S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will be delayed until 2008, or cancelled altogether.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a post-apocalyptic game about a nuclear fallout from Chernobyl, is scheduled for release in the first quarter of 2007. However, the game's already been plagued by numerous bumped deadlines, so it wouldn't be a surprise if it got bumped again.
Jack Bauer will be shot.
This has been a long time coming. Jack Bauer, lead character from 24, has been fighting terrorism for five seasons and has never taken a bullet, despite numerous gunfights. I think the sixth season will be the end of his streak. I also think he'll shrug it off and go back to fighting the bad guys.
The US will begin pulling out of Iraq, or at the very least put plans in place to do so.
I can't believe that after all that's happened since the US' invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush still thinks maintaining a presence there is a good idea. I think that 2007 will be the year that the US either begins a pullout, or at least puts plans into motion.
The Zune will pick up speed.
Microsoft's Zune was released with little fanfare this year. However, if there's one thing I've learned about Microsoft, it's that they are perfectly capable of invading markets that others would consider impenetrable. I didn't think they'd be able to invade the console market either, but the Xbox 360 is currently leading the next-gen platform wars.
I figure that despite the limited success of the Zune so far, a "Zune 2.0" in 2007 will give them more traction in the market.
The Wii will revive Nintendo's role in the console market.
Let's face it: Nintendo has been floundering in the console wars since the Super Nintendo. While the N64 was okay, the Sony Playstation absolutely destroyed it in the market. Although I can't be sure why, I think the N64 was too "gimmicky." Its trident controller was big and unwieldy, and ultimately awkward. The N64 was still a cartridge-based system, while all the competition had moved on to discs. This meant that games had to fit onto a single cartridge, and could not span multiple discs; this was a big problem for games like Final Fantasy, which eventually wound up moving to the Playstation. And at this point, Nintendo was still battling the reputation of being a "kid's" system, without any mature games.
However, Nintendo has two major advantages which have kept it in the market during this time. One, its always-expanding library of excellent brand games, such as Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and F-Zero. Two, its complete dominance in the portable market; the Game Boy's various incarnations have trounced all competition, even Sony's PSP.
It looks like after years of withdrawing and surviving on the advantages above, Nintendo is ready to get back into the console market. Its message? Forget next-gen graphics. Forget expensive hardware. All you need is a great interface. Enter the Wii.
Nintendo's latest console endeavour has drawn great critical praise, and I think 2007 will show that it's well-deserved. A wealth of great games will be released that take advantage of the Wiimote. However, I think most of those games will be released by Nintendo, and third-party use of the Wiimote won't be as effective. Which leads me to my next prediction.
The Wii will be plagued with trouble from third-party developers.
The Wiimote isn't the first interesting peripheral Nintendo's released over the years. And if the past is any indication, third-party developers may not drink the Kool-Aid. I wouldn't be surprised if third-party developers simply don't take the time to maximize use of the Wiimote.
One thing I've noticed from Wii game reviews is that Wii ports of games are rarely as good as the versions available on other consoles. This is because the Wii doesn't have the graphical capability of the other next-gen systems, so Wii games always look the worst. Also, most ported games are not designed with the Wiimote in mind as the primary controller.
As mentioned earlier, I think the Wii will have a lot of great games, but most of those will be games exclusively available on the Wii, not ports. The ported games will generally be substandard, which will play in favour of other consoles. This will lead to the Wii having a small library of great games, and a lot of ported duds.
Children all across North America will develop a single, over-muscled right arm due to excessive Wii play.
Did you ever see that episode of the Simpsons where Homer obtains a freeweight and develops a single over-muscled arm? I think the same thing's going to happen to excessive Wii players.
The PS3 will fail, which will be the beginning of the end for Blu-Ray.
I think it's pretty much a given that the PS3 is going to trail behind the Xbox 360 and the Wii. At this point, the console only has two things going for it.
One: Final Fantasy is still on board with the Playstation. However, I think that's just a matter of time before Square jumps ship to the Xbox 360. It wouldn't be the first time they've done something like this.
Two: The built-in Blu-Ray player. However, I think that the PS3's failure is going to deliver a heavy blow to Blu-Ray as well. Microsoft's opt-in approach with the 360's add-on HD-DVD drive is a much better idea. Sony has had bad luck in the past in implementing their own standards; I think the Blu-Ray will be one of these.
Kevin Federline will release a new album.
Kevin Federline's debut album, Playing With Fire, scored 15% on Metacritic (which represents "Extreme dislike or disgust"). I don't think that'll deter Kevin from a second attempt, and we can expect it in 2007. I doubt it'll score as low as the first album, but I'm predicting below 40%.
2007 will be a better year for me than 2006.
On a personal note, this has been a shitty year for my family and I. I'm hoping 2007 will be better.
If you enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, it's a pretty safe bet you'll also enjoy Neverwinter Nights 2. However, there's one thing you need to know about Neverwinter Nights 2: it assumes you have a working knowledge of Dungeons & Dragons. If you have no idea what to do with a six-sided die, this game isn't for you, and it's certainly not going to give you any help figuring out how to play. That's not to say you need to be a D&D guru - with my minimal knowledge of the technical details, I was able to play it. But if you don't know what 4d6 or +2 AC mean, think twice before playing this game.
The game begins with your player living in a small village, which in typical RPG fashion gets burned to the ground within about ten minutes of gameplay. From there on, you gain levels, equipment and new party members as you trek through a story about a broken sword and an evil bad guy. The story certainly won't win points for originality.
Things I liked:
It's a big game. Neverwinter Nights 2 certainly has a lot to offer. It's a long game, which is to be expected, and carries the feel of an epic quest. The game takes you through a wide variety of environments, and even though the combat rarely changes, it never feels boring.
Character customization. Your main character can be extensively customized. In addition to choosing regular classes (rogue, bard, etc.), you can also choose certain prestige classes if you meet various requirements. Although your teammates are somewhat set in stone, you can customize the main character as much as you like.
Holding the fort. Partway through the game, you get your own keep and become responsible for its development. It's up to you to control policing, taxes, building development, and so on. Later in the game, the keep falls under siege and you have to defend it. This throws a whole new element into the game that makes it much more interesting.
The voice acting. It's pretty solid. I noticed an oddity in the epilogue, but the rest of the game was quite good.
Things I disliked:
Retarded teammates. Your teammates can figure out what to do in combat if left to their own devices, but sometimes their AI doesn't behave in the most helpful manner. This isn't such a big deal early in the game because it starts off easy, but as you progress it becomes increasingly burdensome to direct your characters. They continuously run in the wrong direction, refuse to attack when told to do so, and so forth. As you get near the end of the game, the enemies begin to get far stronger and you have increasingly little margin for error during your battles. At this point, the stupidity of your teammates grows very frustrating.
The linear plot. Although you can configure your main character extensively, Neverwinter Nights 2 doesn't give you a lot of room for decision-making. Regardless of what you say or do during the game, you'll be pushed down the path the game wants you to go. By the end of the first chapter, it's very apparent that any choices the game gives you are somewhat superficial.
Weak relationships with your teammates. Your teammates are ultimately disappointing. You have little control over how they progress and develop. Other than the dwarf fighter you meet early in the game, the relationships with your teammates are dull. Their dialogue will give you pointers and fill in gaps in the plot, but you don't really care about them.
Bugs. My biggest disappointment with Neverwinter Nights 2 was its blatant technical glitches. This game is bug-ridden, which shouldn't surprise me because it's from the same developer as the equally troubled Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2. Not all of the bugs I encountered were harmful - in fact, some of them were helpful - but they certainly pulled me out of the experience. Few things are more irritating than finding bug workarounds when you want to play a game. Here are some of the more interesting bugs I found:
When selecting party members to join me on a quest, the game would sometimes completely remove my selected characters. This would render me unable to ever use those characters again. I didn't experiment with this too much, but it seemed like this tended to happen if I clicked through the menu options too fast.
Items in my inventory kept duplicating. I have no idea why this was happening, but it turned out to be quite convenient. Near the end of the game, my character's most powerful sword duplicated for no apparent reason, allowing him to dual wield both.
I found a character who would give me 1,000 experience points (and that's not a small number) every time I talked to him. (I'm not sure if anybody else will be able to reproduce this, but if you want to try: in Ammon Jerro's haven, get Zaxis' real name and use it on him; he'll open a portal for you and you'll get 1,000 experience points. Talk to him again and try to use the name again. When I did this, I got another 1,000 experience points.)
I suppose the moral of the story is to save often.
We've got an upcoming release, so I decided to go through our help text and improve where possible. What I found was appalling. Here's a tidbit.
"The department of record is the department that is responsible for the records."
I really can't blame anyone but myself for the crappiness of the help text. Actually, that's not entirely true...I can blame the jabronies who wrote the help text, but that won't accomplish anything because they're not with the company anymore. And ultimately, as lead engineer it's up to me to keep an eye out for this sort of problem.
I'm not a big fan of help text in the first place. I think it's an outdated way of helping users. The assumption is that if you cram kilobytes of text in a corner somewhere, the user has no reason to complain if the software's hard to use.
Unfortunately, nobody reads the help. So if you're relying on help text to train your users, you're going to find out that a lot of them are untrained.
If you must have lots of help text, remember that there's a big difference between help text and good help text. It's easy to produce the former, and extremely difficult to produce the latter. Most people opt for the former. Microsoft is a perfect example of this, and anyone who's attempted to use their online help will agree with me.
Writing good help text requires two important skills:
Written communication skills (so that your help text is easily accessible)
Knowledge of the domain (so that your help text is actually useful)
The big problem is that anyone with these skills would much rather invest their considerable talents in more "prestigious" work. Let's face it: writing help text can be pretty mundane, and it's not something you look forward to doing. So a lot of the time, help text winds up being written by people who really aren't qualified to do so. The result? See the earlier example.
My personal favorite help text faux pas is what I like to call the regurgitated definition: when you re-order the name so that it becomes the explanation. For example:
Object-Oriented Programming: Programming that is object-oriented.
Such definitions are, of course, absolutely useless. And unless you make significant investments in your help text personnel, such definitions are what you'll get.
Again, I don't think help text is the best way of making usable software, and I certainly don't know how to find and retain staff who do a good job of it. But I do know that if you really need help text, make sure it's better than what I'm cleaning up now.
What is the deal with these Russian radiation poisonings? This whole Russian spy thing is obviously quite serious, but I can't help but be entertained by the ridiculousness of the whole debacle.
Also, the issue makes me want to listen to Boney M's classic, Rasputin.
In fact, almost anything to do with Russia makes me want to listen to Rasputin.
Why Stephen Harper is re-opening the gay marriage debate
(December 6th, 2006 - 11:22PM)
Because he said he would.
Is it so hard to believe that Stephen Harper's just fulfilling a campaign promise by re-opening the gay marriage debate? How can it be a political ploy? Everyone knows the motion is going to fail. Gay marriage is here to stay. But Stephen Harper said he'd re-open the issue, and even though I support gay marriage, I respect him for honouring his campaign promises.
So let him waste a little time keeping his word, and then we can move on to more important things.
Also, Jack Layton > Stephen Harper > That French loser who's leading the Liberals. Does anyone else think Mr. Dion looks like a deer caught in the headlights (figuratively speaking)?
