fuck off

we've moved... i've moved... bleh

thepurpleview.wordpress.com

What a way to go

Urghhhh

I fear that my new idea : Writeous 24 , will be the death of me... as it does seem quite impossible to write a 60 page book, edit it and self-publish it in less than 24 hours...never the less I have a set date : har har.

The date is Wednesday 28th June,  just in the middle of the holidays - and gives me enough time to figure out WHAT THE FUCK I'm gonna write about.

In other news, you suck... and Killzone 2 looks alright...

Hey is anyone else renting that 50 Cent game? Dat looks awfool lawlz.

Cheers

lol im mute: What's So Good About Half-Life?

Ahhhh! Here's the one I've been planning for centuries! Okay, maybe not centuries... decades... but anyway... Valve's narration in the half-life series has always been recognised as 'shifitng the scale', but whats so good about a 'nerd who had to man up' against generic supazombies? Well, let's look at this smelly pot of pancakes ever so more closer, as I will reveal, why gordon freeman is mute.

Let's start of with the setting shall we? A scientific research department known as Black Mesa, is built deep in the heart of some deseart, Gordon Freeman - a acclaimed physicist, meganerd and champion D+D player - is tasked with switching on some sort machine or something, that is actually similiar to what the Large Hadron Collider of today is trying to achieve.

So he pulls the switch, and generic aliens come out and then he has to limp around the place and then... get tasked to visit the alien homeworld to exterminate the boss.... what the hell. This story has been done to death, Gears of war did it, some episodes of Stargate and Trekkers did it and even godamn Star Wars did it. Hell, you could even count Call of Duty. "Taking it to their turf'' does not even make a good story, what possible narration and dialouge can you get out of a simple mission to get in some badly made 'alien' lair, boomshot the boss and then go home a hero?

Enough with that overused plot and on with probably the most confusing thing ever, apparently the overseer of black mesa surrendered the human race to some alien dudes called the combine.. and he's the king of the world obviously / sarcasm. So now G Freeman wakes up on a train on the way to some city and then has to talk to some random obviously overused models of 'stranded' dudes.

Okay, what the buck? Did jesus come down and rain fire on earth or did humanity just say ''sure you c an have the keys to the earth'', what the buck? Anyway, he goes vroom beep beep and ends up on the run from the combine, with some sorta generic, non-big-boobed female companion (curse yoo valfe), his crowbar and some sorta... purpose to go down a river to get to a facility he could've gotten to with a simple teleportation reset.

Here's what actually happens, Gordon get his HEV suit back, teleports the *****, goes in it, some facehugger (lol so many aliens rip offs) messes it up, he sees some poorly animated stuff to supposedly scare us, then ends up just outside the window. The teleporter works, all he needs to do is go back inside... but some guy who owed him a beer says ''go gordon, down the canal.''

Okay... now that's the definition of dumb. The next two episodes are basically 'escape and go to the moon, and some guy dies', to be honest - there is a hugely emotional part at the end of Ep 2, but that's it - just linear nothingness all the way through. This is probably the biggest aliens rip off I can imagine, just throw in a mute guy.

Now I explain! Gordon Freeman is mute because... no not to give immersion or for this guy to create one of the funniest things I've ever seen , because Freeman just can't have a voice actor, now and even today - I can't think of anyone to voice the most baddass nerd of all time... and I can't think what he'd say!

Valve aren't even writers, they say 'save alex', you save alex - they don't go into emotional detail, but they sure hide it. I honestly don't know why critics rave about the half life story, there is no story! Just a guy in a orange suit, going around killing facehuggers, having some dropped lines from his non-big-boobed companion and occassionallly lending a hand to some squeaky proffeseur.

I'll leave you with a picture of the creator of Freeman's Mind, the link of 'this guy' will show you what he does, and a thought: if half life can be acclaimed for a story it doesn't have, than maybe my conclusion can be raved about without having an actual conclusion, see yer folks, now name of the next episode - ta ra!

what

I honestly don't know what to post... urmmm... da half life series ends in 2 weeks... umm, the next part of the GTA IV thing will be posted on Friday I think, and the Mark Speight tribute will instead, be in early April, as Mark died on April 7th, I checked my calendar... not really... but I will post the article the day before, or on, April 7th.

Here's some things I've been thinking about

• The video-game that me and my Purple View co. friends, is going well - we'll finish concept up by the end of Feb and begin work for about 8 months, expect a Christmas Day release maybe. We currently do not have a confirmed title, but we're tossing "The Irish Distabilsation and The Disregard For Political Correctness" and "Left Turn at Guantanamo Bay", both of which are subtitles for the full game.
• I'm currently attempting to break into mainstream journalism, The Escapist is offering guest jobs and my blog has picked up in traffic... I might just get a call some day... if I put down my number somewhere.
• I do have a planned book - 'omgwtf' - to be fully written in the 6 week holidays. It will be a collection of short stories, rants, poems, nonsense and also my full length novel - Enter The Alphabet, I'm sure to find the motorvation dis time... ish...
• (A seperate post will appear for this) I have contemplated dis idea for a while now, but I have finally concluded that an event called Writeous (har har), which is where I shall write, edit and generally publish a full book... in 24 hours. More on this later.

Cheers.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, are you sitting comfortably? Good. Then we will begin. The half life series (god how many times am I gonna use them words) has always been praised for it's 'high octance, adrenaline pumped action and gunplay. But... well.. whaaaaaats so good about it? I mean, your put in a blocky room, pit again repititve enemies and eventually work into different puzzles and quests.

So... we're all no strangers to gunplay aye? If you've never played an shooter, plaay one like... like now. It's like your virginity, your first time will always be remembered.... and guess what the first FPS I played was? Thatsa right... Half Life. It was 1999 and in the dim room of my friend's house, I was only like 6, 7 years old, I saw this orange thing on his computer screen, I swear I pooped myself when the headcrabs came at him, I thought it was so realistic.

Ten years on and you realise, what the hell where they thinking? Hell yeh, I'm going against Half Life, and you've only just realised it... my house is gonna get burned down by the time I finish part five ain't it? Well come and get me valve fanboys, I've got a crowbar and I'm not afraid to work out to use it properly...

Well, let's start this ranting machine for good shall we? There really is no tactics in half-life, unless it's in the online deathmatch or whatever, just grab a rifle, hold down te fire button and zoom through hallways like theres no tomorow. Now tat I play it, there is no action or gameplay whatsoever, just mindless shooting around corridors.

At the time, it was considered to be the golden age of FPSs before the mass-market landed, so you'd expect Valve to make an effort and push the pony along, well they didn't really, in fact you could probably relate it to a lot of shooters today! Mindless killing for 7 hours with cinematic interloudes and a generally effortlessly put together story!

Generic hallways and rooms didn't help either, in fact it only made it worse through design, and honestly, Half Life is like a box of wood shavings (level design) added to a pool of custard (shooting and gunplay), I don't honestly think theres a more muddled fps tha came from that time, it didn't even know what it was half the time!

g

Half a decade later and nothing much changes, some muddy design, same muddy weapons, same muddy levels and just about same enemies. Valve didn't do anything really but give a new slap of paint, pused it into some 'revolutionary plot' and then said ''get to it''. The thing I don't understand is why after all these years, are people still playing it?

I mean c'mon, you've still got a muddy, unorganised design to deal with - the guns have all changed names and skins and the enemies still bleed the same blood? I don't know what runs through the veins of hardcore half life players, probably gordon freeman's sperm or something. Which reminds me... why the **** doesn't he talk?

But that's for next week my friends, as the penultimate thing of whatever this is is like posted and shiz, stay tuned for Plot, Story and Characters: lol i'm mute

Hey

So hey again, wuz gunna post this yesterday but i didnt because i can lawl.

We have an artist for the game now, and we've found our IT consultant... the final stages of concept have just about finished and production will begin ASAP.

Part 3 of my Half-Life rant series will appear on Friday and the GTA IV Rant series part trois, will arrive next week... just in time for whatever... 

I'm thinking of posting some sort of article to do with a tribute to Mark Speight, the SMart presenter, who died last year after commiting suicide - hanging himself by his shoelaces. That'll happen next month... maybe.

Another thing I have on my mind is the 'Journey to the centre of video game movie adaptations' series, I'm considering another part... give feedback down below or whatever. 

Cheers.

Hey good lookin' : What's So Good About Half-Life?

Ah, good morning my precious darlings. It's currently 6:22 in the morning and it's -2 degrees outside, I'm tired and quite hungry, but I'll try my best to write this thing. Don't blame me if I keep writing the same sentence over and over again. Don't blame me if I keep writing the same sentence over and over again.

The half-life franchise has always been praised for it's 'next-gen' age ushering graphics, when the first half life came out, they thought it looked like Crysis at the time, when Half-Life 2 came out, they thought it was Crysis 2 at the time. But what's so good about the engines now? Surely they must be on their last legs, the answer? Well, short answer - yes, long answer... no... let me explain.

Now, there's a unpretty game. Just looking at the washed out textures, monster look and general blood - don't look too great. But at the time when Halo was just on the concept board (and not in Microsoft's console, cough) this was probably as pretty as it wuz gonna get. The gun textures ain't actually half-badly done and aside from the horrible textures, you can still actually see it.

Then 2 weeks later, the first Halo screenshot came out and everyone went crazy. Half life was actually considered a 'pointer' into the next-gen cloud, well we all know what happened? I can't remember the godamn engine so don't even start about that. Don't even start about that. I played this game to death , and to be honest, the looks never got in the way of gameplay... even if it was reptitive as miliking a blue cow on wednesday for 15 years straight.

The first thing I saw of Half-Life 2 was actually the 'Water Hazard' gameplay level, and good god was I stunned. I think it was the first graphically stunning game and I doubt that anything else looked as good at the time, when the Xbox 360 was on the concept board and Halo 2 was just out, I think everyone went crazy for the looks of HalfLife 2, and it was definetly a basis of graphics for games even 4 years on.

But, oh yeah a big old but, the crucial thing to know was that H-l2 wasn't marketed as 'the next generation of hi-tech graphics' or 'the greatest graphics since Halo', it was marketed as Half-Life2 , and never once did they talk about the graphics... but the journalists did. They had a riot over this thing, and with Steam... steaming up nicely, it only upped the hype moar.

The problem with good looking games, is that you can't market them for graphics anymore - 'cos now we've all got a steel grey, poopy brown textured game that looks like life timesed ten thousand depression. This has nothing to do with Half-life 2, but I just thought to mension... that probably the first ever good looking game... wasn't marketed as a good looking game.

As the age of the Xbox 360 was nearing in and Crysis was on the drawing board, Valve knew they had to make their next chapter of the H-L2 saga, as awesome as possible... and what did they do? They stuffed us in generic hallways, did a horrible remake of the dawn of the dead and decided to do it all... in the VERY same enginge... with only a few lighting changes.

Now when I actually played this, I felt a bit shortchanged, maybe even moreso. I was stuck in generic hallways and well, it was the same old same old. Maybe Valve just wanted to get it out there, mayb they started development too early. I don't know, but at a time when the next generation was just coming in, they could've atleast made an effort to change the engine slightly more or made it a better and more rounder experince than the last.

Then along came Episode 2, with destructible enviroments, better water physics and textures to make optitions cry. It was a definate improvement... for once... but god darn it could've been better. Once again, we got a re-used engine and once again, most of the textures were copy and pasted. I'm starting to think that the Source engine is on it's last leg... or torso...

To be honest, whatever the next episode has in store, better be a huge improvement... we've never seen snow or ice in the Source engine before, so it could be a break from the usual corridors, metal rooms and caves. Hopefully it'll be a better alround experince too, but Episode 2.. is well... treated as 'the middle child', since the plot revolves around nothing and the characters say nothing and graphics mean nothing.

Next week: Gameplay : We're No Strangers To Love/Gunplay