Brent’s Thoughts

If you had talked to me a week ago, I would have told you how stupid and un-fun time splitters is. How the controls are crappy and how it makes HALO look like the best game ever. Well if you ask me now, I would still say that HALO is probably better, but the arcade mode does a lot to help the game out.

The controls for the game have every problem that everyone said HALO would have, but didn’t. Hard to choose a weapon, odd aiming system, no fine grained control.

What it does have though is more of a strategy angle than HALO and there is no such thing as repetitive in this game since every mission is in a different time and thus it is completely different from every other.

The arcade aspects of the game help it out and are very replay-able. You have team warfare angles that you can play even by yourself with computer players on your team. I am dreaming of setting down to do something like this with some real people in the future. Virus games and several different types of games go a long way toward giving you something to do instead of getting pissed at some of the levels. If you liked the run and gun aspects of HALO then you need to stick with the arcade games, because the missions in this game are often times centered around sneaking and hiding.

All in all a game that will draw you back because there is such potential and you hope that it is just around the corner of the game.

This game just came out today and on the advice of the boys over at Penny Arcade I picked a copy up. Now I have been playing it for 2 and a half hours and I had to make myself turn it off to write this review.

There is little to say except, “DAMN GOOD SHOW!!!!” This game if phucking top notch. It is quick and fast paced, allowing for all the stuff you love from the mechwarrior series, but being a whole new thing.

It is something of a take off of the Mechwarrior 3050 (I think that year is right) game that came out a long time ago for the SNES, but it is infinitely better and more dynamic. Buildings shatter and spark when you fire into them, roads collapse, towers bend and break when you run into them, cars fly when you kick them. All that is just what you do to the enviroment, think about what you can do with the enemies. Hover tanks shift and spin when you fire shells into them. The only thing I really haven’t seen be effected by your greatly is the other mechs.

In the previous mechwarrior games you could kinda get a feel for how the enemy was pacing their weapons and by firing a high power weapon right before they did, screw up their aim and make them miss you. I haven’t seen that effect in this yet. Perhaps it is such a non-issue because of the lock on system it uses.

This game really makes you want to get a quick connection and join XBOX – Live so that you can waste Gabe and others online.

If the Mechwarrior series had too much for you and not enough action then this is were you need to head, because it has your fix.

Odd combo for a subject huh?

Well today and the last few days/weeks have been rather interesting. The SAMBA talk went well and has started a new wave of attacks on the status quo for my skills and ideas. I have another post that I was working that ties into this hopefully I will get it up soon.

I have developed a pretty cool backup system for Edmonson County Schools using linux and rsync to backup a program called STI. STI is not a very good program, but we are mandated to use it. Rock/hard place insert us. Therefore we often have to go back to backups and this is a lengthy process that often doesn’t work since everyone has to be out of it to get it to backup correctly. Thus I came up with this system to back up every 4 hours and for 7 days onto disk. This makes it quicker to restore from back up the files that we need. Everything is working ok on that and we talked to some of the other DTCs in Kentucky about it so hopefully that will go over big and I can help put Linux into some other peoples schools and stuff.

Now the bad news. The sunfire has developed a very bad power steering leak. A very bad leak. Such that I drove home tonight with no power steering. Hopefully this will be a fix that is not too costly and works out ok in the end. It is enough to make you a nervous wreck though, because it is something that you hate to have happen and you can’t correct yourself.

Until recently I would have trouble remembering the last time that I had a dream that I can remember. It seems that since about my freshman year in college I haven’t had much to remember from when I slept. Recently though this has all changed around. I think it has something has awoken recently. Honestly, I think it is a resurgence of the creativity of my mind. It is a interesting feeling to have some inspiration in my thoughts and ideas again. It is nice to spend some time thinking of new and cool things that I can do to make things work better and provide new things to work with. I also find I have little thoughts and stories that flit across my mind. So far they have come unbidden and skittered away before I could grasp them and bring them to the front for analysis and catelogue. I also find my desire for stories and to read has increased.

Unfortunately, there are some down sides as well. Along with having dreams is having BAD dreams. Three times in the last two weeks I have woke from a dream of varying themes, but all of them being pulse racers. Ghosts and demons, evil versions of people I know, protecting an unknown group of people from the likes of Jason Voorhees, they are all the things I have been dealing with in my mind at night. Luckily, though things are not all bad, otherwise I think I would have little use for the now prominent adventures. I have also had several interesting but not bad dreams over the span of the last two weeks. I have spent time with a cousin, two best friends, several people from my high school at some kinda whacked out reunion and several other quite interesting events.

What am I telling you for you might be asking? Well first it this site is foremost my journal so I would like to document this occurrence, but second I find it a most interesting thing that when in an environment that is inductive to ideas and thoughts how you feel better and start to think more about things.