Evan Sims

A Quick Review of Orange Box

Here’s a quick and dirty review of Valve’s “Orange Box”, containing Half Life 2: Episode Two, Team Fortress 2 and Portal (along with the original Half Life 2 and Episode One, both of which I’ve already taken a look at in previous blog entries.)

Half Life 2: Episode Two

Short and sweet, would be my best description of it. I got about five hours of gameplay out of the episode. While it’s far shorter than Episode One was, and certainly a fraction of what Half Life 2 was, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much work Valve had put into the quality of this release.

The expansive new outdoor environments are just stunning to experience. Beautiful, really. The action was pretty intense too, especially the second to last chapter in which you’re faced with using the gravity gun to toss explosives onto Striders and blow them up. The Strider sequence was the most challenging for me, and certainly one of the more intense experiences I’ve had in a game in recent memory.

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Bioshock: Greatest FPS Ever?

So, I just finished Bioshock this evening. What a crazy, brilliant game. The game mechanics and level design are top notch, there’s a very deep and involved storyline, and the gameplay doesn’t get stale after the first five levels. I have to hand it to them, I think they may have built the greatest first person shooter to date.

I loved the hacking minigames, the “virtue tests” involving the children (and subsequent alternate endings), and the plasmids were a blast. Not a dull moment in the game. My only complaint? I suppose the ending left me a little wanting… the ending boss fight wasn’t overly difficult, but more importantly it kind of of felt unfinished. You get there, he dies, roll one of three possible endings, fin. Regardless though, total blast, and I can’t recommend the game more.

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iDrops actually work pretty well

So like I was saying, last week I ordered some iDrops from PodShop over on Amazon. I have an iPod nano that I got when I ordered my Mac Pro last year, and a year of use can leave some scars on a device so I thought I’d give it a try. What’s more, my laptop has been around the world and back more than a few times over and it’s surface was also showing some nasty scratches. I figured I’d try it on that too; couldn’t hurt.

Well, I’ve been pretty impressed with the results on both the laptop and the iPod. It took a couple uses on the iPod to get the minor scratches out, and I’m up to ten or so applications on the laptop (it had some very deep scratches) but both devices are really looking good. I can’t see the scratches on the iPod anymore, and the ones the laptop are barely noticeable unless it’s hit with direct sunlight. What’s more, the polishing aspects of it have made the shininess of the surface of the laptop practically like new.

So yeah, I’m super pleased with my purchase. If you’re looking for a quick fix to some device scratches, I’d recommend it.

The Simpsons Movie rocked!

Just got back from seeing The Simpsons Movie. I have to say, they did a great job on it. Plenty of laughs, a pretty decent story and, most shockingly, some original content. That can’t be easy for a show that’s been on the air two decades. 9/10. Definitely worth a watch.

On a side note, I am constantly surprised by how ridiculous some parents are in this country. The Simpsons is PG-13 and for good reason, there’s a lot of inappropriate material in there for younger viewers. But does that stop parents from bringing their Ritalin-deprived seven year olds? Of course not. It’s easier to blame the media when their kids grow up to be rapists and serial killers. Parenting, pfft. Who needs it.

“Lost Planet: Extreme Condition” for PC is Gorgeous

Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way: I’m not a hardcore gamer. I may be looking at designing them for my career, but I don’t enjoy spending all day playing games- unless it’s a game that really pulls me in (which hasn’t happened since Final Fantasy X.) I’m what the industry defines as a casual gamer. To make matters worse, I’m a loyal PC gamer, a tier of gaming that is seeing a rather ugly drought in new titles right now. I don’t like playing consoles in general (except perhaps for the Wii), and if I buy a console I usually do so only at the end of it’s lifetime. To put this in perspective: I haven’t owned a console since the PlayStation 2. Yeah. Shameful.

Why do I bring this up? Because I’ve just discovered a game on the PC that’s been out on Xbox 360 for awhile now, and I’m in awe of it’s visuals. It’s called Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. You can find it on Steam, and the damn thing is gorgeous if you’ve got the hardware to support it. You’ll need a beefy processors and an even beefier graphics card- I can’t even crank up the graphics all the way on my NVIDIA 8800 GTS 640MB and Quad Xeon Mac Pro. (Sidenote: If you’ve got an 8800GTS and are having crash issues; check the Steam help pages for a link to some beta drivers that fix the issue right up.)

The screenshot above isn’t CG, or pre-rendered video. That’s real, in-game cutscenes rendered in real time. Like I said, the visuals are just incredible. The detail that Capcom put into everything - the environments, the characters, the animations, the special effects - is really just top notch, and I haven’t seen anything like it before.

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