New Toys

I got a few new toys over the weekend, namely 2 new Nintendo DS games and a new mouse for the PC.

The DS games that I picked up are "New Super Mario Bros.", which quite honestly is an awesome return to the classic Mario games I grew up with. Jump, stomp, grow, throw fireballs and defeat Koopa. Sure it doesn't use the touchpad much, which was a major beef of mine when I first heard about this game, but it's still good. The other game that I picked up is "Brain Age" which is essentially a highly addictive set of puzzles and challenges that are designed to make your brain smarter. Both games are pretty awesome and well worth getting if you have a DS.

As for the mouse, well I am sad to say that after 7 years, the original MS Intellimouse Explorer (aka the giant bear sized mouse that ones hand could barely cover) bite the dust. The cables within the mouse finally came loose (which apparently is a well known design flaw for the mouse which MS would replace if this flaw happened within the first 3 years of ownership) and that was that. I have replaced the mouse with a MS Lasermouse 6000, which seems to offer all the features the old Intellimouse Explorer had but without a wacky design I don't like (ie. Logitech's MX mice).

Summer Movies Galore

I have had a chance to see a number of movies this summer, more than what I certainly usually see in a year, and since I haven't shared any thoughts on them yet here is a combined list:

Mission Impossible 3 - Darned Good

Overall this movie has probably been my most favorite of the summer even with the zany Tom Cruise in the film. Returning to its spy and team roots this third film is helmed by JJ Abrams (who has brought us Alias and Lost) and as such has a very down to Earth feeling. Gone are the super spy gadgets of the 2nd film, replaced with a believable and practical set of spy gear that allow the MI team to take on one bad ass arms dealer/villian in Phillip Seamour Hoffman (who doesn't say much in the film but like a Boba Fett, comes out looking pretty ruthless from what he does).

Lucky Number Slevin - A Popcorn Flick

Slevin is an ok movie to see once, and if you liked the Usual Suspects you will probably enjoy this movie with regards to how it is broken down and presented to you as a "who and how done it". The basic premise of the film (which is incorrectly portraied in the trailers) is about an unlucky guy named Slevin who comes to NYC to visit a friend and along the way has the worse day of his life as two rival mob groups mistake him for someone else.

X-Men 3 : The Last Stand - Meh

An OK flick, certainly not better than X-men 2 (which IMHO is still the #1 super hero movie made today). The basic problem with the film is that it takes a while to get going with its plot/story so it feels like it lacks some cohesive focus to get the audience excited about what is happening. My biggest problems with the film were the fact that the Dark Pheonix doesn't really do anything but sit in the background (they should have done this as its own movie trilogy) and kill a few X-men, and the US government developing a "Cure" weapon that supresses the mutant gene (which is what the movie mostly is about and how various mutants react to it).

On the plus side Kelsy Grammer (aka Frasier) as the Beast is an awesome treat to see and there are definately some cool fight sequences in the movie (as well as a number of FX sequences)

Davinci Code - Intriging

Having not read the book I didn't really care much about all the hype about this movie and whether or not it was accurate enough to portray a complex storyline properly. As such my opinions of this movie is that it is a pretty cool adventure/mystery flick that is entertaining to watch and have unfold before your eyes.

Also being a bit of a buff on ancient mysteries and what not I found it pretty enjoyable to see a bunch of true facts be spun together to form a pretty interesting yarn that is portrayed.

Pirates 2 : Dead Man's Chest - Not too shabby

Pirates 2 tries to pick up where the first blockbuster film left off, unfortunately though it needs to spend about half the film getting a pretty complex storyline (which continues into the third film due out next year). The production quality in this movie however is pretty top notch and it is rather interesting to watch this treasure hunt unfold even if the majority of the film is about Captain Sparrow.

I think the movie could have been a little better if they utilized the whole cast once again instead of leaving Bill Turner and Elizabeth Swan as secondary bit players, but then again maybe the third film will resolve that for us.

Click - Popcorn Flick

The universal question of "what would it be like if I could control my life like I could my TV" is answered in a rather humorous movie (that also turns more and more serious as time goes on). Adam Sandler plays a man who is short on time as he tries to balance his home life along with career as an architect. There are some very funny scenes in the movie but sadly like I said it turns into a pretty serious film that is reminiscent of the classic "Its a Wonderful Life".

Superman Returns - Can we return him to where he went?

This movie could have been pretty cool, the new actor playing Superman/Clark Kent is pretty dammed good in the role, Kevin Spacy as Luthor is awesome, Bryan Singer (guy who directed the first two X-Men films) is in charge... so what went wrong?

Well for starters, there wasn't enough Superman in the movie. There is only 3 good sequences with him in it, the coolest being the 777 and Space Shuttle rescue you see in the trailers. The other two sequences are the usual over the top, Superman can do anything and everything bits that I think everyone is pretty tired of seeing. Kate Bosworth is a horrible Lois Lane. Lastly the film is just too dammed long, its something like 2.5 hours which could honestly be at least 2 or less if you cut out a lot of the unnecessary scenes (and there are a lot of them).

Posiedon - Why God Why!?

Truth be told I only saw this film because it was better than seeing Flight 93 or any of the stuff I had already seen. This horrible film is probably one of the cheesiest disaster films I have seen and throughout the film my group kept joking that it was too much like Armageddeon but on a boat (and were secretly hoping for a shark to get involved). Save you money here unless you are after a lame rental.

The Torque Art Community is Going Lightwave... Ya Sure...

According to a recent and very informal forum poll on the GarageGames.com site, many of the new community members seem to believe that Lightwave is now the prevelent 3D application in the community, to which I have to laugh and laugh hard. Here are my reasons why their forum poll is full of shit and should be taken with a few grains of salt.

1. Torque Lightwave users seem to have a stick up their ass trying to proove something lately. They see a thread that even mentions Lightwave and they are on it like flies on shit buzzing around and making noise thinking that the lame-ass 3D application wars of five years ago still matter. Sorry guys they don't.

2. Aside from Danny Ngan and myself I didn't see any of the serious or half serious Torque artists post on the thread (and even then Danny and I really just gave our two cents about how the thread was lame and pointless). Honestly if you are going to rate an application on popularity look at what teams are actually using to make games and based on that comment here are what applications were used to make some of the following games published on GG.com (games list is choosen from what I know what they used).
* Tennis Critters - Blender
* Think Tanks - Max & Maya
* Marble Blast & Marble Blast Ultra - Max & Maya
* Lore Invasion - Max
* Minions of Mirth - Max & Maya
* Tube Twist - Max
* Dimenxian - Max

3. Schools. The majority of schools out there teach Maya, XSI and Max (in that order if you want to look at it in terms of what's most commonly taught) of those schools the few that teach game design and use Torque rely on Maya and Max.


Note: I do not mean this as a knock against Lightwave users and its usage in Torque just venting some frustration at the pig-headedness of the Lightwave users that are currently in the Torque community who feel that because they are a small but noisy and vocal bunch that dominate it all.

Damn I Hate Wikis

After much berrating and annoyance we got Adrian to setup a Wiki, which I have affectionately called our "Squak Box", for our own internal use where we can leave various notes and information for future reference about our projects.

Sadly I must admit that I know jack shit about Wiki's and find their whole UI to be another shining example of Open Source Software and its inane lack of ease of use for an end user :) Thus explains a few things about my lack of contribution to the TDN Wiki that GarageGames runs, but I guess now I have no excuse not to learn since this internal tool will benefit the team greatly (I have a feeling that this will be like learning how to use those ungodly BSP programmer-art tools, joy!).

Canada Day = Long Development Day

July 1st is Canada Day, which to those of you in the USA is essentially the equivilent of your 4th of July but without the wanton use of a few trillion in fireworks displays. Normally this is a day of sit on your ass, have a BBQ, drink some beer and socialize but unfortunately for me the day turned into an all day development session.

Normally this would be one of those, feel bad for me because I had to sit at the PC while everyone else had fun, but unfortunately everyone else is either out of town or working so it all turned into a nice little convenient work day. Which is good because MGT was able to wrap up a rough prototype for some contract work that we are doing which involved 5 unique mini-games which have actually turned out pretty cool.

Oh well, here's to a fun Monday off :)