A Good Reason for Few Updates

At least I will soon have a good reason for having few updates. Starting in a couple of weeks I will be living on my Church's property to help build a camp for this summer. Unfortunately this means I have to work under my Pastor, joking, but at least I will have something interesting to do this summer. I probably will only have computer access on the weekends meaning very few updates to my already barren blog.

On a lighter note, I got an Xbox 360 about a week ago and have really enjoyed it. Right now we have Call of Duty 2 and Quake 4 (not my choice); we hope to have Fifa soon. I can't really say I have any complaints with the 360 except the first wireless controller we bought didn't work, but we returned it and now all is well.

In other, somewhat late, gaming news LOTRO is now excepting beta sign ups. Even though I will be gone most of the summer I signed up. I have been following this game through two developers, and two name changes and there is no way I wasn't going to at least try and get in. If I make it, it will put me at 10 closed betas including: WoW, City of Heroes, City of Villains, and Matrix Online.

Also if you haven't heard, Indiana Jones the game is going to be great. There are two main improvements that are driving this game to be a true next-gen experience, the first is Euphoria.

Euphoria is a procedural animation program that uses a bone structure, muscle strength, and AI to figure out how a character should react to punches, throws, a fight on top of a shaking street car, and more. The demo I saw showed Indy on top of a street car with enemies jumping from a car driving along side. Most of the enemies made it onto the street car without too much trouble, but one was not strong enough to pull himself up so he broke the window below him to help himself up.

The second innovation is Digital Molecular Matter. Digital Molecular Matter means that the physics engine decides how wood splinters, metal bends, rubber stretches, and concrete crumbles. Instead of the same pre designed way wood breaks into four pieces like most games do, it will, in theory, depend on how the player applies pressure to the object.

If this all comes together in 2007 when the game comes out it could make for the best licensed video game ever.