Speak for Yourself!

I am virus free, and ethanol enabled, so blogging for everyone.

Hmm....It is Friday night, shouldn't I be doing something? Oh yah right, I am getting bent on Glenmorangie since today was a giant slog at work.

Three interviews, a brutal 1.5 hour meeting in which almost nothing got accomplished (it was agreed that I will create a flow-chart to visualize what wasn’t accomplished...sigh), one employee review (at least it was a good one), my VP gets directly involved in a series of screw-ups by my employees and...and topped off by a 7 AM meeting which is a complete waste of time and an embarrassment to the guy who runs it. Let me give you a hint moron! Holding a meeting at 7AM on a Friday is a sure way to draw less than 25% of the people who should come. The one bonus is my employees get to gorge on all the left-over catering.

Ok enough personal stuff, time for blogging!

Grand Theft Auto San Andreas is one of the best video games I have played…ever. It could top out at #1 depending on the ending. The cut scenes are awesomely acted (Samuel Jackson and Chris Penn are dirty cops) and mostly excellent. The story arc is also very very good. Sure the physics of everything is arcade-like but that just makes it more fun. This is the game that took my PS2 out of DVD player only into game platform again.

I used to love video games but recently I have been very jaded. I have played tons of different video games but lately mostly multiplayer, since AI usually bothers me something fierce. I have played the massively-multiplayer online role-playing (MMO) games, and the many of the FPS realistic war games.

The problem I have is that I want the best of both worlds. I want a game that has an end-point, but I get to play it against other people, not AI. This of course is a very hard formula. Who will continue to play the opposite when he knows he will loose. Since there is no real penalty, the opponent would rather loose fast and start again than play hard to the end. This of course is impossible given the current restrictions in programming.

What makes GTASA so great is that it is so much fun to play. There are a ton of exploits that you get to know and love by the end. They just add to the fun. You just accept that it is a game and is fun to play a certain way. They want you to find the “cheats” and enjoy the game. Many video games try to rid their games of cheats and exploits, GTASA lets you find them quite easy if you think about the situation. It’s a perfect theme to include in a game where crime and mayhem are the fun of the game.