Brooke's Bday

This is the first time I've ever remembered or done anything for this character's bday.

Picked up some very old lineart Zach did and fooled around with it. Enjoy.

What the hell is it with this week?

Is this celebrity death week?

On June 23, Ed McMahon died.

On June 25, both Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died.

On June 28, Billy Mays died.

This is starting to creep me out, i wanted to post something when Michael Jackson died, but there really wasn't anything i could add to the thousands of sites already talking about it. I mostly felt like part of my childhood died with him.


Now Billy Mays dies, i was just fairly recently discovering youtube movies about the guy and how awesome he was.


This has been a fucked up depressing week. Personally, I will miss Billy Mays and Michael Jackson.

Tron 2.0 WTF

Tron 2.0 what the heck? It's been about 27 years since the first Tron came out (1982)! Granted, I liked the first one, but it never warranted a sequel. NEVER.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/

Game review: Ghostbusters the video game

Had to wait 2-3 days to write this lil review, mostly webhosting problems and me lookin up alternative.

So, Ghostbusters. a fairly recent game, highly awaited by Zach and actually not so much by me. I tried this game with no hype, no expectations, no idea what it even looked like or played like.

Prelude

So for starters, i have to admit i played an hacked version of this game, i only admit it because i experienced a huge dick move:

There was 2 cracks for this game, it was released by Reloaded, and they made a crack for it, but there was a Vitality crack too that claimed to be more accurate, and i tried it. HUGE MISTAKE!

If ur gonna download this game, or have downloaded it but used the vitality crack, know that crack sets the game in a weird ultra hard mode and makes the Stay Puft boss fight completely and utterly impossible, even with cheats.

It's an "anti-piracy" crack meant to just make u think the game... er, sucks hard? i dunno what the point of it was really, but yea, if u decide to try this by downloading it, use the Reloaded crack.

First impression

I have to ignore my real first impression since that one was tainted with the impossible mode from the bad crack. So i'll only base it on my experience after using the good version.

right of the bat, this game felt "complete", from the intro to the first few levels, u slowly feel like you're in the 3rd Ghostbusters movie. The gameplay isn't hard, easy to handle and Ray talks u trough it without breaking the 4th wall. The setting feels accurate to the movies and incredibly detailed it's almost eerie. The characters move, act and talk like the ones in the movies, it's just perfect.

A strange phenomenon happens right after u've been accepted as a cadet in the ghostbusters, and a huge plot is underway, and i couldn't wait!

Plot

I'm not gonna spoil anything, just comment on it.

This game has easily the most interesting plot in a videogame that I've seen for years and years. It mostly bases itself on the 1st movie's and expands on it, but doesn't ruin anything. in fact, picks up a lot of details that were left unfinsihed in the movies, and creates a really cool plot with it, worthy of the past movies at least.

I'm gonna go ahead and say this is the unofficial 3rd ghostbusters movie. And the reason it's a game is probably because it'd b too long as a movie.

They did something smart with this game: movie adaptation games almost always completely suck. instead of following the plot of one of the movies, they shaped this game as one and gave it it's own plot. BUT, they were careful to not make it something completely new and unrelated to the movies, thus keepin it interesting for the fans.


This is in fact is sequel to both movies, continues the story, it's just in game form is all.

Most movie/series adaptations makes one of these mistakes.

Gameplay

Ok, I will admit it's not as fluid or perfect as i would like, but it works somehow and should b like that, because if the character was anymore responsive, he would move in a very jerky way and ruin the immersion game.

Also, it's good that Egon gives u new hardware to use as u progress into the game, you're very slowly introduced to the weapons and their mechanics and get used to them easily. Also those weaps functions are really well thought up and cool, they're not all the same with minor tweaks.

Graphics

I am not one to b impressed with graphics, but the sheer amount of detail in this game, the feel of the movies so well emulated, it was just amazing.

It's an heavy ass game to run though, and i do mean heavy, don't b fooled by my screenshots, i have a good computer here (1Gb DDR3 graphic card), and it had ocassional slowdowns.

I normally hate realistic styles for FPS typed game, cause a realistic style is no style. Humans tend to looks so bland in these games, but man, they did an INCREDIBLE job with the main cast of this game, u can see every single skin detail on Bill Murray's face and think "Omg, he does have that lil mark on his cheek there".

Misc.

I'd like to note that the music keeps up with whatever the action is and helps the movie feel even further. A lot if not all of it feels taken directly from the movies, really well done.

I think most people will think the game is short, but not in the sense that it's small, but in the sense that u enjoy yourself and wish there was even more of it.

Enjoy a few extra screens i took:

Final thoughts on this, let's see...

I actually feel bad for downloading this game, it really is worth buying, it's a good one. Easily the best movie/series adaption type game I've ever experienced ever.

If you're wondering, i beat this game and restarted playing it right away that's how much i enjoyed it. If i had a legit version of it with achievements, I'd have a blast getting those right now. I just wanna do more in it.

I'll b keepin my eye out of secrets and easter eggs about this game in the coming weeks.

My verdict for this game, the extremely rare "Do want!"

Of all the crap...

Of all things, ever since i signed with this ISP I've had over 7-8 years, I've always been able to rely on the their filehosting service. It was a lil 30mb space accessible by ftp where u could host your own site or upload files on. no php or sql or anything, simple file storage.

Turns out after all these years, they suddenly decided to pull the plug on it (in fact they did it since the 15th which is why i haven't been able to upload anything since then). which is bad cause at least 95% of the blog's layout is hosted on it, along with a bunch of the stuff i posted.

Now i need to find a new free host to upload stuff into, anything as low as 10mb would b enough, but has to b something that isn't gonna disappear in like a year or 2 and allows me to show images from here hosted there.

Right now, i'm using Dropbox, which is a huge pain to use for mass image posting, hell, just 1 pic is annoying. but my Dropbox is for internship use so this is a temporary solution.

If the blog's layout's images go down, i'll get it on Dropbox (which will take a while), but I'm hoping to find a free host in the meantime. Suggestions for hosts would b very welcome.

Sparks and Dust

I normally do not play flash games as they tend to suck, but once in a while you randomly manage to get a pretty decent one. For me, that one is Sparks and Dust.

http://www.arcadebomb.com/play/sparks_and_dust.html


The game is a pretty simple layout. WASD for movement and Space Bar for jump.



The tutorial is in game so it'll be pretty easy to pick up and play. So get to it.

On a sidenote

Finally got the damn fedora!

It's Google calendar time

I so wouldn't be able to keep track of these myself.



So, Brooke, supposedly my "stereotypical hot" character with a huge rack.

Well, i know what I'll b doing this weekend.