I was reading through my previous blog entries today and I saw that I had an entry about BF 2142. At the end of the post I made a comment about how it feels like good games are few and far between. Well at last there is a game to fill that void. Bioshock.

Unless you live under a rock and/or hate video games, you’ve probably heard of Bioshock one way or another. This game has everything including amazing graphics and remarkable story, and even some controversy about little girl characters in violent video games.

Bioshock starts you off in the year 1960 as a character, Jack, who has just been involved in a plane crash in the middle of an ocean. He is the only survivor. With pieces of the plane wreckage burning all around, you see there is a large lighthouse type structure. As you head towards the structure, very little is known about what lies ahead. You begin to learn more about Rapture, the underwater city, and its oddities as a character named Atlas coaches you though the beginning parts of the game, in what feels like a very immersive and plot-driven tutorial. As you get deeper and deeper into the story, it gets more and more twisted. I personally have only played about 4-5 hours of this 20+ hour game, and I am throughly impressed with every aspect of it. The visuals are very impressive, especially the water effects. The music and sounds add a sense of eeriness and work into the time period quite nicely. Everytime I play this game, I feel like I am walking around in a huge immersive piece of artwork.

I think, whatever type of gamer you are, if you enjoy a game with a deeply captivating environment, an incredibly amazing story, and a little bit of scare-factor, then purchasing Bioshock is a no-brainer.

So my brother decided he needed a laptop, but of course he wanted one that would game too. So he decided to get on eBay and find one. On his first attempt, he ended up with just a e-mail that stated that the auction wasn’t valid due to the sellers account being compromised. After that mishap, he started to look for more believable deals. So he found a Dell XPS Gen 2 for sale in one of the 48 contiguous states. A few days and $1,200 later, the laptop arives. I’m a little worried it might be broken, piece of junk, or maybe just really used. Holy crap was I wrong! This laptop doesn’t have a mark on it. Windows XP MCE 2005 freshly installed, all we did was plug it in, start it up and away we went.

This XPS has some real horsepower too! It packs an Intel Centrino M with 1GB RAM and a GeForce Go 6800 Ultra into a quite beautiful package, not to mention the huge screen. It is only slightly less powerful than our desktop PC, which to me is quite impressive! I would have to say, even though it’s not my laptop, I will definitely be looking forward to playing some games (like BF2!) on this massive mathematics mauling machine with its pixel pushing GPU!

More news today, and a FOTP:So, browsing digg.com and I noticed an article about a programming language called KPL, which stands for Kids Programming Language. This will allow even the most novice programmer be able to pick up an IDE and just start writing readable code that can do things such as manipulate sprites, and 3D applications in 100 lines or less! I’ve dev’ed in Java before, and this is an amazing feat. Currently KPL is only in version 1, and version 2 is only in alpha, but it is roughly 10 times faster for certain executions. This looks very promising for high schools in the future. The whole idea behind the project was to make programming an almost instantaneous gratifying experience, and I think that goal has been met. 

In other news, yesterday Apple announced a Video iPod with a 4” screen. Supposedly it will sport a touch screen and movies will be able to be purchased from iTunes. One more thing for the MPAA to gripe about, yay…

As for WoW ever making its debut on the Xbox 360, it looks as if that is not going to happen.

“We do not have any plans to take WoW to Xbox 360,” Blizzard COO Paul Sams told MCV. “WoW is built as a PC gaming experience. Porting PC games to console often compromises games, and we’d never allow the WoW gameplay experience to suffer.”

That’s ok, I suppose, I couldn’t really see how World of Warcraft gameplay would be a whole lot of fun on the Xbox anyways, but what do I know.And finally, today the Catholic Church just got a little bit more classical, as in classical music. Pope Benedict XVI got an iPod on Friday. 

FOTP: TagWorld.com “Think MySpace, on fire, going 150 MPH though a school zone, being chased by ninjas.” (Thanks Bungie)

I haven’t personally signed up for a TagWorld account yet, but the Web 2.0 App looks freakin’ cool. Drag and drop interface, and so much more customizability than MySpace, but yet organization that doesn’t leave you searching the page for the person’s info. PLUS VERYTHING IS TAGGED. This makes searching so easy. If you have a social life, dump MySpace and get to TagWorld

-Tom

Happy New Year. Hope everyone had a good holiday season.

Back to school again, time to reminisce with old friends and attempt to make some new ones. Maybe this semester will be less work… no probably not.

On to more important things. Battlefield 2. If you like FPS and you are one of the elite few that have PC capable of enough FLOPS to cure cancer, this is definitely the game for you. The graphics are ridiculously amazing and the gameplay is addictive. I honestly bought this game, and I don’t buy many games. If you have played any of the Battlefield Series games and liked them, and your PC is one heck of a workhorse, then pick up this game.

Most sites have features such as POTD (Picture of the Day) or SOTD (Site of the Day), well I’m going to start a new feature called… FOTP ( Feature of the Post). This will include just a cool thing I found or use, and a short blurb about it. So here goes the first FOTP.

FOTP: Maxthon

If you dislike the featureless IE and you are not sure you want to switch to the Flaming Fox Browser Thing. Then try this program. It was actually featured at CES and has won alot of awards.

Until next time… Peace out.

-Tom