d00dpwn1337

Return from the dead? ... no

2010-12-07T12:37:00.002-06:00

Zombies are really popular now. But you probably won't read about that here.

For the 1 of you (me?) left reading this non-blog, you may want to direct your attention over here: W00t Pwn: Blur

My lady is much more likely to actually write something than me, and, honestly, its the same audience anyway.

My rage is visible in infrared.

2009-09-02T17:53:00.008-05:00

My simmering mood over the PS3 infrared debacle has finally boiled over.

These are the facts:

1) Despite marketing the PS3 as a consumer electronics device for watching blu-ray movies, it has no infrared port, and thus cannot be controlled by a regular remote (since blu-ray clearly targets high-end systems, which are more likely to have someone, like me, already working to tame a "too many remotes" problem, this is doubly damning from the outset). Fail.

1 a) IR ports probably cost less than $1 to add to your device, in terms of hardware cost. Fail.

2) Grabbing the normal game controller with your free left hand to pause or play while you stuff handfuls of popcorn into your gob frequently causes you to hit one of the shoulder buttons resulting in either manic fast-forwarding/rewinding or huge chapter jumps forward or backward. This typically happens at about the rate of 3 times per movie viewing. Fail.

3) 3rd parties have USB dongles (for about $10 - $15) that you can attach that allow your regular remote to interact with the PS3. However, the USB ports lose power when the PS3 is off, which means you can't use these tools to actually turn on the PS3 in the first place. Fail.

4) Logitech is now marketing a $60 (!!!) doohickey which registers with your PS3 as a game controller via bluetooth and lets you control it via IR and lets you even turn it on, since it has its own power. However, apparently the 1st gen PS3 units (like mine) have a problem with it and frequently disconnect it, which means in practice it may or may not be worthless, and obviously $60 is too much to pay to logitech for just a chance at fixing a problem that sony should have solved with a $1 item. Fail.

4 a). Logitech's solution is ALSO PROPRIETARY, in that it uses custom IR commands that normal (read, not made by Logitech) remotes apparently cannot reproduce. So for $60, I can trade the Sony bluetooth proprietary system for a Logitech IR proprietary system. Frankly, this makes me want to throw my Harmony remote against the wall and send its broken body to Logitech one piece at a time. And this despite the fact that I'm clearly the target market for this device as I already own both a PS3 and Harmony remote. Fail.

5) Sony wants to sell you a bluetooth remote. Which can only control the PS3. Of course, this will be YAR (Yet Another Remote) in my house, which means... Fail (see 1).

Of course this has been going on for a while, but only recently did I have some disposable cash and decide, hey, I need to solve that remote problem once and for all.

Logitech and Sony both fail spectacularly. Oh well, what else is new?

Turn Around, Bright Eyes

2009-06-06T11:54:00.006-05:00

So someone should tell the Helghast people from Killzone 2 that their glowing red eyes make them great targets for headshots and generally announce their presence to the entire freaking battlefield. I find it hard to believe that a militant splinter group of humanity would overlook this fact.

This is probably the first FPS on PS3 where I've enjoyed the multiplayer. It is just possible that I'm finally getting used to a gamepad for controlling an FPS. Still wish it had mouse and keyboard control though. It has a good ranking system and upgrades. Reminds me of battlefield 2. In multiplayer if you play the space nazi (helghast) side, the regular humans are suffused with a blue glow, which I guess equalizes the giant target that the helghast make of themselves with their poorly designed head gear. In the end it hampers the effectiveness of sneaking and hiding a bit, which probably skews the tactics towards run-n-gun. I'm not sure this is a bad thing. I give the game two glowing blue thumbs up.

Amazon (is) Rank

2009-04-12T23:05:00.004-05:00

Mmmm, google bomb. Amazon Rank is the definition of Amazon Rank. See this page to explain... Fanny Hill is bad, but The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is ok? I say, give 'em hell. Amazonfail.

Is it live or is it quakelive?

2009-03-04T20:39:00.005-06:00

As you might guess from the black circles under my eyes, quakelive came out. Quake 3 (which quake live is based on) ate most of my early 2000's. I'm loving ctf, ffa, duel kinda sucks, IMO, but then I'm comparing it in my mind to RA3, which was by far my favorite mod. Unfortunately, the quake live folks say they won't be porting any mods in the near future. Clan Arena is as close as I'm going to get to the RA3 goodness of the past, so I'll have to get used to the slow weapon switch and no decent 1v1 maps.

Here's a short transcript from a recent clan arena session. It's the end of the match, 1 guy is left on each team. They both have low health. Sudden death. I'm one of the guys. I go around the map looking for the other dude.

OMG

The spectators are starting to get impatient. I go around the map again.

Come on
zzzzzzzzz

Now I've gotten bored and I've gone to the middle of the map and drawn out my machine gun and I'm shooting it around randomly to create some noise so the other guy can find me.

OMFG just go to the middle!
It's not f*@king hide and go seek!

I spin around and see the other guy just as he comes around the corner and kill him with a single shot of the machine gun.

I knew I was keeping a copy of my old q3 config file around for a reason.

radiation makes me sleepy

2009-01-15T21:26:00.003-06:00

The faithful reader may wonder where I've been lately. I've been playing Fallout 3. And playing it. And playing it. And. Playing. It.

It is quite a good game. The rpg and story elements are pretty addictive. There are flaws for sure (FPS style play is possible but sux, weird physics and graphics glitches), but the sheer breadth of the world is pretty awesome. It is like someone dropped a nuclear bomb on GTA4, and then invited you (and your dog) to romp around in the mutated, radiated, steam punkish remains. Phun!

And yet... and yet... I'm getting so incredibly bored of this game. I need a break. One can only wander the wasteland of DC fragging giant scorpions and collecting their poison glands (what are those for??? I must have 30 of them by now!) for so long. I'm actually considering buying it just so I can go on to something else for a while and come back to it later. This seems like an odd reason to buy a game, and I'm struggling with the concept (especially given the economy and possible impending layoffs at my day job), but gamefly has sweetened the pot with a $10 coupon they sent me recently. Decisions, decisions.

Also, I wish it had vehicles, then it would be perfect.

A Bright Hope

2008-11-04T21:43:00.004-06:00

As I watch the historic election returns I can't help but wonder what effect the new democratic president will have on video games. I for one would love to see him mandate that all PS3 FPS and RTS games MUST support mouse and keyboard control.

In the bizarre and very personal math that immediately preceeded my PS3 purchase, the availability of M+K support on the platform was responsible for a small but noticable portion of the deciding PS3 percentage. XB360 doesn't even support M+K and I am *so* tired of using a PC for gaming. I have even considered going over to the dark side of gaming, the Macintosh (of course, you'll need a very *special* mouse with *two* buttons, snark). Linux, of course, will be a non-starter in this category for many years to come, despite noble attempts from some quarters.

Unfortunately, the PS3 has let me down. What should have been an historic joining of parties (consoles and FPS and RTS games) has instead turned into just the same old tired party rhetoric. And as a result, we get garbage like this device which turns mouse and keyboard input into a fake PS3 controller. WHAT?!??!!

This lack of M+K support for FPS and RTS titles has DECIMATED my desire for those titles on the PS3. I will not be buying those kinds of games which do not support my favored input method. I'm afraid that Unreal Tournament 3 (which saw the light on M+K support) may be the first and last FPS I purchase for PS3. When will we get to the promised land?

Git Yer Waaaaagh On!

2008-10-28T18:10:00.005-05:00

By way of introduction, for my non-733T readers, "Dawn of War" by C.S.Goto is the first novel of a series based on a video game (itself also a series), which is based on a table-top war game set in a fantasy future, which is based on a table-top war game set in a fantasy past (or vice-versa, not sure). Welcome to the insanity of Warhammer 40,000.

I've only over played the actual table-top game once, and I hated it. I have, however, played a bit of Space Hulk (back in the day, get off my lawn) and I've played the entire "Dawn of War" video game series to date, which is quite good, if getting a little repetitive at this point. (DOW II is coming, and looks awesome so far, but in order to play it, I'm *probably* going to need to upgrade my game PC, so that could be a problem).

This paperback-only piece of fluff with practically no redeeming qualities cost me about twice cover price and I have two copies.

It cost me about twice cover price because it is out of print (it seems like many Black Library publications have fairly short print runs), and owing to the popularity of the game, it actually has sold extremely well, and used copies have been in high demand. I've been waiting, believe it or not, a couple of years to get my hands on a copy, simply because I've been waiting for the price to come down from its high of, I seem to recall, over $50 a copy. Eventually, I found an Amazon affiliated store which was advertising $14 a copy or so, and I placed an order. I had to wait over 6 months for them to get it in stock.

I have two copies because, about a week after my first copy arrived from Amazon, I found another copy at the perennial book sale at my local library, and bought it for about 25 cents, which is probably closer to its real value.

My intention is to sell one of the copies on eBay and recoup my $14 loss. (oh too late, I see they are now going for about a buck on ebay).

"If you catch an adjective, kill it." -Mark Twain.

This author is obviously not a fan of Mark Twain. There is nary a noun in the entire work without an attending adjective. Here is a splendorous, magnificent, awesome example:

"Lord Bale himself was a monster of man – hugely tall and draped with corpse-like flesh that paled into a sickly white in the thin moonlight. Only his bladed teeth seemed to reflect any light at all, and that was vicious beyond the imaginings of men. A terrible stench wafted through the night air, and the Chaos Marine noticed for the last time how Bale's green and burnished gold armour was coated in a thick, ichorous film of ruined flesh."

The author's swollen fingers trembled with an anxious palsy as he typed that turgid passage. The cracked and battle-worn cover of his fell thesaurus creaked ominously as he paused precipitously to seek additional synonyms of "dreadful".

I look forward to finding the second volume of the series at a library book sale or used paperback shop in the near to distant future. I really can't recommend it to anyone though. YMMV.

Teh Comcast Strikes Back

2008-10-02T21:28:00.005-05:00

Well, the trial month is over and I declare vnstat as the winner. It is a pretty sweet little tool that does exactly what I need, but the linux iptables accounting confirms my bandwidth usage handily.

Accordingly, I can report that, in the month of Sept, we consumed 125.89 GB of our 250 GB monthly limit. That's fully 50%, without even trying. According to some article with questionable formatting (scribd? wtf?) The per capita bandwidth usage for the US was 3GB. I guess we are just fast learners. Anyway, while we might be able to hold out at this level for awhile, I still resent the restriction, and this is negatively impacting my desire to buy a netflix instant access box. Sorry netflix, talk to comcast for me (and while you're at it, talk to Sony about getting this on the PS3).

In other news, RMS says cloud computing is a trap, and I have to say, I totally agree. Everyone loves to bash RMS for being a kook, but he is right on the money here. We could do with more kooks like him.

I for one download all my email using fetchmail (side note, fetchmail is heavily associated with ESR, another notable kook) to an IMAP server on my home box, using procmail to filter it through spamassassin and check it using thunderbird via an ssh port forward, and you should too. Google and Yahoo are the THE MAN. You'll come crying to me one day when they shut down your precious mail service. Till then, suckers...

Speaking of thunderbird, it is stuck in the upgrade loop again. Grrr.. Logitech! *shakes fist*

Eye Hate You

2008-10-01T22:35:00.003-05:00

Maudlin. Lame. Anti-feminist. Garbage. Most of these words come to mind when I consider the 12 or so hours I have wasted on Metal Gear Solid 4. If the game wasn't so playable and enjoyable from a mechanic and graphics perspective, I would have sent it back to gamefly a week ago. The all-female "beauty and the beast" enemies with their endless sad stories involving how their baby brother died in the arms and drive them insane. Octacon's endless whining and crying over Naomi like it was a fat internet nerd's first jilting. Meryl's marriage desires, happening spontaneously in the middle of combat with a guy she hardly knows who literally shits his pants on a regular basis. Sunny's awkward egg cooking. Mullets. Drebin's stupid monkey. Metal Gear Solid 4, how do hate thee? Let me count the ways...

Sweet. Just checked in with gamefly to choose a new game, and their website is totally crashed. Losers.


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Now That's Solid

2008-09-23T19:58:00.004-05:00

I like cutscenes. There, I said it. It's nice to sit back and just be entertained for a couple of minutes between levels, it gives a chance for exposition which would be hard to fit into the game while you are actively playing, and, sometimes, it gives you a chance to run and grab a fresh brew, or eliminate the last one.

In a recent ish of Game Informer, there was a big article on the future of storytelling in games, and how it is all going to be player-driven no-cutscene stuff. Of course, you only have to ask my wife, who repeatedly left the room as Niko screamed the same three phrases over and over while I slowly and repeatedly cleaned up a warehouse full of angry mafia hitmen about the state-of-the-art in player-driven story. Not that GTA4 is a great example anyway, despite its sandbox environment. All the missions are fairly linear affairs, and cutscenes frequent.

Imagine my surprise while playing MGS4 and discovering that, for about every 30 min of gameplay, there is a *huge* amount of cutscene, sometimes as much as another 30 min. worth. Wow. That's a whole lotta cutscene. The worst part is, there is usually a save point in the middle of the cutscene smorgasbord somewhere, but it is never quite clear where it is. So as soon as you get there, you are obliged to watch the whole darn thing, because some parts might not replay when you come back to the game later. And a certain wife is waiting for you to come to dinner.

The other thing that sucks about the MGS4 cutscenes is that it all assumes you've been religously following the MGS series for lo these many years, and you are quite aware of who liquid, otacon, jack and these other people are and what they did in previous episodes. Apart from a couple of days with MGS2, I haven't played those games. So that's boring and frustrating.

Anyway, I thought my previous entry about Solid Snake being a bit pervy looking was just good clean fun. But then in the middle of this long cutscene with a hot doctor lady with a dangerously low-cut, uh, doctor outfit, Solid Snake fully executes a oops-I-dropped-something-check-out-your-panties move. Jeee-sus! What is next? A panty raid? Running the metal gear Mk II in stealth mode (optical camo) into the girl's locker room? MGS4 sometimes lets you change to a first person perspective during a cutscene by hitting a particular button. The ability to do this is indicated by an icon in the corner of the screen. I noticed this was absent when Snake was peeping, but I can't help wondering if there isn't an easter egg there. I bet you're wondering too, aren't you? Perv.

Metal gear bad-touch

2008-09-16T21:39:00.014-05:00

So Metal Gear Solid 4 seems like a decent, well-crafted game. But why did they choose to make the main player character look like a cross between a 70's porn star and somebody's alcoholic uncle? Who is he supposed to appeal to? What's up with that moustache? Every time I play this game, I'm like, "Where's my date-rape van?" "Am I a really old Magnum P.I.?" Update: So many moustache links, so little time.

road rage

2008-09-14T00:02:00.012-05:00

Some of my all-time favorite racing, off-road, and/or post-apocalyptic things (note oxford comma):

Some Baja 1000 off-road racing documentary I saw when I was a kid.
Cannonball Run
Actual demolition derbies
Car Wars (I never played this, but I bought it just to read the rules)
Mad Max
Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior
Roadblasters (arcade game)
Damnation Alley (both the film, starring George Peppard, and the book, but mostly the film).
Interstate '76 (pc game)
The Burnout series (natch)
Vanishing Point (just saw this recently, and I quite liked it)
Midtown Madness (pc game)
Ballistics (pc game)
Various rally racing video games
Motorstorm

I guess that establishes the trend. Pretty excited about several things coming out in the next two months:

MotorStorm: Pacific Rift
Baja: Edge of Control
Baja 1000: Score International
Fallout 3 (no racing, afaict, but plenty of post-apocalyptic goodness).

The demo for Motorstorm: Pacific Rift gives me a good feeling (sort of like sneezing, but different) and it has two-player now, and also the motorcycle addition for Burnout Paradise comes out next week. w00t!!

I fully expect those Baja games to suck actually, but that's what gamefly is for. If only it didn't take a week+ for game turnaround...

It's going to be a good fall.

burned out

2008-09-11T12:15:00.004-05:00

I mostly opened this blog to complain about the lack of DLC (DownLoadable Content, you n00b) in Burnout Paradise (all the latest news seems to be on the Criterion Games site), despite the promise of same on the game's release.

I played this game a lot this spring and enjoyed the heck out of it. But then the difficulty of completing stunt runs became ridiculous, which left me a little cold. I can't get 190,000 stunt points in 1:15. And the next license is something like 99 wins away. Meh.

Since then I learned that they have IN FACT released some DLC, and are planning even more. Hooray.

Since then I played it some more and the new Marked Man online mode is pretty freaking sweet. I did not manage once to either escape the other players or take down another player. I suck, but there is room for IMPROVEMENT.

The DLC so far is kinda crap overall other than the Marked Man online mode. I don't think this is enough to cause me to engage in a multi-week obsession like the first time. But some of the upcoming new stuff (cycles, new location) might be.

I also found out a certain wife is tired of the "sound" of video games, so I've been playing a lot with the sound turned way down and experimenting with alternate soundtracks. I picked out some classical as a playlist for burnout (actually inspired by the burnout screen saver mode, which has classical music as a hilarious contrast to the usual soundtrack, and sepia toned images), and driving around getting smashed to a concerto gives a nice sense of pathos to the endless destruction. Unfortunately, Last Guy doesn't let you adjust the soundtrack. :( 70t477y 14m3

comcast is teh suck

2008-09-08T21:13:00.005-05:00

Lo and behold, for the Comcast DVR has once again F'd itself up with no help from anyone.

This time it decided it was 100% full despite deleting things and would not let you escape from a 'recordings menu' -> 'warning message' -> 'recordings menu' cycle.

Without having memorized the magic incantation, the only way to restart it is to pull the plug. Then it takes it, seemingly, several hours to get the guide back. It must only store the guide in memory. Which is totally understandable, I mean its not like it has a HARD DRIVE or anything.

Amazingly, the power cycle has fixed the problem.

Comcast continues to fail. Between continued DVR misbehavior and the new 250GB monthly limit it is sometimes hard to remember what I pay them >$100/month for. Maybe Verizon FiOS will be an improvement, it has the consumer reports score, but do I really trust any service company? Boy, thats a stupid question. Let's face it, I hate pretty much every communications company I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

On the plus side, it looks like we will squeak under the 250 GB limit unless one of us goes on a big downloading spree, or unless we decide to actually USE any of the cool internet features like streaming video from netflix (heaven forfend) or downloadable HD content on playstation network (ok, I wouldn't ever actually pay for downloadable movies, if I'm paying that much for it, I want a permanent copy).

The key to figuring that was out Traffic Accounting with Linux IPTables. Now I can tell exactly how much warez and tunez a certain wife downloads every night (just over a MB tonight, that ain't much), and how much I'm downloading from playstation network (gulp). Just to make sure I'm not totally off base, I'm also running vnstat to get a second opinion, (which also does monthly summing and estimates, which is kinda cool). And cron'd them up to send me a nightly report. I'm playing with ntop as well, and it makes some nice graphs, but it seems like it doesn't quite give me exactly the view I want. And lets face it. The command line is soooo much more cool. Lesson: iptables is the shiznit.