It is currently Tuesday 13 October and my course in computer games programming continues, as does my gaming itself. The programming on my course is pretty much still all stuff I already know but I don’t mind. In my ludology class I’ve been given a 10 hour assignment to create a simple video game using GameMaker and I don’t think I’ve done a bad job; my game involves moving a bullet-firing mouse around space and destroying the various enemies flying around the screen. The one thing I cannot get my head around though is the maths. I think we’re a long way from applying the maths we’ve learnt to any actual programming but I cannot for the life of me understand some of the mathematical concepts we’re being taught. Maybe it will all become clear eventually.
I have finally got my games consoles set up and working though. This week I’ve been playing Fable 2 which I’ve picked up some nice new achievements on and Burnout Paradise which is still great fun. But of course being the Halo nut I am, the highlight of my week has been finally being able to play Halo 3: ODST and the new Halo 3 multiplayer maps. I don’t think that ODST is as good as any of the games in the Halo trilogy but you know what? It’s still awesome! The game is good-looking and I thought the lighting was especially good. The setting was one of my favourite things about ODST and it was great to see the whole thing play out in the huge, dark city of New Mombasa. The new SMG and pistol were weapons that I thought were very well integrated into the game, it was great to headshot a few grunts at a time with the pistol or unload a stream of bullets into the nearby enemies with the SMG. The limited stamina and health of the ODSTs also did make for an experience where it felt like you were much more vulnerable and had to be more cautious in the way you approached fights and I do think that ODST was harder than any of the games in the trilogy. I thought the story held up well and one thing that I think has been overlooked greatly in the game is Sadie’s Story, the story told via the audio logs; I thought it was great to have a story told in that form and it was a nice little throwback to I Love Bees. One of the most interesting observations I’ve seen about this story though was from a thread on the Bungie.net forums and compared the story of ODST to Dante’s Divine Comedy. It sounds like an insane theory at first but if you actually take a look at the things said in the thread (warning: contains spoilers) it starts to make sense.
Firefight has been pretty cool as well but I think it’ll be better once I have the chance to play it with some friends. One major complaint I know a lot of people have had about the game is that the campaign was too short and that they don’t think they got the amount of content that they paid for. It’s interesting to see how many people are measuring whether they got what they paid for by amount of content and not by the quality of that content but I understand their complaints. It’s also interesting to see how many people are willing to trade the game in for a fraction of their money back and forgoing having free access to the Halo: Reach beta next year but if that’s what people wanna do they might as well go for it. I’m not gonna pretend the campaign wasn’t quite short because it was but I knew what I was getting going into this game and I was impressed with all of it. Oh and one more thing I feel I have to say before I move off of the subject of ODST: There were points in the game where I just could not ignore the fact that Dare’s face looked freaking weird. All the other characters looked and sounded good, but Dare? I tried to ignore it at points and just go with it, but even if only a trivial matter it was something that stood out for me.
I think Bungie have done as good a job as ever on the new maps for Halo 3. My favourite map at the moment is Longshore but they’re each great in their own way. The only problem is that I have a strict NAT and it has been seemingly impossible to play Halo 3 online with friends. This is almost certainly being caused by all the ports that are blocked on my university connection. I have a very strong suspicion that this is gonna be a problem for all my 360 games and if it is that really sucks. In fact the number of ports they have blocked has already meant that I can’t log onto my old puzzle-based MMO Puzzle Pirates or update my Champions Online character editor to use that. What is life if I can’t have virtual pirates?
But I think that about does it this week. This weekend I’m going to be going back home to celebrate the 18th birthday of a very special friend which is gonna cost me about £50 and take over 8 and a half hours to get there and back but it’s gonna be well worth it. I hope everybody reading this is having a great week and I’ll leave you with the very final episode in this series of Giant Bomb’s video game movie review show TANG.
-Gamer_152
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