Halo ODST
Posted by Mike | Filed under Games
I had the chance to play Halo ODST, and I gotta say – not impressed and definetly not worth $60. Clocking in at less than 4 hours worth of gameplay, this game feels like it was forced to fit in the Halo universe. While there was some great performances from Nathan Fillion (Captain Malcolm Reynolds – Firefly), Adam Baldwin (Jayne Cobb – Firefly, John Casey – Chuck), and Nolan North (Nathan Drake – Uncharted), the story was rather slow and jumped around alot. It would have been nice to have a better written story. Evidently Bungie doesn’t have Midas’ touch when it comes to games, and I hope that Halo Reach isn’t this bad when it is released later this year.
PSN Uno
Posted by Mike | Filed under Games
I recently saw Uno on the PSN. At first, the price was $7.99 – way too much for a simple card game. Then I was deligted to see that the game’s price had been reduced to $3.99, much more acceptable. I decided to purchase it and there was no big suprise, it was a game involving the classic card game Uno. The visuals are nice, the controls are okay, there’s multiplayer and trophy support. The one problem is that the game almost seems like it plays for you. If you are playing the classic game, there doesn’t feel like there is a challenge, because it tells you what to do almost. Its amusing to play online and listen to people’s commentaries when you’ve gone and done something that they don’t like. I would suggest this if you’ve ever wanted to play Uno by yourself, otherwise pick up an Uno deck and play with your friends
Editing Visual Studio Menus
Posted by Mike | Filed under Programming, Random
I use Visual Assist X every time that I develop because it is one of the most amazing and useful plugins for Visual Studio, ever. However for some reason the context menu shortcut disappeared for some reason and it greatly slowed down my productivity. For a while I searched and tried to find a solution, and I finally did. Here is how to edit menus in Visual Studio:
If you click on main menu Tools -> Customize… The Customize window will open. Click on the Toolbars
tab at the top and select Context Menu by placing a check mark in its box on the left. This will place a ToolBar at the top of The IDE. Select Project and Solution Context Menus drop down list. Select the context menu to edit and then right click on the menu item to remove and select Delete. To Add menu items go to the Commands table of the Customize window Select a Categories and from the Commands section Drag and Drop the command in the same area you just deleted the previous. You will need to play around with it.
Tags: Context Menus, Editing Menus, visual studio
TestDriven.net
Posted by Mike | Filed under Random
I found out about this cool addin for visual studio, TestDriven.Net. If you do unit testing in Visual Studio, check this out (I believe that it works for both .NET langauges and C++).
Tags: Add-in, TDD, Test Driven Development, visual studio, Visual Studio Addin
Sherlock Holmes
Posted by Mike | Filed under Movies
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law make a great Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. The two work beautifully together, and help draw you in to the world of Sherlock Holmes. While I’m not sure how true the movies stays to the actual books, but the movie was good enough. Its not something that I would rush out to see, but if you have nothing better to do Sherlock Holmes isn’t a bad bet.
Tags: Movies, Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Rockstar Letter
Posted by Mike | Filed under Commentary, Games
For those of you who have any idea about the quality of life (QoL) issue for game developers, the mention of the EA Spouse letter will make your hair stand on end. Unfortunately it seems that the big bad publishing giant EA is not the only company now to have received an open letter regarding the QoL issue for it’s developers.
Rockstar San Diego is the focus of the latest letter from a group of wives of developers working at Rockstar San Diego. I was very concerned to hear that most of the same issues have been brought into the light by spouses of developers 5 years after the EA Spouse Letter. It concerns me greatly as a developer to hear that these issues are still alive in the industry.
I have been fortunate that I have never had to deal with issues even approaching the magnitude of either the EA Spouse Letter or the Rockstar Wives’ Letter. Hopefully we, as an industry, can work towards a way to fix these kinds of problems.
Rockstar Wives’ Letter – Gamasutra Link
Tags: EA Spouse, Industry, QoL, Quality of Life, Rockstar, Rockstar San Diego, video games
Chuck Season 3
Posted by Mike | Filed under Random
Last night started off the newest season of Chuck. There were two episodes that aired last night, and this season has started off pretty good. Hopefully we can ensure that Chuck continues by giving our viewership. Not a whole lot of options on Sunday evenings, so hopefully it will do even better this year.
Tags: Chuck, Chuck Bartowski, Season 3
Video games are dangerous
Posted by Mike | Filed under Games
Evidently, despite no evidence to support it, Keith Vaz (basically the British version of Jack Thompson) is calling for cigarette-style warning labels to be put on video games because of their health risk.
For those of you who don’t know who Keith Vaz is, he is basically the anti-video game MP in the UK. He is more annoying that Jack Thompson (as he at least has good reason sometimes for his pursuits) and wields more power as well.
Tags: Britain, Dangerous, Keith Vaz, MP, UK, video games
Devil’s Tuning Fork
Posted by Mike | Filed under Games
As the month of June dwindled down a group of DePaul students formed to create the DePaul Game Elites. This group was assigned the “simple” task to create an original game in six months to compete in the Independent Games Festival. Advised by industry veterans Alex Seropian, Patrick Curry, Bill Muehl, Joe Linhoff, and Scott Roberts the team composed of six programmers, six artists, two designers, and one producer.
Take a look at Devil’s Tuning Fork website
Tags: DePaul, DePaul Game Elites, Devil's Tuning Fork, Independent Games Festival
Video games were invented by the devil
Posted by Mike | Filed under Commentary, Games
Today brings another “genius” who tells us that she thinks that video games were invented by the devil. Anytime I read something like this it boils me up inside. They continue to show that some people are just not meant to be parents, or don’t really want to do the hard parts – like discipline.
The Frumpy Middle-Aged Mom says:
My anti-video game attitude was only reinforced recently, when I read a story in the Boston Herald about a mom who was so frustrated by her son’s obsessive video gaming that she finally called 911.
Apparently, her 14-year-old had become so fixated on “Grand Theft Auto” that he refused to stop playing it. The trouble in her house started after she woke up at 2 a.m. and found her son playing the game on his bedroom computer.
Video games can be bad, if your child is not monitored – like everything else in the world. Unrestricted, unsupervised, unregulated access to certain things for children is not always the best idea because most children haven’t learned what is an acceptable amount of time for certain activities. Should you regulate your child’s access to certain food, even if it is healthy? Of course you should because too much of anything is bad for you.
Parents that say that video games are the cause of childrens’ bad behaviour are simply looking for a scapegoat, and it is understandable. What parent wants to admit that their child is a terror and is not well behaved? It is easier to blame something like video games. I’m sure we all have witnessed the child at the grocery store or shopping mall running rampant without the parent saying anything.
Now I wonder about the question can video games teach children any positive skills? Video games are endless and therefore there are many opportunities for children to pick up real life skills, even if those skills are not learned directly from video games. Not all children are outgoing and make new friends easily – video games are a common thing among children and can help break the ice when a child is being encourage to expand their social horizons. Children can also learn teamwork through co-operative play. But again, ensuring that children balance their video game time (along with TV and movie viewing) with appropriate healthy outdoor socialization with other children is important. If your child would rather play video games than spend time with friends, then maybe it is time to step in and turn off the video games, or limit them to an hour a day.
Now with this “Frumpy” mother’s misinformed nature, I think it also important to note that video games can probably (I’ve seen no definite evidence, but this is pretty much common sense to me) have adverse effects on children if they were some other factor. For instance, if you knew a sociopath would you give them a gun and let them loose unsupervised? Do convicts on parole just get to roam the streets free without supervision? The answer to both questions should be no. If you had a really nice TV and you knew someone that had a habit of throwing things when they got frustrated, would you let them play a video game with that TV alone? Probably not.
The author of this article continues to demonstrate my point that children should not be left to their own devices:
I was an odd, geeky kid most of my childhood.
I was too weird for most of the other kids to play with, so I spent most of my time reading obsessively, which of course only made me more of a dweeb…
She had problems as a child with socializing with other children because of a self-admitted obsession with reading. Reading is great, but the thing is that it reading begins to cause the symptoms of addition to appear (like the focus of the “addiction” causes the person to spend less and less time with friends and family, work life begins to suffer, etc) then the person has obviously gone overboard with their hobby/passion/pastime. Now I need to mention that I do not mean this as a personal insult but rather proof of children not always being able to balance interests with healthy living.
There are plenty of video games that are suitable for children, and no I don’t mean Grand Theft Auto (which is actually rated to be inappropriate for children). Most Nintendo games are very appropriate for children, like the New Super Mario Bros. Wii for instance, cartoon violence and the like. Children under the age of 13 should generally stick to games rate E for Everyone. Other games include Braid (E10+), Vancouver 2010™ – The Official Video Game of the Olympic Winter Games(E), LittleBigPlanet(E), Frogger(E), Forza Motorsport 3(E), Madden NFL Arcade(E). Would you let a child watch a R rated movie? If not, then why would you let a child play a game that has the equivalent rating (M for Mature)?
In the end, this author simply proves that parents are not informed and therefore vilify something that doesn’t deserve it. It is common for video games to be used as a scapegoat rather than have a parent admit that they are a bad parent. Hopefully we can move on from blaming video games for the world’s ills and start accepting responsibility for our own actions.
Tags: bad parenting, devil, mainstream media, obsession, overuse, video games
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