I spent the last few days with my girl­friend and my fam­ily. As usual, we went to the coun­try­side where my par­ents live and I am of two minds about it. No ques­tion, I like it there. It’s where I was born and it’s a lovely enough place, still not near as crowded like the cities. Even taken all the vaca­tion­ists into con­sid­er­a­tion it’s more than silent if you know where to go. And what’s more calm­ing than sit­ting high on the moun­tain on a bright, sunny day, look­ing down into the peace­ful val­ley while expe­ri­enc­ing moments of absolute still­ness and utter calm­ness? In con­trast to the big city life, every­thing is silent and beau­ti­ful and radi­ates a whole­ness few have ever expe­ri­enced. I really like it there. Next time I’ll make some pic­tures for your view­ing plea­sure, I promise.

On the other hand, there’s this old-fashioned style I can’t quite come to terms with. You know, no broad­band inter­net, no big plasma TV, no inter­est­ing dis­cus­sions, no ade­quate pub­lic means of trans­porta­tion, and the like. Of course, it’s small vil­lage where the rural pop­u­la­tion just don’t much care about out­siders. There are so many things that seem under­de­vel­oped to the untrained eyes. I know that there’s much more going on, I know all there is to know about the local under­cur­rents. Often enough I can for­get about all these “short­com­ings” because there’s a qual­ity to the peo­ple there most town­ers have lost ages ago. Any­way, I still miss some of the things men­tioned above …

I absolutely had to post this one. The results are creepy. I even fear myself now. Just kid­ding. Such tests can be indica­tive but gen­er­ally they aren’t that pre­cise. Any­way, I felt you may wanna know what’s wrong with me . By the way; yes, some­times I tend to be paranoid.

Have you ever had headache? Remem­ber the last time? In fact, I do quite well. When I was 14 years old, I often had bru­tal headaches and there was no cure. The pain was right behind my eyes and no med­ica­tion ever helped to get rid of the pain. Actu­ally, I didn’t get all the meds on pre­scrip­tion because no doc­tor could ever do an analy­sis pro­found enough to jus­tify pump­ing me full with drugs. So I tried every­thing I could get my hands on but, as I feared, noth­ing ever worked. I made a fright­en­ing sight with my blood-shot, almost com­pletely red eyes. The headaches got more and more sel­dom after some months and when I turned fif­teen noth­ing but mem­o­ries remained.

Now, they’re back with a vengeance. The pain isn’t exactly the same – it’s more of a stab­bing kind now – and the cen­ter of it has slightly shifted half an inch above my eyes. Nonethe­less, the pain has at least dou­bled. It’s an excru­ci­at­ing expe­ri­ence because still no med­ica­tion works. If things aren’t going to get bet­ter within the next few weeks I should have myself checked by a spe­cial­ist, I sup­pose. I won­der if there’s any­thing at all that can be done about it. I’m a really peace­ful guy but I’d kill to get rid of these headaches. Many times. Just to make you see how des­per­ate I am.

The guys over at Evil Avatar have inter­viewed Ken Levine, Man­ag­ing Direc­tor at Irra­tional Games, and asked him some really inter­est­ing ques­tions. Yeah, they even talked about Thief, one of the best games that ever was. How­ever, the first part isn’t all that much about BioShock but you’ll get some inter­est­ing back­ground infor­ma­tion on Thief and Shock 2. Part 2 is more about the new game, so head there if it’s of inter­est to you.

Jonathan: Is clearly defined choices not dumb­ing down? That the out­come is of the cardboard-cut-out vari­ety, and that they’re predictable?

Ken: No. It’s mak­ing sure the player doesn’t fall out of the bot­tom of the game.

Hasn’t there even been a game you really wanted to get into but didn’t have the time and energy to under­stand it? I’ve had that expe­ri­ence with some hard core strat­egy games – Europa Uni­ver­salis, Domin­ions 2, etc. All I really wanted was a buddy to sit behind me and help me learn how to play it and when I got stuck to point me in the right direction.

While BioShock is cer­tainly noth­ing like those 2 games, the metaphor holds. Yes BioShock inno­vates in ways you won’t find in a tra­di­tional lin­ear shooter, but we’ve devel­oped a sys­tem called dynamic train­ing that sits back and watches the player. And if the player gets lost, or clearly is not get­ting the game sys­tems (for exam­ple, dif­fer­ent ammo types vs. dif­fer­ent foes), the sys­tem will speak up and lend the player a hand, point him or her in the right direction.

But it’s also how you design your mis­sions, how you moti­vate the player.

I absolutely love the direc­tion these peo­ple are tak­ing with the game. Even if it again is a first per­son shooter, there are some points that are very sat­is­fy­ing. Player-driven gam­ing, user-choice, non-linear nar­ra­tive. These are just some mech­a­nisms to immerse the player into the game. More infor­ma­tion on that topic, such as inter­ac­tive sto­ry­telling or emo­tion­ally engag­ing game audio, is avail­able on the net. I’m so excited!

That is, in fact, the absolute truth if you’re straight. Now, there are these Dan­ish peo­ple design­ing men’s under­wear. They’re employ­ing that fact and they’re doing it very well. Check out their web­site here. Wanna watch the ad? Enjoy it.

I abso­fuck­a­lutely hate his movies. They’re all crap, com­plete and utter bull­shit. Up to date, every sin­gle one of his video game to film adap­ta­tions really sucks. Remem­ber House of the Dead? It’s been so bad, I could hardly bear watch­ing it. What about Alone in the Dark? I really liked to play this game but Boll’s movie adap­ta­tion sim­ply sucks. Then there’s Blood­Rayne. Hell, the best part is where Kris­tanna Loken let’s you see her breasts for some time. All these movies fea­ture wooden act­ing, poor pro­duc­tion, inco­her­ent scripts, stu­pid dia­logues and crap loads of gam­ing gore. All you ever get to see is one stereo­type after the other.

Now, there’s yet another movie set to come to the­aters next year: In the Name of the King: A Dun­geon Siege Tale. I already said that I like this game, didn’t I? No? Well, I do. I truly – and very jus­ti­fi­able so – fear that he’ll screw this one up as well. Accord­ing to this inter­view over at DameDaily I may be wrong. John con­cludes – after hav­ing seen a rough cut of the film – that this movie is by far the best film Boll has ever done. Addi­tion­ally, the the­atri­cal ver­sion has received pos­i­tive reviews from both jour­nal­ists and Hol­ly­wood execs. I dunno yet so I’ve gotta wait. Tell you what, I still can’t stand him.

He’s going to fuck with Far­Cry, one of the best games I’ve ever played. Damn, there are still game devel­op­ers sell­ing film rights to Boll. Is it bet­ter to have a bad film than no film at all? I seri­ously doubt it. Hope­fully, Ubisoft inter­venes often enough to stop Boll from killing this fran­chise off. There’ll be sequels to Blood­Rayne and Alone in the Dark too. Devel­op­ers have to stop sell­ing film rights to him before it’s too late …