Halo:Reach

So I have recently been playing Halo:Reach and it is every bit the game I thought it would be. Bungie has really outdone themselves with this one. They have packed in new weapons, new abilities, and new features in their forge editor. They have also taken the firefight idea that was presented in ODST and created a fully fleshed-out game-type from it. I finished the game the other day and probably liked the campaign more than any previous Halo experience. I am currently going through on Legendary (slow going), and hoping to 1000gs this one.

Having said that there are just a couple of things that have been bothering me a bit. One is the balancing issue. I have beaten every previous Halo game on Legendary and I feel this one is quite a bit harder when you are on your own. I find myself really taking advantage of my NPCs just to progress. One mission where Jun was placing a bomb on a Covenant structure I ended up running all the way out of the area because I didn't have the firepower to take on the three Elites and two Hunters that were suddenly dropped on me. I stood way off and waited for ages while Jun killed all the enemies and finished what he was doing, which is I guess one of my biggest complaints: I wasn't really able to be in the fight. I wish I could make a bigger difference but I always have too few rounds, and not enough armor and shields. I can't even really expose myself to two jackals without being badly damaged and forget about taking on an Elite head to head, even without any distractions. At one point where I was assaulting a large Covenant tower (the one with the two HUGE elevators) I was riding to the top, killing one or two guys and then dropping off the side (saving myself with the jetpack) so that I could get a new checkpoint with fewer guys at the top.

Problem #2 will involve some SPOILERS for those of you who haven't finished the game (shame on you, it really IS good). I take issue with how most of the team died. Jorge was the first to go and his death was good; he needed to stay behind to manually trigger the bomb ala Bruce Willis in Armageddon. That I can completely understand. Then Kat goes -- from a single needler round to the head. It WAS a needle rifle and they DO kill with a headshot but ONLY when the shields are down. She had her armor on and nobody had been getting shot at so I can only assume that her shields were fully charged meaning it was impossible for her to die that way.

Next lets talk about Jun. He is the member that was escorting Dr. Halsey to safety. He was told explicitly to kill her rather than let her fall into enemy hands. We have to assume that if he came under fire either she would have died from enemy fire or he would have killed her himself and since she survived he obviously did as well.

Carter was next. I know when last we saw him he had his helmet off, but then he was talking to his team on the radio. No matter what they are flying in the pilots talk on headsets. Carter's headset was in his helmet. The only way he could talk to his team was if he had his helmet on, and if he DID have his helmet on then he certainly would have survived ramming the pelican into the scarab. C'mon, Noble 6 and Master Chief both managed to reenter planetary gravity without much more than a sprained ankle (walk it off soldier!), so how in the world could that crash kill Carter?

Emile went out like a badass and it totally works that he was flanked by enemies while he was busy working the big MAC gun. He probably was even aware of them coming up on him but his mission of clearing the skies was too important for him to stop, even to save his own life.

Basically, if I had been the one writing the story Jun, Carter, Kat and Noble 6 would all have met up at the end of the game and the last "mission" of the game would have been their death sequence. They had already made possible the future Halo games and done everything they could to protect humanity. I would have given them a mission where they are attempting to bunker in to a safer area to await the backup that was supposed to come in 48 hours ("that's imminent?"). They would be falling back from an overwhelming force and all 4 of them would be getting damaged slowly just like the ending of Noble 6. When I started the ending sequence I KNEW from the start that it was where I was going to die. I think it would have been MUCH better if the hope had been stripped from me little by little. Imagine trying to get into a more fortified area and a bulkhead door slams closed trapping one team member outside with the enemy forces (like every submarine movie ever made). The team members inside are frantically trying to override the door controls but the guy outside shoots up the controls to try and protect everyone inside. They are left to watch him via outside cameras as he fights off the horde that eventually destroys him. Then a wraith comes into view and starts pounding the door open. The mission would continue with the Covenant still in pursuit and you are hearing your team calling out sitrep:
"My shield unit is destroyed. It's not recharging."
"Running low on ammo."
"I can't move my arm!"
"Last clip!"
"Losing a lot of blood!"
"He's right on top of me!"
Suddenly the whole screen glares brightly and the camera switches to show the glassing of Reach as everyone, Covenant and Noble team alike, are washed away in the destruction of the planet.

Try and tell me that wouldn't be more epic than what we got.

END SPOILERS

The third thing that really bothered me was the in-depth armor customization menu that doesn't really DO anything. You work your butt off for credits so that you can afford to buy that new shiny whatever but all it does is change the LOOK of your character. I would have felt much happier about each bit of armor bestowing a tiny advantage. Like the shoulder pads that specifically say that they help with jet-packing. Why not make it ACTUALLY help with jet-packing? Even if it helped the energy recharge just a bit faster or gave just a tiny amount more maximum energy I would be happy. Or how about the chest plate that is supposed to help with armor? Why not give a guy a few more hitpoints? Or a tiny bit more shields? Or special defense against a particular type of weapon? Or a bit of extra ammo? Or a slightly larger radar?

These changes wouldn't be big enough to even unbalance the game. When you play Halo you have drawn-out confrontations. Unlike a game like Modern Warfare 2 where you win based on situational awareness (you see the guy first and you will likely win the battle), Halo requires you to hit the other guy with round after round and not let him get somewhere to lick his wounds. Because of this and the fast-paced nature of the game all of the extra tiny advantages would be swallowed up in the multiplayer experience that is Halo and not really make much of an overall difference to the matches. But feeling like you just worked hard to unlock armor that actually DOES something would make a HUGE difference to the individual players. At least it would to me.

More Than Meets the Eye

So I have this long love affair with twisty puzzles. I love that they are tactile. I love that they can be messed up without being broken. I love to try new things with them. There is another type of puzzle that I have never gotten into and that is what is know as a pull-apart puzzle. I don't like thinking that a piece might go missing and destroy my fun, plus most of them rely on a type of gimmick, by which I mean you find out the big secret and then the puzzle isn't a challenge anymore; oh this panel slides. Oh this needs to twist this way. Oh I need to set it down and spin it.

Along these lines a great twisty puzzle is an appropriately complex transformer. It has a clearly defined end-goal, it will keep your hands and your mind busy for a few minutes, and they are usually robust enough that you don't need to worry about breaking them. I have an ever-growing collection. I really lucked out in that my younger brother is kind of addicted so I get to check them all out as they are released and then I just pick and choose the most intriguing ones for myself. Among my collection are most of the Alternator line which was a model quality line which was targeted to adult collectors and not children. They each take 10-15 minutes to transform. If you haven't messed with a particular model for a long time it can take half an hour. The masterpiece lineup is also excellent and extremely accurate to their cartoon examples.

Many people might automatically assume that transformers are only for kids but the truth is that there are many that would be challenging and fun for adults as well.

The Last Crap-Bender

Well I have been pretty busy with school and work but I came down from those lofty pursuits to give you my opinion on "The Last Airbender" movie: it sucked big time. It should be named "The Last Airbender Movie You'll Ever Want To See".

It was honestly terrible which is a shame because the original series is a masterpiece of epic proportions. Without further adieu I give you the top 10 worst things about the movie (in no real particular order).

10. Lame acting. This is surprising because M. Night has created amazing movies with young actors such as Sixth Sense. Maybe Haley Joel was just a much better actor (obviously) or maybe there is some other reason that I felt like I was watching a middle school play.

9. Character appearance. From Zuko's almost invisible scar to Katara's missing hair loopies I was a bit put off by the departures from the original look of the characters, including the fact that Appa (the Bison) looked really kinda weird. If it had been me, I would have tried to nail everything exactly instead of making my own interpretations of existing material.

8. Story mish-mash. It really turned me off that M. Night took such liberties to an already rich and fleshed-out story universe. He added his own lore (The Avatar can never have family connections? WTF?) as well as making a completely new script when he should have used familiar lines during familiar scenes.

7. Crappy bending. In the cartoon a character would move and the element would move, in the movie the character dances around like a retard for a handful of seconds before anything happens. If it takes you 30 seconds to splash someone with water or 3 seconds to shoot them with an arrow why would anyone ever take up bending?

6. Fire bending bullcrap. This one pissed me off. Firebenders MAKE FIRE from their chi but in the movie apparently only the most powerful ones could make their own fire. Everyone else had to use existing fire sources. So gay. In the original series the powerful firebenders showed off their power in one of three bad-ass ways: 1) Blue fire 2) Lighting 3) Making giant flames so large you say "eff me!!".

5. The overall pacing of the film. Of course I realize that a 20+ hour anime season will lose a bit when it is turned in to a 2 hour movie, but first of all the movie was NOT 2 hours when it would still have been popular if it had been a 3 hour movie. Secondly, season two could have been shortened easier than season one, there is no real reason to have rushed through it so fast and ended the movie at the same point that the season ended, they should have spent a bit more time on character development, made the movie a bit longer, and turned the three seasons into at least 4 movies. Instead it really feels like we got cheated, which is bad for everyone because those of us who are fans of the original feel like too much is missing and those who haven't watched the series are confused about what is going on.

4. Choreography. It sucks that all the fight scenes in the original series were built and executed much better than in the movie. That's gotta hurt going down...

3. Nobody hurt anyone else. It really kinda struck me as funny that Aang couldn't go into his Avatar state until he calmed down and decided not to hurt anyone. Wha..? In the series he was pissed because the moon spirit had been obliterated and it was his past Avatar lives that carried him into the Avatar state. One of the beautiful quirks of the original series is that Aang has NO control over his Avatar powers and they are triggered by outside situations and he is sort of carried helplessly along like everyone else until he finally masters it. In the movie he certainly looked like he had mastered it already. Suck.

2. Really bad comedy. The original series started out very light-hearted which allowed the climactic two-part episode at the North Pole to be so friggin' powerful because it was so dark and out of control. In a similar fashion the whole series becomes much more serious as it goes on. It sucked that there were only a couple parts which were supposed to be funny and they felt forced and shallow.

1. The mispronunciation of everyone's names. From the start of the movie where Katara calls him the AH-VUH-TAR and Aang is AHNG and Iro (Eye-ro) is EE-RO Sokka (Sock-uh) is SOAK-UH, I died a little inside at each butchering. Groan.

I hated this movie almost more than I can communicate to you. Have a nice day.

Assassin's Creed II (Part 2)

Well I beat AC2 last night and I am impressed enough to warrant another blog. The first game had that "plot twist" I told you about (that you learn about in the first three minutes of playtime). AC2 also has a plot twist, but this time it is very skillfully done. The story is truly viewed through the eyes of Ezio who is the main character. The game never stops the story to explain itself to you the gamer, which is a huge plus. Personally, I hate games and movies which assume the viewer is so stupid that they have to slow everything way down and explain it all to you when it is much more stimulating to figure things out on your own. AC2 definitely assumes that you are not a moron and instead of being condescending ends up being extremely rewarding to the player. There are literally tons of stories, clues, and puzzles that can be skipped entirely during the regular playthrough that substantiate and fill out the story, and missing them would be a huge mistake. For those of you who are playing I refer to the hidden glyphs, and reading the codex pages. As you find these scraps of information a huge and foreboding worldwide conspiracy begins to take shape which does a pretty good job of accrediting major wars (contemporary and ancient) to a certain factions trying to assert a New World Order. The game culminates during and just after the last boss battle where the curtain is literally ripped away and the basis for everything in the game is explained in a way that gave me chills. It was like a hundred shards of information were floating about in my mind and I was trying to make sense of them and suddenly all the answers clicked beautifully into place so that the plot twist was really more of a revelation.

In addition to the above it should also be mentioned that the music in this game is awesome, the graphics are leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor and all the varied mini-missions really keep the game going right through to (and beyond) the end. Another new addition to this game is finding the Assassin's tombs and removing critical artifacts from them. What makes these so much fun is that while much of the game involves finding a way to get from point A to B, these normal movements are not specifically set up to be puzzles. Each of the tombs are set up as a miniature level that must be conquered in a way that draws on platforming skills and requires on-the-fly problem solving skills as many involve timed elements. This really felt like Ubisoft going back to its venerable Prince of Persia series and really ended up feeling like a big shiny present in a game that is already outstanding. You really should consider buying or renting this game.

Assassin's Creed II

So guess what I have been doing lately?

When the first Assassin's Creed came out I jumped all over it. It had its drawbacks and shortcomings, most notably of which were the monotony of the smaller 'missions' such as tailing someone, picking someone's pocket, or beating information out of someone's sorry hide. While each of these tasks were fun the first few times, the game made you do them over and over for each mission. This is such a perfect example of how realism does not equal fun. If you were a real assassin of course you would need to do all those things many times in order to learn your target's habits and haunts. But it doesn't really matter what is realistic or not to a gamer. We want variety and panache. If a game becomes tedious or boring a gamer is liable to just insert one of his other games and let some dust collect.

This problem has been completely solved in AC2 by simply removing the whole thing (I haven't finished the game yet so I don't know for certain if it pops up later). Your character simply finds allies (a simple matter of getting to a location) and talks to them; they have already done all your leg work for you. There are still plenty of mini-missions, but they are completely voluntary now. The closest thing to finding your own information now is getting a bit of information from your primary targets.

The other major problem with the first game (for me) was collecting all thousand or so flags if you were a completionist. Collecting these had no positive impact on the overall game and since they didn't show up on the map (or mini-map) they were a complete pain in the hiney. This game still has plenty of things to collect but most of the show up on the maps (once you buy treasure maps) and they all have import, such as collecting treasure chests which give you money to spend on upgrades. I always felt that the challenge should be GETTING to a location which has a collectible, not so much FINDING it. The game, at its heart, is a free-running platformer, so moving around should be tantamount.

Where both games really shine is in movement and combat. Both can be muddled through by a clunky player, but if you hone your skills you turn a good game into an excellent one. The whole combat system becomes this dance of death against multiple opponents where timing and weapon choice are critical. There is a counter-attack system which involves striking just before their attack lands, but incoming attacks vary in strength and speed and timing it just right to get through a fight against a dozen guys without them touching you always leaves a good feeling. AC2 has really ramped things up by adding lots of new combat tools into the mix: smoke bombs, throwing money on the ground to incite the crowd, and being able to pick up any weapon that an opponent drops really adds depth and flavor to an already great system. As for movement, even small differences in directional input result in a different interpretation by the game and it doesn't really care if you leap to your death. Most of the time this doesn't hamper the player but it really pays off to figure out your path before you start jumping around like an idiot. The pathfinding for climbing could be a little better. A couple times I have been climbing and my character stops because he cannot go up anymore and the next handhold is just a bit off center from him and I need to slide right or left to continue my climb.

The game picks up exactly where the first left off. If you haven't played the first game then the major plot twist is that you are a modern descendant of an Assassin and you lie on a machine that can help you relive your ancestor's memories which are stored in your genetic material. Kinda hokey and they tell you all this during the first cutscene so it's not a surprise. The problem is that the game would probably have been better without any of the modern stuff; it was confusing to try and keep track of two main characters and what they were doing, and every time you were the modern-day guy you pretty much just got out of the machine and went to your room to sleep, woke up and went back to the table. The game was intended from the beginning to be a series so hopefully this second game will have more stuff to actually do in the 'real' world. As for the memory stuff in AC2, once you go in you stay in until most of the missions are done. I am probably halfway done with the game and I am still in for the first time. This really helps the game because the player isn't forced to switch gears every 20 minutes.

The bottom line is that Assassin's Creed II is compelling and fun, as well as being extremely rewarding to the more dedicated player. If you want the whole story you had better play through the first one but don't make me twist your arm as that was an outstanding game as well.

3x3x5

As promised here is some info on the 3x3x5, which behaves exactly like a bandaged 6x6x6. It will always turn along its inner slices (behaving like a normal 3x3x3) but an entire hemisphere (hemicube?) must have properly oriented half-pieces to turn along an outside slice. This makes me want to try a solve from two different approaches. First, I want to try and pair up all the half-pieces and solve as a normal 3x3x3. Obviously the edge pieces will be easier to pair as each center-edge piece (cedge?) can be paired with two face-edges (fedge?). The inner corner pieces each have two colors meaning they only have one mate. I think I will pair up all the edges and then I can put two same-colored edges on one face along with the corners to be paired so when I align the corners the edge pieces change position but are still in a solved state. Rinse and repeat and then I can solve as a usual 3x3x3. This method will be time-consuming as I will need to position and orient corners and edges with each attempt at pairing the half-pieces.

The second method I want to try is a top-down method which I know will give me headaches as all the algorithms I know will be difficult or impossible to adapt to a bandaged cube, making me try and invent or find new ways to deal with new problems. I would only try this method for the learning opportunity, as logically the first method will work just fine.

Here are some pictures...




You can see clearly how it would be impossible to turn the outer slices at this point.




This cube was purchased from Cube 4 You along with my Teraminx. The quality of this cube is excellent. The plastic seems to be a lightly textured nylon making turning extremely smooth. There are easily removable caps in each center allowing easy tensioning. The cube was very loose when I got it so I had to tighten it quite a bit. The stickers are high quality Oracal. Some people have complained about shipping times from C4U (from China) but I ordered UPS Saver on the 29th and it arrived on the 1st which was even over a weekend. Hard to complain about that. I will definitely buy again.

UPDATE: As expected, method one worked perfectly, without any surprises. There were some critical-thinking problems to work out to pair up all the last pieces at once similarly to the final solve on the Dogic. Overall, this puzzle (especially from C4U) was excellent and challenging. It feels great in your hands and is pretty unique. If you know how to solve a 3x3x3 and are looking for a bit more of a challenge this is a puzzle I highly recommend.

Uber-twisty!

A while ago I saw a guy who had created his own version of a Teraminx, a higher order megaminx where each of the 12 sides has three layers instead of the usual one. He was charging $2000 for them and if I had won the lottery I certainly would have scooped one up. Unfortunately, I'm not exactly tripping over piles of loose cash around here so I shed a few tears and moved on with my life. Then I found out that a site called Cube 4 You is mass producing these suckers at a much more reasonable price and had to jump on one. It came without stickers attached...




I spent the better part of the night applying them. The Teraminx has 555 pieces (not including washers, springs, and screws), 732 stickers, and 1.7989 x 10^571 possible positions. Assuming the universe has a radius of 13.7 billion light years and each uniquely patterned teraminx has an edge length of 5.5 cm, they would fill the proposed volume of the universe 1.4043993*10^85 times! Holy crap! I don't know if I wanna touch this thing anymore...





Uhhh... I got a little bored... :)


Here is the finished project as well as a comparison with a 3x3x5 and a regular sized megaminx. I will blog on that 3x3x5 soon...





Honestly, I am a bit scared to mess this one up...

Any Start Must Have A Beginning...

Where to begin? Over the years I have picked up so many different hobbies and projects. A non-comprehensive list would include:

• Origami
• Twisty puzzles
• Furniture design
• Card magic
• Writing
• Inventing
  
• Reading
• Videogames
• Collecting Batman comics
• Cooking
• Duct tape crafts

There are plenty more but these are most of the big ones and as my hobbies tend to be cyclical (recurring) any I haven't thought of will certainly come back to me. The purpose of this blog is as an outlet for my thoughts, for future reference (mostly by me), and to appease my lovely wife who, along with my daughter, represent my lifelong career.
This blog will be a general hodgepodge of whatever happens to be junking up our dining room table at the moment. Bear with me.