Turning Point: Fall of Liberty

Well, I just started playing this and I don't really like it for one big reason. There is no "health bar." Pretty much every video game ever made has some sort of status to tell you how close to death you are. In this game they do it very differently...

They say when you take damage it affects your vision. This is presented to you by the screen turning black and white and getting blurry, which is increased the more damage you take. There are no "health packs" of any kind you can use. The only thing you can do is run away and hide behind something and your health will regenerate. How quickly? Who can tell? Again, there is no health bar, and there is no first aid.

So far I'm stuck on one objective fairly early in the game. Hundreds of Nazi's come at you from APCs and Blimps. You have to man a fixed 50 caliber machine gun to fend them off, BUT, it does not have freedom of movement for the whole viewable area. And the Nazi's will sneak up in the areas you can't shoot and start wailing on you. Then you have to disengage from the machine gun and try to kill them with your equipped weapon. Oh, and while you are doing that, more Nazis descend from Blimps and start shooting at you, so you have to get BACK on the machine gun and try to kill them all, but then the same thing happens again and you have to detach... Exactly :( I've tried this like 4 times now and keep dying because I just can't find a balance between keeping the Nazis at bay, so they don't overrun your position, and running off and healing. I'm only playing on Normal difficulty!

I've read some reviews and some things people have said on various forums and nobody else seems to like it much either. Like I said, the big thing is no health bar. Then there are little things like, how come some objects you can pick up and some you can't, and why doesn't it show you how many grenades you have? Oh well...

I'll try and play it a few more times before I give up and uninstall it. Might post about it later...

Bioshock

Well, I just finished this game, and it was pretty cool, so I recommend it to anyone with a good enough PC to play it. Sadly I'm not one of those people... LOL! :)

The game only supports Shader3 cards, so that left my old RADEON 9600 out. Luckily for me, there were a lot of the people in the same boat, so someone came up with a fix for the Shader2 cards. You can read about it here: Shader Shock Project
It works like a charm!

The only downside is that I was not able to experience the full beauty of the game and all the water effects throughout. I wish it looked like the screen shots you can loot at on any gaming site, but at times it looked like I was playing an old-school game. Also, it would only run quick for me at 800x600 at Medium resolution, so that further dithered it down :(

It was still a fun game to play, and I found a good Walkthrough for the game by Brokaliv which you can find here: Brokaliv's Bioshock Walkthrough

One thing I did not see mentioned ANYWHERE is how to get a helper for yourself on the levels! Yes, there is the whole Hacking the Security Bots (2 at a time max), but they are VERY annoying and tend to get killed off quickly :( Eventually I just stopped using them. But later I discovered something on accident that I used for the rest of the game! :)

If you have already harvested/rescued all the Little Sisters from a zone, you will still see Big Daddies walking around. If you hit one of these solo Big Daddies with the "Hypnotize Big Daddy" plasmid, he will suddenly turn Green in the face and follow you around as your own massive personal bodyguard, killing anything that you attack or attacks you! The only thing you have to watch is accidentally shooting or causing AOE damage to the BD, because he will immediately turn on you and you can't make him friendly again with the plasmid :( If that happens, just go find another! :)

It's always nice to have extra firepower alongside yourself in those multi-splicer attacks :)

All in all, a great game (which I guess is why it won all those awards), and when I build my new computer I will probably play again to get the full effect.

This is NOT the last post!

Well, this was going to be the last post. Then I changed my mind and decided I wanted to keep making posts. A LOT has happened since the last post here, and yes it was in 2005. A lot of bad things and a few good things have happened since then, and there is no way to "catch up" on the past couple of years...

That is because I really don't remember the last 2 years :(

You see, I have Bipolar Disorder, and about 2 years ago I went to see a new Psychiatrist who put me on some new medications. What I didn't realize at the time was that I was taking TOO MUCH medication. To put this in perspective, the dosage of this particular medication they give to the most psychotic inmates in prison is less than HALF what I was taking DAILY. On a recent episode of ER they administered ONE EIGHTH what I was taking to a psychotic patient and he instantly fell asleep! I really laughed out loud at that... All this time he NEVER said anything about lowering the dosage

So basically, for the past 2 years, all I have been doing is sleeping and laying on the couch and watching TV. Oh sure, there were some days where I did manage to get myself cleaned up (after a week or so of no showers...) and go somewhere. And for about 6 months I actually held a job, until I had a relapse of my former health problem, but I honestly can't really recall anything specific I did the past couple of years except a few things that happened when I was working.

I put my family through so much stress. My wife suffers from a disabling medical condition and I was certainly no help for her. In fact, I don't know how she even stuck with me through all this. I know now that it is just testimony of how wonderful of a person she is, and just how much she loves me. It took something very bad to get me evaluated by another doctor who IMMEDIATELY changed the dosage of my medication.

It was a very odd transition, to say the least. I began to actually have feelings and emotions. Sometimes they manifested themselves at odd times or for no apparent reason. This went on for a couple of months, and I was even able to stop taking a couple of medications completely! I started looking for a job in earnest and found a good one, only to have the company go out of business on not even 3 months into it :( Didn't even qualify for unemployment :( I was very depressed, but determined to go on and became almost relentless in my pursuit of a good career where I could provide for my family.

I was strictly focusing on nonprofit agencies or companies that did something that contributed to the greater good of the world. As strange as that may sound, that is what I have always wanted to do. and there are a LOT of those jobs out there, since many people don't want them because they pay about half what you can get in the private sector. That's a shame :( So I met with people, I networked, I went to meetings and seminars, I always had resumes with me, just in case. I faxed, I emailed, I called, I prayed, and I interviewed dozens of times and always followed up with a letter or a call. I enlisted the help of friends, family, ex co-workers; pretty much anybody I ran into. Then I got lucky and landed a great career, with fantastic benefits, and am now happier than I have been in years. We all are! :)

So, all in all there are two morals to this story. The first is to ALWAYS get a second opinion when dealing with a medical issue! Don't think that old saying applies only to things like surgery. The second is to be persistent in whatever you are doing and it will pay off!

And I guess the third lesson learned is that one should never underestimate the love and support friends and family can provide, even when it seems like there is no light at the end of the tunnel. I am truly blessed by God to have a wonderful wife, fantastic family and amazingly supportive friends all over the world. I thought for a while that there was no way I could put my thanks into words, but then I changed my minds and did that very thing. Put it into words. It was the least I could do :)