My rule used to be not to post anything on here unless I spent a significant amount of time writing & revising it, and it was something I felt passionate about and that it should be shared.  However, since I haven’t updated in 6 months, that’s obviously not working out so well.  So my goal now is just to update periodically with something, even if it’s not all that profound or interesting.  This way my blog will at least serve some purpose, instead of just being another dead site on the internet.

Here are a few ideas for posts that I have that may or may not come to fruition:

• Reviews/comments on movies and TV shows that I watch
• Updates on my video game exploits (with videos)
• General posts about what’s going on in my life
• Details or instructions related to projects I’ve been working on
• Musings on various topics that I’ve been
• Rants to vent frustration

I’m also considering importing all of the entries from my several previous blogs & journals, just so they’re all in one place.  But… we’ll see.  That may not be the best of ideas.

Here’s a list of all of the armor I’ve seen in Halo: Reach videos and screenshots so far, along with their descriptions. Without accompanying pictures, the Armor Effects and Firefight Voices are probably the most interesting things on this list… though I suppose if you’re enough of a Halo nerd like me, you’ll find the Helmet variants pretty interesting as well.

To get an idea of what they look like, check out this official Bungie image, the armor images on this blog (towards the bottom), and this IGN Armory Video.

]]> http://www.vagrantsoul.com/blog/2010/07/28/a-list-of-known-armor-variants-in-halo-reach/feed/ 0 http://www.vagrantsoul.com/blog/2009/07/28/everything-i-know-about-modern-warfare-2/ http://www.vagrantsoul.com/blog/2009/07/28/everything-i-know-about-modern-warfare-2/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 18:02:22 +0000 jax sedrin http://www.vagrantsoul.com/blog/?p=49 This is a list of everything I know about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at this point in time:

(updates to this list are in… whatever this color is)

General Info:

• Release Date is 11-10-09.  All major retailers are taking pre-orders.  Amazon in particular is offering release-day shipping and $10 credit towards a future purchase.
• It’s being released for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.
• There are three editions, for the console versions at least.  Regular, Hardened, and Prestige.  Regular is just the game.  Hardened comes in a steel case with an art book, “custom art”, and a code to download Call of Duty 1 (HD) when it gets released for XBLA and PSN.  Prestige edition includes all that the Hardened edition does plus “fully-functional, wearable, adjustable Night Vision Goggles with indiviually numbered and engraved collector’s stand.”  The editions are priced $59.99, $79.99, and $149.99, respectively. I’m not sure what the editions will include for PC or what the prices are.

General Gameplay & Engine:

• Enhanced Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare engine, running at 60 frames per second on consoles.
• A new live-patching system will allow Infinity Ward to directly update the game’s data files, bypassing lengthy console certification patch processes (and potentially fixing multiplayer cheats & exploits much faster).
• Some vehicles will be “interactive” (drivable), such as the snowmobile, truck, and tank.  You can shoot a pistol with your left hand while driving (at least with the snowmobile),
• You will be able to swim and go ice-climbing.
• Confirmed weapons:  ACR, AK-47, AT4, AUG HBAR, FAMAS, SPAS-12, USP.
• The game will have “customizable weapons” (possibly more customizable than CoD4, but maybe not).
• One of the weapon customizations will be a “Heartbeat Sensor”, which is an attachable motion-tracker, a la “Aliens”.
• There will be a controllable, motion-tracking auto-turret, a la “Aliens”.
• The game will have riot shields.
• Apparently you’ll have the ability to throw and stick a “Semtex” to enemies, a la Halo’s plasma grenade.
• “We go for authenticity not realism,” Zampella told Official PlayStation Magazine. “We’re not making a sim, we’re making entertainment. We want it to look real like an action movie.”
• (7/30) The HUD will be smaller on-screen and have a new compass.

Single Player:

• Linear, longer story mode with opportunities to take alternate paths through levels.
• Levels will be “bigger” than those in CoD4.
• Levels settings include: Rio De Janerio (Brazil), Russia, a military base in Kazakhstan, and a desert area in Afghanistan.  Level missions include: an oil pipeline stealth scuba operation, an oil tanker attack, a Siberian operation (with a snowmobile), and a helicopter assault.
• Special co-op mode called “Special Forces”. Co-op missions are not tied to the main campaign’s story, but may provide alternate viewpoints.
• Co-op levels include a snowmobile race, a battle alongside U.S. Navy SEALs, and fending off a wave of 50 enemies at once.
• Fewer infinite enemy respawns that are only stopped by passing an invisible trigger line.  The game engine uses a “dynamic AI,” which has replaced the respawn system and allows enemies to act more independently. These “smarter” enemies are designed to actively seek and drive the player forward through a level, and can break away from set behaviors such as following a designated route in order to attack more quickly. The player cannot depend on an enemy being in the same location because enemies will behave differently each time a level is played.
• Stealth will be a viable gameplay option (no more enemies with x-ray vision).
• CoD4′s Captain ‘Soap’ MacTavish returns as a non-playable character.
• Ken Lally (Resident Evil 5′s Wesker), will be a voice actor.
• (7/30) Co-op will be 2-player only.

Multiplayer:

• Xbox 360 will be getting timed exclusivity on two map packs; PS3 owners will have to wait 6-12 months.
• Killstreak loadouts will be customizable with new unlockables (so, instead of always getting UAV radar at 3 kills, air strike at 5 kills and a helicopter at 7 kills, you’ll be able to choose what you want and when).
• There are 15 killstreak loadout unlockables, including AC130 cannon fire at 11 kills.
• You will be able to man the guns of AC130 (with thermal vision) during multiplayer.
• You get bonus XP for killing a player right before they get a streak (“Buzzkill”) and for getting revenge on them (“Payback”).
• It is apparently possible to earn 2300 XP with a single kill.
• Multiplayer will “highlight exceptional players and reward heroic actions.”
• (7/30) 4 factions. (Possibly “US Army Rangers”, “British SAS”, some sort of middle-eastern faction, and “Russian Spetsnaz”)
• (7/30) The AC130 will have a time limit (30 seconds?) and have 3 different guns you can switch between.  You can turn thermal imaging on and off.  The gunfire can destroy parts of the environment.

Some HD gameplay videos you should watch:

• Gameplay Trailer
• 9 minutes of Gameplay footage
• Multiplayer AC130 Video (if you only watch one video, watch this one)
• (7/30) Multiplayer AC130 Video w/ GameTrailer’s “Pop-Block” additional information

Sources: Planet Call of Duty, Wikipedia, Multiplayer AC130 YouTube video, GameTrailer’s “Pop-Block: Multiplayer Video.

• Push (background) notifications for apps (e.g., you can log into all your accounts on the Meebo app then close the app – it will notify you when you get a message)
• Cut, copy  & paste text in any app, undo with a shake
• SMS app is now “Messages” app
  • MMS support (pictures in text messages)
  • Can forward and delete individual messages
  • Can send and receive contact cards, audio files, locations
• Landscape (wide) keyboard for all Apple apps (Mail, Safari, etc.)
• Peer-to-peer wireless gaming
• A2DP (stereo over bluetooth)
• Spotlight – adds search to all key apps (Address Book, Mail, Calendar. iPod, Notes)
• Sync notes to your computer
• Multi-photo emailing
• Support for turn-by-turn GPS
• Voice Memo app
• Calendar app subscriptions (CalDAV, Exchange support)
• Downloadable content for apps
• Communication with iPhone accessories (possibility of a gamepad attachment?)

The bad news:  won’t be released until sometime “this summer”. 

But what are really getting to me now are the reactions that I’ve heard from friends and family and those that I’ve read online.  It seems to break down like this:

• Movie critics generally see the movie as a bore, the characters as uninteresting or underdeveloped, and the movie overly ambitious and full of a lot of over-the-top stylistic elements without much substance.
• Watchmen graphic novel fans usually tear the movie apart for omitting or changing what they considered to be key elements of the story, or condemn the movie more generally for not communicating the same themes well enough or not having the same impact as the source material.
• The average movie-goer (unfamiliar with Watchmen at all) was wholly disappointed (this goes back to my expectations post last week).  The movie was too boring, didn’t have enough action, was too graphically violent, had too much nudity, not enough story, too many characters, etc., etc.  Like I already mentioned, I write a lot of this off as simply people wanting another blockbuster, action-packed superhero movie and becoming rather indignant when they didn’t get it. (I heard at least one report of a parent bringing their 8-12 year-old children along…)

As far as what the movie critics say… they don’t bother me that much.  Sometimes I agree with them, sometimes I don’t, and a lot of times they seem to pan a movie simply because they’re much more interested in the artistic and historically literary relevance of the film moreso than its actual entertainment value. So… whatever.  For the graphic novel fans, I think they’re being overly critical, but at the same time I understand where they are coming from.  I felt much the same way about Dark Knight… while everyone was fawning over the movie, I couldn’t help be feel frustrated with how close they came to finally faithfully representing my interpretation of the Batman mythos while still missing some key elements.

But I guess the reactions from the average movie-goers are what frustrate me the most.  Here, we have a movie that is completely unprecedented.  It tells a story unlike any that has ever been told in a movie before, and people seem to be disgusted by it simply because it is so different.  It wasn’t Yet Another Hollywood Action Movie, and people didn’t like it.  When a movie pushes into uncharted territory, I think that it is something to value, even if it isn’t perfect.  Kind of like with the Fountain… how many movies do you know of that would qualify as “sci-fi romantic epics”?

Even aside from the originality of the story (as far as cinema is concerned), were the other aspects of the movie really that bad?  Was it really that boring, offensive, uninteresting, etc., than any other recent movies, like 300 or sin city?  I really don’t think so… but maybe I’m just a freak and it’s just me.

Anyways, I sincerely hope that anyone who reads this and was not wholly impressed by the movie to consider watching it again sometime down the road to give it another chance.  Maybe gain a new perspective on the film, one that you can appreciate a bit more.  Next time around you’ll know what to expect and maybe you can focus on enjoying the unique themes and story in the movie that you aren’t likely to find anywhere else anytime soon.

• 24″ iMac (MB420LL/A, March ’09)
• Glossy widescreen TFT active-matrix LCD (CCFL backlit)
  1920×1200 maximum resolution
  385 cd/m2 typical brightness
  750:1 typical contrast ratio
  178° horizontal, 178° vertical typical viewing angles
• 3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor
• ATI Radeon HD 4850 with 512MB GDDR3 memory
• 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM (2x2GB)
  6MB shared L2 cache
  1066MHz frontside bus
• 1.0TB 7200RPM Serial ATA Hard Drive
  Slot-loading Serial ATA 8x SuperDrive (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
• 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet
  802.11n Airport Extreme wireless networking
  Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR (Enhanced Data Rate)
  1x FireWire 800 port, 7 watts, up to 800MBps (backwards compatible with FireWire 400)
  4x USB 2.0 ports, up to 480MBps
• Internal 24-watt digital amplifier
  Built-in stereo speakers, microphone, iSight camera
  Optical digital audio input & output (minijacks)
  Mini DisplayPort output with support for DVI, VGA, and dual-link DVI
• Supports:
  - Extended desktop and video mirroring modes
  - Up to two external displays
  - Full native resolution on the built-in display simultaneously with 2560×1600 resoultion on an external display
• Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard
  iLife ’09 (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb, GarageBand)
  iWork ’09 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote)
• Apple Wireless Mighty Mouse (though I’ll still use my Logitech VX Revolution mouse)
  Apple Wireless Keyboard
  Apple Remote

These are the improvements it will offer over my current 12″ PowerBook laptop:

• 4x larger screen (12″ -> 24″)
• 3x max resolution (1024×768 or .8 megapixels -> 1920×1200 or 2.3 megapixels)
• 2x faster processor (+1.56GHz), 5x more memory (+3.23GB)
• Support for Intel-only and Mac OS X 10.5-only applications
• Support for dual-booting Windows (XP or Vista, and eventually 7)
• HD video playback

And here’s what I plan to do with it:

• Hook up my 37″ HDTV as a second monitor via DVI and my audio receiver via optical (for 5.1 surround), then run Plex media server software so I can enjoy my movie, tv show, music, and photo libraries in high definition on my home theater setup (as well as streaming content from the internet directly to my TV and speakers, such as Apple Movie Trailers, YouTube, Hulu, and Pandora).
• Install Windows (Vista or 7) with Boot Camp so I can run Steam and other PC-only games.
• Utilize better CPU and memory for faster physical media ripping and encoding (CDs and DVDs).
• Reorganize my photo library using the latest iPhoto features (places, events, facial recognition).
• Set up Time Machine so I finally have a viable backup solution.
• Have fun with creating music and maybe learning to play keyboard with GarageBand (after I buy a keyboard).

The only problem is the Radeon graphics card was a build-to-order option, which severely delayed the shipping (it now stands at 4-6 weeks ).  But I figured, this is a really damn expensive computer, and I’m planning on it lasting for several years, so… I might as well get exactly what I want, even if it takes a little while longer.  40 days and counting…

Personally, I’ve been stung by this before. I usually try my best to go into movies with little or no expectations, so even if the movie is just average it’s still a pleasant suprise and experience. Sometimes, however, this is next to impossible, given the familiarity I have with the subject or the hype surrounding the movie (or in the case of Watchmen, both). Star Wars Episode I is a perfect example of this. After repeated viewings more recently I have come to appreciate the movie more for what it is, but at the time I was so disgusted by how much it didn’t live up to the original trilogy that I left the theater in a pretty bad mood.

I admit that I haven’t read the Watchmen graphic novel. It seems like something I should have done before seeing the movie, but in scenarios such as this I can’t escape the feeling that doing so could negatively affect my enjoyment of the movie (if they cut out some really cool scenes from the movie that were in the book, for example). However, that didn’t stop me from researching the graphic novel. I read the Wikipedia entry and some of the associated links, I watched interviews with Zack Snyder and others about the source material, and I read comments and literary reviews of the novel itself. I would say by the end I understood the cultural significance of the text, and while I didn’t know every detail of the storyline, I had a pretty good idea what to expect. These accurate and semi-accurate expectations probably helped me enjoy the movie much more than I otherwise would have.

As I mentioned before, it came to light after the movie that her expectations were quite a bit different. It’s too late for me to affect her initial impression of the movie (I can only hope she comes to enjoy more like I have with repeated viewings, if she’s willing to do so), but I can offer an “expectation adjustment” to those of you who haven’t seen it yet and aren’t familiar with the graphic novel.

So, I thought I’d run through a quick list of what Watchmen is and is not:

• Watchmen is not a “superhero triumphing over evil” movie. Yes, the movie is about heroes, but this is not another story about an iconic comic book hero facing off against an arch-nemesis and saving the city. So don’t go into the movie expecting it to be anything like Spider-man, X-men, Iron Man, or even the Dark Knight, for that matter.
• And, on a related note, Watchmen is not an action movie. It does have a few fight scenes, but they are few and far between. How can a comic book movie about heroes have so little action, you ask? Well, that’s exactly what makes Watchmen so unique; you’ll have to watch it to see why.
• So if it’s not about fighting evil-doers and it’s not about action, what is it then? I would say that Watchmen is a story about characters. And what I mean by that is the point of the film isn’t so much what the characters do as who they are and what their actions say about them as people. In other words, expect the majority of the film to focus on character development (rather than plot development).
• In fact, to go a step further, Watchmen is about deconstructing the hero/superhero myth. In most hero movies, the main characters share certain admirable qualities (e.g., compassion, altruism) and they behave in certain ways (e.g., rescuing people from danger, self-sacrifice) which is in large part why people love them. But Watchmen takes apart this “myth” surrounding most heroes and looks at them from a completely different perspective. It shows how, despite their roles in society, they are still very much human (or not human, in the case of Dr. Manhattan) and they share all of the flaws associated with human nature. And, in some cases, their specialized roles in society amplify their flaws to massively damaging proportions.

I could go on, especially about the many other themes present in the film, but I think I would start crossing into spoiler territory, so I’ll stop where I am. I hope this helps people unfamiliar with the source material to more easily enjoy the movie.

And I thought I’d throw in a little Watchmen-related humor: 104 Ways to Hilariously Ruin the Watchmen Movie [via Gizmodo]