14 posts tagged “dork”
From childhood 'til now... What's the best Christmas present you've ever received?
Another three-way tie this one.
1983 (I think): Castle Greyskull from Father Christmas
1993 (I think): me and my siblings pooled Christmas money for a Super Nintendo
2007: an electro-acoustic guitar from Jess
What do you love most about your job?
1. Problem solving. Although it's all in the field of nerdy computer things, I do like being given a problem then working out the best way to solve it. Or the best way with the time available, which are not always the same thing.
2. People. I work with several people who I love dearly and learn a lot from.
3. Learning. In the space of less than two years, I have learned a LOT and keep learning. It's great, and I attribute that to both the people I work with (especially my mentor, Eduardo, whose coding style is so easy to follow) and the fact that the company is too small for pre-defined roles to really stick on any given project. I was hired to do CSS and JavaScript, but spread out into SQL Server, ASP.Net, XML and other technologies just because I could and extra hands were needed.
Winner: Tales Of Vesperia
For: Xbox 360
Fifty hours. That's how much time it took me to get through this game from start to finish, an epic journey that took me all over a fictional world called Terca Lumireis, fighting everything from bouncing frog-things to shark pirates to rock giants to daft-looking dragon/fox hybrids with my team of typically gender-dubious misfits.
The story is the typical JRPG gibberish, recanted with twee abandon using regular animated cutscenes, in-engine sequences and bizarre headshot panel sequences. Blah blah blah, evil dudes plot to take over the world, accidentally unleash catastrophic intergalactic space squid thing, references to a great war and some entirely baffling pseudo-science about dragons that turn into glowy battery things. While the story is a potential turn off (especially when they keep repeating annoying things like one character being undecided about continuing the adventure after every bloody boss), it's at least well presented.
So why then is this my game of the year? It's simple: while it suffers the usual pre-boss grinding and some of the typical RPG quirks, this is the most perfectly balanced, beautiful, fun game I have played all year. The cel-shaded graphics are nothing short of jaw-dropping, the combat system is a pleasure, and the game - while a little linear - really makes you feel like you're making progress on your own merit.
And I really do want to single out combat. Battles aren't random like other examples of the genre: you can see enemies on the world map and avoid them if you want to (although some are hard to pass). When you do initiate a battle, your primary character is under your control while everyone else follows a strategy you had set in the menu system. The AI is a little clunky sometimes (once or twice, I found my mages wading into melee combat when I specifically told them to stay back), but generally they will play an important role in how you do.
The strategy system allows you to control what each party member does individually - with details like item use, spellcasting and the like - and as your party is made up of the usual mix of strong warriors, fast warriors, hunters, attacking mages and healing mages, you can tailor the game to how you want to play.
Runner-Up: Fallout 3
For: Xbox 360
Fallout 3 is practically the opposite of Tales Of Vesperia. On a visual level, while Tales douses your eyes in bright pastel hues, F3's desolate post-apocalyptic Washington, DC has a very flat grey/brown palette... and that isn't even the start of it. Tales' Yuri Lowell is a very well defined character for whom you just provide the input, F3's Vault Dweller is almost devoid of personality and story - the choices you make as a player define them, from the haircut to moral compass. And Yuri had friends on his journey, the Vault Dweller is very much alone.
With a very clever setup (where sequences showing your character's birth and adolescence cleverly mask the customisation options), the game introduces you to your father, James, who has raised you alone in a nuclear bunker called Vault 101 since your mother died during child birth. One day, your father disappears, his best friend is dead and you are urged to escape the Vault to go find him.
This is where the story picks up, with a hurried escape into the wastelands where your character sees sunlight for the first time in their life.
Although designed to operate more like a first person shooter with RPG elements, I have been playing the game almost entirely in the third person view. This would make combat (with the game's assortment of oversized bugs, stray irradiated mammals, mutants, ghouls and opportunist survivors) difficult were it not for the VATS system. Tap a button and the action pauses, with your character zooming in on the nearest enemy. You have a regenerating pool of action points which you can use to fire off shots at specific parts of the enemy's body. It makes combat less frenzied and more strategic, and I love it.
As well as shooting things, you have to complete numerous quests that take you around the vast expanses of desolate wasteland as well as the remains of the city of DC itself, quests for which you will have to chat, explore, fight, hack, lockpick and sneak in various amounts. All of this earns you experience, and at each level, you can assign points to yor various skill categories (for example, if you prefer combat, you can focus on being better with different types of guns) as well as choosing a perk. Perks run the gamut of allowing you to carry more items to making animals like you - a good thing with nasties like the mutated bear-things called Yao Guai roaming the wastes.
The game is a bit of a slow burner, but still great fun. Its quests try to give you moral dilemmas which, in the now-standard video game fashion, are still very much black and white issues with no room for blurring. The result is that you often gain or lose karma, with minimal benefit or penalty bar slighty different responses from characters. Depending on where you fall on the scale, you will earn a specific achievement when you reach level 8, 14 and 20 (the maximum level in the game), and later on, you will be targeted: I've been playing as a goody two shoes, so there is now a contract out on me, with the odd random encounter with mercenaries to deal with.
* * * * *
I would strongly recommend both of these games, although I can see how either might not be to everyone's tastes.
Show us your latest purchase.
It's alright... but considering it's been in the making for 10+ years, I expected more. As it is, it's just a slightly prettier take on Marvel Ultimate Alliance, replacing comic book heroes with Norse mythology. Lots of random mashing of buttons.
Are you going to be amongst the first people to buy the iPhone 3G? If so, when do you plan on picking yours up and which one will you be purchasing?
I am ashamed to say, I was one of "those" people. You know, those people you see standing in lines that stretch around corners waiting for some hot new technology item to go on sale. Those people about whom you think: "Doesn't that loser have a job?" Yes, that was me, today.
I turned up at my local AT&T store at 7am. I thought, given last night's thunderstorms, the line would be short. It was about 50-60 people deep... and grew much larger after I got there. Jess showed up shortly after me, and kept ducking out of the line to get coffee or pee, but I held strong.
Some time around 9.50am, we got to the corner of the alley and the street the store was on and found out all three versions of the phone had sold out, but that we could still go in and order the phones to be delivered at some time in the near future. So we did that. I ordered a black 16GB, Jess a white 16GB. So this year's bonus bought us both iPhones.
Sure, it's just a phone, not some life-saving, life-affirming big deal. It probably didn't warrant standing in line for three hours when I could have stayed in bed a little longer and gotten to work on time. Still, I worked hard for that bonus, I want something nice from it.
What did you do for fun when you were a kid? How is it different from what you see kids doing now?
Submitted by jaklumen.
Mostly play with action figures, or play video games, or watch cartoons. I was always a bit of a loner, but I see it as a good thing - I can entertain myself for hours and don't rely on human company.
I don't see much difference with kids now, except kids' cartoons these days suck a dick. They're either really ropey CGI, or really ropey animé-style animation. Too much of this Pokémon/Yu-Gi-Oh/Dragonball Z-style bullshit.
... but I think I need a time out:
1. I saw a car with the license plate "WHT SPCE". I said to two co-workers "I can't see this car as I ignore white space." If you understand this joke... yeah.
2. I heard a co-worker laughing about hex values for colours. If you know what hex values are... yeah.
YEAH. Seriously.
To launch version 0.1a of my playlist tool, I present my favourite twenty songs from 2007:
http://www.transatlanticdrawl.com/Playlist.aspx?PlaylistID=1
It's a little ugly and feature-lacking, but you can listen to all twenty songs in full and buy the albums from Amazon.
I've not really had time to mess around with it lately... and then my hosting provider sold up, with my domain moving to the new owners. Somehow in this process, they wiped everything I had done in the database in the past two months and lost most of my pages.
I had backed up the latter and I've restored most of the former. Now I'm just re-adding some data and uploading the MP3 files before I roll it out.
What was your major or field of study in college? Did you wind up working in that field or using that degree? If not, what field have you wound up in?
Submitted by sneuf.
I didn't go to college. Or university. Or whatever you want to call it. I did a month of sixth form college at age 16 then left education to work. I'm possibly one of the least qualified people I know, but I've been working in the internet since long before many people had access to it in the UK.
I think I've done well because...
a) If I'm interested in something, I soak it up like a sponge (see also: pointless trivia about alternative music)
b) While I am lazy when a bunch of dreary forty year olds are prodding me through a course book, I am a lot more attentive when not-so-dreary people of indeterminate age are paying me
c) My small, girly hands - while ill-suited to manual labour, smarmily shaking hands with douchebags, etc. - are perfect for typing
