Multiplayer Status Report 1

Well folks, this is the first in a series of Blog posts leading up to the launch of Multiplayer. The idea is to keep you up to date on how work is progressing, what's getting done, things I'm thinking about and so on.

Over the past half hour, I mocked up the Beta 0.1 cover of Multiplayer Magazine (Issue 1) in Pages '08. Worked like a charm I might add. Overall, I'm very pleased with how it looks, especially given how quickly I threw it together.

As part of this, I spent some time deliberating the Multiplayer fonts. GizzedUp used Arial, Verdana and variants thereof. I myself became infatuated with Bitstream Vera Sans at some point. But none of these wound up being used except Verdana - and that is for a tiny piece of text which isn't meant to be the same as the Multiplayer stuff.

As it stands, I've picked out a modern and fairly rare font for the majority of text (Including the word "Magazine"). As for the all-important "Multiplayer" part of the name, I settled on a placeholder font which looks very unique. And as it stands, I'm wondering if it should just be the final one as well, it looks great - especially contrasted with the "Magazine" font.

You know, Multiplayer Magazine Alpha 0.01 (Code Name: Let's Play) featured Halo on the cover, promising a (Fabricated) story about the future of the series. What adorns the cover of this updated effort?

Gears of War 2

In the Future

Well guys, since no-one seems to be reading this any more I figure it's not wasting anyone's time if I do a post about stuff I'm gonna buy and indeed stuff I have bought.

Since my PC and desk now function as my entertainment system, and I have a widescreen 1050p monitor, I decided to make use of those pixels and seriously upgrade my media centre.

Firstly, I bought a LiteOn DH 4O1S Blu-Ray Disc Reader to allow playback of the dominant consumer HD video format. It's in the system now, though I can't yet watch any Blu-Rays (More on that later).

Next, I decided to upgrade the control system. Now, I do have a wireless presenter mouse built into my desktop mouse. That method of control does work of course, but it can be tedious to mouse ball over controls from my bed.

So I got CyberLink's IR USB remote control. It works great - controls DVD(/Blu-Ray) playback, TV Centre Pro (Helpful, since the mouse and keyboards for that are jacked) and iTunes. Basically, I'm set.

Incidentally, Need for Speed Carbon (Yes, I did buy it) is great on Wii and works really well with my steering wheel shell.

For those of you wondering, my first Blu-Ray movie is The Simpsons Movie - easily one of my favourite films of all time. 2007 was a great year for movies. Bear in mind, Spider-Man 3 (Another of my all-time favourites) and other truly great films came out this year as well. Even made for TV Movies were better than expected (Yes, I do love HSM 2. So sue me.). It was also a great year for games between Mario Galaxy, Halo 3, CoD 4 and of course Portal. This year shall go down in entertainment history.

So what am I buying in the coming future? Well, first I'm going to get a Sapphire HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of GDDR4 memory. Besides bumping games performance (Like making Halo 2 at least seem playable) and providing access to recent games like Unreal Tournament 3, it has HDCP. With that, I will be able to watch my Blu-Rays (My monitor is also HDCP-compliant).

Games-wise, Medal of Honor Hereos 2 is next on my list (I'm moving to renting games unless I really want them from now on, thanks to my £10.99 per month LoveFilm account which is also supplying me with additional HD content in the form of Blu-Rays). February 8th can't come soon enough.

I'm also buying an Xbox Live Vision Camera £50 set, the one which comes with a headset, 12 months of Gold and 2 Arcade games. It's outstanding value. I more interested in the Gold subscription, games and the headset to be honest, but the camera will be nice to have.

Then, a month later, I'll be grabbing Game's £209.99 Xbox 360 Arcade Bundle and putting the hard drive from my brother's Premium in it. He's buying an Elite. The Premium will go in the living room, mine will go in the upstairs TV room (My dad won a 20" HDTV at work).

So once I have that and I can play 360 just about whenever I want, you can expect my GamerScore to go up a fair bit. Possibly I could take it to above 5,000 before we leave Cambridgeshire.

I'll also grab a GameWare Play and Charge kit as I continue my ongoing fight against Double-As.

Then, in mid-June, I will make the biggest purchase I ever have. At long last, I will be buying my MacBook. So hooray for that.

Anyway, that gives you an idea of where I'm headed in the coming months. You can probably expect me to gush at length about most of those products and, indeed, I advise you to be prepared for more Blu-Ray love than anywhere else on the internet which doesn't swear allegiance to PS3.

Jens Out

The Heroic Prejudice

Those of you out there who've played Halo 3 almost certainly loved it. I loved it too. I played single player on Normal. I've played a bit on Heroic, but am I going to play it all the way through on Heroic solo? Hell no.

And so what? I'll go through on Legendary or Heroic on Co-Op. And what's the problem? All these people - Bungie included - acting like Normal is retarded. Well, no, sorry, I just don't particukarky like being killed a lot. I play Halo to kick aliens' asses, not to have them snipe me before I even arrive.

There used to be this big prejudce against Easy by Bungie, like they wished it wasn't even there. Now they treat Normal like that and act like Easy doesn't even exist.

The descriptions for the difficulties don't help either. Normal is, logically, the normal setup of the game. So it should be the way it was meant to be played. And yet, the difficulty descriptions claim Heroic is. Er...No...

Anyway, this is indicative of a greater problem in gaming. Namely, that every gamer has to be absolutely god-like at every game or at the very least masochistic enough to play something that keeps beating you so much you know what to do by heart.

Well fuck that. Fuck it to hell. I play Halo for fun. Not for a challenge. If I want to have a challenge, I'll play multiplayer. Single player is for goofing around. Multiplayer is for having a real, level fight.

I, in fact, would rather we did away with traditional difficulty levels. Because, even some of the better gamers find certain games' higher difficulties impossible. Why? Not because they suck at the game, but because the game has added difficulty to an area which is not their strength.

What we need is for you to say at the start if you're playing to be hardcore, to feel god-like or just normally. The game then assesses your relative skills and adjusts itself to suit your preference.

Sure, it's a pipe-dream, but I'm sick of 12-year-olds complaining about people playing Halo 3 on Normal. Some people just don't want the kind of challenge Heroic represents.

And Bungie, stop being dicks to half your customers. Not everyone is a Bungie Bitch. And incidentally, Heroic is for anyone who's ever completed an FPS before? Are you mad? Maybe for those weirdoes who played more Halo 2 than all other games released over the period between it and Halo 3 combined.

Jens Out

Microsoft's Windows Vista

Hot damn. I like it.

It's a marked improvement over the aging XP. It feels faster, smoother, sleeker. It looks better, has better ideas, it's more logical.

Ignore the naysayers, this is the best Windows version yet. And it's not just the eye candy. It's just got some ideas that are simply better. The way Windows Explorer works, Sidebar (Superior to Google Desktop's version, sorry) and more.

Truly a much needed improvement.

I'm not going to do a full reeview. I'm just sounding out my thoughts. To summarise, it's better in every meaningful way than XP get to it ASAP.

But still, avoid Basic like the plague.

Seriously.

Recently I've been playing Halo 2 Vista (Not on this PC, my brother's). It's a great way to pass the time and grab some easy Achievements. I think it's going to take my Gamerscore over the One Thousand mark. Awesome.

I've been thinking about Disney a lot recently - as I am wont to do - I've come up with some ideas to revitalise the TV and Parks and Resorts divisions. They're pretty radical though.

But, that's sort of who I am.

Reminds me...Party planning...Must get it done. But I am so bad at it. I can see what I want in my mind...Yet I can't articulate it.

Bah. Never mind. I'll let you go now.

Jens out.