At the movies... err, machinima - Doom Arenas

What better way to show my love for the id Software games than with this great machinima by Tritin Films. Using the Doom3 engine and a bit of the Quake3 engine, this is a spin on the story behind Quake III Arena, because yes there is a story behind it. Also, great background stories on some id Software legends :)

Enjoy all the frags !!!

o7

Back to the roots yet again

Despite having had to deal with various appointments with my boys and beat the virtual crap out of unbelievably inept Canadian politicians on social networks, I did get some gaming done lately. Last week I received an e-mail about my first Quake Live account that was about to get into inactive. While I don't mind because I started a fresh account last spring that better reflects my skills (or rust) and is linked with my long-standing clan (Kill 'Em All, or KEA), the mail did send me an alarm to remind me that maybe I should log in to bring my QL client up to date and brush off a bit of rust while I'm at it. I didn't play super long because when I'm home with the boys they sometimes fight over computer time. I played two games of regular Free-For-All and two of Instagib, and I must admit that although there was some evident rust, there were a few sparks of greatness here and there. And hey I even won one of the Instagib matches! So Quake is pretty much like riding a bike; you can get rusty but you never lose it.

What I find cool - and this may freak out some "normal" parents - is that my boys, who are now 5 and 6, are starting to get the FPS vibe; I let 'em play Star Wars Jedi Academy in God mode (I've played through it literally hundreds of time; I couldn't care less anymore), and I've installed World of Padman, a stand-alone Quake3 mod with cartoonish characters and weapons with fun team modes like "Capture the Lolly" and "Spray your Color". Up until last weekend they were playing lopsided 6v1 team matches to make sure they stayed safe, but something happened after they saw me die a lot in Quake and they started playing with balanced teams, against easy bots of course. Good on them! They do try to play a bit of Quake with tournament graphics and Pro Mode, but they realize it's much faster and harder.

With Quake Live having a very active community there are always tournaments going on so of course I just HAD to show them what the real pros like Cooler, CZM and Fatal1ty can do... off to YouTube to find an epic match! This isn't hard to do because there are so many tournaments both online and on LANs that there is never a shortage of awesome matches. Well, something you get to see someone get destroyed 70 to 0 on ZTNDM1, a map notorious for lopsided matches where one player controls the key power-ups. But for every one of those there is an absolute grudge match that ends in sudden death overtime. Even though it's an eSport, I find Quake tournament play more fun to watch than hockey games these days (especially the way my team is playing... phooey!).

Apart from that I'm still very much active on Skyrim, getting close to 250 hours on it. Between my first/main character and my max-skilled mod tester I can say I've pretty much done all the quests except maybe for those never-ending radiant ones, but there's still a lot of fun to be had when you have mods that give a challenge to even a max-skilled character. Because I use Deadly Dragons sometimes the dragon fights are nothing short of epic; The character might be Level 81 with all the perks, but I didn't go out of my way to get crazy resistance and armor bonuses through enchanting. Same with the weapons. Everything is crafted using only vanilla-bonus'd smithing apparel, and improved  with a single vanilla potion. So when I meet the top level dragon called "Aspect of Alduin" which spawns Skeletal Dragons, shit gets real quick. I had such a battle right at my front door at Dovahkiin's Retreat (Hideout's little brother; awesome mod). I was on my way to do a Thieves Guild quest but the battle was so epic that when the dragon finally died I felt like nothing could top that for the night so I saved and turned the game off.

And to close this post, yes, I'm staying the course with my very-long-term EVE break. The people who love the game don't really see how I came to not love it anymore but I don't mind. As I've told a few people, it's the people interaction that I'll miss; the game to me just gets in the way too much. I'm not bashing EVE, it's just that as it is it doesn't suit ME. Although I did see a glimmer of hope and surprisingly it came from none other that The Mittani himself, who over the weekend was singing the praises of Red vs Blue and having a complete ball in Rifters. It is a possibility, true, but not right now. If I do come back as an active player that will most probably be where I'll end up because small scale ship-to-ship combat is the only thing I have an interest for in EVE. I'll pass on everything else.

And there you go, a decently sized blog update and the inspiration came back after reconnecting with my first love in gaming. If you want to try the Grand Daddy of all First-Person Shooters head on over to www.quakelive.com and make an account; no need to pay for premium or pro unless you are very serious about it. If you do or if you already have an active QL account, by all means add {KEA}CozmikR5 to your buddy list

Fly and/or frag hard!

o7

Quake graphics 101

To the casual player, Quake Live looks like this:

Pretty!

But to the serious Quaker, prettiness is superfluous, and the game looks like this:

Who needs eye candy?!

Take a wild guess which side of the crowd I'm part of >:) A little back story on the map: this is Blood Run by a brilliant map maker called ztn. The first version of this map was for the venerable Classic Quake, and it received a new life not long after Quake3 came out. It's very popular among competition deathmatchers, and it's also one of my favorites. The key to success on this map is controlling the Red Armor (RA), on that little ledge on the left, and the MegaHealth (MH), which is found just on the other side of the archway on the bottom of the map. Getting to the RA can be tricky though, as you have to leave yourself exposed to attacks from below.

So yes, ever since the EVE account went dead I've been getting back seriously into Quake, mainly playing FFA deathmatches, Clan Arena, and a little Instagib to work on my rusty railgun. I also spent last evening getting back together with a few of my old clanmates, where I found that for someone who spent much of 3.5 years not playing Quake seriously I wasn't as rusty as I thought! My buddy StaticSys did remind me more than a few times that my railgun needed some work, so this morning I got on an Instagib server and managed to pull this off:

Booya !!!

I need to work on my rail accuracy a bit more, but yeah... I'm back :)

Fly dangerous; rocket-jumps ftw !!!

o7

Cozmik’s other games

It’s been a while since I’ve done an out-of-topic blog post, but with the recent events I’ve talked a few times about the fact that I play games that have absolutely nothing to do with EVE, so I decided to write about them.

I grew up next to a Canadian Air Force base so plane geek since Day One. I’ve been interested in video games pretty much since Pong came out (yes, I’m that old), and in 1977 a certain movie had about the same effect on me as a sledgehammer has on italian crystalware. So since then I’ve been a Sci-Fi geek. Around the same time we had a local hero tearing up tracks in F1, so I became a racing geek. Fast-forward a few years later to about 1984. I was in high school at the time and I got hit by two particular freight trains : Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings… thank you sirs Gygax and Tolkien, I’m a fantasy geek now! So over the years the games that interested me were always close to those 4 major interests. Here are the main ones I play and why I love ‘em. Enjoy!


Flight Simulator 2004


Ever since I’ve started this blog I’ve been preaching about flying dangerously, and where better to do it than in a real world setting! My love of flying doesn’t just come from proximity to an airport full of jet fighters. There’s a branch of my family that produced a few bush pilots based out of the St.Lawrence river’s North Coast region. Out of my father’s uncles and cousins to be bitten by the flying bug, one of them, Lucien, was known to be the barn-storming nutcase. On a dare, he once flew under the power lines near his home of Sept-Iles :) While I myself never took the full flying lessons, I do love the crazy stunts that are only possible on a simulator, like landing too big a plane on too small a runway, flying under bridges, and of course my favorite, flying at rock-scraping level in the Grand Canyon in nothing less than a Eurofighter Typhoon, never going below 500 knots. Yes, it’s doable. Yes, I’ve crashed a few times learning the canyon, and yes, my settings are set to full realism except for fuel; running out would just suck :) I haven’t updated to the newer FSX because at first my computer wasn’t strong enough to run it. Now I could but there’s still so much fun to be had with the older one. The amount of stuff you can download, such as aircraft, scenery, terrain, tools, etc, is just mindboggling. And if you’re really serious you could spend A LOT of money because the better downloads are not free. Examples : Ultimate Terrain, the best terrain replacement package for FS2004, is 30$ USD for Canada/Alaska, and 35$ USD for USA. Some of the more realistic aircraft are close to 100$ and are meant for those hardcore simmers who build the realistic cockpits. And from there, the sky’s the limit, litterally!

Dangerous: the only way to fly !!!

rFactor


From the skies to the pavement. This racing simulator is probably the most bang for the buck you can find in any kind of game, any genre, single-player, multi-player or MMO. All you need to do is download the full game that’s locked in demo mode, register it for 40$ USD, and from there you can install almost any track you can think of, plus some you can only dream about, and any racing series you can think of. You like F1? Almost every year is there from the 1950’s to present time (GP79 is just nuts!) is available. You prefer endurance LeMans-style racing? Covered. Not so sure about that « turning right » thing? There be stock cars. Drifting sideways on a mountain gravel road? Of course! 5y-old friendly? Karting? Lawnmower racing? Yep, all there! This game has a very active community and there are racing leagues for anyone from day-old noobs to grizzled old veterans, some of which are actually race car drivers. Yes this is another one where you could go nuts with money and build a realistic cockpit, and the better racing leagues have actual entry fees and pro purses. But even just by myself alone on a track, say the 20 mile long Nordschleife, this simulator is all fun!

Somewhere in Switzerland... in an alternate dimension

Dungeon Runners


This one I’m a little bit sad to talk about. Before last Sunday I hadn’t logged in in a few weeks but it was long enough to get a really bad news : the game will die on New Year’s Eve, This is the second RPG to give me this surprise after I come back to it; Hellgate London was the first. But let’s do what the devs did and put sadness aside a minute; see, with the final update the devs put in a huge bomb in the middle of Townston (the game’s town of course) with a timer that’s set to go off at 23:59 on December 31st! This is the kind of dark humor Dungeon Runners was known for. It takes a little bit from Diablo, a little bit from WoW, and adds just enough goofiness to make it really funny. I mean, where else could you smite thine enemies with a Gargantuesque Pizza Cutter of the Malcontent Rhinoceros? I’m making the name up but I’ve seen even better ones… the Pizza Cutter IS a usable two-handed melee weapon though! The same thing goes for the armor, the quests, the universe, and everything. I haven’t been to Pwnston, the PvP town, yet, but I will have to pay a visit before that bomb goes off. The price was really good : I wanted an RPG just for the fun of running around and beating stuff up and came across this. It’s a free-to-play game with a monthly subscription of 5$ if you want premium membership. On the website they advertise the boxed game at 20$ which gives you 6 months of membership, but last July I found this box at an EB Games store for 5$. 5$, 6 months, the price was right so I jumped in. Too bad it’s gonna end soon because this game is a riot!

Me, my Bling Gnome, and the denizens of Townston

Mechwarrior/Battletech


In 1995 I discovered the Battletech universe when I started hanging out at Montreal’s Virtual World center, and met someone you may know as Letrange. I went to his place and he showed me Mechwarrior II, and it was love at first sight… with the game of course! I’ve followed the franchise ever since, seen the ups and downs of FASA Industries and FASA Interactive, the Microsoft take-over, up to the current stuff being developped over at Mektek.com which is very promising. I have yet to re-install Mech4: Mercenaries with the Mektek 3 and Net Battletech mods since my hard drive failure last summer but this should be done fairly soon because last week’s announcement at Mektek was enough to make me yell « Seyla! » :) A few months ago Mektek took in the Assault Tech 1 devellopment team; AT1 is an effort to remake Mechwarrior II from scratch using modern-day graphics. On October 27th, the Open Beta for AT1 was released. Mektek also received the go-ahead to re-release Mechwarrior4: Mercenaries with the Mektek mod included, as a free game. And on Youtube there's a video of what would be the next Mechwarrior game, this time set in the 3025/Succession Wars timeline, and the graphics are just jaw-dropping with urban fighting, buildings collapsing, dangling wires from blown-off 'mech limbs, the works. Oh, and an Atlas :) Clearly, the Battletech universe is far from dead!


Quake Live


I couldn’t end this post without mentioning the game franchise that opened me the door to multiplayer gaming. I don’t log in very often so to say my Quaking is rusty would be the understatement of the century, but the fact that you can now play one of the best ever deathmatch games through your web browser is just amazing. Explaining this game to a neophyte couldn’t be simpler : point gun, find target to shoot. If it moves, shoot it. if it doesn’t move, shoot it some more. I don’t care how complex the newer games get, or how much prettier, there’s just nothing like pure deathmatch. Not even EVE PvP !!! Oh, did I offend someone? Wanna deathmatch? C ya on Q3DM6 >:)


Fly what you love


o7