Game Review: Carrier Command Gaea Mission

I just found this one the other day. After doing a bit of research, that is, checking youtube for gameplay previews and various other sites for hype, I decided that I would check it out.

Turns out, wasn't too great. Not terrible, mind you, but reallllllllllly needs improvement.

I should point out that I have not yet bothered with the Campaign, just the strategy mode.

You are a solider in an Interplanetary fleet. You command a navel based aircraft carrier on an alien world.

Yeah, that's where I raised an eyebrow too.

 

(the Carrier)

You are tasked with liberating a large chain of islands. It plays like an RTS/FPS. You are always controlling something, whether it be the carrier or the Mantis

or the Walrus

 

You get four of each vehicles. That's it. You can control them RTS style or jump in and control them yourself. It's a neat and very well executed concept. It is, however, fairly limiting. You get four of each and whenever one is destroyed, you have to build one and then have it delivered to you via cargo ship, which can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes depending on where you are. Your carrier also runs on fuel, which can be depleted. If you run out, you have to have the cargo ship bring you more. That was quite annoying.

You also have limited line of sight. Your own islands can't see anything, so if the enemy carrier goes nearby, you don't know. Speaking of the enemy carrier, of which there is only one, it's a freaking PAIN.

Whenever you get within radar range of it, it flees like a mouse when you turn on the kitchen light. It's also slightly faster than your own ship, so if the mission is to destroy the enemy carrier, the only way you'll catch it is if it is heading at you.

In closing, I wouldn't buy it. At least not new. Wait for it to go on heavily marked down sale. It's good, but the drawbacks are very, very annoying. But when combat gets going on enemy islands, it becomes really fun.

I do miss being able to tank rush though.

Electronic Arts Strikes Again

This week, BioWare founders Dr. Ray Muzyka and Dr. Greg Zeschuk announced that they were stepping down and leaving BioWare.

I smell something foul. Something that reeks with the stench of greed, a complete disregard for an industry and a company built to serve a large part of the population not to mention the stench of a small game studio that had been absorbed by a larger entity that has a track record of absorbing and liquidating small game companies and...

.....Oh, that makes sense now. I mean, it's not like EA has gone around buying up small game studios and then liquidating those assets, resulting in some really, really bad games, right?

.......well shit.



In any case, the retirement of the BioWare founders only months AFTER Mass Effect 3's (which was good, but lacked a lot, especially in the ending) launch and subsequent scandal and just after the announcement of Dragon Age 3 (admittedly, that doesn't matter to me, since I don't play that series. But some people love it, apparently), only brings about suspicions that EA is once again messing with a company that started with an amazing reputation. Now just shadows of what they once were. For example, MAXIS. Sims, SimCity. Sims 3 is the latest and features an in game market, where players use real money to buy points to buy more stuff in game. (ignoring the whole bit about the never ending amount of expansion packs, since that's been going since day 1) SimCity. SimCity was a revolution in it's day. SimCity 2000 was one of the best games I had growing up. The latest installment that is soon to be released has been converted into an MMO in all but name.

Westwood studios. Makers of Command & Conquer as well as Dune. CnC is my all time favourite game series. Red Alert 2 was amazing. Westwood studios was liquidated and closed shortly after RA2 launch (though many Westwood veterans went on to form Petroglyph Studios that brought Star Wars Empire at War, which was amazing). Generals set the bar for modern RTS combat. Red Alert 3 was so zany and off the wall it blew my mind. Command and Conquer 4, the supposed "finale" in the Tiberium series was so much of a failure that I played it for a half hour, uninstalled it and haven't touched it since. Recently, EA announced a new game, GENERALS 2. I was so happy! But even more recently they changed it from GENERALS 2 to just Command and Conquer Free2Play with no single player (they later said that SP will be added later) or Skirmish mode. Once again an MMO in all but name.

NUFF SAID. I really shouldn't have to add that EA's big boss has proudly said that he has never green lit any games that are purely single player, but I will anyway, because he's a moron.

For whatever difference it makes, I'm riding myself of EA and tossing my support behind THQ and other developers that understand how important single player is.

Parenting

Before I begin, (and to avoid any overly negative feedback after I publish this) let me start by saying that I am not a parent. Therefore, anything said in this entry should be assumed to be pure opinion based on available facts and not experience.

Okay that's done with.

Exhibit A:
Recently something came to my attention, a mother in Texas was arrested and held in prison overnight for "abandonment". Pretty bad parent, don't you think?

I sure don't.

Her children were riding around outside on scooters and she just out of view. Why did she get arrested? Because one of her neighbors made a quick decision and called 9-1-1 because they didn't see the mother anywhere.

The mother was put in jail for 18 hours. 18. Hours. Because one of the neighbors wasn't able to see her watching her kids.

Now, even less than a decade ago, kids were playing outside in residential neighborhoods, unsupervised (I was living in the middle of nowhere, so I can't make much of a comparison). Not only was this accepted, it was the norm. Go farther back and kids were outside all day.

What's changed?

Some people will say that there are more predators, pedophiles and rapists out there. I disagree. I say that we've just succumbed to fear. There are more, yes, thanks to the internet, but not many more. Not enough to cause this level of dread. (whatever happened to block watch, anyway? Neighbors looking out for each others kids).

Now we come to exhibit B. Actual bad parenting.

A report out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada back in May of this year was a story about a family that was torn apart. I say that literally. Police and paramedics arrived at an Edmonton home and arrested two adults, a male and a female (the courts have prevented them from being named to protect the identities of the children). Their two children were taken to hospital. Two year old twin girls. Both bruised, dangerously malnourished to the point that their body weight was HALF of a normal girl that age. One even went into cardiac arrest.

"The parents said the twins were hurt when they fell down some stairs they had been playing on with their older brother three days earlier. They also maintained the girls were able to crawl and walk with assistance at the time.
However, “medical evidence suggests that this could not be possible,” according to the court documents.
A pediatrician is quoted in the documents saying the girls were “profoundly malnourished,” and would not have been mobile three days earlier. He is also quoted saying the bruises on the girls were “clearly due to multiple impacts” and “cannot be explained by only one event.”"

As of Friday, September 21, 2012, one of the children, known by the name of "Baby M" to protect her identity, was taken off of life support and passed away. It should be noted that both parents, who are not allowed to have contact with each other, went to the Supreme Court of Canada to try and prevent the ventilator from being taken off. That does not redeem them. I have not heard any word on the condition of the other child.


I guess the take away from this entry is that we should be careful when judging parents. There are people, like exhibit B, who are not fit to be parents and frankly, should be rendered sterile. Alongside that, there are parents like exhibit A, simply out of sight at the wrong time and whose neighbor is apparently so paranoid that they call the police at the first sign of something odd.

If kids aren't allowed to explore, then they don't learn. That's my view.

Education

So an article came to my attention recently.

Teacher fired

So let me get this straight, a teacher has been fired, for teaching kids about how the real world works.

In what reality does that make sense?

It would have been a bit better if the person behind the firing wasn't the school's principal. The man who wrote a letter to the Edmonton School Board saying that Mr. Dorval had shown “obvious neglect of duty as a professional teacher, his repeated insubordination and his continued refusal to obey lawful orders.”

I'll give your brain a moment to process the irony in that statement.

All done? Good.

So apparently, letting students not complete work and give them "behavioural codes" when they didn't fix that problem is okay while giving them a flat out ZERO for the missed assignment and potentially alienating their feelings is a no-no.

Let me be very clear. People fail. That is how nature works. Someone is always going to be left behind, alienated and outright fail. Deal with it. Does a heard of Zebras running from some Lions stop and wait for the slowest to catch up so that everyone is on equal pace?

HELL NO.

They all run as fast as they can. The slowest get eaten. By not giving students zeros we're letting the system eat everyone up. Sure kids who do good work still excel, but why should they? They're going to pass the class whether they do the work or not. Most kids hate schoolwork. This gives them a free excuse to not do anything.

I skipped on some homework when I was in high school. What happened? I had a C average. I didn't put much effort into my grade 12 Spanish homework. What happened? I FAILED (only by a percentage point, mind you and I still got my diploma, but that was five years ago).

The principal of Ross Shepard high school has even gone so far to say: “I am here to tell you that you did nothing wrong,” Ron Bradley says. “Everything you did with regards to student achievement and high school completion was the right thing.”

He also was quoted as saying that the news media’s take on the policy is “narrow” and oversimplified.
“In my opinion, the culture of the media deteriorated to the quality of pulp fiction and talk radio,”


Dude, get your head out of your ass. You are encouraging kids to be lazy, unproductive slackers. With this kind of policy in effect, the crop of kids who graduate in a few years is going to be so warped that they won't have any idea how the real world actually works!


Now why is this happening? My theory is pretty simple, money.

Public schools are funded by governments. To the best of my knowledge, (this might not actually be the case, I will do some further checking, so don't quote me on this) the higher the grade averages, the more money they get. Zeros look pretty bad and the more of them that happen, the lower the average is so the less money they get. The no Zero policy means that the grade average stays high, since "behavioural codes" don't imfluence the grade average. But that's just my theory.

I just got an official reply from Alberta Ministry of Education and as far as money coming from them, the above is not the case. Each school board sends money as it chooses.

Teachers have spent the last couple decades teaching kids to "feel good about themselves" and "imagine how the world can be". The problem with that is that it doesn't really do anything useful for the students and all it does is breed lazy hippies.

Now if you've read the rest of this blog, you'll know that I am fairly left wing in both politics and beliefs. I always tell people to dream big and if you believe hard enough, you'll have a hard time letting yourself fail. That said, I hate this. It's encouraging kids to not do anything. After all, if they think that no matter what, they can't fail, then get out into the real world and fail constantly, won't that destroy their self esteem and self worth faster than getting an F on a homework assignment? What does that lead to? I'd rather not think about it. Failure builds experience. After all, Thomas Edison did find 2000 ways NOT to make a lightbulb. If we don't fail, then we never have the chance to stand back up, dust ourselves off and look at a problem from a different angle.

That's just my theory.

My return

I apologize for my almost year long hiatus. I just didn't feel like writing anymore. But I've been feeling that with the world the way it is, I should be writing.

Also more than a few movie reviews I've wanted to do haven't had a home.

So, with that in mind,

I'M BACK! Expect new posts shortly.

Why 2012 is the end of the world after all.

To start, no, this is not about the "Supposed" Mayan prophecy. Based on everything I have seen and learned so far in 2011, it's my belief that 2012 will be the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of a whole new world.

2011 has already seen widespread revolutions in the Middle East - Egypt, Tunisa, Libya - and now it is beginning to happen in Syria. It is also beginning to happen in the United States and somewhat moderately in Canada.

The Middle East Revolutions, "Arab Spring", was about bringing freedom and democracy to the lands ruled over by tyrants with an iron fist. Now people are taking to the streets in American cities just like the Egyptian people did in Tahir Square. There is also unrest in China, Iran and North Korea (but neither government will acknowledge that). Coupled with the extreme amount of uncertainty and chaos in Europe with their financial crisis, it is only a matter of time.

I watched the Egyptian Revolution from day one. I have been watching the Occupy Wall Street movement since before it even started.

Now, I will admit that people in North America don't have it as bad as people in other nations, I will admit that freely.

After everything that has happened this year and as we enter the final quarter of 2011, it is my opinion that 2012 will be the year that the world falls. There is unrest everywhere. New York is a powderkeg. All it will take is an event the violence we all saw in England will pale in comparison. And one by one government around the world will fall. People have seen that if enough of them congregate together with a real belief in a progressive ideal, it will have an impact.


At the same time, Egypt is still in turmoil, Libya is barely holding together and the death toll of Syrian civilians is nearing 3,000. So I wouldn't call them complete successes just yet, but it is a start on the right path.

In North America the voting public are, en masse, rejecting right wing conservative politics in favour of either left or centerist politics, something that the right wing extremists are not happy about.

At this point, a global upheaval is invetable. There are only a few questions left to be answered:
1) Where will it start?
2) How will it start?

and, most importantly,

3) How will it end?



Only time will tell, but as I stand here, united with my progressive brothers and sisters around the world, one thing is for certain, this decade will be one that will change the world, and humanity, forever.

NASA's New Rocket

If you haven't heard already, NASA announced today that they have a new vehicle in design, the DSES or Deep Space Exploration System (Though I think DSV - Deep Space Vehicle - sounds way better) that will ferry astronauts to the Moon and then to Mars. They say it is supposed to be able to carry around 130 metric tons. My theory is that that is based on current technology. Who knows where we'll be in six years, that number may just go up.


NASA DSES

The rocket won't be ready until 2017 unfortunately, so we still have a ways to go. But not only is returning to the moon looking more feesable, but seeing a colony there in my lifetime is looking very possible.


I still say that NASA should not only work on this system, but an unmanned delivery vehicle. Sacrificing crew compartments for cargo space would be an easier way to make large deliveries to any future bases.

All in all, I'm glad to hear this annoucement. It's a step in the right direction. It could also foster international competition among the space agencies which could lead to better delivery systems.

Battlefield 3

My mind has been officially scattered all over the wall. I just watched the Battlefield 3 Caspian Border Multiplayer trailer and holy crap is it amazing. It once again proves how much of an edge EA and DICE has over Activision and Infinity Ward and their Call of Duty series.

If I were them, I'd start toning down the hype on MW3 cause there is no way they can match this. I might even have to rebuild my entire computer just to play BF3. Something I will do gladly.

Seriously, I nearly had a spaz attack when I watched this.

(on a side note, you shouldn't watch if you have epilepsy or are allergic to awesomesauce)

and Lolz @ 1:34. Watch and you'll see what I mean.

Pure Disgust.

First off, thanks to Blag Hag for mentioning this.

I would also like to note that my personal preference about whether or not the WTC cross should or should not be put up has no impact on this blog. Those who know me know my position.

We all know that FOX News is the breeding ground on nonsensical crazy. That's just a plain fact. But after American Atheists Communications Director Blair Scott appeared to defend their lawsuit about how they believe the cross should not be put up without equal representation of all religions affected in the 9/11 tragedy, well, Christian extremists took to FOX News Facebook page with an outpouring of hate and rage as can be seen here.

Taking the step to suggest that they should be "Nailed to a cross in the manner that jesus was claimed to have been tortured, rammed through the chest with a spear in full public view". That's just not right!

This is not online commentary. This is inceitment of violence and threats of physical harm. I believe freedom of speech ends when harm is threatened. This goes beyond all that. This is people advocating and supporting that someone walk into the homes of the group's members with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Or advocating rape.

Point is, these are not people expressing personal opinions, they are expressing a desire for physical harm against another human being. For no other reason than a difference of opinion. Indeed this is where freedom of speech must bow down to rule of law. These people have made their desires clear.

Frankly, I am horribly disgusted. Cyber bullying is still a criminal act regardless if it is pointed at a specific person or a group of people.

While these people have had their full names provided to us, I urge restraint from going to their pages and harassing them. That's not the way to deal with this.


I do suggest, however, reporting a tip with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and if you feel the need, the U.S. Department of Education. Because their spelling and grammar are, after all, atrocious.

But seriously, a tip to the FBI would be a good start. Get these people on the grid. If they want to spew hatred, show them the cost.

Crime and Punishment

First off, my heart goes out to all those that have lost loved ones in Norway. That was unspeakably evil.

There is no question that Mr. Breivik is not only insane, but a product of years of right wing brainwashing. However, that is not what I'm going to be touching on.

Many people I have talked with have been saying that we should just kill him and be done with it. On the one hand, I agree. The man is a sociopath. No remorse, no guilt. He believes that he was right in doing what he did and he worked for years to achieve this goal. It sickens me, it hurts my heart in ways I didn't think possible.

In war, it is a matter of survival. Kill or be killed. That doesn't make it right, but it's less of a crime. But gunning down innocent civilians - CHILDREN - for that matter is an evil so vile that Satan himself must be shaking in his boots.

These days there seems to be very few ways to administer justice. Either execution or jail really. But does that work? Executions are easy, especially the more vile the person is. Jails these days are overcrowded and make people into worse criminals. It's easier for the legal system to just throw them in jail, but it doesn't actually do anything. Not in the grand scheme of things.

I say there are a few ways to go about it. Start small and creative. Make the punishment fit the crime. The aim isn't to toss them in jails for years upon years. The objective is to rehabilitate them and let them fit back into society. But that doesn't always work. Jail is for when a criminal cannot be rehabilitated, but at the same time, shows guilt and remorse for what they have done. If a criminal fits that category, then they should serve society. Put them to work doing hard, dangerous work until their sentence is finished.

If they don't show honest remorse or guilt, then they are of no use to society and on top of that, they are a dangerous threat. A person who is of no use to society has no need to be in a society. Like Mr. Breivik here, he shows no remorse, no guilt and is actually proud of what he did. Death is the best option for him. It will never bring back the dead, but there will be one less hate filled person in the world.



I did have one further idea, however. In the case of Mr. Breivik, he should be made to construct a memorial for the dead before his execution. Fitting justice, I think.