Ok, I’ve looked at Borderlands and it’s probably not the pickup and play variety. It seems like WoW without the crowd; pure shoot and loot. You run around doing missions and tend to accumulate lots of guns with different specs. shoot, loot, sell, repeat. There’s experience points and tons of upgrades.
The art style reminds me of Crackdown, so does the drop action. You off someone then hit point numbers, XP, ammo, guns, and money shoot out of his ass. The gun’s are fucking cool and each attribute definitely makes a difference when using them, plus there are fun little perks like “chance to set on fire” and I hear that there are sweet amalgamations of weapons like a missile-launcher shotgun.
One thing I noticed was that the FOV is really tight, like claustrophobic style. I don’t feel like I’m fully out of sniper scope view for some reason. That make firefights a little tense, since she can get right up on you without a good peripheral hint that they’re getting close. The compass shows bad guys as red dots, large red dots if they’re aggro, but I found myself whipping around to make sure I wasn’t being jumped by a midget psycho. (Yes, midget psycho’s are bad guys that crop up every now and again, squealing and giggling like a clown, extremely funny the first time when you don’t expect it)
Also of annoyance but technically more “realistic” is when you utilizing the automated ammo, gun, medial vending machines, up to your nuts in stats comparisons and equipment, you can still be attacked. I was shopping for SMG upgrades, and hear this giggling and howling, then I started taking damage. I closed out the shop screen, spun around and blew the head off of whatever was bothering me, but it just shows that this game’s a little different than your average FPS or RPG. When you go into your inventory screen it also doesn’t pause the game. So switching weapons apart from your two currently equipped ones during a firefight may cost you some health. You can pause the game by hitting escape at least.
Oh and respawn. Like an MMO the enemies you brutally murdered respawn in just a few short minutes. I butchered an entire Skag nest, went over the hill to loot some shit, then shot a few more things, and when I went to leave the original nest of Skags was repopulated. It’s good in one sense because it gives you a nice/fast way of grinding for gear, money, and XP but for an FPS I wasn’t expecting the Doom3 Monster hole effect. As far as your death, when you die you respawn back to the last respawn point you physically walked past for a small fee. If you run out of fund I’m assuming your totally fucking dead.
In true RPG style as you level up there’s skill tree’s for different things. Just how Team Fortress characters have different abilities, depending on which core class you pick when you create your character (Hunter, Siren, Soldier, or Brick) you have a different set of abilities that you can train as you play the game. The solider is all I played so far and he has this auto turret called the scorpion that he can drop that has a shield you can duck behind. Add points to the scorpion to add more firepower, longer duration/damage, healing of teammates near the turret, added damage for player near the turret, that kind of stuff. Skill points are can go to your core skills, like weapon specialization and passive stats.
Along with Skills, leveling up increases your core stats, and allows you to use weapons with higher level requirements. For loot whores out there this gave follows Diablo-style loot rarity colors. From the Wiki:
Borderlands uses a classification system for gear that follows the standard color-coding system for RPGs. A common (white) gun would be average, an uncommon (green) would be slightly above average, a rare (blue) would be a premium gun, an epic (purple) would be a very strong gun, and legendary (orange) guns are the best of the best.There 3 type of orange,Light Orange, Orange and Dark Orange. Dark Orange being the rarest. The rarity of each gun is indicated by color as stated on the page of each gun. (See Category:Weapons)
White < Green < Blue < Purple < Light Orange < Orange < Dark Orange
For those who like to cut to the chase on loot value, the game gives you the trade-in value of the item at the bottom of the stat sheet and the specs are color coded (like in mass effect) to let you know what stat is higher (green) or lower (red) than your currently equipped weapon.
Like in Wow and other RPG’s if you trying to fight a character with a skull next to their name and health bar, you are in for some hurt. It’s best to grind up or do other quests until you’re about the same level. There is definitely the same WoW damage/difficulty ramp when fighting slightly higher level characters that are skulled. You may blast through their shield, but they won’t take anywhere near the physical damage you think that they would with the amount of lead your feeding them. All the while your shield and life is being pulled out of you like a nightmarish happy-ending.
It has 4 player coop, in sort of the same vein as diablo battle.net matches, since it’s an RPG. Monsters get stronger with more players entering the world, weapon trades are possible, and joint XP. it’s great for me because I like soloing games anyways, but there is the opportunity to team up if you’re the social butterfly of headwounds.
Anyway, I’m interested in seeing where this game goes as it’s pretty fun, but I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, due to the RPG structure of this FPS. I loved Mass Effect, and this covers the combat (minus the non-realtime strategy portion), the weapon lust, and the character building, and it has a WoW open world (level gated) and grinding/loot model. An interesting mix, indeed.
On a scale to 1 – 100, I’d say, so far, it’s about an 85.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. [...]
Among the graphic statements…is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: “I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.” [...]
Three detainees, including the alleged victim, refer to the use of a phosphorescent tube in the sexual abuse and another to the use of wire, while the victim also refers to part of a policeman’s “stick” all of which were apparently photographed.
Now the “kid” in the above example was male, as was the translator who was allegedly busting up his bowels.
A senior military officer familiar with the photos told me that they would likely provoke a storm of outrage if released. … Some show U.S. personnel engaged in sexual acts with prisoners and each other. In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position. [...]
Still other withheld photographs have been circulating among U.S. soldiers who served in Iraq. One soldier showed them to me, including a photograph in which a male in a U.S. military uniform receives oral sex from a female prisoner.
So the decision that Barack made to block the release of these photos is a little more justified. No matter how many “My Bad”’s you issue after revealing that your government condoned and permitted sexual assault on male and female (sometimes underage) detainees in your charge, you are going to have a tough time “focusing on the future” without answering calls to prosecute military and CIA personnel and also civilian contractors. I really don’t think that there’s any way around prosecutions and further investigations, because I think that there isn’t way to ignore this any further. I read a story yesterday that said essentially Maliki was briefed on these photos and stated, “Bagdad will burn” if the world were to see these images. Releasing the photos without any actions taken to apprehend or answer to the crimes these images depict would probably rush the United States out of the region much sooner than planned, for good or for ill. The longer Obama hesitates to sort out these crimes and bring perpetrators/planners/instigators to justice the more he is complicit in the coverup.
I love how these bastards parse the phrase “pain and suffering” and choose to view both terms as a joint concept with which waterboarding was conveniently not compatible. I’m sure we would all enjoy to have our “pain and suffering” discounted in such a detached and calculated manner. As we all know, suffering = prolonged event. As long as you break one’s suffering into several “seasons” of “episodes” then something like watching “the hills” could not be considering “suffering”, I’m happy to say, by John Yoo’s definition.
Seriously, all these guys need a good stiff jab in the balls.
I was driving to a LAN party the other day with a friend and for some reason (no pun intended) we got on the subject of music and why we don’t make it anymore. I felt compelled to express a frustration that I’ve had with music software that essentially prevents me from creating anything these days. Every time I get the desire to open one of these programs I hesitate because of all the bullshit hoops you have to leap through in order to set your canvas and get something accomplished.
One has the power, through software, to accomplish insanely complex tasks that were impossible with prior technologies, but with this power comes an immensity of technical hang-ups that don’t exist when you have a 4-track and a guitar, for instance.
In my mind, workflow is largest barrier between me and my creating. Some people (including me, when I was a student and had time to burn) have no problem with a few set backs or technical glitches. They accept this as par for the course, or use these limitations to their benefit by finding creative workarounds. I really have no time for this kind of “dicking around” anymore. Through the years I’ve come to expect a certain amount of functionality to the applications that I use, and I’ve distilled these findings to the following list.
1. Drum Synthesis
2. Audio Recording
3. Self-reliance (doesn’t require additional software to be used to fullest extent)
4. Plug-in Support
5. Flexible audio routing
6. Backwards compatibility
7. Standardized file formats
I’ve learned that no program is perfect in respect to its workflow/features because not every program is created with the same musician in mind. That brings me to Reason 4 (or 3).
Reason 4 is built from the mindset of someone with an affinity for hardware. All software instruments and virtual “devices” within Reason are modeled from existing or imagined hardware devices. Inputs, outputs, signal flow, patch cables, bypasses, and even drawn-on power cables are featured, and perform as imagined. While this is “cute” and certainly helps those not familiar with abstract computer-based music software get their heads around the concept, it’s impossibly limiting! Wiring up a patch is just as arduous a task in Reason as in real life, but with the added “bonus” (see, handicap) of having to use a mouse to patch everything together. Everything about Reason screams “waste of time”!
For example, I’m a musician who, on occasion, likes to add vocals or a live bass/guitar part to a song. I also tend not to record my parts perfectly on the first try, nor do I set “live” parts in stone for a whole project. I tend to revert back to these recordings and either re-record them or cut them up. Ok fine, now, Reason costs about $400 for the latest version. It’s a bit more if you want all of the bonus content. You’d think that this amount of money will allow you to accomplish the above tasks without spending additional money. You would, of course, be wrong.
If you want to record vocal or other live instrument parts for use in Reason your only “real” choice (see my comments on Rewire below) is to record those tracks in an external audio editor and import them into one of Reason’s two sampler “devices” (three, if you count ReDrum, four if you count Dr. Rex and have deep pockets). Of course, by doing this you’ve “locked-in” that recording, so that if you had to re-record or make changes you’d have to go back into that external application and re-record, edit, export, then import all over again.
Like the Vocoder in Reason? Me too. Too bad you can’t reach the damn thing with a live input. What’s the point of a vocoder without a live input, you ask? Nothing, it’s just a stupid audio effect. Maybe there are tons of people out there that can imagine what their tracks will sound like with a vocoder without having to preview it ahead of time, but I don’t have time to record, export, import, map, then playback while playing another patched instrument as a carrier just to hear if I like a fucking vocoder added to my track!
Ok ok, let’s fucking forget the “live” features of Reason, as there are very few, and honestly it’s not meant to be a multi-track recorder or full-out DAW. Let’s move onto Reason’s bread and butter, namely electronic music production.
Synth drums?! Don’t get me wrong, people can do amazing things with samplers, amazing, but the days where you had to mixdown a software synth track to a sampler bank because you had seriously limited CPU power are quickly coming to an end. I mean, am I the only person that thinks sample-based drums are extremely limiting? What if you want to “create” your own drum sounds? Well, open an instance of Thor, Subtractor, Maelstrom, or what have you and start twisting, right? Well, none of these instruments are intended for drum sounds. Yeah, there are envelope options for it, but a whole device set aside for a single drum sound is pretty wasteful. Plus, if you wanted to add this drum sound from a Reason synth into one of the many sample devices (like ReDrum) there isn’t an easy way of bringing over your creations to these devices (despite the fact that you’re “locked” into a sample instead of being able to tweak a knob and pull a totally different sound into your mix). All I can think of is setting the sequencer to playback only a single note, mute the rest of the tracks, render to disk, then open in an external audio editor, clean up/trim the recording if necessary, then save this to disk and import it into Reason. What a fucking joke! Can it be done, yes. Will I do it, fuck no.
So you like to cut-up drum loops, eh? Well bend over, douche-neck. Reason 4 (as in Reason 3) features a phrase-sampler, Dr. Rex, that sounds great on paper. It allows you to playback cut up loops and re-sequence them at any tempo. Too bad the format that the “Rex Player” accepts (the .rex format) is only able to be exported from one particular application. If you guessed that this program is called Reason, then you owe me $200 bucks. Actually, you have to purchase ReCycle from propellerheads for $200 bucks to attain the capability of exporting Rex files from your own loop content. Kinda defeats the utility of such a “device” when you need to buy more software to use it properly, IMHO. And what is so special about ReCycle? Well not so goddamn much, at least not anymore, or not special to the degree that they couldn’t include the app’s functionality into Reason. The program is practically unchanged from when it was originally released in 1994. (we’re only on version 2.1, 15 years later, guys? …guys?) I’ve never wanted to buy the software because it seems so rarely supported or updated, that I figured that it would eventually be dropped due to lack of interest. I’d then have a dead-app that I couldn’t guarantee would function on any later OS X or Windows versions, so what’s the point?
I thought I could work around these plainly noted limitations but as I’ve tried to use the software I always, and I mean “always”, hit these walls one time or another in a project. Yes, I can add a lot of this functionality by tying Reason to a full DAW via Rewire, but if you’ve tried this out yourself you’d understand why this isn’t even a fucking option in my book. Using Rewire to connect Reason to Logic or another app is no different in my book than going back to using hardware instruments.
Using Rewire, you now have to make sure that your apps are opened and initialized in the right order (just like using a hardware synth where you have to load the correct bank before playback). You also have to worry about having two project files to save, manage, and backup, just like when you have to worry about saving a bank from a hardware synth to make sure you have a copy for future use, or for when you run out of internal memory. When I was using Reason in Rewire mode in Logic 7 there was a limitation where Reason would only play through as a single stereo track, not individual outputs. Which, even if this was a setup issue on my part, or a limitation that was resolved by the release of version 4 (I was using version 3 at the time) it’s still a pain in the ass to setup.
If they want to encourage the use of Rewire then they should build in a series of presets for outputting multi-channel to outside DAW’s, otherwise fuck off.
Would it be too much to ask to add your existing virtual instruments into Reason, like the modules from Rebirth? Why even have a software connection to Rebirth from Reason on OS X if ReBirth isn’t a OS X native application? That’s like a casket with a satellite dish. Foist your abortion-ware on someone else.
Like I said, I thought I could ignore these limitations, but in following the virtualization of hardware model they virtualized almost all of the limitations of hardware as well (minus the most important, instantiation). There is so much promise to an app like Reason, but I fear this promise will never be realized unless they dump some of the “hardware baggage” and think about the totality of service that’s expected by their customers. Make it easy for musicians to create music with this technology not in spite of it.
With 12 apps being offered for $39.99, you can’t beat the deal and with 25% of all orders going to charity you can even rationalize your purchase as being a gift to those less fortunate. Win-Win
I’ll talk about one of the major apps in the list that caught my eye.
Kinemac, the 3D motion graphics application, tops the app list as far as retail value ($299). If you’re a Mac user with at least a marginal amount of interest in media production, I would say based on its inclusion you would be hard pressed to find a reason not to buy this bundle. While it doesn’t quite measure up to apps like Apple’s Motion or Adobe’s AfterEffects in the realm of features, it’s certainly intuitive and easy on the eyes.
Some of the more powerful features in Kinemac include being able able to drag damn-near any image type to any surface for mapping. You can map not only 2d raster images but text, 2d vector (svg), and video files as well! If you don’t fancy building your own models using the limited primitives (sphere, cube, cone, cylinder, ring, star, 3D text, etc) provided in-app, you can drag over 3D obj and 3ds files made using other 3D modeling software. All of these features are implemented in realtime so you get a machine-specific representation (I’ll touch on this in a moment) of your animation immediately without rendering. Key framing is full featured with full bezier editing via a timeline. You can add backgrounds with alpha to export Final Cut compatible exports for video overlays.
Now the hiccup:
Some things I noticed about Kinemac that concern me are the fact that your export options are limited by your graphics hardware (another reason to pony up for Pro’s verses standard macbooks), shadows as a result of lighting are seemingly unsupported (unless you’re talking about text effect shadows), and 3d modeling (as far as creating, forming, and exporting your own meshes) is not supported.
Using an Intel graphics chipset means that you don’t have support for anti-aliased exports of your projects (kinda weak), it also limits (possibly removing) your motion blur options. Even on my Dual G5 with an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro motion blur export controls are disabled, though I can add anti-aliasing (yay). The lack of shadows made me pause, because it seems like such a no-brainer to include, but technically since this software does everything in real-time it is limited in what it can represent without a proper ray tracing engine. We all know that real-time shadows as seen in video games are generally of poor quality (see cheating) so perhaps this is why they didn’t bother to include this as a feature. Finally the copy of Kinemac that you purchase is tied (via hardware signature/online activation) to a single workstation. A pretty inflexible arrangement in this day and age of extreme workstation mobility to be sure, but hell, why not buy to bundles? You will still be saving tons of money.
Running at a fraction of your $39 investment you will certainly get tons of use out of Kinemac despite any technical hang-ups you may notice. If you’re a mac user, I suggest taking the plunge.
Here’s a list of the other apps being offered (and some that will be unlocked as more buyers commit).
The object, known as 2009 DD45, thought to be 21-47m (68-152ft) across, raced by our planet at 1344 GMT on Monday.
The gap was just 72,000 km (44,750 miles); a fifth of the distance between our planet and the Moon.
Considering the name of the object, the absolute earliest we’ve known about it would have been January 1st of this year. Three months time is a very small window before a potential impact with an object “68-152ft across”. Enough mass to annihilate many cities (and some states) and significantly alter the landscape of our Earth. We would only have had, a most, three months to prepare for its arrival. This doesn’t fill me with too much confidence that any known method of altering the trajectory of threatening space debris would do the least bit of good. I’m not saying that we are prepared for a “Armageddon” style interception of any kind, but it is a sobering report to say the least. I hope that people eventually realize that we have to start making more substantive efforts towards protecting our planet from the possibility of a calamitous impact from space.
At this point in our understanding of these objects would authorities on the subject even bother to predict where such an object (or larger) would strike? Would such information do more harm, in terms of widespread panic, than good, considering we are in no way prepared to prevent it and we would have potentially so little time to evacuate? Would the response be to quietly shuffle support structures into place to prepare for the aftermath? I would hope that we would risk panic to save more lives, but who knows?
Not to belabor the topic, but what is this? Fucked in the skull game month?
If you though kids were jittery and lack focus during their studies, wait until you see this onslaught of attention span collapsing japanese hand/eye torture.
The idea is that you have to kill and level up like a standard RPG but in 30 second increments. You must meet the level goals in 30 seconds to move to the next event and refill your timer. Totally insane. Holy Shit
I took some screen shots of the disaster as it was unfolding. Kinda sucks that the definitive source for live Apple news from within Macworld was harrassed in such a manner. As of 11:40am CST macrumors.com is still down.
After this last screenshot the site was pulled, most likely by macrumors’ staff to deal with the security issue and prevent any further malicious disinformation.
