Daily Archives: September 21, 2007

The machine guns are roaring

Got a bit more Quake Wars in, though the single map available in the demo is beginning to pale slightly now. The (human) GDF attack, the (alien beastie) Strogg defend, and they’ve got a couple of places that, if the GDF don’t quickly attack before defences can be set up, can be fortified into total killing grounds. I actually felt pretty bad, sitting the turret of a Desecrator hovertank, next to another Desecrator, with a couple of missile turrets, some artillery and radar pointing towards the hapless GDF, running towards us over open ground (or riding unarmed quad bikes, if they felt particularly daring). It was rather reminiscent of a futile World War I attack… Feeling suitably guilty, I switched sides for the next round, and… found myself rushing over open ground towards Desecrators and turrets, lobbing a couple of grenades before being cut down, which wasn’t so hot either. A bit of variation will be nice with the full release.

I also have a new toy, a Logitech G15 keyboard (the one with the built in LCD screen). I’d been tempted for a while, but £70 is a bit much for a keyboard… Then Melmoth found a plugin for the Miranda instant messenger that lets you run games full screen, and display IMs on the keyboard’s screen, and while generally browsing around I saw that Logitech are releasing a new version, which looks a bit… orange (the current version has a blue backlight), and you can get the current version for £50, which isn’t quite so bad. So I popped one in the shopping basket at Dabs, and saw they’re now offering evening delivery, between 5 and 9pm. Brilliant! Sorting out deliveries can be a bit of a hassle, but evening delivery would be perfect. Course, it turned up at 10am this morning. Ah well, a kindly neighbour took it in, so the blue glow of LEDs in the corner of the room is a bit brighter now…

Hey! Teacher!

It’s curious how the nefarious population of City of Villains has a university; the game mechanic of the university is to give characters a place to learn about and participate in the recently introduced crafting system. Clearly the developers work on the hero side first and then transfer as much of the effort as possible directly into CoV, converting any glaringly obvious heroic insinuations.

One wonders, though, what a villain university or school would be like…

“Johnson, did you do your homework again? What is the matter with you boy? If you carry on completing coursework and paying attention in class you’ll find yourself out of this university before you can blink, and then you’ll probably have to get a job wearing spandex and helping old grannies get their cats out of trees. Is that what you want?”

“Right! Who was that? Come on, own up, which one of you wasn’t throwing paper planes behind my back? Someone wasn’t throwing them, I can tell. It was you was it, Packard? Well, as a punishment you can go and help old people cross the road for a day. Actually make that two days, because I’m fed-up with you owning up to your crimes, a good villain doesn’t own up to anything. Are you some sort of pansy hero, Packard? Right! Three! Three days, because you’re not even arguing with me over the point. Go on, get out!”

“You! You behind the bike sheds. Stand still, laddie! Right, now, why aren’t you smoking? Explain yourself!”

“Well, Franklin, apparently you’ve been bullying young Thatcher here and stealing his lunch money. What? Oh I’m not punishing you for stealing the money, Franklin. No. But you see, Thatcher tells me that you’ve been failing to steal all of his money, that he’s been keeping some of it hidden from you. You’re a slacker Franklin, so you can be in detention this evening. Top snitching there Thatcher, you can have a house point.”

“Evening everyone. First order of this detention session: you’re all in further detention for bothering to turn up to this one.”