Games people will never play…

Alt MAC

So STEAM finally comes to MAC next week while I don’t plan on loading it right away on my Mac, I thought I would share a tidbit of the improvements coming with the Mac version of STEAM. Please note that this is aimed at the Mac gamer set… so if you aren’t a gamer you probably won’t get these. If you’ve ever used Mac you will get them all.

Team Fortress 2

When engineers build turrets in the Mac version of Team Fortress 2, the turrets will cost twice as much (in metal) as the Windows equivalent. However, the turrets will be curvy and shiny, and emit a pleasant noise as they shoot the enemy down.

The Heavy’s chain gun will be lighter and smaller, and of course curvier and shinier. It will weigh merely 1.8 pounds and fold up nicely to ultra-thin dimensions, allowing the Heavy to move quickly at all times. It will keep track of the Heavy’s appointments and phone numbers with a stylish, yet elegantly functional, interface. However, it will only shoot rubber bullets.

And my current favorite…

Left 4 Dead

All custom maps in the Mac version of Left 4 Dead will have to be approved by Apple, which will reject any maps that feature nudity, suggestive content, political satire or zombies.

Two more main characters will be added: a balding, schlubby-looking guy in a suit, and a young dude with tousled hair and a semi-beard whom you will immediately want to shoot. However, you should not shoot the tousled guy, because teamwork is important to winning the game — and because it’s a lot more satisfying to see him dragged to his death by a tongue zombie.

Read More http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/05/alt-text-valve-apple/#ixzz0nHqReIup

Just another GEAR in the machine….

So as I’m sure most of you know by this point I went out and purchased a Xbox 360 just over a year ago now.

Much to my surprise it hasn’t blown up on me yet as most of the media reports in the gaming press would have believe at this time last year.

The main reason for the Xbox was I wanted to expand my menu of games on their native platform, outside of Valve FPS and alot of RTS and RPG games there isn’t much that comes out directly for the P.C. these days. Most of what does come out is ported from our friends in the console realm and most of that tends to be of the craptastic level for quality. It doesn’t help that I have this thing for if I’m going to play a game I don’t want to play it on a ported platform I want to play it on the platform it was developed for.

The Wii being the major exception for this rule most all of the games that came out for it that I wanted to play showed up in 2007 so I still have it and does very well sitting there just like the Gamecube did before that and the N64 before that… hmmm I’m starting to see a patern with the Nintendo stuff.

Anyway…

I’ve bought a few games over the course of the last year for the old Xbox… GTA IV (Awesome story, gun play and driving need work but the physics model is top notch so I won’t get that down on it) Rock Band 2 (also awesome and a game that is popular enough that everyone under 30 can play it) Fallout 3 (I don’t RPG’s that often.. I will get back to you on this one once I get into it some more) And of course the two games that everyone and their brother who owns and Xbox and considers themselves a “real gamer” as…. Halo 3 and Gears of War / Gears of War 2

Lets talk about Halo 3 first… up until I bought this game I was a Halo virgin. I honestly don’t get what the big deal is with Halo? I know it was a launch title for the first Xbox way back when but honestly I don’t get it. I don’t know if it my lack of understanding of the entire Halo universe and the overall story of Halo 3 and not understanding the various interactions of some of the main characters. I honestly didn’t get it. I think Curtis summed it up best when he said “You know if your going to play Halo 3, you may want to check out the first two before you do that”… I don’t know if it would have made a difference. Also beating the thing in a afternoon didn’t help it’s cause.

Don’t get me wrong I had fun with Halo and I do enjoy occasionally popping on to Xbox Live and wasting someone but honestly I don’t get what the big deal is.

Now lets talk about the Gears of War games…. obstinately the original Gears of War was the tent pole title for the Xbox 360 in 2006. Thing of it as the big blockbuster summer movie of video games that year. Think of it like “Independence Day” good enough the first time through, a passable way to kill a couple of hours of time every time you watched it after that. That is what Gears of War aspires to be… Honestly this is the first game that it felt like a chore to get around to finishing it, seriously on my to do list for the last 3 months for weekend would be something like;

Laundry

Clean kitchen / bathrooms

Yard work

Beat Gears of War

I think it was made all the worse that I knew I was only about 45 minutes of game time from the final boss, but would have to depend on my skill to beat the game since there are no cheat codes (yes I know I shouldn’t use cheat codes but some of us play games just to play games and not to improve our overall skill). I knew the Gears was really a chore when Curtis and I had a choice we could either play a 6 hour game of “Sins of a Solar Empire” and we knew it would last that long with the both of us working together or play Gears of war CO-Op for 3 hours and beat the thing from start to finish. We chose the 6 hour RTS game and loved every minute of it.

Which brings me to tonight’s reason for posting, the 45 minute save point to the end took me about an hour to get through it to the final boss. The final boss took me probably 2.5 hours of trying to finally kill. And in the end it was a lucky shot that did it (which pisses me off more then you will ever know). Now why was I so obsessed with beating Gears of War? Simple I already had Gears of War 2 and I wanted to have the full experience of beating Gears of War when I got into Gears of War 2.

Imagine my surprise when I get into Gears of War 2 and it’s basically a stand alone game! And the more I think about it the more it pisses me off.

What is the payoff you ask? Other then a few Xbox live achievements? Not a whole hell of a lot it would seem.

He’s in the music business… he’s calling you DUDE!!

So about a year ago I moved to this new word press blog thingy…. and about two weeks after that I discoverd the joy/pain of upgrading your blog’s database. That was a consequence of “rolling my own” as it would be and well since I’m a I.T. guy I surely don’t get enough of this shit at work I just rolled with it….

Many many many times as it woud turn out. Now why am I writing about this… well it turns out that Live Journal has sucidal servers when you get a 404 page not found error. And I found it so humerous I took a screen shot saved it to the desktop and went to load it up here.

And that’s when the problems started… because the day before I had yet another one of these upgrades that has caused “no problems” up until now. And of course as I google for solutions and try to not blow my database tables (turns out WordPress has a really nifty export function) I discover I’m far from the only person that is having this problem. Which leads me to be the only logical conculsion.

The internet hates wordpress….

Not God… or god… or vishnu… or theatons… no the internet hates wordpress.

So no funny picture for you… and no I’m not going to hyper link to the picture… the whole point was that I was going to craft this story around this one picture…

You know I’m going to stop now, I’m starting to sound like a damned engineer.

Oh and yes I’ve been usually quiet… I don’t know why but it may have something to do with a few games that I’ve picked up….

Deja Moo…

It’s the feeling that you’ve heard this bullshit before.

And with the exception of the gratioutis nudity I’m pretty sure you have heard all of this before.

Oh wait this is a “family” blog… The gratioutius nudity is going to be covered up by bits of duck tape.

There that’s better

Go read another post…. I’ve got nothing… I just had “Deja Moo” pop into my head while I’ve been listening to Pearl Jam bootlegs…

Oh wait! I remember what I was going to do now… more cards to the game (which is really nothing more then a creative release for me so I have no intention of having any of it make sense 🙂 )

The Intern…(experienced)(lackey)

A know it all user… You know, the one who “already knows all that stuff about security” and “yes, I already tried all the normal troubleshooting thing, this problem is different… oh wait, your right, it isn’t plugged in” and “I should have admin privileges on my machine because I can’t get around the firewall…er.. I mean use the programs I need to without it”

+3 to all tasks/projects that require low level lackey work

-1 if any task involves using the internet in a research fashion…. since we all know that interns only use the internet for Porn and Movies.

The Intern…(newb) (lackey)

This person is a empty vessel waiting to be filled…. or crushed your choice.

+2 to all tasks/projects that require low level lackey work

-3 if any task involves using the internet in a research fashion…. since we all know that interns only use the internet for Porn and Movies.

Standard Issue Cody… (character card)

Security Guru in every sense of the word… comes with the business savvy and look to sell any project to management. Can implement most projects on time and on budget. Open to all operating systems and vendors has natural talent to “just pick this shit up”

+5 to time manangement

+2 to security tasks

When combined with any other “Standard Issue” character all attibutes go up by one. When combined with an experinced Intern and Standard issue all attributes go up by 5.

Security Consultant….(action card)

This guy will tell you everything you want to hear for the right price.

Use this card at any time to prove a project is secure or not (roll d6) If the project is secure all players give one card from their hand. If the project is not secure, place all of your cards face up each player may pick one.

Character #31337 (lackey)

Claims to be a IT guru extraordinaire but always seems to be asking coworkers how to map a drive or install a printer.

Lose one point to all attributes since your always cleaning up after this character…

Upside… card can be transfered to another department with transfer card and project card.

Downside… card must be played upon getting it… if you already have a lackey they go into the discard pile.

Character #136 — The Mrs. (action card)

I’m really good at throwing wrenches at Mr.’s project deadlines. For instance, the two weeks of paternity leave he had to take. The extra days off because of illness, emergency room visits, mental breakdowns, road trips, etc. My insistence that he is working way too many hours…Who works a 40 hour week these days anyhow…Or that he work from home because I really think I have to move to another state ASAP. Or, on a smaller scale, there’s the list of tasks that I send him to work with each week — call the bank, set up the 529, decide on a date for a trip, bitch out the furniture store guy, get renter’s insurance — All things that I can’t do myself.

Play on any other player to slow them down in finishing their work (-3 to time management)

A whole new deck…

So for those who read this corner of the internet and haven’t talked to me directly in the last couple of weeks, I recently lost my long time partner in crime at work to another facility. It’s sucked not having a someone to work with directly, but at the same time it also helps to put things in perspective.

Suddenly the CT scanner not talking to PACS is not the issues it once was, now instead of it being “Top immediate priority” it’s been bumped to “I will deal with it after lunch…”. It’s all about achieving some sort of balance.

I’ve never been good at achieving balance.

One of the neat side effects of my brain being over stimulated for the better part of the day is. I come up with some of the most random things.

I now present to you the latest creation of my over stimulated brain cell…

“IT PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION FROM HELL!!”

The game… set the IT project cards out face down and select…

2 cards for a “easy game”

4 cards for a “challenging game”

8 cards for a “hard game”

The objective… to complete the projects listed on each card with in the allotted time frame for the project. Project times are stack able (i.e. in a easy game if you have one project that runs 3 months and another card that runs 9 months you have a total of 12 months to complete both projects). Each complete turn around the table is “1 month” of game time (so in the above example there are 12 complete turns around the table to complete the projects)

Project tasks are assigned from the “Task deck” after the projects have been selected. All the tasks assigned to a project need to be completed in order for a project to be considered completed. Each project has a base number of tasks assigned to it additional tasks may be assigned from the task cards themselves. Tasks are completed based on your character card (we will get to that later) abilities and cards from the actions deck.

The “Action Deck” contains all of your functions you can perform durning your turn. Each player draws 7 cards at the start of the game (additional or fewer cards can be drawn based on character card stats). When a action card it played on a task the player rolls the 10 sided dice (10d) and the task is completed based upon the 10d roll, player abilities, and completion critera on the card. Other players can play their action cards to either help or hinder you. Remember not all wolves will eat you and not all knights in shining armor are good.

The Character deck has all the characters needed for a IT project. Characters come in two varieties characters who’s objective is to complete the project (Analysts, Engineer, Project Manager) and those whose job it is to make sure things stay the way they are (Bad Engineer, End User, Bad Project Manager). There are those who do not care if a project suceeds, but can play both sides of the field. This is a any of the “Director” cards.

Next thing… come up with some character cards….