Blogs - Whizzard

So what was I up to in the meanwhile?

"*beep* Left leg injured.... * beep* Left leg injured..." The calm, soothing female voice declares every half minutes. Like the HEV suit in Half-life, really. Bravo squad had cleared the first floor of the two floor building we were going to take under our control but the enemy was clearly still on the roof. The staircase was treacherous place, we could see the sunlight shining onto the wall from the hatch above and occasionally a shadow moved from over there. They were clearly ready to shoot anyone who comes up. Never the less, unit chief was personally there giving orders. He patted on my shoulder and gave me the order to move up and cover the hole in the ceiling. I moved up keeping my G3 rifle (that thing is long, never meant for battles inside buildings) pointed at the damned square of blue sky.

I got into position and the rest of Charlie squad was sent up to clear the second floor when suddenly an enemy reared it's ugly head to rain down hell on our guys. "CONTACT!" I shouted at the top of my lungs and opened a hail of fire upon the grinning face of the enemy. Things didn't go well. Not good at all. You see, the detectors on head of the laser tag harness (which is the one speaking in soothing female voice) rarely works well and this was no exception. No matter how many shots I fired at the enemy, it had no effect on his face. He returned fire upon us and I heard a clear "*BEEEEEEEP!* You've been terminated." from a comrade on my right. I tried to fire at the opponent again, uselessly once again and he fired upon me. And then I heard the terryifing beep. This time shorter: "*BEEP!* Left leg injured. *BEEP* Weapon disabled." The female voice declared. My left leg was busted and my weapon destroyed, but I had survived. The enemy retreated as guys threw a couple of grenades on the roof, the unit commander himself grabbed me and dragged me down the stairs.

"You okay?" He shouted in my face. I assured him that it was nothing serious, just my leg and gun were busted. He gave me the dead guy's rifle and put me to cover the first floor corridor and took the rest of the Charlie squad to the second floor.

"*beep* Left leg injured.... * beep* Left leg injured..." The calm, soothing female voice declares every half minutes.
There I was, with a new rifle and unable to walk. I observed how Bravo squad cleared out the rooms when suddenly a loud boom cracked in the room at the end of the corridor: couple of guys had stepped on a well hidden mine . Both had died and there was nothing to be done. Bravo squad leader spotted another bobby trap in the middle of corridor - lucky no one stepped on it - and then that was it, the building had been cleared and everyone moved to the next building to clear. I lied down there, just me, the HEV voice, the corridor and couple of guys on the second floor, keeping enemy from retaking the building. And the mouse.

Battle was raging at the next building, which was connected to our own building by the skybridge when suddenly a tiny mouse popped it's tiny head from a hole not even a meter away from me. It looked around, looked at me and then climbed out to eat it's lunch, whatever it was. For 5 minutes, I just stared at the mouse while the mouse ate. It was magical. Until mouse finished it's lunch and left back through the hole. The rest of time I spent listening through the radio how the battle was going - our guys had used the skybridge to get into the other building which was about thrice the size of mine and had managed to clear the top floors while the rest of guys tried to take it from lower floors. The enemies were clever though and managed to kill everyone in Charlie squad - MY squad - except for our giant machine gunner, over 2 meter tall mountain of big bones and muscle who was practically keeping the enemy at bay all by himself.

Eventually the building was cleared and we received orders to catch up with rest. I limped over to them and found out that the enemy had holed up on other side of the road and we were preparing to flank them when I suddenly heard: "*BEEEEEEEP!* You've been terminated." Fuck.

As it turns out: my "leg injury" was left untreated for too long so I "bled out". Medic! Why u no be there when needed?

So, what the hell am I talking about?

Well, in the country I live we have mandatory military service. You have to serve either 8 months in infantry or 11 months in specialization, such as NCO course, sappers, navy, recon, sniper or like me: military police.

Military police was waaay more interesting than infantry. That's because 6 months were exactly the same as infantry. Infantry just spends last 2 months practicing unit maneuvers, we take those extra 2+3 months to learn military police stuff, such as: scouting and mapping the roads and enemy movements (yup, how do you know the high brass knows where the enemy is? Recon is too few and valuable to bother with such mundane observation. It's left for the MP to deal with. It also means finding ambushes. Usually by being ambushed. But we are good at getting out of them, so no biggie. But it practiaclly means being ambushed every day...), then there's arresting and searching people for illegal items (trust me, feeling up a man for the very first time is as embarassing as you can imagine), searching vehicles (even ships!) and rooms for same stuff (it's amazing what you can hide inside a room where there's just a closet and a bed), setting up check points (like in Iraq), and the fun stuff: like self defense (Ju-jitsu! With rifles!) and VIP escort (the best).

Who's the unluckiest guy in VIP escort? VIP! When someone starts shooting at you, chance of getting shot may be the biggest problem but it's not the only one! First of all, your escort will throw you on the ground. Then he'll drag you back up and forces you to run while being as low as possible. Try it! Bend forward, bend your knees and try to run as fast as possible. You can't see where you are going and you feel like you are going to either trip and hit the ground face first or you are going to run into something head first. Finally you are thrown into a car and not comfortably: you got to keep as low as possible people are going to jump on you to cover you!

As for the battle I described it was part of the urban battle exercise.

So, next blog post 3 years from now!

Ahh, it was a refreshing morning walk.
A dog barked at me violently/playfully. He had no leash and there was no fence between me and him/her but he was a smart one and knows his job description, thus he just barked at me and didn't in fact get off his owners land as he knew what he had to protect and no more. Good doggie.

I proceeded with my walk, heading into the countryside. Then as I was strolling down the road, not 100 meters in front of me a pair of deer crossed the road. Magic.

The sun came out and the weather was perfect, it was truly glorious morning. And then as I strolled down the forest road and passed by another farm, another dog, not so smart this time, came storming at me, with lots of barking and stuff, it was a big dog, angry dog!

I immediately stopped as the dog came up to me all agressive and furious and started circling me. My body, boosted by adrenaline told me: "Run!". But the knowledge that's often reminded to us that tells us not to run, no matter what, was deeply embed in my mind. As I am all mind over body, I stood still and and made myself look bigger as one must look non threatening to the angry beast but also a non-pushover who isn't worth the fight the beast is asking for.

And as the beast barked at me and looked like it's ready to charge, I started walking away from the beast. The beast made a few sudden movements, showing me that it's ready to leap forward as soon as I start running and I saw that and kept on walking away. The beast didn't follow and I got away unscathed, heart beating blood in my body, my muscles felt like they are ready for run or fight but my mind told the body to do neither and was truly right.

But then I was assaulted by a garbage truck. Racing down the forest road at incredible speeds of 300 miles per hour (exaggerated but it was seriously fast) . It raced through the teeny tiny puddle right next to me and showered me with dirt. Truly, the driver was fit for the machine. His driving is pure garbage.

I was furious!

The rest of the stroll wasn't that eventful.

True story, bro. I just returned from it.

Pictures are illustrative and from Google search.

Hello everyone, it's time for my yearly blog post. *cough* *cough*

I regret to inform you that from 2 and half months from now, my life will come to an end. Wait, don't get sad, don't get confused, I'm not going to die. It's just the end of one period of my life. I'm going to finish the vocational school and get my papers as web specialist. That moment marks a drastic change in my life which so far has consisted of going to school to learn stuff.

From that moment I'm supposed to do what everyone expects a youngster who's path of education has come to an end to do. I'm supposed to do something with my life. Since I haven't planned on continuing my so far 15 years of education in university, everyone expects me to find a job. That's what they expect me to do, that's what society expects me to do, that's also what I expect of myself. I feel unhappy about it. My life so far has been a peach. I have so much that it would make half the world jealous of me, my life so far has been a happy one, when I think about it, hell some people dream of the life that is mine. It's secure, it's calm, I have people who care about me, love me, help me. A happy life that I'm unhappy about.

Why oh why am I unhappy about it? Because this life can not continue, in two and half months it's going to end. yet, I'm not unhappy about that. To be honest, 21 years of this life is enough, it's about time a large change came into my life. But the change is not going to be something that I like. I'm going to get myself a job and then... do that every day, earn my pay, pay taxes. Not cool, not for me. It's a trap, it's a endless circle of routine. Changes in that life are going to be slow. I feel like... I'm going to waste my life away.

As unhappy as I am about that, it's what I'm expected to do by everyone. Even by myself, I expect myself to do it, because there hardly is any alternative. Like so many young people these days, my life lacks a Goal, a Reason, a Dream. I can't find Motivation, a reason to do something, anything. All I can do is just what is expected. For now, I'm going to do it and keep an eye out to see if I can change it, break free from it. At least my job could be what I like to do. But that doesn't make me feel any happier.

Oh, but if I have any strong points, it's that I can find satisfaction in small things. But over time those small things, exactly because they are small, can get me frustrated... I'm afraid of unchanging typical life, full of small things, small changes.

Oh god, what have they done to Battlefield!?!?

It doesn't resemble Battlefield at all! It's, it's something horribly confusing... it's... it's... well, it's magnificent. New squad system, new class system, completely destructive world, it doesn't take a pile of bullets to down someone (unless they have unlocked kevlar vest) and the noise, oh god the noise. You can't get a moment of silence in Bad Company 2, it's like someone set off a bomb in gas station. And someone probably did. Bullets fly past your head, someone hammers enemies down with a machine gun next to your ear, extinguishable bangs of sniper rifles tear the air apart, tanks roll with thunder and nearby explosions cause Whoomp! sound in your ears followed by moments of silence and then everything comes back with a small hint of ringing. And world is alive again.

RPGs and tank shells tear holes into walls, you can then peek out of the new window and return fire upon advancing squad, your best buddy, medic, cuts trees and bushes with machine gun, after 5 minutes of intense battle over a position, the land that was filled with vegetation of all sorts is now barren, torn up and scorched. Explosion leave craters that you can use as new cover, tanks can drive through buildings, and plates of armor fall off them when anti tank rockets and missiles hit em. Small remote recon copters can cause headache to snipers who look like bushes and my friend once complained about hiding into a bush but the unhappy bush stabbed him instead of covering him. And gunships are even worse headache because engineers who come equipped with silenced smgs and RPGs can't unlock guided missiles for quite some time. Their universal repairing drill can drill holes into walls and they can switch their RPGs with anti-tank mines.

Scouts come equipped with sniper rifle, pistol, packs of C4 and motion sensors they can drop into bushes and that reveal close-by enemies to all allies. Scouts can also get a small radio in stead of C4 or even a laser for launching and guiding missiles. And in additions they are disguised as grass or bushes and with such beautiful graphics he can really fool you when he hides among real bushes. Assault class comes with assault rifle with nade launcher attachement and an ammo pack. Medic comes with machine gun bandages and that classical reviving... stuff. Plus they wear red barrets looking like some special forces.

And they all have universal weapons you can unlock like few assault rifles, shotguns and smgs. Of course they'd have to switch out their main weapon to wield them but this allows for example an recon to do some reconnaissance behind enemy lines pretending to be a bush and blasting those away who fare too close.
Plus the melee has quick button, where instead of always wielding a knife you just immediately stab and one shot anyone. Well exept those wearing a body armor, those you have to stab twice or shoot a bit first. You can clear out a room in mere seconds with a knife.

I really love what they have done to Battlefield, new graphics engine, piles of new physics and even gameplay is much better than before. Can't wait for the real deal to come out as demo is practically just multiplayer demo featuring new gamemode introduced into Battlefield series called Rush where instead of huge map with several points to capture one team is on defence and other on offence. The map is still huge but it's quite narrow but wide enough for gunship to move freely and it's really really long. But you can't go anywhere, battle starts with small area and offencive team has to destroy defencive team's tactical points after which defencive team has to fall into new defencive positions defending a new front while the offencive team ofcourse advances.

Beta features only one map and one gamemode. But it also feature all the unlockable weapons (even though best weapons require millions and hundreds of millions points to unlock which seems impossible and seems Dice doesn't want to have beta testers get all the goodies), gadgets and gears. You gain rank unlocking new stuff and each class has it's own stuff but there's also the overall rank which unlocks universal stuff like layzor sights and other usefull stuff like universal weapons I mentioned before.

Oh and why did I say it's horribly confusing at the start? Well it takes about an hour to get what's going on with all those explosions, falling trees, noise and bullets flying around. But once you get the hang of it, it's piles of awesome.

First movie I watched in 2010 was a horror movie. it was awesome. You know those Japanese horror movies where there's always a girl with long hair and pale skin as the ghost who kills all, crawls on walls and ceilings and shiet? We'll that was exactly it but better. The ghost did cool stuff like killing people in front of other people with everyone witnessing it (even though ghost was only visible through mirrors or cameras) like in TV show where a guy was trying to excorcise the ghost and ghost blew him through the air, crawled around the corner on a wall and then possessed her target and made her twist her own head off.

And in the end the last girl designated to die went to an abandoned hospital, because clues led her there... yeah, abandoned creepy hospital is always a wise choice where to go when you try to escape the ghost but the specific date and time when she was going to die was set so she chose to go to the ghosts lair. And boy some hilarious shit happened there. Like the ghost walking on ceiling for no apparent reason, twisting her own fingers in impossible angles without using external help and when the girl stopped running and cowered in fear in the corner the ghost started to slide jars with dead infants through the doors, really slowly and really many. And secretly without girl noticing the ghost slipped the last one right between the girls arms, now that was funny. XD

And then the Girl and the Hero found the corpse of the woman they thought was causing all those deaths (well afterall she had a cellphone in her hand and everyone died after recieving a SMS with date and time from her and shiet). And then they thought it was over... but then the corpse got up and started to beat up the Girl. A zombie, can you believe it? Rotting flesh (some of it even falling off, awesome!), slow limping and hands stretched out when near her target! A real zombie in a ghost movie. The hero did most obvious choice when facing a ghost: he grabbed the fire axe and struck the zombie in the chest, yeah, I know, against a zombie that doesn't work so well, he should have aimed for the neck. Anyhow after recovering from disappointment of not killing the zombie, the hero tried to run off with the Girl, but zombie blew em apart with telekinetic powers and went after the Girl. The zombie tried to strangle the Girl but the Girl killed the zombie with a hug and empty promises ("I'll stay with you here forever", she didn't of course).

And then they thought it was over... again. But the the hero found out they got the wrong ghost (oops) and went to save the Girl. But was too late... the Ghost had already possessed the Girl and stabbed the Hero when his guard was down. But the hero did impossible, he hacked the Ghost's memory and made the Ghost think he saved her life when she was dieing. And it worked.

Best creepy-girl-ghost-killing-people-after-phone-calls/messages/videotapes/etc movie ever!

Hmm, a good review I'd say.

I've finally got to play Prototype and i have to say it is an excellent game. Unlike many games of the same style it's gameplay doesnt get repetive fast like in Assassins Creed. And story ain't that bad. In fact i think it's story got a lot of inspiration from Biomega manga by Tsutomu Nihei and some Alex abilities might in fact be inspired by Abara manga also by Tsutomu Nihei.

In Biomega's story a governement corporation goes rogue and releases a dangerous funguae onto Earth where it starts to grow in living organism and turns them into various kinds of zombies and there is basically one guy, an artificial human to try to stop the end of the evil plans. To do this, the other industrial corporation which made him gives him an order to find Ion Greene a little girl (sounds familiar? in Prototype one of your main enemies is a girl named Elizabeth Greene) who seems to be immune to the fungus but turns out to be the second creature created by the evil corporation but who has only ability to neutralise the growing fungus. (in Prototype Elizabeth itself the evil virus turning people into monsters [but in Biomega there is another girl, Ions sister with an odd name Reload who is the origin of the fungus, but she only appears in flashbacks from 500 years past]). In middle of Biomega all humans but few are turned into the monsters and soon after Earth is destroyed and humanity becomes almost extinct. Quite similar in Prototype but the outbreak is only in Manhattan.

As i said some Alex powers are inspired from Abara like (possibly) bone armor, razor fingers and sword hand. In Abara main character can grow anything out of his own bone like armor and swords and spine whip.

I found that now i have too much time in my hand and so far i haven't really used it for anything. it's always like that, you enjoy such freedom for a shortwhile but then you get bored and start using that for something else... like writing a blog entry, for which you were too lazy before but now found that at the moment there is not much else to do.

Besides that, around January I wanted to write about few games I played lately... well I didn't and so much time has passed, so I never will, at least that's how I decided.

Now I have other things to worry about since next month my final exams results will roll in and high school graduation will be held. The thing though is that maths exam I chose to do this time around was too hard for even math teachers who decided try it along with us. The exam was in two parts, with the first part being the "easy" one. Well, excercises in it were actually just under "too hard to complete" and super long and we had only 2 hours to finish the first part. I made the easiest excericise first and when i checked how much time it had taken me I was shocked because the easiest and shortest excercise had taken me 40 minutes to complete. And we had to do 5 of these... so... yeah, i worked as fast as I could, made silly mistakes which i had to to correct or some of which i decided i didnt have enough time to correct, so rest of excercises were only half done.
Even our best student managed to do only 4.

So there was a little break between first and second part and during that time we were discussing about that if the first "easy" part had been so hard, then what is the second part with HARD excercises going to be? Well we soon found out. The second part consists of 3 very hard excercises and we had 2 and half hours to finish it. It was horrible. I spent whole first hour blankly staring at the excercises until I finally managed to make two of them halfly, third one was too hard to try.

So, everyone are expecting low results and since univerities here accept under the basis on final exams, we think we are pretty screwed unless they decide to lower the scores needed this year.

Everyone seemed to agree that the guys who chose the excercises for math's final chose the excercises that even they couldn't complete just to see if anyone can finish those.

"...I know an hour when
time takes the shape of a human,
that restless creature
with soft skin
touches your soul."

I found it interesting, so i decided to share it with you

300 characters 300 characters 300 personalities 300 characters 300 SPARTANS!!! still not 300 dammit is it 300 now? yes it is, oh wait it isn't lets try now

List of Things I'd Love to Do In Next 5 Years

Not necessarily in the order of importance.

1. Learn how to play guitar... properly (I do have proper working electric guitar :P)
2. Learn to dance - seriously, right now moving myself in rythm of music only involves head
3. Learn a computer coding language
4. Practice drawing until it's good enough for me
5. Practice 3D modelling until it's good enough for me
6. Eurotrip - I live in probably the coolest area in the world and I have been only in a small part of it
7. Mod a game - well shouldn't be too hard to accomplish... just not yet.

There you have it. As you see none of these are impossible to do. All it takes is a matter of will and time. I've got no time though.

Now I figured since I'm into games anyways and at least active in forums at ModDB but don't do anything mod related myself (bit of a lie there, I actually do something really really small from time to time) I figured I should write smalls reviews on what I play lately be it mods or games. I think I start with 3 games and one mod I have played lately: Prince of Persia 08, Dead Space, Tomb Raider Underworld and Smashball.

I start with Prince of Persia 08 and I think I'll be brief.

Prince of Persia (2008)

Starting with showing off the cocky attitude of a new prince it actually takes longer to plunge you straight into action of running on walls and slaying horde of enemies (main reason you never fight a horde but one bad guy at a time). The story starts with nicely long introduction/tutorial part which is nicely melded with the rest of the story. A guy is lost in the sandstorm in middle of a desert and looking for his donkey, falls into a crack in earth. A girl chased by some anonymous guards who all look the same but sound different from each other (each guard had its own voice actor) plunges right into the arms of our protagonist. After a short chase scene where a guy runs after a girl (hey, it's probably same in every universe :D) and you learn how to wallrun correctly prince discovers that the girl has magical powers and is de facto a princess. And wears a name Elika. Also she has a papa who cuts a hole into the dimenions and releases a dark god who was trapped in a tree.

That god, called Ahriman, takes awfully lot of time to get out, so Elika decides she goes to stop the god from escaping and our prince who never says he's a prince nor mentions his name decides to help her. Starting with bitching about how rich he would be if he only could find his donkey and talking about carpets THIS thick prince shows his true nature: a joker. And that makes the game fun to play since he has a joke for every occasion. About gameplay: wallrunning is still mostly the same only you can now do impossibly long wallruns and all this climbing is much easier than in previous versions. And Elika is always there to save you whether you fall down if actually manage to fail at climbing or when some bad guy is about to cut you a bit shorter. Yes that's right, you cannot lose in this game. While it makes game extremely easy it also makes it more smooth to play, you never have to load the game again after deaths.

I really enjoyed the new Prince of Persia, I never got bored with it. And the ending was suprising and damn good but also made me bit sad because now I have to wait for another PoP to see what happens next. I just hope it won't be trilogy again, it get's boring over time.

So that's it, I really didn't know what I was going to say about it but at least I got it out. Also did you notice that I said "I'll be brief"? Looks like I wasn't brief... well in the spirit of that I say next review comes briefly. So don't expect it in a while.

Also about my last blog entry. I've almost gotten my driving license. I failed at the final driving exam but I feel quite positive about the next try which is next week. Wish me luck.

EDIT: Ooh, I see reviews tab up there where i can post reviews... oh the hell with that I won't publish these too publically. <- that word is red so I wrote it wrong somehow. Oh well, if I write my thoughts about Smashball I also will post it into Reviews.