Category: Entertainment

The demo for the PC title Joint Operations: Typhoon Rising is now available, and I almost want to recommend downloading it so you can see why you might not want to buy when it arrives in May.

The game looks okay once you start it up, though the textures are extremely bland. The draw distance is pretty far, though the environment is extremely plastic looking. In game models, especially vehicles, look poor, especially compared to a free user community mod like Desert Combat. The Humvees look more like armored Honda Civics, for example.

There’s almost no physics in this game. All four wheels of the Humvees stay firmly planted on the ground no matter how bumpy the road, and there’s no collision damage to speak of. In fact, I’ve not only rammed helicopters straight into mountains without a scratch, I managed to load a Humvee into the back of a Chinook transport helicopter, fly over to the enemy base at the maximum altitude of 500 feet, leave the pilot seat, jump into the Humvee, drive it out the back and fall four hundred feet, bounce once and drive away without a single scratch or dent on either me or the vehicle.

Overall, I can’t see any real reason, other than the claims of lag free 100 player servers, to buy this game over, say, a three year old copy of Operation Flashpoint, let alone something like Battlefield 1942 with the Desert Combat mod installed.

The official Batman Begins website has finally put up two photos of the movie’s Batmobile, which in this story is a Wayne Industries military vehicle that never finished development and finds it’s way into Bruce Wayne’s hands.

Batman Begins is certainly looking to be a very different take on the Batman legend.

There’s a new trailer at some movie theaters out there, and here’s a poorly lit video of that trailer here. (14MB, Quicktime .mov)

Due to nearly constant exposure to Battlefield Vietnam over the last week, I went ahead and purchased a copy of Full Metal Jacket yesterday.

It’s interesting how often director Stanley Kubrick uses eyes to heavily convey plot in his movies, from the wild eyes of Jack Nicholson in The Shining, to HAL’s unblinking, red, murderous eye in 2001. Early in the Vietnam scenes, mention is made of “the thousand mile stare” that soldiers who’ve seen hell on earth obtain, and it’s interesting watching the exact moment where Joker’s face goes from fear and confusion while he tries to muster up the courage to shoot the sniper straight into that very stare afterward.

It’s also interesting to note that in nearly every case in which someone from the squad gets killed, it’s related to a mistake on their part, rather than simply luck of the draw. From the Lieutenant who doesn’t pay attention to the dangers ahead, to the soldier who picks up the booby-trapped stuffed rabbit, to Eight Ball’s mistake in navigation.

It’s a very powerful, disturbing movie, intentionally ugly as befitting its subject.

Yesterday was an entire twelve hours of Battlefield Vietnam gaming LAN party goodness. Between six and ten people, depending on the time of day, computers all connected together, blowing the virtual hell out of each other and any helpless bot players that got in our way. I even managed to stay in the top three scores for most of the maps, which was fun.

Like most other situations in which you have other players in the same room, rather than facing off from across the country, we had some memorable moments, including a rather intense session of close quarters combat in which another player and I each scored over ninety kills each as enemy troops tried to break out of their spawn point across a bridge and take over our own bit of land on the other side of the river. Another such moment took place when the sixty bot players fought feverishly over a flag on the other side of the map, while the three people in the room who were on the opposing side decided they wanted the little hillside lean-to I had claimed as my own. They killed me numerous times, but never managed to take my little flag pit, even with three-point assaults taking place. I even managed a few knife kills on Bill while he desperately tried to scramble into an APC I had parked nearby.

Overall, it was a great experience that made those twelve hours disappear quicker than I expected.

For those looking into purchasing Battlefield Vietnam for the PC, you should be able to find it for $29.99 this week at your local Best Buy.