OS10 does a terrible job of connecting to and maintaining network volumes. Today, I switched network connections from wireless to wired and my network volume lost its connection and wouldn’t resolve the connection automatically. I had to physically navigate and mount the volume again.

In windows you can attach a network storage drive, and when your switch connections it resolves fine, not only that but it will reconnect every time you login if you want it to. No deal with OS10, you have to mount the volume every time I come into the office.

I pulled a bit of a marathon the last two nights in order to finish GOW before starting Crackdown, which I know I will playing the hell out of. I am having a bit of a hard time trying to put to words what a masterpiece GOW is. Playing as Kratos I felt like a mad man. Game play mechanics like mashing buttons to finish off an enemy, holding a button to open crates and doors, mashing a button to get heavy doors open all did their job in making me work for my progress.

The scope of the game is enormos. Within ten minutes of starting you are in the middle of a great battle and fighting an enormous boss. When I arrived at Athens and saw the massive Ares destroying the city, and its residents doing everything they can to destroy him I thought I was nearing the end of a very short game. Next thing I know I am on my way to one of the greatest dungeons I have ever played through. The puzzles and sense of discovery were amazing. The designers of the game always led you back to where you started and showed you what you just finished. Like “here, look at this awesome thing you just did.”

The perfect example of this is just before going into Pandora’s Temple, which is chained to the back of a giant Titan named Kronos, you meet an old man digging a grave who goes on to tell you that the grave is for you. About six hours of game play later you are climbing out of that same grave via a mysterious rope that drops down to you. If you haven’t played it, its hard to explain. But its damn cool.

Excellent game. Can’t praise it enough.

First up in my pile pf shame is God of War. Released in 2005, I never played God of War, or a number of games in my “Pile of Shame” because I sold my PS2 when Halo came out. GOW is outstanding. I am almost shocked at how good it really is, and how much better it is than almost every “next gen” game I have played on my 360. It combines details from games like Tomb Raider and Prince of Persia and blends in some classic movie action scenes similar to something you might see in an Indiana Jones movie. The control is tight, the action intense and the story is engaging. If God of War 2 were coming out for PS3 I would go out and get one when it is released. Its that good.

I have Windows XP installed on a Boot Camp partition which I can boot into and use Windows as I normally would. Then, while booted into OS10 I have Parallels installed and I use that same partition as my virtual machine. So all my data, applications, fonts etc are exactly the same as though I was booted into Windows proper. I am only using Windows for Flash at this point and its way faster like this than the real Mac version of Flash. Its good stuff and the main reason I am switching to Mac.

I am using a MacBook Pro laptop and on it there is a key labeled “delete.” But this key is not delete at all, its a backspace. I had to download a application called DoubleCommand that remaps certain keys to what you want. Since there is a second “enter” key I remapped delete to that. There is also a shortcut, if you hit “fn/delete” it acts like a forward delete key.

Is this the way you would expect a delete key to work? Every keyboard I have ever used, backspace was the key if you wanted to delete moving backwards, the delete key went forward…

If you are ten directories into your hard drive or network you can’t tell what directory you are in unless you trace back through the folder structure. In Windows Explorer you can always tell exactly where you are just by looking at the title bar or the url bar, I like that.

IGN has an excellent interview with Epic game designer Cliffy B where they talk about new content, game design and story.

On adding more players to multiplayer.

Honestly, we have received some notes on that, but honestly, when you have a medium to small player count, you have a better chance of getting to take out the guy that you’re fighting on a regular basis. There is a sense of an intimate relationship that happens there. I think that in some instance, bigger is better. But not all the time. And getting to know the guys you’re killing on the server is a good thing in my book.

Gears is still the #1 game on XBox Live so they must have done something right. Right? More game modes just fragment the community of people playing, and adds to the development time.

On the use of the “A” button to do most every action.

I think we did a 90% perfect job on that one. There is that 10% of the time that the button doesn’t do what you want it to do. It’s one of those things where anticipating what players want, at any given time with a contact sensitive button like that, is an art form in itself. We consolidate everything on A because it’s prime real estate on your Xbox 360 controller. I’ve played so many other shooters where the controls feel so clunky. The bottom line is the A button in Gears was designed for the impatient gamer to have something to do…it’s kind of taking that Mario element of him running across the landscape when he goes “woo-hoo-hooo-hoooooh!” like he would always do and allow you to find cover in the gamespace in Gears. So honestly, there were a couple instances where we could have ironed that out better, but A was definitely a success.

This is their greatest achievement if you ask me. The “A” button brings so much focus to the game and breaks the gameplay down to exactly what it was meant to be, duck, cover and flank. There is no jumping over shit, no falling off ledges, just simple, challenging gameplay.

On the minimal story.

With regard to the story leaving a lot of questions unanswered, I think that’s a very valid point. That’s something that could be potentially set up for future products in regards to sequels or ancillary materials. But honestly, we did not want to have 10-minute cut-scenes. We did not want to sit there and force the player to endure some sort of expedition of lengthy wanna-be Spielberg stuff. We wanted the player to feel like he could be entertained in the first few minutes, break to the chase, and enjoy an action movie with some secondary themes in the background. That was our primary goal.

I think it’s perfectly OK. I think it’s the same as the movie Children of Men; the game is about getting from point A to point B. No one asks about the movie’s story. Just like in that movie, the story is about the moment to moment feeling, it’s a set-up for what’s going to happen in alleged future products.

You know what your goal is, you know why the goal is there and you get to know and care about the other characters. Thats way more than can be said about most games with so called “stories.”