My 23 Cents Worth

Excellent Weekend (Minus Dominion)

Mon, 09 Feb 2004 04:11:45 GMT

I had an excellent weekend. After the long stress, test, and sickness filled week I finally had a good time on the weekend. I started it off on friday by renting Lost in Translation which, I thought was an excellent movie, and watching it with Laura. After Lost in Translation and a lovely Chinese dinner courtesy of the take-away The Mayflower we played a tonne of Co-Op Star Wars Rebel Strike. Even though we failed most of the missions which have been made ridiculously hard for Co-Op I still thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It was nice to sleep in on Saturday. I woke up at 8:39 AM and panicked thinking I was late for school. I then remembered that I had no school and rolled over and returned to sleep. When I woke up again at 12:30 I decided it was a good time to read some more Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I did this until 2:30 when I was forced to get ready for work. Dominion sucked as usual even though I was working beside Catlin who is one of the most fun cashiers to work with (after Nigel who was a fucking legend!) I hope I get the job with Toronto Public Health I applied for, better pay, more exciting, anf I have to think! If I start getting some good hours with it I think I will quit Dominion by the summer. My supervisor will hate that, I am a fast cashier and I follow all the regulations, the place just doesn't pay, it's boring as hell, and the general public can all shove their "Not Found or Wrongly Priced items" up their collective asses.

I wasn't supposed to do anything on Sunday, but while I was playing Neverwinter Nights with Laura Saturday night I was invited over to hang out with Mari, Sarah and Math. I decided I would go, and I am ever so glad that I did. We did absolutely nothing! It was great, we sat around and talked, Math drove us to Sobeys and we bought a nice dinner. (Great Caravan Math!) We got those new smiley face potatoe thingies. They were yummy, we had some chicken strips and plum sauce, and some garlic thing that looked better on the box then it actually was. (That or I had completely lost my appetite after cookies, 25+ potatoe things and about 11 chicken strips. My stomach was far from happy. After that Math left and Mari and Sarah soon after. Laura and I screwed around online until I had to go. Thanks again for lending me the method book, Laura. Learning the Guitar should give me someting to do for a very long while, a well, well needed something to do.

In all I had an excellent weekend and wouldn't have changed anything...Well one thing, I would have brought the Camray because, well, Chrysler sucks and Japanese cars are better. Besides if we had seen a Civic I could have beaten him and pissed of alllllll of snobby Oakville. ^_^ Excellent weekend, Thanks to Everyone!

The Long Road Winds Into The Distance...

Wed, 14 Jan 2004 21:59:52 GMT

It's been a long while since I last updated my Live journal. What has happened since then? Well lot's of studying for chem, the chem test and a math test. All was successful. The most important thing was on January 7. I got Final Fantasy XI.

After a long installation and the time spent registering my Dad's credit card, it was finally timed to play. However, due to some error where most of the playonline servers crashed (due to people being dicks and consuming bandwidth, POL assures players they have been dealt with) I had to wait until the next night to play. So, on January 8 I began the long grueling process of updating the game, it took about an hour and 45 minutes to complete. 1934 files needed to be updated, ugh. Finally all this was completed and I was able to log in.

The first thing I was told to do (after an AMAZING intro, you really out did yourselves Square!) was create a character. I didn't know FFXI was set to LOWEST QUALITY by default so it looked awful. I quickly fixed this and came back. It was stunning, the models have bump mapping, and the clothes are separate objects. The characters have expressions and thanks to 8x anti-aliasing and complete antistropic filtering the game is beautiful. The hair flows as the characters move, tails randomly swish, the characters BLINK (impressive in an MMORPG) and there is barely any edgy-ness to the perfectly smooth and life-like movements of the models. The scenery is also extremely impressive. The textures at times look completely real, there are weather effects, and accurate environmental changes as time passes from morning, to afternoon, to night. The river in East Ronfaure is amazingly done, there are ripples as objects move through it, the water flows and sprays at waterfalls, and anything underwater is distorted according to the physical laws of optics. Weapons on characters are holstered and drawn when needed and most clothing objects show up and look very different.

The game world that has been created is impressively large. I'm guessing that to travel across it would take many hours. Chocobos would, of course, speed this up, and they also look amazing seeing them how I'm sure they were originally imagined by Square's concept artists and graphics design team. The airship system is also well done, above and beyond, and breath taking. There is nothing like being in your towns port, looking out at the lake and seeing an airship come sailing in through the water. Think that sounds impressive? Well it doesn't stop there, you then see people getting on and off the airship before it once again kicks on its engines and sails off. It doesn't end there, while out travelling if you look up you will occasionally see an airship pass overhead. Wow.

Amongst all the graphical beauty is a solid and in depth plot, come to be expected for a member of this long famous legacy. There is the main plot, which deals with the 3 nations of the world, and then there are the many sub-plots focusing on the NPC's of the game world. To add to this, there is a wonderful crafting system, complete with fishing, mining, logging, alchemy, the list goes on. These are just the aspects of the game I have experienced and I know there will be many more.

In conclusion, Final Fantasy XI is a solid well-made game. It offers everything you would want in an MMORPG and combines it with a full Final Fantasy plot and manages to keep lag unnoticeable. The substance of this game is missing nothing. If you have a Radeon 9800 please, give it the pleasure of rendering the most impressive game worlds to date and give yourself the pleasure of being part of the best online story ever created.

Grumble

Mon, 05 Jan 2004 03:58:55 GMT

I'm hoping to get a copy of FFXI near the end of the week. Expect a full review on it when I do get it, after I've played it for a LONG time.

Not much else to say, school resumes tomorrow, I feel like I'm looking into a long dark pit of stress, worry and depression I'm about to be pushed into. I doubt I'll update before thursday.

Work over. Fun now.

Sun, 04 Jan 2004 04:31:34 GMT

After a boring day at work with customers about as sharp as a tupperware cup of water I was in desperate need of something to do. After mircowaving myself some Stoafers pasta I began playing Raven Shield and killing some Venezuelan terrorists on some god forsaken oil rig. Good time were had there until I opened one door to be looking down the barrel of an AK-74, ouch. The gun shot took me out and nailed the operative behind me in the stomach, needless to say I was pissed.

Not long after the Americans descended on my house again, I haven't had a moments peace since they got here, ugh. They yell and bickered while I toobed around on my computer playing Battle Engine Aquila (BEA) and some more Raven Shield. I loaded the map Peaks, it takes place in the Laurentians in Canada and is filled with incompetant Mid-land European Terrorists. The only have one ability, and that is to nail you in the eye while you look down a scope. Don't look down the scope and they line up for yah....well me at least, remember Mike?

After all that I became hungry again a microwaved more Stoafers pasta. And that brings me to where I am now, eating, typing and and listening to Gorillaz. I have a long night ahead of me with toobing in store. Hoo-wah!

9800 Day 2

Sat, 03 Jan 2004 07:45:22 GMT

Well I booted Raven Shield and have decided it is one of the best games ever. The models are perfect and sharp, the guns are sleek and smooth and the blood effects are jaw dropping. Flanagan and I have to start playing again and killing the Italians who frequently take over the airport...damn Guidos. I loaded Republic and completely flooded my RAM to hell. I need another 256 meg to hit the whopping 512 meg requirement (I know 512 is standard now, but for a fucking game that is basically a spreadsheet?)

Later on in the afternoon a friend, Ben, from Guelph came up and Evan came over and we spent a fun while playing double dash on my computer, god bless this VIVO adapter I love it. I've been twinking around with some settings and almost have the image at TV sharpness, I figure I can improve it ALOT more by getting an S-Video cable for the GCN and PS2.

Later, Evan showed me some amazing demos ATI made for the 9700, I downloaded them all and my personal favourite is Pipe Dream. WOW. I won't describe how amazing it is, you have to see it. The when I watched the Chimp video for the 9800 my jaw dropped and I couldn't believe I was watching graphics. It was a beautiful sight, I loved it.

Finally I installed a game that came with my 9800 called Battle Engine Aquila. The game is a cross between Mech Warrior and Descent. Basically you pilot a walking death mobile (Mech) and can transform into a flying ship of death (Descent thingie). The characters all have poor Russian Accents, and the Open GL cutscenes look worse then the gameplay (The gameplay looks amazing on the 9800) but the game looks very promising and I will soon play through more than just the training mission (which impressed me) and will update on that in the near future.

Day 1 of the 9800

Fri, 02 Jan 2004 03:39:01 GMT

January 1, day one of having the new ATI 9800 XT 256 Meg VIVO video card. I have dreamed of this event for oh so long. I spent what time I had today installing all the goodies and utilities and tweaking the mini god. I've played most of my games on it and each time my jaw has just dropped. The exception being Unreal 2, that games just blows, 9000 or 9800 it needs to be burn. The card runs hotter then my XP 2200 CPU but has an amazing cooling system. I have a sneaking suspicion it was built by AMD. The REALLY nice feature is the VIVO (Video In Video Out). It allows me to play my consoles on my computer, I just hook my Audio output from the consoles into my Line in and I never have to leave my computer again to game.

The first thing I ran was 3D Mark 2003, It ran like a dream with NO slowdown on full everything. Afterwards I tried the HL2 Beta and was blown away by the lovely textures. Afterwards I ran URU and almost cried at the beauty of the game, it's amazing and looks nearly real. Booting Mafia next, I learned that not only was the card improving the graphics but also load times, god bless the on board processor. Mafia was like stepping into a lovely 1930's environment full of shiny cars and wonderful textures. When I got hit by the shotgun at point blank range by the cop and the blood splattered my screen a tear came to my eye.

Next up I ended up getting dragged to Laser Quest since my parent's friends from the States are here. They have young children so I went out with them to LQ. Meanwhile my Mom their Mom and my girlfriend stayed and watched some Tom Cruise movie. There were four people at LQ (us) and I won both games. Yup. When I got back the little hell minions (the kids) watched some movie, Clancy slept and I decided it was time to work on the VIVO aspect of my card.

I hooked up the adapter and plugged in my PS2, there was no hassle, I booted ASUS Digital VCR and there it was, the PS2 Bios screen on my computer monitor and looking a lot better then on my TV. Plus, my TV is Monophonic sound, this is Stereo, w00t. I then occupied myself with MGS2 for a bit. Now that I have some more time (the others are watching Caddy Shack, good movie) I am about to try Raven Shield, Republic and Freelancer. I'll be back to report on those games as well.