Burnout Paradise Review

I've been thinking about getting some type of racing game lately. After talking with some friends today I went ahead and picked up Burnout Paradise. After having only played the game for about an hour, I'm glad I picked it up.

Immediately when you load up the game, it throws you into the driver's seat. All the instructions and tutorials are done on the fly while you're driving around. If you've ever played Crackdown this will seem very familiar. The game is set in Paradise City, a lone city on an island with no exit. You can drive around the city as much as you'd like. You can unlock cars and paint jobs by finishing challenges. If you just like driving around, you can do that too. Challenges are triggered by coming to a stop light and holding down both the gas & brakes at the same time. There are different kinds of challenges, such as races or road rage.

My personal favorite so far is Road Rage. In this type of challenge you get a time limit during which you need to wreck a certain number of opponents. Against the AI, this isn't too hard. My first one required me to wreck 3 opponents in 3 minutes....I ended up with 27. Online play lets you play with up to 7 other players. Everyone is in the city and you can race either other or compete in any of the other challenges.

The graphics in this game are amazing. The entire game is displayed at 60 fps and in high definition. Every time you get in a wreck or knock someone else off the road, you get a nice slow motion effect. Every time that happened I was wanting to have my capture card going. Yeah, it's that good.

Overall I'd have to give the game a 8/10 rating. Not the best xbox game out there, but still, it's worth buying and worth playing. I see many more hours of wreckage in my future.

MORE SPEED!

Not to gloat (ok, yeah, I'm gloating), but I recently was able to upgrade my internet connection to the higher tier of service. All I can say is....wow.

I really don't understand why more people out there aren't demanding internet speeds like this. After this, I'll never be able to go back to cable or dsl.

Halo, CoD, Clans, etc

There's an interesting blog post over on the TTL Gunslingers website worth reading by any Halo fan. Xerxdeej made some really good observations about the effect CoD4 is having on most Halo groups and clans.

Really, though, this effect is the primary reason Xbox Gamers Inc (XGI) was created. Previously I had pushed to have RCG, a Halo group I belong to, expand into more of a clan role. After my efforts resulted in little to no change in the group dynamics, Dez1013 and I decided we needed to create an official clan in that we would not be tied to any one game title or franchise, but invite gamers from all games into the fold. With that goal in mind, I never intended on alienating members of RCG by doing this, but rather would invite any and all members to join both RCG and XGI. Have RCG for the custom Halo games and gamedays. XGI is here to support all your other games too. Call of Duty gameday? That's why XGI is here. Gears of War gameday? That's why XGI is here.

Solar Powered USB Charger

Seriously, this is pretty cool.  I actually might try and make one.


How To Build A Solar Powered USB Charger - Watch more free videos

NCAA 08 ... missing something

So earlier today I was bored while doing chores around the apartment. Between changing loads of laundry I sat down and popped in my NCAA 08 football game into my Xbox 360. I decided I'd play a few games with my alma mater school, Utah State. It'd been a while since I'd played and I think this is the first time I played Utah State. Sadly, I was a little disappointed.

One of the biggest draws I had to the NCAA games over Madden was the realism the developers put into the game, namely that the individual stadiums for each school closely matched the real thing in design. I already owned NCAA 05 for my original Xbox and was already impressed how well the developers had Utah State's stadium done. As you can see in this YouTube video, they had it pretty close back in 2005.

Last year I thought I'd buy the newest NCAA football game for my new Xbox 360. I really expected marked improvement with the new graphics system and all. Today when I finally got around to playing Utah State, my first reaction was "what is this?". I clearly was not playing in Romney Stadium. This is definitely not the stadium I played my high school playoff games in nor where I played my college games in. Here is a YouTube video of the NCAA 08 version of Romney Stadium.

This is only the first stadium I've noticed a big difference in, so I can't say there aren't others. Still, with the past history of EA Sports and their accuracy in depicting college venues, I was really dissapointed in this version of the game. Hopefully it was just a mistake. I'm not sure how much work it would be, but I would really appreciate a correction to fix this in a future update.

More Mass Effect Mess

Fox News recently ran a story where they had so called 'experts' on to debate the illicit scenes portrayed in the popular game Mass Effect. Here's a YouTube video of that news story:
The problems I have with this story are almost too many to list. Fox News didn't do any research on the game. In the middle of the story, even their experts state that they've never even picked up the game. If the media is going to report video games in this manner, how can parents really use it as a legitimate source of information regarding them? For one, I know parents, based off this and other previous Fox News reports, should disregard almost anything Fox says about the video game industry. If parents want a clear understanding of a game's content before purchasing it for their children, my advice is simply go into a video game store (not a Wal-Mart) and ask someone who has actually played the game. Most parents don't realize this, but the average age of video game players in America is somewhere near 30 years old. In other words, most games they're considering for their children, have already been played by adults. Try asking one of these adults for advice. Most gamers who play these 'M for Mature' rated games will freely tell you what content is in the game and then let you decide whether or not it's appropriate for your children. There's no need to go to tabloid journalism like Fox News for your information.

Due to the misinformed bashing of Mass Effect on Fox News, author Cooper Lawrence recently felt a mighty backlash against her from the gaming community. Many gamers went onto Amazon.com and freely reviewed her new book without ever reading it, dropping its rating into the cellar. Cooper Lawrence, I guess, came to realize her mistake in appearing on Fox News and saying what she did, and has come out and apologized for her remarks, even recanting her statement in light of now having seen the content in Mass Effect.

Sometimes I feel like a geek....(well, usually)

This last weekend I went to watch a high school wrestling tournament that my younger brother was in.  They had the stats for the tournament updated live online.  The day before the tournament I was on the site, just browsing around.  I noticed a peculiar bug while doing so.  If you clicked on the 'Team Scores' link (granted, they were all zero the day before the tournament) it left off my brother's school for some reason.  As a software engineer, I knew it was just a small bug that someone missed.  The school was obviously in the system, as the athletes were listed.  So, being the geek I am, poked around and figured out what variables I could put in the URL address to get the team to be listed. 

Later the next day at the tournament, I was sitting there with my dad when the announcer came out and gave a team score update.  After announcing the scores, a number of fans vocally complained about the conspicuous absence of my brother's school from the update.  After a bit, the announcer still hadn't come back with a correction, so I made my way to the announcer's booth.  They told me they couldn't figure it out.  So, pulling from my geek ego, I proceeded to sit down and show them what URL to enter so as to get all the schools listed.  The announcers (and the fans) were much appreciative of the correction, especially considering that my brother's school went on to win the tournament.

Mass Media Effect

Media coverage of the video game industry is, needless to say, lacking. Even with game sales rivaling movie ticket sales, mass media, in large part, still just ignores the video game industry. The net result is that what coverage does come out, is usually not from reliable sources.

Recently a review of the popular game Mass Effect came out on Townhall.com, a conservative political website. With the current presidential election looming, this article got way more attention than it deserved. First off, I consider myself a conservative. I also live in one of the most conservative areas of one of the most conservative states in the country. With all that in mind, even I found this review full of flaws and falsehoods.

As someone who has played the game Mass Effect and played through the entire storyline at least 3 different times, I can tell that Mr. McCullough has never even picked up this game, let alone played it through to the end (one of the required prerequisites in my mind for writing a review).

Granted, there is a sex scene in the game, but the amount shown is on par with any scene from a daytime soap opera or a PG-13 movie (in fact, I've seen much worse in PG-13 movies than in this game). As for the Mr. McCullough's remarks that a player can customize any and all physical features of the characters--that's just plain not true. A player can customize the head and facial features of their character, nothing more. The only other visual element you can customize is what armor you're wearing throughout the game, but unlike other BioWare games, you have to have armor on at all times. There's no running around without any clothes on like what you were able to do in other previous BioWare titles.

I love this quote from Mr. McCullough...

"Mass Effect" sounds like a war game with a deadly virus that is spreading unless the GI-Joes are able to defeat the evil and deadly substance and it's covert war plan.

This quote in and of itself shows his total ignorance of the game. The game is aptly titled as it's the name of the new science fiction technology that allows interstellar space travel in the game. A technology that no one in the universe knows the origins of, only that some ancient civilization developed it. The game centers around a looming galactic threat that you as the player try to avert. This game is full of sci-fi violence and shooting. The game doesn't try to hide that. But for Mr. McCullough to suggest that the primary focus of this game is the sexual encounter that happens near the end of the game, after almost 30 hours of gameplay, and only lasts for ~40 seconds, is preposterous. With all the customization options available to the gamer, there's really only 4 possible sexual scenes available. If you have a male character, you're relationship can be with either a female crew member or a 'neutral gender' alien that has a female form. If you have a female character, your options are with a male crew member or the same neutral gender alien.

Mr. McCullough also suggests that a question needs to be addressed by current presidential candidates, "How much moral judgement should the President push into legislative issues that are likely to severely damage our children's innocence, function, and capability?"
The answer: none.

Herein lies the flaw of many conservative activists. The responsibility of teaching correct morals to children is the responsibility of the parents, not the government. The role of government is, if needed, to give parents the tools to do that job. Right now the ESRB does that fairly well. They review games and give them ratings. If a parent blindly purchases video games for their children without reading the rating, that's the parent's fault, not the government's nor the game studio's fault.

Sadly, I think the folks over at Penny Arcade got it right in guessing Mr. McCullough's true motivation in writing this game review...

Difficulty Settings

Every game worth playing out there has varying degrees of difficulty. The way difficulty is implemented varies greatly though. Some games choose just to change the time limit for completing a task, while some will make the task harder to complete.

With the popularity of cooperative gaming increasing, many game developers are choosing to make difficulty levels so hard you almost require the coop play to finish it. But at the same time, developers don't raise the difficulty based on the number of people in a game, so playing with 4 people in a game (like Halo 3) makes the Legendary difficulty almost a joke to play through.

Not every game has cooperative play though. So developers find other ways to make this insane difficulty easier for you. In Mass Effect, you can start a new character on the Insanity setting, but it won't be easy. So, the developers made it so that once you've beaten the game on any difficulty setting, you can start over with the same character. You get to keep all their stats and equipment. After a few times through on the lower difficulty settings, playing on Insanity isn't all that hard either (provided you're using a previous character).

One game developer that refuses to make it easy for you to beat their game on the highest difficulty is Infinity Ward. Playing Call of Duty 4 on the Veteran difficulty is hard. They don't give you extra help, you don't get to play cooperatively with a friend, and you can't use experience from a previous game to help you either. They made the game AI a lot better aim, so if you step out into the open, odds are you're going to get shot. I give props to Infinity Ward for not making it easy for us to beat the hardest difficulty. By definition, it should be hard.

Tower of Hanoi

A classic puzzle taught in many computer science courses is the Tower of Hanoi puzzle. The concept usually being taught is recursion. Because most video game developers also have a background in computer science, it's not surprising to find this puzzle included in some video games. A popular game studio, Bioware, apparently has some developers who really enjoy this one as it's appeared in more than one of their games.

As a programmer I didn't find the puzzle all that difficult, but I was surprised to learn when browsing the game forums on Xbox.com that many gamers out there found this puzzle extremely difficult. While playing Mass Effect I actually thought the puzzle was too easy. I mean, if Bioware really wanted to challenge gamers to figure it out, they should have put more than just four discs in the puzzle. Four discs only requires 15 moves to solve.

The puzzle could easily have been used as a checkpoint for gamers. Make it difficult enough that only a select few can get by it by solving it, then (as they do) provide a way to bypass the puzzle using something readily available elsewhere in the game. In Mass Effect you can use omni-gel, a substance obtained by breaking down items you find, to bypass the puzzle. If only Bioware had made the puzzle have six or seven discs.... Then the puzzle would have taken 63 and 127 moves, respectively, to solve. It could have been used as a way to make gamers pursue the side quests in the game if they didn't have the patience to solve the puzzle.

Number of Discs:4
Move from First to Second
Move from First to Third
Move from Second to Third
Move from First to Second
Move from Third to First
Move from Third to Second
Move from First to Second
Move from First to Third
Move from Second to Third
Move from Second to First
Move from Third to First
Move from Second to Third
Move from First to Second
Move from First to Third
Move from Second to Third
# of moves = 15

Extra:
Here's my C# algorithm to solve it, for those that want to know

public long hanoi(int discs, Pegs from, Pegs to)
{
   if (discs == 1)
   {
      Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Move from {0} to {1}", Peg2String(from), Peg2String(to)));
      return 1;
   }
   Pegs other = (from == Pegs.First) ?
      (to == Pegs.Second) ?
         Pegs.Third : Pegs.Second
      : (from == Pegs.Second) ?
         (to == Pegs.First) ?
            Pegs.Third : Pegs.First
         : (to == Pegs.First) ?
            Pegs.Second : Pegs.First;
   long moves = 0;
   moves += hanoi(discs - 1, from, other);
   moves += hanoi(1, from, to);
   moves += hanoi(discs - 1, other, to);
   return moves;
}

Giving Coding Advice...

I'm all for helping out my fellow coders when they're in a jam, but sometimes that advice can come back and cause you grief later.

It just so happens that this exact problem plagued me this last week at work. Sometime last week a coworker asked me for advice on what would be the best solution to the problem he was working on. At the time he asked I was already neck deep in a project of my own and didn't pay enough attention to his query to give a good response. In fact, I don't even really remember giving the advice at all.

So, later that week I'm given a project to put some customization into our product. As a template I took what my coworker had done and was adding in some extra customization options for the end users. As I'm going through his project and reworking it to fit my needs, I'm cursing under my breath at how he had done things. No good coder would have done it that way. So, needless to say I reworked it and then went to him to show him the better way of doing things. His response--'That's how you suggested to do it'. Needless to say I'm going to be careful in giving out coding advice in the future...

Creation

And thus the foobar was born...