Blade Edge

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Track night – burning up the 1/4 mile

August 9th, 2008 · Personal

I’m sitting here in my chair smelling of rubber. That’s the smell that has permeated my very being after standing on the sidelines and watching dozens of cars tear up their tires as they drag down the 1/4 mile strip at Raceway Park in Englishtown, NJ. The track is about 30 minutes from my house, very easily accessible and every Wednesday and Friday nights are Track Nights. On Wednesdays though they don’t time you, and on Fridays you can pay $24 for three runs on the strip. Not too shabby if you ask me.


The Drag Strip

I went with my friend Andrew, who owns a Mazda 6, and his friend Devon, who also owns a Mazda 6. Both their cars are modified (Devon’s moreso than Andrew’s) above stock, whereas my 2003 350Z is baseline trim and completely stock. Not that I really cared, I still have 287hp backing me up and it will be nice to have a base reading of my stock performance when I finally start tweaking the engine on this car.

So we got to the racetrack about 15 minutes before the gates opened, in a torrential downpour thanks to a passing thunderstorm. Luckily the storm blew through in a matter of minutes and while they got started drying the track ASAP we sat in line to get through the gates and past the tech inspection – which was rather pointless for us, having street-legal cars. So about half an hour later we were parked in our lanes. Andrew was staging in Lane 1 while Devon and I were in Lane 2. There are 15 lanes total and lanes 1-7 were for time trials, lanes 11-12 were for 8.50s cars (yowzers!!), lanes 13-14 were for the Mean Street elimination competition, and lane 15 was for the bikes (awesome).


Keeping the engine cool

Right so, we chilled in our lanes for a good while, I’d say about another 30 mins or so – then all of the sudden it was “quick! to your cars!” and we all piled in and Lanes 1 & 2 both pulled out and around to the back of the stadium, where we entered into the main staging area. You would pick an open lane (left or right) and pull up to the first guy, who would check your helmet, lights and seatbelt – all on. Then he’d pass you up to the water pit, but as I’m in a street car I would just detour around it. Finally they would give you the thumbs up to proceed to the lights, where you nudge forward until the second double-amber light glows. A second later you’d get the 3-2-1 single amber lights and then GREEN!!! GO GO GO!!

I’m proud that I kept my cool and didn’t stall out my start or sit there and do nothing but spin my tires. However, this is mainly due to talking with another Z owner with drag experience prior to my first run, he told me that even though the light goes green, the timer doesn’t start until you actually move. So that removed a lot of the stress I was feeling on nailing the light and gave it a good smooth start and flew down the strip until I passed the billboards displaying the time/speed and then I was like – ok now what?? So I followed the car that had raced next to me off the track and got my very first ever time slip:

Temp: 73F
R/T (green-light reaction time): 1.275
60′: 2.299
330: 6.227
1/8: 9.470
MPH: 76.39
1000: 12.218
1/4: 14.541
MPH: 96.80

Not too shabby for my first run. My buddies in the Mazdas both missed gears and timed in over 15s. A white 06 Z with 300hp also came in with a mid-15s time, which we all found surprising considering it out-powers me (we found out later the guy didn’t know to turn off his traction control). I was pumped and ready for my second run, but that was a long time in coming. About two hours, in fact. Yea, they kept racing the Mean Street and 8.50 cars because they were in for money so they got priority. Also, there were a number of engine blowouts, stalls, and even one almost-crash where a 70’s Camero SS spun out barely 100yds down the track and nicked the wall. In those cases, the track had to be cleared before racing could resume. In the Camero case, they actually had to re-surface the track which took forever. But it was cool seeing a jet turbine being used to dry the track surface.


Doh!! Luckily it was only a scratch


A Zamboni for drag strips?? Who knew?!


That’s right. A jet turbine. Awesome.

Finally around 8:45pm we got in our second run. This time around I tried pushing a bit too far and topped out of fourth gear, hitting my rev limiter and delaying my shift into 5th. Still, I managed to chop a few more tenths/hundredths of a second off my times:

Temp: N/A
R/T: .734
60′: 2.270
330: 6.170
1/8: 9.359
MPH: 78.00
1000: 12.089
1/4: 14.429
MPH: 97.69

Luckily the third and final run wasn’t long in coming compared to the gap between runs 1 and 2. The third run I managed to improve my times even more, as I came smooth off the line and shifted smooth all the way through to 5th gear (no way I’m making it to 6th :P). I almost managed to hit 100mph as well.

Temp: 69F
R/T: .740
60′: 2.238
330: 6.163
1/8: 9.327
MPH: 78.36
1000: 12.036
1/4: 14.317
MPH: 99.03

So, I obviously need to improve my launch, because when I stopped to think about it, I should not be shifting out of 4th gear at all. I know can hit 105mph in 4th gear before I’m in any danger of red-lining, so the fact that I’m redlining 4th at around 93mph means I’m losing some speed in 1st or 2nd due to wheel spin. I also know I should be moving faster thanks to dragtimes.com, where this timeslip was the fastest stock ’03 Z listed. I wish they had included the temperature as well – I raced my last run in 69 degrees, and the colder air (4 degrees cooler than my first run!) no doubt helped boost my horsepower as well.

I’ll definetly be working to shave that half-second off my 1/4 mile time in the coming months, as I do indeed plan to head back to the track for some more dragging, because it was fun. And not just the driving, but standing on the side as the 8.50 cars spooled up and spun out their tires (hence me reeking of rubber) before taking to the starting line and then wheelieing halfway down the dragstrip. Awesome. The sounds too – man those are some serious engines!

if you have a sports car, I’d definitely recommend taking it to the track with some buddies. Just remember to be gentle – it’s still your daily driver! Slip that clutch nice and smooth and no dumping!

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Some content changes

August 8th, 2008 · Personal

So I made a few changes to the blog today. Biggest change was redirecting the Software link up above to a plage here on the blog, rather than the seperate Blade Edge Software sub-site. That site is practically static anyways these days since I’m not really dedicating any time to my games development, so I might as well just host the information here on the blog in one page rather than several. You can still get to the BES site though through software.blade-edge.com or www.blade-edge.com/software/

Second change was to the Social Homes buttons off to the left. I created a Plurk account yesterday, because since I use HelloTxt to globally update my status and it supports Plurk, there’s really wasn’t any reason not to add another micro-blogging account. It’s not like it’s another site I have to visit in order to update my status there. I also updated the YouTube button since I deleted my ‘DarkPylat’ account and created a new one called ‘bladeedgeproductions’.

Finally, I created a stub page for my Stuntwork bio. I’ll be posting up video clips, including my stunt reel, later on. I also have to stub out the rest of the sub-sections in my About page.

So, construction continues – I haven’t even begun to finish installing Joomla (it’s on the server, but not DB installed) and getting the Blade Edge Production site together. One thing at a time…

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First fight scene locked down

August 5th, 2008 · Production, Stuntwork

Well well, another two hours of rehearsal this past Monday night and Dizzle and I are feeling very very good about the opening fight scene. I added in a brief new segment of me bolting to the door, only to find that it locked after I entered and so I have no choice but to continue to fight. The scene really flows well and we have our rythym set for all the sequences. Of course it wasn’t without sacrifice – I have a good mark on my elbow where I threw the wrong block and got nailed by the heavy kali stick, and Dizzle whacked himself with it in the head once after it bounced off one of my jacket pads when I blocked. All in a night’s work tho.

We’ll be rehearsing it at the location tonight and then filming an uncut version of the fight. if Dizzle gets his car back from the autobody shop, we’ll aslso rehearse a minor car stunt for the movie’s opening scene. Wednesday night we’ll actually film the scene as if we were shooting for real, so that my friend with the HD camera can come out and spend as little time as possible getting in the shots that we need. That will hopefully happen Thursday or Friday night, and we’ll have our first fight scene in the can.

I also sat in front of the camera for like an hour tonight and tried to do my featurette on choreograhy, but just couldn’t get my mouth to formulate anything resembling the thoughts I was thinking. I guess it would be easier having someone to actually talk to? No idea, but that’s bust for tonight anyways since I need to get in at least a few hours sleep.

Hrm, actually come to think of it I don’t think much of this post made sense to anyone but me since I’m to tired to give details. Oh well, you’ll have to wait till I get some featurettes up…

need… sleep….

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Guitar Hero pwnage

August 3rd, 2008 · Gaming

So tonight I was supposed to run through the fight scene with Dizzle and prep it for a reference filming, however Mack wanted to swing by in the afternoon so I could help him with a computer problem. He ended up picking up Dizzle (who’s car is still in the shop) and bringing him along. Then Jason happened to call Mack who said he was over my house and J was with his daughter just down the road so he came over as well, with his 9 year-old daughter Nicole, who I haven’t seen in a year or so. So it ended up being quote the impromptu gathering and my parents served us all dinner.

Needless to say, after quickly solving Mack’s computer issue, Dizzle of course wanted to rock out, and everyone else was down with that plan as well. After J and Nicole left around 9, and Mack not too long after, it was already too late to bother heading up 20 mins north to the gym so Dizzle and I just kept playing Guitar Hero, jamming through all the Co-op Career songs we had unlocked but not played – which were all the bonus songs plus the non-campaign game songs.

Around midnight is when we finally started to run out of steam, but since I was so pumped and warmed up after playing for like four hours straight I decided to tackle three of the most challenging songs in the game, the complete Boss Battles. I had always been close to beating Tom Morello, so I took that song on first and actually completed it for the first time. Psyched up, I then attempted to take down Slash’s battle song – and again succeeded for the first time!!

Well, at this point one might as well take on the big bad Devil Went Down to Georgia, and lo and behold:

The closest yet!!

Well okay so I didn’t make it through but this does mark the closest that I have yet come to completing the song. To put things in perspective, the last time I tried this song in career mode I only got like a 23% completion. Getting closer! Now, if only Through the Fire and Flames didn’t have that retarded intro I could consider beating that as well…

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Hitting up the links

July 31st, 2008 · Personal

My father has been a semi-pro golf player since he was a kid. He’s played in tournaments and such, so when I was growing up it was of course one of the things I learned as well. I took lessons for a year or two when I was about 8 or 9, and my family used to own a condo down on Hilton Head Is, South Carolina, about 45 minutes north of Savannah, Georgia. Hilton Head has at least a dozen golf courses crammed onto that tiny little island, and so visiting several times a year for a week and doing nothing but playing lots of golf really got me into the game.

Of course, when I got into my teen years I started getting a bit… crabby. I’d throw clubs and get frustrated very easily and usually stop playing all together about halfway through an 18-hole round and just drive my dad around in the golf cart (I loved driving golf carts – my dad would let me drive when I was 13 as long as no golf course officials could be seen. Got busted a few times tho :P). We ended up selling the condo while I was in high school and although we have plenty of good local courses which my dad and I visited from time to time, being home led me to want to do other things. So eventually around 16 or so I pretty much stopped playing altogether, although I still enjoy watching it on TV at times.

So today my old friend Lucas, who’s lived down the street from me my whole life, finally got me back out on the course, a local country club called Bamm Hollow. It’s only about 7 minutes from my house, which is awesome, and apparently he gets on for free or something – I didn’t ask! We just hopped in a golf cart and drove off to the first tee. Sweet.

Now, Lucas can also be considered semi-pro like my father. He’s played in and won tournaments. So obviously I knew he’d be sitting around a lot waiting for me to catch up to his shots, but he’s a cool guy and didn’t complain at all when it would take me 3-5 shots to match his one 😛

While on a whole I played pretty crappily (no surprise!) and came in 28 over par, I actually pulled off a few shots that reminded me of the fact that I used to be somewhat decent on the golf course. My first drive of the day landed me on the left side of the fairway, which was nice. Besides that I was hit-or-miss a lot throughout the round (we managed to get in 15 holes before darkness set in) until I remembered to keep my head down until I actually hit the ball. Otherwise I’d top it or bring the club down too far behind it.

I was surprised at how much I actually remembered about gripping and swinging the club, and Lucas confirmed that my stance is great – I just have to work on the little things like not taking my back-swing too far and keeping my head down. If I do that, I actually get a great connection on the ball, although my slicing issue (hitting to the right) is still present and most of the time the ball curves so far right I end up on the fairway of another hole 😛

Still, I had one chip shot from a good 50 yards out that actually struck the pin (but bounced off several yards). A few good clutch shots, including having to stand practically inside a pine tree, with its nettles poking turning me into Swiss cheese – I took a 7 Iron and whacked that sucker a good 100 yards somehow. One nice 9 Iron shot carried up and over a tall tree in front of me, taking some leaves off the very top, and came straight down on the green. I never was good at chipping, but a few nice shots I really got under the ball and laid it up right next to the pin.

of course, there were more bad shots than good. I lost a total of five balls, three on the same hole. I think I hit about six or seven trees. Took three shots to get out of a bunker (though the shot out was awesome). I ended up off one tee in a sand trap on another hole and accidentally hit someone else’s ball. One hole I practically played on another hole. I redid three tee shots. Ended up lying against three or four trees. Hit the cart path twice. Oh, and the lowest score I got was a bogey (on just three holes).

But it was a lot more enjoyable than I thought it would be. Maybe because I’m older and more mature, I can better keep my frustration in check. Maybe because I can acknowledge what I’m doing wrong in my swing and work to fix it. Maybe it’s the company – Lucas is a good friend and he brought along a buddy who was also a great guy.

Or maybe I just have to do a few more rounds before I lose it and start throwing clubs and wanting to drive golf carts into water hazards again (remember that old commercial?). We’ll probably find out because I definitely plan on hitting the links more often now that I have access to a course so close to my house.

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The complexities of cutting a film scene

July 30th, 2008 · Production

So I finally was able to get my hands on the footage that was shot late last September that was to be the opening of my short fight video. My friend Steve, who owns a commercial-level HD Sony camera, accompanied me and my bike to a local 7-Eleven location. The movie opens with me coming out of the 7-Eleven and receiving a text on my phone. I flip it open and there’s an urgent message that spurs me to run to my bike, get on and quickly put on my helmet and gloves. Then I start up the bike and peel out onto the street and zoom off into the distance.

Well after about half an hour of editing I had a sequence from the footage that gave me a rough idea of what I want the final scene to look like. It also made me aware of a ton of things that I have to take into consideration when we shoot at the location again.

First and foremost was the sound. I could jack up the levels and hear insects chirping, which was great – but then that would be interrupted by cars whizzing by every now and then in the background. Rather than film later (this footage was captured between 11pm and 12am) and hope for less traffic, I’m going to loop the background insect noises on a seperate track so that when I cut between shots the ambient sounds remain constant. This also applies to the bike, when I start it up and zoom off. I’d like to cut to different angles during my drive out onto the road, and so to do so I’ll have to capture the sound of the bike alone and run that as a seprate audio track as well so the engine sound remains constant.

I also want to pull in tighter and shoot some quicker shots to lend a more urgent feel to me mounting, gearing up and riding off. Currently it just seems to take a bit too long from when I run to the bike to when I take off out the parking lot and down the road, during which the viewers will be like – “ho hum”.

Furthermore I definitely need an establishing shot of the 7-Eleven location to fade into and open the film; I’m thinking from across the street. I’ve also added a new element to the end of the scene – as I pull out into the sreet I cut off a car, which brakes into a skid and honks at me. My stunt partner Dizzle will be driving his MR2 convertible to pull off the quick stunt.

I have the edited footage, but it’s too raw for me to want to post it online.

Oh and last night during rehearsal I managed to punch myself in the chin when I took a fall to my arms an knees. I kept my arms crossed from a block the previous move and so when I landed on my elbows (yey bike jacket padding) my arm on top bounced up into my chin and cut my lip up a bit. All in the line of work 😛

And one other thing, tonight at the location Dizzle and I went through the opening fight sequence in the lobby area to see how our choreography moved us around the actual area we’ll be performing in. To our immense satisfaction the sequence filled the space perfectly, and we don’t have to worry about tweaking it to fit within the space allotted. Now we can just get down to perfecting it. w00t!

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First fight scene completed

July 29th, 2008 · Production, Stuntwork

After roughly 5 hours of choreography and rehearsal evenly spread over tonight and last Friday night, my partner and I have completed the fight moves for the first fight scene of the movie. It’s roughly 60 movies long, but those are combined moves. If you count each of our individual moves that number immediately doubles, because if I’m punching, he’s blocking or ducking or taking a hit – and vice versa. You can break the fight down into 4 individual parts, which is nice because it helps you to remember all the various moves if you can work through it one segment at a time.

Although 5 hours may seem like a short time, we had previously spent several hours last year working through the scene – I would say a little more, about 6-7 total. As I mentioned in my previous post, thanks to me having the forethought of taping our rehearsals, we were able to look back at what we had done, incorporate some things but for the most part throw a lot out and come up with new moves that better fit the character’s motives.

I am definetly going to put together a short “behind the scenes” featurette of this fight scene’s development, as this third iteration of the choreography has finally produced a fight that flows well, fits the characters and fits the overall mood of the film at that point as well. We’ve been rehearsing at a different gym, tomorrow night we’ll be able to go to the actual film location and block out the fight in the proper setting to make any final adjustments, then we’ll film a slow run-through for the same reasons I taped us last year, so that we can review moves later on down the road – we have 3 more major fight scenes to choreograph!

Now that we have the moves locked in, the next step is to go through and get our pacing and foot work down. A lot of people don’t think about their feet when they’re doing fight scenes, and they end up just shuffling around as they punch and block with their arms. This is fine to some extent if the camera is catching the actors from the waist up – but not only does this affect the movement of your upper body noticeably, I don’t plan on making use of many tight shots in this film, so the footwork will be visible almost always.

Once we get this cleaned up to a decent level, we’ll be moving right along to the second scene involving the bamboo Kendo swords, or Shinai’s.

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Back to being an Action Star

July 26th, 2008 · Stuntwork

Last year, in my original journal over at GDNet, I mentioned that I was working on a fight video with my friends. After spending one night shooting the opening scene, my bike’s tail lights went out completely and by the time I was able to order new ones the weather had gotten too cold to continue filming the rest of the bike scenes. While we planned to work out the fight choreography over the winter and pickup shooting again in the spring, things didn’t quite work out that way. I can’t pin our lack of effort on any one thing, but the end result is that nothing happened until last month when I finally revisited the idea, wrote up an actual screenplay nd storyboarded the entire film.

Now tonight my friend and I finally got back to working on the fight choreography, and we are both very pleased with the progress we’ve made. Despite the 8 month absence from the project we were able to pick up right where we left off thanks to me having our initial rehearsals recorded. I stuck the videos on my iTouch and we were able to watch them again and again to re-learn the moves. Looking back at the sequence after so much time gave us a fresh set of eyes as well, and we were able to improve a lot to make it flow better. We have half of the opening fight scene pretty much locked down after only two hours of work. Not too shabby for… ohhh I’d say about 28 moves?

I might, after we get this third and final version of the sequence on tape, put together a quick “making of” showing the iteration of the fight sequence and why we changed up certain things. For now though I’m just happy we’re working on it again, and hope we go all the way. The film is not supposed to be any longer than 15 minutes, so that’s a very realistic goal for my first movie.

More updates as they come!

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A look at Multiwinia

July 22nd, 2008 · Gaming

So the good folks over at Introversion sent me a preview build of their latest title, a multiplayer take on their original hit Darwinia, with enhancements added as well of course. Having never played Darwinia before (yes, I am shamed) I was abel to approach this with a fresh set of eyes and get my first experience dabbling around with these flat little guys. I have to admit I dumped a fair amount of time over the weekend on this game, and always managed to have some fun while playing, even though my only opponent was the computer.

The preview build was of course lacking in all of the game’s final attributes, but they did include two game modes, King of the Hill and Capture the Statue. King of the Hill also had various scoring modes that let me mix the game up a bit. Capture the Statue was a pretty straightforward game of using many multiwinians to carry huge statues back to your scoring zone. It was a nice diversion but my main focus was on King of the Hill. Four player battles were intense!

The Multiwinia preview build kit. Yey I have a Darwinian now!

The Multiwinia preview build kit. Yey I have a Darwinian now!

I was a little confuddled with the controls at one point, as the game didn’t have a mouse cursor and seemed to require an Xbox 360 controller, which puzzled me until I realized that my Guitar Hero guitar was plugged into the computer 😛 The game detected it as a 360 controller! i unplugged it and restarted and was able to use my mouse and keyboard. Navigating around the menus was simple enough, no crazy complex interface which was nice. It was a bit puzzling to see some options get their own screen just so you could select one or two different choices, but this not being a final build that’s all subject to change anyways. I did notice though that selecting my color, going into the Advanced Options panel and coming back to the game settings screen reset my color back to default green.

Like I said earlier, King of the Hill was a ton of fun to play. It took some getting used to controlling all my Darwinians as I took over more spawn points, but I eventually got the hang of creating formations and sending them marching off to wage battle. I was slightly annoyed by the fact that left-clicking to send off a formation wouldn’t de-select the leader. Sometimes I would forget to hit Space to remove the selection and send them marching off someplace else without even realizing it. This is mainly me being used to other RTS games where giving a move command deselects your units – I adjusted easily enough.

Darwinians do battle! KillKillKill!!!

Darwinians do battle! KillKillKill!!!

The only other small gripe I could make is that I noticed some pathing issues where my formations would get stuck navigating around water on the 4 player map. Again though – preview build so while I point it out I wasn’t annoyed by it – it simply required a bit more micro-management to get my formations where I wanted them.

Bumping the AI up to Hard gave me a good challenge, and during one 30-minute long King of the Hill game I got my ass handed to me. But then I came back and knocked the socks off the AI next time around. A special game mode called “Retribution” can call defeated players back into the game and if you don’t watch out when they reappear they may take over one of your spawn points and scoring zones before you even realize it. I like that aspect of shaking up the game.

There are also special items in crates that drop from the sky you have to collect by sending Darwinians out to where they land – the more you send the faster you unpack whatever goodies they grant you, from troop ships to gun turrets.

Multiwinia is one of the most casual RTS games I’ve played in a long time. It’s easy to just jump in and start waging massive battles. Spawn points are the only resources you have to worry about, and simple objectives, like capturing score zones, keep you focus and engaged. Although I’m having fun against the AI I can’t wait to be able to pit myself against human opponents. If there are more than 4 players are allowed I can only imagine the carnage that would ensue. It gives me goosepimples.

Multiwinia is slated for a release in September. Get psyched!

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Why I love Uncharted

July 19th, 2008 · Gaming

I’ve probably spent around 20 hours the past 4 days playing Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune on the PS3. I first downloaded the demo a few months ago when I finally bought the console because I had rememebred reading about it when it had first come out – though what stuck in my head were the stunning visuals, I had no recollection of the gameplay. After playing through the demo several times I decided it was probably a good idea just to try the full game. Luckily my friend has a copy he already played through, so he was willing to lend it to me so I could have a go at it; and I was amazed. This game is so much win it’s amazing. I haven’t had so much fun playing a shooting platformer since… well, since a long time. Not only are the visuals amazing, but the gameplay and mechanics are excellent on top of that. What’s to like?

Checkpoints

Normally games have checkpoints every so often in a level, and many of the times they’re placed rather horribly so that if you die, you have a lot of re-playing to do to get back to the spot where you were killed. First of all, I can’t even tell when I reach a checkpoint in Uncharted, which is great because it doesn’t kick me out of my sense of immersion and doesn’t warn me that I’m possibly approaching a difficult area. Yet when I die, I’m usually starting at the very beginning of the exact gun battle or platform traversal that I perished on. This means I’m never really frustrated by dying (other than the fact that I died, of course) and having to replay a lot of the game to get back to my previous location. Doing so would have quickly made me turn off the game.

No health

One of the most annoying things about any sort of adventure or platformer game is health. As if there isn’t enough to worry about, you have to be on the lookout for health pickups to make sure you make it through the next area alive. Uncharted has a unique approach to health – you lose it when you get shot and you regain it when you cover from gunfire. Simple. The screen slowly turns black and white the more damage you take on – when you hear your pulse pounding you know you’re only one or two more shots away from death. But if you can find a safe hiding spot, you can wait several seconds for the pounding to stop and the color to return. You can even pop out and get off some shots if you feel you won’t get hit in the process. Who wants to worry about finding some sort of health pickup? I just wanna shoot people, and the game lets me do that. Yey.

Immersive environment

Big props to the art director and artists on this title. The design of the environments, both outdoor jungles and indoor complexes, are so detailed and well-researched that it’s not hard to lose yourself in the game as you play. Lush jungle with so many moving plants and branches and leaves blowing in the wind make it hard to spot enemies and hidden treasure. Dark, scary interiors like the German bunker level with those devolved man beasts had me screaming like a little girl. Old Spanish castles and missions look amazingly authentic. Jaw-dropping water effects are icing on the cake. You can search the game world for hidden treasure lying around, and it’s certainly a pleasure to take in all the wonderful detail as you do so.

Rewards

I love this so much, I’m not even mad that I’ll have to unlock them all again once Trophies become supported in Uncharted (coming “soon”, according to Naughty Dog). Why would I use every single weapon in the game? Why would I try any of the hand-to-hand combos? Why would I attempt to lob grenades while hanging off a ledge? These are just a few examples of things you can do to unlock rewards, things I may not otherwise have done while playing the game. Giving me reason to explore the entirety of the game and rewarding me in the process – why can’t more games do this?? Yes, 360 games give you acheivements, but these rewards unlock things like behind-the-scenes featurette videos, art galleries, cheats, character costumes, etc. By the way, if you want to get the cheats before the rewards, because I know not all of us can wait. Go visit I Like Cheats and their website will give you plenty of extras.

I’m already starting my second run through the game on Hard setting, since beating the game on all the various difficulty levels yields further rewards. Even if it didn’t, I’d probably play through again just for the hell of it, this game is so great. If you missed it like I did when it first came out, I’d definitely recommend you head to the game store or borrow off a friend.

Then again, if you want to have a life I guess you better not.

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