SpaceRodent

I am leaving Pelago after four years. I have accepted a position at Popcap games! I am very sad and excited. Sad to leave Pelago who has been so good to me but very excited for a new chapter in life.

Today marks the day I start purging Apple from my life. My music has been moved to my Windows system, my MacMini has been shutdown. Soon I will upgrade all my DRM tracks from iTunes to the unprotected ones so I can move all the music to my Linux system. My AT&T contract is up in February and I will be getting either a Nokia N900 or some Android phone and after that I will be Apple free.

The deprecation of Java is the last straw for me. My Anti-Apple sentiments has been building over the last two years but the Lion announcement and the Java blurb is enough.

When OSX first came out I remember them talking about Open systems. A first class Java platform, kernel and user land that was open source (Darwin). Safari was based on the khtml engine and became webkit.

Of course they did some nasty things back then as well:

Anybody remember Watson? Then Apple’s Sherlock? You know the complete rip off of an indie developer?

Anybody remember Konfabulator? Then Apple’s Dashboard? You know the complete rip off of an indie developer?

Anybody remember Delicious Library? Then Apple’s iBooks? You know the complete rip off of an indie developer?

Just a few examples of when I should have left Apple before but let it slide.

Then came the iPhone and it has been downhill ever since. Now don’t get me wrong the iPhone is a wondrous piece of engineering but it comes at a high price: completely closed development and walled garden.

This is a post I made on Reddit six months ago: http://bit.ly/dBqT1j and I was almost ready then to ditch Apple but I thought maybe there was a chance of things changing.

Lion and the new MacApp store shows that Apple is tightening the reigns more and more.

One more thing that really pissed me off. I have an original Apple TV and when Apple decided to not port the Netflix app to the old version I lost it. I just couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t been a victim of this before now and I wasn’t happy at all. There is NO reason to not upgrade the older Apple TVs other than to kill them off.

Apple is the new Microsoft, Google is the new IBM and Oracle is worst of both put together!

So I am putting my trust in Canonical:) (makers of Ubuntu)

What a strange time we live in.

You have probably heard some word of Minecraft, the indie emergent sandbox game, sweeping the interwebs. I have been playing it quite a bit but more surprisingly is my wife has been playing it! The last game she played was Warcraft III.

So why is the game so addictive? In a word: Legos.

Yup this game is basically an electronic version of Legos.

Check it out at http://www.minecraft.net/ – you won’t be disappointed!

So I recently picked up Modern Warfare 1 & 2 off of Steam. I had played them on the Xbox 360 previously and wanted to play them again on my PC.

I haven’t played even two hours before I am so fed up with the games I am ready to delete them. Somehow I forgot about the utter frustration that is Infinity Ward.

Basically it comes down to their stupid ass scripting system.

Picture this. I am on a rooftop supposed to be heading to an extraction point. I kill every enemy in sight. I then take one step forward and trigger some event and next thing I know there are 20 guys coming out of the woodwork.

For one it really pulls you out of the moment because if feels fake. The other thing is until I get to the next magical scripting point these guys just keep coming…Wave after wave of them. I could literally kill 500 guys but once I cross the “line” there isn’t a baddie in sight.

It really sucks.

I know most people buy the games for multiplayer where this wouldn’t be an issue at all but I don’t play multiplayer. I crave the awesome single player experience.

I won’t really delete them but I doubt I will play them ever again.

When I first mentioned Borderlands I was pretty hard on it and ended up returning it.

Recently I bought it off of Steam for $10 dollars and what a difference it makes.

For $10 dollars it is an incredible game. I recently finished my first play through that clocked in around 40 hours and ended up at level 38.

I don’t think I gave it enough the first time since I never got out of the first area.

After exploring the game and all the DLC I am having a lot of fun and have even started a second play through so I can get bigger, better weapons.

I recently finished Metro 2033 and Singularity. Both are Russian games set in alternate realities. They were both really short I completed both of them in less than 10 hours each.

Of the two I had more fun with Singularity but I liked the atmosphere and weapons of Metro 2033 more.

I played both of them on my PC. Metro 2033 ran pretty well and looked good but Singularity had horrible “Unreal Engine 3″ texture pop-in problems and sometimes the textures never popped in making the game look really ugly. This didn’t distract from the fun though.

The guns in Metro 2033 were varied and fun and each had its own purpose, in contrast the guns in Singularity are your standard run-of-the-mill FPS guns and I mostly used the machine gun and shotgun.

The time elements in Singularity were a neat gimmick but the fluid shooting and boss battles were excellent. I was also scared a couple of times.

The shooting in Metro 2033 wasn’t as fluid but I loved how each mission could be full on run-and-gun or stealth. If I felt like fighting I could but if I wanted to sneak around that was always an option. Singularity was completely linear and there was only one way to do things but it was fun.

I would recommend both games.

For my latest blog update? Correct. I also visited my Mom in Texas and the last time I was there was six years ago (When Half-Life 2 was released!). It was a much better trip this time around because my sister and her four kids were not there. It was relaxing. I didn’t do anything except sleep and eat.

I have played (and finished) a number of games since my last update as well:

• Final Fantasy I (PSP version)
• God of War I
• God of War: Chains of Olympus
• Saints Row II
• Puzzle Quest (PSP version)

I am current playing but haven’t finished:

• Final Fantasy VII
• God of War II
• Just Cause 2
• The Saboteur

I gave up playing:

• Final Fantasy XIII
• Bayonetta

I just finished Modern Warfare 2. It was, in a word, EPIC. The single player campaign is pretty short. I finished it on normal difficulty in about six hours. That being said it was a wild ride. I wasn’t sure the sequel could live up to the original but it did and surpassed it. This game goes to great lengths to show you a realistic depiction of war while still maintaining that video game feel. More than once I felt uneasy about what I was doing in the game. I was also at times thinking “why the hell did I just go through that?” The plot is dense and twisting. The story was totally believable and there were parts that I predicted and many that I didn’t.

I don’t want to give anything away so I am being vague on purpose. You really need to experience it without prior knowledge to get the full effect.

My biggest complaint of the first one was how wave after wave of baddies would just keep coming at you until you passed some spot. That is fixed now, yay! I don’t normally go for multiplayer but I have been playing the free for all mode and have been enjoying it a lot. I am going to try some of the other modes as well.

I got the XBOX 360 version so the lack of dedicated servers doesn’t affect me. I can say though that so far online play has been smooth and easy.

I got the three games mentioned in the title. So far the only one I am really happy with is Torchlight.

Borderlands: Diablo done wrong. Uninspired levels, repetitive creatures and a million weapons that all look and act the same and no armor! So the only loot is weapons; boring.

Dragon Age Origins: If Oblivion was a Porsche then Dragon Age Origins is a Toyota. Its the third day and it still hasn’t captured me. I don’t feel like I have to play this game.

First of all the story is right out of every single fantasy novel, movie and game you have ever experienced.

Second of all there is this lush beautiful world and you get to interact with none of it. There is a narrow path you can walk along. I loved in Oblivion that I was able to go anywhere. In Dragon Age Origins the environment seems very small and confining. The gameplay is ok but I prefer the pause based system of Knights of the Old Republic (KOTOR).

Finally, if you haven’t purchased it yet get the PS3 or PC version; they are both better than the 360 one (which I got) if you can believe that. The PC is the best though because you can zoom out and see a more tactical view.

Tonight after playing for about an hour I felt like playing Oblivion again! I just wish I hadn’t completed everything in the game. Oblivion is the only game where I got every single achievement. Right now I am not even sure I will finish Dragon Age Origins. I bought this game sight unseen due to the developers previous games (Baldur’s Gate II, KOTOR, Mass Effect) but I wish I would have waited for the reviews and peoples opinions first.

Torchlight: Gorgeous game that looks like Warcraft III and plays like Diablo II. Seriously fun times. I downloaded the demo and played for three hours straight then purchased it. I love it. I will definitely be playing this game a lot. Kudos to Runic games for pulling off a masterpiece. Apparently they are working on a MMO component and I am pretty excited to see what they come up with.

I picked up a PSP over the weekend and have been enjoying it quite a bit. I got the 3000 not the Go. I got a used 8GB memory card for it and have quite a few games installed on it already. Games I have been playing on it:

• Fieldrunners
• Thexder Neo
• Final Fantasy VII

The screen is gorgeous, the speakers are so-so but that is okay I got a headset. The controls are quite comfortable. I got a slick custom theme too.