Modern Warefare 2

Right, so apparently this game is insanely addictive...
I have spent too much time with it the past week. The single player campaign is fairly short, it took me just under 8 hours to beat on hardest difficulty. The story is horrible and the vehicle missions are boring and can be highly annoying since you don’t have much control over what happens.
The Coop part is a bit mixed. Some of them are pretty fun, especially the ones where one is in the air covering the other as he moves through the level. The stealth missions are pretty useless, even on hardest difficulty you can shoot your way through them ignoring all elements of stealth. We beat most of the coop missions on hardest difficulty on first or second attempt which is pretty disappointing.
Multiplayer is where the fun is!
It feels the same as the old modern warfare, but with more toys and challenges to complete. The maps are much better designed as you can not kill each other within the first 5 sec of the round by throwing a rain of grenades anymore!
My biggest complaint is that getting into a multiplayer is like “press start” -> “choose game mode” and then it pairs you up with other people automatically, like the xbox thingie… But it doesn’t work very well, and it removes all sense of community. I got a lot of my friends from playing on specific servers and having fun there. Now you just get paired up with random people each game.
If you want to play with more than 8 of your friends you can’t just find a server normally since you cant be more than 8 on a team so you have to get the 8 people together and find a server, then the rest have to quickly join them after they found a game and hope that the server did not fill up before they get in. (even with 8 it’s a bit of a problem since you one get one game mode to choose if you are more than 6 players together)
As there are no dedicated servers one of the players have to host, and that causes the game to lag for everyone if the host has a slow machine, which kind of sucks too.
But once you finally find a game it is a pretty fun game :)

I still have not written anymore for nanowrimo… And everyone I got to join me for it have given up...

And on a side note… Danish Radio sucks! Apparently they want me to pay £220 per year because I own a computer with internet access. And I already have negative money :(

Unqualified salesmen

My computers were stolen last week, so I went to buy a new laptop. When I got to the store (Expert) they did not have any of them left, so the guy there offered me another one, telling me it was the exact same laptop except it was 1000gb instead of 500gb.. sure, why not, its only £50 more... So I got that and happily went home, unpacked it and looked at the sticker on it... Hmm, it has got a much slower processor and graphics card. So I go and look around on the internet (their own website listed both of them, with clear differences), sure enough, it was not the same as the one I wanted. So I call the shop and explain the problem to the guy there, he sounds annoyed and insist that he is right and tells me to bring it in if I am not satisfied. So I took the bus back there and got my money back...

So that leaves me where I started, no laptop or anything. Now I have ordered one over the internet and hope it will arrive soon!

As for Nanowrimo.. It took me a while to get started (5 days...) but I’m up at 3000 words now and hope to reach 10k before the weekend.

Tim Burton rocks!

Apparently a new Alice in Wonderland is coming out soon. It is made by our good friend and residential psychopath Tim Burton. I have always been a fan of his out of the ordinary movie style, from Edward Scissorhands back when I was a child to Corpse Bride back in 2000. His artstyle is unsurpassed and rivals my own visions in freakishness which is always a plus! It makes movies fun to watch!

http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/aliceinwonderland/

Another movie I can’t wait to see is “9”, think the trailer shows more than I can be bothered to write here :P

http://www.apple.com/trailers/focus_features/9/

So much to watch, so little time to watch it! I still need to watch Hell Girl too. I really do love that show but I still have not had time to watch more than the first to two episodes. :(

Steelseries 5H v2

I have been using a cheap pair of earplugs from an mp3 player since my old headset broke a month ago, so I finally got tired of it and bought a Steelseries 5H v2 and it is awesome!



The padding is large enough to go around your ears instead of resting on top of them, so it doesn’t hurt after wearing it all day and it gives some extra noise reduction (My computer sounds more like a muffled buzzing than a lawnmower with them on, yay!)

I had a problem with my old headset with the cord getting damaged from getting swirled around itself a lot. The wires of the 5H are of some kind of braided thread instead of plastic so it doesn’t break from getting curled and it feels nice and soft instead of cold plastic :)

The mic can be hidden inside the headset when you don’t use it which is handy I guess… It can be freely adiusted to what suits you the best. The quality is crystal clear and it has three settings which I am not entirely sure what do (Off, low and high). Off is pretty obvious but nothing seems to happen when I switch between low and high setting.

The sound quality is the best I have ever heard. Paying near £50 for a headset was a good investment. The base in it is like nothing I have ever heard in a headset before and the sound is very clear without any sign of background hissing or the likes. Playing call of duty 4 with proper sound makes a huge difference, I still find myself starting to drool every time I shoot something.

Shameless advertisement and stuff

I have been watching various anime shows lately (of different quality). If you got any suggestions I would love to hear them!

One Piece:
I saw quite a few of these, my first impression was.. “ meh, this is crap” due to the art style but then I got caught up in the story and after a while it just got stuck in a story loop and I dropped it again. ( I am not going to watch 400 episodes of the same thing happening over and over with different characters)

Naruto:
Another show I recently started following, it is of much higher quality than One Piece. Most of the show looks good but I still lose immersion with the story when the characters do that thing where their voice gets high pitched while their eyes go white and their facial features become jagged and arms starts flaring. (will call it shitfaced from now on to make It easier). This is really a problem for me in almost every anime and is what has kept me away from a lot of them. There is a fair amount of character development in Naruto, the only character that I do not like is the main character which kind of sucks considering the show is based around him. :)

Vampire Knight:
Cool name, crap show. It has excessive amounts of “shitface” at stupid times. The story from what I could tell from the first episode is a bit like Twilight.

Hell girl:
I was recently made aware of this show, I have only had time to watch the first episode but it has no “shitface” so far and the story is intriguing and the environments dark and ominous. Looking forward to watching more :)


On a sidenote… A friend of mine just got a new book published, so go buy it! (while you are at it, go get the others in the series as well...) ;) I will toss up a review if I ever get to read it :D
http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLegendOfTheMedallions.html

Troll

Someone has been bugging me about updating this thing, so since I don't have anything to write about I will post a few pics of the troll I'm working on :)
(and yes, her hair is a mess, click for larger image)

The path of little red riding hood

The Path

This horror game from indie developer Tale of Tales is more of an experience than a game really. It has no difficult puzzles or enemies to kill. It has a path and a forest, and if you stray off the path it will have consequences.

It is basically about six girls of different ages and with different looks on life and death which will be reflected throughout the game in terms of how they interact with their surroundings and how you will see things. They are each given a basket that they are to take to their sick grandmothers house in the middle of the woods. They are told not to stray off the path… but of course all the fun is off the path… But so is the wolf.

The game is extremely unsettling. The background music itself is eerie (and it embeds on your mind, I kept hearing it in my head for a week after I stopped playing it, and started humming it when I was bored *shudder*) The music reminds me alot of the one the children sings in one of the Nightmare on Elm street movies.. (one two, Freddy is comming for you, three four better lock your door..) with lyrics from a woman with a beautyful voice :). and the ambient noises keep you on your toes. As you walk around the forest you constantly have a feeling of being stalked by the wolf, a feeling reinforced by growling in the darkness and twigs crackling. I kept finding myself walking deeper into the forest because I got distracted by a noise and went to investigate; it did not take long for me to get lost.

Some of the sights are amazing; I stumbled upon a makeshift cemetery in a forest clearing where you could see the ghostly faces of previous girls who had been wandering too deep in the forest. How you experienced this was different depending which character you played.

There is a constantly changing filter over the screen which makes it look very fairytale-ish, it has various drawings and colours on it now and then. I am not sure if it has anything to do with hints or if it is just an effect.

I still have not completed the game with all the characters, but it took me about an hour to get each character killed so far (go me!) I can not imagine the game being very replayable once you have gone through it all once, but the experience is worth the money in my opinion.

This is a game you will either love or hate, but the game is only 7 euro on Steam so you should check it out if you are interested in horror or alternative games. Or if you are just bored (Or if you like to get little girls killed)


The PATH ----- Launch Trailer from Tale of Tales on Vimeo.