Monday, November 22, 2004

Curse you Holidays!!!
I got a chance to do a few things this weekend, but here are some of the highlights.

The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra: I rented this movie from netflix after one of my Chemistry pals rented it. Its a 'spoof' of the old B-movie science fiction films, like stuff they used to show on Mystery science theatre 3000. Basically they made the movie to be exactly like one of those films, and did it pretty well down to the wooden acting. Different groups of people are searching for a meteor which contains atmospherium, and one evil scientist wants to use it to revive the lost skeleton of cadavra. The skeleton is the best part of the movie, though he comes in pretty late in the film. He has a great booming voice and tells people to shutup fairly often. Some of my favorite parts were the couple where the husband was a scientist, because they have some really great quotes. "This could mean actual advances in the field of science." It might be extra funny for me since I am a scientist though. I'd give it overall a 7/10, and recommend it to anyone here to at least check out.

I also started playing Metal Gear Solid 3 this weekend. Its REALLY good. The whole gameplay experience is very realistic. If you've played any of the other MGS games, you can pretty much make it through them by staying out of their line of sight "cones" that you can see on their radar screens. It was fun, but basically amounted to a puzzle where you could walk right by soldiers without them seeing you if you stood in the right place.

This game is much more realistic. The enemies can see you from good distances, and you don't have the radar screen map at the top anymore. Also you need to 'sneak' around more, which amounts to walking or crawling fairly slowly. To balance this out the game focuses on camoflague (spelled right?) which you can change based on where you are hiding. You can wait from a distance and watch guards follow their routes, then sneak to an appropriate hididng spot where you can pop out of the bush and grab them in a spot where no other guards are. You need a lot of patience, but I think that it makes the game seem really realistic that way. It has taken me a few tries to get past sets of guards for every area I've been in so far. One good trick is that you can grab and interrogate guards, and they give up info as to where weapons are hidden and one gave me the enemy positions on my map.

You also have to catch your own food, and can eat almost anything from snakes to birds to alligators. If you tranquilize them they don't spoil either which is nice. I ate a peice of rotten meat, and it made me sick so I went into the camo-viewer (you see a 3d model of Snake) and spun him around on the screen. When I went back into the game I threw up the rotten meat. There is just soooo much to this game its great. It is pretty hard though, especially getting away from the guards after they've spotted you.

I think this is the best game of the year so far that I have played. It really is a gaming experience rather than a simple videogame. If you are starving or injured to the point you can't move you can save and turn the game off, and the longer you rest the more you will recover. It just blows away most games which don't do anything that innovative.
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