The piece I wrote for 1up.com about Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers got posted. It's very brief and "gamey" so don't look for clever social commentary or political metaphors in there, but here is the link all the same.

Oh, our internet at home is down due to a hardware failure so if you emailed me recently and I didn't respond it's because I don't like you since I can check my email using a webmail client from work. We should be back up by tomorrow.

posted by Travis at 5:32 PM

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Saturday, January 21, 2006

"We’re all scared. You hid in that ditch because you think there’s still hope. The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you’re already dead. And the sooner you accept that, the sooner you’ll be able to function as a soldier’s supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it."

I learned a valuable lesson yesterday. I learned that US Marines are no fucking joke. Not that I ever thought they were, but I was brutally reminded of it yesterday. I took the day off on Friday so I could attend a press event. THQ invited the gaming press to Blue Cloud Ranch in Saugus, California to play Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers and talk to the military technical advisors that worked on the game. The email that I received listed the itinerary as such:

9:30 AM – Report to Hyatt Hotel Lobby
10:00 AM – Urban combat training session with breakfast
11:00 AM – FSW: Ten Hammers Multiplayer Competition
12:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 PM – Interviews with top military advisors from Pandemic Studios
2:00 PM – Enter hostile town and remove insurgent forces
5:00 PM – Return from combat (if applicable)

I was pleased when I read this because it is my policy to never take part in urban combat training unless there is a breakfast attached. So we ate and played the game and did our thing, and then we were told to suit up for combat. The marines, all of them combat veterans, then proceeded to decimate the gaming press in groups of 4 at paintball. We were dressed up in camo and given about 10 minutes of tactics training (specifically they were teaching us a technique of moving called bounding overwatch). We were then told that a convoy had been ambushed at the end of the street and all that remained was a grey car with a briefcase in it containing sensitive materials. We were to proceed down the street and retrieve the briefcase. Sounds simple enough.

I've never played paintball, but I did play a lot of Rainbow Six, so I was confident in my ability to check for enemies, move, check for enemies, move, repeat. Now I know why marines train for so long because as soon as I started taking fire my notions of spotting enemies, covering my team, or retrieving a bag from a car all became a far priority to "what do I have to do to stop getting shot." Sure, it's just paintballs, but they hurt. I have little round bruises that still hurt from every paintball that hit me, and there were many. Oh...soo many. My first reaction to being shot was to immediately let go of anything in my hands and try to cover where I'd been hit so I wouldn't get hit there again. Unfortunately the only thing in my hands was my gun, and as I found out all too late, the only thing that will stop a trained marine from shooting at you continuously is to return fire and force them to take cover. Eventually, I got a little better, but that fear of "I'm being shot and I don't know from where" was ever present. I don't dare compare this to real combat, but it is the closest thing I've come to it, and I don't know how those guys do it. Walking down that street knowing there were people hiding out there waiting to shoot me really made me realize how many places there were for people to hide.

I went up against them a few times and started to get into it. I eventually made a successful go for the bag after crawling through the ruined husk (including lots of broken glass...sorry, hands!) of the car. Just so you'll know what we were up against, after several runs the Master Sergeant was examining the goggles and face masks of our gear. He then went to the Staff Sergeant and I overheard him say, "I think it would be a good idea if the boys stopped shooting these guys in the mouth." You see, when you get shot in the face the paintball breaks open on the mask, but the paint goes right through the slots in the mask and into your gasping mouth. That taste doesn't go away. On the last run, the marines let the press go 4 on 4 against each other and you know what happened? We all took cover and never came out. So they took up arms and chased us all around shooting the shit out of all of us.

It was lots of fun and I think the marines enjoyed showing us what real soldiers are capable of and how different "real" combat is from a videogame. I have lots of respect for those guys. I took some pictures from the event and they are up here. The marines are the guys dressed like terrorists and anyone wearing matching camo pants and jacket is press. I also added some of the photos that I liked to the photography section.

posted by Travis at 7:50 PM

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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Recently, I've gotten back in touch with my console roots. It started by watching Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. When the movie ended, I ventured upstairs into the storage area and dug out my old PSX, cables, controllers, power, and the discs for FFVII, and hooked it all up to the TV. I was surprised to find that it all worked perfectly. I don't know why, but I always assume that electronics will magically stop conducting electricity and cease to function the longer they sit unused in a closet. I played a little FFVII, but I could not save because I could not find my memory card. That's when I started thinking, "Why should I buy an $8 PSX memory card or borrow one from someone when I can just as easily purchase a new Playstation 2 for $150 and play FFVII on that!" This is how my brain works. I've been considering a PS2 for a while now and there are several titles that are Sony exclusives that I have missed out on over the years. So, this week I'll be getting my PS2. I already bought six games for it on ebay (God of War, Final Fantasy X, Devil May Cry, Gran Turismo 4, Onimusha 2, and Kingdom Hearts for Kim) and I imagine I'll be renting some over the course of the next few weeks as well. There is a reissue of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater coming out with some added content, so I'm going to pick that up, but thinking of MGS reminded me that I never finished MGS2: Substance on Xbox. So I've been playing that over the last few days. It's really quite shocking how little of the game is actual gameplay compared to the amount of time you spend watching cinemas. Don't get me wrong, I love good in-game cinemas and a good story, but some warning like "you will not be playing for the next 30 minutes" would be nice so I can get a drink. My understanding is that the story for MGS2 borders on asinine, but I need to finish it to sate my completionism complex. This is also why I'm buying the original Devil May Cry and Onimusha 2 (I played Genma Onimusha on Xbox) instead of the most recent iterations of those games. I want to see it from the beginning.

posted by Travis at 5:03 PM

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Tuesday, January 10, 2006

I watched Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children over the weekend. You can download the trailer here (right-click and save target as). Advent Children is a CGI movie sequel to the game Final Fantasy VII which was the killer app for the original Sony Playstation. It was the reason everyone bought a Playstation and it is still the most beloved of all the Final Fantasy games, of which there are now 11, not counting spin-offs. If I remember correctly (correct me if I'm wrong, Shane), but FFVII was the first Final Fantasy game since III to be released in the US. IV, V, and VI were all released in Japan only. I think they have since been released in some kind of combo pack. I played the first Final Fantasy on NES all the way through as well as Final Fantasy II and III on SNES. Betweeen Final Fantasy II, Shadowrun, and Super Return of the Jedi the SNES nearly drove me out of college (not to mention X-Wing, Strike Commander, Wing Commander III, and a large assortment of other PC games). I think I'm getting a little sidetracked here. The point is Final Fantasy VII is a huge game in many gamers' lives. So a movie sequel is a big deal to us.

It's really unfortunate then that the movie kind of sucks. I don't understand how people who can make such stunning CGI animation can know so little about the basic elements of storytelling. I want to underscore that the animation IS stunning. The movie is worth watching for the animation and the action scenes alone. But the storytelling is poor. Characters show up out of nowhere just to take part in an action scene and then disappear again. All the characters from the game have cameos (which is nice) and there are some neat musical cues taken straight from the game music, but the story just isn't there. If you have never played the game, you can forget about understanding anything that is going on. Just watch the pretty pictures. I'm disappointed, but not surprised. I wanted it to be really cool, but the story just doesn't work for me.

posted by Travis at 10:36 AM

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Thursday, January 05, 2006

If you haven't noticed, I've put new pictures up in my flickr account. You can see pictures from Kelly's trip to California, from Christmas, from Thanksgiving, and some I took during Brad's poker tournament (where I placed 3rd out of 15). I also added some pictures to the Photography section that I took at the tournament and some of Kelly's engagement ring.

I got a Canon Rebel XT for Christmas, so I'm going to give this photography thing a run.

posted by Travis at 6:46 PM

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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Now that the holidays are over and I'm done traveling, everything will get back to normal. Kim comes back tonight so things should start to feel a little more normal around here. Christmas went well. I ended up with some good presents and those I gave out went over nicely. Now that the gift-giving is over I can finally reveal that I am an iPod owner. I had it mind to buy one for my Dad for Christmas because the CD player in his airplane broke and he was complaining about having to have all those CDs in the plane all the time. So I bought an iPod with the intention of trying it out to see if it was something I thought would be useful. I've been an iTunes convert for some time now, so an iPod was the next natural step. I didn't get much use out of it at first, but I bought a tape adapter (they are superior to the more expensive FM transmitter) and started to listen to it in the car. In early December I was driving down to Anaheim every day for some training and it was about three to four hours in the car every day. That was when it started to shine. I do have some problems with it and there are some things I wish they would fix, but all in all it is a quality piece of equipment.

So I decided to keep the one I had loaded all my stuff on and buy my Dad a new one, which I did. He seems pleased with it and has already taken it up in the airplane to enormous success. I've always been of the opinion that I have absolutely no need to carry every CD I own around with me at all times, and I still believe that. However, for traveling and ESPECIALLY when flying it can't be beat. I noticed I got a lot less idle chatter from Christmas airport people because I had headphones on, and the constant music kept my mind occupied enough so that I didn't spend the entire flight waiting to crash. The iPod is only as good as your iTunes however, so if you have one I urge you to work with it and get some smart playlists going. I've only played with it enough to set up a playlist that pulls 25 random songs that have not been played in the last week from another playlist I have.

This doesn't make me an Apple person, but I think they are on to something with this iPod.

Sadly, I had to send the Xbox 360 back to tomshardware today because they decided to delay payment of my invoices until they got it back. Real nice, fellas. Actually, I'm not too sad about it because the games didn't hook me. I'm looking forward to playing my old Xbox. It also helps that we have a couple of them at work for "testing" purposes.

This is going longer than I anticipated, so I'll stop now and save the rest for tomorrow or Friday.

posted by Travis at 6:05 PM

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