Playing Tetris with real boxes

Yep, moving day was this week... so we are playing Tetris with all the boxes around our house. We (er, Michelle) is making good progress.

I sent back COD4, I advanced to Prestige level 7 and then I stopped... I just didn't see the sense in going farther.

Over Thanksgiving weekend I went on a game bender... playing through Halo 3 on Legendary and Kane and Lynch on the Morphine level.

Both were okay and both had parts that were frustrating as COD4 was in spots, but I persevered.

So I have played through 40% of Mass Effect and I am enjoying it immensely. Some minor faults, but it's a typical Bioware game.

In the queue is Jericho, Transformers and Flatout 2... a little lighter fare than Mass Effect.

Playing COD4: MP

So I started playing MP and I must give kudos to IW. They have built a game that keeps me going. I am level 43 now and want to get to the last levels to see what this "prestige" thing is. With all the weapon mods and unlockables it's pretty deep.

The only thing is - where are the MP achievements?

Next week I get Kane and Lynch: Dead Men and I'm pretty stoked for that. I loved Freedom Fighters by IO Interactive, so hopefully it will be good.

I may try Skate - since it's different from the Tony Hawk games that I suck at and with that game I may have a hope to get some achievements.

Otherwise, my left wrist hurts from clicking down for "run" on the left stick for COD4. So, I've stopped running - and I'm like the Terminator in battles - I hold my ground and fight until I die an untimely death.

Playing COD4: Modern Combat

Okay, someone pointed out my review of COD4 was a little harsh, so my synopsis is this:

I felt like I was in "I Married an Axe Murderer" and I needed Charlie's Dad to pop up and yell:

"Gaz! Move your head! Look at the size of that man's head! Crap, he just shot you."

"I'm not kidding, that's like an orange on a toothpick! Dammit, Gaz moved into your snipe!"

"Well, that's a huge noggin! That's a virtual planetoid! Has its own weather system! Head! Move!"

At that point I was usually dead due to not being able to get off a shot to kill the enemy.

If you are a friend and I actually know you I'll send my review to you if you request it.

TimeShaft

Ok, so I'm playing Timeshift now. Most people are saying... damn, does he work? Yeah. I work and then I come home and play games for an hour, go to sleep, get ready for work, work and then rinse and repeat. Without a wife, cat, furniture and anything to distract me... this is what happens to a male workaholic/video game developer.

Plus, this all changes in less than 20 days when my 3 months of near-bachelordom come to a screeching halt when all of the above finally arrive in North Carolina. The only thing missing is the sale of our house in Chicago, which will remain empty until spring when the housing market should be better (or a tornado demolishes it - I'm rooting for the tornado).

Anyway, TimeShift.... so Vivendi did FEAR (no, I'm not using the goddamn periods) and they also made this. Wouldn't you think the accountants there would say to their producers...
"So what makes this different?"

"Uh, you stop time... but you do it manually."

"Er, okay.... so how is that fun?"

"Well, you get to decide how to stop it."

"And, are there other things you do?"

"You shoot guys in the head."

"While you are trying to decide how to manually stop time?"

"Er, yeah... well, it sounded good in the meeting."

"And how is this more fun or different than FEAR?"

"Um, I gotta go now..."

It makes me think that besides World of Warcraft, Vivendi has nothing but producers who want to stop time and hire studios who only know how to do that type of game ("Well, we can't hire you until you show us some time manipulation.... sorry... wait, do you have some dwarves in this game?").

Also, this is not the way I would do any kind of time manipulation. FEAR was one button, with that button you stop and start time - simple - no interface with lots of stuff.... click on, click off.

When I play TimeShift and I want to stop time I get what looks like a set of instructions for some alien boom box on my screen.... I can go back in time, stop time or go forward in time... and all of these block my view of 16 guys trying to kill me.

Not good.... not bad enough to get the Mielke Corner Toss... but I've only played the first 2 missions. More time hilarity to ensue....

Guilty Pleasures

One of the best collections of gaming reviews is on The Escapist by a guy whose name is Yahtzee. I don't know if being named this made him a cynical bastard and infused him with the spirit of Old Man Murray, but his reviews are awesome. His reviews are under Zero Punctuation.

If I could write gaming reviews... if you are a constant reader you will notice I have stopped... this is how I would love to have enough humor to do something similar.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/

Right! Well I have finished Overlord and I am on to bigger things - even though I am kind of cheesed off at the game since it didn't give me a lousy 20 achievement points when I beat a particularly hard boss because I skipped a cinema and didn't watch the guy die.

Another game that got thrown in the corner for being bad was The Simpsons Game by EA. I thought "Man... I really must be getting old when I can't make timed jumps." Then I figured out I was using logic and someone at EA thought the rules of physics in games should be altered since logical physics just weren't fun.

I compared my frustrations with co-workers who also played the game about making timed jumps and the randomess of floating/hangliding that you do in the game as Bartman or Homer and we all had the same frustrations. We also put (or threw) the game down after not being able to complete the Natural History level (level 2).

The witty dialogue wasn't enough for me to make the same jump for the 17th time... only to miss... oh, so slightly.

Other games... DiRT < what is with the lower case "i"? Anyhow, lots of fun and I'm enjoying it. I won't finish it... but it hasn't gotten the Mielke Corner Toss.

I've seen COD4 in the office and watched people play the intro level and it does look good. I will be getting it shortly in the mail and I can give my opinions on it. If it's like Call of Duty 2 and I have an escort mission with snipers all around... and mortars are shelling me... it's getting tossed not in the corner - but into the street.

0 Comments

I hate the internet. Zero comments make me feel unloved or they are reading and watching and not saying a word... just watching... breathing.... waiting...

Anyway, thanks to all who comment - the two of you.

Sniff... sniff... where's my Weighted Companion Cube?

Now how's that for an idea. Valve is going to sell (probably) a Weighted Companion Cube (which probably costs $1.00 for the plastic and 60 cents for the 6 stickers of hearts) for $19.99 and they will sell 1 million of them... and they will sell out.

For a cube for the love of Pete. Ok, Valve - where are they? I think I need one. Now... right now.

Interview with the Portal writer

When you moved to Valve - that must have been a strange day - what did you expect to be doing?
I figured I’d be spending most of my time getting fired in a few weeks. Thank God for Portal and Team Fortress and Valve’s decentralized management structure that created an environment where nobody 100% knew who had the authority to fire me until I was able to actually make a meaningful contribution.

All these years and 1/2 of Old Man Murray is still as funny as hell.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/?p=518

Update

We've been busy down here in Cary building video games. Anyway, it's taken most of my time and been pretty time intensive with the ship schedule.

Oh yeah, we also bought a house... so that's taken tons of time. But at least that's out of the way and except for 2 mortgages... it's great! Seriously kids, don't do this - ever.

I finally got internet at my place... very speedy. I can't get VPN to run, so I'll need to bring in my notebook tomorrow and see if IT can get me set up. I've tried the limited tricks I know and I need to get into my computer or else I'm sitting at my desk watching an hourglass spin for tasks I could easily be sleeping through.

Okay, in my spare time I've been playing lots of the UT3 demo at work and logging good servers that we can give kudos or free keys to run server farms or something like that.

Played the Orange Box (who hasn't - right?). I played most (?) of Portal and got bored. Then I played HL2 and liked the first 10 minutes of it and got bored and frustrated in a certain spot I got stuck in on the PC.

If a chopper is gunning at me in a sewer Mr. Level Designer - AND YOU PUT BOXES IN THE WAY OF THE DOOR - I personally will come to your house, kidnap you, tie you up in a sewer with boxes in front of the only door out of the sewer (an all you have is a crowbar to bash them out of the way) and release you as I fly a gunship torwards you with guns blazing. See how many times you die before you make it - eh? My count is 3.

Anyway, I made it past that part and threw my work copy of Orange Box in a corner since it had misbehaved. I'll try to get back to it so other people can enjoy it.

The game I've really liked and am actually playing through is Overlord for the 360. This is actually a smart little game that was overlooked. It's fun. The puzzles are pretty good (Pikmin), but I'm really enjoying this gem.

It has it's flaws... it could use a mini-map and sometimes you think you can do a mission but you actually have no chance in hell accomplishing a mission until you do another one and get stronger. I guess I'm kind of stupid that way - I just keep banging my head against the part I get stuck on and finally figure it out after a half hour to look elsewhere. But, it hasn't been a negative experience.

Crysis Demo hmmm... Far Cry with aliens and a nicer suit? I wasn't that impressed with the demo. The sandbox aspects were great, but the linear wandering around in a nice looking forest didn't appeal to me. I just liked exploding the barrels with various things piled on them and seeing how far I could launch them into the ocean.

Oh, and how many of you (yes, I'm talking to the one person that reads this blog) shot the turtle when you got to shore? It's kind of a Rapture/Bioshock moment... "Did you shoot the turtle??? You did? How could you?" I'd definitely make it an achievement on the 360.

Current news

So we released the Unreal Tournament 3 demo. Now you know why a delay from my last update. I was pretty busy... but it's out and we're getting a great response. Check an FTP near you for the demo and get playing!

Also for the holiday season we have released Gears of War for the PC. Sweetness for all those PC people! An ideal holiday stocking stuffer. Again, keeping busy - but I had little to do with this great project.

Okay, now some personal news... in a week we'll be in the scary place where we own two homes. We bought one in North Carolina and of course we are trying to get rid of (sell) the one in Chicago. Even with a $35k price drop it's getting interest but it isn't moving. Thursday I get to close on the second home. Yikes!

I've given the word to Michelle to pull out of the house in Chicago and join me down here by the end of the year. I'd hate to hold that other home over the winter, but I guess we may have to.

We'll see I guess but in the meantime we are steeling ourselves for the eventual feeling of being "house poor". Sigh.... it seems we can't win even though we try like hell.

Status

Yeah, I know I promised an update, but honestly I can't let you know how it is working where I work – NDAs and stuff. So, back to what I can tell you.

First, having no internet access sucks. I'm piggybacking off of someone's wireless connection. Nothing worse than that.

I've played through Bioshock and saved the little sisters. The game lives up to the hype. Go and get this one and pay full price. It saves me a review. Actually, CliffyB has a really good review on his site which mimics my thoughts – check it out.

At midnight on September 25 I was one of the dorks who joined the rest of the world in launching Master Chief to the status of being the richest video game character on the planet. Four of us from work went to Best Buy and joined the rest of the people who were waiting for ummm... a video game. Well, I was there to get the schwag. I got a t-shirt and a hat... and some blow-up phallic thing with Halo on it. I actually bought the Legendary edition to sell on e-bay at Christmas when the fleecing usually hits a fevered pitch.

Am I going to play it? Probably after I get it through Gamefly. I can wait. I never got past the first few chapters in Halo 2 – so I’ll be totally lost. My friend Alan Noon has a good writeup so far, so check his site out: http://alan-noon.blogspot.com/.

My next two games are Stranglehold and MOH: Airborne. Stranglehold is pretty much the demo all over again. Without your “Tequila Bombs” on Normal the game is actually pretty difficult. Fun? Not really, I just felt like I was grinding it out. Hit the trigger, new guys spawn, kill them and move on. Meh.

MOH:Airborne is a different thing altogether. I had to put it down to go to work, but it made me a half hour late. Damn! I think I was having fun! So, we’ll see how the rest of the game shapes up.

So what's it like working for Marcus Fenix?

I haven't worked there a week yet, so next week I'll write a little something.

The Trip Down

Thursday was the day to make the trip down to Epic in North Carolina. So I packed up the car on Wednesday and put the final items in that night. The car was packed and only Michelle and a backpack could finally fit in.

There was a little wrinkle - the driver's seat in my car wouldn't move from the position I have it back in for the last few years. We tried oil and WD-40 and it still wouldn't budge. So, I would need to drive the whole way - this was supposed to be 14 hours according to Google, Mapquest and Yahoo.

We started out at 7am and went through Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and finally North Carolina.

All went pretty smooth until we hit the mountains in West Virgina/Virginia. People were flying through these mountains and when we hit them when it was dark. I almost got rear ended by a trucker who was going way too fast. I was easily going 70 mph on the straightaways and doing turns at 50-60 mph. It was pretty much a white knuckle ride the whole way.

Also, in West Virginia the rust that was supposedly holding my muffler together gave way and the ride got incredibly loud. This did not make me a happy camper with the mountain driving and the dark.

We did need to stop and take breaks, but we didn't get to Cary until 2am and the trip taking nearly 18 hours almost had me batty. I was exhausted after the mountains, noise and the amount of time in a packed little car.

The trip ended safely and I got my muffler fixed the next day, but I think it would be a trip I would be reluctant to do in a car again.

Our own cat scares me sometimes

Okay, I know Tuck is only a cat and I outweigh him by a good 150 pounds... but he's as smart as hell.

How do I know this? Lots of people I know have cats and I've never seen them do the following:

• Open doors - All types of doors - room, closet, cabinet, and now he knows how to detach our screen door magnet and let himself outside. He can escape at will now and it's like hunting "The Fugitive" nightly.
• He knows what time it is to be fed within 5 minutes. Our cat has timers to feed him otherwise he would eat until he exploded. If a timer is off then he will come and get you and lead you back to the timer and nod his head at it saying "It's not working - feed me now." The timer's aren't that accurate... I can get them close, but never exact. I know what time he is supposed to be fed, and he knows this also.
• Tools - a cat's best friend. Yep, he knows how to use tools. He can take forks and knives and prod underneath things to get food under paper towels or in bowls. It's funny watching him do it, but he can.
• If people show fear of him, he's on them and will not let up. Our cat is 16 lbs. and big boned.... he's not fat. His way if seeing if a new person is a chicken is by hissing at them. If they ignore him he will leave them alone. If they approach him and try to pet him after the initial hiss usually he will stand his ground and let the person pet him (reluctantly). If they react in fear he will charge them and try to move them to the door. He also will not let up until they are out the door. My own father won't enter the house without a water bottle (Tuck's only weakness). I've never seen other cats corral people and force them out the door.
• He knows how to push buttons... for good and evil. With Michelle he knows he gets more of a reaction if he's cuddly. With me he knows I pay more attention if he's doing something bad or in the process of destroying something. Since our house is on the market he's not too pleased with all the people coming through. He's been pretty cold to me (he assumes I'm causing this torment somehow). On Monday I was upstairs and came downstairs to my office. He was leaving and had a quite content look on his face. I went into my office and noticed that he decided to drop a load right where my chair was and right at the foot (it cleans up pretty easy, it's just disgusting). We use cleaner on it and it smells pretty chemical-like and I had to move my chair to avoid breathing in the fumes. He was pretty pleased with my reaction to the "Cat BioTerrorism".

I'm sure people have their own cat stories, but if he starts talking we're all in trouble.

Monster Madness: Battle for Suburbia Single Player Review

This game gets an abbreviated review because after 3 hours of fighting with the controls and the lame gameplay it was back in it's Gamefly sleeve and sent back. Again, I didn't play any MP since I was so frustrated with the Single Player.

Controls were horrible. Putting "Jump" on the right stick blows in a game where sometimes you have to make precise jumps. They seemed overly sensitive and aiming was difficult. Their camera angle was also very skewed and when you had to look for items switching the camera angle did not help. Controls: D

Tutorials were minimal and I was confused from the beginning. They never told me how to cycle weapons (primary or secondary) or what the jump button was. Then they had a voice that was yelling at you to do certain things while an event was happening... sorry... when I'm trying to learn something I can't pay attention to 2-3 things going on at the same time. Tutorials: D

For the AI it was your basic swarm mentality with the bosses having a couple special attacks. They were dumb though. They would frequently run into obstacles and keep their running animation going while blocked by the object. Great for cheating your way through the two bosses I did kill since I just wandered around and they followed and boxed themselves in. AI: D

This was made with the Unreal 3 engine, so it should look awesome... right? Nah, it looks slightly better than a PS2 game. Visuals: D

The levels were typical hallways with triggers. Some Z-axis play was implemented, but it was pretty generic. The clutter was unbelievable. Level Design: D

Gameplay was horrid. Button commands at trigger points were unresponsive 50% of the time and you had to maneuver your character around to the exact trigger spot. Thrown weapons were random on trajectory 50% of the time. Running out of ammo with your super weapons and having no idea of how to recharge them sucks. Collecting countless pieces of junk for minimal reward (weapon upgrades) was sucky. Weapons besides the shotgun seemed underpowered and useless (3 whacks with a mailbox to kill a zombie who is faster than I am?). And the acheivements were god-awful. 3 hours of play and I have 1 achievement? No thanks. Gameplay: D

Overall SP Score: D
What Would I Pay For This Game? $8

If you like pain, buy this game. It has "Madness" on the title for a reason. They should have renamed it "Sisyphean Challenge". After 2 levels I had a monster (hah!) headache and just walked away.

The Darkness Single Player Review

I didn't play any Multiplayer, so this is the Single Player Review.

Overall, I really liked this game... it was over the top in just the right places and had enough weirdness to keep me going for the plot (which in The Darkness is the same as most video games... boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl gets kidnapped by bad guys, boy tries to save girl, girl either dies or gets whisked away by the bad guys and the boy has to rescue her, and the boy either takes revenge or tries to save the girl by killing all the bad guys).

When I play video games I rarely have time to sit down and explore and figure out what is going on, so I use a game FAQ (about 90% of the time) to find achievements and complete the game. It's what makes the game enjoyable for me and maybe it means that some of the puzzles and subtle innuendos that the designers intended do not come through as well as they would like. Or maybe I'm just lazy... but I digress.

Now in this review I assume you know about the game and the plot from other sources, so this is my feedback based on my observations.

Controls overall were good. I liked the dual targeting reticules. However, for pinpoint aiming the aim assist was a little too forceful (I could have throttled this down I guess, but I used the defaults). The controls for using the Creeper sucked. Making them go where I wanted them to had to be like watching a drunk earthworm on a Tilt-A-Whirl ride. Maybe I was too heavy handed, but I sent the Creepers into a tailspin way too often and had to retract them and start all over again. Also the Demon Arm sometimes would target what I wanted and then it wouldn't... Control scheme seemed logical on the 360 controller. Controls: C+

I thought the tutorial section was a little short, especially in regards to ordering your darklings around. I forgot how to tell them where to go and usually had to take a couple rounds to the head to get them to engage the enemy. Tutorial: C

Getting your darklings to engage in combat was also hit or miss. Sometimes they would attack right away, but frequently they would get stuck behind you or just sit there while you took fire. The Gunner darkling was fun to summon, but frequently shot into walls, furniture and other obstacles. As for the enemy AI, it was pretty challenging and many were crack shots on "normal" level. Any AI with an automatic weapon at close range was certain death. They didn't do anything exceptional besides take cover standing behind stationary objects (no vaulting, diving, rolling, etc.). I didn't see any AI running into walls or doing anything out of the ordinary. The subway stations where the ambient AI ran around seemed logical. AI: B

The look and feel was typical of next gen games, but Starbreeze still couldn't get rid of that "plastic" look that permeates the people and objects in the game. This was pretty noticeable in Riddick, and I don't know if they decided not to fix it or could not fix it for this game (I hope the remake of Riddick (Athena Sword or something?) doesn't have this look). Otherwise, the details were pretty nice and the art direction was well done. Visuals: B

Level design was pretty hallway-like, similar to FEAR and other shooters. They definitely wanted you to focus on a certain direction and not be distracted. Not much sandbox play allowed. Some levels had some nice Z-axis play, but it was pretty linear. Level Design: C

Gameplay was pretty solid, but a few things annoyed me. Gunfighting and interaction was well done. However, without the FAQ I never would have completed the side quests. These were very convoluted and I had to check the FAQ often since I was lost. These should have been streamlined. Also, collecting 100 (?) phone numbers was a little much. I missed 3 collectibles to get the Completionist achievement, but for a measly 20 points I wasn't going to waste the time. I like having my achievement progress in the game and it telling me what was missing.

I could skip cinemas and other audio/video - sweet! Well done on that point. If I listened to Aunt ForgotHerName babble on about minestrone after getting shot to pieces 5 or more times I was going to lose it.

Also, I liked the Darkness powers, this gave this shooter some legs and made gameplay really fun in parts.So I give Starbreeze high marks on this - they made them pretty seamless and easy to use in the game. When they worked correctly and the action was a fever pitch this made the game really fun. Gameplay: B

Overall SP Score: C+

A few random thoughts about the game that don't fit into any category.

• The ending reminded me of Liberty City Stories for PSP. What is with evil mobsters and the final mission to kill them being in a lighthouse? I thought for sure I on the boat ride to the lighthouse I was going to end up shooting other bad guys in speedboats - I'm glad I didn't have to do that.
• Mike Patton is a freak, but he did a great job with the audio. I didn't have a speaker setup, so I couldn't grade the audio - a to-do for the next review.
• Multiplayer - okay I didn't review this but it would seem to be pretty tacked on and probably similar to Prey (yawn).

Now the finale - since every review has a 1-10 score, two thumbs up or whatever - I'm going to try something different. I'll give you the price I would pay for this title. I'm pretty much a cheap bastard when it comes to games, so you may have to wait for a pretty good sale. I'm assuming that a current console title lists at $59.99.

What Would I Pay For This Game? $43 (after tax of course)

How do I rationalize this?

• It's short - I completed the main story and the side quests in about 12 hours. I could almost see 5 movies at 2.5 hours per movie at the cost of $9 per in-theater movie.
• Must have factor - would I pay extra $$ to play this? No.
• If it has fun MP, tack on a couple extra bucks.
• Extras - it has some additional media to see, so it gives some extra value.
• Replayability - would I play this again. No.

Anyway, try the game out for yourself. Hope you enjoyed this review.

Okay, enough non-game stuff already!

Yeah, being a homeowner and going through a move definitely saps the gaming time out of you...

However, my "official" vacation begins tomorrow and I expect to return to playing the Darkness and I may run out and buy Bioshock to see if all the awesome reviews are telling the truth or there are some massive amounts of payola Take 2 is dishing out.

Staging

So we've decided to not wait 6 months and put our house on the market now. Yes, at the worst possible time in history. When you want to sell your house you need to "stage" it.

Basically this means "fix all the junk you've been procrastinating on doing by playing video games". So the last week I've been busting hump to get all this fixed by tonight when our realtor walks through and gives us her blessing. This is a whole summer of work in 7 days (painting, patching, caulking, sanding, etc.).

Also as a part of the "staging" you need to purge any clutter or evidence that anyone besides Rosie the robot maid from the Jetsons lives there. Finally, you need to set up flowers or bits of color (bowl of apples) to guide people's attention through the house. (Sigh) Now, once you have done the cleaning and set the house up for the non-color blind ADD buyers you need to keep it in this pristine state until your house sells. Um, right...

This supposedly raises our chances of getting an offer and makes people visualize themselves in the house without some other people's junk in the way. According to their statistics after the first 3 weeks a house is on the market the traffic drops off substantially. Most of the new traffic has passed through the house and are onto bigger and supposedly better "staged" homes possibly by Christo himself. Then you go into house purgatory and wait to be picked from the 24 other active listings we are competing against.

My idea is to lowball them all since it's going to cost us money if we sit for 6 months with the house and I am in North Carolina and Michelle is in Chicago. We may as well take the quick stab to the heart now rather than being bled slowly...

Free Stuff Locusts

Well, my free stuff giveaway went well. I moved the items out of the garage and lined the driveway.

At 9am precisely the first person showed up and started taking stuff - he looked like a college student and he had a buddy. A woman with a minivan pulled up and she started grabbing everything she could fit in the van by herself. I said to them "It kind of feels like stealing doesn't it?" The woman replied, "Uh, kind of... yeah." as she picked up my coffee table and shoved it into the minivan.

I didn't see all the carnage because our realtor showed up at 9 and gave me her pitch. By the time she left at 11 am all that was left was a few items... it looked like locusts had stripped my driveway bare! I went outside to do some work and by 1pm the last person showed up and took the only items that were of any value. All I was left with were a few small desk knick-knacks and a box fan. The toys I just threw out and I stowed the box fan in the garage.

So this was pretty successful - so I was pretty happy and a few lucky people were also pleasantly surprised.

A study in human behavior happens tomorrow

I'll need to take pictures tomorrow of the event that will unfold at my house. I posted this on Craigslist Wednesday: http://chicago.craigslist.org/nwc/gms/397297185.html

For those of you who do not want to link I am giving away junk - for free - I don't want it and most of this junk I've moved twice and never unboxed it. Well, some of it's okay junk... an old Apple Mac G4, monitor, etc.

Anyhow, I've gotten numerous e-mails from people who want the stuff, want me to hold the stuff (I've said no to be fair to the other people), and people who want the stuff early (ummm... that's cheating). Some people have turned on me when I told them I need to hold it... it's only trash... sheeesh!

But this has caused quite a stir and I expect a riot outside my house and in my garage tomorrow morning. These e-mails have been really interesting and some make me really question how far people will go for "free" or just material items in general. I have to figure out how to do this without people killing each other and so my house doesn't get trashed (or stuff inside the garage I don't want to give away taken).

Stay tuned tomorrow night - I may have some interesting pics posted. Or, I may be arrested for inciting a riot, in traction or filing a homeowner insurance claim.

Bio-shocking

Okay, I want to play this game... I was so tempted to go to Toys R Us and see if they were hiding it behind the counter. Then I would see if they could break the street date....

Anyway, I've played the Bioshock demo once and watched four other people play it. All the same events are triggered (hey, they are triggers...) but nobody has played it the same... and the AI seems totally random after they are triggered. The enemies fight, flee, hide and jump out at you when you pursue them.

The environments are phenomenal. You can tell that the developer really crafted this game out of a love and interest in the game. While playing I frequently have stopped and looked around (and inadvertently triggered the enemies and security bots) in wonder. Some of my artist friends say the environments look pretty plastic in some areas, but they look pretty good to me.

Anyway, this looks like a game of the year contender and should do quite well.

Changes...

So tomorrow is my last day at Day 1 Studios. I have accepted a position at a place I have wanted to work at ever since I started playing video games - Epic Games in North Carolina.

At Epic I will be their Art Production Manager. In this position I will be scheduling their internal teams and external outsourcing partners, working to ensure a high level of craftsmanship in their artwork, proofing and checking art assets before they enter the pipeline, and being the Epic liaison to their international outsourcing partners.

They utilize outsourcing firms in some pretty cool locations and I will probably get to travel to all of them and meet the people who make the great artwork there. Shanghai, Europe and Canada are a few of the places I will probably get to visit.

I really wanted to work somewhere I could be for as long as they would have me. My criteria for moving was to find a "world-class" firm that really appreciated their employees, was located in an area that was recognized for a high quality of life (Cary and Apex, NC have been recognized as these by Money Magazine), was warmer and preferably not on the West Coast (this was Michelle's wish - but my choices did not really reflect that...), and did cutting edge work. I applied to 5 places on a whim - Epic, Bioware, Google, Pixar and Blizzard.

As a result of this I heard from Epic and Bioware. I was shocked! When I accepted the Epic offer... I was one step away from possibly receiving an offer for an to be an Associate Producer Bioware in Edmonton (they were going to fly me up there for the final interview and start the immigration process) and had to turn down an offer from Midway Chicago to be a Development Director for a next gen project (this was a referral). This all happened in 24 hours!

After speaking from multiple employees at Epic one-on-one and en masse... this was the place for me. Both Midway and Bioware were very understanding and know that Epic is a great firm to work for.

The key here is to "dream big" and always keep that ultimate goal in mind... you just may attain it!

Leaving Day 1 was a hard decision. They are a bunch of great guys and I wish them all the best. I learned a heck of a lot in the last 4 years and put out 3 video game titles (2 are next gen... yeah, they were ports... but they had to go through Certification just like the rest of them). Not too shabby - I was really busy!

In the position at Epic I felt I could make an impact from the first day I started and really carve the position into an influential one. The people I met at Epic were great also with a determination to make great video games... I have never felt the kind of devotion I get from them from talking to employees at other developers. It's hard to describe.

So, we are trying to sell our house in this crappy housing market and for the next two weeks my vacation will be fixing anything the realtors say needs to be fixed to sell. I'll be pretty busy, but I'll try to update this again.

Games I am playing? Lots of Lumines for PSP (trying to break 100k), The Darkness, and some Viva Pinata. I think at Epic any game that uses the Unreal Engine I get a free copy (unless I heard wrong), so I'm waiting until I get there to see if we get copies of Bioshock. I've played the demo and it's pretty cool. I can't wait to play it.

E3 (or what was formerly E3)

I went to the last "official" E3 last year and I was glad I did. I went to support FEAR 360/PS3. It was a lot of fun - lots of things to see and it was pretty huge. The crowds really got into the games and it was nice to see the people we make the games for enjoying them.

Now that E3 is more business and "E for Everybody" is supposed to be the consumer show (is that right?), it seems a little strained. E3 this year had plenty of news, but it seems a lot of people that I work with were quite restrained. Only the head of our studio and Business Development went to support "Fracture" for LucasArts. We got a lot of good press - which is great.

My game "FEAR Files" for the 360 got a press release and not much of anything else. That's fine - FEAR is a great franchise, but people want to see the series continuation and my project is 2 expansion packs.

We'll get the full rundown on Monday for the results first hand from the guys who went. This is a huge industry and maybe E3 was a little out of control with spending on the publisher end. But, you have to push the products - and E3 is like the Super Bowl of video games. Advertisers spend huge amounts of money for commercials, so why wouldn't an extravagant booth/presentation be any less? The worldwide media flocks to events like these and eats it up.

I don't think this will last. Spending will ramp up again and we'll be back to the same E3 we saw last year.

Some games I am looking forward to playing:
Unreal Tournament 3 on the PS3 - This looks like a knockout and you can create unique content. Sold. Plus my underpowered notebook can't run this beast.

Mass Effect - Big fan of Bioware. Looks pretty solid with the gameplay. Even better than Oblivion.

Fallout 3 - Seems like we are rolling into a golden era of RPGs.

Monolith's F.E.A.R.quel - Always interested in what Monolith does.

MGS4 - Still looks awesome. If this is Kojima's swan song he'll go out on top.

BioShock - This comes out in August. I'm really looking forward to this one. We got into a screening last year at E3 and we were impressed back then.

Killzone 2 - I need another game for my PS3, and this looks like one I will pick up.

Here we are now... entertain us.

So who the heck are you anyhow?

As my profile says - I am an Associate Producer for Day 1 Studios. Our company has made MechAssault 1 and 2; ported FEAR for the 360 and PS3; and have a new game coming out called Fracture for LucasArts.

Games are pretty much a big part of my life and have been since my Dad brought home an Apple II+ and I started programming games in Basic on it. Games were a hobby until I went back to school to learn how games are produced from the art side in 2000. I learned 3DS Max, Maya and other 3D tools.

From there I created a demo reel and looked for contacts - it turned out the President of Day 1 Studios was a friend of my old boss. I submitted my demo reel to him and it was promptly rejected by his lead artist (thanks lots, Tim... heh). I began working on improving the reel and then I got another call from Day 1 Studios.

It turned out they needed a "Content Manager" for MechAssault 2. I would manage all the artists and assets and get them into the game. It was the opportunity I had been waiting for. So I moved to Chicago and made MA2 and then was promoted to Associate Producer for FEAR 360 and PS3.

Right now I am working on a next-gen project that will be announced at E3 in a couple of days. Crossing my fingers for a good reception.

As for the blog name "NextGenSoldier" - in this era of next gen consoles it's full of promise and fun. However, sometimes it seems that you have to march up that hill for duty and consoles. But then it wouldn't be called a "job" would it?

I know I'm in an exciting industry and take nothing for granted. I'm incredibly lucky to be where I am and I work hard every day to make sure I can continue to produce at a triple A level.

That's my introduction... as for this blog... it will be full of random subjects usually pertaining to gaming, life and anything that crosses my mind that I need to write down.

An idea that has come to life

After watching several of my friends start blogs I decided to start one. I guess I will see if anyone is really listening out there...