Resistance 2 preview

Alrighty so this is part 2 of my 2-part beta preview extravaganza.  As you may have guessed I’m talking about Resistance 2 for the PS3 this time.  This is one of my most eagerly anticipated Playstation 3 exclusives based on the first game (Resistance: Fall of Man) which I just got around to playing not too long ago.  Like the Call of Duty: World at War beta I wrote about on Tuesday, the Resistance 2 beta is multiplayer-only.  There is an added bonus, however.  The beta also includes some samples of the 8-player cooperative mode, an excellent added bonus.

Let’s start with the competitive multiplayer.  First off let me say that this is the most beautiful multiplayer game I’ve ever played.  I believe that the beta only includes one competitive map, but based on that map I have to say the graphics and environment are stunning.  Generally in games like this you kind of expect the multiplayer portion of the game to be scaled back considerably to cut down on potential game lag.  That’s not the case with the Resistance 2 muliplayer.  Not only does it look like it’s been copy/pasted straight out of the game’s singleplayer  campaign, but it runs smooth to boot.  I never had a single issue with lag while I was playing.  Granted, I never got into a 60-player match (obviously the more players there are the higher the possibility of slowdown) but in the 16 player matches I played everything ran very smoothly.

If you’re like me and you didn’t play the Resistance: Fall of Man multiplayer, let me give you some insight.  In team deathmatch (my competitive mode of choice) you play on the side of the American forces or the Chimeran army.  Each has their arsenal of weaponry from the first game, and you can choose between different classes to get the load out you most prefer.  Personally I stuck with the standard weapons (M5A2 Carbine for the Americans, Bullseye for the Chimera) and both controlled great.  One issue they were able to avoid was potential lopsidedness due to weapon balance problems but each seemed to have its own strengths and weaknesses to a point that you never felt outgunned.  The controls worked great, and the online functionality is one of the better implementations I’ve seen on the PS3.

One cool thing about the competitive multiplayer (and I think it carries over into co-op too) is that they’ve integrated a ranking system much like Halo or Call of Duty.  Basically as you get kills you get points, get enough points and you rank up, unlocking skills and goodies in the process.  That’s always a nice feature to see and it’s becoming more and more of a standard lately.  I didn’t have enough time to rank up too many times, but I did notice a lot of the other dedicated players’ skills.  If you rank high enough you can unlock weapon upgrades, better armor, and of course different abilities.  That always adds a ton of replay value, much like Call of Duty 4 and 5.

On to co-op!  This is a feature of the game that Insomniac has really been hyping.  I remember hearing about Resistance 2’s co-op not long after Halo 3’s co-op component was revealed.  Everyone was so excited to see 4 player co-op in Halo 3 and then bam, Insomniac unveils 8 player co-op for Resistance 2.  Not only that but they promised that the co-op would be focused to a story external to the singleplayer campaign of the game, which is a bit of a revolution in cooperative play.  Usually if you get co-op at all it’s just the same thing you’d see in the singleplayer campaign, but with more people.  The prospect of having entirely new content to play through with your buddies was extremely exciting.  Now that I’ve played it though, I have to say I’m a little less excited.

Don’t get me wrong, the co-op levels I played were fun (the first was fighting off an onslaught of Menials, the second was based around taking out Chimeran artillery) but they didn’t exactly feel like a campaign.  There was no interaction between co-op players, no real setup or story for the levels aside from a screen of text while the level was loading, and altogether it felt more like a scenario than an actual level.  If you’ve played either of the Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter games you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Basically the co-op is veiled as objective based but when it comes down to it all of the objectives just have to do with eliminating all of the enemies on the map.  That’s fun, but it’s not the cinematic experience I was hoping for.

Of course I only tasted a bit of the co-op, so I could be wrong on the overall experience.  Hopefully they can tie the different levels together with a meaningful story.  I think that would help a lot, and it’s entirely possible because hey – this is just a beta.  Insomniac might have chose to leave out the story bits in the beta so they don’t let any of the story slip before the game has his store shelves.  That makes sense to me.  Either way Resistance 2 is still on my must-own list of games, and I can’t wait to get back to Nathan Hale’s story.  If you’ve played the first Resistance game you’ll know it leaves off as a bit of a cliffhanger, so to see the resolution will be nice.  Add to that the solid multiplayer offering and you have a lot of content to keep yourself entertained.  Resistance 2 will be in stores on November 5th; if you own a PS3 I’d suggest picking it up if you can tear yourself away from LittleBigPlanet long enough to do so. =)

Now Playing:
The Real McKenzies – Will Ye Be Proud?
Fallout 3, LittleBigPlanet

Call of Duty: World at War preview

So I’ve been playing two betas a bit lately, and I figured since I don’t have anything else to talk about I’d go ahead and devote my two posts this week to doing previews.  Today’s game is, as you may have guessed, Call of Duty: World at War.  I got into the CoD5 beta by preordering the game at GameStop (so if you’re interested I suggest you go do the same) and have had enough time to put a couple hours into the game so I figured I’d just share my thoughts.  The beta is competitive multiplayer only.

First let me say that Call of Duty 4’s multiplayer portion of the game was awesome.  It introduced quasi-RPG elements which allowed you to earn levels, skills and guns as you played.  If you liked CoD4’s multi then you’ll love CoD5’s.  It’s basically the same system, with the main difference being that the game takes place in World War II.  Obviously that means you’ll be playing in different environments with different weapons and different skills.  I was a little concerned about that since it’s a devolution in technology, and so after having used modern weapons I was afraid that the older weapons would feel out of place.  Fortunately that’s not the case.  The game feels great and the perks work really well.

As far as perks go (perks are skills you unlock as you play) there is a lot of old favorites and some new ones as well.  From what I remember, some of the older perks include:

• Martyrdom (drop a grenade on death)
• Deep Impact (higher bullet damage)
• Juggernaut (take more damage without dying)
• Last Stand (before dying you get to pull your pistol to try and get a kill)
• Sonic Boom (higher explosives damage)

The newer ones I’ve been most anticipating are:

• Toss Back (resets grenade fuse so you can throw grenades back at the enemy that’s thrown it)
• Second Chance (lets you revive downed comrades)
• Shades (decreases intensity of signal flares)
• Reconnaissance (reveals artillery and tank locations on the map)

There’s also a whole new list of vehicle perks, which applies to another new feature of the Call of Duty 5 multiplayer – vehicles.  In the beta there’s only one map which features vehicles, but I was really interested/concerned to try them out.  The problem with vehicles is game balance.  If you have a ton of vehicles the whole game becomes a Twisted Metal spin-off with players driving around all over the place causing havoc and ultimately detracting from the infantry experience.  From the one map that has maps in the beta I’m really happy with the limited amount of vehicles they’ve placed.  The map is called RoundHouse and is basically an old destroyed train yard.  On the map there are only two vehicles, one tank for each team (this is for the Team Deathmatch and War gametypes, it may vary otherwise).  Have just one tank per team is great for a couple reasons.

First, it makes the tanks menacing.  If there’s 10 tanks and everyone has a tank you aren’t really concerned about crossing paths with one.  However when the other team is dominating with their tank but yours has been destroyed, you’re much more cautious.  Sure there’s a perk to carry a bazooka, but you only get 2 shots and unless you hit the tank from behind you won’t destroy it.  Another cool thing about single tanks is that because it’s so menacing it’s a great distraction.  I can see strategies being developed where one or two people hop into a tank and then the rest of your team flanks the enemy while they’re distracted.  I’ve tried a similar strategy on my own and it has worked quite well, so that adds value to having vehicles.  Rather than just being another way to get around the map and kill opponents it can be worked in tactically.  Great stuff.

The other two maps are Castle (a Japanese village) and Makin (a seaside village at night).  All three are original maps which is good to see, since I remember playing Call of Duty 2 and 3 and being a little unhappy that they had maps from the original Call of Duty in them.  That’s not to say that I wouldn’t like to see updated versions of those maps (Carentan was a favorite) but it’s always good to have new ones.  There is some bugginess still though, particularly on RoundHouse where I’ve run into some people who are able to glitch their way under the map and kill everyone without being vulnerable.  Hopefully that will be patched but this is a beta so I can’t critique it too harshly.

Another weird thing about the game is how weapons are earned.  In Call of Duty 4 you started with an M16 and worked your way up from there.  In Call of Duty 5 (this is the primary rifle/assault class) you start with an SVT-40 which is a Russian weapon.  From there you get a Gewehr 43 which is a German weapon.  Maybe the problem is that I know too much about World War II-era weaponry, but it just feels weird playing as an American soldier using a traditionally German weapon.  By the same turn it’s weird playing as a Japanese soldier and using an American Thompson sub-machine gun.   I guess the same argument sort of applied to CoD4 but since it was all modern weaponry I guess it was easier to justify that anyone could be using any weapon.  Dunno.  It’s a weird and very nitpicky problem and doesn’t really matter much, it’s just something I noticed.

Despite having spent a decent amount of time with this beta there’s still more multiplayer scenarios for Call of Duty 5 that I’m looking forward to.  First, CoD5 will be the first time that co-op play is introduced to the Call of Duty universe.  You’ll be able to play through the entire campaign with your buddies.  That’s obviously very appealing.  Second, and this is a much more recent development, Treyarch has revealed a cool new cooperative zombie mode which looks to be a lot of fun.  It takes cues from Left 4 Dead, one of my most anticipated games this year, and applies them to World War II.  Like I always say, the only thing worse than a nazi is a zombie nazi:

‘Nuff said.  CoD5 is shaping up to be a multiplayer powerhouse.  Add to that the undoubtedly stellar singleplayer campaign and I think the game might end up being a “sleeper” best-seller this holiday season.  Gears of War 2?  Fallout 3?  It’s entirely possible that they won’t hold a candle to CoD5.

Now Playing:
The Tossers – Siobhan
Little Big Planet

Dropbox : The Video

I wrote a post some time ago about Dropbox.  It’s an awesome online storage solution for backup, syncing and sharing your files.  Despite having written about it I was still inclined to do a video showing how the whole thing works, so that’s exactly what I did.  I even compared it to Live Mesh a bit so that’s a bit of a bonus.  Thanks for watching!

Dropbox

Now Playing:
The Tossers – The Sheep In The Boots
Saints Row 2, Resistance 2 (multiplayer beta)

Mobile applications: the future of software development

I twittered a link to an article by Gizmodo yesterday in which it was announced that BlackBerry was bringing it’s own application store to their mobile products.  Obviously the success of the BlackBerry is fairly well known, but with the iPhone gaining more and more traction it’s not entirely unexpected that BlackBerry would want to throw their hat into the mobile application market along with the recently released T-Mobile G1 (powered by Google’s Android OS).  Could this be the new trend in application development?

As more and more emphasis is put on cloud computing it seems that there isn’t as much need for actual desktop applications anymore.  Presumably the ultimate goal of computing in the cloud is that we’ll be able to access server-based applications from a web browser, much like 280slides and Pixlr – two websites I’ve probably talked about a little too much recently.  I’ve also made reference to the Google applications (docs, calendar, mail) and Microsoft’s Live services (email, calendar, Skydrive, Live Mesh) as other good examples of where cloud computing might be headed.  So then, in 15 years will traditional desktop application developers still have a role in the tech industry?

I think that’s where all of this push for mobile applications comes in.  Obviously they’re successful.  I wrote a post about the developer of Trism for iPhone being on track to make $2 million by 2009.  There’s a market here.  Besides, isn’t that what we’ve wanted from our cellphones all along, that is to say a mobile computing device?  The phones in question (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) have some features with all sorts of potential for developers – functionality that we dont necessarily see in even sophisticated computers today because they don’t lend themselves well.  I’m talking about GPS, video capturing, accelerometers and obviously telephony – and it shows with some of the more innovative apps to hit the phones’ respective stores.

Of course there is some room for improvement.  The G1 for instance, only has around 30 applications right now despite being completely open source.  Also a lot of the applications are a little too innovative for their own good; for example there’s an application that calculates your carbon footprint as you drive using GPS (it’s called Ecorio, seen here) and yet there isn’t a quality instant messenger app.  Some have speculated that this is because of Google’s $10 million contest for the best Android application, which may have spurred more incentive to make an overly ambitious application instead of focusing on something more basic (and yet essential).

It seems like common sense to me that as the shift to smaller devices happens that developers will have a home on mobile platforms.  It could be sort of a trend in which BlackBerry sees the iPhone and Andriod app stores and says “we need to get in on that as well” but based on some of the success stories so far I think mobile applications are here to stay.  They aren’t new, but now they’re beginning to take front stage.  I don’t dare say that this shift will be as important as the shift to the internet, but to say that mobile applications won’t have at least comparitive importance is rather shortsighted.  So if you’re a desktop application developer (or any developer in general) it might just be worth your while to grab a copy of the iPhone/Android/Blackberry(???) SDK and tinker around a bit. =)

Now Playing:
The Pogues – The Battle March Medley
Saints Row 2

Could the economic downturn spell doom for Web 2.0 startups?

Very few people have been happy with the way the economy has been lately.  Of course there’s always the bullish approach to a poor economy and start market – time to buy at record lows, right?  But what if you’re a web 2.0 company with little to no funding and no business model?  There are a ton of sites out there these days that don’t really have a means of monetization beyond advertising.  So then, what’s going to happen to the Twitters of the world?

Let me start off by saying that I’m not really concerned about Twitter.  Twitter is much too viable to completely fade away into obscurity at this point.  After all, Britney Spears just opened a Twitter account, so that must mean something.  How about the Twitter clones though?  You’ve got Plurk, Jaiku, Zannel and even Pownce all competing for the same market.  Each service varies slightly but in the long run they offer the same service: micro-blogging.  None of these services charge a fee either, unless you take into account Pownce’s nominal fee for the pro version of their service.  As I mentioned, that puts a lot of emphasis on the good old banner ad.

Now, I’ve heard a lot of people say that the first thing to go in an economic downturn, recession, whatever you want ot call it – is advertising.  Businesses trying to cut back on some spending end up turning to the marketing department in order to save some cash but cutting some of their promotional campaigns.  That’s obviously bad news if you’re Twitter.  Still, I’m not positive if web advertising will be hit the hardest.  You would think, if anything, web advertising might see a bump in all of this.  If companies are reining in spending on advertising they might want to turn to a cheaper alternative to popular media ads.  Seems to me like the web is a perfect place to move forward.

That’s all well and good but there are a lot of sites out there that don’t even advertise.  Not too long ago I did a few video walkthroughs on some cool web applications – 280slides.com and Pixlr.com.  Both provide excellent functionality but, because they’re situated like a desktop application, fail to integrate any sort of banner ads or anything.  That’s great for the end-user but not so great for the startup’s bottom line.  How long before investors realize there’s no money in a free online service like 280slides.com and decide to pull funding?  Of course they could always hope to be bought out by the Microsofts and Apples of the world (seriously – 280slides and Pixlr would make great additions to the Live/MobileMe suite of services).

I’m not really sure where I was going with this post, but it’s just one of those things that I’ve been thinking about recently.  My favorite part about using the internet is having access to all these cool web applications and social networks, but you never know, we might finally be approaching the Web 2.0 equivalent of the dot-com crash from 2000.  That’s a pretty cheery thought!

Now Playing:
Street Dogs – Tale of Mass Deception

Apple’s Notebook Event – 10/14/2008

Alrighty so let me first apologize for not getting a post up on Thursday.  I was kinda busy this past week so I never got around to it.  Instead, I’ve decide to record a video of what I would have written about on Thursday, which as you might guess was Apple’s notebook event from this past Tuesday.  Here you go, she’s a two-parter:

Apple Notebook Event – 10/14/2008 (Part I)

Apple Notebook Event – 10/14/2008 (Part II)

Now Playing:
Canibus – Curriculuum 101
Saints Row 2, Call of Duty : World at War (multiplayer beta)

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Clear Sky

This isn’t a review in the usual sense.  With Clear Sky I just wanted to talk a little bit about it because I made a tweet not too long ago saying that, despite wanting to desperately, I couldn’t recommend the game to anyone based on the amount of bugs it was plagued with.  With the retail 1.0 version of Clear Sky (and actually I think I installed a 1.05 patch of some sort before starting the game) I ended up running into a game-ending bug 17 hours in that forced me to stop playing until the game’s developer, GSC, released a patch that fixed the issue.  I’m happy to say that this past week Steam finally slipped the patch in, and installing it the game ran more-or-less flawlessly.

I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Clear Sky is an important game to talk about for a few reasons.  First of all, in a day and age when the PC as a gaming platform is in a sketchy time of transition it’s rare to see a PC exclusive get released, let an exclusive that’s good.  Add to that the fact that GSC is a relatively “indy” developer when compared to most out there and I’m quick to realize that the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise is special.  The game, despite having very little going for it compared to most big-budget games released today, is pretty great on multiple levels.  First, some background.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes place in the near-future in the areas that surround the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.  It’s well after the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and groups of stalkers have begun to infiltrate the area in order to find rare artifacts created by the accident’s effect on the world around the NPP, which is referred to as “the zone” by stalkers.  Clear Sky is a prequel to the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, and I mean that in the literal sense.  The events in Clear Sky lead right up to immediately before Shadows of Chernobyl, a game that I played and loved.

Let me first point out some of the obvious things the game does right – firstly, atmosophere.  The game’s a first person shooter that looks and feels unlike any other game I’ve ever played.  A lot of people give Bioshock tons of credit and claim that it has the best atmosphere of any game in existence, but I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trumps it.  When you play one of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games you know you’re in the zone, you’re familiar with the conflicts in the zone, and everything just feels “right.”  The games have a unique environment that I haven’t seen in any other game, and that’s not just the visual aspect.  There’s also the in-game characters, the sound design, and the storyline to name a few.  Needless to say when Clear Sky finally hit store shelves I was excited to get back into the zone.

That’s why I was so disappointed when I couldn’t finish the game because of the bug I mentioned.  The bug had to do with the autosave feature getting out of wack, and after a certain point if you moved in between the many areas of the game you’d get a crash to the desktop.  That’s obviously no fun.  Now, let me first say that I give the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games a bit of exception critically when it comes to technical issues.  Neither of the games run as well as most high-budget alternatives released lately.  There’s some slowdown, and the un-avoidable glitch here or there, but generally I accept those technical problems because, as I mentioned earlier, the game’s developer is a relatively small company who probably can’t afford to rigourously test their games for a mass market.  I also am partial to them because their games are so good despite being a smaller developer that they have that quasi-underdog appeal.  The point is, even with some technical difficulties their games are some of the best I’ve played.

I could not, however, give exception to the game-ending glitch I mentioned (thus the tweet).  There’s nothing worse than buying a game, investing 15+ hours playing it, and then simply being cut short.  The bug was so bad that when I heard GSC put out a patch I was certain it wouldn’t solve the problem, and if it did there was the potential that I would have to start all over anyways.  I’m happy to say that neither of those assumptions ended up being true.  The patch fixed everything up and the game run as good as ever.  Not only that but I’ve been assured by some other S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans that if you do start up a new game in the future the game runs even better than it ever had with the new patch.  For those reasons I just wanted to make a post and praise GSC.  They really delivered on the patch, and as a result I was able to finish their game (spoilers: it’s amazing).

It seems like such a simple thing that we may take for granted these days, not just with games but with any software.  If something’s broke Microsoft, Apple, EA, Activision or some other company steps in and resolves the issue relatively quickly.  The turn-around isn’t as easy for smaller companies though, and I think it’s important to praise them when they put the extra effort in to fix problems and make their customers happy.

So where does that leave S.T.A.L.K.E.R.?  Well, I can now officially recommend the game 100%.  If you have a gaming-quality PC you should definitely play both S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadows of Chernobyl and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky.  Both are amazing games that get overlooked far too often.  Not only are they stunning visually (S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky has the best DX10 support I’ve seen in any game period, including lighting better than Crysis) but the story and gameplay are spot-on.  If you’re looking forward to Fallout 3 and you haven’t played S.T.A.L.K.E.R. then you’re missing out, because S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is of a similar premise.  If you’re looking for a new game to warm up that gaming PC, something that unfortunately doesn’t happen quite as often these days, do yourself a favor and go pick up a copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky!

Now Playing:
The Real McKenzies – Bugger Off
Spore

Pixlr.com – Free image editing

This week’s video is another short walkthrough of a handy web application.  This one’s called Pixlr (at pixlr.com) and it lets you do some in-depth image editing from inside your web browser.  The interface is really slick and reminds me a lot of Photoshop.  Pixlr’s great if you are at a machine that doesn’t have your favorite image editing application installed and you need to do some image work, especially if you’re a Photoshop user because you’ll be instantly familiar with Pixlr.  Thanks for watching!

My app store applications

So it’s been a while since I first started using Apple’s app store, and I’ve tested various different applications that provide various different functionality.  Based on what I have used so far and what I’m still using to this day, I figured I’d write a post outlining some of my favorites.  Granted I probably don’t install new applications as often as a lot of people do, so this list might not be full of the latest and greatest, but still if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch and you haven’t heard of the following applications you should go ahead and check them out.  Let’s get started!

Air Sharing

Ever wish you could use your iPhone or iPod Touch as an external hard drive?  Better yet it’d be nice to view some important documents from the device as well.  That’s what Air Sharing does.  When you set up Air Sharing you set up a connection between your Mac and your touch device.  What that means is that you can easily mount your iPhone or iPod Touch to your Mac wirelessly.  Once mounted you can drag and drop files from your Mac to your iPhone completely seemlessly.  I’ve found it’s been particularly useful for .pdf and .doc files I’ve been given in classes.  If I’m in class and I need to reference something in the notes I just pull out my iPod Touch and I’m good to go with Air Sharing.  Air Sharing is also free, which is a good bonus.

Remember the Milk

There are a ton…and I mean a ton of to-do applications for the iPhone.  Some are free and some are paid, and as expected some are fairly basic while others offer a lot of functionality.  My to-do list is a website, however.  Remember the Milk has an excellent web app built specifically for the iPhone which sings on the device and looks better than most to-do software applications I’ve seen in the app store.  I think there has been a lot of people who have forgotten that Apple was pushing web applications pretty hard before they unveiled the SDK for the iPhone, and Remember the Milk is certainly not a website which should go overlooked.

Aside from the pretty interface which allows you to add tasks to your various lists, set priorities, set due dates and so on (all of the features you’d expect with a to-do list), RTM integrates into a lot of other applications as well.  For instance, I recently started using Mozilla Labs’ Ubiquity extension, and there’s already a nice command for adding and viewing your tasks straight from Firefox.  RTM also has a Firefox plugin which shows your tasks inline with your gmail account and (as I’ve mentioned before) using gmail in a web browser without my tasks sitting to the right has since become foreign to me.  Finally there’s even an RTM dashboard widget which allows you to tick off completed tasks throughout the day.  If you haven’t used Remember the Milk and you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, check out i.rememberthemilk.com from your touch device and give it a spin.  The only drawback is that it costs $25 after the initial 15-day trial period, but I loved it so much I dropped the cash without thinking twice.

Wikipanion

This is a fairly simple application.  We all know that Safari is excellent on the iPhone.  Still, there’s sometimes when you just want to search Wikipedia and get some information that is pre-formatted for easy reading on the iPhone.  That’s what Wikipanion does.  All you have to do is open Wikipanion, search for Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes and the application pulls down the article after formatting it for the iPhone’s screen.  It also has predictive queries so if you start by typing a few letters of your keyword chances are pretty good that one of Wikipanion’s suggestions will be what you’re looking for.  Wikipanion is another great free app.

1Password

It’s obvious that one of the best parts about Apple’s touch devices is that they’re mobile computers.  As a result, you probably find yourself logging into your web services from the device quite often.  However, if there’s one complaint that anyone can make about the iPhone it’s that the keyboard is a little unfriendly when it comes to inputting strong passwords.  1Password allows you to safely and securely store your passwords on your iPhone or iPod Touch.  Using 1Password you only have to remember…you guessed it…one password in order to access your others.  After inputting your master password you get access to your concealed account credentials, and from 1Password you can login to various sites.  1Password is free for now despite being a paid application on the Mac, so if you’re even slightly interested I’d check it out before they decide to start charging.

So there you have it.  Those are the applications (aside from ones I’ve mentioned in previous posts) which I’m enjoying the most right now.  Honorable mentions go to Twitterific which is still my favorite Twitter client on the iPod Touch and Bloomberg, an awesome stock application that blows Apple’s Stocks app out of the water.  The only reason I’m giving those two an honorable mention is because Twitterific isn’t exactly the most obscure application, and Bloomberg is really only useful if you’re a stock junkie…otherwise it’s just pretty to look at.  =)

Now Playing:
Deftones – Teenager (Idiot Version)
The Orange Box

Valve’s Source engine

I recently received the Orange Box from Gamefly because I was interested in playing through the Half-Life 2 games again, plus I hadn’t ever played the console variants so I was curious as to how the game would feel when playing with a controller.  Turns out the game controls fine and after an hour or so it feels pretty natural.  What has really struck me after playing through first Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One (I’m working through Episode 2 right now) was how well the Source engine has held up 4 years after Half-Life 2 came out.

When Half-Life 2 came out in 2004 it was right on the heals of the much-anticipated Halo 2.  I also played Halo 2 recently, the Games for Windows Live version, and one thing that was clear about that was how bad it looked.  Half-Life 2 is a completely different story.  The Source engine (and thus Half-Life 2) still looks great.  Not only that but there’s a marked improvement in the graphics when going from Half-Life 2 to Half-Life 2: Episode One, and then another improvement from Episode One to Episode Two.

The reason this struck me was that I’ve been realizing how short-lived a lot of game engines are these days.  I remember when id’s Doom 3 came out (also in 2004) the game was heralded for being amazing-looking.  The game’s engine (Tech 4) was supposed to be the new standard moving forward.  As it turned out id only ever made 4 games with Tech 4 before moving on to Tech 5.  Valve’s Source on the other hand is still being used to this day.  In fact, one of my most anticipated game releases this year uses it (Left 4 Dead) and it’s looking better than ever.  Including Left 4 Dead there are 11 major Source releases, not to mention hundreds of mods and third-party games which use the engine.

This isn’t exactly news but I just marveled at the thought that Valve was able to create an engine in a field which is ever-changing, and make it last for 4+ years.  Plus it’s not just the way the Source engine looks, it also has beautiful sound design, HDR lighting, awesome character animation, advanced enemy AI…the list goes on and on.  I’m starting to sound like a true Valve fanboy but to be honest, if I was ever labeled a fanboy of anything I’d gladly take the label for Valve.  They make great games based on a great engine, and they keep coming up with fresh ideas.  I can’t wait to play Left 4 Dead next month and it should be interesting to see what they come up with in the coming years…aside from the eagerly-anticipated Half-Life 2: Episode 3.

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