Archive for January, 2005
Well, I have finished Half Life 2, and I must say, with mixed emotions - but I’ll get to that later. I walked through the tunnel to preceed what would be some of the most spectacular images and architechture of the entire game. From the earlier post, you could tell that the Citadel is a very tall structure. At this point, I’m towards the bottom, but not the very bottom, which looked thousands of feet below me. There were a lot of piston-type colums on outside of the Citadel that were slowly pumping every 5 or 10 seconds. I had to jump down a cliff to get to a part where I could jump onto the outside of the Citadel. Once inside, I made my way through a maze of columns and small alleys. Then, I made it into the assembly line where the pods of humans were being carried off. I eventually made it to a spot where it didn’t look like I could walk any further, and it was quite obvious what I had to do. There was a line of empty pods that would stop, open, close, and get carried off. I jumped onto one, and then lost control and could only move my neck around a little.
This part took a while, but was amazing to watch. I bet I took more than double the amount of screen shots just in the Citadel than in the entire game. Of course, it’s easier to take shots when you aren’t busy killing bad guys. (I’ll be sure to post a link to my gallery where I’ll put up an album of my screenshots.) Anyway, I ended up at a containment area of sorts and was dumped out. They scanned me and found my weapons, so they got torn from me and disintegrated - except my gravity gun, which turned from an orange color to a light blue. Whatever it did was good, because once the guards came at me, I was able to suck him onto my gun and shoot him at his buddies! The evil guy came on to every screen I came by and was asking me to stop and insulting my intelligence. My HEV suit was also upgraded from 100 energy to 200, and every charging station only took seconds to fill up. So, I ascended my way up as far as I could go, taking out many waves of guards. I was delayed at a large tunnel where I had to take down guards and a strider. This is where I discovered my second source of ammunition for the grav gun besides guards. Throughout the Citadel there were these beams of energy columns supplying fuel to various devices. They carried these orange balls of energy that I could suck out and use as a rocket. So, I used these on the strider and took it out in 2 hits! Moving forward, I came to another dead end where I had to get into another pod.
At end of that long and bewildering pod trip, I came to a drop off where two guards met me, took my grav gun, and then Dr Mossman showed up. She told me how sorry she was and that Dr Breen (evil guy) wanted to talk to me. I was still in my pod and was carried into his office, where he was arguing with Eli about how great his society of new humans was going to be. He asked Eli to consider helping him, he refused, then he brought out Alyx in her pod, and he still refused. So, he said he would teleport them to some random planet or something. Then, he turned to me and asked me to help, but Dr Mossman could take it any more and locked the doors to his office and told him to leave us alone. He grabbed my grav gun and shot out one of the doors to go teleport himself somewhere. Alyx and I said our thank-yous to Dr Mossman and Eli and left them to get Breen.
We saw him talking to some alien person through a hologram and he dropped my grav gun and shot out to an elevator to go down to the teleporter. Alyx got on the system to find out what he was doing and told me the only way was to go down to the core to stop him. I took the elevator down to follow Breen and was met with lots of Combine guards. At this point, I basically had to scale the outside of the teleporting core to get to the top. Along the way, Dr Breen insulted me more and I kept getting shot at by guards. Finally, I made it to the top and Alex told me to grab the energy balls and shoot at the core to destroy it. Two big gunships flew up and started hammering me with bullets, but I just kept throwing those balls at the core. About halfway down to my health, I destroyed the core and Dr Breen, and Alyx came out from the console to see. She said something about us having to get out of there because the destruction of the core could level City 17 or something like that. I started looking around for where to go and then, all of a sudden, the core made a huge explosion!
But, the explosion paused almost as soon as it stopped and I saw Alyx shielding her face. Then, out of the paused fireball, the infamouse G-Man came walking out. He told me how great of a job I had done in such little time, so my services were being asked for somewhere else. Then, the screen when black, then white and inverse colors, then some pychadelic stuff started coming through the G-Man’s face while he was talking to me. He was basically saying that my job was done for now and then he said he had to go. The screen was black at this point, and a white door slid open and he grabbed his briefcase and walked out. THE END. I had a big question mark on my face. I was dumbfounded. But, then again, that’s pretty much how the first game ended too. I will say that this is probably the best first person shooter game I have ever played, and probably the best game in any genre I have ever played. It had non-stop action, great gameplay and problem solving, and a really great story. The parts with the zombies and aliens really freaked me out sometimes and made me jump. The only downsides were parts that seemed to go on too long and the ending. But, I play too cautiosly sometimes and the ending definitely hooked me in for Half Life 3!
January 17th, 2005
I took out the next two generators to disable the barriers, but got trapped in one of the rooms in the house. Combine solders started throwing grenades through holes in the walls and busted through the doors in massive numbers. After my squad and I took them out when headed downstairs to exit the building and met more waves of soldiers. This was probably been the most gun fighting I’ve done yet in the game. After exiting the area, we went downstairs and met a resistance force soldier that told us they dropped a crate of rockets in the courtyard that could be used to take out the striders outside. Striders?!? Striders are these huge spider-like vehicles that have a powerful mounted gun and an even more powerful energy canon that has a cool animation that I can’t describe. They take about 6 rockets to take down, so that means that you can’t just get some rockets, hide behind a wall and take it down. I ran around like a freak taking down around 6 striders, so it took a while. Then, I got past a barrier in the street and headed down it.
I exited into a very large tunnel that had only one solder running towards me, I quickly brought him down and knew something bad was going to happen because of the largeness of the area. Once I ran down it and got to a certain point, a large explosion happened behind me and a strider was crawling after me! I ducked into a torn up building full of soldiers and flammable barrells which I used to extinguish the soldiers. I scaled the building being careful to not let the strider (who was pacing around the building) see me, but these flying scanners kept revealing my location. I think I blew up about 20 of those things before I found more rockets to bring down the strider. Once that was over, the building connected to another street with more striders that I had to just run past, because there were no rockets to be found.
This part was very hard because all of the buildings where blown to pieces and there were countless soldiers shooting at you, while you are trying to not be seen by the striders. I eventually got some resistance force help, but they didn’t last long. Finally, I got to the top of one of the buildings and found some rockets to bring down 3 of the last striders in the area. I balanced some I-beams across to the other street and found more help. We came to an intersection and I saw a car get thrown into a statue and thought, oh great. But, that was Barney and Alex’s “dog”, who rushed in to help me take out a squad of Combine soldiers. Barney said dog was looking for Alex and wouldn’t stop at anything. At this point were right next to the very tall Citadel, where the evil scientist was hiding out, but there was a very thick and tall wall blocking our way. Dog lifted up one of the posts that revealed a tunnel below. I climbed down and that’s where I stopped.
January 17th, 2005
Watched Garden State Friday night, and I was pretty impressed. It was Zach Braff’s (from the tv show, Scrubs) first major motion picture to write, direct, and star in. And for it to be this good, I will be expecting great things from him in the future. Just from watching him on Scrubs, which I think is hilarious, I would never have expected him to be so artistic because of his quirky comedic style. The movie is basically about a young, depressed actor, Andrew Largeman, that comes home for his mother’s funeral after being away for 9 years. He expects to leave soon, but meets a girl (Natalie Portman) that changes his mind.
The acting in this movie is superb and so is the writing. Peter Sarsgaard played one of Andrew’s old friends and delivered an outstanding performance, yet again. Ian Holm plays Andrew’s father, but didn’t get that much screen time. There’s a delete scene on the DVD between the two that is very good, so look for that. There is a lot of “that was deep, man” dialogue in the script, and that sometimes made the movie cheesy, but overall very good and meaningful. And the reason for all of that is because Andrew is coming to grips with his mother’s death and the fact that he hasn’t needed to be on antidepressants for the last 9 years. The pace of the plot is steady and wraps up very nicely at the end. And it wasn’t over 2 hours long! Yea!
January 17th, 2005
I went to the roof to meet Barney and he told me just to lob some grenades to kill the two snipers. After that was easily done, we teamed up to get past the barriers and into the Combine, since he was undercover as a Combine soldier and could open any door. He opened the first barrier and met a little resistance, but no big problems. Then we got into a building and met up with a few resistance forces that joined my squad. We saw through a window a large, old building that would take us into the combine. But, to get to it, we had to dodge these supressor beams that would just shoot down large laser-like beams onto you and do a lot of damage. Once were were through that, we killed off a bunch of soldiers and got into the building.
Here, I discovered a new enemy - underground turrets. They would only set off by crossing though beams, but once you did, they would pop up, scan for targets, and blast away. At first, they were hard, but I got the hang of it by just running up next to its blind spot and dumping a grenade into it’s chassi. Apparently, we had to find some energy generators and disable them to get any further. This was actually one of the tougher battle sequences because a LOT of soldiers came at us and it was dark and I had to disable a bunch of those underground turrets while keeping Barney alive. I had to reload my game several times before moving forward. Once through that, we found the first generator and disabled it. Now, I’m on to get the next two.
January 16th, 2005
I took the last person in my squad and headed down the hallway. We got to a room with a lage hold in the floor and saw a bunch of zombies get toasted by some turrets. I threw a couple grenades down into the room to take care of the turrets and forged ahead. We went through the maze of the building, taking care of soldiers and whatnot when we met up with Alex again. She brought us to a control room where she had a plan of attack for a barrier just outside. More people joined my squad and we headed outside for Alex to do her work on bringing down the barrier. Meanwhile, TONS of solders attempted to stop us, but Alex finally opened the barrier just long enough to let us all through. She expected a bridge to be on the other side where we would meet up with the rest of the team, but it was blown to smitherines. She climbed a pipe on a building next to it to see where we should go, but got ambushed by gunfire. I’m sure she’s not dead - just delayed, as usual. At the last minute, she told me to go down into the canal and into a tunnel beneath the building we wanted to go to.
I made it in, and went through the tunnel (full of zombies and critters) to get to a larger area with a bunch of catwalks. After killing many soldiers along the way up, I finally got to the top and back into the building, which was full of more zombies and creatures. At the exit of the building, I met up with a resistance soldier that told me that Barney (one of the resistance leaders) is waiting for me on the roof of a building, but the forces were split up by snipers. Great. I headed outside to see a girl say “I’m coming with you, Freeman!”, then get sniped. The other guy followed me and got sniped too - stupid AI. I made past a few more snipers and into a building with more creatures and a half-dead guy in the basement that told me to go to the roof to meet Barney. I climbed the stairs to what I think is the roof, and that’s where I stopped. I hope Barney can get me out of this mess!
January 11th, 2005
Once in the tunnel, we were hit with a heavy barrage of “manhacks”, which are these little flying buzzsaws that have bad aim. I had to point my squad into the opposite end of the tunnel, but they usually refused in order to take care of the manhacks. Once we were mostly clear of them, they complied and we went into a small building with more manhacks, and through the other side into the other part of the tunnel. This section had soldiers galore and 2 mounted guns. The bad part for them was that there was a lot of flammable barrels around for me to shoot. Many explosions later, the area was clear and we went to the other side, where was saw a small hole with a resistance soldier behind it. He told us to back away and he would blow a hold for us to get through, but of course, it would take a minute. No sooner did he end his sentence, and a bunch of manhacks and soldiers came at us from behind. This time, I had a mounted gun to play with, so it was pretty easy taking care of the waves of attack.
Once through the hole, we found a door that we could only open from the inside and I had to go through a big toxic waste area. I had to use my grav gun and move things around to jump on top of, while getting suprised every so often by a zombie or 5. Once I was through that, I opened the door and let my squad through. We proceeded out again into City 17, which was a FREAKING mess. The buildings are in shambles and you have to jump through holes in the floor sometimes to get around. But, there was a lot of people to help me out along the way and to join my squad in case I lost someone. This is where I’m at now, and I hope it’s over soon because the environment is really annoying. You can’t really tell where to go, but the game does an pretty good job of making you figure it out. You also don’t know if you are going to face a group of zombies or soldiers - or both. Currently, I’m in a dark hallway with only 1 person in my squad because we just went through pure hell in the city.
January 10th, 2005
I have been a Netflix subscriber for more than a year straight now and have been very pleased with the service, but was a little ticked when they raised the price on me last year. Now that they have some serious competition with Blockbuster, and soon Amazon, they dropped the price and increased the level and quality of service that they provide. Ever since, they have been constantly adding tiny to large enhancements to the web site. The 2 newest of which are a Friends list (which I’ve suggested to them before) and a way to create multiple profiles on one account.
The friends list is created by inviting friends that you know are probably Netflix members by an e-mail. They get the email with a link to accept the invitation and then they are added to your Friends tab, whic is at the top of every Netflix page. The friends page will show you the last 4 movies they rated and what the rating is. There is also much more to the Friends page, such as movies your friends liked that you haven’t seen, unique movies your friends like, movies that are your friends favorites, and movies your friends hated. Also, when you are looking at a particular movie, it will show you each of your friends rating, and it also gives you a chance to write a quick, one line review of the movie to share with your friends. The friend feature adds an entire new dimension to Netflix.
The other feature, the ability to have multiple profiles on one account, is a welcome feature to older movie-watching families. It gives everyone a chance to have their own login and queue, but also gives parents the ability to lock down movies based on the MPAA rating. There seems to be a good amount of control to it, but I’ll be interested to try it out for myself and my wife. I know she isn’t always happy with the choices of movies I get, so it would be nice to allow her to have a queue so she can get movies she wants as well.
I’m proud to say I’m a Netflix member and it is going to take a lot of convincing to make me swith, especially to a giant like Blockbuster, Amazon, or Wal-Mart. Netflix was on the scene first and now they are proving that they know what customers want and can deliver.
January 10th, 2005
A lot has happened since my last post for HL2. I finished the prison area by waiting yet again for Alex to get to me and fending for myself with wave after wave of Combine soldiers coming. After that was done, we proceeded to a room where Dr Mossman (bad lady) is . We find her and she denies everything, but Alex isn’t fooled and makes her bring her father out of his pod. She takes him out and then Alex makes Mossman enter the coordinates to some place I can’t remember. She enters coordinates for the teleporter, but at the last second, Mossman grabs Eli and they go somewhere other than what Alex told her. So, Alex decides to go back to get to our original starting location and get help from the scientists. But, as luck woud have it, we had to wait for the teleporter to “warm up” and more waves of soldiers came at us.
After finally getting in and teleporting, we greet Dr. Kleiner, who says that the teleporter is really slow and it took us a week to get there. Meanwhile, people have started to resist the Combine forces and a revolt is starting. They tell me I need to go somewhere (I always forget the details, don’t I?) and Alex’s robotic “dog” gets to escort me. I go outside into City 17, and backtrack some of the streets I started out on. Dog helps me out a LOT by throwing large cars and buses at Combine forces, but then I got to a point where he prys open a barrier and only I can get through, and I think he gets blown up or something.
After that, I went down another street and met up with 4 resistance forces pulling down one of the large screens that I saw the evil dude on early in the game. Then, they joined me as a squad! They worked very much like the antlions, and actually better, because all I had to do was put my crosshair on some location, hit “c” and they would go there. So, I proceeded through the maze of City 17 with my squad and made them lead the way most of the time. I got to an area with these “hoppers” that puzzled me at first. They were mines that stick in the ground and sense when you get near. If you get too close, they hop in the air and explode. But, if you use the grav gun to pull them out of the ground, you can replace them and they won’t hop when you get close.
Right now, I just got through a pretty tough checkpoint with a lot of buildings and a large barrier involved. I got through the barrier, into another building, down into the basement, and now I’m in some sort of tunnel area with my squad still in tact. Well, mostly. 
January 10th, 2005
What a throwback to the eighties!!! Napoleon Dynamite doesn’t really have much of a story to it, but has probably one of the most original and true characters I’ve seen in a movie. I seriously need to see Jon Heder interviewed because he has got to be like the character he plays in some way. I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of “you either love it or hate it” about this the movie, but I think the consensus is that it’s good. I sometimes have quirky taste in movies, so I always look to my wife’s taste to see if a movie is agreeable for the general public. Since she liked Napoleon, I think it’s a safe bet.
The movie is set in the 80’s (I think) and focuses on Napoleon, who is a very awkward teenager living in Idaho and trying to make the best of the situations he faces. It also has one of the best opening credit sequences I’ve seen in a while, by using different real backgrounds and doing close ups on different plates of food while spelling out the credits in some kind of sauce or condiment. The script was very well written, especially the dialogue between the characters and Napoleon’s mannerisms. There was also NO cussing, sex, or brutal violence in the whole movie, hence the PG rating, which is unheard of these days for an adult audience. And most important of all, it made me laugh a lot.
Now, one of the more controversial aspects of the movie is when it takes place. Almost everything looks like it should be in the 80’s, but there are a few things, especially one, that would prove otherwise. For one, Napoleon’s brother, Kip, talks about how he was chatting online or bought something online, which no one did in the 80’s. But, he was a real nerd, so it’s plausible. Also, in the opening credits, Napoleon’s school ID card says 2004 - 2005 on it, but that could have just been an oversight by the editor. Finally, there’s a part in the movie where a group of girls dance to a Backstreet Boys song, and that couldn’t have been an editorial oversight, unless it’s a serious error in the story or script.
If you want to see something original and funny, this is a good movie to watch. Don’t get ready to hear a great story or see awesome action and special effects. And it’s not funny in the sense of the cheap shots most of the SNL or teen movies take. It’s funny because everyone probably knew someone like Napoleon either by acquaintence or because you knew it would be social suicide to associate in any manner with someone like him. Also, this movie should be appreciated by fans of 80’s culture because this movie has some good 80’s artifacts floating around that most current movies set the 80’s don’t have.
January 9th, 2005
My wife and I got to go out on a date last Friday and we decided to see White Noise after stuffing ourselves at Guadalajara in The Woodlands, TX. The movie is about how a man’s (Michael Keaton) wife dies and he finds out how to communicate with her from the “spirit world”. But as he starts to figure out what she wants, he gets caught up in a big mystery, with a somewhat suprising ending.
Anyway, the movie was good at making the audience jump at obvious times and the idea of EVP (electronic voice phenomena) was interesting as well, although I would have liked a better background on what EVP is and how they claim it happens. The story and plot isn’t great and kinda starts to fall apart at the end while it tries to wrap up the ending. I really hate it when the speed of the movie is sacrificed in order to wrap it all up. The effects were nice, especially the parts with the TV, although I think that was more psychological than technical. The cast all did a pretty good job, although the script didn’t really call for much acting and Michael Keaton doesn’t do a very convincing job as a mourning husband.
But, despite all of that, the movie did well at making me feel anxious to find out or see what was going to happen next. And my wife can tell you, I hardly ever jump during scary movies because I can prepare myself far in advance since it’s usually obvious when they are going to try to make you jump. I can say that White Noise was a good choice to see at the theater just because you can’t get the same movie watching experience with a scary movie at home.
January 9th, 2005
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