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Bulletstorm feature
2011.03.09

Bulletstorm

With the promise to bring back the fun to a popular genre – First Person Shooter -, the Epic’s Bulletstorm is a mess.

One of the main problems is the core idea: stimulate the user to perform vary the play style by using different weapons. The player now is psychologically forced to vary. And because this concept is presented and used in the main campaign, several times the player will stop to pay attention on the story – which will comment later – in order to

Several of the “skillshots” are too dependent on luck, like killing several enemies at the same time in a specific condition. It brings a lot of frustration. It’s an immense TODO list to be executed.

The other pillar of the game, extensively advertised, is the bad language. Fun at the start, it becomes an annoyance by the end of the game because the player feels it is forced and unnatural.

Bulletstorm content 2118.jpg

The story, I must say, is terrible. ALL the characters try to look bad but be good ALL the time. The players’ character best friend, the cyborg Ishi, through the WHOLE game goes back and forth saying “Ow… the pain is huge. The computer is trying to dominate my mind”… we simply not buy it. I would say that the 4 characters of the game are among the worst I ever seen.

The visuals are amazing. Even with a modest pc you will still get a fantastic looking game. The loading time are impressively quick and there were only few times when the framerate dropped. Unreal Engine showcase.

The curious part is that the gameplay is actually good. If the player were not “forced” to worry with the long TODO list, it would be much better. I didnt play the multiplayer yet, but if it follows the chaotic formula of the single player campaign combat, I think people will like at first but the annoyed soon.

Bulletstorm content 2119.jpg

My Rating: 6★★★★★★
Metacritic: 82
2011.01.10

2010 Art Review

2010 was a great year. This was a not typical year for books. The list is quite short. This list is what I could remember.

Games

  1. Most, but not all, I finished
  2. 3 Cards To Dead Time
  3. Agatha Christie: And Then There Were None
  4. Agatha Christie: Murder On The Orient Express
  5. Amnesia
  6. Assassin’s Creed 2
  7. Borderlands
  8. Cities XL
  9. Civilization V
  10. Darwinia
  11. Dawn Of Discovery
  12. Democracy 2
  13. Donkey Kong Country Returns
  14. Dragon Age: Origin
  15. Epic Mickey
  16. Europa Universalis III: Heir To The Throne
  17. F1 2010
  18. Fallout: New Vegas
  19. Fifa 11
  20. Gratuitous Space Battles
  21. Harvey Teh Attorney
  22. Kirby: Epic Yarn
  23. Little King Story
  24. Mafia 2
  25. Mass Effect 2
  26. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
  27. New Super Mario Bros
  28. No More Heroes 2
  29. Rock Band Beatles
  30. RUSE
  31. Settlers 6
  32. Settlers 7
  33. Shatter
  34. Super Matio Galaxy 2
  35. The Saboteur
  36. The Secret Files: Tunguska
  37. Thief
  38. X-Com: AI

Movies

  1. 2012
  2. Alice In Wonderland
  3. Alien 3
  4. Aliens
  5. Angels & Demons
  6. Avatar
  7. Bounty Hunter
  8. Brüno
  9. Clash Of The Titans
  10. Crazy Heart
  11. Escape From New York
  12. Fantastic Mr Fox
  13. Funny People
  14. Ghost Writer
  15. Gosford Park
  16. Green Zone
  17. Halloween
  18. Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Pt 1
  19. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
  20. Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince
  21. Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix
  22. Hot Tub Time Machine
  23. Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
  24. Inception
  25. Inglourious Basterds
  26. Kick Ass
  27. LA Confidential
  28. Law Abiding Citizen
  29. Murder On The Orient Express
  30. Near Dark
  31. Paprika
  32. Paranormal Activity
  33. Prince Of Persia
  34. Princess Mononoke
  35. Pulp Ficiton
  36. Robin Hood
  37. Shanshank Redemption
  38. Sherlock Holmes
  39. Shutter Island
  40. Taxi Driver
  41. Terminator Salvation
  42. The A Team
  43. The Blind Side
  44. The Fisher King
  45. The Silent Warrior
  46. The Sound Of Music
  47. Time Bandits
  48. Twilight
  49. Up
  50. Up In The Air
  51. Where The Wild Things Are
  52. Zombieland

TV Series

  1. Death Note
  2. Fullmetal Alchemist 1-10
  3. House S6
  4. Lost S6
  5. Naruto 1-20
  6. Mad Men S01 S02
  7. Breaking Bad S01

Books

  1. Some of them I used the audiobook
  2. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
  3. Butcher’s Hill – Laura Lippman
  4. Dramatica
  5. Screenplay – Syd Field
  6. The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho
  7. The Blue Ocean Strategy – W. Chan Kim And Renée Mauborgne
  8. The City And The City – China Mieville
  9. The Comic Toolbox: How To Be Funny Even If You’Re Not – John Vorhaus
  10. The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
  11. The Murder On The Links – Agatha Christie
  12. The Naked Face – Sidney Sheldon
  13. Y: The Last Man – DC Comics
2010.12.07

Automatic Translation

Brazilian guys, I’m sorry.

But keeping a two language site manually is simply not worthy.

I’m going to write only in English for now on since I write most about worldwide subjects.

Google will be responsible for translating everything for me 😉

There is a new button that will translate without any page reload, which is awesome.

Note: All Portuguese content were already deleted!

2010.12.05

Flash on Linux finally fast

English
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I don’t like much Adobe, but their commitment to Linux is above average. Flash for Linux never was great, but at least was close to their pairs on Windows.

The problem was with Flash videos, which is now the vast majority of its usage. The problem relies on pure CPU processing. The Linux version does not use the video card to decode the highly compressed videos used today. The result was a slow computer when seeing videos. The situation was really dire when you attempt to see more than one. The crash is almost certain.

But finally my days of browsing YouTube or porn sites only on Windows (which is a quite risky) are over! The new beta version of Flash (10.3) finally uses the GPU and is several times more stable. On KUbuntu, I added the repository ppa:sevenmachines/flash and installed the flashplugin64-nonfree package.

Hallelujah

2010.12.03

Unity 3D 3

The new version of the Unity 3D engine was just released and I’m super excited.

All the previous features continue there: great asset integration (several 3D, 2D, and sound file formats), programming scripts, and a great IDE. But now the visual performance is better, even with the new features enabled.

Pre-baked lightning is now included by default. It allows the creation of amazing scenes that most of the lights pre-rendered. It allows the video card to work on other stuff, like shaders. Speed is also better than the inclusion Ambient occlusion package. It analyses the scene/map previously and checked what parts of it will not appear depending on where the camera is and saves the information to be used in real-time. The performance gain is huge.

The animation manager is also a great plus. It seems very much like video editing, with curves and keyframes. It is now very nice to program animations, especially for designers.

UDK (Unreal Development kit) is also gaining a lot of attention from the media, but with a feature set somewhat similar (again, 99% of the game makers are not even capable of using the engine fully), it is quite an irresponsibility to accept the license that makes you give 25% of the profits to Epic (and after paying your distributor, marketing, etc…).

Bruno MASSA