More Strogg than Strogg

Category : entertainment + games + quake + review

Well, I bought a game I told myself I’d never purchase. But I went ahead and bought it anyway considering it was cheap and everyone kept telling me the single player campaign was pretty good. Not to mention I finally have a graphics card which can actually run it. I now concede that Quake 4 is all that and then some as far as the single player game is concerned. In fact, it’s absolutely awesome!

Being one who enjoys most multi-player titles along with a well balanced single-player aspect, Raven appears to have pulled out all the stops by seemlessly blending the puzzle and combat action in Quake 4. If you’re familiar with the good old and confusing puzzles where you’re left asking “what the hell do I do now?!” ala Hexen or Heretic, there’s many of these moments and then some. Not rediculous physics based puzzles but more along the lines of “what do I have to blow up next to keep going?!” type of puzzles.

But what suprised me even more were the sizes of enemies you encounter, from small to extremely ginormous and a real chore to take down. While getting my ass handed to me on an easy setting was actually fun, I began to learn that the game appears to ramp up the difficulty with each checkpoint you pass. Sure you might start on easy, but don’t expect the game to stay at that setting as you move further along. It’s either that, or I make for a grade-A frag magnet for Quake 4 NPCs.

Sadly, the multi-player is a big disappointment. Having played my fair share of Quake 3 and seeing that much of the multi-player are Quake 3 redux maps it still doesn’t quite come up to par. Sure everything looks pretty, but game-wise and timing seems very far off. The Dead Zone mode is laughable at best, it’s not something I’d play but if you’re curious go for it. Personally I hope that Enemy Territory: Quake Wars makes up for Quake 4’s weak multi-player. And I seriously hope that Quake Wars multi-player doesn’t stem from Quake 4’s lack there-of, but that’s just me.

Forget the vistas or player fatigue the pause button was created for a purpose, players want the action and a challenge not a pretty looking rest area. But that’s this player speaking for himself. If I had to choose between a continuation of Quake 4 and one of the next Half-Life 2 episodes, I think that for a single player fix it might have to be Quake. Mainly because it seems to actually deliver the kind of action you would want given the type of weapons you’re carrying. That and grenades actually blow things to shreds instead of sending the ragdoll flying.

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F.E.A.R. Combat - Free? Hell Yeah!

Category : entertainment + f.e.a.r. + games + software

The sign-up for F.E.A.R. Combat is extremely painless, answer some questions and provide an email address (prefferably one where you get spam), then receive a CD-key for the game. Once that’s all good and done, you can download the 1.8 gig installer. Over my AT&T “Broadband” connection it took me a good 8 hours over-night to download the 1.8 gig installation file, and by this morning I had it ready to go. In within about 5 minutes after entering the key, scrolling EULA’s and performing the actual install, it was done.

Like previous Monolith titles, the setup interface is easy to navigate and does most of the setup for you. I selected 800×600 and lowered the settings thinking I could hardly run the game, but the game said otherwise and set me up at 1024×768 with everything cranked up to high. I thought to myself “This can’t be right…” but went along with the games suggestion and proceeded to do my keyboard and player setup anyway.

In order to test my settings I managed to play some multiplayer and “out of the box” I was already having some fun even if I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. Easy enough though, find some enemy players and shoot them, right? Done and done, I already managed to go on a short killing spree and get a few headshots without trying before someone melee kicked me into a corner which made me laugh a bit. Ok, so I’m not godly, but I’m not terrible either as some folks on the server mentioned.

The graphics for F.E.A.R. are great, however there’s some little interface bugs which started to annoy me since the moment I started playing. Number one being that I can’t bind anything to my F1 through F12 keys and I don’t have access to a dev console to see what important messages I’ve missed. This goes hand-in-hand with being able to manipulate Punk Buster settings if the need arises as I’ve already been kicked for switching it off accidently while searching for options in the menus while on a server. There’s also no obvious way to reduce the font size for incoming chat and server messages, I’m certain this wouldn’t be a problem if I could play in 1280×1024 and up resolutions.

Other than those little issues, this is probably the best free game than America’s Army or anything else could be. The game play is very diverse and it’s actually fun even if you’re not great at it from the start. And if you accidently team-kill someone you’re not booted off of the server and sent to some retarded little virtual jail cell with harmonica music in the background. While there’s no vehicular combat or anything spectacular, firing rail spikes at an opponent and pinning them up to a wall is a funny sight to see. Oh and don’t forget the general and grenade splatter. I caught myself a few times questioning whether I just saw someones arm or leg go flying off, it’s surely a sight to see.

On the list of things to do in F.E.A.R. - Pin a players corpse to a ceiling.

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And now back to our regularly unscheduled programming…

Category : internet + programming + software

It starts with a “M” and ends with another letter… It’s pretty awesome, but it’s additions are questionable and inside it is in a brilliant disarray. What started as a simple idea for a proposal ended up with me signing myself into an exsting project to help pull things together and whip it back into shape. I’m not going to give away what this is or what the project entails, but I can tell you is that I have my work cut out for me. What I can say is that in order to do this, everything will need to be broken first, toggles, switches and knobs be damned. Wish me luck.

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For Mein Haha?

Category : cryptography + entertainment + internet + programming + silly

Well, it appears that the entire “For Mein Fraulein” was a ruse to see how well the crypto community would respond. It’s rather funny actually, but it worked out well and it was a setup from the start. Get the entire play-by-play break-down over at Homeland Stupidity and read about how it all came together. One thing is certain though, Mike’s millitary contact was right on in stating it was bullshit.

It seems 2006 is the year for internet mind games, first Eon8, and now this. What could possibly be next in unannounced for this season? Who knows, but it will hopefully entertain us if it carries on for a lengthly period.

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