If you’re playing BioShock, I discovered a “fool proof” way to take down a BigDaddy very quickly without any risk;
Highlight spoiler text below for solution:
Once you get the crossbow and trap bolts, line up a corridor with 4 of them. Drop 2-3 Proximity mines along the same path. Shoot Big Daddy. Watch him charge you and die in the trap you’ve set.
Harvest/Release Little Sister.
ooooohhh…. in-game screen-caps from Crysis, a DirectX 10 game built for Windows Vista. Almost looks real…
Hellgate: London looks like it will be ready for an October release based on the rumors going out. The forums have a wonderful post with a lot of in-game footage videos. According to an interviewwith Flagship CEO (the developer of H:L), there will be significant “free online content,” which could mean anything, but there will at least be co-op play a la Diablo 2 multiplayer.
Not sure what PVP content will be available, but they will definitely have premium (read: subscription) content, which will include raiding. Now, the interesting thing about raiding in H:L will be that the “dungeons” will scale based on the number of players who participate in the “dungeon.” This has the potential to exceed World of Warcraft raiding significantly in that you can work on the same content with 5 people that you can work on with 15, and the difficulty scales. 2 people don’t show up that evening? No problem, the monsters get a little easier to defeat. At least, that’s the current theory.
There seems to be lots of concern over the copy protection that the publisher will force on the product (a la 2K Games and BioShock being married to StarForce). Since I was lucky enough to purchase BioShock via Steam, I evaded the StarForce genii. Of course, if I knew that a game was going to include StarForce (or some other uber copy protection) before I purchased it, I would skip buying, and so would a lot of other consumers. Why? If you have to uninstall your anti-virus to install the game, or you’re limited on the number of times you can re-install without asking for a keycode reset, I’m just not going to spend my money. Not to mention all of the problems with customers who have had trouble installing the game and end up using an installation instance even if the game didn’t properly install (and the installation problems are caused by interactions between the system and the DRM software during first install of the product.)
A recent article on joystiq regarding the moral choices of BioShock has been published. In BioShock, you are a survivor of an airplane crash in the mid-Atlantic (read this MSNBC article for a full review). You submerge to an underwater city (a la Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand) of objectivist engineers, businessmen, artists, etc. But… Not all is right in Rapture (the name of the underwater city).
Enter Big Daddys and Little Sisters:
The details of these little creatures is not really relevant except that you are told early on in the game that they are not human and should be killed (by your erstwhile savior and narrator, Atlas… see why I refer to Atlas Shrugged above? And I will go in to a little detail further down in this post to make a point.)
So, you come across a little girl, bereft of her protector and are given a choice: Kill her and get more ADAM, a genetic substance that makes your more powerful, and more likely to survive the dangers of Rapture, or, Release her, get less ADAM, some nebulous reward from the creators of the Little Sisters, and a questionable improvement in your self image for sparing a virtual girl who begs and pleads for her life… and who you later see singing fairy tale songs, exclaiming wonder at discoveries made, complaining about scabby knees, complaining her protector is a slowpoke and should hurry up, talking about falling asleep and more.
So, I’ve played a little over 20 hours of BioShock so far, on my first run through the game. The first time I played, I forgot to save the entire way through, and the autosave took me past a point where I was doing well with the game, and then the game crashed. So, long story short: I had to start over.
My first time through, I harvested 2 of the Little Sisters, got 160 ADAM each. My second time through, I released the Little Sisters and only got 80 ADAM and a nebulous promise of some future reward. But, when I reached my 3rd released Little Sister, their creator gave me a gift: A container of 200 ADAM.
Now, I’ll first admit that killing the Little Sisters was a bit disturbing. They cry when you kill their protector, they are afraid for their lives, and then you harvest the ADAM. While it could be argued that you’re not actually killing them, the most succinct explanation of that argument is: “Little Sisters are terminally ill, kept alive only by the symbiote that generates ADAM. You’re not so much killing them as removing a terminally ill patient from life support.” But you harvest the slug for it’s ADAM content, and then you release the girl… to die.
So examine that decision more closely. Get 160 ADAM per kill, or get 80 per release, plus 200 per 3 releases, plus additional gifts. That’s 480 ADAM for 3 kills, or 440 for 3 releases, plus an assortment of other items (health packs, “mana” or EVE packs, components for building things, etc.)
For those I’ve spoken to about this before writing this post, obviously my original math must have been off. I attribute that to the late night hours of game time I’ve been pursuing. Good thing I’m not a mathematician as a profession, or my day work would suck as a result of playing this game. 
I agree with the people who wrote the news article at MSNBC, BioShock is one of those games whose storyline will reverberate in gaming history for years to come.
A topic that is (just under) 2 years old made the news on Filefront today. The Corrupted Blood disease (ZG/Hakkar, 20-man raid dungeon in STV) of bygone years came to light again today at Filefront, for some brilliant (questionable?) disease researchers (I’m not spelling the name of the scientists who study skin and skin diseases this early in the morning, and I’m too lazy to cut and paste the name ) decided to use it as a study model (according to the BBC) for how humans spread disease or attempt to avoid it.
The CDC apparently has requested infection statistics (etc) from Blizzard (if I read this news article correctly), back when it happened.
On an unrelated side note, apparently the developers considered putting the Ghost of Leeroy Jenkins in BRS after seeing the video.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/pc/hellgate-london/preview-379913
Hellgate: London is set to take Diablo 2 from the fantasy 3rd person setting to a first-person near-future setting. Hell has opened a gate in London, and it’s your job to send the bad guys back where they came from.
One part Doom 3 and two parts Diablo 2, the game will mix solo and cooperative play. Players will be able to “group” to trade items, chat, or adventure. There will also be a competative mode based on early analysis.
According to the latest, there’s an official trailer. I didn’t dig too deeply in to the release date. From what I saw from one or two of the preview articles, they’re taking the same stance that Blizzard has taken forever… it’ll be done and ready, when it’s done and ready.
I just received this. I guess I should respond ASAP… or else…
——- Original Message ——-
Date: 8/15/2007 4:07 PM
From: World of Warcraft Account Administration <accountmanager48@gmail.com>
To: me (email address omitted)
Subject: World of Warcraft Account AdministrationWorld of Warcraft — Account Administration
Greetings,
We are writing to you to inform you that we recently noticed one or more attempts to login to your World of Warcraft account from a foreign IP address.
If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual
login attempts may have been initiated by you. However, if you did not
initiate the logins, please read on.If you wish to not get your account suspended you should immediately
verify your account. We need to confirm you are the original owner of
the account.
This is easiest done by confirming your personal information along
with concealed information about your account.You can confirm that you are the original owner of the account by
replying to this email.Use the following template below to verfiy your account and
information via email.* First and Surname
* Address
* Zip code
* Phone number Daytime
* Country
* Account name
* Account passwordIf you ignore this mail, your account can and will be closed permanently.
We ask you to NOT change password until the investigation is fully completed.
You will be notified by email when the investigation is complete.
This can take up to 3 working days.Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be
addressed by Account Administration. To learn more about how
Account Administration is able to assist you, please visit us athttp://www.blizzard.com/support/wowaa/.
Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter.
Regards,
Bevog
Account Administration
Blizzard Entertainment
http://www.blizzard.com/support
Reported
A topic near and dear to my heart, my Paycheck.
I was flipping through the (very limited) TV channels available on “hotel cable” and came across an interesting show on TLC about a kid who was getting “paycheck negotiation” coaching in exchange for recording his entire experience for television.
The summary of the episode is this boy moved out to New York to be a line-cook for a friend’s restaurant. He’s passionate about cooking, but when he and his friend/boss first negotiated he was told he was going to be making something in the $32k per year range after he got a little experience under his belt. Nine months later, he’s making $10 an hour (less than $21k per year base salary) and he’s improved his cooking skills dramatically. Unfortunately, his negotiation skills haven’t increased in proportion to his cooking skills.
So the hosts of the TV series set off to give the subject of the episode the experiences he needs to both see that he could make more money, and that he does have options other than sitting down and sucking up how he’s being treated.
He goes in to the negotiation asking for $15 an hour (which he is certainly not going to get, especially with the national average for him being $13 an hour) and ends up getting $13, or $27k per year. That’s a $500 paycheck increase per week (assuming bi-weekly paychecks), and that doesn’t count the overtime already works.
The show ends with a 1 month later view of how well he’s doing and a status report from his boss. The subject had taken to the new responsibilities (he had to get promoted to get the $13 per hour).
Burn Notice is a story about a covert agent whose overseas action goes wrong. He returns to his home, Miami Florida, and discovers he’s been burned. Which means that his agency has given official notice that he is considered unreliable. The lead character is played by Jeffrey Donovan, who is spending most of his time in the series to either acquire resources to fund his investigation in to why he got burned, or actually investigating why he got burned. Donovan appeared in the movie Hitch, and in the TV series The Pretender, Witchblade and Monk. If you’re drawing a blank, he’s the misogynist in Hitch who said “power suit, power tie” and got his ass kicked by Hitch.
You can read the details of the story to date by visiting the USA Network website, the wikipedia episode guide, or the TV series summary.
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