GRAW Mission 1 Highlights

Posted on 2 March 2008 by FoxTwo

I have been playing GRAW (Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter) on and off the past couple of days. Yes, it’s not GRAW2, but the older one.

Rather than giving a full rundown on mission 1, here’s a 12 minute clip showing some highlights up to the point of reaching the rendezvous with the airborne drone.

I did complete the mission with zero injuries and fatalities on my side though, but I didn’t record them on video.

As I said, the AI in GRAW seemed much better than in GRAW2. I remember that there was a machine gun post hidded in the warehouse, on the way up to the helipad to evac from the area. So, this time around, I just ordered all 3 Ghosts to run straight into the warehouse. I am partially amazed that none of them was injured at all, and they managed to take out the machine gun nest in under 3 seconds.

Now I’m on mission 2, and again, I forgot to record the action. No matter, I’ll record it when I get back into it again.

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I Played Need For Speed, And…..

Posted on 27 February 2008 by FoxTwo

… realised I still suck at it :p

I remember the first time I came to know about this game called Need For Speed. I forgot how long ago it was, but it’s definitely more than 10 years ago. Perhaps about 1986 or so. I remember the game came on a 5.25 inch floppy disk (360K capacity), and after installing it, we marvelled at how great the CGA, 4-colour graphics were at 320×240 resolution. Amazing! They finally managed to use the Cyan, Magenta, Black and White colours effectively to convey the sense of speed, and also the scenery!

I remember how excited we were to hear engine sounds coming out from the dinky little PC speaker. It was an amazing achievement!

(Back then, there were NO sound cards. Creative was just selling PCs at a corner shop on the 6th floor of Funan Centre at the time, and haven’t even invented the Adlib card yet, which is the predecessor to the first Sound Blaster cards).

So, back to the game. At the time, I played any games I could get my hands on. Racing games, flying games, platform games etc. It was only through the years I realised which types I enjoyed, and stopped playing others which I don’t. Racing games aren’t one of those I enjoyed, sadly. I keep crashing. Mashing the left and right arrow keys all the time, can’t slow down fast enough to make hairpin turns etc. These are all so frustrating to me.

And, it’s not that I dunno how to drive in real life. It’s just that we don’t drive with a keyboard in real life, see?

So yeah, I still suck at it, and thus I’ll delete the game from my harddisk and return the DVD to my friend heh.

Oh yeah why did I even install it? Well, blame it on Knight Rider 2008… After watching it I thought I might have a go again at NFS, and to see if a Ford Mustang is one of the cars in it. It wasn’t. Well, not in the game anyway.

Ah well. Guess the next time I play a racing game again would be in another 15 yrs…

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The Movies

Posted on 17 February 2008 by FoxTwo

Yes I know I have kinda “disappeared” for awhile.

Part of the reason is, I just got The Movies, plus the expansion pack Stunts And Effects.

The game itself, is similar to The Sims. You control a movie studio, hire stars, scriptwriters, builders etc to run your movie empire. This kind of games isn’t really my cup of tea though.

So why did I get it?

Simple – I have not been making machinimas in a couple of years. Sometimes I wish I can do it again. The Movies appears to be a great tool to make some simple machinimas, and with a little bit of creativity, slightly more complex ones too.

For a start, I have already made a couple of them. They can be found on my Vimeo channel here. The 3 videos listed at the top are all made with this “game”. Yes I view this “game” more like a tool than a game. I run almost exclusively in the “sandbox” option in the game, where everything is available to me, and I have options set to make sure my actors don’t misbehave etc etc.

For the record, here are the machinimas I made with this “game” so far:

If you watch them in full screen mode, they should be in “high-def”. That’s why I love Vimeo – my videos don’t get resized down to 320×240 (like how Youtube would), and not only that, resampled to a lower bitrate. On Vimeo, my videos are available in high-def if you play them in full screen, and “standard resolution” if you play them in a small window.

Update: 17 Nov 2008: Vimeo has unceremoniously removed my account. Thus these videos are now relocated to Viddler.com.

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