All Kinda Classics

 Those are clearly classics. I was dumb and didn't take any pictures. Here's a picture of an obvious classic: Apparently Azteks have been cool for the last 5 years or so. I always thought they were cool. The SAFETY YELLOW is the canonical color. I went out tonight and saw one!

 I was looking at a game last night, and they had done some of the art with AI. It wasn't very good, but at one point there was some brainwashing/flashback memory/spot-the-difference bullshit. I thought maybe they'd used the glitches in the AI images as the spot-the-difference points. They did not. 

  College of Ben Franklin Heraldry at Yale

I will be an insufferable Harvard fanboy, since that's what the blog is based on. (Not really it's gonna be really freaking cool.)

 Nightdive generally does a pretty nice job with their re-releases. You get the usual concept art, but they often grab stuff like deleted levels, demos, etc. and include them. Quake 2  comes with two such demos. Neither is worth a real post (they're levels from the game with less stuff, yay!) but a couple general observations: 1. The decision (or at least the work) to make every everything as dark as possible was apparently made pretty late in? A lot of these levels are actually visible, which is a cool change. It's fun to look at vintage screenshots and see how everyone yanked the brightness/contrast up (and made everything washed out) to compensate. And the visible levels were there all along. To be fair, a few are actually even darker than in release. 2. The levels work a lot better as a continuous set. There's some debate on pistol start vs full run in Doom , but Quake 2 's interconnectedness is critical. These just felt like weird speed runs (some were very skippa...

 Unlike  The Reckoning  we did have  Ground Zero  when I was a kid. Looking back, I think a fair number of my  Quake 2  annoyances were mostly from it. This is a very traditional expansions, bigger, harder, slightly more technically developed than the base game. Rogue software's stuff is kind of hit and miss, but I don't think they have anything actually bad. They worked closely with id (literally closely, same building), and I'll be looking at more of there stuff as this series of posts continues. Big picture, this is a decent expansion. They looked at Quake 2  found some areas that were lacking and polished them, moved the difficulty up in a mostly appropriate way, and put together a couple cute set pieces. The overall design doesn't quite align as nicely as  Quake 2  did, but it's better than  Reckoning, Evilution , etc. I will note that the remaster team made some substantial changes to this. I think they mostly got it right, an...

 I dunno, was gonna do some more DQ  today, but this felt more timely. I don't think I've ever actually sat and watched a whole futbol game before, so semi-live-blog here we go! I like the way they do the national anthems. They actually sing along, instead of just awkwardly standing there while someone hopefully doesn't butcher it like they do in most US sports. Watching it in the lounge at the campground we go to in the summers. As always, it's very important to get into a pissing match about how much you like soccer. I don't know why, I just feel like this is common when I'm at a watch party. We're 2 minutes in, and the commentators have already gotten awkward. Oop, don't talk about refs. Oop, don't talk about war. 3:30 and the begging the ref for a penalty. This is a real professional sport. Don't ask questions. ~4:00 Spain's first shot on foal, almost immediately followed by a turnover for a second. Argentina gets possession and runs down...

 I beat Ground Zero  and it was better than Reckoning,  but not by much. Will get it an entry later. Quake 2 64  is also included in the collection, and was pleasantly surprising. It's a bit easy, but I did have to scramble for ammo once or twice on hard. It's short. I beat it in one afternoon/evening, and I didn't  no-life it (cooked dinner, did some stuff with my wife, etc.) You get the full Q2 arsenal. It really goes to show how pointless most of the xpack guns are. About 3/4 of the bestiary is there. The Medic is probably the most noticably omission. They aren't afraid to throw what they have at you. I think the first Tank is on level 3. It's nice to see them again after the Gladiator-fest that was GZ . The levels are smaller/simpler, but the AI handles them better as a result. Flyers can get in close, Gladiators don't get hung up on ramps, etc. Lighting is, dare I say, better (aesthetically at least) than in the original, and even with the low poly textures...

 Got approved for TSA Precheck and Global Entry today. Go travel. It's a classic thing. Like Herodotus.

 I've had a nice DSLR for years, but I don't use it nearly as much anymore due to not wanting to drag around so much stuff. I got a nice little durable pocket camera and took some shots this weekend. Went to the beach with some friends and even got a cool shell. Classic stuff: Go to the beach with people and enjoy the nature. Take pictures with a real camera.

 I tried to get into it probably half a dozen times over the years. 5 kind of clicked, but 3 never did. I think the problem is that I started with the random map mode. That's what I often do in turn based games. Pick a faction, pick the big map, build a big silly army, play it like an 8 year old. The campaigns are a lot better, though starting with the generic ass human faction doesn't help. Campaign two is demons and monsters, a big upgrade.

 The Reckoning is the first of the Quake 2 mission packs, dropping about 6 months after the original game. It adds: Enemies: 3 new guards. One with a crappy version of the Hyper Blaster, one with a laser (ugh, hitscan) and one with the new ion ripper. They kind of set the tone for the whole expansion. They're not substantially stronger than the original three guards, they're just annoying. The "Beta class" enemies. Brains (covered already), Iron Maidens (all of about a dozen of them, with homing missiles), Gladiators (with a shield and the shitty phalanx, thus making them weaker overall), and the Super Tank (same as before, but with a plasma shield).  And two actual new enemies. The Gekk, acid spitting xenomorph like things. They're pretty cool, and can climb walls and stuff, but get a little monotonous. Would've loved if they fought the Strogg, just to add some flavor. They seem to gib more easily than most enemies. And Repair Bots, which revive dead Strogg. ...

 I was going to do a post on the Reckoning, but I can't really talk about those monsters without talking about the base monsters, so here we go: The Guards:  Returning from Doom, the "light" (blaster-pistol), shotgun, and machine gun former humans. All have the same HP, putting them roughly in line w/ the pistol and shotty zombies from Doom, with no HP boost for the chaingunner. That goes to... The Enforcer:  Not much more dangerous than the guards, but with triple the health, so they can at least soak a couple shots. Sometimes works gun turrets, in a first for id. Gunner:  The Ogre (Q1) upgrade, with grenades and a machine gun. It's a good filler setup. Enough health to take two super shotty blasts. Most common enemy in the game.  Berserker:  A bit tougher, but limited to melee. Gained a jump attack in the remaster. Mostly just a bullet sponge that gets in your face to disrupt combat. Iron Maiden:  Rounds out the generic mid-tier trio. You'd think a r...