Offbeat Geek

My ears are still ringing from last night’s ‘rockin’ concert at the Marquee Theater in Tempe, Arizona. Overall a fantastic show with great performances from most of the bands. Below, in order of appearance on stage, are my thoughts on each of last night’s acts.

The Asylum

First on stage were the local, full on, metal five piece known as: The Asylum (Myspace).  These guys were most definitely the hardest band present.   On paper they looked like a very odd choice for an opening act especially taking into account the other openers.  They did not let that interfere with getting the crowd motivated.  A giant mosh pit opened up center stage within minutes of their arrival.

The only thing that seemed to hurt them was the loss of a lot of the intricate guitar work present in the recordings.  I couldn’t tell if the audio settings were quite set up right or just lost in the overall barrage of metal slamming into my chest at the time.  Closing with a re-imagining of “Eye Of The Tiger”,  which you can hear on their myspace profile, was just wicked.  The perfect song to finish up on. (continue reading…)

Part one of Assassins creed Lineage has been released on youtube. Check it out now!

This is a preview of “The Making of a Hardcore Old-school Low Poly Map”. The video will show a custom Unreal Tournament 3 map being created from scratch at speed.  The final release will also contain highlights of what I am doing as I progress through the map. The music is courtesy of Yppah. Thank you Joe!

After this video is released there will also be a set of real-time videos with commentary showing exactly how the map was made for aspiring level designers.

Young, Rush and Wallace figure out what is going on

Spoiler Warning
This is a recap of SG·U Episode 5. Plot details revealed

This episode begins with Greer having his “kino snippet”.  He seems pretty calm considering the Destiny is about to fly directly into a star.   After the title screen Colonel Young addresses the crew.  There is no power.  The Destiny is flying directly into a star.  The crew “are having another bad day”.  Following the status report he announces that there will be a lottery for fifteen spots on the working shuttle.  In addition he will choose two more people who will pilot and have the necessary survival skills. He also announces that he will not be part of the lotery. The crew are understandably frustrated.  A montage shows us Sgt Becker downing some pills.  Matthew and Cloe hit the bedroom and the second sex scene in Universe.

Camile visits Col. Young and tries to weasel her way onto the shuttle.  Young, having none of it, threatens to remove her name from the lottery. She promptly retreats. Meanwhile, in his quarters, Eli has a flashback of his mother giving him grief about not attending  a job interview.  Meanwhile Cloe and Matthew were discussing who was going on the shuttle.  As per usual Cloe was being her pessimistic hopeless self. Yawn.

Eli continues his promotion of the “message-in-a-bottle” kino.  He is still trying to get everyone to talk into the kino to preserve a record of their presence. Cloe volunteers for  her “kino snippet”.  Elsewhere on the ship Young  approaches Rush to find out which of the three planets the lottery winners are bound for.  One of the three is on the other side of the star but being between the two planets which are too hot and too cold placed it in the “Goldilocks Zone“.  The Shuttle will be flying blind to the planet. (continue reading…)

Oh what will it be?

For a brief while the epic games site changed and  the tag line: “It’s Unreal. And it’s almost here” appeared along with an image. Whether this will be an Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Unreal Engine, Make Something Unreal Compilation or something new entirely remains to be seen. With none of the usual sites reporting it It may very well be nothing. I’m getting needlessly excited anyway! More Unreal is never a bad thing.

As I find out more I’ll be sure to update.

Edit: It seems kotaku is now reporting the story.  So there may be some weight to this after all.

Edit 2: It seems the unreal.com website is now empty with a white flash box and sporting “Unreal Universe” on the title. Maybe a site to watch in the future?

Update Friday 23rd Oct: So Joystiq (article) are reporting that the Unreal Engine 3 is going to be released to consumers.  Essentially this will be something like Unreal Runtimes before it.  Allowing aspiring developers to showcase their work with  current “next-gen” power.   Exciting times are ahead!

Meet the crew

A prerendered trailer for the upcoming left 4 dead 2 has been leaked. You can check it out below. It’s quite fun, check it out!

Live Action Assassins

The preview trailer for the live action trilogy of short movies, Assassins Creed Lineage, was released today! Set as a prequel for Assassin’s Creed 2, Lineage will be airing on youtube October 27th. Check out the video!

Hybride who have worked on”Sin City”, “Snakes On A Plane” and “300″, secured the visual effects work from Ubisoft. If the trailer is anything to go by these shorts could be quite fun. I can’t help but wonder though if  the Microsoft and Bungie excursions into live action advertisements for Halo prompted Ubisoft to do the same?  More entertainment for the consumers I suppose.

Modern Warfare 2 changes PC multiplayer for better or for worse.

There has been quite a bit of ruckus in the Call Of Duty PC community over the weekend. Rob Bowling, Infinity Ward’s Community Manager, confirmed that their would be no dedicated server while talking during the bashandslash.com podcast over the weekend.  Infinity Ward aim to bring the PC community (most likely kicking and screaming) to the match making systems that exist on consoles.  This has a huge deviation from the norm.  You can listen to the podcast over at bash and slash to get all the details.  Notable topics discussed include the future of mod support and iw-net creation and growth.  While it is a surprise, time will tell how this move will affect our PC multiplayer experience.

Amongst a slew of “Borderlands” gameplay videos no doubt aimed at garnering attention for tomorrows console release, Gearbox have included the opening vinematic for the game. Embedded video can be found below but as it is so newly uploaded the HD version may not work depending on when you read this. The song used is “no Rest for the wicked” by Cage the Elephant.

Thirsty for more? Head on over to gametrailers.com for a peek at the rest of the borderlands footage released today.

Pesky Ghost!

After a fair amount of nothing the fourth battle report for Starcraft 2 is available to watch.  It is the best battle to date.  Great Medivac harassment.  Both nukes and Thors finally appear in a battle.  Definitely a Terran vs Protos game to watch! check it out below!