Redwolf's Journal (continued)

Huh. I've been a bit tuned out of the meta-level news for the game. Really, I've only been logging in briefly once a day to grab a reward box and then a couple hours on Sundays to do guild missions. I've pretty much decided that I won't be raiding, so there's not much else to really work toward in the game that interests me. I haven't even gone back and done the Mordremoth fight again. So I'm a little surprised to hear Arenanet recently announced they were halting development on the new round of legendary weapons. They were planning to release a hold new set over the course of HoT, but have only done a few so far. Instead, they've said they're trying to shift focus back to Living Story content. I sort of approve of that decision, because the game really does need some more content at this point that isn't a raid. At the same time, I can totally understand how disappointing that can be to people and how it can seem like a betrayal when "n

Once again casting about for distractions, I found the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. bundle on Steam relatively inexpensive. There are some good reviews out there. After my experience with Far Cry 2, I was wary, though. So... this is about what you get if you take Fallout 3, remove the quirky sense of humor, add a little more color variety to the palette, replace advancement with survival-style elements, and maybe knock the graphics down a peg or two. I find it kind of strange that Shadows of Chernobyl (the first of the games) is as engrossing as it is. The story's sort of weak so far (several hours in, but not complete). Without any sort of XP system, there's very little incentive to do "side" missions. With scarcity of ammo, weight of gear, and wear to weapons/armor, there's actually incentive to avoid most of them. The only improvement to be found is better weapons and armor, and even then things feel more "realistic" than most games. Even with a scope (which h

Weekend - too short. D&D - I'm stunned at how much shady, suspicious stuff can happen without revealing any actually-damning evidence of wrong-doing. I don't believe for a moment that Shirhan (sp?) is actually innocent, but even getting into the fight he coooould just be defending himself. Zootopia - It's a little frustrating that most of my friends still haven't seen this movie. It's also mind-boggling to hear more and more about the movie it started out to be and how much things changed. To think things almost went "I can't believe that's Disney" levels of dark... just wow. I find it a little interesting, but I'm sooo glad the creators managed to find a new direction. Far Cry 2 - My first "request a refund" on Steam. The game seems to have a good reputation, but... ugh. Just getting through the intro drive, the game was buggy, with character models bouncing as if on a trampoline. The first 20-30 minutes of play felt rough

So, after having played through Metro 2033 Redux, I saw Singularity on sale on Steam. A little research made it out to be a good, storied FPS that was generally under-played. For less than $8, that seemed like an okay ride. And it is. It's a reasonably good shooter with a time travel plotline that bounces back and forth to a degree between a 1955 where the Soviet Union is on the verge of breakthrough with a fictional super-element, E99, and a present-ish day that is influenced by what happens back then. Things start out with a pretty familiar-seeming modern day, but a change to the timeline sends the "present" off the rails and sets the player character on a quest to fix it. Maybe. Somehow. It's not revolutionary for a time travel story, but it's a decent example. The TMD, which lets you age/revert some things in the game is a neat mechanic. It's mostly used in some light puzzles to get through areas, but also gets some major combat application along the

Another weekend done and a time change survived. Though I still don't really care for Daylight savings Time - I don't really make enough use of the light at the end of the day, I just find it harder to get up in the morning. Bleh. I felt an odd craving for some sort of FPS-style game with story, so after a little research, I took on Metro 2033 (Redux) . It's about ten hours of decent story presented in a very linear, often-scripted shooting and sneaking. The post-apocalyptic story of survival, mutants, and potential supernatural is pretty solid, if a little on the dark side. The shooting is fine, the stealth felt pretty weak to me, though. The most striking part to me comes in how I went in fairly blind. I had no idea there was a morality system that limits your ending. While I was generally nice to those friendlies I encountered, I think I may have killed too many people to unlock the "good" ending. Heh. Still not a bad experience overall. This whole "ju

I went to see Zootopia today, and... it's pretty great. One of the greatest "sins" for a movie in my book is to take me out of the story - whether it's boggling over a plot hole or finding dialog clunky, if I'm forced to sit back and think about the movie as a movie, that's a form of failure in the storytelling. Zootopia absolutely didn't do that. The characters and story work well. I love that the message isn't simple , and the themes of inclusion feel timely. Really, what's not to love? It's good as a "buddy cop" movie. The animation is technically great. I can't think of one complaint at the moment. On the other hand, I caught Desolation of Smaug (the second Hobbit movie) on TV last night. The CGI wasn't so bad as Scifi Channel original movies or anything. It's great and detailed, but almost too much so - it still feels fake to me. Watching elves battle orcs, it felt like people jumping around in front of green scre

So, yeah... The meeting yesterday was about what I've been craving for the last week. Very little of it was surprising. I could have assumed pretty much everything. But hearing it directly is a good thing. It helps. On the newspaper side of the business, we're keeping financially pretty flat, which is really the only company goal. The board sees newspapers as a community service of a sort, realizing they're not a big revenue source. Our phone book business is still profitable-but-declining, which is expected. The company is trying to push things more toward online, but advertisers aren't really willing to pay as much for online products as print. A couple company projects, one a local "free" weekly paper and another a regional "lifestyle" magazine, are profitable, but only just. And the company's major software project, which only reached maturity recently, still has a lot of potential, but hasn't actually sold yet - that's the bigges