barely fatal

Today, I need help making a decision. That’s not exactly new, but usually I just wait until the objects of interest float out of my mind again on their own and leave me as happy as ever, even when i didn’t bother buying any of them.

What I am talking about? I’m perfectly sure you all know the feeling. There’s a new game coming out, a new DVD, a book, a movie, a CD – and you want it. You just want to buy it, hold it, comfort it, take it everywhere you go. That’s called a hype. I have yet to meet a person totally resistant to hypes. Everyone has a field of interest which she or he just can’t ignore. For some it’s football, for others it’s fishing, for me it’s, well, digital stuff.

I need a new toy, need, like in deserve, longe for, must-have. But I have a problem: There’s my deepest wish it to be something digital and the icecold logic of my guilty conscience that maybe it should rather be something very, very analogue.

I’m going to move soon, and I don’t have any furniture besides my bed and a book shelf. My bike, I ride it every day – weather makes no difference – misses parts. I mean, important parts like brakes, not just lights. But then there it is, shining like a diamond, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. And there’s the Battlefield 2 booster pack for only 10 bucks. And I ran out of hard drive space weeks ago, that ancient thing sounds like … well like my bike. And if I get Oblivion maybe I should think about getting a GeForce 7800 GT, they are quite ‘cheap’ at the moment. Plus, I’ve always wanted an MP3 player. My cellphone plays MP3s, but it’s a) uncomfortable to handle, b) sounds like … my bike, and c) only holds 512Megs. iPod G5, oh yes … but those things are gorram expensive.

On the bright side, I might actually make it to the meeting with one of Fatal Shadow’s US members in Munich.

So what? The tension is killing me. And the crappy coffee, I better stop drinking it like water.

With Auto Assault coming to the end of its development cycle the one question on my mind regarding that game is “do I buy it?”

The answer must unfortunately be “NO”

While the game is very different from anything else available, which is a very favourable plus point as far as I’m concerned, it really isn’t all that involving.

You drive a car… well that’s great and all but there’s only so many cars you can use since they’re class dependant (bad design decision there). Only 50% of the game area can be accessed by any one faction, essentially one gigantic safe zone for every faction. So that the game can try and win over people that don’t like PvP.  A strange decision, probably made cos they wanted to cater to the non PvP crowd but didn’t want to spend any amount of time trying to figure out a way to do it properly.

Game play is just plain disappointing. Move your weapons tactical arc over the general area of the enemy and hold down a button? Wonder who dreamed that up. It neither offers the fast paced action of FPS nor the automatic combat of more common combat systems. In essence you have an auto lock system that determines hit and miss via the standard dice roll taking stats into effect, the only change is that the weapons must be pointing in the general direction of the target… All in all a rather pointless, if slightly different, system.

There’s only 2 things to do in the game, crafting (the system in play actually bores me, and anyone that knows me knows I really like crafting in games) and combat. Theres no mining (closest thing is resource collection which happens wether you want it or not when you kill stuff, but that’s not mining its farming) and the economy… well lets not even go there.

In short it’s a shoot em up that requires little skill and never realy provides a sense of accomplishment in anything you do.

Is my opinion biased? Probably, but then again you wont find a single person on this planet that’s unbiased, and if they say they are there just lying

Maybe I’m just upset that NetDevil stopped working on Jumpgate in order to put time into AA. Maybe I don’t like the fact that Mightygames’s GM’s that used to run the EU JG game were double standard tossers with delusions of adequacy. Or maybe the game is just missing something…

If all you want out of the game is to drive around and kills things you’ll love this game (also I suggest you go see a shrink ) cos that’s pretty much all you can do. Even CoH has more of a point to its game play then AA and that’s saying something.

 

I started playing Battlefield 2 again. I’ve often said that I suck at it, and I still do. When my team runs around a corner it doesn’t matter if I am the first, the middle or the last guy in the line, it’s always me who gets shot. It’s always me who spawns right on top of an enemy tank. It’s always me who stumbles into the Claymores, gets run over by team mates, falls from the roof or gets blown up by friendly artillery.

My stats are horrible and my progress has been the slowest ever. Now, I don’t want to sound too optimistic, but I think I discovered the secret: Think before you shoot, and do not think before you shoot. Weird? Mais non. Think before you try throwing a grenade up a roof (and it bounces off the wall right into your lap). Do not think when two guys come running at you with guns blazing. It’s incredible how easy kills come if you just start shooting in their general direction and drop to the ground, slowing adjusting your aim. So I still suck. But I begin to suck less.

As a continuation of last week’s excerpt about Battlestar Galactica I again fail to give a complete review. But I have a few more things to say. At the weekend they showed an old, very old, ancient Babylon 5 episode. Man, science-fiction has come a long way. Or not, because at this very moment Stargate runs in the background. Huh-huh. Anyway, BSG: today they aired another episode and I really liked it. So the cylon ships are all bio-mechanic, and not piloted by ‘scary dudes in tincan outfits with red scanners’ anymore, that’s cool. Not so cool: you can fix holes in the hull with nothing but your space suit and still fly in space. Hmmmm.

It is amazing to see how BSG uses the same cinematographic techniques as Firefly. No steady-cam – hence shaky pictures, fast zooms in space like from a security camera, blurred, out-of-focus images, reduced sounds in space. Okay, while in Firefly you have no sound in space at all, and you have at least some in BSG, the way they turn down or muffle it just works. Also the lighting: fewer lights on the set, light coming from straight above or below, long shadows and hard contrasts, it’s really different and fresh – for a TV show. Compare it to Star Trek or Stargate and see the slow, steady camera work they do in those shows. The ‘new’ style really brings you into the action and adds to the fast-paced story telling during the action sequences. So does the ‘used look’, it adds realism.

Since I started to listen to more podcasts lately – boring work – I’d like to recommend the FireFlyTalk podcast. They have infos, fan fics, interviews … besides the Signal probably the most successful Firefly podcast. I find the cast panels from the cons most interesting, there’s a lot of other talk, but well that’s what a podcast is about, isn’t it. If any of you know a good humorous podcast besides the TikiBar which already made it to Link Of The Week, let me know please. I tried some at iTunes, but they couldn’t make me subscribe to them.

It’s been a week since my last post, busy week and such. Did some enforced travelling and learned that not all employees at German Railways are total jerks, this time it was me being stupid and hey, I got real help and didn’t even have to buy a new ticket. Okay I still arrived half an hour late due to delays – but I won’t complain (or have I already?).

Space, space games, space movies, space shows. I’ve always been into space stuff, the entertaining kind that is, not the number crunching. I started out with a strange show for kids, I can’t even remember the name. Then I got hooked on the Star Trek movies, my first real sci-fi experience. When I got to see the original Star Wars (Han shot first!) at a friend’s I was beyond the point of no return. Lets see.

Buck Rogers, Tron, Battlestar Galactica, Space 2063 (Above and Beyond), Starship Troopers, Stargate, Independence Day, Alien 1-4, Terminator, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters (Bustin’ makes me feelin’ good), Total Recall, even Knight Rider, Babylon 5, Trek, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, Firefly, … you get the idea.

Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad?”
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

Naturally, when I got my first PC I also endorsed sci-fi games the most. I wrote a Star Trek Trivia game in Basic, even composed the “Title Theme” – PC speakers were just as bad as they are nowadays, but soundcards were rare and expensive. So, games.

Wing Commander 3-5, Star Trek 25th Anniversary, Final Unity, Bridge Commander, Privateer: The Darkening, Freespace 1+2, Descent, System Shock 2, X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, Jumpgate, Star Wars Galaxies, Command & Conquer, MDK, Freelancer, Elite Force 1+2, Jedi Knight 1-3 and many more. Tie-Fighter is the overall winner, btw.

So, with this profound background I am hard to impress by fancy graphics or witty dialogues if that’s all I get. After watching the first few airings of the new, shiny Battlestar Galactica 2005 on TV, I’m still not quite sure. It looks great, sounds unique, the stories are solid, yet I’m not hooked – yet. I love how they manage to recycle themes and stories from the old BG, they re-use them and make them look totally new and fitting. I think I miss heart in it. And questionable haircuts. Ad breaks and German dub – which by the way seems to be accurately and professionally done – make it hard to build up the right “feeling”, and that might be the cause. Anyways, there’s more to it than to other shows, so it’s worth a stand-alone post on some other day.

Dr Ray Stantz: Listen! Do you smell something?