Minesweeper: the movie

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Okay, one more for today. This one’s for all the Mario Brothers geeks out there.

And yes, he’s not just playing the flute but providing the most stellar beat box to it.

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Well, a month has passed and I’ve been long overdue for an entry in the ol’ blog. Along with the passage of time, my days of being an active PC user have passed like gas and left behind memories only a computer geek could be fond of — rebuilding the damn computer, fighting back the rage when encountering memory errors, and of course the frequent occurrence of Windows locking up.

Alright, I wasn’t really fond of Windows, but the necessity to run such a loathsome operating system was driven purely by software.

But I decided to make the jump to light speed and purchase a new 20″ iMac (2 Ghz processor) with my wife’s blessing. With the wonderful invention of the Intel Mac, I now have a few options available to me as far as running the loathsome Windows — as a boot option or as I prefer, a virtual machine that I can run inside OS X.

So far I really love OS X…there’s just one thing I do have to complain about though…

…how about they start releasing some decent games for Mac, now!?! A few years ago, when Apple wasn’t pushing their products as hard, I wouldn’t have expected to find the big headlining games available for Mac. But now-a-days? I have come to expect the best from Apple, and instead, we’re stuck with such lame game titles like “Luxor”, “Virtual Villagers” and the ever popular “Plantasia”
oh… and can’t forget “Tom’s Hen House” and “Teddy Factory.” Sure there are a couple ones possibly worth considering, but come on now… Mac is becoming a bigger contender for the home computing share of the market. The gaming industry should sit up and take note of this fact and actually start releasing some titles.

EA Games is releasing a few games, like Battlefield 2142 and Madden NFL 2008 — but if you do recall, EA Games has a bad video game release history with their debut titles. I’ve already sworn that I’d never give them another dime. They’ll be hard pressed to gain my business after the crappy service I had to deal with in previous dealings.

Anyway, to my point…with such a consumer-driven focus on the Mac platform, it just really surprises me how many STUPID games there are compared to how many legitimately cool and interesting ones are actually available.

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Another slow evening at our household—just relaxing after four days of training and backing up all my photos onto DVD’s as my hard drive is nearly full with RAW files. Now that I’ve been shooting more often, and many of those photo shoots involving 200+ exposures in one evening, my media drive fills up fast.

Because it takes so friggin long to burn a DVD, I’ve been poking around looking for a free version of SimCity to play and kill some time. Well in that quest, I inadvertently came upon this DOS game that I was TOTALLY addicted to back in 1997. Oddly enough, there was a period of time a few months ago that I hunted frequently for this game and COULD NOT FIND IT. Ironic that you find what you’re not looking for but were once earlier.

So the game was called Terminal Velocity and was this “3D” spaceship shoot-em game (you didn’t actually fly in space, but within the planet’s atmosphere) where you basically shoot up a bunch of crap and watch the glorious 16-bit DOS explosions fill up your screen. Oh, and the funny part is, if you don’t have a SoundBlaster 16 card, forget having any sound. Back in the day, you actually had to select which soundcard you were using; and many of us did have soundblaster 16’s then—when they were cutting edge.

Anyway, fun to have that back on my machine again and saving “the world” from a robot alien race with spaceships, tanks and various other objects intended to be destroyed. Now back to backing up photos.

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Though I’ve yet to personally see any advertisements within Battlefield 2142, there have been rumors and statements floating all over bulletin boards and such regarding in-game advertisements and the alleged “spyware”.

Released from DICE games:

Because BF2142 delivers ads by region, the IP address of the player is used to determine the region of the player and helps serve ads by region and language; for instance, a player in Paris will be presented with ads in French. Note that this IP address is not stored on the advertisement server and is not repurposed for other uses.

A unique ID number is anonymously assigned the first time the player joins a Battlefield 2142 online game. It is stored locally on the PC but is not linked to any personal details.

The in-game advertisement gathers what we call “impression data”, such as location of the billboard in the game or duration of advertisement impression. It helps see how many people have seen an ad - but not who has seen it.

We are also conscious that the advertisement shouldn’t distract the player from the overall gaming experience, so all ads fit in the unique environment of each level in the game. The content of the ads is also controlled to ensure that no offensive content is displayed in Battlefield 2142.

There are two things that bother me about in-game advertising, particularly for a game set at the year 2142:

1. We’re seeing ads for present-day companies running ads in a futuristic setting.

So companies like Subway can place their annoying, present-day logos in a futuristic, semi-apocolyptic setting, where the world is literally freezing over (and has been for a long period of time) and the various factions of the earth are fighting over small regions of inhabitable land. Sure I don’t mind seeing a torn up billboard as a part of the scenery, but it should NEVER capture my attention and distract me from my objective—to obliterate the other team’s players.

Advertising companies get paid to distract us in real-life with their big-ass billboards and signage all over the streets and highways. They litter the landscape with crap with the sole intention of filling the space in our minds with their brands. I don’t want to deal with that in a game, thank you. If I want to be assaulted by ads, I’ll buy a NASCAR-sanctioned game.

2. The second thing that perhaps bothers me even more than item number one, is that you’re PAYING to be advertised to.

You can equate that to subscribing to Sirius Radio Network and having to listen to advertisements in between songs. No one in their right mind would put up with that…why should gamers have to put up with being ADVERTISED TO within a game that they’re PAYING FOR??????

EA Games and DICE have really lost it. Between the serious bugs with their game and insisting that we be advertised to AGAINST OUR CHOICE, I don’t think that I will ever buy a game from them again. No thank you.

If you feel similarly, I encourage you to head over to the EA Games forums and post your thoughts to them. They need to know how the general gaming community feels about these poor choices. Sure some rich executive thinks it’s an innovative way to make more money…but I say “NO”. If they insist on generating revenue from in-game ads, then they can afford to drop the price of games to something that’s more appealing…say $25 instead of $50.

Tell EA and DICE where to shove the ads… up where the sun don’t shine—where all the lousy games go to collect dust and general criticism from the gaming community.

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Well if you were one of the masses that flocked to get the new issue of Battlefield 2142, you might as well have waited another week or so as the game really BLOWS when it comes to functionality. It’s a cool game, don’t get me wrong…but it would be nice if the game WORKED!

There are repeated forum postings about an issue with Punkbusters repeatedly kicking people off servers within only 2 minutes or less of game play. It also appears that many people are having issues with their CD Keys and are unable to play at all.

In addition to that, EA Games released a PATCH the day before the game’s official release. I call that tacky and a sign of rushing a games’ release, whereby letting some big bugs and glitches through the system.

I know it’s not really my place to criticize, but I will. If you’re going to issue a game for $50, it had better damn well be free of major glitches and problems. I think it’s acceptable for some small glitches to get by—but things like being kicked by Punkbusters within 2 minutes of play, issues with CD Keys and serious latency in connections…I think EA and Dice would have been better off holding the release date off to fix those issues, rather than get gamers across the globe all excited, only to dash and smother their expectations.

I think EA Games and DICE need to rethink the way they build and release games. Clearly it’s not working out very well and MANY people are walking away disgusted and ticked off.

I had checked both the EA Games and Even Balance websites for any mention of the bug, and nothing. But there sure are a lot of ticked off people trying to play BF2142…myself included.

Added 10/19: There is one thing I do have to say about the new Battlefield 2142 that is a major improvement. The rendering looks better and both the maps and the game load MUCH faster than its predecessor, Battlefield 2: Modern Combat. But as my buddy Jamison says, “sounds like they UNLOAD faster, too”.

He’s right. They do, thanks to Punkbuster and the superb quality of EA Games and DICE. [sarcasm]

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I’ve still got my old harddrive hooked up with a Win2K installation on it and a few old games like Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 1942. There aren’t a ton of servers out there to play on like their newer games, so I tried out a few of them and played some single player games. Kinda fun. I really like how the Heuey attack choppers handle — you can do some pretty crazy stuff with them…stuff you can’t remotely do in Battlefield 2.

The only downer is that I have to boot to this harddrive (Win2K) if I want to play these games, as the serial numbers are stored somewhere in the registry and I can’t seem to transfer them over to the new harddrive.

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I’ve had a chance to play the new European expansion pack for Battlefield 2 and I have to say that I’m relatively disappointed. You really don’t get much…three maps, a few new weapons and some new vehicles.

The new chopper flies horribly — it’s way too sensitive for my joystick — but the new jet isn’t so bad. But on the whole, there really isn’t anything worth buying in the European expansion pack…even if it’s only ten bucks. Seriously. Save your money.

(more…)

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I like playing BF2 occassionally and hop on a few servers here and there. One server I play on now and then (and I’m not even sure why) is this “Christian Gamers Online” server. I think the idea of a “Christian” gaming server is kinda funny, espcially that we’re playing a war-oriented shoot-em up game.

God bless me as I blow mine enemies to little bits.

Well, a few months back I got kicked from the server for saying literally “OMG”, which commonly is understood as “Oh My God” or “Oh My Gosh”. Lame, right?

My contention is simply that they’re taking the idea of taking the Lord’s name in vein FAR out of what it really means. The name “God” is simply a title… not a name. Same as Lord, Savior, and even Christ. “Lord” is a title for a being of authority. “Savior” is one who saves. “Christ” is a title or name for one who saves. And “God”… well, that’s a deity — real or not.

So I’m playing BF2 this evening on their server and someone got kicked because their name had “crackhead” in it. Naturally he complained and a dialogue started up as to how/why people were getting kicked. Naturally I piped in about being kicked for saying OMG. A little sarcasm kicked in and I said, “the next thing you know, we’re going to get kicked for not praying enough.”

Kicked.

So here’s why I contend that it’s not a Christian server. If they were truly Christians, they would have let it go and got on with the game. But no, they kicked me for making a snide remark — offensive or not. I simply ask the worn out old question, “what would Jesus do”… and I think Jesus would have been a lot more loving and not so quick to deal out punishment because someone challenged the “system” and the ways of thinking.

I don’t plan on going back — they’re just too prudish there for my taste… all for the sake of trying to make a non-offensive, “clean” gaming environment. I think you can still have that without being a prude. And the CGO server? Prudish!

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Finally hit a new level in BF2 at Gunnery Sergent. Took a little over an hour and a half because of the stupid server I started out on. That gave me two new weapon unlocks. Can’t wait to try ‘em out.

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