Tag: East

Where there’s a Wil, there’s a way.

Gaming

My hatred of PAX stems from two important facts.

  1. It happens on the other side of the damn country so I can’t go.
  2. It happens the same weekend as Dragon*Con and I love going to Dragon*Con too much to skip it.

The new PAX East solves problem number two, and actually lessens problem number one.  It’s still far away, but going is more possible.  But not this year… you know, since it happened last weekend.  Wil Wheaton gave the keynote speech, and not only is he a pretty good speaker he’s also a real gamer.  If you have an hour, watch it… if you don’t have an hour to just sit and watch, let it play and listen to it while you do other stuff.

Vanguard

Gaming

No, this is not Brad McQuaid’s failure of epic proportions Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, GameTap doesn’t have that.  Instead, they have the 1981 side scroller Vanguard.  Perhaps Mr. McQuaid’s game would have done better had he not lifted his title from a previous game.

Vanguard - Not a Saga of HeroesVanguard is… fairly awful.  Its typical, side scrolling and shooting while avoiding stuff.  The game has one minor twist in that its not all side scrolling.  It is also diagonal scrolling and top scrolling.  As you progress through the level, sometime it changes direction.  And then at the end of each level, it stops scrolling so you can fight the boss.  The controls are as you would expect, using a dual stick game pad the left stick is movement and the right stick is shooting.  Oh, because you can shoot in 4 directions.  If you do decide to play the game, I give this advice: Ignore the North, South, East, West options for firing, instead use North-East, North-West, South-East and South-West.  Hitting these will fire two directions at once (North-East will first North AND East).  Seeing as your goal is to kill everything, there is never a reason for you to not be firing in two directions at once.

All in all, the game is a bore, and I found myself thinking that I’d rather be playing Defender.  However, I did find the game to be more fun when instead of being some valiant soldier fighting for survival I imagined myself as the invading force.  This was made easier through the sections where you are blowing up alien houses, people and their pets, none of which fire back at you.  To paraphrase a film that does not deserve the indignity of being associated with this game or its review: Anyone that runs is an alien hostile! Anyone that stands still is a well trained alien hostile!

… and… I’m out.

Moving On Up

Pictures

This cube is actually to the East side of my old cube.Yesterday, not only did I get a new house, but I also got a new home at work. If you dig back through the Phone Photos you will find a dismal picture of my cramped old little cube, the one with a server on the desk. So now I have a new phone photo of my new cubicle. Just one cube over from my last home, but this one is much nicer. Its probably actually the same size, but with 3 less filing cabinets, no server and a better desk orientation, it is all around a much improved use of space. The only things it lacks is a window view of downtown Atlanta and a door.

So things of looking better from this side of Sunday (I’ll tell you what happened on Sunday later)… I’m moving on up! To the East side! (This cube is actually on the East side of my old cube.) To a deluxe apartment in the sky! (No! No more apartments!)

And with the job calls coming practically non-stop, I think I’m finally getting my piece of the pie.