More Useful Gaming

Here are two instances of video games helping people in real and dangerous situations. This first one is a post from GotGame about a child who survives a moose attack and the second is a man who saves a a crash victim's life. These are both "violent" games that have ended up helping people rather than hurting them.

12-year-old Hans Olsen saved himself and his sister from a charging moose using World of Warcraft hunter moves. More here at GotGame.com

That same month Paxton Galvanek saved two men at a car crash scene using medical training he received from the FPS America's Army. He had no prior medical training or knowledge and treated a serious wound to the driver. More here at Gamervision.com

I love the World of War-Crack?

So the semester is over, and for the first time in eight months, I am bored out of my freaking mind. All my friends have jobs or summer school, and I'm left in the lurch with no nine to five. It is this series of unfortunate circumstances that has driven me back to the ruiner of social lives... the World of Warcraft. I've been two years clean with no relapses (well maybe one, but if its not more than 8 hours it doesn't count right?). Once I was a strapping young gnome warrior with a devil may care attitude and a haircut to match, but the game took over my freshman year of college, I decided it was time to quit. It took my hard drive getting destroying to quit cold turkey, but in the end, it was worth it. A beautiful woman took pity on me and took me under her wing, and I got drunker than I ever wanted too.

But this brings me to my point. As I re-installed WoW, I was reminded of an article I read a few months ago about Internet Addiction in the New York Times (picture left). More specifically, it was about a South Korean internet addiction rehab camp for youngsters. As the internet becomes more inextricably tied to our lives, the potential for abuse and addiction has grown at an incredible pace. The junkies of cyberspace didn't even exist fifty years ago, and now there a kids who log eight, ten, twenty hours a day and ODing (very isolated cases but ODing none the less).

Internet addiction has become a serious concern that has gained attention from the American Medical Association, networks and news outlets like CBS (click link for a quick vid), and by individual doctors like Dr. Kimberly Young who heads the Center for Internet Addiction Recovery campaigning for treatment and rehabilitation. The withdrawal symptoms are similar to those of alcohol and other drugs and can lead to unhealthy lifestyles.

I only hope that as I delve ever deeper into the world of WoW that I don't lose hold of my discipline and social life. As always, moderation is the key to maintaining balance, a mixture of good judgment and self-discipline.

Interactive Media: How Far Can We Go

Ugh, finals are done. I've finished packing and moving out. Past the grueling ordeals of the airport and its prodigious delays. Its game time... video-game time.

I think in light of the recent boom in the video-game industry, the term "interactive media" has gained a new significance. It describes mediums of entertainment that engage users on more than just a aesthetic or vicarious level. Lately, I've been thinking about the applications of "interactive media" and how they can effect the future of the gaming world.

Recently, I finished the Call of Duty 4 single player campaign ( I know, I know... but better late than never, eh?). To be transparent as a pizza grease napkin, I was fucking blown away by the cinematic value and the depth of the story. Though it was a bit short, the campaign drew me in and engaged me on a level that had never really clicked with me before. Even my room-mates were stunned watching while I played. They wanted to know how it ended. Thats how engaged they were in it. This brings me to my point, a new genre of video games that emphasize story and cinematic value first. A wave of movie-games... a new "interactive media."

Think about the possibilities. Some game developers have already started releasing games with an episodic type format with each adventure its own independent and self-contained story, yet still flowing with the greater vision of the game. Telltale Games has done this with their cult-classic psychotic (naked?) bunny and noir canine Sam and Max with a gushing response. Movie or tv-show type games with an emphasis on interactivity could be the next step. Movie/Games bought on-demand to be expierienced and watched by an audience, not just to be
played alone... in your room... with half empty Mountain Dews littering your desk.

There are some flaws with my new vision for the future. To mention, development time, costs of a full professional screen-writer staff, continuity issues for different outcomes in say a television series format, and target audiences, but hey, wouldn't you want to play the chase scenes in the Bourne Ultimatum?

"A Harrowing Experience" - An Excerpt From My Life

Unfortunately, maintenance has been low this past week and a half, and I take this time to apologize. With the spring semester wrapping up and the Ultimate Frisbee season ending, the time of no time was imminent and marked by a prodigious amount of work. Projects and finals that are not quite finals abound and drain my willpower like so many disheartening parasites. Instead of a hard hitting editorial piece this week, take a certain voyeuristic pleasure in the sordid and occasionally pleasurable details of my life.
Highlights of the week: a quite pleasurable foray into Downtown L.A. to take visit some interesting places in one of my favorite shirts poignantly cut short by a dying camera battery, turning in a badly polished proposal for my retarded brainchild "Myrmidon," and Econ tests, on two different occasions, kicking my tender buttocks. Ooh, plus I finally got to catch Assy McGee last night.

Shooting news coming soon GTA4, Gears of War 2 vs. Army of Two, (Because we all know TPS is the bastard child of FPS) and a follow-up on Realism in Video Games. Perhaps more poetry.... who knows?

Ode to Halo 3: HD Dreams

Hey all, this is a poem I wrote for my Creative Writing class.  Someone had the nerve to tell me I had started a new genre of "geek" poetry.  Not geek... gamer!!!!

HD Dreams

Take a step past that glowing Halo,

And enter the lobby, which is also the home

To the owned, the pwned and the stoned

Sometimes even the renowned

If only for one game and the next

Is up to you and you gotta be too legit to quit

Until you’ve interjected your own acerbic wit

To call that other guy a fag,

Insult his mother,

And call out

HEADSHOT!

And Deadshots, hotshots, and cheapshots

And any other kind of shot,

Like shotty-snipes on your favorite map

But everyone gripes cause they hate that type

And you got them all dead to rights

Locked into your sights

Except he ducks into that room and you die

And for sure he’s a leet hacker

(or slacker)

 

But hippieslayer won’t stop singing Journey

Chorus punctuated by explosive percussion

Or is it percussive explosions going a rat-a-tat-tat,

Harsh virtual metal pinging and scraping and penetrating

But not the good kind cause that would require a

Partner in person

And you see the dead come back to life to die again

Creeping and sneaking in a perfect posed

Crouch so different from the slouch on the couch

Who doesn’t feel the pain he inflicts on his pixilated pawn,

But instead yells inane, profane, and insane curses

At his monitor and at the assholes he sometimes calls friends

Remembered fondly in a tidy list on a glowing and slightly menacing menu

Dead Federalist

Itchnut

Ovvnage44

The Littlest Donkey

And they follow me into dreams

Spinning and pirouetting,

Lazily lingering in the air

Between streaks of vibrant viciousness

As orbs of potential pyrotechnics

And leashed luminescence

Burst like stormclouds in vivid Technicolor

 

(my dreams are not yet in HD)

Map Pack Follow-up: The Day After

So after a weekend of binge playing the new map pack for CoD4, I am still over 300 headshots away from my golden Kalashnikov.  Double exp didn't help with my resolve to resist another round of prestige, but I wanted to put my best foot forward on these new maps.  So after eagerly checking Xbox Live every five minutes on Friday morning, I finally downloaded the maps around 6:30 a.m.  Needless to say, I was stunned.  Broadcast is a delightful mash-up of a heated close quarters fracas within the station and a healthy dose of sniping and precision BOOM HEADSHOT-ing between the buildings in the parking lot.

  Tips for Broadcast: Use Extreme Conditioning when starting out in the parking lot to get onto the roof before the Op-For and pick them off as they come out the rear stairwell.  Watch out for flankers coming from the main lobby though.  The second tip is to sneak around in the conference room close to the stairwell and the roof entrance.  You have a good vantage point of the station floor in the back and a good hiding place crouching by the conference table.  Just pick people off as they cross from the stairwell to the roof.

Creek, I have mixed feelings about.  First of all, I'm not really a sniper so I've been frequently perforated by a hail of sniper bullets whenever I peek my head out.  However, the map is a lot of fun even if you don't want to snipe.  The map is nicely balanced with an open area to snipe any unwary combatants through the middle, and buildings on each side for some up-close confrontation.  As a in-close kinda guy, I really liked standing right next to snipers and taking a few extra seconds for that headshot.  You know that Kill-cam is going to piss them off, and after getting taken down like a buck in deer season for five minutes, the revenge is soooooo delicious.  

Tips for Creek: If you're not a sniper like me, an effective alternative is to equip an assault rifle with an ACOG.  You get the best of both worlds with a scope for hunting down all those pesky snipers and a good close-quarters firearm for those "Oh-SHIT" encounters.  In the cave, be wary of campers and claymores, and don't be afraid to throw a little smoke.

Chinatown is a nostalgic walk down memory lane.  CoD2 fans will take the first minute and a half going, "WTF?  This isn't Carenetan!" but after getting over the contrastingly shadowed corners and the vivid neon, they'll soon sink back into the groove that is Carentan.  Some noticeable and exploitable differences are the trashcans next to the walls by the lions' gate which allow for opportunities to flank, the third story in the central building looking out over the lions' gate.  This also allows for a overhead view of the small courtyard between the buildings (not the big courtyard with the cars).

Tips for Chinatown: Get to the building across from the mounted .50 cal with a good long-range assault rifle and pick off people as they look out that window.  I swear they're like moths to a flame.  Other than that.... Its Carentan, dude!

All in all, the CoD4 map pack is definitely worth the 800 Microsoft points on Live.  Four brand spanking new maps, two of prodigious proportions, one filled with bittersweet memories, and one to freaking pwn your best-friend in. 

Sable Caine out and watching you down iron sights.

New Venues for Victory: COD4 map pack IMMINENT!

Recently, a press release from developer Infinity Ward announced Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare's first downloadable map pack.  This comes just weeks after Halo 3's free Heroic Map Pack release which opened up Foundry, Rat's Nest, and Showdown to the world's cheap and underpaid gamers (myself included).  The Heroic Map Pack has been available for 800 Microsoft Points for about a month and a half now, and I have to wonder if COD4 (Call of Duty 4 for the layman) will follow suit.  

 

Well, regardless of payment, COD4's new map pack looks, for lack of a more grandiose and stunning word, SWEET.  Succulently sweet, syrupy sweet, candy sweet, and any other kind of sweet you can think of.  It comes with four maps: Broadcast, Chinatown, Creek, and Killhouse.

Broadcast takes the fight inside a television station loosely based on one of the single-player campaign missions.  Chinatown is a re-interpretation of everybody's favorite COD2 map, Carentan.  Creek is a large outdoor map with plenty of cover and wilderness, and Killhouse is a live-fire training course that promises some intense fast-paced carnage.  The new game of the year edition of COD4 (out on April 3rd) will include these four new maps stock.  

If you're anything like me, you can't wait for these maps to come out.  Playing Countdown, Crossfire and Showdown all the time can get pretty boring and frustrating after someone snipes/C4's/noob-tubes you from the same spot thirteen times.  Hopefully, Infinity Ward will also open up some of the online maps for LAN play while they're at it.  Cross your fingers for split-screen online, but that's a rant for another day. 

For more detailed descriptions of these bad (meaning good) maps check out CharlieOscarDelta.com your source for COD news.

Caine strafing out