All Points Bulletin: Reloaded

Step in the shoes of either a policeman or a notorious criminal, with the online shooter All Points Bulletin: Reloaded (APB:Reloaded or APB for short). The character/environmental style is sandbox-esque, much like the Grand Theft Auto series (the graphics compete with GTA:IV as well). You can be either an enforcer, mainly police work, or a criminal, which commits... crimes, nonetheless. Uniqueness and distinctiveness are a big role in this game, giving you options to customize your vehicle, clothing, weapons, graffiti, and much, much, more.

First of all, I want to discuss the looks of the game - the aesthetics. Characters are heavily customizable in terms or bodily features (hair, skin color, height, weight, and even details like eyelashes and freckles). The characters are pretty detailed in terms of 3D. Better than the characters in Test Drive Unlimited 2 (what a horrible game). I noticed this game uses a lot of bump-mapping/normal-mapping, mainly on objects, vehicles, and weapons. Weapons are modeled to a decent level, and so are the buildings. Both provide enough detail (buildings have very scarce polygon bugs sometimes) to suit your eyes. Vehicles are, what I imagine, in between low poly and medium-high poly, giving you just enough detail to fathom them.

Next, I want to discuss gameplay. I play as an Enforcer (police) but the missions are similar for both "factions" (factions = enforcer vs. criminal). You get dispatched to do stuff like take pictures of a garage labeled a crime scene, break into cars, ram into doors, all performed with the function (F) key. Depending on the opposition (opposite faction), they will be dispatched against you to try to stop you, or even reverse your actions taken by you. Missions range widely, from stealing/delivering cars, investigating/breaking into crime scenes, eliminating/assassinating a VIP, capturing a suitcase for the longest time, and all that good stuff. And with the great 3D environment as I mentioned earlier, it never gets boring (although recent updates took out "camping" spots, what a fucking shame). Note: you can only kill online players if you are in a mission/group with them.

Lets talk about the social aspect. You can have a friends list that is limited to a very small amount of people (I think 50 or lower, never counted). I guess it's enough for a good time though. You can also make a group with a maximum of four (4) people that always get put into missions together. This is not to be confused with teams, which are your allies only during missions. With groups, you can mess around/kill each other while out of missions. Speaking of messing around, this game has a lot of griefers: people that aren't in your mission, and are influenced by the opposition to ram your car, and losing valuable time because of them. Really horrible. As far as the social environment itself goes, you can meet both assholes and really nice people. You can also have clans, which is basically a giant group that usually share a certain clothing style, certain vehicle, certain gameplay, etc. and usually group up with each other for a good time.

This next subject is a mixture of gameplay and social aspects: matchmaking. These are the people who get put on your team, and the people who are dispatched against you. First off, let's talk about threat and rank. There are four threat levels (five if you include trainee/beginner). Green, bronze, silver, and gold. Gold is the highest, and for the overly-accomplishing outstanding players, and green just suck in comparison. Your threat color is based upon your wins/losses in mission. I myself play as a silver, sometimes gold when I'm lucky. This is what pisses me off: matchmaking. I am always dispatched against golds. Like, fucking high-level golds. I rarely get the option to call for backup either. Rank also comes into this. Rank ranges from R1 to R200+. Most of the very-good golds are R200+ and those are the same fuckers I get dispatched against, when I am only R150. Matchmaking: bullshit. Makes me prejudiced that the game is shitty, even though most of the game is good.

Customization is a HUGE role in this game. With over approximately 15-20 vehicles to choose from, you are pretty covered. Especially considering some factions get certain cars while others don't. There is a large variety of clothing too. Want to look like some low-life, thief, nigga? Then get golden chains and baggy clothes. If you want to be a hardcore police officer, get a kevlar vest and a police uniform. Really, clothing customization is awesome. There is also a comprehensible [but not refined] symbol designer with symbols and letters to put on your car. Cars can be customized as much as clothing. Make them police-themed, make them camouflaged, make them lime green with Monster Energy decals. You name it. Cars also have a lot of options to be customized with in terms of body parts, especially as an Enforcer. You get a plethora of police lights that make your vehicle extremely noticeable on the streets. In an addition to all of this, you have a music player to make in-game music from, which can be 5-seconds long for death themes (if you are killed by a person, their theme plays). The customization surpasses that of any other games in my opinion.

Finally, is this game free? Well, yes. Uh, no. Well... sort of. You can play Free2Play (as many do) and get it through either Steam or GamersFirst Live (GamersFirst is the distributor of All Points Bulletin). Honestly, GamersFirst Live is just crapware, and if you have Steam installed, get it through Steam. If you don't, get Steam. However, if you want to take things further: have better weapons, clothes, vehicle kits, you can get Premium which increases the money you make in-game, and also helps you progress quicker. You also get access to weapons which are superior over Free2Play weapons in many situations. However, with enough skill, you can easily beat these (I do not have that skill, unfortunately). Premium is costly. You pay a certain amount of Euros for G1 credits which are used to purchase things in-game. It's not a one-time fee, which is bullshit to be frank. Seriously GamersFirst, this is expensive as fuck. You capitalist pigs are making tons of money. Some people are paying 30 Euros just for a vehicle. Congrats for being successful scam artists.

In short, here are the major pro's and con's of the game.

Positives

• Game is Free2Play (preferably through Steam)
• Customization of everything is extremely vast and unique
• Allows for realistic roleplay and cooperative teamwork
• The game itself never gets boring due to the variety of missions it offers
• Great way to spend time with friends and have a good and/or funny time

Negatives

• Large problem with hackers/aimbots in the game, who demolish even the most skilled
• Premium/Pay2Play is a slap-in-the-face to Free2Play players
• The developers/respected forum users do not respond well to constructive criticism
• The matchmaking is awfully dreadful (I'd quit my job if I designed the matchmaking)
• In general, a lot of easily-fixable problems are ignored by developers due to laziness

I would not say the game has more negatives than positives, but hell, it is pretty close to that at this rate. Overall, I give the game about 7.5/10, but I spent over 400 hours on it since late December, according to Steam, so they must have done something right.

Minecraft In-Depth Review!

What can I say? I bought Minecraft. The only words I can use to describe it are: fascinating, exciting, exhilarating, significant, amazing, exhausting, (very) addicting, interesting, fathomable, astonishing, exquisite, unique, one-of-a-kind, and anything else that is a synonym to "super-ultra-kick-ass". In a nutshell, this is one of the best games to hit the planet Earth and its neighboring galaxies. It is truly unique in just about every way. I ran out of words for this game. I have been playing it for at least 100 hours minimum. Expect this review to be a bit out of order compared to my other reviews because I am speechless. I hope you enjoy this review; it will get a little dry at parts but then again since it is full of facts and other cool information some might actually be able to enjoy it.

First off, I want to go over the price. As I said in my earlier post regarding Minecraft, the game has a nominal fee of £9.95 for the Alpha of the game (once again, that is $15.92 or €11.59). According to the site, the game is at half price right now. When the full game comes out, the price will nearly double. But, if you buy the game like I did at the Alpha stage, you get all future versions and updates free of charge. Basically, it's like a pre-order that guarantees your future at Minecraft. Not only is it extremely worth it, but it also goes towards a good cause because Notch (the developer of Minecraft) is an independent developer meaning he has no team compared to Eden Games or Electronic Arts (although rumors say Minecraft now has a development team). If Notch gets your money, it will most likely be used towards the development of the game and to treat himself as a reward, which he totally deserves!

Next I would like to discuss gameplay for beginners. At first, you just start to beat stuff and walk around. Hopefully enough, you will get eaten by spiders, zombies, or creepers (all three are called "The Mob"). This is a positive thing because you will learn to avoid them the next night when they usually come out. After you get the idea of things, you would hopefully beat a few trees and collect the wood. After collecting some wood and processing it, you could make wood planks, a door, a crafting table, and a chest. This is how you make your own house. Now that you have a house, you can learn how to craft more stuff and even make weapons to kill creepers for their resources. It's all a learning experience, and once you get enough experience, you can build superstructures like skyscrapers completed with moats around equipped with traps for The Mob.

Another important thing I need to discuss about the game is the graphics and setup. Yes, they may be made of cubes which are made up of cubes, which are also made up of cubes (hell, even the sun/moon are cubes). But that is what I like about the game. It is simple, made of cuboids, but the cuboids make an array of objects and environments. Truly amazing, this game. All it comes with is an .EXE (executable file) and it is impressive for a single .EXE because the game is so complex - fishing, digging, collecting, mining, etc! Notch gets another pat on the back from me for packing such a diverse game into a single .EXE and of course for making so much out of so little (so much = the game, so little = cubes). So if you are debating on the graphics, the gameplay definitely blends with the graphics and makes up for it.

One vital thing I do not want to forget is the multiplayer experience. You highly benefit from multiplayer because you can get friend(s) online, compared to just yourself offline, and you can all build a castle with the great power of teamwork and each have your own room in the castle. Online interaction also accounts for fun adventures, especially mining in deep mineshafts and striking gold together and sharing the success! Other fun activities to do while on multiplayer servers include actions such as hunting, digging, creating, destroying, and anything your mind wants to do. Of course offline is just as fun, but the teamwork element online definitely accounts for a lot of fun!

Last but not least, the things you can do in Minecraft amaze me. As I already mentioned, you can fish, hunt, dig, mine, plus many more cool concerns. But one thing I cannot express is the amount of things, as I only mentioned a considerable fraction! One of my favorite things to do is to just build stuff. Houses, canals, tunnels, castles, buildings, superstructures, and basically anything I put my mind to when I'm in the mood. Like I previously remarked, playing multiplayer adds to this experience significantly. Building stuff with your friends at 02:00 in the morning on a school/work night beats no other activity. You can also have sorts of "mini-activities". These include shooting arrows, fishing, hoeing (no, not that kind), watering, and crafting. May I not forget to mention that the crafting is realistic: to make glass, you follow the real life procedure of melting sand. To make pork to gain health, you need to burn raw meat. To make ladders, you need to assemble sticks in a 3x3 grid. You can also upload custom skins using cool programs like SkinEdit but you may also traditionally use Photoshop, Paint.NET, GIMP, or for simplicity, the classic Microsoft Paint.

My most favorite part about this game is definitely the ability to create what you want. When you are feeling down, or when you are bored, or when you do not want to do schoolwork, or even when you are slightly depressed, please, open up Minecraft and take out your stress by building something. Some say Minecraft is a little kid's game but it actually lets you think about thinks strategically and rationally. Some skills may even be used for real life (note "some"). But I think you get the point.

Anyways... this game is well worth the money. If you are even thinking about getting Minecraft, definitely go for it. The only reason why I find that you shall not like it is because your mind has no imagination or creativity. Other than that, this would be a good Christmas/Hanukkah (or birthday if it's in December) present. I am definitely addicted to this game for good reasons.

I hope you enjoyed this review, and trust me - this is not a waste of money. This is well worth the money, so I enormously recommend to get it. Unfortunately, my copy of FRAPS isn't working, so no screenshots/gameplay footage for current times, but I ought to sort that out. Now, off to play Minecraft. Goodbye and happy holidays!

Minecraft

This is a game I have really been aching to get lately. You are basically a Lego-esque guy with a box head. You are free to walk around a massively open environment and destroy shit with your hands. But once you destroy a tree, you can make wood. Once you fiddle with the wood in a gadget window, you can make an axe. Once you fiddle with more wood you can make stuff like doors for a house, and a workbench too (I presume). But you need to watch out for the mobs! That's why you make traps for them to keep yourself out of harm. I don't know if the game has a plot at all, but to me, the plot is to build random shit with your friends on multiplayer and to have a fantastic time.

You need £9.95 for the game (That converts to $15.92 or €11.59) or else you will see this window:

Nevertheless, here are a few gameplay videos I came across on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3KQ0_6T3h0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OashbT7HVCg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaMTedT6P0I

Blog Launch

Welcome to my blog. Here you will find an arrangement of posts varying from subject; some discussing my personal LED/breadboard projects, while others may contain visualizations of 3D modeling, and some may go to the extent of technology or politics in general. I hope you enjoy the posts here and find them interesting, and possible write some feedback so I can receive it as constructive criticism. It will only help me on the subject that you decide to post on. All in all, enjoy, and if you don't - well, that's too bad.

My LED/breadboard projects have started very amateurishly. They consist of a relatively small breadboard and with basic light-emitting diodes and an array of wires. I have also added a cutoff switch but I soon learned that it caused the LED's to shorten out. Oh well, shit happens. However, I got a bunch of parts (resistors, transistors, DC motors) in a tin container that my father gave to me so I can try a lot of stuff. Hopefully I can get good to the point that I will be able to wire a series of LED's in a matter of hours and fully "animate" them with 555 chips, relays, circuits, and what not. Electronics like these are becoming a greater passion for me, so I hope to prosper in this field.

As far as 3D Modeling goes, I began in 2008 with the free program called Google SketchUp. I mainly liked it because it was easy to use plus it had a 3D Warehouse where you could distribute and download 3D Models. As I discovered game modding (Rigs of Rods to be specific) I realized of how mediocre of a program it was. It was sometime in 2009/2010 that I learned not to use that program due to its lack of plug-in's, lack of general modeling tools such as UV-mapping, and the fact that it creates unnecessary polygons. I have now emerged to Blender 3D and I am alive and kicking with it. I have made a few houses/parts of vehicles with it to date, and plan to make much more. It was hard to switch user-interfaces from Google SketchUp to Blender 3D but it is well worth the benefits. I also have little experience with 3DS Max 2009 and AC3D.

One thing I don't want to forget to mention is my passion for video games. My passion for games lie in adventure or racing games. My most favorite and recently-played games include Rigs of Rods, Live for Speed, Test Drive Unlimited (and hopefully its sequel), Racer, Need for Speed: Porsche, and anything that is realistic, modifiable, and offers a kick-ass online experience. However, my most favorite of these games definitely has to be Rigs of Rods. Rigs of Rods is a giant sandbox-like simulator where you can simulate everything and anything. Basically, it's a playground for you to enjoy and to dick around in. Live for Speed I adore for its physics and race car-like gameplay, and the rest of the games are just fun in general, whether it's the racing aspect, or the multiplayer aspect.

I also enjoy making/editing videos. I do not have any professional equipment like a 1080p camcorder with a 35mm lens and all of that, but I do like to make videos of games or just videos of pictures/footage in general. I used to use Windows Movie Maker on my old YouTube account, but I tried Sony Vegas 8.0 Pro and fell in love with it. To this day, I use Sony Vegas 9.0 Pro and use it to edit all of my videos. Some improvements in my videos over the last few years include: stretching footage to fill the 1080p aspect ratio, not using mainstream music, using cool video effects, and just appealing editing in general. I have made well near 100 videos to-date and plan to make more. Check out the channel Beolex on YouTube to see my work.

Learning about politics also seems to satisfy my. Not only are politics a good way to express yourself, but they also tend to teach you how to look at things rationally. I am not some super-genius historian that can name every war in every region of the world, but if I spend enough time studying a situation such as the Srebrenica Massacre I will be able to target and locate evidence and proof to determine that it was well fabricated and that it didn't happen. Despite my political views, I hope you will still be able to enjoy any updates regarding geopolitics/wars I make.

Basically, I have a wide variety of interests and cannot list them all here. With that being said, enjoy my blog and I hope you find everything alright and in order!