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.