Archive for February, 2010
In the Garden we are growin'….
Obligatory thoughts & views on Bioshock 2 follow. Please stand by.
So, Bioshock 2 came out last Wednesday, and as I’m now on my second playthrough, I have to admit, this game is just as good as the origonal. The story is class, the character development still there, and the atmosphere and attention to detail in the underwater world is just, well, amazing.
So the single player portion delivers in buckets and spades. The gameplay upgrades feel natural and enhance the game from the previous title, and the new weapons and plasmids are pretty awesome.
Couple things wrong with the single player mode though; there seems to be a Gene Bank station on every wall; and as such there are a lot of Gathers Gardens around too. One of the challenges of the first game IMO was coming across these things. There are also Ammo Bandito machines sprinkled liberally, moreso than the first game, where they weren’t very obvious at all. The Circus of Values were always all over the shop, so that’s no surprise though.
Health stations suffer from the same problem, actually. There are also aren’t a great deal of security cameras, auto-turrets or other electronic defences compared to Bioshock 1. Multi-part quests don’t even pop up until the very end of the game. When a box pops up to teach you a gameplay element during the final boss, you know it’s been underused.
Big Sisters on the other hand a goddamn hard and fun to fight. There’s nothing better than a nicely sculptured female body in a diving suit doing extreme parkour and using telekanisis to throw doors at you.
The multiplayer element, though, is not so good. The fact that everyone essentially spawns in the same room at the start of the match, and subsequently respawns in the same room 90% of the time, means that the fighting generally concentrates in one small area, with large bits of map not very inhabited in smaller games.
This also means that this game is a camper’s dream. Just sit in the corner with your granade launcher, and wait as person after person appears in the same general area.
The idea of having to use research on bodies to do well in multiplayer battles, and the story driven level based gameplay, is actually a fresh idea that I like. But unfortunately the sides are let down by the core product.
The spawn points need spreading out. Like, srsly now.
But all in all, a brilliant game that I really can’t fault. A 9 out of 10.
Now, Sonic & Sega All Stars racing…. the demo for that game is pretty awesome. I’ll be picking that up next week too…. stay tuned.
In the Garden we are growin’….
Obligatory thoughts & views on Bioshock 2 follow. Please stand by.
So, Bioshock 2 came out last Wednesday, and as I’m now on my second playthrough, I have to admit, this game is just as good as the origonal. The story is class, the character development still there, and the atmosphere and attention to detail in the underwater world is just, well, amazing.
So the single player portion delivers in buckets and spades. The gameplay upgrades feel natural and enhance the game from the previous title, and the new weapons and plasmids are pretty awesome.
Couple things wrong with the single player mode though; there seems to be a Gene Bank station on every wall; and as such there are a lot of Gathers Gardens around too. One of the challenges of the first game IMO was coming across these things. There are also Ammo Bandito machines sprinkled liberally, moreso than the first game, where they weren’t very obvious at all. The Circus of Values were always all over the shop, so that’s no surprise though.
Health stations suffer from the same problem, actually. There are also aren’t a great deal of security cameras, auto-turrets or other electronic defences compared to Bioshock 1. Multi-part quests don’t even pop up until the very end of the game. When a box pops up to teach you a gameplay element during the final boss, you know it’s been underused.
Big Sisters on the other hand a goddamn hard and fun to fight. There’s nothing better than a nicely sculptured female body in a diving suit doing extreme parkour and using telekanisis to throw doors at you.
The multiplayer element, though, is not so good. The fact that everyone essentially spawns in the same room at the start of the match, and subsequently respawns in the same room 90% of the time, means that the fighting generally concentrates in one small area, with large bits of map not very inhabited in smaller games.
This also means that this game is a camper’s dream. Just sit in the corner with your granade launcher, and wait as person after person appears in the same general area.
The idea of having to use research on bodies to do well in multiplayer battles, and the story driven level based gameplay, is actually a fresh idea that I like. But unfortunately the sides are let down by the core product.
The spawn points need spreading out. Like, srsly now.
But all in all, a brilliant game that I really can’t fault. A 9 out of 10.
Now, Sonic & Sega All Stars racing…. the demo for that game is pretty awesome. I’ll be picking that up next week too…. stay tuned.
Why a software crash might mean just that…
The so-called environmental wondercar of the world, the Toyota Pryus, seems to have caught so much momentum in recent years with soft liberal-types and people with more concern over their environmental image than their personal one, that it shows no sign of stopping. Literally.
The news that thousands upon thousands of a particular model, worldwide, can’t stop under certain circumstances is quite hilarious if it wasn’t so potentially dangerous. What ammuses me most about this, though, is the fact that this isn’t caused by a faulty brake disk, wire, cable or component – it’s a software error.
And the fix for this problem? Well, a firmware update, obviously.
A bug in computer software can be an annoyance. It might stop me from getting my spreadsheet into the boss on time, or stop me from getting to level 21 in a game, but for a software bug to stop me from being able to stop my car properly?
Of course, this particular firmware update requires the owner to return the car to the Toyota dealership. But what about the future, when people receive firmware updates to their car’s dash over the air?
Software controlling output on a screen is fine, but when it governs the physical interaction of the world, it needs to be right. Sure, things can fail mechanically, too, but traditionally, you need to be near someone’s car to cut their brake line.
The thought occurs that, one day, someone might find a way to send some kind of software modification to a model of car, and cause every single person’s brakes to fail simultaniously, or invert their steering or somesuch. And the idea that we might be closer to that day than we all think is frightning.
So next time you open a dodgy e-mail, look out for Pryus’ coming towards you. All might not be as it seems….
