Expectations were high. Good reviews other places. The promise to control a full Star Wars campaign – from the big galactic picture – down to controlling every unit. Could it be? The Star Wars version of Total War?
No no no – what is this piece of shit? The earth warfare is a crippled RTS game – control waypoints – kill everything – weird control style – no involvement – no fun RTS. They don’t even try to make it feel like there is any point in what you are doing. The only cool thing is that is: It’s Star Wars. Then again so sad. The warfare in space is basically the same crippled game – using a 2D battlefield. Sorry, Star Trek Armada did this sooo much better.
And? Surprise. The overview campaign strategy is also some shitty halfwit without meaning. It is some kind of simplified blend of Civ and Galactic Civ game play, problem is it’s as playable as Yoda Desktop Adventures.
Empire at war is basically a game for small children and doesn’t deliver. What about truly making a Star Wars conversion of Total War?
onsdag, juli 26, 2006
Prey (Game)
Ahhh. If I remember right – this one has been in the owen for a long time... Can It be.. ten years or so? And finally it hit the streets. Built on the eminent Doom 3 engine. Looking a bit brighter than doom 3. Is it so that this is the game doom 3 should have been?
I main points I remember from Doom is – loads of killing (later given to us by the Serious Sam series – even if I wasn’t to happy with the sequel) and the scare – few games have managed to feel the adrenaline pump like that. Doom 3 did give the scare back to us with its dark – devious style – so I am quite content with it.
However Pray plays much more nice. The control system is so smooth and blends into the gfx , music and effects like a dream and is the most polished FPS’es I have played for a while. It is definitely not a Doom wannabe – but takes inspiration from other games.
The first Unreal games was one of the few games I finished – because it really was unreal and you got an unique feeling of discovering something unexplored. And the gfx just rocked. While the latter Unreal engines has become more real I find a lot of Unreal in Prey (in a competition engine) – the other big inspiration I find here is (believe it or not) the first Half Life game.
So basically you know it will be a killer game.
The effects with portals – even if it is just another way of doors – its pretty awesome and cool – and I hope we can see this being brought even further. The gravity thing when you run around floors and shit is also a new (?) and refreshing way of game play.
All the levels (even the dull ones) feel like they have been tried and tested to death – and everything is placed in the right (or perhaps wrong) spot. The spirit walk – even if it might be a little dull – is an entertaining way of making a few puzzles.
The games weak point is the story line. The opening sequence is the lowest end, only the worst games dares to honestly show this kind of shit – and since it is the first you see of the game – chances are you’ll just throw it away –
Don’t
this time patience pays. The cut scenes later in the game are a bit better – but still low end. The scenes from the spirit world looks like someone tries to show off some outdoor scenes, and the story elements smell like old fish. The main characters voice seems to be done by multiple people (??) could this be?
But the rest of the game is pure gamming pleasure!
I main points I remember from Doom is – loads of killing (later given to us by the Serious Sam series – even if I wasn’t to happy with the sequel) and the scare – few games have managed to feel the adrenaline pump like that. Doom 3 did give the scare back to us with its dark – devious style – so I am quite content with it.
However Pray plays much more nice. The control system is so smooth and blends into the gfx , music and effects like a dream and is the most polished FPS’es I have played for a while. It is definitely not a Doom wannabe – but takes inspiration from other games.
The first Unreal games was one of the few games I finished – because it really was unreal and you got an unique feeling of discovering something unexplored. And the gfx just rocked. While the latter Unreal engines has become more real I find a lot of Unreal in Prey (in a competition engine) – the other big inspiration I find here is (believe it or not) the first Half Life game.
So basically you know it will be a killer game.
The effects with portals – even if it is just another way of doors – its pretty awesome and cool – and I hope we can see this being brought even further. The gravity thing when you run around floors and shit is also a new (?) and refreshing way of game play.
All the levels (even the dull ones) feel like they have been tried and tested to death – and everything is placed in the right (or perhaps wrong) spot. The spirit walk – even if it might be a little dull – is an entertaining way of making a few puzzles.
The games weak point is the story line. The opening sequence is the lowest end, only the worst games dares to honestly show this kind of shit – and since it is the first you see of the game – chances are you’ll just throw it away –
Don’t
this time patience pays. The cut scenes later in the game are a bit better – but still low end. The scenes from the spirit world looks like someone tries to show off some outdoor scenes, and the story elements smell like old fish. The main characters voice seems to be done by multiple people (??) could this be?
But the rest of the game is pure gamming pleasure!
onsdag, juli 19, 2006
Surprise
By mistake I just happen to play around with task manager. And what a surprise. Microsoft’s beloved Explorer creates approx 2 page faults a second. Wow – how far hasn’t the world come?
tirsdag, juli 04, 2006
Second flower died
In the relationship between me and flowers there are still a few grudges and my second flower died on me. The first one has tried to die a few times but is still going on. We will see what this leads too..
Parking
In the five years I lived in The Netherlands I only had 2 parking tickets, and that was because I gambled on not paying the parking fee. (Naughty??)
Anyway – back in Norway I get parking tickets all the time – and it’s because they make 440 million kroners a year on parking tickets (divide that on 4 million people and you see what I mean)
It is basically big business and so parking rules are so difficult that no one can ever apprehend them all – meaning you never know if you park legal or not – probably not.
Sometimes places that where legal yesterday has suddenly become “no parking” just to keep the money flowing in.
It’s not very much fun – but the option is to choose not to park at all.
Thank you Norway..
Also on the trip back from Kristiansand I noticed something strange – one gas station actually sold gas for 12.30 kroner and diesel for 12.60 – the first time ever I have seen it being more than gas.. Must have been a mistake.
Later I will probably write some shit about the speed cameras and all the shit that they create.
Anyway – back in Norway I get parking tickets all the time – and it’s because they make 440 million kroners a year on parking tickets (divide that on 4 million people and you see what I mean)
It is basically big business and so parking rules are so difficult that no one can ever apprehend them all – meaning you never know if you park legal or not – probably not.
Sometimes places that where legal yesterday has suddenly become “no parking” just to keep the money flowing in.
It’s not very much fun – but the option is to choose not to park at all.
Thank you Norway..
Also on the trip back from Kristiansand I noticed something strange – one gas station actually sold gas for 12.30 kroner and diesel for 12.60 – the first time ever I have seen it being more than gas.. Must have been a mistake.
Later I will probably write some shit about the speed cameras and all the shit that they create.
A few summer piccies
I havent been to busy with a camera but still - Here is a few pictures from summer so far.
Norwegian Wood - Saturday (Festival)
Norwegian Wood is an "exclusive" festival where they limit the numbers of visitors so its completely relaxed to sit and watch your favorite (?) band(s) playing. And it’s of course also fully possible to start the festival morning with the great bath.
Elvira Nikolaisen played better than expected and I was quite surprised actually. Looking forward to hear and see her perform again.
Richard Hawley performed ok, his music is a bit Frank Sinatra like – so one could say a tad too slow. Technically good performance though. The best part however was his in between jokes about his day out on the piss in Norway and the couple that decided to split up because they had the greatest sex ever but the rest 364 days of the year sucked.
Bigbang was quite entertaining. I don’t think they gave more than usual – but they have quite a few nice tunes that are hard to mess up – and brought up the mood of all of us.
Lou Reed tried to find a new musical expression which didn’t live up to the expectations – it’s just no fun listening to a 3 minutes song taking 15 minutes – but maybe he eventually will be able to put in enough elements to make it worthwhile. To many people’s disappointment he didn’t play “Perfect Day” (even when we have made a movie of this….) but make up for it – he did finish up with the “Free Jimmy” song!
All in all an ok night – but as we all know – Wednesday with Roger Waters would be King!
The Mjøswhale in Sweden
This is a picture from our Whale hunting safari in Sweden one weekend. The Mjøswhale followed us (because he is so lonely) all the way and we could hear his sad “Moooooaaaaa”’s all the way to the Swedish country side.
Unfortunately we still haven’t caught it.
During the hunt we also came across this smoke commercial – saying that there is no problem to keep good help and still enjoy a smoke…
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