It's the peak of summer and to celebrate the awesome weather here, here's my personal playlist of soaring, wailing shred-happy
guitar-work that is fantastic to listen to on a bright sunny day. All these guitarists deserve mention :
Vinnie Moore,
Andy Timmons,
Tony Macalpine,
Reb Beach,
Joe Satriani,
Edu Ardanuy.
All world-class shredders. Mostly unknown except by guitar nerds. Get yourself a Corona with a lime, a pair of sunglasses, and crank this stuff up!
Now that hell's frozen over officially and Duke Nukem Forever has come out, it's not difficult to see where
Duke draws his influence from. That being previous 3D Realms games such as Duke Nukem 3D, Redneck Rampage, and
Shadow Warrior.
Duke had his fair share of interactivity, but Shadow Warrior ninja-kicked this up a notch and threw a few
shurikans into to to nail it to the wall. Cool challenging puzzles that DNF borrowed directly like a closed-off
room where you can use a remote-control car to bring the key to one small opening just to name one specific example.
The list goes on and on... These games are all about these little experiences they give to you, not about "beating the boss
and saving the day" like the typical borderline-gay one-dimensional emo superhero.
Also, Shadow Warrior, like Duke and Redneck Rampage, has another quality that's sorely lacking in most modern FPS's;
That being a sense of humor. Like DNF and Duke Nukem 3D that came before it, Shadow Warrior doesn't even attempt to
take itself seriously. Unlike most modern shooters where you've been tasked to "save the world" and it all rests squarely
on your shoulders, these Build Engine games turn that on it's ear and proceed to unload a can of whipped cream in it, then
laugh mockingly and run away. If you're saving anything, you're either doing it for selfish reasons, like Duke's car
getting shot up, or in this case, an 80's movie plot with an ex-bodyguard going after his previous corrupt boss.
Standard fare, not-so-standard-fare fun.
As if this extremely polished FPS wouldn't be good in it's own right, the whimsical
little jokes and references just add to the fun factor. Something that can't be said of ultra-serious, ultra-expensive,
ultra-graphically-intensive, and ultimately ultra-boring games like Cysis. Throwing 50 spoilers, body-kits, and custom whistling exhaust
on a Lamborghini does not make it more fun to drive. All the physics in the world can't make up for infusing a game
with some good ol'-fashioned fun. Which is the point of games, isn't it?
Now, most people think computer chess and their ass arriving on a silver platter for dinner comes to mind. And that's just
Joe-Average Chess Engines. But, these chess engines are so badass that they make Gary Kasperov cry and then kick his puppy to drive it home!
I will tell you this though. play against these, and every other Chess game will seem like a frolicking hopskotch through a field of daisies
on a bright summer day. The upside of this is that playing these will make your Chess game go up in a hurry. And, while it's fun
to kick your friend's and family's collective butts in Chess, you'll be challenged to find a more skilled opponent to
push your brain against. To that end, there's these free interfaces which use these Hal-9000 engines; Notably WinBoard and Arena.
Arena is far easier to set up but has slightly less overall control. Winboard gives you totalitarian control, but at the expense of complexity.
To help you out a bit, I've already spent a few weeks getting all these things packaged up nicely for you, so, for the most-part,
you can just download them and have happy good times getting run over by these ridiculously high-powered engines like a M1 Abrams Tank going over a worm. That said,
let me make a few notes so you don't get too stuck :
- These engines work off of what are called Chess Fonts. Basically they're standard True-Type fonts that Windows uses
but, in this case, the GUI interfaces for the chess engines use them to display all the pieces. To install these Fonts,
you just unzip the .TTF file and copy them into the Windows\Fonts directory. Windows will say "Installing Font" for all of 2 seconds
and it'll be done. Yeah, it's really that easy.
- WinBoard has a weird way of dealing with multiple user accounts on Windows and it basically forces you to deal with it.
It's not nonsensical, but just overblown a bit. Like you and your roommates really want drastically different chess interfaces.
But, anyways, in the Winboard download below there is an "Application Data" folder with a few files. You need to find your
Application Data directory (In XP under your "Documents and Settings\[User Name]" directory. In Vista under Users\[User Name]\Appdata\Roaming)
and dump these files in there to get the look above by default. Some more info here.
Unless it's the band Suicidal Tendencies. Let's be frank... Being whiny, emo, apathetic, butthurt, downtrodden, and crying in buckets is not going
to solve a damn thing. So you've got to give a band like Suicidal credit when they capture that crowd and dump a proverbial
bucket of cold water over their heads lyrically and manage to add some awesome thrashy riffs, solos, and funny campy videos on top of that.
At least, sometimes they do. The rest of the time they get pretty whiny. So, here's the best songs I've found by them, sans nancy-boyishness. Enjoy!
After the success of Wolfenstein 3D, id briefly considered doing a direct sequel in the form of Wolfenstein 2.
Being that their previous creative Director Tom Hall
was now at 3D Realms/Apogee, Tom took it upon himself to have id outsource the work to them.
Then mid-drift, id pulled the plug on the project to concentrate on
the release of Doom, and the project metamorphised into something unrecognizable. You can see the influence
of Wolfenstein 3D, with Nazi-esque guards and whatnot. But then, there's all the whacky randomness. Things
that just make absolutely no sense, like Gravitational Anomaly Disks, God Mode where the guy mumbles as he
kills people with full-on deity handpower, Dog mode, and a Shrooms powerdown. I am not joking. And of course, you need to add some
robed koolaid drinking cult to kill (the Koolaid didn't work).
And, the boss fights are pretty memorable too. Most especially the NME aka "Nasty Metallic
Enforcer" who looks like a dirty trashcan with wheels, but makes a sound that will be tatooed on your brain forever
after, like a robotic gyro turning quickly. Right before it proceeds to hand your ass to you on a silver platter.
It's the most bizzare and insane fun you'll probably ever have playing a first person shooter.
