Joe Dynamite

I stumbled upon this article, I Am a Game School Dropout while in a fog at work today (I spend a good portion of my workday on the Internet slacking off). It kind of struck a chord with me because I too attended a college program for video game design/programming. I attended DigiPen in the Fall of 2003, and this article sounds very much like the experience I had. I would venture to say that it was DigiPen that the author attended as well. I agreed with a lot of the sentiments she wrote about, like the militaristic approach to pumping out graduates just to fill seats at development studios and not work on original projects, just do what they’re told for hours on end. It is very sad for the industry that this is how new talent is brought into the fold. They should nurture originality and the indie spirit, it will do nothing but revive the industry and fill it with better content for us all to enjoy. If you fancy yourself a person who is into video games you might want to check the article out.

If you own a Microsoft Xbox 360 and you haven’t yet purchased Mass Effect get out there and get it. The game has all the RPG elements you’ve come to expect from anything BioWare puts out, including the ability to have your character be the upstanding, do-gooding hero that everyone expects (called a Paragon in this game), or be a complete jerk to everyone and shooting before asking questions and other such ill-regarded actions (a Renegade). There are 3 full classes and 3 mixed-classes making it a total of 6 for you to choose from. Soldier (Combat Specialist), Adept (Biotic Specialist, like a mage), and Engineer (Tech Specialist, is strong against robot enemies), and then a half Soldier-Biotic called a Vanguard, a half Biotic-Engineer called a Sentinel, and a half Soldier-Engineer called an Infiltrator. There are 4 different weapons you can train in, Pistols, Shotguns, Assault Rifles, and Sniper Rifles. You also get a melee attack, grenades, and a plethora of special abilities.

The one thing that sets this game apart from past BioWare fare is the combat system and simply the size of the galaxy you get to explore. The combat is more akin to Gears of War than it is to other RPGs. It is 3rd person perspective, you have to use cover, you get different ranged weapons, and you have to aim with a reticle like a true shooter rather than an RPG. You can hold the right bumper in to pause combat and issue any of your squadmates to use a special attack, but unlike in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic you can’t set a queue of abilities to be used in succession (unless I’m an idiot and can’t figure it out).

You explore the Milky Way galaxy and they let you go to a bunch of different nebula and star systems and whatnot (as you can tell I’m no astrologist). You survey planets for useful gases, metals, minerals, and ancient artifacts of old alien races. There are tons of uncharted planets that you can land on and explore for yourself and there is an abundance of side missions on many of the different systems.

All in all, this is a great game. If you are a fan of shooters I’m sure you can enjoy this, and anyone who is an RPG player or lover of BioWare games is bound to love this. The graphics are top-notch (go in the menu and turn off motion blur and film grain… why they made those on by default I will never know, they’re horrendous), the sound is amazing, and the story so far is compelling. You have no reason not to get it unless of course, you don’t have an Xbox 360. Everyone else should get it.

I read a post on Joystiq tonight about the Guitar Hero 3 demo from Tony Hawk and how it leaked onto the Internet. If you burn it to a disc, it will play in any Xbox 360. As soon as I got home from my class I downloaded it, and it is now about 2 am (I have to go to work at 7 am) and I cannot stop playing the damned thing. I was worried when the game was taken away from Harmonix, but let me just say, Neversoft did an amazing job handling it. It feels just like you’d expect, even a little more fluid with the hammer-ons and pull-offs. If you have an Xbox 360 and a guitar controller for it I would highly suggest downloading the .iso file, it’s sick. Now I’m even more pumped for the game’s release later this month.

For those of you that don’t know, Kevin Smith has a new book out. It is called My Boring-Ass Life: The Uncomfortably Candid Diary Of Kevin Smith. That name alone makes it worth buying, besides the fact that this man is a genius writer and funny as hell. I pre-ordered it back in July and it finally arrived today along with my copy of Now You Know, the writing and directorial debut of Jeff Anderson (Randall from Clerks), and a replacement copy of Silent Bob Speaks: The Collected Writings of Kevin Smith (which I have read most of but I lent it out, and you know how that goes). So far in just the introduction, My Boring Ass-Life has caused me to laugh numerous times. I can’t wait to ingest this book chapters at a time. I’ll probably write more about it after I’m done. But for now, you should go out and get it too so he can make more money and sit on his ass doing more boring stuff to write about.

And I mentioned this on my Pownce account, but I will reiterate here, Download SModcast. It is a weekly podcast he puts out with his producer Scott Mosier and occasionally a special guest. It is simply hilarious.

Apple just set loose the 1.1.1 version of the iPhone software over iTunes. The main feature upgrade is the addition of the iTunes Wi-Fi music store to the device. Other than that there are some minor changes, such as the Calculator icon changed, they added a double-tap of the Home button to link you to the iPod or Favorite Contact sections.

It’s pretty sweet to have iTunes on your phone to allow you to download songs from anywhere, the one problem is that I am never usually in a Wi-Fi hotspot unless I’m in my own house on my own network and in that case, I might as well just get on my computer and download them. That could be because I live and work in such a suburban area that free networks are few and far between.

I didn’t jailbreak my device or add third-party apps to my iPhone, so I had nothing to worry about during the install. For a little while after upgrading, my phone was acting screwy and the receiver wouldn’t get sound, I needed to put it on speaker, or plug in a headset. But after I got home and restored the phone it seemed to be working fine.

All in all, if you have an iPhone that isn’t jailbroken and you don’t have to worry about winding up with a brick, you might as well get it, it is a welcome upgrade.

I’ve been keeping my eye on this game for quite some time because I’m a huge Hironobu Sakaguchi fan. I’ve been playing Final Fantasy since the first one way back on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I might have waited a week or more to grab it (I’m kinda broke at the moment), but boy am I glad I went out and bought it.

It brings back many memories of my childhood. It feels like a Super Nintendo RPG on steroids, and that is a great thing. The last mashup of Sakaguchi and Akira Toriyama that I remember playing was Chrono Trigger and that was an SNES RPG. Some small bits of it also remind me of EarthBound (another of my favorite games), since you fight robots a lot, and there are a bunch of weird sounds, and a voice saying certain things to you at certain moments. You’ll see what I mean if you’ve played both… I hope.

The gameplay is very reminiscent of Final Fantasy V and its job system. You can change the class of your shadow from a Monk, Black Mage, White Mage, Assassin, Sword Master, etc. As you earn Shadow Points from battle, your shadow gains abilities that can then be equipped when they are a different class. So you can have a Sword Master who can cast White Magic or Support Magic. The graphics are insane, they look just like a Toriyama cartoon should. At some points, it almost looks like claymation (that’s another thing that reminds me of EarthBound because of all the clay models they used in their promo materials) but it’s mostly all real-time game engine, I’ve only noticed a few pre-rendered scenes so far.

The story so far (I’m only 5 hrs. into a game that spans 3 DVDs) is pretty standard, but it’s very well directed. It is everything you should have expected from this game. I highly suggest any RPG fan go out and get it.

If you’ve ever been interested in learning to program in the Ruby language or just programming in general, I would highly suggest you check this site out.

Hackety Hack is a downloadable, interactive tutorial and programming environment. You can edit and save your Ruby programs, you can also share them with other “hackers” and you can download other peoples’ shared “hacks” as well.

There is a built-in tutorial section of the program that runs on the top in another window while you enter your code in the editor portion of the program. The tutorials are easy and powerful, you create a blog using only six lines of code in the second lesson.

It is for beginners and seasoned programmers alike. They should have more of these for other programming languages and license them out to schools and universities. This would have been great when I was in school, I would have loved it. So go to www.hacketyhack.net and get it for yourself.

If you want to get a little more in depth into Ruby you can check out www.ruby-lang.org (It’s official!) or you can read _why’s (poignant) guide to ruby which is by the creator of Hackety Hack and it is just as fun to read and full of cartoon fox comic strips. I must have read like five chapters at work today, it’s great.

P.S. Ruby is the basis for the Ruby on Rails web framework which is all the rage right now. That is the main reason I wanted to learn it. Go check it out too www.rubyonrails.org.

It’s a far cry from Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater but in a good way. I dig the control scheme of the game, but it seems like it is very difficult to master. The fun thing about Tony Hawk is being able to bust out insane, million point combos and link tricks for like ten minutes straight. I was having trouble linking three tricks in Skate, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t having fun. I have purchased every Tony Hawk game since I played the first one at a friend’s house way back in the days of the original Sony PlayStation, and Skate isn’t gonna change that. This year I think I will buy both Tony Hawk and Skate because I am not completely sold on the gameplay. That which is fun and different in a demo might become tedious and frustrating in a full game, so I’m not gonna pass Tony Hawk up just yet.

I am the proud new owner of my very own MacBook. This isn’t my first Mac, but it might as well be. I had purchased an iMac some time ago but it was right after buying a brand new Dell and having two new desktops wasn’t really the best of ideas (financially or logically). So I kept the iMac for about a week and reluctantly brought it back to the store and paid the restocking fee. This time though, my 5-year-old Compaq laptop just died and seeing as though I’m going back to school and could use a new laptop I figured I’d go with the Mac instead of something else. So far I am very pleased with it and I’m sure I will be more so when I learn more of the OS’s nuances. And I love the keyboard, it’s very easy to type on and has a good feel to it. Anyway… that’s it for now… I’m trying to come up with some ideas for this blog, but haven’t been able to think of any. Hopefully, soon I’ll have some cool stuff to write about.

I decided that today I would grace everyone with my thoughts on the rumored 3rd-generation iPod nanos that are on the brink of release.

Apple has always been known for its aesthetically pleasing and artistic design sense, (have you seen the iPhone or the newest iMacs?) but this new nano is the complete opposite of what they’ve made a name for themselves doing. I’m saying this as though I’ve seen definitive proof of their design… well, I believe the renders floating around to be legit. Apple’s legal department has been going crazy sending out letters to have the images removed from sites, and from what I hear, they only bother when it’s actual product information or designs. I think it’s a step backward in their design. It looks like the iPod’s fat cousin. It might only be redeemed if the thing is thinner than the original nano by at least half, and have twice as much storage. Don’t call me an Apple hater either, because I’ve had iPods, I have an iPhone, and I’m on the verge of purchasing a MacBook. I just think the thing is ugly. Maybe they’ll pull a Sony and completely redesign it before launch like the original design of the PlayStation 3 controller.