Turok 2, gratos y sangrientos recuerdos me acaban de venir a la mente, fantastico y genial juego de Nintendo 64, un FPS de “personaje vs World”, donde la dificultad y el estres estaban elevados a la enesima potencia. Del año 1998, casi nada.

Informacion completa en la Wikipedia.

Unas notas positivas y muy a tener en cuenta dada la fecha de su lanzamiento:

· Poseía uno de los mejores apartados gráficos de la época siendo de los mejores títulos que aprovecharon la potencia gráfica de la Nintendo 64.

· Los enemigos podían ser matados eliminando partes de su cuerpo según la potencia del arma y del lugar donde impacte el arma.

·Un alto nivel gore. Los enemigos podían ser asesinados eliminando partes de su cuerpo (según la potencia e impacto del arma) con grandes cantidades de sangre conteniendo escenas muy gores para la época. Esto se hacía más especial en un catálogo como la Nintendo 64 que contenía pocos juegos violentos.

· Se podían recuperar las flechas que se lanzaban ( Es un pequeño detalle utilizado actualmente por varios títulos).

Unos videos in-game, seguramente que mas de uno recordara el ruido del segundo video…:

I’ve spent the night switching to and fro from the X-box, the PS2, the 360 and the PC, trying to find something I could play without getting incredibly annoyed at minor and irrelevant annoyances. There is a whole list of reasons why my impatience is not merely dissatisfaction, so I’m not going to bore everyone with tales of years gone by play-testing. I expect finished games to be of a higher quality than the ones which I helped discover glitches in.

Finished games, and ones I have actually shelled out money for, should be above the bell curve of quality. Sometimes a rush job is needed, but I will accept no excuses when after-sale care comes into play. Patches are an essential part of computing, and it will never go away as long as technology rushes onwards and upwards. But there are some games, still on sale, which are so disappointing as to make me want to throw them out of the window.

Armed And Dangerous is “thinner” than I remember it being, with glitchy clipping issues, at one point letting me get stuck as I passed a building. There was even a moment when the graphics failed to load correctly after a cut-scene, leaving me wondering why I had kept this title hanging around. Epic Fail in so many ways that it is hard to define one reason I am handing this one off to a charity shop. Spider-Man: Friend Or Foe was essentially the same level replayed over and over again in similar but not quite identical layouts. Fail. Even the Venom level was abysmal.

Rogue Trooper, perhaps sensing my increasingly bad attitude, refused to load. Ha! The PS2 is smarter than I gave it credit for.

Slightly over twelve hours of constant play (and attempted play) has shown me that my quality threshold for games has been raised significantly by too many A+ games, and I’m aware of every little thing that isn’t quite ‘right’ in the software. Hell, I’m turning into a moaning old bastard that refuses to allow a game even the slightest problem. I even swore at the television when I got to a cutscene. Always a bad sign…

Tomb Raider: Underworld. Not epic or eye-bleedingly beautiful.
Wall*E. Words fail me as I try to describe how bad this is…
Braid. Didn’t I play this, like, twenty years ago? Donkey something…
MotoGP 08. The other bikes seem to be able to go much, much faster than me, making up half a lap in a few seconds. Bad coding, or a secret boost button I haven’t discovered yet?

This was probably about the time I realized my blood pressure was rising instead of falling, so I hit upon the idea of playing something I knew would appease my increasing agitation. I break out ‘Old Faithful’ from the shelf, and pop the Turok disk in the 360.

There should be a limit to how much a person can bitch and moan, but I really am beyond salvation at the minute. My complaint about Turok isn’t pertaining to the gameplay, the graphics or even the selection of weapons. I took exception at the lead character almost as soon as my game had loaded, remembering how much fun I had reading the Gold Key comics, so the game didn’t stand a chance.

Maybe watching a DVD will relax me…

     Turok is one of those game series that had its heyday years ago and every attempt to revive and reinvent the series has ended in utter disaster much like the Sonic the Hedgehog series. The newest iteration of the Turok series tries to relive the glory days of the original Turok release on the Nintendo 64. This new Turok is a step in the right direction, but has no relationship to the prior games in the series. The story is mediocre and forgettable.

Graphic and sound:

Turok uses the Unreal Engine 3 to power its environments and does a superb job of creating a realistic environment with high-res textures and character models. The dinosaurs move and attack realistically and are a pleasure to watch attacking the enemy soldiers. The game’s sound effects are average and even the voiceovers by Timothy Olyphant are average, but again, the lack of a good story line and script are large contributing factors.

Gameplay and controls:

Turok has a single player campaign and a multiplayer element, which is played in 1^st person perspective. The single player campaign focuses on the player, Joseph Turok, searching for his mentor Kane who committed various war crimes. The story is forgettable at best. The missions consist of infiltrating the enemy base while traversing the jungle environment infested with dinosaurs. The player has a range of weaponry to choose from, but can only hold two other weapons besides a knife and a bow. The player can choose to run and gun, attack with stealth, or use the dinosaurs to bait the enemy soldiers.

The multiplayer aspect of Turok has a few modes to choose from: Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag, assault capture the flag, war games, and co-op. Deathmatch is every player for himself with the winner being the one with the most kills. Team deathmatch is deathmatch with teams vying for the most points instead of a free for all. Capture the flag is based on player teams capturing the enemy team’s bio-toxin canister and returning it to their base. Assault capture the flag is similar to capture the flag except there is only one bio-toxin canister and teams take turns playing attackers or defenders of the canister. War game is an objective based game mode. Co-op allows up to four players to team up and battle CPU controlled enemies.

Overall thoughts:

Turok is another of those games that could have been much more. I think the original Turok and direct sequel Turok: Seeds of Evil should be remade much like Tomb Raider Anniversary with modern graphics and perhaps a bit of revamped level design. The game is not horrible, but the fun of killing dinosaurs or having dinosaurs kill the enemy soldiers wears out within the first hour because the story is basically nonexistent. The multiplayer had lag issues when released, which are supposedly patched now. Hopefully the next iteration will take the positives from this game and add a story players can care about.

or, How To Create A Cohesive Universe From Disparate Sources

There is a litany of characters already firmly established in Philip José Farmer’s Wold Newton concept, but I thought it might be fun to tie together some of the wilder and weirder ideas in one place. Why? Well, why not? Lets see how far this can be taken…

The incorporation of ‘lost islands’ is one which is incredibly difficult to reasonably incorporate into the overall WN ethos. There are very few places on planet Earth that have not been comprehensively mapped, analyzed and placed on charts and maps, and those (very few) places where no studies have been conducted at length are so small in comparison to the ‘known’ world that inclusion of some of fiction’s most recognized islands is largely being eroded in the WN “canon” (a hotly disputed concept in itself).

I propose an elegant solution to placing ‘lost islands’ in a sideways dimension so that they may still be referred to in Wold Newton fiction.

We have some idea of the layout of Alice’s Wonderland, and Godzilla’s Monsterland (Site Omega if you have seen the 90’s cartoon) has been explored enough, so some rough geographic features can be aligned. Yup, that all adds to the reality for the concept. But the most important aspect to the WN idea is the pruning away of unnecessary additions. Meh. Bring on the fun…

The whole ’secrecy’ subject relating to the locations poses a problem if they are located in physical areas which can be easily accessed, and from which creatures and characters can enter real locations. The solution I propose involves the removal of all these places to an ‘other’ reality, separated from our own by a means of hidden ‘doorways’.

Time flows at different rates in Lovecraft’s Dreamlands, where an hour on earth can represent a few seconds, a minute, a week, a year or longer in that realm. I get the feeling that Narnia, with weird time dilations and characters who know of Earth, is somewhere in Dreamland. Lovecraft’s magical dimension is also a good entry point due to the nature of the natural inhabitants, who can be considered immortal as long as they don’t or disease. This would give us room to place the mythical Olympus (and thus all of the Greek gods) firmly within its’ environment.

If the archipelago of strange locations is actually located in another dimension, then it is safe to say that Gulliver would have somehow managed to end up there for his adventures as recounted by Jonathan Swift. I’ll come back to Noble’s Island, from The Island Of Dr. Moreau, later on. We’ll just stick everything else here too: Valhalla, Olympus, Avalon, Gort Na Cloca Mora and other mythical places all located in this dimension. Simple.

I like the idea of adding a few comic book and television characters into the Wold Newton line as well, so Torchwood (which already has the concept of The Rift in place) can get added. The old Warlord comic-book, which is itself set in a kooky dimension, lends itself easily to inclusion, as does Shangri-La (which ties in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and The Champions TV show). Bulletproof Monk is in the mix as well, though I can’t recall offhand if it was specifically mentioned as Shangri-La he came from.

The Savage Land, home to Ka-Zar, seems to be King Kong’s home as well. Turok (Gold Key comics) probably passed through here as well at some point, and Tarzan is a logical anchor to the Wold Newton family tree, so he gets to play with the giant animals as well. This is where I come back to Dr. Moreau, and his experiments. I pointed out the strange time-bending properties of the Dreamlands a few paragraphs ago, and it makes sense that Moreau was one of the earliest visitors (chronologically) to the island. His experiments, and their descendants, are the monsters which pop up every so often. I figure that The Savage Land would probably be near the centre of the island chain due to its rain-forest appearance in the comics.

With Turok, his original appearances being the ones I concentrate on, we get aliens as well. Fine. That opens up other planets in both this dimension and in the Dreamlands. I’m liking this idea.

There is nothing to say that a person entering the Dreamlands in 188? will appear thousands (or millions) of years in the past or future when they enter the dimension, so it doesn’t discount the myths, legends or fables which are tangentially tied to this concept. The seas around the islands can also accommodate underwater beings, as well as the not-yet-submerged Atlantis. And we can use this to add Namor, The Man From Atlantis (TV) and Aquaman. Which, of course, ties back into Conan and a bunch of Lovecraft ideas anyway.

So, in short, we have gods, dinosaurs, mutated monster-men-creatures, the dead, the undead, extinct creatures, ‘aliens’ and a whole host of problems for a clean introduction into the WN continuity. There can be no (or, at the least, limited) interaction with the wider world from these locations. It is hardly conductive to maintaining a sturdy world-view if there is a stream of ‘exotic’ creatures running around. There is a need for their inclusion in the overall continuity to maintain the stories in which characters appear as canonical, but enough distance needs to be created so that their existence is maintained shrouded in secrecy.

Not that I’ve thought about this much…

I was sitting under my Big Bang poster when I started Endless Universe, and I remember taking a good long look at it the night I turned the last page. Here’s a book that gently overturns a conventionally accepted truth and turns your view of the universe inside out, all the while sounding more like a friendly anecdote than a lecture from a balding physics teacher.

Authors  Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok are the pioneers of an alternative cosmology where the Big Bang was not the beginning of time, but rather part of a cycle where universes are constantly being created. The book takes you through this new “cyclic universe,” along the way addressing the many problems that plague the Big Bang today.

Two theories

First off, the Big Bang is almost as bad as Christianity in that it has more holes than a Philippine highway. But unlike religion, cosmology’s flaws can be expressed in black-and-white miscalculations rather than a soup of misinterpretations. The cyclic universe model, although far from perfect, has the potential to answer long-standing questions in science, including whether or not there was a point of creation or a beginning of time — the self-same questions that theologians have forever tried to answer.

In a cyclic universe, the universe is born in a Big Bang, undergoes a period of expansion, and then bounces back into a contraction phase until it reaches a “Big Crunch.” And then, as it approaches the point of singularity, it explodes in another Big Bang and the cycle starts again. These phases are marked by the periodic dominance of matter, radiation, and dark matter, which account for the distinct properties of the universe in each phase.

The bang itself is caused by the collision of two dimensions (known as “branes“), each of which is essentially a proto-universe. These collisions occur on a very tiny scale, as each brane is unimaginably small, so under this model, new universes may be coming into being all the time.

To account for the formation of galaxies (at least in this universe), physicists call upon quantum theory, more specifically quantum foam — a hypothetical picture where, at ultra-microscopic distances, space appears to move violently as particles are continuously created and annihilated. These jitters create areas of high and low density, with the latter providing the low-energy “seed” needed for galaxy formation.

Dark matter

If the calculations are right, the universe we’re in right now is in the end-stage of a cycle (a cycle lasts roughly a trillion years), wherein dark matter is smoothing out the initial jitters and new galaxies cease to form. The existence of dark matter can address many of the fundamental flaws of the Big Bang, including Einstein’s troublesome cosmological constant.

Dark matter also strengthens the defense for the cyclic model, since it accounts for the energy required for subsequent Big Bangs. Effectively, what we’re looking at is a perpetual-motion machine — something that rudely deviates from conventional physics, because it violates the laws of entropy — except that it’s powered by something that naturally occurs from the cycle itself.

Stringy concepts

The cyclic model’s biggest flaw is that it hinges too closely on string theory and M-theory (which gave rise to the concept of branes), which have yet to be proven themselves. For another, if quantum theory plays such an important role in the cycle, then what are the odds that there will be the right mix of matter, radiation and energy in each succeeding universe? And what started the cycle in the first place? Are there any conditions under which the cycle could be thrown off course? If so, what happens?

We could go on asking questions all day. As the authors themselves have pointed out, it’s possible that the cyclic model appeals to us only because we’re human, and our culture has led us to see beauty in cycles. We live according to sunrises and sunsets, winters and summers, births and deaths. I think it’s the same way that a Catholic might hold on to the Big Bang because it supposes a moment of creation where a supreme being like God would naturally fit.

Questions and answers

Steinhardt and Turok may have come upon a grand unifying theory, sure. Personally, I hope that the cyclic model turns out to be the real thing. But people said the same things of Einstein, who in the end got saddled with more questions about the universe than he had answered. In any case, generations of scientists will devote their lives to these same questions before, if ever, we get any answers.

Meanwhile, I continue to wonder at the fact that with just the limited view we have from earth, we have managed to ask and answer bigger and bigger questions. And although it would be nice for the theory of everything to be crafted in my lifetime, it’s also a nice consolatory thought that new Big Bangs might be happening as we speak, and beings like us may be springing to life in the universe next door.

O Tiranossauro (Tyrannosaurus rex, que significa “lagarto tirano rei” ou numa tradução alternativa “réptil rei”) foi uma espécie de dinossauro carnívoro e bípede que viveu no fim do período Cretáceo, principalmente na região que é hoje a América do Norte.

Segundo os cálculos feitos até então, o tiranossauro podia alcançar até 48 km/h (alguns cientistas discordam desse valor e dizem que ele podia alcançar até 60 km/h) quando corria, era portanto apto a caçar suas presas. Apesar disso, crêem-se ainda que o Tirannossauro fosse um animal necrofágo.

Se por um lado as pernas de um tiranossauro eram bem desenvolvidas e fortes, por outro lado seus braços eram fracos, pequenos e praticamente inúteis pois nem ao menos alcançavam a boca. Essa característica de possuir braços pequenos é comum também em alguns outros dinossauros da ordem carnosauria.

Os tiranossauros não viviam em bandos, é provável que somente o macho, a fêmea e os filhotes andassem juntos. O achado de um crânio de tiranossauro danificado comprova que deveriam ocorrer violentas batalhas por comida e pelo direito de se acasalar entre os indivíduos dessa mesma espécie.

Descrição

Foi um dos maiores carnívoros terrestres de todos os tempos, alcançando 4 metros de altura e mais de 14 metros de comprimento. É considerado por muitos o predador mais eficiente e o mais aterrorizador dinossauro que existiu, mas essa afirmação é incorreta, pois havia dinossauros ainda mais fortes que o próprio Tiranossauro. Sua boca possuia dentes que chegavam a medir incríveis 20 centímetros, sendo que já foram encontrados dentes de mais de 30 cm. Estes,eram curvados para trás, e, diferentemente do Carcharodontossauro, eram cônicos e grossos, chegando a estraçalhar os ossos. Os dentes usados ou quebrados muitas vezes são encontrados, mas diferentemente daqueles de mamíferos, nos tiranossaurídeos dentes eram constantemente substituídos em todas as partes da vida do animal.

Comparação do tamanho de um tiranossauro a um homem

Foi o animal mais feroz de todos os tempos, mas sua força podia ser superada. Em comparação sua mordida não era superada, bastando apenas uma mordida certeira para matar a presa.Sua mandíbula é imensa, podendo abrigar meia tonelada de comida lá dentro, e por possuir músculos extremamente desenvolvidos no pescoço possui uma força de mordida maior que qualquer outro dinossauro, chegando a potência de 4.000 kg.

O maior crânio de Tiranossauro até hoje encontrado mede até 1.5 m (5 pés) de comprimento. Em comparação com outros terópodes, o tiranossauro teve um crânio particularmente grande. O crânio foi extremamente largo posteriormente, com um focinho estreito, permitindo algum grau da visão binocular. Alguns ossos, como o nasais, foram fundidos, prevenindo movimento entre eles. Apesar de ser conhecido como “Rei dos Dinossauros” existiam carnívoros maiores que ele como o Espinossauro,o Giganotossauro,o Carcarodontossauro,etc…

Descoberta

Os primeiros vestígios atribuidos à espécie datam de 1900, por Barnum Brown (o popular “senhor ossos”, apelido que representa a enorme quantidade de fósseis desenterrados por ele), assistente do curador do Museu Americano de História Natural, descobertos no estado de Wyoming, nos Estados Unidos. O espécime estava parcialmente completo, e superava o tamanho de todos os terópodes conhecidos. Foi batizado, então, de Dynamosaurus imperiosus pelo seu descobridor. Esse nome permanecera por alguns anos, até que, em 1905, com o sucesso que o D. imperiosus conquistara no mundo da paleontologia; Henry Fairfield Osbron-curador do museu onde o espécime estava-decide alterar o nome da espécie. Com os dados obtidos sobre tamanho, a precoce agressividade ligada ao animal, o nome não poderia ser outro: Tyrannosaurus rex. Todavia, a história de descoberta da espécie ainda não está completa. Fontes revelam que, em 1892, o pesquisador Edward Drinker Cope catalogara o T.rex, mas sob o nome de Manospondylus gigas. A proeza de Cope consistia em duas vértebras, sendo que, atualmente, uma delas se encontra perdida. Inicialmente, Osbron só reconheceria as semelhanças entre as espécies em 1917. Todavia, devido as condições do M. gigas, este foi dado como um nomen oblitum. Ainda sobre outros nomes, atualmente há um debate sobre a existência do Nanotyrannus, que muitos afirmam ser um T-Rex filhote descrito como outra espécie.

Ossada de um T-Rex.

Boa vida na juventude

A vida de um Tyrannosaurus jovem era boa, pois estudos modernos revelam que fósseis de animais mais jovens não costumam apresentar marca de fratura ou qualquer tipo de dano causado em vida. Em outras palavras isto significa que os pais T-Rex cuidavam de sua prole por um período muito superior ao que os cientístas supunham. Eram então ótimos pais. Porém após atingirem a idade adulta o mundo tornava-se extremamente hostil para com os ex-jovens carnívoros. Lutas violentas aconteciam durante sua fase adulta que costumava ser curta devido a violência.

Predador ou Carniceiro?

Durante os últimos anos, alguns autores iniciaram uma discussão acerca da veracidade da condição predatória do Tyrannosaurus, propondo que alguns de seus dados fisiológicos apresentariam uma desvantagem para caça e alegam que este poderia ter sido apenas um carniceiro gigantesco. Um destes dados apontam para o fato de que o tiranossauro teria braços demasiado curtos e, caso caissem, seria muito difícil para eles levantarem-se rapidamente a fim de dar continuidade ao ataque.

Tiranossauro.

Paleontólogos que defendem a condição predatória da espécie revidam a estas teorias argumentando que há provas fósseis de ataques de tiranossauros a outros dinossauros que poderiam ser possíveis presas. Outro argumento é que determinados tipos de predadores bípedes já extintos não possuiam sequer braços, como é o caso da Paraphysornis brasiliensis ou outras aves do terror que perambularam pelo mundo no período pliocênico. Muitos pesquisadores defendem a teoria de que o t-rex era de fato um animal carniceiro, porém a grande maioria dos cientístas acreditam piamente em sua versão predadora. Ainda existem uma minoria que acredita que o tiranossauros seria um pouco dos dois.

Paleobiologia

Como todos os dinossauros, o tiranossauro só é conhecido através dos fósseis. Assim sendo desconhecem-se muitas das suas características como o seu comportamento ou a sua cor da pele. No entanto vários espécimens recolhidos ao longo dos ultimos anos têm-nos permitido alguma especulação em relação aos padrões de crescimento, dimorfismo sexual, biomecanica e metabolismo.

Dimorfismo Sexual

Tem-se vindo a verificar que os fósseis de tiranossauro apresentam dois tipos de corpos diferentes: um mais robusto e outro mais gracioso. Várias diferenças morfológicas indicam que os tiranossauros mais robustos eram fêmeas. Por exemplo, a pélvis dos espécimens “robustos” mostra-se mais larga, talvez para permitir a passagem de ovos. Também a primeira vértebra da cauda, nos espécimens “robustos”, tinha um chevron reduzido para permitir a passagem dos ovos, tal como acontece nos crocodilos.

Em anos recentes esta teoria tem vindo a efraquecer. Um chevron de tamanho normal foi descoberto num individuo muito robusto. Pensa-se agora que estas diferenças possam estar relacionadas com variações geográficas ou com a idade dos animais sendo os mais robustos mais velhos.

Postura

Até 1902 pensava-se nos tiranossaros como um tripé, com o corpo a 45º da vertical ou menos e a cauda a arrastar como a de um canguru. Em 1970 os cientistas perceberam que esta postura estava incorreta, no que resultaria em deslocações ou enfraquecimento de várias articulações. Apesar destas incoerências foi só na década de 1990, com o filme Jurassic Park, que uma postura mais correcta foi apresentada. Hoje em dia sabe-se que o dinossauro se deslocava com o corpo paralelo ao solo com a cauda levantada atrás servindo de contra-peso para a cabeça e de “guiador” nas perseguições.

T-rex

Braços

Os braços do tiranossauro são muito pequenos comparativamente ao resto do corpo, medindo apenas 1 metro. No entanto não são estruturas vestigiais pois mostram grandes áreas de músculo, indicando uma força considerável. Isto foi observado em 1906 por Osborn (ver taxocaixa) que pensou que podiam ajudar o macho a agarrar a fêmea durante a cópula. Outra hipótese é serviram para ajudar a erguer o animal do chão ou ainda para lutar contra a presa ou para a agarrar. Esta hipótese é apoiada pela análise biomecânica que revela que os braços do tiranossauro tinham ossos espessos propícios ao levantamento de grandes pesos. Um macho adulto conseguiria levantar 200 kg com um só braço.

Fóssil de braço de um T-Rex.

Crescimento

Comparando os fósseis de espécimes de diferentes idades, cientistas puderam fazer muitas estimativas sobre o T-Rex, como espectativa de vida e padrão de crescimento. O Tyrannosaurus rex crescia assustadoramente rápido, principalmente quando chegava à puberdade, o que acontecia aos 14 anos. Entre essa idade e os 18 anos (a maturidade da espécie), o T-Rex explodia num padrão de crescimento no mínimo espetacular: passava de seus 6 metros e 2 toneladas para 13 metros e mais de 6 toneladas. Os fósseis do menor T-Rex, o LACM 28471, que tinha 30 quilos, apontam que ele teria cerca de 2 anos de idade quando morreu. O maior, conhecida como “Sue”, que pesava 6 toneladas, morreu com cerca de 28 anos, e acredita-se que é uma marca muito alta para uma animal como esse. E como nenhum espécime mais velho foi descoberto, os paleontólogos puderam concluir que o T-Rex crescia muito rápido, mas vivia pouco.

Um gráfico mostrando a hipótese de curva de crescimento (massa corporal versus idade) de 4 tyrannosauridae. Tiranossauro Rex é desenhado a preto. Baseado em Erickson et al. 2004.

Penas?

Com os achados dos tiranossauros mais primitivos, como o Dilong e Gualong, criou-se uma teoria na qual o T-Rex seria provido de penas. Essa teoria fora criada em 2004, quando o Dilong fora descoberto. Todavia, essa teoria pode estar errada, pois tanto na Mongólia quanto em Alberta foram achados vestígios epiteliais de outros tiranossaurídeos, apresentando estes escamas, típicas de outros dinossauros, e não penas. Realmente, para um animal de quase 8 toneladas ser plumados iria contra as leis da física, pois como iria perder calor? Quando se locomovesse, o calor gerado não seria perdido, mas sim armazenado nas penas e retransmitido para o corpo, assim matando-o. Todavia, ainda se acredita que os filhotes teriam uma leve cobertura de plumas.

Bebê Tiranossauro coberto de plumas.

Cultura Popular

Não resta sombra de dúvidas sobre quem é o dinossauro mais famoso. Devido ao tamanho descumunal, dentes imensos e descrição como superpredador, etc. Suas aparições são quase sempre como supervilão e/ou principal adversário, sempre demostrando um aspecto de agressividade suprema e instinto assassino incontrolável ou, em certos casos, como um protagonista pacífico e idiota (como o Roy de Família Dinossauro).

Uma aparição clássica (e também a primeira) do T-Rex foi no filme de 1925 chamado The lost world (O mundo perdido), no qual a fera aparece atacando as personagens humanas e lutando com um Triceratops. Em outra de suas grandiosas aparições, a fera aparece na versão original de King Kong, degladiando-se com o protagonista. O estrelato do Tyrannosaurus rex em filmes e desenhos é quase incalculável, mas, sem dúvidas, a mais gloriosa das apresentações da fera foi em Jurassic Park, como principal dinossauro. O estrelato da besta segue até a segunda parte da série. No último capítulo da trilogia, é derrotada pelo Spinosaurus, assim abrindo espaço para um novo antagonista (no entando, a batalha entre dos dois terópodes não apresenta coenrência científica, pois viveram em continentes e divisões Cretáceas diferentes (Albiano e Cenomaniano para o Spinosaurus e Maastrichtiano para o T.rex).

Além de filmes e desenhos, o dinossauros estrelou videogames, novamente, quase sempre como um imponente obstáculo a ser morto. Um dos destaques do T-Rex nos jogos eletrônicos é Dino Crisis, como um supervilão sanguinário. Também aparece como chefão final em Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (um tanto quanto modificado), vários títulos da série Jurassic Park, em duas expansões de Zoo Tycoon 2, etc. O T-Rex também aparece como antagonista nos três primeiros capítulos de Tomb Raider.

Toda fama do Tyrannosaurus se deve ao fato de ter sido declarado o maior carnívoro terrestre por décadas, até a descoberta de outros colossais predadores, como o Giganotosaurus, o Mapusaurus, entre outros.

Um Tiranossauro lutando com um Tricerátops (Tim Bekaert, 1997).

Tiranossauro Rex : Carniceiro?

Estudos feitos pelo paleontólogo americano Jack Horner comprova que o Tiranossauro Rex poderia ter sido um grande carniceiro, diferente daquele T-rex vilão que conhecemos. Os argumentos utilizados pelo paleontólogo são muito fortes, o que faz com que muitos críticos aceitem sua teoria. Suas principais idéias são:

• Patas dianteiras: elas são curtas, pois, se o T-Rex fosse um predador de verdade, ele necessitaria de braços longos para agarrar a presa e fixá-las com suas patas e garras;

• Patas traseiras: suas patas traseiras mostram que ele não era um bom corredor, o seu fêmur era praticamente do mesmo tamanho que o osso de sua canela (diferente dos grandes corredores bípedes atuais, dentre eles o avestruz, que acaba alcançando grandes velocidade);

• Olfato Desenvolvido: seu olfato era desenvolvido para conseguir achar a carcaça de algum outro animal, o que provava que ele se comportava como um carniceiro, assemelhando-se a um urubu;

• Ossos Frágeis: seus ossos eram muito frágeis caso tentasse perseguir uma presa, e se por um acaso tropeçasse e quebrasse uma costela, poderia levar o grande T-Rex à morte, provando que ele não suportaria grandes esforços no momento em que estivesse capturando o seu alimento.

(Breve jogos de Jurassic Park  e outros)

by AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Game studios have it hard at the moment. With the global recession starting to hit the industry, if your studio isn’t working on a proven franchise there’s no guarantee your game will ever see the light of day. Hell, there’s no guarantee your studio will survive the development cycle and may just sink into bankruptcy oblivion.

Here’s a look at some of the most loved studios that went bust this decade after the jump.

Ion Storm

Who doesn’t know Ion Storm? They are developers of what’s widely considered one of the greatest games of all time, Deus Ex, as well as its follow-up Invisible War. Ion Storm was founded way back in 1996 by John Romero of Doom fame, with several other notable developers like Warren Spector who joined in 1997.

It was very much like a dream team – taking some of the best people in the industry and getting them all together under the one roof. We all know that this paid off with Deus Ex, but there was also the very public mishap of Daikatana.

After Looking Glass studios closed, most of the staff were merged with Ion Storm which bolstered its reputation even more. Looking Glass was famous for the Thief series, which can be considered the origin of the modern stealth game genre popularised by Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid.

Only a further two games would make it out of Ion Storm before it was shut down – Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. Both were excellent titles but highly debated about because of the massive expectations as sequels to some of the most critically acclaimed games ever.

In 2005 after the release of Thief: Deadly Shadows, Ion Storm was closed by its publisher Eidos. There wasn’t much press surrounding the closure, perhaps due to the slightly sour impressions Invisible War left in some of the fans of the original Deus Ex.

There were claims of ‘dumbing it down for consoles’.  Nevertheless, it was a massive loss for the industry. This hasn’t stopped Eidos from announcing Deus Ex 3 however, despite a new development team being assigned.

Digital Anvil

Digital Anvil was also opened in 1996. After the commercial failure of its first release Starlancer, Microsoft picked up the studio to be a first-party development house for their new Xbox console and PC. Predictably this meant scrapping some projects as well as adopting new ones.

In 2003 their first games to come out under the Microsoft logo were released: the very successful Freelancer on PC and the heavily marketed Brute Force for Xbox. Brute Force had mixed opinions on release as it had pretty much been promised by Microsoft itself to be ‘the next Halo’ at a time where every new shooter was touting itself as a ‘Halo-killer’.

Undoubtedly a great game, the expectations seemed to be a bit too much but they did their job with Brute Force selling by the truckload. It also integrated co-op directly into the gameplay at a time where people were beginning to see that multiplayer did not always need to be competitive.

Unfortunately the rumoured sequel would never find its way to the public, as Microsoft closed the studio in early 2006. Some of the staff were shuffled to other Microsoft-owned studios while others went to join Warthog Studios in the development of games for the ill-fated Gizmondo.

Oddworld Inhabitants

Suitably odd enough, the semi-closure of Oddworld Inhabitants in the previous generation was never very well explained.

Opened back in 1994 to exclusively develop the Oddworld series, Oddworld Inhabitants gained quite a reputation for itself. Starting off with Abe’s Oddysee on the PS1, the studio quickly gained a following for its completely unique style and amazing universe of Oddworld.

At that time platform games were generally very family-oriented with Mario, Sonic and other talking animals leading the way. Creator Lorne Lanning showed a different possibility of using fantastical creatures to parallel modern political and environmental issues.

The game’s style was very deceptive with lots of adult content and mature themes hidden beneath a world of Mudokons, Scarbs and Paramites. It recalled the style of Tim Burton in its twisted fantasy vision.

The follow up Abe’s Exodus was very similar before Munch’s Oddysee at the launch of the Xbox threw the game perhaps a bit too forcefully into 3D with the new lead protagonist. While the game sold reasonably well, it wasn’t a blockbuster hit by any margin. This may have been an early ominous sign before publishing rights switched over to EA for their final game.

Stranger’s Wrath was a critical smash hit, scoring glowing reviews for its unique take on the first-person shooter where the player was required to hunt down literally live ammo to fire from a crossbow, such as skunks or bees. Unfortunately the games was also one of the lowest selling of the generation, with director Lorne Lanning publically aiming the blame at EA for next to no marketing.

Soon after that Oddworld Inhabitants announced they were leaving the games industry to focus on CG feature films, which made sense from the incredible CG cutscenes that were a highlight of the Oddworld games.

Unfortunately nothing has been heard from them since, with even their website oddworld.com remaining static with a ‘New site coming soon’ message since 2006. It’s just…..odd.

Ensemble Studios

Now this one was very public. Ensemble, started in 1997 are best known for their massively popular Age of Empires / Mythology series on PC. Along with Blizzard and Creative Assembly, Ensemble is one of the most respected studios when it comes to Real-Time Strategy games.

It’s no surprise there was a lot of anticipation when Microsoft announced they were taking that knowledge to create a new RTS in the Halo universe, Halo Wars.

Halo Wars largely delivered on the promise of finally making RTS work on console without a keyboard, but not without sacrifice. Shortly before the release of Halo Wars, Microsoft suddenly shut down the studio in response to the global economic recession in the effort to restructure its internal studios.

According to employees there was little to no warning, with Halo Wars being their final game.

Since then two studios have emerged from the ashes: Robot Entertainment which will handle patches and future content for Halo Wars, and Bonfire Studios of which little is known yet.

FASA Studio

Another Microsoft studio, Fasa came from a company that created tabletop games before being bought by Microsoft in 1998 to create MechCommander and MechWarrier 4 on PC. One of their success stories is Crimson Skies on Xbox, an acclaimed arcade flying game that demonstrated the capabilities of the Xbox’s infant Live online service.

Their next title, Shadowrun on the PC and Xbox 360 didn’t quite have the same effect. Publicised very much as an online-focused title with the new crossplay feature that allowed Xbox 360 and PC gamers to compete over Live, some design decisions and mechanics ensured it never got the success Microsoft was expecting. Unsurprisingly Fasa was shut down later that year.

Auran Studios

An Aussie developer, Auran made a name for itself through the Train Simulator series before starting on an incredibly ambitious project: Fury. An MMO fighting game, Fury promised to revolutionise MMO combat while the hype machine went through the roof.

On release this did not translate into sales, however, as World of Warcraft was entering its peak with the rest of the MMO audience in Guild Wars or City of Heroes. Fury flopped, and it flopped hard. Auran had fed so much money into the project that literally the entire company was resting on the seemingly inevitable success of Fury that never came. Aurun quickly went broke with the remnants of the studio going back to Train Simulator and casual games.

Nowadays Fury can sometimes be found in bargain bins or lying in a dusty corner of the basement; proof that sometimes a winning concept and massive hype can backfire.

Acclaim Entertainment

Do you still remember Acclaim? Once one of the largest and most successful studios in the world during the N64 / PlayStation / Saturn generation, Acclaim had franchises to its name such as Turok, Dave Mirra BMX, Spiderman games, WWF (before it was WWE) and many will have forgotten even Burnout 1 and 2 were Acclaim-published.

If you want to look for where it started to go wrong you don’t need to look hard to find Turok Evolution at the forefront. Evolution was the planned first game of the wildly successful Turok series to jump to the Xbox / PS2 / GC / Dreamcast generation and with it came massive marketing campaigns including the controversial ‘name your first baby Turok’ competition.

Unfortunately, the game was released to mediocre reviews contrary to previews labelling it The Next Big ThingTM. While we were promised roaming through forests, seeing complete ecosystems at work and the never-before-seen AI of the dinosaurs, what we got was an unimpressive linear shooter heavy on the gore but not much else. I can remember walking into EB Games the month after it was released to see the preowned games section swamped with piles of copies reduced to a quarter its original price to clear.

Other signs of Acclaim’s troubles was the poorly conceived BMX XXX (initially Dave Mirra BMX XXX until he disassociated himself with the project), a hybrid of extreme sports which was very popular at the time and porn. Simply take a broken version of the quite good Dave Mirra BMX 2, replace the riders with naked girls and reward the player with videos of strippers. How could it miss? Perhaps making the game fun would have helped.

Like many successful studios of the N64 / PS era, their success did not always carry over into the new generation and Acclaim quickly sank below millions of dollars in debt from one commercial failure after the other. These days the name and logo live on in another studio calling itself Acclaim that make such titles as My Diva Doll, Ponystars and Prize Potato.

Other Notable Studios

There are too many shut down studios to write about here, so here’s a brief list of some of the others I couldn’t fit in:

- ACES Studios (Microsoft Flight Simulator)

- Black Isle Studios (Fallout, Planetscape: Torment, Icewind Dale)

- Pandemic Brisbane (Destroy All Humans 1 & 2)

- Free Radical for about 3 days before Crytek bought them (TimeSplitters, Star Wars Battlefront 3, Haze)

- Clover Studio (Okami, Viewtiful Joe, God Hand)

- Big Huge Games is due to close if not bought in the next month (Rise of Nations)

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Please share us around

It’s the second day of WOStock, the largest music festival in West Michigan, and I met “Ports of Aidia”. Turok fans may remember the name from an earlier level of Turok on the Nintendo 64, but this time it’s a band.
The best part of the band is that it is composed of several Mac users, and plays awesome tunes. Pictures from the event after the break.

Akik valamennyire jártasak a videójátékok világában, azoknak biztosan ismerősen cseng a Turok név, még akkor is, ha idehaza nem lett akkora nagy szám. Ez elsősorban annak tudható be, hogy a Turok franchise Nintendo 64-en kezdte pályafutását, ami itt Magyarországon abszolúte nem számított széles körben elterjedt gépnek. Összesen négy Turok jött ki N64-re, majd a ps2/xbox/GC trióra megjelent a Turok Evolution. Eme játékok közös vonása, hogy egy indián (khm! amerikai őslakos, csakhogy politikailag korrekt legyek ) bőrébe bújva kellett irtanunk a jónépet, elsősorban dinoszauruszokat. FPS játékok voltak a javukból, remek grafikával, dögös fegyverekkel, rengeteg véres jelenettel. Tavaly télen kijött az aktuális generáció Turokja, lássuk méltó-e az elődeihez!

Mindjárt az elején megmondom a frankót: nem voltam sosem egy hatalmas nagy Turok rajongó. Látványosak voltak, meg vér, meg dínók, meg FUN; de semmi nagyon komoly. Néhány pálya egyszerűen túl idegesítő volt. Mindezek ellenére amikor pár éve megláttam az első képeket és videókat az új játékból, akkor egyből tudtam: nekem ez kell.
Ebben a játékban már nem a régi Turok a főszereplő. Az aktuális főhős is indián, Joseph Turok, a kőkemény kommandós. A történet úgy kezdődik, hogy új alakulatában pont a régi bajtársai ellen indul. Az új “haverok” nem igazán kedvelik származása és előélete miatt. Turok a Farkascsapat tagja volt, egy különösen kegyetlen és vérszomjas alakulat egyik legjobbja. A csapatot volt fegyencek közül válogatta a karizmatikus veterán Kane. Az egység végül felbomlott, Kane titokzatos eltűnése után. Turok visszatér a Földre, ott teljesít tovább szolgálatot. Évekkel később viszont Kane újból felbukkan (pár régi cinkosával együtt), az ellenséges Mendel-Gruman (MG) korporáció élén. Turok csatlakozik a Kane likvidálására küldött Whiskey Alakulathoz. A feladat egyszerűnek tűnik, igazi elit csapatról van szó. Viszont a célbolygóhoz közeledve kilövik alóluk az űrhajót, a planétára zuhanva pedig kénytelenek a túlélők azzal a ténnyel szembesülni, hogy egy dzsungel közepén vannak, ami tele van vérszomjas dinoszauruszokkal…

Egész impozáns kezdet. A dzsungel/dínó-feeling nagyon ott van a szeren, az embert ténylegesen nyomasztja a környezet, egy pillanatig nem érezhetjük biztonságban magunkat. A hüllők gyorsak és NAGYON éhesek, továbbá remekül rejtőzködnek a magas fűben. Sokféle fajtával találkozhatunk, egykoron létezett és fiktív lényekkel egyaránt. Nem kell aggódni, ezúttal is megküzdhetünk a ragadozók királyával, a T-Rexel. Gyakran emlősökkel is összefutunk, ők keményen fel vannak fegyverkezve, okosan támadnak és pofátlanul jól céloznak. Apropó fegyverek! Összesen négy lehet nálunk, ebből a kés és a nyíl kötelező, a másik kettő szabadon választható. Az arzenál, sajnos inkább az aktuális trendeket követi, nincsenek olyan különleges fegyverek, mint a régi játékokban. Cserébe viszont majdnem mindegyik remekül használható. Én a kettő alapon kívül általában a pulse rifle – sniper duót preferálom, de majdnem mindegyik eszközre szükség van a végigjátszás során. A kést és a nyílt még véletlenül se becsülje le senki se, ez a kettő fegyver a legerősebb. A nyíllal közepes távolságról bármilyen emberi ellenfelet egy lövéssel leszedhetünk, a robbanófejes íjak pedig még a nagyobb dínókat is fasírttá változtatja. A késsel egy jólidőzített támadás gyakorlatilag bármilyen ellenfelet azonnal kivégez – ez nem csak hatásos, hanem roppant látványos és brutális is.

A grafika nincs a generáció elitjének (KZ2, RE5, GoW2, etc.) szintjén, de nem sokkal marad el tőlük. A külső környezet részletes és látványos, a belső terek viszont meglehetősen egysíkúak. Az effektek is széles skálán mozognak, pl. a shotgun “flare”-je kimondottan gagyin néz ki. Néhány textúra mintha valamelyik N64-es Turokból maradt volna ott. Ellenben a karakterek iszonyat jól néznek ki. Maguk a kommandósok bőven hozzák az elvárt szintet (gondolok itt elsősorban a saját cimboráinkra), a dínók meg valami beszarás jók lettek. Komolyan szebbek, mint a Jurassic Parkban. Ráadásul ahogy lőjük őket egyre inkább rongyolódnak, főleg a nagyobbak csupa vér lesznek. Egyszerűen COOL!

Amit eddig leírtam az mind szép és jó, de megint jön a szokásos feketeleves, ami ráadásul ezúttal különösen savanyú lesz. Lássuk…
major problem #1.: controlls SUXX!
Az irányítás eleinte csak bosszantó, későbbiekben viszont kimondottan frusztrálóvá válik. Turok néha iszonyat lassan reagál a lenyomott gombokra, főleg a guggolás problematikus. A fő gond viszont az, hogy ha Turok beszed egy komolyabb sérülést (rakéta) akkor összevissza elmászik a nézet. Pl.: Turok mellett felrobban valami, erre hősünk feje elfordul 150 fokkal. Ez ugyan valamennyire reális, de játék közben ISZONYAT idegesítő. Ez néhány helyszínt kegyetlenül megnehezít, néha már szabályosan tombolni lett volna kedvem.
major problem #2.: levels SUXX!
A pályák néha roppant egyhangúak, rosszabb esetben frusztrálóak. Gyakran nem egyértelmű merre kell menni, mert a helyszínek eléggé hasonlóak, könnyű beragadni a sziklákba meg a gyökerekbe.
minor problem: checkpoint system SUXX!
Volt már szerencsém pár olyan játékhoz amiben nagyon helyezték el a checkpointokat. A Turok messze nem a legrosszabb ilyen téren, de gyakran bosszantó. Van amikor gyakorlatilag kettő van közvetlenül egymás után, valamikor meg négy-öt kőkeményen nehéz helyszínt is végig kell járni, mire menteni méltóztatik a program.

Ezek a dolgok külön-külön annyira még nem vészesek, de kombináltan már súlyos mértékben az élvezhetőség rovására mennek. Vannak helyszínek amiken az ember még legkönnyebb fokozaton is vért izzad, és nem a saját bénasága, hanem a játék gyermekbetegségei miatt. Nagyon komoly mértékben szétbarmolják a játékélményt ezek a dolgok, pedig igencsak komoly móka lehetne ez az új Turok. Így viszont csak egy erős közepes játék. FPS rajongók nyugodtan megvehetik, meg bárki aki szeretne dínókra vadászni (vagy szeretné, hogy dínók vadásszanak rá).

/a játék megjelent ps3-ra és PC-re is/

Cameron Fielding.  Animator.  To say the images speak for themselves, is an understatement.  Well, press the play button and see.  If I could character animate half as well as this guy, I would be a very happy man indeed.

Character animation has never been a strong point for me.  Organic modelling is something I don’t get a lot of time to do professionally and on occasion I feel that I am losing my skills a bit in this department.

Saying that, when I see something as wonderful as this, I realise that I am happy to be able to see work of this quality even if I can’t achieve it myself.

G

The tsunami of layoffs that is sweeping our country has hit Disney. It looks like one casualty is the sequel to last year’s Turok first-person shooter. The unannounced game was reportedly in development at Disney’s Propaganda studios.

Game blog Kotaku’s inside sources say Propaganda Games is laying off approximately 70 employees. “That reduction in workforce is likely closely tied to the cancellation of Turok 2,” sources say. Turok 2 was one of two projects that Propaganda was working on; the other game remains a mystery, but it presumably won’t be affected by the layoffs.

Disney Interactive is reportedly planning to consolidate some game studios, including Avalanche Software and the Fall Line studio. These are development houses responsible for creating games based on Disney properties.

I’m bummed that Turok 2 looks axed. There was always so much possibility with Turok games. They’re first-person shooters with dinosaurs! How can it be anything but awesome? And yet, they never seemed to quite live up to what they could have been, so each new Turok title was a fresh chance at that gold ring.

"So why don't I level up? What're my perks?" "No leash. Now kill that raider."

It seems Bethesda, in a moment of utter genius (and I mean this with no sarcasm) have decided they’ve learnt a couple of things from Fallout 3’s reviews and audience feedback. Todd Howard, the title’s executive producer, has been quoted as saying the following; “Greatest lesson? Don’t let the game end, don’t have a level cap”. These two things are the only problems with the game I can think of. The game ends with a bizarre choice; sacrifice yourself by standing in radioactive gas to stop a bomb from going off, send someone else in to do it for you who will also succumb to the airborne toxins within, or run away and let it blow up.

Now, as I played this section standing next to Fawkes, an intelligent Super Mutant who was immune to radioactive substances, if not healed by them, I was a little confused. Why couldn’t I send him in? And even if you don’t send yourself in to die, and stop the bomb using someone else, the game still ends. This hurt a lot of players because unless they reverted to an earlier save, as I did, they could no longer play their current character. Whether I went back for achievements or simply more fun content is irrelevant; games like these should follow the example set by Fable and its sequel; continuous play after the narrative’s conclusion. The level cap is also a good idea that needed nixing, as I can only grin with glee at the thought of having every skill to maximum, and every perk in the game. You’d squash things flat.

Need for Need for Speed?

Need for Speed started off as one of the most promising franchises in arcade racing, along with the likes of Burnout and the industry standard, Ridge Racer. And yet somewhere along the line, it hit its head and woke up convinced it was a game adaptation of the Fast and Furious trilogy (read: farce), and things went a little awry. The live-action FMV sequences didn’t help, either; if it didn’t work for Command and Conquer, it sure as hell isn’t going to work for you guys. I won’t touch upon NFS: Pro Street, as I intend never to include profanity in the blog, and that would have me break the rules a few sentences into the paragraph. However, in a suprising turn of events, EA is attempting to revitalise the franchise with three new titles, each aimed at a very different audience.

Three titles, ladies and gentlemen. The first, Need for Speed: Shift, is the NFS title for the fan of more realistic racing experiences such as Gran Turismo and Project Gotham Racing. The second is Need for Speed: Nitro, geared towards fans of the arcade-style racing experiences of old, though EA is keen to stipulate it won’t be “a Mario Kart clone”, though whenever someone needs to deny plagarism prior to anyone even seeing the content, it’s usually a sign that they’re lying through their teeth. The third title, most intruigingly, is Need for Speed: World Online, a play-for-free online racer hitting the East at 100mph, then cruising on over to Europe and the USA if it works out.

I think this is a brilliant idea, but honestly? I think EA is seriously shooting themselves in the foot considering how astonishingly well Burnout Paradise is doing at the moment. Every time I even mention Criterion’s open-world racer I feel the urge to buy it to once again feel the rush of demolishing barriers at warp ten while spinning through the air and listening to DJ Atomika, someone I’ve missed since his SSX 3 glory days. I don’t think it’ll outdo Paradise, but it’s a welcome addition and here’s hoping they drop the sex and focus on what made NFS such a groundbreaker in its genre; the rush of the cityscape at illegal speeds, the customisation, and of course, the nitrogen injection.

Dead as a… Dinosaur?

It seems Turok isn’t being continued by Disney, in the latest round of redundancies for game developers. 70 employees were laid off the project, as the developer Propoganda is being pushed by Disney to cut costs and focus on one project, of which there still is one, albeit completely hidden from view. I can’t say I’m surprised, the game was a complete farce, horrible to play, and in all honesty, if I want scary moments, gunplay and dinos, I’m going to watch the Jurassic Park trilogy. Disney, when a twenty year old man would rather play Wall-E on his 360 than Turok, I think you need to take a serious look at how badly marketed, designed, and written it was. But fix it. Upgrade it. There’s a reason it was a staplemark of FPS gaming on the N64.

A Sad Day for Ensemble

In this blog post, Ensemble Studios co-founder Bruce Shelley said goodbye to all of us from the creators of the exciting new RTS experience, Halo Wars. It’s a damn sad day when a team of people can work that hard on a title, promise to do DLC (and they’re still doing it, bless them) and update with patches and new ideas constantly, and still get canned by Microsoft. This isn’t just the team who piddled around in the world of Master Chief, this is the team who worked on Age of Empires amongst other things. They’ve done a lot for the RTS genre, and to see them go like this is as insulting as it is aggravating.

ATTENTION GAME DEVELOPERS: The recession is resulting in an increase in entertainment sales figures. The reason for this is because more and more people are staying indoors as going out is too expensive. What does this mean, amongst other things such as books and DVDs? It means more people are playing Gears, Wii Sports and World of Warcraft. What it doesn’t mean is that you can lay off hundreds of staff in the industry, then expect any decent content with developers scared out of their wits they’re going to be canned at every moment. The higher-ups will learn eventually. I just think all of us in the industry are sick of waiting for them to do so.

Over my vacation during the holidays, I finished quite a few games:

• Tales of Vesperia – 8.5/10
• Fable 2 – 9/10
• Quantum of Solace – 7/10
• Condemned 2: Bloodshot – 8/10
• Too Human – 6.5/10
• Left 4 Dead – 9/10
• Mirror’s Edge – 7.5/10
• Marvel Ultimate Alliance – 8/10
• The Darkness – 8/10
• Gears of War 2 – 9/10
• Rainbow Six Vegas 2 – 8/10
• Turok – 7.5/10

These were all on the X360. I didn’t get all of the achievement points out of these games, but that doesn’t really matter to me overall.  I prefer to just finish them and get whatever achievements I get.  Eventually I will go back and get some of the easy ones that I missed.

Da bekommt man wochenlang kein einziges Paket und dann das… Alles was man in letzter Zeit bestellt hat kommt natürlich an einem Tag auf nem großen Haufen an.

Die Resultate dieser Grundidee? Man läuft Abends von einem Nachbarn zum anderen und sammelt seine Postsendungen ein, weil man natürlich tagsüber nicht im Haus ist um das Zeugs selber entgegen zu nehmen.

Das ergibt dann einen schönen Stapel an Päckchen die man durch das Treppenhaus trägt. Diesmal eine große Kiste mit asiatischen Nudelsuppen (wozu sollte man Egay sonst verwenden?), eine kleinere Kiste mit 2 Rumble-/Memmorypacks für das N64 (natürlich nochmal in kleinen Kartons mit dem doppelten Volumen des Inhalts und diese dann nochmal zusammen verpackt) und ganz oben drauf ein größerer Umschlag in dem das neueste N64-Spiel lag das ich mir geleistet hab.

Eine Kiste Suppen und der Inhalt der anderen Päckchen

Mit “Blast Corps” sind es jetzt übrigens 16 Spiele die wir hier rumliegen haben. Dafür dass ich erst dieses Jahr wirklich angefangen hab mir die Dinger zuzulegen ist das eigentlich schon ganz nett.

Hier mal eine vollständige Liste, Vorschläge was dringend noch fehlt sind erbeten (zumindest von mir, Cindy sieht das wohl etwas anders *g*):

1. Super Smash Bros.
2. Zelda – Occarina of Time
3. Snowboard Kids
4. Mario Kart 64
5. F-Zero X
6. Blast Corps
7. Cruis’n World
8. Turok 2 – Seeds of Evil
9. Waverace 64
10. Star Wars – Rogue Squadron
11. Star Wars – Episode 1 Racer
12. V-Rally 64
13. F1 Pole Position 64
14. International Superstar Soccer 64
15. NBA Courtside
16. Wayne Gretzky’s 3D Hockey

Eigentlich nicht schlecht wenn ich mir mal die Situation vor einem halben Jahr ansehe.

Sobre o personagem: Turok – Son of Stone é um desenho animado baseado num personagem de quadrinhos publicado na década de 1950 pela Dell Comics e Gold Key Comics.

Publicado pela primeira vez em Four Color Comics #596 (com roteiro de Gaylord Du Bois e arte de Rex Mason), de 1954, o personagem foi atualizado na década de 1990, quando a extinta Valiant comprou os direitos e lançou a série Turok – Dinosaur Hunter.

No Brasil, o personagem foi publicado pela Ebal.

Sinopse: Turok viaja para a Terra Perdida, uma espécie de “Vale dos Dinossauros”, em busca de vingança contra Chichak.
O desenho animado, produzido direto para DVD, tem 70 minutos e foi criado pela Genius Products e Classic Media, com produção de Tad Stones, o mesmo dos desenhos de Hellboy e que já trabalhou na Disney.

Formato: rmvb
Áudio: Inglês
Legendas: Português/BR
Duração: 1:13
Tamanho: 238 MB
Divididos em 03 Partes
Servidor: Rapidshare (aqui, aqui e aqui)

Fonte: ClickGratis