this isn’t important, but when you can come up with fifty different ways to disable a GPS jammer, and do them all, you know you have found a great gaming gem.
Crysis follows the story of Nomad, or Lt. Jake Dunn, in the year 2020. Sent to Lingshang Island, Korea, Nomad and his squad of elites are sent to rescue a captured archeology team. What the team has found could risk the safety of the world; it’s up to you to stop it.
The gameplay is, at a fundamental level, a first person shooter. You can use stealth to avoid shooting and just take a nice, island stroll: or go balls out and do action-movie style slaughterfests with exploding helicopters and everything. It’s all possible to several things. First, it’s the great, and massive, level design. The island is a living breathing thing, and the only thing that makes it hard to traverse is the enemies and your limitations as a character; not the level design. You can get to the highest peaks or the bottom of the water, and this allows all kinds of approaches to the goals given to you in-game. At one point, you have to retrieve a hostage from a heavily guarded complex, surrounded by machine guns, armed personal, beach mines, and the like. I tried several different approaches; quietly eliminating each guard, to blowing up the place with a few well placed grenades and boats. Some techniques work better then others, but that’s not the point. At some points you will not think “What do I HAVE to do?”; you will think “What CAN I do?”. That’s one of the game’s greatest strengths.
The game is again supplemented by a piece of technology on your character’s body; the nano suit. It has several cool abilities; cloaking, increased strength, great speed, and enhanced armor. The abilities are balanced well, and are each only temporarily usable, based on the (rechargeable) power levels of your suit. With only the ability to use one at a time, you can supplement your plans to get to your goals. For example, the sneaking. Cloaking is a major help; get past enemy defense and flank everyone, cloak again, and methodically eliminate every KPA soldier in your way of a hostage. The abilities are also not overpowered; enemies can still hear you while cloaked, you can only do slightly more with extra strength (break open doors, or lift heavier objects), and you can’t exactly zoom from one end of the island to another with max speed. Each ability has its own little great uses that I’ll let you discover yourself, but they become useful and stay useful to the very end.
Each difficulty in the game is different, and not just in a way that “the enemies are stronger! OH NO!”. Actual gameplay changes take place. On the easiest difficulties, your enemies all speak English, are highlighted with awareness levels and can barely shoot to save their lives. On Delta, the hardest difficulty, you don’t have crosshairs, your enemies speak Korean and are actually sometimes able to take too many bullets, a drawback. But this is the way I suggest you play the game on Delta unless you’ve never played an FPS in your life, because it’s the most realistic and fun way to play. Some great moments result from this; such as “Did that Korean soldier just say he saw me, or does he just like that magazine he’s looking at?”. It adds great suspense and it makes surprise attacks (like having a large tree crush you, since a KPA guy just broke it right behind your back), that much more awesome and cinematic.
The game feels like a movie when it comes to the story; great voice acting, and intricate character development flesh out the story over its long length and keep it interesting. When a squadmate dies, you feel genuinely torn up about it, and when you save a key person, you feel admirable. You may think I’m lying, but play the game, and you’ll see exactly what I mean. The story seems a lot like a War of the Worlds or Alien, and it is. Just because it’s an average story doesn’t mean it can’t be good in some ways; the great characters prove this. If you feel like being John McClaine for a bit, but don’t want to play a crappy tie-in game, Crysis may just sorta be your chance.
One of the greatest things about Crysis are its graphics. At the highest settings, and at a good frame rate, the game looks nigh-photo realistic and is a gamer’s dream. The water just looks like you can get wet by getting in it, and the trees wave about in the wind like a dream. Every little brush reacts to you; you can chop down entire trees with a few well placed grenades or bullets. The island can change after a single firefight; a lush tree filled oasis is now a barren, sandy, hole filled wasteland. The little details add greatly as well; motion blur when you run, a lack of focus on the things around you except for what you look at when you use a scope, and the blood on your screen when you are shot. The physics to go along with this are also amazing. You can pick up anything you have the strength to pick up. Feel like killing an enemy with a porn mag? A boat engine? A cup of coffee? Go right ahead; you can do it. A really great example of the physics I saw was when a bunch of KPA (your main enemy in the game) crowd into a small shack. I threw a grenade in the room, and before they could escape the house collapsed inward and everyone got crushed. Pretty sadistic, but it gets the job done. The physics also make great cinematic action. When a mountain in the distance starts to shake and sputter, rocks fall out and crush everything below, and it all looks great too, since it’s all in real time. Now you may think that, looking at the system specs, that this kind of awesome is unattainable; it’s not! Don’t hold back on this because of the frightening specs. On a mid-range PC with a pair of NVIDIA 6800 Ultras in SLI, the game could still hold a semi-decent 20-30 FPS with every feature on high except the shaders. Of course, if you want to see everything at good quality, you should upgrade. 6800s are the absolutely lowest end you can play on, and even then it’s still not perfectly smooth.
The controls for the game are somewhat complicated seeming at first; your Nano Suit has many different changeable functions, weapons can be customized, you have night vision, and the like. It’s all controlled by different buttons, and if you don’t get used to it you may get confused. Luckily, the game gives you a bit of help along the way, and somewhat gradually introduces these features. Luckily, every control can be customized to your liking. More of an arrow-keys kind of guy? Do you want to turn on night vision with the N key? Go ahead! No support for gamepads, but with the breadth of features, who in the world would attempt to distill it all to a gamepad?
The audio is one other great thing that isn’t as heavily touted as the other game’s features. Explosions make the room shake with great tremors, like when a jet plane crashes into the land not to far ahead of you. Gun fire is piercing, and your character gives noticeable audio cues to his pain. The click of an empty gun is a sound you’ll learn to dread, and the shouting of a KPA patrol that has just spotted you will make you panic. The screams of an alien creature will rattle your bones, but boy will you like it. Real 7.1 Surround is going to sound amazing (and I tout it with a 2.1 system!).
This game is far ahead of its time. With a PC like the HP Blackbird 002, a 7.1 Surround system, and a great mouse and keyboard, this game should completely blow your freakin’ mind. Even with me, (for now) just playing on low specs with not too great an audio setup, I gave the game the score you’re about to see. The game is a cinematic PC masterpiece, with absolutely almost no flaws, except that it can’t play on your grandma’s PC and it can sometimes be difficult. The bar really has been raised, as PC Gamer has stated. It’s gone so high now.. can it be beat again? For all gamers out there, let’s hope so.
Shortly after watching this movie, I went searching for Advil on craigslist. But that’s not because the movie sucked… it was because of the highly piercing voices of those chipmunks. No wonder Dave Seville thought he went crazy.
So, by chance I got to see this movie yesterday. I’m sure all you youngsters have heard of this crazy trio of talking animals; if not listening or hearing to their music at least hearing the names. This movie was so highly anticipated because of this trio’s history; over 40 years of high pitched singing and animated specials. Finally the ‘munks have moved into a new territory; the world of CG animation. Mixed in with the filming of everything else, it’s an interesting film style that hasn’t been put to good use ((don’t) see the horrible movie Garfield: A Tale of Two Kitties). The director behind that movie was behind this one as well, explaining the CG… but would that also explain the movie’s quality? Gladly not, for the most part.
The story follows Dave Seville, a hapless songwriter who, after being rejected by Jet Records producer Ian Hawke, comes across a trio of talking chipmunks. While the chipmunks sleep, Dave makes a song out of their musical snoring, and after eventually getting it to Ian, the chipmunks become a musical sensation throughout the world.
I wish I could say more without spoilering, but for the most part the movie is good. It’s for kids; rampant butt jokes, and a constant moral question of “What makes a family?” and “When is your kid spoiled just a bit too much?”. It also mixes in great adult humor as well.
The songs on here are good; but influenced too much by today’s trendy. Bad Day at the beginning was okay, but it gets worse; Funky Town and the Chipmunks own toons are too trendy and poppy. They may appeal to the kiddie crowd but they leave a bad taste in the mouth of us with a more advanced music palate.
The CG, for the most part, is done well, and the acting is not troubled by the lack of real chipmunks. The actors seem to be perfectly choreographed with the (absence of) the chipmunks on the sets, and certain scenes pull of the details as well (such as when the chipmunks destroy a recording booth on accident). My favorite casting pick is David Cross as Ian Hawke. The guy’s comedy is hilarious and his previous roles on TV (Mr. Show, Arrested Development) have all been great. He does good here as well, being “the rich guy who everyone loves to hate”; one of the best bits is when the chipmunks are judging a dive into a pool Alvin does; Theodore holds 7.5, Simon holds a 10, and Cross simply holds up a sign with the “$” symbol on it. Jason Lee as the lead was also a good pick; he does pretty good on My Name is Earl and he does good here as well. His constant emotional struggle seems real and you feel bad when bad things happen to him.
The movie is pretty short; judging by the impatience of most kids they’d never sit through a LoTR epic; so the story elements are sometimes either rushed or dragged out; there is rarely a good balance.
I would go see this; if not for the story, but for the great look, the great acting, and just to see those annoying little things one more time.
As you all know, we love Steam. We get our frequent Orange Box fixes there and all the other good games out there. With the Orange Box, a feature was introduced along with it; gifting the games you already have to other people. Although this new update doesn’t exactly extend this idea, it’s another gifting idea, great for this holiday season.
This new option is the ability to buy games for friends. Simply purchase the game from the Steam Store as usual, but if you choose an option (”Is this a gift?”), you can give the game (and the ability to download it) to your friends on Steam, or even just an email address, where the person emailed will be invited to Steam to play their brand new game! Here’s some pics of this great new feature.
Note some of the hilarious sentiments. Below the box of sentiments is a “Your Signature” box with your name in it. Perfect for gifting a girl you like who plays on Steam (you lucky bastard) with a signature like “Your Secret Admirer”. Neat, huh? After all the gift “wrapping”, you can proceed to regular, old, boring checkout. Now start gifting!
And I didn’t exactly buy you Bioshock, Josh (maybe for another day…)
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