Tuesday, July 28, 2009

annoying invention of the day

If you cannot afford to put a regular soap dispenser in your home or office, why not get one that is exceedingly wasteful and ineffective? That's right. When you grab the following dispenser: http://www.newtondistributing.com/panel/fotoprod/BRA%206501.gif
You will find that it is difficult for the soap to come out, and when it does, it will just drip slowly. Grab it now so that you can detest using it and wish people never came up with it.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Blogging!

Here I am sitting at work, not working, because it's after work and I'm only here because my pal is getting to the nearby airport 4 hours from now. That's a long time. However, there's no sense in me driving home, because that takes approximately an hour and a half. So I would be spending all my gas to get home and then leave again shortly thereafter. So why not blog a little?

Hello! I'm Randy O. I work at Digital Chocolate as of two days ago. I spend my time now making sweet art for stuff I can't tell you about. I like signing NDAs. It's about the closest I will ever get to being a secret agent. In fact, it's as close as I can get because it makes me a secret agent because I keep secrets as an agent of this company. I'm ignoring the somewhat inappropriate usage of "agent" and so can you. This is cooler than my normal life because I don't have to keep anything secret. Though I do love mystery.

And there are still a few people here at 7pm. That was definitely not how it was at my last job. Then again, surprisingly, people show up here even later than people at the previous place. How do they do it? Okay, I know the answer to that: they have sleep schedules just as screwy as mine. I'm changing my schedule because I've got no other choice. 2 hour train ride to work at 7am, ya got no choice but to not sleep at 3am every morning.

This change of pace in life, it really gets to ya. I'm tired right now, but, well, I could take a nap. Perhaps I shall. Oh, to be napping at my workplace (after work hours!) after three days here. I am amazing.

[Oh, yah, so this all means I have a job. Go me!]

Monday, July 13, 2009

WoW

I was scrollin' the internet through the power of the Nethernet, and a portal took me to TOSBack, a site that follows certain EULAs and such, including Blizzard's EULA for World of Warcraft. I decided to scroll down and I discovered this addition from a couple months ago:

"BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of this Terms of Use or the EULA."

Can I just highlight "BLIZZARD MAY...TERMINATE... MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS... FOR NO REASON"?!?!

Wow, that's scary. What kind of rights do you get with an MMO now? The right to what you paid for? Now back to Fallout 3 where multiplayer doesn't get in my way.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Ghostbusters: The Videogame

73/100

(I played the version for the Wii, so I can't comment on the graphics of the other versions, or if there's much difference otherwise.)

Ghostbusters is a fun game that uses a single mechanic too much while treading ultimately blocky repetitive levels. What the game does well is really give you a solid mechanic for tackling a variety of ghosts that are, in general, fairly similar. They either fly around in circles ocassionally swooping in to attack or they run/drift at you, trying to swarm you. You hit them repeatedly with various forms of energy until they either disappear right there or can then be wrestled with until they lose the fight and you can drop them into a trap. It's a fairly simple mechanic of shooting enemies without draining all of your energy and having to let it replenish. I felt energy drained slightly too fast, but still, once you had knocked enough out of the ghost to get a lock on with your proton pack, you would swing the remote in different directions, slamming the ghost against walls until you had defeated it. That was a lot of fun, I thought, and, unfortunately, it was the only really satisfying part of the game to me.

The story was decently clever, and the various actors did a good job of bringing it to life. Except Bill Murray, who seemed far too calm and quiet during the whole affair; it almost seemed as if he were whispering out his lines. I do wish they had recorded a little more idle chatter, however, as they were fairly quiet when the cutscenes weren't occurring.

As a level designer/environment artist, I was somewhat disappointed by the all-around blocky levels. They were bright and colorful and interesting for a couple minutes, and then many would descend into the same routine of extending the levels by copying sections and then pasting them over a few more times so you had more distance to cover. In particular, I wasn't a fan of the graveyard and its strangely tight corridors. I guess I've never been to graveyards with winding corridors of stone walls... Although I should say there were also decent levels, my favorite being the museum with its open halls.

Much of what annoyed me doesn't seem so bad in retrospect (a week after playing the game), but I distinctly came out of the game just glad it was done. I felt engaged for parts of the game, but at other points it was just slogging through to the next interesting checkpoint. I played through with a friend and we decided it was a good game to rent, but not to buy.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Up. My review

My review will be very short in my writing, rather start by reading Matthew Sorento's review here: http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=11758

I agree with the points that Matthew makes and it really does hit the nail on the head that Up seems to take a great concept and throw it into a blender with a bunch of other random ideas. Three questions that arose in my head over the course of the movie.
-Why do the dogs always yell squirrel when they've been raised in a jungle where I doubt squirrels exist?
-Why is a man who is at least 25 years older than the main character at least as spry?
-Why do we see the main characters trudging through jungle when every time we see their environment from afar they are at the top of a huge rocky ridge?

I thought the movie failed to really explore its exploration concept further and instead went on a more typical romp for the second half, however the mood of the first half was strong enough to carry through the characters for most of the movie and I did indeed come out of the movie wanting to accomplish something with my life. The movie was very strong emotionally, and hopefully they can tie that up next time with just as cohesive a narrative.