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.

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.

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

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…).

I just bought a Zenithink ePAD tablet. It’s a generic iPad tablet made in China that runs Android as the OS. Please, consider from now on that it costs less than half of the price of the original.

I must say that despite the whole “generic” label, its quite a nice piece of machine. It has a 10 inches screen with resistive touch sensor, which is great to navigate through internet and reader ebooks and pdf. The processor and memory don’t rival Apple but i don’t feel it is big lack, except, of course, games.

The Android used is the 2.1, which is good one. With Google Market fully enabled, its possible to transform it into a quite comprehensive computer. Zenithink US, the american distributor are releasing often versions of its firmware, so its possible that 2.2 “Froyo"or even 2.3 “Gingerbread”.

The only two things that I was disappointed (which I should not be because I knew about them before buying) are the short battery life (4 hours if WiFi is off) and the ridiculous short range of its internal WiFi. If the tablet is not less than 2 meters, it simply not work! It’s better to connect the net cable at this distance! There are several minor things here and there, but hey, as I said at the very beginning: it cost me less than half of the iPad price*. I really believe that tablets are going to be the next world desired toy. Apple is in grand advantage, but this time their advantage for being the first in the market is not to last long. Chinese companies are going to flood the market with generic inexpensive hardware until they acquire experience, scale and courage to face these big guys. This is what takes in trying to create simple and copyable products with a premium status. Apple woke the dragon.

Masterpiece. The crazy style of China Miéville is notorious. He specialized in a science fiction sub-genre called weird fiction, which mixes the real world with some out-of-the-place elements that are common to the characters, somewhat like Lovecraft. Almost all his books are great. But The City and The City is really great.

The story is a noir murder investigation. The main character is the detective Tyador Borlú and the story is first-person point of view. Borlú is a great character, clever but not a Sherlock, and a little sarcastic about his job.

One curious thing is that I “read” the audiobook. In the beginning, I was completely lost because the name of the characters and places: Besźel, Ul Qoma, Tyador Borlú are just unusual.. II had to check the names on the internet to see how they are written. After some time, they become familiar.

{SPOILER ALERT begin}

Its basic concept is fascinating: two cities that occupy the same physical space, at the same time. People that live in one have to “ignore” the existence of the other. “Trespass” is a crime worse than murder. Crazy crazy concept. That is just one element that sticks you to the book.

{SPOILER ALERT end}

As of September 2010, the novel only won the Hugo Award for Best Novel, tied with Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl, the BSFA Award for Best Novel of 2009, as well as the 2010 Arthur C. Clarke Award and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.