Entertainment
Red Dead Redemption 100%
As announced here, it was my declared goal to reach as much game completion as possible. I’ve reached the 100% mark today, so I think this is the maximum ;) Nice game.
Red Dead Redemption
Today, I finished the story of Red Dead Redemption. Needless to say: it was an epic adventure up to the end. Last stats say that I’ve spent almost 7 full days (that’s 168 hours) playing so far. For those in doubt about 100% “achievability” (which was not possible in GTA4 after you had finished the story): you can play on after the story is done. I’m at 90.7% right now, willing to push this to at least 95% :) I’m not going to spoil anything here, I just want to say thanks to Rockstar for providing me with yet another very entertaining game.
Oh, by the way: I was sure that I had cancelled my pre-orders for both RDR and Mario Galaxy 2 – the latter arrived today. Seamless switch from the Wild West to another Mario adventure! Yay!
Episodes From Liberty City
Once again, I used the source (Amazon UK) and ordered “Episodes From Liberty City”, the DVD edition of the two GTA IV addons “The Lost And Damned” and “Ballads Of Gay Tony”. Both episodes are playable without the original GTA IV which was not the case when TLAD was released as DLC on XBOX Live. I have to say that first impressions of BOGT are really great, especially because one of my most intimate dreams has become true: mission replay. Each mission has a couple of targets like time limit, max allowed damage to the character and other constraints, and you are presented with a rating at the end of the mission. You can later choose individual missions to play again. I’ll keep reporting as I make my way through the second episode :)
Upcoming games
I recently spent a lot of time playing video games, partially due to one week of being infected by a trojan horse carrying the flu (luckily, no H1N1) – the last game I played with a perverse intensity was Fallout 3, a nasty time killer, yet very entertaining. The next couple of weeks will bring quite a lot of new games to my collection, I’m almost in a state of fear already :)
- The Ballad of Gay Tony – the second addon for GTA IV
- Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
- New Super Mario Brothers (Wii)
- Forza Motorsport 3 is definitely an option
- Assassin’s Creed II
- Some time next year, Red Dead Redemption will be published
- Maybe I’ll look at Brütal Legend
Red Dead Redemption and the two Mario games are already ordered. Currently, I’m playing Assassin’s Creed on the XBOX 360 which is a really nice game with lots of historic background, so I’ll probably be heavily eager to play the sequel; Forza 3 appears to be a must-have but I’m unsure if I’d like to play it with a gamepad; Red Dead Redemption is a must-have just because it’s a Rockstar game; Brütal Legend looks funny but of course I can’t play 24/7 so I think I’ll stick with AC and Mario for the next couple of weeks :) Obviously, this is kind of a luxury problem, just like the question “New XBOX or PS3 slim?”. In this case, I think I’ll keep the running hardware and spend the money for christmas presents instead.
Java and blue moon
From the Hibernate-DEV mailing list:
Java 6 doesn’t support making the moon blue, you’ll have to use Java 5.
> When I get hibernate to build, I’m very pleased, as it happens once in
> a blue moon.
Nice reply.
Lego Star Wars – The Crash Of The System
Yesterday, I found a secret chapter in “Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga” on XBOX360. It’s called “The Crash Of The System” and it is not reachable by intent. Today, during freeplay of episode III, level 1, I found myself holding a controller that wouldn’t stop vibrating, and I saw the following image on screen:
Lego Star Wars TCS (''The Crash Of The System'')
Okay, frozen game, or even frozen Xbox – whatever. Sucks, but who cares. About a second later, my girlfriend, half-asleep, said “wow, that’s a nice high score you got there” with that ironic sound in her voice. I looked again, and I saw it: 1.057.048.958 studs! :D Anyone who can tell me which data type’s max_value this is, will get a free beer. (I don’t know, it has to be something Xbox specific because usual 32-bit primitives have different min/max values)
With this pretty good laugh (although the crashing game is annoying) I’m calling it a day – have a good night :-)
VLC easter egg
Although it’s christmas, I’d still call this an easter egg: the widely used VLC media player currently displays a special icon with a small christmas hat on top of the usual VLC icon. Nice thing, thanks :-)
GTA IV new content announced
Two days ago, Rockstar announced new content for GTA IV to be released February 17th 2009. The new episode is called “The Lost and Damned”. Read the announcement here.
This is just what I’ve been waiting and hoping for, having completed the story mode and longing for new missions :-)
A quote from the announcement:
Developed by Rockstar North and set in Liberty City, The Lost and Damned features a new main character and plot that intersects with the storyline of Grand Theft Auto IV; new missions that offer an entirely fresh way to explore Liberty City with new multiplayer modes, weapons and vehicles; and a diverse soundtrack with additional music all with the incredible production values that are the trademarks of Grand Theft Auto.
Sounds very nice!
Playing Lego on a whole new level
When I was a child, I used to build the craziest things out of classic Lego bricks. It was great fun being creative and reusing special parts for innovative creations. I still have the Lego stuff from back then somewhere :-)
Some time ago, people started meking Lego movies, setting up scenes and taking sequential pictures of them, hence creating animated sequences called “brick films”.
Recently, “Lego Batman” was released for the XBOX360. I played the demo yesterday and it’s really great fun. You can be the hero or the bad guy, which lets you play the game from different perspectives. The demo still contained some clipping errors (just like the Tomb Raider demo) but gameplay is just like in the other Lego games released so far, namely:
- Lego Star Wars II – The Original Trilogy
- Lego Star Wars – The Complete Saga
- Lego Indiana Jones
I suggest – if you are a Lego fan – that you take a look at those games :-)
