The Quixotic Engineer

Rainy Woods has been described as “Silent Hill meets Twin Peaks”, but it reminds me of the film Se7en more than anything. Either way it looks fantastic, I’ll be looking forward to this next year.

On a slight tangent, not only does the Orange Box come out this week, but it seems that Puzzle Quest is set to arrive on XBLA on Wednesday as well. With today being a holiday, this is shaping up to be one fantastic week. Happy turkey day, fellow Canucks!

All the hype and anti-hype about Halo 3 left a sour taste in my mouth and made me question whether or not I should bother writing anything about the game. While it certainly doesn’t deserve the release madness it has created, the fact is that Halo 3 is a very solid FPS with extremely refined balance and great production value. Taken objectively without the fanboy hype, the game is just good fun.

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Considering the name of the site, it seemed oddly appropriate to post this video. Everything you see is true to life: we engineers frequently sit and play guitar in the middle of battlefields, and we most definitely wear orange helmets at all times. If you haven’t been following the amusing character profiles, you should also check out Meet the Heavy and Meet the Soldier. The cartoon-like visual style is really striking; I’m really hoping that the light-hearted approach translates into the actual game.

These videos are promos for Valve’s Orange Box video game compilation, set to be released on October 10th. The set is a bargain, including Half-Life 2, Episodes 1 and 2, Team Fortress 2 and Portal for the price of one regular game. Furthermore, if you pre-order the game off Steam then you’ll not only get into the TF2 beta, but also get Orange Box themed Peggle Extreme (pictured above)!

Update: Rock, Paper Shotgun has been doing a really great 9 part series detailing each class in TF2. If you’re beta-less like me, this might help tide you over.

I’ve never been a big fan of puzzle games. Even the really classic ones, (Tetris, Bust-A-Move, etc.) only manage to entertain me for a short time before I’m compelled to move on. While I can certainly appreciate the sheer genius of deriving complex strategy from simple rules, the truth is that these games quickly become mind-numbingly difficult. It’s been my experience that there comes a point in the learning curve of every puzzle game, usually right after you’ve wrapped your head around the game’s mechanics, where it takes immense dedication and practice to make any kind of headway. Clearly some players thrive under these conditions; I am not one of them.

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In my anticipation for the game, I had made myself a little plan for Bioshock. I was going to harvest the little buggers the first time around and go buckwild with ADAM. I would then know which plasmids were worth picking up to use the second time around, when I would rescue them all. It was a good idea, in theory…

…but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Rapture is a city filled with people who have compromised their morality in order to survive. If I did the same, would I be any better than they are? I decided that being kind of guy who clings to his values under pressure better fit the narrative I was building up in my head. I’ve saved five of them so far, and exploring the alternate reward scheme is turning out to be quite interesting.

Is it silly to personalize a video game in this manner? Yeah, it is. It’s also, in my mind, the mark of a great work of fiction.