barely fatal

Whenever I come by a church these days, my mind goes “Hmm, where is the wooden beam and how do I get up there?”

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GTA IV, it’s out, and I can’t play it *sniff*. Anyways PC FTW – I can wait a few months! Gah!

Family Guy: Blue Harvest – Awesome (well, of course, it’s classic Star Wars.)
Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer – exactly what I expected, unfortunately. Bleh, boring.

What’s with all the super hero movies anyway? I mean yeah, the USA are the comic nation, alright. But do you really have to turn every sad pseudo-hero into a multi-million-dollar movie? Iron Man – never heard of him. Until now. Green Lantern – quoi? What kind of illumination device, and why green?

Don’t get me wrong, I totally dig the X-Men movies. Hell, they have Patrick-friggin-Stewart. And Hellboy wasn’t that bad. But does the world really need a Wolverine movie? The new Superman? Please, the old one was ridiculous enough. Batman, fresh start, fresh ideas, that worked. But Hulk? Transformers? Maybe you gotta be an American kid to understand the hype…

“Okay guys, Assassin’s Creed is going to have 12 levels … err assassinations, three in each city and three in the kingdom, the sizeable country side which connects the cities. We’re going to start working on the cities, those are the most exciting and difficult parts.”

Three years later …

“Well, we have the cities, all story elements are in. We have the combat system finished, we have the physics, stunning graphics, and great sound. Alright, the missions turn out to be somewhat repetitive, we have to think of a few new investigation methods. The kingdom part is fleshed out, we have beautiful lakes, mountains, villages and a lot of AI. But we have only two months left and so far we don’t have any of the three planned missions in the kingdom yet.”

“Ok, we can either polish the game, or we can add more mechanics like the investigation types you mentioned, or we can build a few half-baked assassination scenarios in the kingdom, but we won’t be able to script and test them properly before the release.”

“Nah, we still have too many defects, we have to polish the controls and play test the game! We can still add new investigation types in the PC version later, that will silence the nerds. And we can’t put in poorly-scripted story missions to a game that is already somewhat repetitive, even when it’s great fun to play. We already have nine missions, that’s good enough! Granted, the kingdom will seem dull and empty, but there’s still all the scenery! Add a few templars and flags to pick up and lets focus on a stable release!”

…

This is what I believe that happened at Ubisoft when they developed Assassin’s Creed. Of course that’s all speculation from my side, but that’s what it feels like – and from my experience, software development oftentimes goes exactly like that. They made the right decision, hard as it might have been.

Now, they must have overlooked the “how to quit the game” issue… Did you know that to quit the game you have to:

• Exit the Animus (the “meta game” in the game)
  >> A level is loaded, and a slowish animation is played while your character exits the machine
• Exit the game
  >> The menu is loaded which brings to the profile selection screen
• Select your profile
  >> You are taken to the main menu
• Exit the game once more …
  >> … and you’re finally back on Windows

The only other option? ALT+F4, but who wants to risk his save game.

I still need my wrists and hands to rest, so no gaming this weekend. Instead, I watched a … an alternative German comedy and Beowulf. Now, Beowulf really is a movie I should have seen in a cinema, the look is fantastic. Also the dialogue and “acting”, especially in the first half of the film, are great. It doesn’t sound so artificial as for example the Lord Of The Ring movies, but much more real and believable. The story is a classic, of course. Angelina Jolie is shown almost completely naked (with the usual American exceptions) – that surely didn’t hurt the movie at the box office. I really like Robert Zemeckis as a director, I mean, Back To The Future and stuff. This movie has a background, texture, and a love for detail, plus the totally unique half-rendered, half-real look – if you haven’t seen it, check it out.

I would be building tracks for TrackMania Nations Forever right now if it wasn’t for my stupid hands – I’m going to need them next week. However, I can tell you that Forever is now out, free for all, and still a great arcade racer. I prefer creating tracks over racing, I can hardly beat my own tracks, but it’s sure a lot of fun.

In other news, Assassin’s Creed also still waits to be played, the first level was great so far. Now’s also the time of year in which I should decide where I want to spend my holidays (in late summer) – any ideas?