The sun has kind-of risen, but I don't have anything much to say, and haven't been feeling too brilliant either, so I don't have a post prepared - I'm posting this as a place-holder for a vlog instead, to follow some time in the next few days. I hope that the prompt-ish provision of a vlog will compensate for my lack of an on-time post, and thus render my punishment null and void. Or something like that.
[Mother of all cop-out posts to be rectified in due course]
Charlie
Monday, 25 April 2011
Monday, 18 April 2011
One of these days, I'll post *before* the deadline
Speaking of deadlines, as I write this, the clock's counting down to Portal 2:
http://aperturescience.com/glados@home/
I thought that was a pretty clever way of supporting the indie games industry. Major credit to Valve for this.
Onto the main body of the post: Scream 4 (Scre4m).
I ended up seeing Scream 4 on Saturday along with a group of friends. The film is centred around a masked, robed attacker with a fondness for large, sharp knives and the illicit use thereof. Several threatening phone calls, gratuitous stabbings, murders, worryingly-open windows and chases later, the film reaches a clever-but-not-entirely-unexpected-and-somewhat-but-not-entirely-predictable conclusion of sorts.
My feelings about the film were mixed - it felt well-made and genuinely entertaining, with a decent storyline and pacing, and some fairly amusing moments. It was pretty gore-heavy, but not un-watchably so. On the negative side, there weren't any moments which stood out as particularly tense or suspenseful either, and at no moment was I truly scared (unlike how I felt playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The first bit with the water. Seriously.) .
I can't comment on how it compares to the originals, since I haven't seen them, but can certainly recommend the film, not as an amazing or deep one, but as an entertaining one.
That's all for now folks. Expect more terrible pseudo-reviews and Portal 2 raving soon...
What's your favourite scary movie?
Charlie
http://aperturescience.com/glados@home/
 |
| Yes, it's 2011 and I'm still using XP. My Linux machine's taking a nap, and I didn't want to wake it. |
I thought that was a pretty clever way of supporting the indie games industry. Major credit to Valve for this.
Onto the main body of the post: Scream 4 (Scre4m).
I ended up seeing Scream 4 on Saturday along with a group of friends. The film is centred around a masked, robed attacker with a fondness for large, sharp knives and the illicit use thereof. Several threatening phone calls, gratuitous stabbings, murders, worryingly-open windows and chases later, the film reaches a clever-but-not-entirely-unexpected-and-somewhat-but-not-entirely-predictable conclusion of sorts.
My feelings about the film were mixed - it felt well-made and genuinely entertaining, with a decent storyline and pacing, and some fairly amusing moments. It was pretty gore-heavy, but not un-watchably so. On the negative side, there weren't any moments which stood out as particularly tense or suspenseful either, and at no moment was I truly scared (unlike how I felt playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The first bit with the water. Seriously.) .
I can't comment on how it compares to the originals, since I haven't seen them, but can certainly recommend the film, not as an amazing or deep one, but as an entertaining one.
That's all for now folks. Expect more terrible pseudo-reviews and Portal 2 raving soon...
What's your favourite scary movie?
Charlie
Monday, 11 April 2011
Nine Days of Freedom
That's right, it's been nine days since school finished. To make myself feel slightly better, I decided to work out what I've done with my time instead of revising:
- L'artista
- RC car on the Heath
- Plenty of coding and database work (now fairly comfortable with JavaScript and AJAX, if by "comfortable" you read "no longer feel gut-wrenching terror at seeing statements like $('#element').load("somefile.htm").fadeIn(1000, new function(alert("BOO!");));" - that is a valid and "sensible" line of code AND grammar, by the way.)
- Writing a haiku to express my undying hatred for IE6
- Portal!
- Mathematics (sadly, unrelated to anything in the exams, but happily, related to my game)
- Benji's
- Extracting dustballs from my brother's laptop.
I think that justifies spending no time on revision?
Under the sub-heading "Portal!" I was messing around with some screen recording software, and was pretty happy with this run-through. (shameless segway into my "rich media" of the week):
Click me, you know you want to?
T minus 8 days,
Charlie
Monday, 4 April 2011
Happy Birthday!
... as of 4 hours ago, Benji is now 17. If you haven't checked out his blog yet, click here - it's quite simply awesome.
I'm afraid I'm a terrible person, and so this is going to be the mother of all cop-out posts.
I'm afraid I'm a terrible person, and so this is going to be the mother of all cop-out posts.
 |
| Giant armed alien robots in New York? Standard |
I'm going to put it simply - Crysis 2 is probably the best game of the year so far. Graphics are suitably epic - the game uses lighting and shading to an even greater extent, but also feels faster in terms of framerate - I've not checked the numbers yet though. Gameplay is much improved - the suit has been made simpler without losing any of its core functionality. My main complaint is that it feels more like a multiplayer game even in the campaign, with purchasable upgrades offering slight bonuses like reduced footstep sound or bullet traces. Useful but hardly game-changing, and all adding complexity. I'm currently in Grand Central station, struggling with a Pinger (which looks even better than in the pre-release picture above). More pictures will follow at some point later in the day.
It still remains to be seen whether Portal 2 will steal the crown from Crysis 2 or not. Crysis will certainly take quite some beating...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)