Herbert1405241469

Wow, either I'm getting better, or "Normal Mode" is actually easier than "Easy Mode." I was playing it last night, and switched it up to Normal mode and I was getting A and S ranks (S being the best rank) and it was still a challenge alone, but it was much easier. My recommendation is to play through on Normal, if you get it

It's funny, the guy who owns the Wii is only into racing games, so when I brought over the RE game, he said "Oh I don't have the patience for those things,' etc. Very negative attitude and whatnot... SO I sat him down for a round of target practice in the Zelda game that came with the zapper, and he basically kicked my *bottom* haha. So now I saw him during the week, and he actually sounds like he's looking forward to another round of zombie blasting this weekend when we hang out again It gets hard though, prepare to have friends to help you out.

Well, I picked up Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles for the Wii yesterday, and I must have about 11 hours of gameplay already in on it, and I still have quite a bit to unlock. Here's my review thus far:Intro:First off, the only Resident Evil experience I have is playing the original PS1 version (though didn't beat it because I couldn't stand the voice acting and camera angles). I'd always wanted a Zombie survival horror First person shooter, but never could find one other than bad "House of the Dead" ports for the PC, which weren't quite up to par with something along the lines of Half-Life 2...Half Life 2 helped curb my hunger (so to speak) for the whole Zombie genre, but the zombies didn't really play a huge role in the game. Resident Evil had all I wanted, but as I said, I couldn't stand the camera angles... Plus, traditionally, I'd been a PC gamer, and there hadn't been any decent ports available.When I saw RE: Umbrella Chronicles advertised, not only with a first person view, but with Cooperative gameplay, I had to have it. I had some doubts viewing some YouTube Videos, as to how good it was going to be... Since the sample footage's voice overs didn't really pack the emotional kick that games like HL2, or Bioshock, or other games with high production values traditionally have...Well I'm here to say that it's not an issue. Voice acting isn't 100% awesome, but it is much better than previous installments (from what I've seen on the net).Onto pros and cons:The GOOD:I picked up 2 licensed Wii zappers (which came with Link's Crossbow training, which would be a great deal, but now I have two copies of Link's Crossbow training.... Sort of wish there were a way to send it back to Nintendo and get a couple bucks back, but it's neither here nor there.)The Wii Zappers are a great concept, though paying $20 for a piece of plastic only meant to hold your Wii-mote and Nunchuck is truly a ripoff if it weren't for the additional game (Crossbow training). I plan on getting a Perfect Shot handgun off amazon.com as soon as I get a few more bucks in my wallet (Paying for 2 wii zappers and the RE game cost me $90!)Anyone looking to buy RE, I'd recommend 1 wii zapper, and the Perfect Shot handgun on amazon, which has a near perfect 5 star rating.The Zapper takes some getting used to, because it is rather small for an adult. Playing for a consecutive 3 hours made my hands and shoulders ache. That's my biggest pet peeve is the ergonomics of it, it's not ....RIGHT.Though painful for extended play, it does the job. The ability of holding the Wiimote and nunchuck with two hands makes for steadier aiming and better accuracy. A problem that arises is when RE: Umbrella Chronicles asks you to hit the "A" button, which is located on the top of the apparatus, and is hard to reach while keeping your finger on the trigger. I think this can be changed in the settings, but never bothered to look.Back to the Game (The Good):Graphics - 9/10: The graphics are superb. Everything is high quality and very sharp. The shader effects of being outside in the rain and all are very immersive and well done. Characters, monsters, they're all very nice.Monsters may all look the same (as in all dogs look like the same dog, all 'lickers' all look the same, etc) there are a wide variety of monsters, so you won't really care or notice... The human zombies are varied, though you'll get some that look the same, they try to avoid having the same zombie character models in 1 area.The environments are fully destructible. You can pretty much shoot and break any object... Lights, boxes, windows, etc all can be broken realistically, and often hide files you need to collect to get a better score.The dumb thing about this "Find the Files in each level" thing is the places you find stuff... I'll shoot out a light, and an object will appear... ???? How'd it get up there is what I wanna know!Sound - 8/10: Sounds are well done, voice acting not absolutely perfect, but great anyway. You'll hear the same zombie growl right before you turn a corner and bump into a hoard of em, so that's both good and bad.Gameplay 7/10: The reason I don't give it a straight 9 or 10 is due to the STUPID "dodge by pressing a button" sequences that come up every once in awhile, either in the level or in a boss fight. 80% of the time, I don't have enough time to press the right button, and if I do, it doesn't recognize it, and I die or get hit. What happens is a sequence comes up in a cutscene, where you see a truck or something coming at you, and a button pops up on your screen and you literally have about 2 seconds to push it ***REPEATEDLY*** or you die... and dying lowers your score, so you essentially have to restart the level if you want a good score. I don't know if I need new batteries in my Wiimotes or what, but both my friends and I had a hell of a time getting through some of these levels with those features. I wish they'd eliminate them or find some other way to do it... Waving the Wiimote around like an idiot is the worst, because it almost never works.Another thing that irks the hell out of me is the fact that my friends and I wanted to start on Easy and work our way up... And we're dying as though it was set to Hard mode! I mean we're highly accurate guys, we get a lot of critical hits most of the time, but the fact that it takes wayyyyyyy to much ammo to kill a zombie is just ridiculous. The later levels especially. The thing I hate most is the fact that a shotgun blast to a zombie's head won't blow it up, even if you aim for the critical spot for a 1 hit kill... 1 hit kills are only achieved with the basic pistol, or by luck with any other weapon, though it's rare. You'll shoot a zombie in the head 10-20 times before it goes down for good, and in the meantime, you'll have other zombies in the back spraying acid vomit on you and another one is grabbing you for a bite to eat. The game is virtually impossible on the harder modes due to the reloading factor. At least with CO-OP, while you're reloading, the other guy can blast enemies back with his shotgun.I'll have to test the normal and hard modes, but if they're harder than "Easy" then I'm in for a world of hurt.I must be doing something wrong...Boss battles can be rough, but they usually have a pattern, so once you figure that out, you'll be doing ok.Overall, I'd say this game is worth a buy, or at the very least, a 5 day rental. It's hard as hell, so make sure to have a friend to help you fight the Undead. There is a lot of fun replay value in trying to get a higher score because you can buy upgrades for guns and unlock new sub-missions. If you liked arcade shooters like House of the Dead, then this game is really going to appeal to you.

Also, forgot to mention, the copper plate that was used can be used again, but you'll have to sand or use a steel wool to rub off the loose layers on top... Make sure to dispose of that properly too. Don't let that stuff go down your drain.

Since I've been sick with a head cold, and in no shape to make a video worth of YouTube, I'll just jot down some of the things you'll encounter when doing the etching.First off, you're going to need to make sure that you have clean measuring cups to mix the copper sulfate and water. I used filtered tap water and that worked ok, but I'd recommend using distilled water for a cleaner effect.I can't remember the exact measurement of copper sulfate to water proportions, but I think I indicated them somewhere on this page, or if not it is available on one of the links I've already included.For storing the mixture, I have 2 blue water-tight water bottles, that are clear so I can see the mix. Each are a liter, and it takes both to fill my main etching container, which is something like 1.8 liters (so one of the bottles isn't completely full).I rigged up a holder for the metal plates using rubber bands and plastic-coated paperclips, but there's gotta be a better way to do it, because it was too flimsy. The plates were submerged, and have to be extremely close together without touching. I used a 9-volt battery to speed up the etching, and wired the two plates together with the battery between them, I think I indicated which lead to hook up to which plate above.As for putting the image onto the plate that needs to be etched, I found that pure black and white (maximum contrast) works best, and make sure the image is both inverted in color, and horizontally mirrored. It should be mirrored because when you iron it onto the plate, it will be reversed, so when it goes on the plate it will just be inverted and look normal otherwise. The parts that have toner on it will not etch.Putting the toner onto the plate was actually the hardest part. I tried several methods... The first was recommenced by the Steampunk workshop site... that was to iron the paper onto the plate (with the image) and put the whole thing in water to peel the paper away... This actually was hard for me, because when I'd go to remove the paper, some of the toner would come off, and I'd have to start all over again.One of the things that worked was getting the toner to be really really hot, and peeling the paper away so that part of the toner would stick to the metal. Not all of the toner got onto the metal, but it got the job done.Then I put the two plates (copper and zinc <-with the image on it) into the copper sulfate mixture and the zinc plate almost instantly got a copper-brown coating on it where there was no toner covering the metal. I let this sit for awhile, occasionally scraping the gunk off with my hands (which were covered with latex gloves, since the copper sulfate is slightly toxic, and would stain things!) The whole thing soaked approximately 45 minutes to an hour, and I pulled it out and washed it off of all gunk, and tried using several things like baking soda to stop the etching process (since the baking soda is a base, to stop the acid).Don't know if that part is needed though, so test at your own discretion. Then there was a bunch of copper gunk at the bottom of the etching solution, which I filtered out using a painter's filter (sort of like a coffee filter, but for paint) and that separated the gunk from the etching solution, which I could use again, though it wasn't as potent as the first etch. The gunk is mainly copper metal so it should be disposed of properly... don't just dump it.Once the metal dried, with the etch, I put a layer of black paint over it and rubbed off the upper layer with a paper towel before it dried to expose the upper layers... The paint stayed in the grooves, and gave it contrast. Then I let it dry and did it again to make sure it was good enough, and then let it dry. Then I put a coat of sealer over it to make sure the paint didn't fall off, and it was finished!I'm going to hopefully start getting more stuff etched soon, but I've been busy with the holidays and whatnot. I'll keep you all posted.Overall it's not hard to do, it just costs a bit of money and takes time, but all good things do

So is this game on par or better with Introversion's "Uplink"? I loved Uplink, but once I hacked a bank and gave myself $1 million, the game quickly became boring after I beat the main mission and had cracked all the biggest systems

YouTube video will have to wait until next weekend. I'm swamped with work until then. I'll make sure to post the video when it's done though

I just received a question as to where I buy my zinc and copper plates. I'll post my response here too, so that anyone looking to try this knows where to go: I picked up zinc and copper plates from 2 places, and I found that one of them is way more costly than the other. The one that was cheaper was here: https://www.printmaking-materials.com/products/intaglio and the more expensive ones were here: http://www.dickblick.com/products/polished-etching-plates/ I found Blick first, so I bought from them, and they were way way expensive. After I bought some metals from them, I found the other link and found them to be a lot cheaper, but the metal was still good quality. I would recommend the first link. I've only etched 1 test plate, and 1 actual "finished" plate I used as a gift, so I'm still rather new at the game, but overall the process itself is rather easy once you get it down. You just need to make sure you get the right equipment and such and maintain safe working conditions, as the copper sulfate isn't 100% environmentally friendly, though it's safer than sulfuric acid One of the key elements to success, as I found with my first test plate, is to use pure black and white (not grayscale) photos to create your negatives. I tried several variations, and found just pure black and white photos work best. Here's an example: Works well with sharp contrast. It's a one or zero situation. You either want the zinc metal covered with the toner, or bare. Where it's bare is where it'll etch, so you'll need to invert your picture, and mirror it horizontally for when you transfer it from the paper to your metal. I'm going to to an instructional YouTube video on this, and I'll post the link this weekend.

From what I can remember, it can be hard as hell because the enemies respawn in different places every time you reload the level, so you can't memorize things, and they typically stand in one spot (some patrol though) and as soon as they see you, they start shooting, so Point Man (whoever goes into the room first) usually gets taken out. You get penalized for killing suspects, and the most effective way I've found is shooting their knees, or the non-lethal shotgun... They almost never put down the gun when you ask them to, and flashbangs don't work the way they ought to. It was hard.

Well, I just beat the game early this morning after a very strenuous all-nighter. Playing the game for nearly 70 hours started getting to me, and I just wanted to find the bad guy and end it all. Hours per dollar, I sure got the most bang for my buck, though I don't see myself investing virtually another three solid days of my life (non consecutively) to replay this game to get different endings. Overall I was somewhat satisfied with the ending. For the choices I made, I feel like the game really went the way it ought to have... I know some games like Deus Ex 2 have multiple endings, and they all make you feel bad for picking the side that you did, no matter what choice you make, but The Witcher's "freewill" system worked rather well. The slightest alteration in dialog results in totally different story lines in some cases, so you really have to watch what you say. As far as collecting "women-trophy" cards (ie. ones that you laid), you will miss some if you don't specifically look up how-to's, because some of the ones that have the option of having sex with are characters you otherwise wouldn't have ever even bothered talking to. Needless to say, I didn't "catch em all," since some progressions in the plot make it impossible for you to go back to a level. The environments are vast, especially the Muddy Waters (chapter 4) and the final level versus the main bad guy (no spoilers). There is a bit of a plot twist, but it's very underplayed. I didn't like it, though, because: ***Mild spoilers*** (Highlight area below) They used a closed-loop time travel plot device like The Terminator, where the actions happen because the bad guy went back in time, but the bad guy would not have gone back in time if it weren't for the events.... An infinite loop where both the chicken and the egg are like "WTF?" ***End Spoilers*** Overall, satisfied with my purchase, I recommend the game to anyone who enjoys RPGs, and has at least 70 hours to dedicate to this game if they want to see it to the end.

Reading more, I've found that Crysis is being marketed as becoming a trilogy, (so my "prediction" was correct). It just sucks that we have to wait so long for the whole story. I just finished The Witcher, and that game lasted approximately 60-80 game hours, the story was decent, and they finished the plot in one game. Needless to say, 80 hours is a bit much, and by the time I finished it, I was truly glad to be done with it... But still, hours per dollar, I got more bang for my buck.

You know what my biggest pet peeve is... game developers moving to this "episodic" gaming phase.The first game I can think of that I purchased that purposely left the ending unresolved was Half-Life 2. Ever since Half-Life 2, it seems like every game I've purchased has had a crappy or unfinished "cliffhanger" ending. I spend $50 + tax on a game, and I spend a good number of hours of my life battling against all odds, and I don't even get a proper ending.With Half-Life 2, I had grown to love the Gordan Freeman experience, and I had a true connection with Alyx and the other characters. The story telling was novel and fun. I didn't mind the idea of buying further expansions in order to follow the story... for $19.99... The First Episode of Half-Life 2 was $19.99, and you got about 4-7 hours gameplay. Then Valve decided to capitalize on this, and charged a whopping $50 for the Orange Box (Which is an incredible deal if you don't already have HL2 and Episode 1).OK, so Valve decided to screw over the customers a bit, but we got Portal, so I'll allow it.... But Finishing Crysis, I figured I have approximately 8 hours of gameplay (Beat it over the course of 3 nights)... Which, for all the hype, is unacceptable.Kicking off the game, since I tried out the demo and liked it, I started the new game on Delta mode (the hardest setting, and supposedly makes the AI smart). I wanted the full experience... Koreans speaking Korean, and all the realism I could muster. The game was hard, but it's not nearly as hard as it could be. Maybe I'm just that good, :rolleyes:Ok, so the game kicks off the same as in the demo. You are on a special forces team infiltrating an island filled with Koreans in search of a missing group of archaeologists. A decent start. Weird stuff starts happening from the moment you jump out of the plane, and the game holds in in suspense all the while you're battling Koreans... Ominous shakings of the ground, and an impending mountain is visible virtually at all times... As you make your way through the game, you get ever closer to what seems to be the source of one hell of a disturbance.... Love the foreshadowing.So you make your way though the jungle, using stealth mostly (if on delta mode, you have to use it, because a platoon of Koreans will pretty much oust you, since your energy runs out quickly from defense from bullets). My favorite tactic is following a group of 6 patrolling guards, and grabbing the rear guard while in stealth mode, pulling him away from the patrol, and smacking him unconscious... and doing this until the guards are thinned out. It's the only real stealth move you have, since you don't get a knife, wrench, or crowbar like any other FPS game.You can only hold 2 big guns (rifles) and 2 pistols, and 1 RPG rocket launcher. Later in the game (the last level) you do get to acquire a gun that supposedly is a portable nuclear weapon launcher, which I'm guessing is going to have the novelty of the gravity gun in the Half Life Series, actually wasn't that all impressive, in terms of explosion. It's only usable in a scripted event and when you get to launch it, it's nothing but a larger version of the RPG. Yawn.Speaking of the ending, I won't spoil it, but they totally dropped the ball. It would not have been hard for them to make the game longer. You have a massive battle, which is as epic as the final battle in Pirates of the Caribbean 3, and just when you're all psyched to go get those sons of b*ches, the credits roll.... WTF?! I'm not done kicking *bottom*! I don't care who made the game!Yeah, they purposely made it so that us gamers have to wait another 3 years (or however long it takes) for Crytek to develop another game (Crysis 2: The Search for More Money) and we'll have to shell out another $50 to find out how they decide to end the story... Oh, I'm sorry. They're probably going to stretch it into a sequel and we'll have to fork out another $150 to find out.Timeshift, they did that too. Take a perfectly good game and totally make it suck because of a cliffhanger ending.I enjoyed Crysis while I was playing it. The environment was engrossing, though I can't play it above Medium settings since it's so advanced... The scenarios were fun, the characters had depth in terms of believability. The voice acting was top notch. Game only crashed on me once, and that was because I had played it too long and my gfx card overheated.The A.I. was OK. Using the stealth mode on your suit makes them dumb. You disappear, and they shoot the spot where you were at, nonstop for about 20 seconds.... Which is annoying. Real AI ought to shut up and try listening for your footsteps in the woods... It's amazing how a cloaking device hides the sound of me breaking branches in the woods, with the AI totally oblivious I'm running up behind them... Yet if I crouch, and move slowly and turn off the cloak THEN they decide to turn around and start shooting me. Not realistic.One of the biggest plot holes in the game is the presence of Koreans that are wearing the same special biosuits that you're wearing.... It's equivalent to the time shifting bad guys in TimeShift. The only purpose they serve is to match the player up against someone with the same advantages (stealth, strength, armor) never saw the AI use speed though....How the hell did the Koreans get these suits? It's never explained. At least in Timeshift, the bad guys had your suit because the bad guy in charge was also in charge of the Time Travel research, so he had the means... Koreans with biosuits... No reason other than to make the bad guys harder.The Zero-G environment actually wasn't how I expected it... Luckily, those American scientists considered the fact that the player wearing the suit might encounter a lack of gravity, so they had enough foresight to put in jets in your suit to help you move around. Zero Gravity then in fact does not act the way it should. You shoot your gun, the kick ought to send you backwards till you hit something... Since there is no friction to stop you... But thanks to your suit, you stop automatically after a slight kickback. The game's Zero G environment could have been a bit more fun if they had slowed down the bad guys your aiming at, and somehow made it so there was no "friction" but rather you had to manuver via shooting to propel yourself... They used a can of cheese (under pressure to propel) in the Journeyman Project 2... it could work in Crysis. Don't get me wrong. The game itself is a fun ride, while you're playing it. There are many things you might miss because the levels are so huge... If you take 1 path, you might miss a dead body of one of the scientists... or stuff like that. It's linear, but open-ended in presentation... You're moving foward, but you have a mile across to do it.In summary:Graphics: 8/10 (I can't see em on the Highest Detail yet! It's too advanced)Sound 10/10 (Good use of sounds)Voice acting 10/10Story 3/10 (Lame *bottom* "ending" leaving many plot holes and unresolved problems/characters)Overall feel and presentation 7/10 (Environments are engrossing)Overall Average 7/10 (not mathematically calculated)Overall worth a buy, but only after it's come down to $30 or less.Side note: I haven't tried multiplayer yet, which might be interesting so I didn't base my rating off that... Game developers should not have to rely on multiplayer to make up for crappy plots in singleplayer.

I make a healing potion for a woman, I get laid.I save a woman from bandits, I get laid.I save some hookers from bandits, I get laid.I got laid 3 times last night in The Witcher, a RPG that was just released a bit ago. Apparently the US version is censored, so of course I got the UK import version. Only difference I believe are the "cards" you get when you receive "gratitudes" from women in this game. Of course, there's no actual "Sex" in game, just a card with a nude chick on it, marking your "conquest," but I guess the developers wanted to go with the saying "Take a picture, it'll last longer."Graphically, the Witcher looks very good, but the performance is low on the high settings... I have these specs for my desktop:Intel Core 2 Duo, 3ghz2 gig ram2 gig flash drive utilizing Win Vista's "ReadyBoost"GeForce 8800 GTS (320meg)And the game runs smoothly on Medium settings. I could bump it up, but my hard drive is running on an IDE cable, so it's probably the bottleneck to my computer.Sound and music and voice acting: A++. Awesome work. There are a rich and wide diversity of voice overs and characters, though some of the NPC townpeople have some minor repetitive dialog if you try talking to them.People complain about the loading times, with my rig, they're only about 20 seconds or so, depending on if I'm going outside or inside. It's not bad with my rig. Saving takes less time than that, but "QuickLoad" does take about a minute for some reason... I think it's dumping the pre-cached textures and stuff to avoid a memory leak, but I don't load too often like that.Combat is rough when you first start, since I'm used to either the Oblivion version where you just wing your sword whenever you want FPS style, or using the semi-"turn-based" version found in other RPGs like Knights of the Old Republic. With The Witcher, you have to only click when your arrow turns into a sword with flames on it. If you click too early, your momentum ceases, and you get hit a lot. It's hard to get used to, and they could have done better at it. I'm too busy looking at the mouse than I am looking at the battle.The game camera is basically 3 types... isometric high gives you a top-down view at a 45 degree angle to let you see more around you, isometric low is the same but slightly closer, and an over the shoulder cam. I prefer the over the shoulder cam, but it sucks when you're fighting multiple enemies, because you're only looking at one bad guy, whist your character is slicing behind himself hitting other baddies and you don't get to see all the cool moves... Switching to the isometric cam is hard, because the enemies become smaller since your camera is higher up, and you might accidentally click the floor and throw off your fighting.There are 3 fighting styles, fast, strong, and group. Fast is good for weak opponents... Strong for slow hard armored opponents... And group is for hitting multiple baddies at once, which is cool. You usually have to switch from group to strong or fast once you get all but 1 baddie down, so make sure to change your style.There is a pause mode that you need to utilize, because often in the game you'll find yourself entering an area and get ambushed and hit before you can even take out your sword.My first complain is the Inventory. There is a lot of stuff you can pick up in this game... and I mean a LOT. Various types of food, tons of herbs and alcoholic drinks, potions, weapons, bombs, scarves, gloves, jewelry, etc, etc, etc. The problem with all this is that your inventory is quite limited by the number of spaces you have... (not by weight like Elder Scrolls: Oblivion). So here I am stockpiling things like a rat, and I find myself wondering whether or not to sell stuff, because I don't know if a vital NPC will need a red scarf to advance the mission, or if I'll need booze to loosen the tongues of an informant. After Chapter 1, (No spoilers) you lose all your stuff for a reason... SO you start pack-ratting it up again, and then find you can get all your old stuff back... wee. Problem is... what do you sell? I ended up finding an Innkeeper that I could use as "Storage" at the Hairy Bear Inn that currently is holding about 30 items that I simply can't carry with me.Another thing is how easily it is to get quests.... Everyone and their grandma wants you to go beat some monster up, or something... And so as of this moment, I have about 16 active quests I'm pursuing at once here... And some of them are inter-connected, so I have to do one to finish the other. Everything is weaved together so tightly, it's quite amazing. Some, though, are simply in pursuit of pleasure (saving hookers to get laid, etc.) so those are true "side quests." But overall, I'm overwhelmed at the amount of stuff to do in game. Good thing they have an organized journal to help you.As you play, you'll come into some major choices you'll have to make, but they won't seem major at the time. When you're first starting the game, the first choice you make of either following the chick to the laboratory, or killing the bigass monster upstairs might seem easy enough, but picking one or the other might have dire consequences to what happens to characters much later in the story. That makes for some decent replay, though at the rate it's taking me to beat the game, might take me awhile.The overall "moral" choice you'll be dealing with is chosing to help either the non-human elves/dwarves, or helping humans who act rasist towards the non-humans. Since your character is neither (a mutant experiment) you can pretty much be either/or in terms of sides, though as of this gameplay, I'm slowly helping the non-humans just because humans are such jerks in this game haha.The game has 3 endings, I've heard. Hopefully they're worth playing the game over again for, since most game endings nowadays have sucked hardcore.Overall, I would recommend this game to someone who liked Knights of the Old Republic and Oblivion, since it's almost a mix of both... With the Medieval settings of Oblivion, and the click and play RPG style of KotOR.As for importing it, gogamer.com was nice and quick, though all you're missing out on by buying the US version is the in-game cards with uncensored breasts... Pics of which are already available online anyway... That's one last pet peeve... The cards you get of women don't always look like the chicks' models they use in-game... Just a minor annoyance.Plus, some of them look like they have implants, which would be slightly unrealistic in a medieval setting!

I finally got around to etching my first test. It's been hard since it takes about 2.5 hours to do one start to finish... Here's my story: Ok, so I bought a bag of copper sulfate on ebay (5 lb bag for about $26) Get that in the mail, and pretty much have everything I need to get started. I took a photo I want to test, and do 3 different filters on it in one photo (so I can see how the etching will affect areas of gray and whatnot.) Once I got the photo the way I want it... I inverted the colors (grayscale colors) and I flip the whole photo horizontally. I inverted because that's what's going to be eaten away on the zinc, and I fliped because when I transfer it from the paper to the zinc, it will be mirrored. I proceed to print the photo onto a Staples Basic 4x6 photo paper using my Dell 3100CN laser printer. I take a hot iron, and try melting the toner from the paper onto the metal Zinc plate I have (4x5 was about $3.50 each) I then tried 2 tactics... I tried just removing the paper and leaving some toner on the zinc, but that didn't leave all the toner on the metal... And I tried taking the paper on the zinc and dumping it into a thing of water and slowly peeled the paper away as it got soggy... The problem with the second method is that some of the toner kept coming off, and would make a crappy picture... The first method worked well, but I couldn't get a deep etch because the toner was so thin on the metal, it came off quickly... I need to perfect this part of the procedure. Then I took 500 grams of copper sulfate (powder) and added it to approximately 2.5-3 liters of regular tap water. I was going to use distilled, but it was too late and I didn't feel like going out. I attached a 9 volt battery (though the instructions on the internet didn't mention this for what I was doing) to help speed up the process. I had the Postive wire (red) going to the zinc plate, and the Negative (black) wire going to a copper plate of approximately the same size. Both plates were lowered into a plastic container and were suspended vertically using plastic coated paper clips and rubber bands. Then I poured the copper sulfate and water mixture into the container, and almost instantly the zinc plate formed a sort of copper-like gunk on the exposed metal parts... I then let it set for about 15 minutes, take it out and wipe the gunk off. I do this every 15 minutes until about 45 min - 1 hour passes. I took it out, and took a scotch brite pad to scrape off the remaining toner. I didn't dump anything down the sink... When the metal was cleaned and dried, I took a black acrylic paint used for metals and painted it with a very very light coat, and wiped the upper layer off with a piece of paper ... The ink stayed in the cracks where the chemicals etched it. I need to polish and varnish it. For cleanup, I took a disposable filter, and filtered the junk out of my copper sulfate solution and currently have the blue liquic (copper sulfate) in containers for future use and testing. I wore gloves the whole time, and took precautions not to breathe in the dust when mixing the copper sulfate and water. The process and materials all need to be refined and perfected, but I think I'm getting somewhere... Here's my second test, for the first one didn't come out very well at all: It's a photo I took of a friend and his girlfriend being all cute, with my other buddy goofing off in the background. They had no idea haha. The photo doesn't do it justice. That's about it for now, I'll post more pics as I get more of these finished.

Or if you're still looking, try "Mafia" (the game) hahaGreat story and gameplay

*ENDING and STORY SPOILERS*The ending felt like an episode of Quantum Leap. Your character makes all things right, and is forced into another time jump. Lame....Let's talk about the use of Time Travel in this game, since I'm a nerd about time travel.Ok, so in the beginning of the game, Krone sets a bomb and goes back in time to create a new reality. You see the bomb go off, and follow him into the alternate reality. You essentially take down his entire army and kill Krone. With Krone's suit, you somehow jump back to your original reality several seconds before you originally left it (Like Marty in Back to the Future) You stop the bomb and the "Paradox Imminent... Jump sequence initiated" message sounds, and your character jumps back in time again against his will.Ok, so let's discuss this "paradox."Picture yourself back at the beginning of the game (right after you beat it...) The cutscene would go as follows:-You're getting in the suit-Krone sets the bomb timer-You're looking at the monitor at your girlfriend-She looks up, but nothing happens (no explosion). (The "You" that just beat the game is standing over her)-Krone is still back in time and changing the present-You get pulled through time since the new reality is created by Krone (though the bomb did not explode, nothing stopped him from leaving)-You play the game as normal, trying to get Krone.The only paradox I can see is that though you actually kill Krone at the end of the game, you did not stop him from creating the alternate reality in the first place! The "you" that turns off the bomb at the end of the game will be forced back into the alternate timeline again, since he hasn't stopped Krone from becoming a dictator in the past.So if you wonder what TimeShift 2 is going to be about, that's what I'm guessing its going to be.The only way to resolve this is to either stop Krone from going back in time... or killing Krone when he's in the past before he can become a dictator... Either way, that would be rather boring.

Well, I just beat the game. I'll keep the spoilers down to a minimum.First off, I give the game a B+ for gameplay. The levels get better after the demo level... More diverse and interesting... The game is still extremely linear though, which sucks. They didn't use enough logic puzzles in my opinion, though they did come up with some interesting puzzles using the environment. Sometimes you have to go "backwards" in order to progress haha. Really makes you think fourth dimensionally.There were a couple spots I got stuck, but I figured them out eventually... There's a spot there is a huge fan that is sucking air down... People that played Half-Life remember a scene where you get blown up into the ceiling... Well I figured I had to use time reverse to go up, but the game turned off that option, so I got stuck in a room, spinning around on the fan, getting totally dizzy, until finally I realized the time reverse feature was back on, and I managed to progress....Stuff like that.When you're stuck, check to see what "recommendation" the computer is giving you in Time to use... It highlights one of the options that it recommends for any given situation, so keep an eye on that.The time travel itself was a little loopy... I'm going to create a separate topic about it that will have story and endgame spoilers in it to discuss the way the game ended and how it works logically.Overall, I'd say this game is only worth buying if you can get it for $30, but I haven't tried multiplayer yet. Single player, though, is rather short, and there's basically hardly any replay value since it's so linear, and you use basically every time function so you don't need to play the game again... Multiplayer is supposed to be good so I might have to try that.Weaknesses: STORY! My God the flashbacks that occur during game play are too short and totally random... The cut scenes are sometimes only 1 sentence long before it cuts back to the game... I can see what they were trying to do, but it wasn't very effective. You are no more informed at the end of the game than you were at the beginning other than the chick you see in the first cutscene and your character are lovers... That's it. You feel bad for her getting roasted in the first cutscene, but if I knew that I was supposed to be emotionally attached to this girl from the beginning, I might have felt worse... The game would have taken on a whole new meaning, since it would have been all about me getting revenge for Krone killing my girlfriend... Like if they did that to Alyx Vance in Half-Life 2, I might have felt more anger towards Krone than I actually did.I was watching videos online about the story they were using before they took a year to polish the game... The main character had his daughter killed on a school bus when it exploded or something... I think that would have been a bit more heartwrenching than another "oh dang they killed my girlfriend again" thing.Just my opinion...Anyway, gameplay AGraphics: A+ (no lag, no problems)Sound: A+Voice acting: A+Storyline: CIf it weren't for the short ending, it might have made me feel better spending the $50 on it...But for gameplay, it's worth getting one way or another.

PEOPLE WHO ARE HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE GAME, THE CAUSE SEEMS TO BE THE LATEST 169.04 DRIVERS!! I installed the 169.04 driver (Released Oct 30, 2007) and when I went to load the game, the Securom mouse icon ran, but the program closed.... So I re-installed the old drivers before that, and it runs now, though I get an error saying that I need updated drivers... THE GAME RUNS FINE WITH 163.75 DRIVERS! The framerate is smooth (though I haven't calculated what FPS it's running). Graphics are nice. Audio is nice. Text is crisp and clear. Textures are good. Overall, the year of work they did on this game really paid off! Back to the review of the game itself: I went out last night to buy TimeShift, only to find that the shipment hadn't arrived yet... So I went back today and got them to unpack the boxes and sell me a copy... Is it bad that they weren't in demand enough to pull them out of the boxes when they got them?? I get it home, open the box and wow, they were so nice, they gave me TWO manuals... Haha, I hope they didn't do that in every shipment, because that is going to be a lot of costs on there end... I wonder if I could ship one back and get some money for it? Yes they are identical manuals... No idea why. And it also comes with a free demo for World in Conflict, which gives you a 10 day trial serial number so you can play multiplayer online... I have no intention of trying this either, but that's just me. Anyway, I've been playing for awhile now and I've passed both points in the game that were provided in demo-form. I got to see the new and changed version of the first demo they did a year ago, and I must say it's much cooler. They've expanded it, so you have to go a long, windy way to get to the main headquarters, unlike before where you could just freeze time and walk past the main gate... The game itself has been pretty linear, but there are some open areas that are quite difficult because you have to utilize cover while your time gauge refills. It's really like Half-Life 2. The presentation is rather well done, as the game presents new tactics and tips as you progress, and you don't even get to time shift until a level or two in the game... to prep you for combat. Overall it has a Halo feel to it... with the refilling health, rather than health stations. It forces you to use cover and move to avoid getting shot (hah, well duh). The story is brought to you in third person flashbacks, which sort of breaks with the whole "You are the character" feel to it that Half-Life has... There are in-game cutscenes where you see yourself out of body as events unfold in game, though you don't see your human face in any of the FMVs. So the character you play as is truly generic, other than his cool looking suit. It would have been nice if they would have at least named the character... I can just see it now... Timeshift 3.... they pull a Metroid on us, and we find out we've been playing as a girl this whole time Speaking of women, I find it sad to say that there seem to be no women in this alternate timeline like there is in Half-Life. At least women in combat would make the "rebellion" in the game a bit more believable, though I think this takes place in an alternate 1930's timeline, so women didn't really do a lot of fighting yet The thing that still irks me is the fact that Headshots don't kill... You have to pump a guy in the head 3-4 times with a shotgun to take him down. It's too arcade-like. You do unlock concept art and the FMVs, and soundtrack as you play through the game, but you don't have to DO anything other than go through levels. Still playing though, so I'll post my final thoughts when I beat the game. I'll have to try out multiplayer too if I can figure that out

I just finished playing the demo for the refurbished fps "Time Shift." I say refurbished because they were going to release it last year, but ended up doing the thing all over again because people didn't like the graphics. I had originally played the first demo of Time Shift last year, and didn't think it was much of anything special. I have an idea for a time travel game that would totally blow everyone else's out of the water but lack the programming knowledge and time to make it (though I did make a demo in Qbasic around 1998 or so using boxes and circles ) Anyway, I picked up the latest demo and here are my impressions and comparisons of this new one versus the old one. The first thing I can say I don't like about the newest demo is the fact that it takes more than one shot to the head to kill a soldier. The first demo, you could hit time Stop, and run around the corner, pop 4 baddies in the head with 4 shots from a pistol, and hit resume, and they all fall over... This one... You hit them 3-5 times with a machine gun in the head and they still don't die. This new version is twice as hard as the old one, even on "casual" mode... Also, though the graphics are 100% more realistic and the art design is a lot nicer, it's too dark. Half the time, I had only my aiming reticule turning red to indicate "enemy" to know whether or not I was even aiming at anyone.... Lots of Blur and smoke effects makes it hard to see anything. The demo is heavily scripted and linear as hell, though, so was the first one. You don't get nearly as much time to play with with your new time controls as you did in the old one, it seems. I know the developers want to make it harder for people to put it into stop mode and breeze through the levels, but for the difficulty how many bullets it takes to kill a guy, it just doesn't feel like enough... The first demo was too easy, I admit. You could breeze through the demo in 5 minutes... The new demo would take as long, but you keep having to quickload due to constantly dying on harder difficulties... Maybe I'm just too noobish One of the big improvements is the Time Reverse feature... The time reverse feature in the original demo was a bit buggy, especially if you shot them while in reverse mode. The new reverse mode is a lot less buggy, but as I said before, you don't get as much of it, unless it's for a Time Puzzle... Such as a bridge exploding that you need to time reverse to get past.... Which brings me to another problem... The time puzzles involving Time Reverse are either a pass or fail situation... Half-Life 2 has physics puzzles that give the player as much time as they need to figure out, and don't throw a dozen enemies at them in the mean time... The developers of Half-Life sat down and made sure that the player would never get stuck in an impossible position by destroying the solution or something... With Time Shift, if you don't have enough time left to use your Time Reverse function, you die. I can only make this assumption based on the one time reverse puzzle involving a bridge being blown up. But the first time I went through it, I hit Time Stop, and ran out of time and died because I didn't have enough time left over to use time reverse. It just seems to "on the rails" for me, and doesn't present a lot of options in terms of solving puzzles. Another thing I hate in this game is the fact that I can't sprint. The game trailer shows the guy running around and having a "blast" but in-game, I feel like a slug... especially in "time stop" mode. I guess since air and the raindrops would be stationary, it realistically would be hard to move around, but since we don't get a lot of "time" to be in stop or reverse mode, I wish we could sprint, even if there was a fatigue meter or something. I'll probably get the latest Time Shift game when it's released, but I will do so only after reading many reviews... For reference, here are screenshots of the old demo (that I just found on an arabic site!) that I just took to show you how it's changed, and new demo screenshots I took: As you can see, the old Alpha Suit was a lot uglier than the slick new Beta Suit you get in the new version: And here are the newer screenshots.... As you can see, the physics are greatly improved, and stuff blows apart... Plaster and glass acts realistically and blow up when you shoot it. Reminds me of the old Red Faction days Multiplayer should be a different type of experience with "time bombs" but I'm not a big multiplayer gamer, so I hope they didn't put too much into multiplayer so that the campaign sucks... Will post review when the game is released (which is October 30, 2007).

Well I just finished Episode 2. I'll keep the spoilers down and just mention my impressions.First off, I'd say that Episode 2 was a bit longer than 1, but most of the first part of the game is taking place underground, which isn't really new if you've played Thief or the like. Thanks to the XBOX 360, PC gamers now have a multitude of pointless tasks they can try to perform in order to get "achievements." Sure, some of them are helpful, like finding ammo caches and protecting things in certain levels, but other stuff like "Kill 333 grubs" (baby ant-lions that look like, well, grubs) is a bit annoying, especially if you miss one or two, and don't get the achievement. I know there's one where you are supposed to drag a lawn gnome through most the entire game and stick it in a rocket to be launched into space... which can be a challenge, and I think the developers did it because some people were doing the same "challenge" in HL2 with the ball you get when you first get the gravity gun... Still, too bad it didn't unlock anything when you actually did it. Bragging rights, I guess...Alyx was actually annoying in the beginning of the game, because she was being overly affectionate and saying very obvious comments that you know the developers fed her those lines to make you look at something that was happening. Thankfully, this stopped happening after a point, and she went back to being a more believable character.Couple of things that irked me. Firstly, I thought this game was going to be less linear... Seeing as how it was taking place mostly outdoors, but in reality, even when you're driving, it seems almost chockingly linear, even compared to the previous half life games. Secondly, I felt as though the developers are starting to taunt me... because every time I tried to progress in the game, something would happen, and the character there would politely ask me to fix it... The darned Vortigon, capable of green electricity beams that can do crazy magical stuff can grab a Zombie by its head and smash it to the ground with one hand, yet I'm the one that has to go over the wall and push the button so they can get through the door... Tedious stuff that they threw in to make the game longer... I mean even more annoying than the puzzles in the first two. Throwing in a steam pipe with a valve next to it. I have to stand here and turn the valve to turn off the steam... Ok, that took me 16 seconds.... that's 16 seconds that really wasn't necessary. Stuff like that.Back to the positive aspects... Graphics were more dynamic in lighting, and higher quality... Lights are blinding if you just came out of a dark area... (Too bright in some cases). Sounds are good. Voice acting top-notch, as usual. They tied in the corporation "Aperture" into this episode, so hopefully we'll be seeing some Portal action in EP3.I caught the G-Man once, though I think he makes an appearance in-game a couple times.Tons of gravity gun usage... Explosive stuff laying around all over the world... It's amazing that more stuff isn't blown up the amount of explosive tanks that are laying around.The car you get to use, I didn't like. It's similar to the buggy thing you get in Half Life 2, but the controls were harder... It seemed like the buggy was more responsive... This stupid car, I kept crashing into stuff because it wouldn't turn, or would turn too much.... Ugh. Probably due to the XBOX 360 compatibility, you either turn the wheel all the way, or none at all with the keyboard, while xbox players probably use the analog stick to drive... Lucky SOBs Hmm, what else.Well it's worth getting if you're wondering what happened after Episode 1... It progresses the plot a bit more than EP 1 did, thankfully, though there is still a lot left to go... I wonder how long EP 3 is going to take now...

Just picked up Valve's "Orange Box" on October 10th. The "Orange Box" comes packaged with a whole ton of stuff, which is a great value for someone that hasn't gotten into Half-Life 2 yet.The box came packaged with 2 dvds, which contain:Half-Life 2Half-Life 2: Episode OneHalf-Life 2: Episode TwoPortalTeam Fortress 2I have a review in the Puzzle forum about Portal, but this is the FPS forum, so here's my review of Half Life 2: Episode 2I already owned Half Life 2, and Episode One, so those I am going to give to a friend of mine... But getting 5 games for the price of 1 (Bioshock as an example) is indeed a heck of a deal, if you don't own HL2, and EP1.Episode Two actually starts off differently than all other half life games, by starting with a cutscene movie... I was like "WHOA, Wait a minute, this is different!"They basically recap everything that happened in Episode One in brief scenes that took place during the gameplay, and they added some music in the background... Now, usually, you start a game by being Gordon, and any cutscenes that occur at the beginning are "happening live." Like the beginning of HL2, with the G Man talking to you. That was happening. But this was a blatant "we're going to show you this video so you don't have to replay Episode 1 to remember what happened." The technique reminded me of when you see a cliffhanger ending to the end of a TV show, then the next new episode, they have that recap at the beginning... It was sort of ok, but it broke the continuity of gameplay... More of a nitpick I guess.The game now has "Achievements" that you can earn by doing different things, such as killing 3333 grubs, or actually carrying a garden gnome found in the beginning of the game all through the game and "blasting it into space." I haven't gotten that far yet, but I figured I'd try unlocking that after I beat it the first time haha. It sucks though because those achievements I believe are kicked in due to XBOX 360 users, and they get points for doing those, while us PC gamers are doing the same things, and we get nothing other than a "feeling of accomplishment." Ugh, they need to implement something for us too Graphics are on par with Episode 1, and better than Half Life 2. I guess they are supposedly better than EP1, but not a ton... Most noticeable thing is a longer view of distance, since now we're outdoors in the woods... Then you get into some caves, and the reflective maps on the wet rocks are done very well, but I can't help comparing this gfx engine to Bioshock now, since Bioshock had water and textures done so well...I haven't beaten HL2: EP2 yet, but I figure it's going to have one last cliffhanger ending due to the fact that they plan on releasing Episode 3 eventually (Just like the Matrix, and every other "middle" movie in a 'trilogy.' Doomed to always be that cliffhanger that everyone hates.)I'll post more once I beat the darned thing.

Just picked up Valve's "Orange Box" on October 10th. The "Orange Box" comes packaged with a whole ton of stuff, which is a great value for someone that hasn't gotten into Half-Life 2 yet.The box came packaged with 2 dvds, which contain:Half-Life 2Half-Life 2: Episode OneHalf-Life 2: Episode TwoPortalTeam Fortress 2Now, I already have and played the first two games, and I have no interest in playing Team Fortress 2, but I know a guy I can "gift" (legally) my key for HL2, and HL2: EP1, so it's all good.Since this is the Puzzle forum, I'm going to review Portal here, since it is in all reality, a first person puzzle game. There will be minor spoilers.First off, if you have seen the movie Cube, and/or played System Shock 2, you'll have a very very familiar feeling here. You start off waking up to an annoying trumpet music sound coming from an alarm clock. You get out of your "recovery bed" and right in front of you, outside the 4 glass walls you're stuck in, is a countdown timer, starting from 1 minute.... A metallic, computerish voice comes up and welcomes you back from your sleep, and proceeds to tell you that you are a test subject. When the counter reaches zero, a portal is created and the game begins!If you've played Half-Life 2, it's basically the same in terms of controls and physics. Graphics are crisp, though some of the textures could have been a bit sharper on stuff like posters and wall textures. The levels start out pretty "bland" since it's mostly just white walls, with a cube motif. Later, though, once you get through all 19 tests, you go behind the scenes, and you get to use your knowledge for "practical" use.The puzzles of Portal start off basic enough, but get harder as you progress. If you have experience with portals using either the Portal mod they made for HL2 came out, or by playing Narbacular Drop (which was the college student-made predecessor to Portal) then you'll be better off... Some people don't understand that you're not entering another dimension or something, you're really just opening a doorway from one coordinate to another. It really gives you a sense of vertigo to see yourself from above if you put a portal on the ceiling, and another in the wall in front of you, because you are now essentially looking through a monitor through a camera above you, that you can jump through and such. Crazy stuff.The best part of Portal, that makes it actually worth buying, is the voice that guides you through the levels... She starts out nice enough, then as the levels go on, you start to sense some tension as she calmly tells you that "There are certain things that might help you along your way, such as, if you touch the floor you will die. Good luck." or "This next room is down for maintenance due to android testing, and all bots are now using live ammunition. We apologize for the inconvenience." The memorable pieces that everyone who have played it, if you don't know yet, are getting a piece of cake, and the companion cube. In the game, the voice tells you that upon completion of the testing, there will be a celebration and moist cake waiting for you... While playing, you come across breaks in the level, where previous "test subjects" holed themselves up, writing with blood on the walls "THE CAKE IS A LIE!!!" and such. Note that you never find a single body, nor do you actually fight against anything organic while you're rushing through the levels. The turrets actually make you feel bad to knock them over, because they say in a very sad, soft voice "oh, I forgive you."The companion cube comes up around test 15 I believe. It's just a cube with a heart on each of its 6 sides, and you use it to solve puzzles, but as you see, one of the previous test subjects held on to it so long, he/she eventually went insane and thought the cube was talking to him... haha, the commentary by the voice is funny: "The companion cube is not alive and cannot talk. If it does start talking, I recommend that you do not listen to it." and so on.Once you get though the 19 test levels, the game isn't over. I won't go on to spoil it, but by the end it gets pretty hard, though not too bad. I ended up beating the game in about 3.5 hours. I got stuck at the last boss, and had to reload a couple times till I figured out I was just wasn't looking in the right place.Now, for $20, this isn't terribly great, especially since there is a Portal mod already made for HL2, and Narbacular Drop is free, but the "story" though very vague, is pretty good. The narration from the voice is funny as hell and worth the price alone. And once you beat the game, you unlock "advanced" levels, which are complicated versions of levels you already beat. There is a commentary mode, which I'm now half way though, and provides some insight.The ending credits song is funny once you beat the game, you won't get it as much if you just watch it on youtube without playing it first.Paying $40 for an episode of half life, and Portal, which are the only two reasons I got it, isn't too bad... That's like $20 a piece, and getting 3 more games free (two of which I'm sending to a friend. So that saved him $40-50 right there.)Overall, definitely worth playing if you like puzzles. It's got a nice learning curve and throws stuff at you only after you have really learned how to do it.

I picked up the Battlefield 2: Collection for $40, though I kind of wish I would have stuck to just the $9.99 version with just BF2 on it... The added maps are pretty cool, but registering them was a pain due to EAs website bugs.Your experience playing online depends on finding a decent server. I was lucky enough to find one where the players seemed half way decent... All you have to do is be a team player, and not be a jerk, and for the most part, you'll have no real problems. Of course, you'll always have *bottom* holes, but if you try not to attract their attention, you'll do alright.I enjoy playing as a special ops character, sneaking over and blowing stuff up

I was sorely disappointed with Perfect Dark Zero. It felt nothing like the original... Why was Carrington wearing a kilt? Come on!I hated the controls too... Give me a good ol fashioned mouse and keyboard, and then we can talk I loved the original. PD and Goldeneye are my two favorite shooters on a console, and I hate console shooters I was surprised at the loss in quality of the composite cables from the N64 to the TV... I always wished the game was faster, so I tried running the 64 version in an emulator, and WHOA. Running a direct emulation without running the video through additional wires, the game was CRISP and clear! I just wish I could hook up a 64 controller to my computer so I could play through it. I tried mapping the mouse to the control stick but that isn't perfect yet. Too bad they don't have HD cables for the 64

Sorry about that, here's the link: http://steampunkworkshop.com/keyboard.shtml/