thehowe_v7.1

Halo 3 launched today. So begins the war of attrition. My plan is to get a 360 & Halo 3 at Christmas. The question is: can my willpower hold out that long?

It just so happens that today is also the College of Engineering Career Fair here at U of M, which means Microsoft is here. And of course, they had Halo 3 at their booth. And of course, I played it for an hour after class. Tonight, I'm going to a special Halo 3 tournament.

So, can I hold out? This morning I sang the Halo theme song in the shower. Multiple times. Smart money's probably on no.

Well, I went out and saw Sin City tonight. It was gory, disturbing, messed up shit. I loved every bit of it. Usually I don't really like those mega-violence type movies (if you haven't seen it, think Kill Bill and you'll be close), but for some reason I really enjoyed this one. Maybe it was the color thing, maybe it was the cheesy one-liners, I don't know, but it was awesome. Plus, I think watching all that violence helped vent some of the pent-up rage that always accumulates this time of year due to the utter imbeciles that live in Ann Arbor. I was so worked up after the movie that I played an hour of Halo. It was great.

To sum up the experience: cathartic.

Gee, it's been awhile. Let's see, I managed to make it through Thanksgiving break without getting any work done. As usual. That, combined with mounds of mouth-wateringly good food, made me a very happy camper. I ended up not taking the ole Xbox home over break - I'm blasting through Legendary on Halo 2 faster than I thought as it is, and I'd like to leave some for Christmas break.

So my DVD/CDRW combo drive on my laptop broke, and the company I bought it from has since gone out of business. One of the prices you pay for buying cheap from a small company, I guess. On the downside, this means I'm going to have to spend between $80 and $150 of my own money to get the damn thing replaced, which is definitely not cool. You really have to pay for the slim design on those internal drives. On the other hand, I now have a fun, broken toy to take apart. I plan on attacking it Tuesday after my Latin exam.

In other news, I've played enough Halo 2 by now to come to the conclusion that it's not as good as Halo 1. However, with a few new maps and some bug fixes over Xbox live, it has the potential to be much better. I'll write up a more detailed review sometime over Christmas break. I won't really have time before then; the semester's winding down. Two full weeks of classes left, then a final week during which I have two days of classes, four exams, two projects, and a paper due. Fun fun. (Of course, on the plus side I'll be home a whole week before some chumps. Ha ha.)

Just an F.Y.I., the management (a.k.a. me) is on moratorium for the rest of the month, and probably most of the next two. Halo 2 has become the exclusive, all-consuming focus of my free time, and I don't foresee being freed from its grasp anytime in the near future. When I've gotten a little more experience in the multiplayer, I'll post some of my thoughts on the game and how it compares to the original.

Stupid cheap-ass bastards. That's the last time I let them set up the game - three on two capture the flag with ghosts on Blood Gulch is not my idea of a fun game.

*Takes a deep breath...*

So besides losing to a bunch of smug jackasses, it's been a pretty uneventful weekend. Got the new and improved website up and running (although it still needs some work), but didn't accomplish much else. Lots of people went out to party and whatnot for Halloween. I didn't. I probably should, one of these days. Maybe I'll let Sam take me out partying like he always offers to. Sam's kind of a dim bulb sometimes, but he's a good kid.

I think maybe when I'm older I'll be a hermit. That way, I won't have to put up with all these stupid people all the time. I'll buy a house out in the middle of nowhere and be the crazy old man with the shotgun. That would be great.

Okay, time to cut off this incessant babble. Off to bed I go.

I have an admission to make. Today, I was beat in Halo - by a girl.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not sexist. There's nothing wrong with a girl playing Halo. In fact, I wish more did so. It's just that I've never met a girl that played Halo, and she was pretty damn good. To top it all off, she was even attractive (remember the hot girl at the Wolverine Soft meeting I mentioned a few entries ago? That one.) To sum up, she's hot, into video games, and really good at Halo. Somewhere Hell is freezing over while simultaneously being flown over by pigs. It's a friggin' fleet of aerial freezing swine.

Still, I can't believe I got beaten by a girl!

Well, I made a step toward improving my resume today. I officially joined a student group. I was already a member of IEEE, but that doesn't really count. This is one of those student groups that is actually formed around a common interest and has some unified goal. The kind of stuff that makes people that read resumes think I have a life. Of course, when you take into account the group I joined, that last part doesn't really apply. The group I am speaking of is Wolverine Soft, a student run video game developer / enthusiast club.

Already knowing a few members, I kind of knew what to expect at the mass meeting. Still, the levels of poindextrose were extremely high in that little room. I was surrounded, for the most part¹, by a crowd of lonely, gangly, slightly out-of-shape, and slightly under-washed nerds. "Why," you ask, "are you joining if you have such a low opinion of the group?" Well, the answer is twofold. First, I am under no illusion that I am any different than anybody else in that club. At least this way I can congregate with my fellow social rejects and geeks. Two, it will be a good chance to network, and make a valuable addition to the sparse "extra-curricular activities" section of my resume. There are other good things about joining Wolverine Soft. I'll certainly improve my programming skills. And did I mention the Halo tournaments they hold on north campus, in a big room with four projection screens? Yes, there are definitely some perks to joining.

¹. I say mostly nerdy because there was one anomaly: a surprisingly hot blonde girl in a pink halter-top. What she was doing there I have no idea. Perhaps allowing her to appear there, in such a sea of nerds, was God's idea of a joke. Good one, Big Guy.

What a crappy day. You'd think that, on a day when I only have one class at 11:00, it'd be a good day. So I went to class this morning, Philosophy, and all these idiots were mouthing off, trying to sound like they knew something. The poor professor was just trying to make a point, and these damn LSA morons kept on making senseless analogies, false assumptions, and generalized statements that said nothing. The professor couldn't stop them, of course. It's a philosophy class, he's supposed to encourage discussion. It was one of those times I wish I had a baseball bat with "shut up, stupid" written on it. That'd get their attention. Morons.

So then I get back, eat crappy dorm grilled cheese and tomato soup, which tasted like ass by the way (you know, like donkey. What did you think I meant?). After choking that crap down, like a good little boy, I decide to get an early start on my Latin homework that's due tomorrow. I open that up and it's four fucking pages of busy work. I hate busy work. After I finally worked my way through the waste-of-time homework, I decided to sit down and play a little of the Halo campaign. If you've ever played the last few stages on Legendary difficulty, you know that this probably wasn't my best choice of relaxing activities. Three or four hours later, after progressing through about 3/4 of a level, I decided to stop. People were starting to wonder what all the loud cussing was about.

So finally at about 8 o'clock, I decide to do a little work on the website. I'm not really happy with the current layout, so I'm trying to design a new one. Keyword being "trying." I know what I want to do, but I can't seem to find a way to make the stuff go where I want. There are ways I could get things into position and sized correctly, but they all involve coding that ranges from dubious to downright ugly. I can't find an elegant way to do it, which means I'll have to think up yet another design, and this pisses me off to no end

. You can tell I'm still worked up about this, because the grammar in this post is just atrocious. Oh well, tomorrow's an early day. I'd best get to bed.

Well, it's that time of year again folks. One week of classes has gone by, and that means it's time for the beginning-of-semester-complain-about-classes rant. So, without further adieu, here it goes:

• EECS 370: Unofficially subtitled "Hardware for Software People." We're learning about all kinds of fun stuff like processor and memory design. On the upside, this means that the programming assignments will be easy. On the other hand, I understand that the exams are a bitch. Luckily, the professor seems like a really cool guy. I arrived at this conclusion when he said, at the end of the first lecture, "I won't be here on Thursday, because I'll be in court in Texas. By law, if I teach this class on Thursday I'll be a felon on Thursday night."
• EECS 285: Had my first session of this class today. It's only two credits and meets only once a week, so I don't anticipate too much trouble. It's introduction to Java, which should be interesting. If I learn to write any good applets, I'll put them on the site.
• Latin 101: I know, I know. "Latin? What's up with that?" you're thinking. Well, I needed social science credit, and all the other classes that fulfilled that requirement looked boring. So, I decided to take something totally irrelevant to my intended field. Plus, it seems fairly easy so far, as languages go. The only thing that has really been throwing me off is the v's. They're pronounced like w's, and there are lots of words that start with them. I feel like Elmer freakin' Fudd here.
• Philosophy 383: "Knowledge and Reality." It may sound daunting, but it's really just a blow-off course. No quizzes, no exams, and only six half-page "papers" due. I can't believe people actually major in this stuff. The downside, of course, is that attendance is required. I was really hoping I could skip that class on Wednesdays and take a day off, too.

There it is, my friend. Fourteen credits of fun. I know, it's not exactly the most challenging schedule. On the other hand, I plan on doing a lot this semester to improve my chances of getting an internship this summer, which includes becoming more active in campus groups. So, I won't be totally wasting my time.

Plus, Halo 2 comes out this semester. You'd almost think I planned it this way, wouldn't you? And they said I'm just lazy. Lazy like a fox, maybe! Suckers!

It has come to my attention that some people (coughSAMcough) have come to incorrect conclusions about Halo 2. As far as I can tell, they arrived at these conclusions based on lack of information and incorrect analysis of video clips. As part of my continuing efforts to educate the stupid masses, I consider it my civic duty to help inform these poor souls that they are wrong: Halo 2 is going to be awesome.

Note: throughout this entry I will be referring to the Major League Gaming Seattle Halo 2 tournament direct-feed video clip, which you can download here, assuming you have BitTorrent.

First of all, a general overview of the most controversial new feature - dual-wielding. The main concern here is that dual-wielding will ruin the balance of the game by being too powerful. I don't think this will be a problem for three major reasons:

1. Inability to dual-wield the more powerful weapons (battle rifle, rockets, sniper, etc.)
2. Inability to throw grenades while dual-wielding
3. Inability to melee while dual-wielding
4. Longer reload times while dual-wielding

The first three reasons are well-known, having been published by Bungie earlier in the summer. The last reason I noticed myself while viewing the video. If you'll pay attention the one time he uses the SMG by itself, you'll notice it reloads faster than it did while dual-wielding. I'm not sure how this will affect the covenant weapons, which may make a large difference, since without the pistol most of the single-hand weapons will be covenant.

Another feature I have heard complaints about is the game speed - some are saying the players move too fast through the level. This is based on faulty observation of the multiplayer video, especially when the player tried to use the sniper rifle. If it wasn't evident before, the player in this video is an idot - the level is far too small for sniping. I estimate that, in terms of open spaces at least, it is a good deal smaller than hang 'em high - probably more along the lines of damnation. A level of that size is far too small to snipe in. The result of trying - the targets appear to move too fast. Case closed. In general, the player in the video seemed to be moving at approximately the same speed as in Halo 1.

One of the changes I had the most problem with initially was the removal of the pistol from the game. In Halo 1, a good player with a pistol owned medium to short range. However, after reading some reviews by players who have had a chance to play Halo 2, I've come to realize that the new battle rifle basically replaces the pistol. While zoomed-in, it fires single shots less powerful than the pistol's but at a faster rate, making it approximately as powerful. While not zoomed in, it fires three-shot bursts. Assuming the shots are still not as powerful as the pistol's individually, a three-shot burst would be approximately as powerful as a pistol shot. So, basically, they've put all the capabilities of the pistol in a more realistic form. To further the comparison, the old assault rifle is not replaced by the battle rifle, but by the SMG. It's a short to medium-range, high spread gun that shoots lots of bullets, just like the assault rifle. As anybody can tell you, there are precious few times in Halo where the assault rifle is the preferred weapon. As far as I'm concerned, the ability to dual-wield it's successor in Halo 2 will only make it a good weapon, not an uber-powerful one.

Really, the only worry I still have lies in the improved rocket launcher. In Halo 2, the rocket launcher has the ability to lock on to vehicles and fire missiles that home in on them. I saw the player in the video try to do this, but it appeared ineffective at close range, which as far as I'm concerned is good. Making it too easy to kill a vehicle would ruin the balance. It should be damn hard to beat a guy in a vehicle when you're on the ground, it's just common sense. I'm still hoping the lock-on feature won't prove too powerful on larger maps.