More homework shenanigans:
'14-27. Suppose that your campus water supply was contaminated with trichloroethylene at a concentration of 10 mg/L. Determine the total intake over a 4-year undergraduate program suing Equation 14-3.
14-28. Repeat Problem 14-27, assuming the contamination was in beer rather than water.'
Answer to 14-28:
"TOTAL. ****ING. CATASTROPHE."
Yesterday my friend's brother died. He was stabbed numerous times saving the lives of his two friends he was with and died later in the hospital. I've known my friend since we were in diapers and it's kind of a shock to me that this has happened to his family. If you're religious or spiritual, say a prayer for his family; if not, just keep him in your thoughts. Rest in piece, Paul, you were a hero.
Am I the only one who thinks that Battlefield 3 looks awful and uninspired? I mean, how many military shooters does the world really need? Sure, it looks pretty, but look at Modern Warefare 2: it looked pretty but the game was total balls. Battlefield has always been the superior military shooter between CoD and BF and the miscellany of Tom Clancy-endorsed copy-pasted games and I've been with the series from launch up until they decided Battlefield 3 was a good idea and had their booth at PAX East when I went way back in March.
Sure, this is a pretty game, but there's no way this isn't going to be a linear shooter with lots of brown and sand and moments where you can't do a damned thing and you have to sit there not playing the gamewhile your character experiences your $60 (it's $60 because this is EA, let's be realistic) and you sit there mouth agape at the incredible time your digital representation is experiencing. Maybe I'm just a cynic but Call of Dutyfield 3: Modern Shades of Brown just looks so...generic.
I've presented this arguement to several people and they defended BF3 with such zeal that I was taken aback for a moment. These are some of their arguements (paraphrased):
You get the idea.
I'll say it now so we can get this out of the way: I ****ing love Valve. Every single one of their products reflects the fact that they have been working on their game for several years.
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Part of the problem with this game is the nature of shooters today. Take the modern shooter these days. Typically, shooters are built around their multiplayer aspects; developers are more interested in making somethingmarketable as opposed to something that reflects the quality and amount of time they put into it.
Let's use Modern Warefare as the standard for a modern shooter so more people will get what I'm trying to say.
Call of Duty is a series that started strong and tapered out after the second game--not Modern Warefare 2, Call of Duty 2. Campaigns for recent entries were, at their longest, approximately 6 hours for the first-time player so the series has been relying heavily on their somewhat average multiplayer.
Let's delve a little deeper into the multiplayer aspect of CoD, as I think I'm one of the only people left in the world who actually plays games for their single player; a man much older than his age; a lone survivor wandering the world of brown, quick-scoping, and derivative military shooters--a zealot for the single-player gamer.
Multiplayer modes in Call of Duty range from shooting guys to get points until one team wins, shooting guys to clear points until one team wins, and shooting guys until...wait, that's it. Not a whole lot can be said about multiplayer across other shooters, either, so technically I can't knock CoD on lacking of game modes. The competitive scene for Call of Duty, though it has recently had to convert to the Modern Warefare/ Black Ops scene, has always preferred Call of Duty 2--something you may not have known.
Anyway, I hope this gives you an idea of how I cla$$ify modern "standards" of gaming. Let's look at an atypical example of a multiplayer shooter before we finish with BF3. Let's take, for example, Brink, another modern shooter.
Brink, at its core, was a simple shooter. Most aspects of the game involved exploiting the incredibly broken slide-tackle and then using stupidly powerful abilities to obliterate your enemies because most of the online players were too incompetent to realize how to revive themselves or how to shoot while on the ground.
Where Brink shined was in its unique art $tyle, architecture (a friend of mine who is an architect described it as "an architectural orgasm"), and the parkour mechanic. The parkour mechanic meant little to most players as they usually wanted to use the big guns so they were bigger guys with slower movement. Nothing wrong with that.
The players who realized, however, that combat in Brink was more than 2-dimensional (point and shoot) quickly realized that with movement came momentum and with momentum came surprise. If you caught your opponent off guard they quickly fell. Players who mastered wall jumping soon learned that the game had unrecognized potential, hastily shrugged off by media unhappy with the quality of the visuals, the poor performance, and the inconsistent AI difficulty.
Brink did something that other shooters failed to do, despite Brink being more-or-less an incomplete game. Brink brought the originality of a new mechanic, combining the run-and-gun of games of ye olde times where I hail from with sweet games like Serious Sam, Painkiller, and Quake with the mobility of a game like Assassin's Creed.
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Finally, let's break Battlefield 3 down. I'll use bullet points because you're sick of reading this and I'm getting carried away; I'm going to address the aforementioned bulleted arguements for why BF3 will be "good"
"Battlefield 3 has the best gaming engie to date"
"Battlefield 3 has the best multiplayer of any shooter out there"
Why? Because it has jets? It's not even released yet and the first reactions to the open beta have been all over the place, ranging from "I just cancelled my pre-order" to "I bought 30 copies to share with my friends".
"Something, something, EA, something, something Call of Duty"
You know me at this point, I shouldn't have to explain this. I have a vendetta against EA and Activision; on the one hand they produce the masterpiece space-shooter-slash-RPG-BIOWARREEEEEEE Mass Effect series that will actually conclude the story with the third installment of the game, a marginally surprising annoucement, considering the fact that EA just can't let things die--and on the other hand, they have released 10 (or something) Call of Duty games that do little more than re-hash the same things in a different setting, infinitely-respawning enemies, and charging you for levels you used to have and you have to buy again in order to play the game.
"It is the most realistic shooter to date"
A. That is an opinion
B. The most "realistic" shooter in what way? In graphics? Sure. In physics? Doubtful, that would go to the 1-shot-and-you're-dead Metro 2033 and America's Army games. In AI? Definitely not, still goes to Republic Commando, X-Ray engine games (STALKER series), and the original FEAR.
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Anyway, If you made it this far, thanks for reading. If you skipped through and just joined the rest of us here, I don't blame you--I did just spend the last 90 minutes typing complete jibberish about how I hate the modern generation of shooters and how CoD needs to end 6 games ago. If you feel like arguing this further, I'm up for it as long as it remains civil. I'm pretty stubborn so I don't know how far you'll get but it's fun trading quasi-threatening remarks about how the only reasons I even get to play the unique games these days are because developers are trying to make "WoW-killers" or "CoD-killers". We both know EA isn't done.
Anyway, on that note, I feel I have summed up my reasons for thinking BF3 will be bland, boring, and a rehashing of what we've done a dozen times before, albeit my addled brain has a hard time staying on topic. Thanks again, hope all is well, viva la EA revolution!
MW3 guy looks like a Colonial Space Marine. Heh.
For those of you who don't know, I am currently the Head of Game for CEVO's TF2 league. This means that I run a competitive gaming league for one of the largest gaming organizations in the world. This keeps me quite busy, especially as of late; as much as I want to read everyone's blogs, regrettably, I don't have the time. Add to that the 9th semester of undergraduate studies (that's a 5th year for a BS degree) with 3 courses I nearly failed the first time I took them in high school, the fact that I like to do other things, and the fact that my neighbors have noisy sex at all hours of the night (I'm betting some more letters are due).
My keyboard and mouse were on their last legs and with my keyboards dying strokes I managed to punch in my credit card information on Amazon to pick up a new set of gear; I picked up the Microsoft Intellimouse 3.0 (aka IE3, the famous Starcraft mouse) and the Microsoft X4 Sidewinder keyboard (another legendary SC accessory) for around $80 total. Not sure why I'd share that--I don't usually care or share this kind of crap with you all, it's usually something crazy like that 3rd date or the crazy Burger King lady. Anyway, good keys & mouse:
But this is neither here nor there. I've taken to making a $*@!-load of game videos, most recently is a string of Left 4 Dead custom campaigns that have been a blast to make. This is the latest one:
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl6aYGAqYlk
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJ372etgIJE
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjvWTr_T1OU
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvgbVznPH1k
Anyway, hope all is well. And johnsteed7 should have gotten around to Deadly Premontion by now...
So my Hazardous Waste Management course is getting hilarious. This is a homework question I was actually assigned and my answers:
6-6 What is wrong with the following statements:
(a) "OK, we'll do an audit program, but we can't give a copy of the audit report to the plants!" (The exclamation point made me laugh)
(b) "We don't need a spill plan. We don't have any spills!" (Again, loving the punctuation)
(c) "Well, how good did we do? What was my score?"
(d) "We send the solvent off to a recycler so they can reuse the hazardous waste. The sludge in the degreaser? Oh, that just goes in the dumpster."
My answers:
a. Give the copy to the plants
b. We need a spill plan
c. "Good" is incorrect grammar
d. Sludge should not go in the dumpster, especially since you recycle.
Love this cla$$
I was doing homework for a class and noticed one of the questions that the professor luckily had not assigned.
Actual homework question: "Contact your local state legislator and obtain a copy of one hazardous waste bill currently being considered. Prepare a brief synopsis of the bill, indicating your opinion as to whether it should be passed."
Had he assigned this, I would have had approximately 36 hours to contact my state legislator, explain what I needed, pick up paperwork at the state capitol, write a response, and finish 20 other problems. Small miracles, eh?
Just in case you were sheltered as a child, Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday was today--rather, yesterday. Freddie died of AIDS complications in November of 1991 after a long battle with the illness. Freddie, if you're sheltered, was the lead singer of Queen, the most influential rock band of all time; to this very day, not a soul on the planet does not like Queen (the Queen haters are soulless). Queen music is in films, videos, tv shows, and those of you less than 16 years old will recognize "Don't Stop Me Now" from Shaun of the Dead's famous zombie beating scene. I shouldn't even have to mention Queen to many of you as you remember not only Wayne's World but Queen's albums themselves.
I was just a child when Freddie died but to this day his music can be heard across the globe. Freddie is a symbol of gay rights, peace, and music for everyone. May his legacy continue on for eternity and if you haven't heard Queen's music, do it now. Seriously.
Happy birthday, Freddie, the world misses you every day.
My PSU (power supply unit) for my desktop kicked the farm bucket it bought and it's ^#&$ed. Photos of my dead 850 watt, 85+ Gold-Certified, Rosewill PSU are processing. I bought my PSU and my motherboard this time last year (actually to the date) for $85. It cost me $148 to replace it. Newegg is sleeping on the couch tonight.
As many people are now well-aware, games are fun. Some games are better than others, too. Take, for example, Deus Ex, the commonly accepted "best game ever made". Deus Ex is far, far, far better than many games that have come out in recent years. For instance, Deus Ex is far, far better than Sonic Heroes. Sonic Heroes is loved by some, but not by most. Sonic Heroes was a(nother) dissappointing entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog series. Bear with me, I have a point.
In the last few years a certain game series I am quite partial to has been rapidly declining in quality. If you guessed Call of Duty you guess wrong but get bonus points because you know who you're dealing with. The series in question is Resident Evil. Resident Evil follows the interwoven stories of several different characters as they deal with an outbreak of a (few) biological outbreaks. In short, zombies be tearin' &#%! up and it's up to the player characters to get out aliveishly.
Since 2002, a director who is now married to the female lead in the Fifth Element and happens to star in the movie adaptations has been making movie-abortions of my beloved game series. They are filming the unfortunate 5th in the series WHICH BRINGS ME TO MY POINT. I screwed up back in 2009 by giving the 5th (numerically) installment of the Resident Evil series the equivalent of an A-. Resident Evil 5 does not deserve an A-. As a Resident Evil game, it does little more than introduce new players to a more-accepted way to play a game. As a game, however, it is fun and plays well.
My point is, much like the movie abomonations Paul Anderson keeps unleashing like the T-Virus, the Resident Evil game series is starting to...uh...degenerate (the joke will make sense shortly). Sure, Resident Evil 4 was the best-in-series as a game, but it was a poor survival-horror entry; there was little horror and survival was not particularly challenging. Still, RE4 is one of the best games ever made.
There is one hope left in the world of Resident Evil, however, in the form of Capcom-made animated films. Capcom has put out 2 so far, in the form of Resident Evil: Degeneration and Resident Evil: 4D Executor. Most of you have never heard of the Executor film, as it was never released outside of Japan and most of you have never heard of rehorror.net, but it was a pretty decent Resident Evil film. Degeneration was a moderately-successful straight-to-DVD film that really embodied the essence of an RE film. It had characters from the original games, a cla$$ic RE plotline involving crazy conspiracies, awkwardly-emotional characters, and lots and lots of zombies.
4D Executor link:http://www.rehorror.net/thirdeye06/m_4d.php
Recently, I re-watched the movie. It is a fun movie to watch if you've never seen it and it features the original voices for Leon Kennedy from RE2 and RE4 (and RE Code: Veronica X if you payed attention to it), Claire Redfield from RE2 and Code: Veronica, and the voice of Chris Redfield as one of the antagonists. Anime fans will also recognize the voice of Crispin Freeman of Hellsing notability among others, and Steven Blum of pretty much everything ever made. The plot made sense, the animation was clean and crisp, the zombies were very zombie-like. Overall, it really was a pretty decent movie and a really, really good Resident Evil movie.
So I was on IMDB, like I am often, and felt like looking up RE:Degeneration. To my astonishment, I saw that Anderson has begun working on anotherRE movie. Yeah, great. After some digging, I found this hiding out in the links. It may just be the last hope in the world of Resident Evil movies.
Escape From City 17 Part 1:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ixFf4ljuCg&feature=relmfu
Escape From City 17 Part 2:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lyUNs7eNhs&feature=feedu
Beyond Black Mesa (Adrian Shephard fanfilm):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOrH5tfWorg&list=FLdW1UWmaLP82k1Y4hilGvOw&index=44&feature=plpp
Who says all game movies are crap?
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