Something to look forward to
– Fourth Splinter Cell is scheduled to come out in spring 2006. And I haven’t got the third one yet either.
– The new Prince of Persia is coming out in a few days (on 9th I think).
– Colorado Kid by Stephen King just arrived for me from a bookstore. I’ll have to finish Insomnia (by S.K.) before I’ll start the newest book. I ordered Blood and Smoke (audio book) as well, and I can’t wait to get to listen to it!
(I actually got it already, but it turned out to be a cassette version so I’ll send it back and ask if they have a CD version.)
– Early next year yet another Stephen King book is coming out: Cell.
– This Tuesday is a public holiday (Independence day).
– Apparently, WordPress 2 is coming out soon.
And last but certainly not least… Fanfare, please.
– 2 days off in January! (Which in practice will be a 5-day weekend, because Friday, Jan 6th is a public holiday and I’m taking Wednesday and Thursday off.) Holy game-a-thon, you say? Yeah, so do I.
[edit: Dec 6th]
I completely forgot this!
– Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished by Rocky Wood, David Rawsthorne, and Norma Blackburn is coming out. I just hope it’ll be available in Finland.
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I can’t believe you haven’t picked up Chaos Theory yet. You have the patience of a rock. Seriously, though. Enough is enough.
I think that’s what led me here in the first place. I think I did a search to see who the artist was who did all the music (Amon Tobin), and for some reason your blog was way at the top of the list.
I love the series, but this release-a-year thing has to stop. For one because I’d probably buy them all, but you have to wonder just how much work this guy would really get. Not to mention he has to die sometime. The guy’s a senior citizen and still saving the world.
I couldn’t even master the Splinter Cell 1? whatever it is that I have. I will not be buying any other version of the game. I got stuck at a part where I don’t know if I’m supposed to climb a fence, find a secret passage, commit suicide. Never mind I find the movements in the game really difficult compared to other games.
Ok, my Zuma game has gone downhill too. I need another Half Life 2. It’s the only game that thrilled me.
Kory, either I’m patient or I just haven’t found Chaos Theory anywhere
I’m hoping Dad’ll find it for Xmas. If not, I’ll hunt it down. I promise. I must.
You mentioned about the search that got you here. Sorry my post couldn’t give an answer, though… I only know about Name of the Game by what’s-its-name.
I’m very much in love with the Splinter Cell series. The style suits me because — oddly — I find some shoot-em-ups a bit too hectic for my taste; Painkiller, whooo boy. Even Half Life 2 had me breathless at times. Am I, perhaps, taking the games too seriously?
Hmmm… maybe in the meantime, I could install SC 1 and 2, and see how gorgeous the light and shadows look on this gorgeous computer.
Wow Wow Wow! Talk about massive news lol. Seems like you’ll be having quite a bit of work to do these days
hehe. Yay for the Independence Day =).. I have a P.T. Day today so I don’tr have to go to school lol.. w00t! lol. But I do have other things @__@; Did I mention that I’ve created a temp. blog over at:
http://veestarr.wordpress.com ? Visit visit visit! =) no one really knows about it anyway -__-; but that’s okay =D. Ah, I better get going, hope to hear from you soon! Take care. Have a nice day :mrgreen:!
Jafer – I think there were a lot of fences and vents in the game, but are you talking about the beginning of the CIA level?
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I fell in love with the series at the first game. The levels were mostly linear, but 99% of the time there were alternative routes.
The second game was just a tiny bit disappointing (second was made by the Chinese, not the French like the other two), only because the game was still linear, but there were very very few alt. routes.
The third is more open. You don’t need to do everything in a particular order and there are plenty of paths to take. Also, although it got great reviews, I’ve seen points taken off everywhere because the game was thought to be more action than stealth. I think this is true and false, and to everyone’s benefit. In the previous games, they gave you your equipment and your mission and you did your thing. Now you can choose between a few different load-outs (basically Action, Stealth, and Balanced).
I guarantee you that you can complete the game 100% stealthy, without firing a shot or even knocking a guy unconcious (except for a couple situations because of the story). On the other hand, you can take the SC-20k with the shotgun or sniper attachment, extra frags and make sure no one is left standing (you can kill a civilian or two in this game, Lambert will chew you out, but it doesn’t mean game over).
So, if you like the slow, methodical, invisible Sam Fisher, you can certainly play that way.
And the alternative routes are the best! Especially when you find new ones during a re-play. I’m glad I have a stealth game to look forward to. I love sticky shockers and head-locks. Brzzzzz. Ahhh. (No, I’m not sadistic. :twisted:)
Vera, how are you liking WordPress.com? I decided not to put up a blog there even if it’s available for everyone now (I think). WordPress 2 is coming out soon; yesterday I installed the release candidate locally and I’m trying out the new features. I think I have enough work in covering those (in my magazine article) and will mention the blog service only in passing.
The alt. routes were the best. I was blown away at how complete the game was my first time through. But every time I revisited a level, I would find a completely new way to go and it was indeed awesome.
One thing that annoyed me about the previous versions was you really had no options if you came face to face with an enemy. Obviously you have your firearms, but if someone came whipping around a corner with an AK pointing at your head, you either had to retreat and line up a shot, or quickly try and get around to his backside for the grab (not appropriate for the workplace, by the way). Also, if you did get someone from behind, you’re only option was to knock him out.
In CT, under either condition, you have both a lethal and non-lethal option. Say some hapless terrorist decides to invade your personal space. Lethal button slashes his throat with a knife before he has a chance to call for help, non-lethal does a palm strike to the face (most satisfying action/animation in a video game). From a chokehold you can either, well, choke him until unconcious (also a very cool animation, with hilarious [in a sadistic way] facial expressions), or jam a knife in his back and send him flying.
I was also very impressed with the AI. It’s fun to hear them talk to each other. I know other games have good AI and that they communicate, but here it’s audible, even if the speech isn’t all that varied.
Hm, I like it.. the functions are like your personal wordpress blog/site. I’d say it’s better than other blogs out there.. well, that’s in my own opinion =p… ah, you mean WordPress 2 for blogs like that or like this?.. or is it practically the same? lol..
I think WordPress.com has been using WP1.6 which has never been released as a regular WP version. So WordPress.com has been ahead of its time
I don’t know if they’ll be implementing WP2.0 soon (if they haven’t already). It’s pretty much the same, I think (I’m not a developer 
), except places like WordPress.com need a little different handling of users, as they have many users and the system has to be secure.
I don’t even know what I’m talking about with the Splinter Cell or whether it’s even version 1 (or 2 or 3), what part it’s at, which level or anything, just that I didn’t play it much and then got stuck. Plus I have a hard time remembering which keys to push for what, the hanging on to edges, yada, yada.
I much prefer Half Life 2 and Painkiller (even though I finally got to a higher level on Painkiller and then the game crashed and had to be reinstalled and I started from the beginning again and then couldn’t get past the big guy).
Right now I’m playing my Doom 3 since I’d never bothered to go past the first level. So now I may be halfway through that but I don’t like it. It’s too dark, even though I’ve adjusted the gamma, so it just pisses me off. Although I’m gonna finish it just to see how it ends.
Splinter Cell is a love-it-or-hate-it type of game.
I was looking forward to Quake IV, but I heard it wasn’t anything exceptional as a shooter. Looks like Doom without all the darkness.
Prey looks very cool.
OooH I see.. really? It never occured to me cause I didn’t check lol =p. That’s cool.. nothing new .. all i see ‘visually’ is that the slow gradiant fade when changes are made.. something like that.. but what’s new about 1.6 compared to 1.5 or whatever i am clueless =T.
Yeah the gradiant fade is made with Ajax or some new buzzword. In the WP2.0 the same technique, I think, is used to allow you to configure the writing view pretty drastically. I especially like the ability to drag the writing area bigger. Ajax is probably used for a lot more but I haven’t dug into the code — yet.
Uhh… I would probably get dizzy from that walking on the ceiling. In a game, possibly No One Lives Forever 2, there was a level where you had to dive and the world kept whirling around and I was close to hurling.
Heheh, the girl was funny after the ghost took over her.
That reminds me a little of Half Life 1. A little.
Sadist.
I would like to shoot a guy on the floor from the ceiling, but it makes me woozy as well. I really liked the portals.
Oh hey… does WordPress (.com) have any way to click through random blogs like Blogger does?
Or would they rather not have random freaks coming across?
I don’t see any random thingy apart from those “Hot Blogs”, but it just got out of beta stage anyway so something like that may appear later on.
Yeah, Hot Blogs indeed.
But I notice on the Dashboard there’s also a couple lists for Top Posts and Latest Posts.
Most of them are in a language I don’t speak… but I can honestly say, I did not know this about Chuck Norris.
You signed up for WordPress.com?
> I did not know this about Chuck Norris
Yeah, a good friend of mine recently took a trip to Europe and I’m trying to coax her into putting it on the web with pictures and stories and such (duh). So I looked around a bit and decided I wanted a little piece of the Web for myself.
I started a Blogger page as well as a WordPress one just to compare and being the picky bastard I am, I can’t decide which would annoy me the least. Getting a hosted site would be ideal, but I’ll see how this goes before a committment.
I think I’ll stick with the WordPress account, and you’re certainly invited. Any comments, grammatical fascism, epic “I heart Splinter Cell” posts, corrections, suggestions, questions are all welcome. It would only be fair.
May I add that link to the People list in my sidebar?
Sure thing. I didn’t know what a “blogroll” was before WordPress, but doesn’t it sound like it would be delicious if it was dipped in a gravy?
May I add you as well?
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I didn’t realize WordPress was just opened to the public (23 Nov.), and that you needed an invite to have an account before.
There are some bugs in their HTML editor (special formatting strips paragraph tags; recursively on subsequent saves), but one thing that drives me absolutely nuts is when you hold down Backspace it buffers up too many key repeats. I’ve actually sat there and watched my entire post erase itself. Thankfully, they have an Undo feature.
Course you may
I haven’t tried out WordPress.com blog but that editor is probably in use on WP2.0 as well. Hopefully they’ll fix those bugs before the official release. I’ll have to play around with my RC install to see if it does that too. Although, I switched off that special editor thingy the second I saw it
It’s too… marshmellowy (like the default XP theme). Me like it rough. (Ahem.)
Yeah, the rich text editors are fine for something quick that you just need to get done, but I so much prefer to get involved with what I’m working on. You can’t as easily massage the code to get it just right and it’s hard to tell how it’s interpreting things behind the scenes.
When did HTML get so sexy?