Rihards Unplugged

As you may have already heard, some Korean sites “leaked” information that Blizzard is going to announce StarCraft 2 on May 19th in the WWI(World Wide Invitation in South Korea). Furthermore these sites claim that StarCraft 2 will be entirely in 3D (not really shocking, considering that most games have been 3D for quite a while already) and that there will be a new race as well as a multitude of changes to the existing races.

Blizzard’s reply? This following lovely bit:

We do intend to announce a new product at the Worldwide Invitational next month in Korea, and we appreciate the enthusiasm and interest in getting an advance look at what that will be, but players will have to wait until May 19th to find out more. Also, we have a very strong connection with the characters and settings of StarCraft, and we do plan to revisit that universe at some point in the future, but we don’t have anything new to announce in that regard at present.

So what does it mean? Does it mean no StarCraft 2, or no StarCraft 2 until they announce it on the 19th May at WWI? But that’s not all, Blizzard have also posted details about new job openings, which are basically for a MMO production. So what now, a StarCraft MMO akin to that of World of Warcraft? If so, I certainly hope that it will be more than just “WoW with Guns”.

Or maybe it will be Diablo 3, a massive multi player hack and slash game, aimed more at adults. Of course, not that I think that World of Warcraft is aimed at children. Or do I?

Yes, only today did I see The Big Lebowski in its entirety for the first time. I had previously seen bits and pieces from it, but today I sat down and watched it properly from start to end, and I’m very happy that I did. After watching it, I started thinking while the credits rolled, what was this movie about.

And then it came to me, the movie is a big mostly plotless mess, but a very wonderful and funny mess. The movie begins with the introduction of Jeff Bridges character, The Dude. Yes, his character calls himself The Dude, as do all of his friends.

The Dude is a jobless drifter who spends most of his day doing nothing but smoking joints, and every now and then goes out to a bowling alley to meet his friends for some bowling. His friends are Walter (John Goodman) a gun crazy Polish Catholic turned Jew, and Donny (Steve Buscemi) a person who isn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box.

The “plot” begins with two thugs giving The Dude some beating because Lebowski’s wife owns their employer a lot of money and they have come to collect. Little do they know that The Dude, while being a Lebowski, isn’t the Lebowski that they are looking for. During the scuffle one of the thugs takes a piss on The Dude’s rug.

At first it doesn’t bother The Dude that much, yes he is irritated and annoyed by what the thugs did, but he only decides to do something about it after his friend Walter talks it into him. And that’s where the mess begins, The Dude goes to visit the real Big Lebowski to demand a refund for his rug, which is promptly denied, but the story doesn’t end here, far from it.

The Dude ends up working as the bag man responsible for handling the ransom of Big Lebowski’s wife. And this is where most of the humour comes from the movie. The sheer silliness, and to a big degree dumbness of The Dude and his friends really make for a lot of funny situations. After watching this, it’s really hard to imagine Jeff Bridges as anyone but The Dude, he really nails the role very well.

The Big Lebowski could be defined what a comedy should be like, great actors, loose plot, and more humour than five other comedy movies put together have. If you still haven’t seen this movie, just like I hadn’t a day ago, then I highly recommend that you watch it, it’s nothing short of brilliant.

I know that Startopia isn’t really that old, at least it certainly doesn’t look like it was released in 2001. But Mucky Foot did release the game in 2001, and I’ll say that it has aged very well over the years, certainly much better than most games. For Startopia still looks quite good.

For those of you who don’t know, Startopia is a simulation game wherein the player takes the role of an administrator on a space station. In the single player campaign the player is tasked with rebuilding and repairing the various space stations according to his/her employers wishes. One mission might have you build a strong and profitable trading port, and the next one, a correctional facility for rowdy aliens.

So far I’m up to mission five of the campaign and have been enjoying the game a lot. The graphics are still top notch, the humour is excellent, the talking AI which assists you on your missions has a very cool personality(sarcastic bastard!). The design of the buildings and rooms are good as are the varied missions.

As with all games, Startopia has its flaws as well. For one, I really dislike the main menu music, or for that matter most of the music used in the game as it gets very repetitive very quickly.

The other thing that annoys me somewhat is lack of miscellaneous information in the interface. For example it would be great to know the usage of a berth, be it percentage wise, or maybe even something that tells me how long the waiting times are if there are queues of aliens waiting to sleep in the berth. As it is right now, I have no real way of telling if the berth is too small or not, without carefully looking at its use all the time.

It’s a shame that Mucky Foot Productions (formed by ex-Bullfrog employees) has been out of business since 2003 already, otherwise I would have sent them a list of suggestions for Startopia 2, a game that I would definitely look forward to. But Startopia is already a great game that was really under appreciated and badly promoted by Eidos, I even hear that it’s quite hard to get a copy these days.

But if you see one kicking about in a bargain bit, or the oldie section, make sure to pick it up. It’s well worth whatever budget price they are asking for it these days.

Hot off the press, the first official picture from the upcoming Iron Man movie has been posted on the internet. I remember watching a lot of Iron Man cartoons back in the day when I was much younger, so I’m really looking forward to this movie. Hopefully it will be better than most other recent super hero movies.

I also love that they picked Robert Downey Jr. to play the Iron Man. Personally I think that one couldn’t find a more suited actor than Robert Downey Jr. for this role. Can’t say the same about the other actors that they picked, but we’ll find out when the movie comes out, which is sadly in 2008. So long still to go.