The Refined Geek

There’s really nothing quite like the Space Shuttle. Every part of it has been subjected to countless hours of engineering with the culmination being one of the most complex and powerful objects that man has ever created. All that being said however it’s getting on a bit at 29 years old and the revolutions in technology since its inception have set the stage for it to be succeeded by the next big thing. It will still remain firmly in our heads for a long time to come as the icon that heralded in the new space industry but the time has come for the Shuttle to retire to greener pastures.

Obama seems to support this vision with a new plan that focuses on what NASA does best: pioneering technologies and that are risk heavy and lack the current commercialization opportunity that would make them attractive to private industry. Following on from this idea it would then be preferable for NASA to delegate the routine tasks to private industry where possible, saving them an appreciable amount in research and operational costs. This is why I supported the closing down of the Shuttle program as whilst it is something that I and the wider world will miss the time has come for private industry to take over some of the mundane aspects of space travel so that NASA can return to the innovators they’re meant to be.

It seems however that some just can’t let the status quo go:

NASA currently plans to retire the space shuttle fleet in the fall after flying the last of four final shuttle missions remaining for this year. The next shuttle to fly is Discovery, which is poised to blast off on April 5 to deliver vital supplies and spare parts to the International Space Station.

The fleet’s retirement would end more than 29 years of U.S. space shuttle flights and leave NASA without a dedicated American spacecraft for launching astronauts into orbit.

Some U.S. senators and members of Congress have expressed support for extending the shuttle program, with Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) filing a bill last week formally seeking a reprieve for NASA’s space shuttle fleet.

Whilst I can appreciate Hutchison’s concern for keeping the Shuttle going I can’t help but feel that it’s done only to win some political points with her constituents. Texas is home to the Johnson Space Center which employs around 3,200 public servants and well over 15,000 contracting staff. All of these are dedicated to the manned space flight programs which will suffer under Obama’s proposed plan for NASA. Other supporters of the bill are from the state of Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center which is the current host to the shuttles and the majority of America’s launch facilities. It would then be advantageous to them to continue the Shuttle program as long as they could to keep the loyalty of their constituents, but it comes at the cost of revolutionizing NASA. Something which I believe it is desperately in need of.

The bill also calls for some form of heavy lift launcher to be ready to transport crew and cargo to the International Space Station by 2013. The earliest scheduled date for a Ares-I launch was sometime in 2014 with more recent estimates pegging it around 2017. The only way that NASA will get such a capability will be to buy it off private companies such as SpaceX, who’s Falcon 9 is much more likely to reach that deadline date than anything NASA comes up with. I can’t seem to track down if there’s any additional funding included in the bill to support this more aggressive timeline but needless to say it would be needed if they wanted to meet it.

As much as I’d love the Shuttle to continue on I know that it’s not the right path if we want to go further into the solar system and beyond. Obama’s plan for NASA showed a great deal of strategic focus with creating a real and sustainable space infrastructure that could support future astronauts in their endeavours outside our atmosphere. Introducing a bill like this one just to score a few cheap political points is what has been keeping NASA back for decades and it’s only now that we have an opportunity to let NASA shine again.

Quantic Dream is a name that you’ll be familiar with if you’ve been a long time reader of this blog but outside of that you’d be hard pressed to find those who knew of them. Much like Ninja Theory, who were thrust into the limelight for being one of the reasons to buy a PS3 on launch day (and subsequently faded into the background as quickly), they have specialized in creating games that focus less on the actual game play itself and more on the characters and the roles they play in the story. Such games blur the lines between themselves and more traditional forms of video entertainment, which has drawn the ire of many a game critic. Still the genre of cinematic gaming¹ has proven itself to be extremely viable with many dedicated fans like myself lapping up every offering that any game company puts forth. With one of these such titles under their belt you can understand my excitement when Heavy Rain was announced, and my elation when I finally sat down to play through it.

The menu screens of Heavy Rain are rich in a sense of foreboding, with a noir like feel to them. It then comes as quite a shock when the opening scenes turn out be quite the opposite with bright colours and your character showing a healthy amount of contentment for his life, family and an overall appreciation for the world around him. As with any classic tragedy we know the man with everything has everything to lose and the focus of the game is very much centered on this.

The inital scenes are, as always, the tutorial for the game. Initially I felt the controls were a tad awkward as they’re different from your usual 3rd person affair. To walk you have to hold R2 and then steer your character with the left control stick. Additionally you have little control over the camera save for being able to switch between some pre-determined camera angles. Granted its no where near as bad as say Resident Evil which often had dreadful angles that hid details from you and from a design point of view the decision to lock the camera is solid, so no points lost there.

Combat and other challenges take an advanced form of the much dreaded quick time event. With a game relying so heavily on the story (and by consequence linear game play) Quantic Dream really out did themselves when it came to engaging you at the right times. Some of the events had me playing two handed twister with the controller which sounds like a cheap way to make you panic but the implementation is nothing short of flawless. Many of the scenes play out in drastically different ways should you succeed or fail at the button mash at critical times, something which will ensure that conversations over your Heavy Rain experience will be wide and varied.

Heavy Rain is set in the near future and Quantic Dream has taken this as an opportunity to give it a slight sci-fi bent. One of the story lines, a FBI investigator, utilizes a pair of sunglasses and special glowing glove with a Minority Report like interface to gather and analyze evidence. Additionally a scene with another character in a psychiatrist appointment has what appears to be a CAT scan being done with nothing more then a slim slab of metal on their forehead. Whilst it may be a minor point in the game overall it helped keep the pace of the game whilst ensuring that the hand waving over certain plot points was kept to a minimum.

Unlike Fahrenheit before it, which allowed you to choose which character to progress the story with up to a point, your experience within Heavy Rain is completely controlled by the decisions you make with each character during their scene. This has a much more organic feel to it as the story flows consistently with the story arc able to stretch from beginning to end without any odd disjoints in it. Fahrenheit had a few moments that were absolutely unnecessary to the overall plot or individual character development which I attribute to the choice you were given when progressing a certain character.

Heavy Rain’s scenary is one of complete normality. Almost every section of the game plays out in normal settings with extraordinary circumstances. It’s done as to contrast the banality of everyday activities, such as doing your teeth or simply looking at yourself in the mirror, with the extremes each character will be pushed to in order to achieve their various goals. After visiting so many lands of fantasy recently it’s been an oddly refreshing experience to be pushed back into the (almost) real world.

This is greatly helped by the fact that 95% of the achievements in Heavy Rain are hidden from you (although you’re really just a Google search away from finding them) and the only time you’ll know you’ve got one is when the loading screen appears. It might sound like a small thing but there’s nothing worse for immersion then having a “Trophy Unlocked!” message appear along with its associated sound coming along right in the middle of a scene.

As for the story itself? Completely and utterly engrossing. I’m not usually one for murder mysteries (they’re in the same category as horror for me, entertaining I won’t go out of my way for them) but chasing the Origami Killer through 4 different sets of eyes throughout the game makes for a complex and twisted story that had me guessing right up until right before the ultimate climax. Whilst it had been said before that at any point any of the characters could die (and I can see their point to, there were many close calls in my play through) I managed to keep them all alive throughout. You’d think this would bring me the ultimate closure on the whole ideal and whilst the story does wrap up quite well I still wonder how it would have gone had I made one decision differently, or if one of the characters died before a critical point.

Additionally Heavy Rain hits on some very mature themes that other games have been struggling to showcase properly. I’ve lamented in the past that for all the game industry’s trying at putting sex into games they always seem to make it a reward for clicking the right buttons rather than an expression of deep emotions. Heavy Rain on the other hand mirrors a similar scene to that found in Fahrenheit, with two people in desperate situations falling for one another. Whilst I won’t comment on how it all turns out (your choices will decide that) it’s good to finally see a game that views sex as something that is as quickly forgotten by the characters in the game as it would be by the gamer looking for a cheap thrill. The long lasting impact of such emotional involvement is deeply apparent in the way both characters react to each other afterwards adding yet another layer on an already complex relationship.

My game developer buddy wouldn’t let a conversation about Heavy Rain go by without mentioning that his trusted reviewers have stated that the game will start lying to you at certain points. Now that I’ve actually played the game (yes I’m calling you out on this ) I can see what he was getting at but realistically it was at one point (well two, but the second isn’t an outright lie so much as it is just a cheap way to keep you guessing) in the game and had the scene been shown to you it would not only be confusing but also ruin the remaining game. Critically the game he worked on reviewed quite similar to Heavy Rain. However it would seem that the gamer community as a whole rejected that viewpoint with it garnering a rather embarrassing user score. The often sighted problems weren’t so much the complaint of the game lying to you, more the user critics level their eyes squarely on the plot citing its predictability and numerous plot holes. The score is misleading though as the reviews are ones of extremes with players either loving it or hating it.

I disagree with many of the criticisms as they seem to either come from a player base the game wasn’t levelled at (I.E. not the frat boy crowd that lapped up MW2) or forms of hindsight bias. The first lot of users will have come across Heavy Rain due to the hype it recieved, not for a following of the genre. Ask many of those who find fault in it if they had played Dreamfall or Fahrenheit and you’ll often get blank stares as few would have even heard of either of those titles. The second lot are those who probably pride themselves on not being easily fooled or after finishing the game look back on it and remember (quite wrongly) that they picked up on every hint and knew the outcome well before it was revealed. Had they wrote down who they thought the killer was after every scene I’m sure we’d see a completely different picture.

Heavy Rain is one of those games that has successfully managed to demonstrate that games are ready to become a mature medium for any story that would have them. I spent many hours on the edge of my seat hungering for the next scene or scrap of detail that would bring me that one step closer to knowing the truth. Each of the characters are uniquely themselves yet still shaped by the way you want to play them. In the end this makes Heavy Rain a unique experience for all of those who play it and will serve as a turning point in games as a storytelling medium.

Rating: 9.75/10

Heavy Rain is available exclusively for PS3 for AU$108. Game was played on the PS3 on the hardest difficulty with around 10 hours of gameplay total with all characters alive at the end.

¹I have to make the point here that what I call cinematic gaming seems to be drifting away from what the industry thinks this term means. Today a cinematic game could very easily refer to something like Modern Warfare 2 which has a very Hollywood-esque feeling to it yet falls into the category of a FPS. For me cinematic games will be the ones that are only a few steps away from actually being a movie, despite whether or not they actually feel like one.

Despite my tag-line explicitly mentioning finance I haven’t really been harping on the subject much recently. I’ve always managed to find something else far more interesting than boring everyone to death with dollar figures or the latest news on how the Global Financial Crisis is unravelling itself. More importantly however the big ticket financial issues haven’t really caused any waves and as such I really haven’t had anything to say on the matter. Yesterday however a juicy little nugget in the form of recent GDP growth has given me a little something to talk about:

The economy grew 2.7 percent from a year earlier, the report showed. Economists forecast a 2.4 percent expansion.

Signs that Australia’s economy outperformed other nations made its dollar the best performer among the most-traded currencies in the past year. The currency has climbed 42 percent versus its U.S. counterpart since March 2009 and this week hit a 25-year high against Britain’s pound.

Interest Rates

Faster-than-anticipated growth was a key reason policy makers increased the overnight cash rate target to 4 percent yesterday from 3.75 percent and prompted Governor Stevens to say rates should be closer to “average,” which he last week signaled may be 75 basis points higher than they are now.

It was just under a year ago when I did my first analysis of how Australia was reacting to the GFC and I did a followup a few months later. Back then I made the point that Australia was well placed to whether the fallout from the USA’s failings and we would for the most part be unaffected. Here we are many months along the track and my predictions have come true, despite the air of skepticism that abounded in the media and amongst my peers. I can’t say that I blame them though as the media was pushing the story that everyone wanted to hear and the everyman would have to actively seek out the opposing viewpoints, something which most of them don’t have the time or resources to do.

The follow on effect of economic growth is of course higher interest rates. Whilst I appreciated them at the time (and managed to lock in a home loan at an absolutely ridiculous rate for the next 2 years) I feel there might be a mini housing crisis on the horizon when the interest rates ramp up and flood of first time home owners start to feel the pinch. The First Home Owner’s Grant boost definitely kept the low to mid range of the property market from feeling any effects of the GFC however it may have come at the cost of long term price stability in the future. I’m really just speculating here as if interest rates stay away from their 2008~2009 highs then most of them will be fine. However I know many who took advantage of the boost to crack into the property market without thinking about the long term consequences, especially when concerning higher interest rates. Time will tell if this mini-disaster comes to pass (it will be short, as the glut of cheap homes will be snapped up by investors) but I’ll be watching the low to mid range market carefully over the next few years.

Another factor to take into consideration is the current unemployment rate, which has shown an interesting turn recently:

I made the observation back in September that the unemployment rate was steady to that month, which was a good sign. However in the same breath I also cautioned about another metric, underemployment, that showed there was still some work to be done. Recent figures show that in fact things are improving with the underemployment rate dropping 0.4% to 13.5% a small but marked improvement. The article I just linked echoes the feelings I was trying to get across many months ago but also fails to recognise that underemployment and unemployment will track each other quite closely, with minimal lag between changes. The stability of the previous 2 quarters plus the trend down in the quarter just past shows that not only are we creating more jobs but we’re also able to ramp people back up that had to cut back their hours for economic reasons. Both these metrics are trending in the direction that you’d expect when the economy is on the way up, which for all intents and purposes it is.

Additionally the mass media has been generally free of any major doom and gloom stories regarding the economy. The last interest rate hike went past without even a second glance from the major news outlets when just under a year ago it would’ve spurred days worth of debate. It seems that we’re far more interested in Rudd’s latest health care plan than whether or not our houses are going to be worthless and our mortgages untenable, which means the consumer sentiment is improving.

After spending the past year telling everyone that it wasn’t going to be as bad as the news made it out to be it’s good to finally get some vindication on the matter. This year will see Australia drive itself forward and will hopefully let the Rudd government start to really get their teeth into some real initiatives, rather than fighting an economic fire. With an election not far off it’s going to be interesting to see not only how the post GFC Rudd handles himself, but also Australia at large.

After the initial media flurry that was triggered by Google pointing their finger squarely at the Chinese government in relation to illegal hacking into their various systems there really wasn’t that much follow up. There was a considerable amount of talk about what effect Google pulling out would have on China, from the obvious increase of market share of other search engines to Chinese researchers losing one of their most valuable tools. Additionally the IT world covered many of the technical aspects such as attack origins and the vectors used but after Google mentioned that it was going to restart talks with the Chinese everyone pretty much gave up on the issue. The ferocity which Google used to deliver the initial message seemed to have disappeared.

That was until recently when Google started to flex its muscles in another arena:

March 3 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is weighing the merits of taking China’s censorship of Google Inc. to the World Trade Organization as an unfair barrier to trade.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office is reviewing legal arguments advanced by two groups with links to Google, spokeswoman Carol Guthrie said. The Computer & Communications Industry Association and the First Amendment Coalition say China’s restrictions on Web access and content discriminate against U.S. Internet companies and online commerce.

Going to the WTO is “well worth consideration,” Nicole Wong, deputy general counsel of Google, operator of the most popular Internet search site, told reporters after a congressional hearing in Washington yesterday. Using censorship “in a manner that favors domestic Internet companies goes against basic international trade principles,” Wong told lawmakers.

Now there’s two ways to look at this. The first is that Google is championing information freedom, a principal they’ve held for quite a long time. Their original move into China was a trade off they received a lot of criticism for since they were breaking their own rules by censoring the search results. However they believed that it was better for them to be in China in some way rather than not at all and with over 380 million Internet users you can understand why. I don’t doubt that this ideal is part of their strategy with China but it would be naive of me to say it was the main reason.

Far more likely is the fact that maintaining a censored search engine in China negatively impacts their bottom line. Despite the obvious infrastructure requirements (which for Google would be rather small) there’s also a limitation on how their core business can operate within the bounds of China. Certain advertisers can’t be shown (heaven forbid you have skeletons in anything) and this impacts on Google’s profitability within China’s bounds. Arguing on the bounds that the censorship restrictions on Internet companies is a barrier to trade takes some of the focus off Google whilst still allowing them to get the results that they want. Make no mistake though, the main motivation for Google here is money.

It’s interesting to see their progression from a media hailstorm to a more subtle flex of political muscle. I’m dubious on whether or not this will have any noticeable impact on Google’s operations in China but I have to give them credit for not giving up when their initial attempt of shaming China into relenting didn’t work. The results of these allegations will bring the much needed attention of people with the ability to do something about the Internet situation in China. Whether or not that will end up doing good though is a story that’s yet to be told.

I’m no stranger to the interview room. At least once a year for the past 6 years or so I’ve found myself sitting in front of a panel of other people convincing them that I’m the right person for the job. Initially it started out of sheer boredom since the first couple jobs I had were entry level and seemed to come quite easily to me. Eventually it graduated into a thirst for new challenges as once something became routine the boredom would start to creep back in, and I’d get itchy feet. Whilst this has been one of the fastest ways for me to climb the IT ladder (believe me, I tried to advance within before looking externally, it never worked) it has more recently led to a few uncomfortable questions about where my loyalties lie. Switching to contracting has stayed these concerns somewhat, but a resume that spans as many jobs as years still raises questions from our current Gen-X and Baby Boomer employers.

For a long time to I believed that I was an exception rather than a rule. Many of my close friends and colleagues have been in their respective positions for years or have dedicated themselves to long term study (been there, not interested in going back just yet). Coming from a family parents who are Baby Boomers themselves having clocked up decades in employment in a single place certainly added to the stigma of jumping jobs as rapidly as I did. However taking a look outside my obviously small and biased sample showed me that I might just be yet another Gen Y upstart:

Additional high-level findings of the 2008 Life After College Survey include:

• 43% of Gen Y are not in the career they expected to be in after college, either because they couldn’t find a job, or another opportunity presented itself
• 60% are currently looking for another job or career, despite the fact that 57% indicated that they are also happy at their current job
• 74% of recent graduates are in a career that aligns with their college major

“Constant job hopping can create frustration for employers, who would prefer three years of service out of each new hire,” says Jenny Floren, founder and CEO of Experience. “However, HR managers can increase retention by making slight shifts in their organizational practices to accommodate entry-level employees.”

It’s quite scary how accurately this lines up with my experiences. Technically I’m a Computer Engineer by training and whilst that has a strong focus on things like software development I also did quite a lot of hardware design as well as management courses. I took up a help desk position in the public service as it was an easy, well paying job and they were quite flexible with my hours when I was still at university. However the next job I managed to land was a junior system admin position (which in all honesty I was barely qualified for) which then snowballed into the position I’m in today. It’s not that I didn’t consider the career in an actual engineering firm, far from it. More it was that when I got that piece of paper in my hand switching into another career would’ve seen my pay packet take a hefty hit, around a third if memory serves me. For a 21 year old that was a fair chunk of cash and the cost/benefit didn’t quite add up.

If you’d asked me what the positives were in any of my other jobs (and really the same could be said for my current position) I’d tell you that I have an enormous amount of free time, the work is easy and the workplace is relaxed. Sounds pretty good right? Well the other side of the coin is the lack of challenge in most of my jobs. Maybe it was systemic since all the places I’ve worked at have either been in the public service or working for the public service (outsourcer) but most of my time isn’t spent solving novel problems. For the most part its battling bits of bureaucracy in order to get small packages of work done or explaining my decisions via reams of documentation. I think this is why I find so much pleasure in things like Geon as there are no barriers to progress but myself and every single step is an engineering problem just waiting to be solved.

It’s like crack to my inner engineer.

I think this also comes down in a shift in ideals between generations. The Gen Y crowd have grown up on a diet of rapidily evolving technology and if something can’t be done from home on their desktop or on their iPhone whilst on the move then it’s probably not worth doing. Again it seems like I’m not alone in thinking this, as the NY Times points out:

Old assumptions about what employees value in the workplace don’t always apply with Gen Y. Friendship is such a strong motivator for them that Gen Y workers will choose a job just to be with their friends. Boston-based Gentle Giant Moving once hired an entire athletic team. “It looked like a great work environment because of the people,” says rower Niles Kuronen, 26. “It was huge to be able to work with friends.” It feels normal for Gen Y employees to check in by BlackBerry all weekend as long as they have flexibility during the week. Sun Microsystem’s telecommuting program, for example, has kicked into high gear in response to Generation Y’s demands. Today more than half of Sun’s employees work remotely.

Honestly I could see myself working at a company for a much longer time period if I spent 50% of my work time telecommuting. Unfortunately the norm for most workplaces is that face time is of the utmost importance, despite how productive you might be. The inertia really comes from having to switch from a simple metric of “were you here on time” or “I could see that he was working” to “they achieved 100% of the goals I set”. The problem is predominately the difficulty employers have in defining solid metrics that guage how effective employees are when they are working remotely. There’s a definite shift occurring in some companies who have experienced positive results, but they’re still the exception to a long lasting rule.

Personally I feel its due to us Gen Ys growing up in a world of easily accessible information that drives us to get exactly what we want. Sure we’re happy to settle for whatever we can get in the interim but as long as we know there’s something out there that might better suit us we’re willing to take the risk of going for it. In my small sample world I think my bias towards them not being job hoppers is because they’ve found exactly what they were looking for, and the Gen Y drive merely propels them to excellence.

I’ll have to make a mental note to revisit this topic in a years time.

Not matter how big or small of a game developer you are sequels are one of those things that are hard to get right. If you leave your initial game deliberately open ended in order to accommodate for the possibility of a sequel you’re instantly labelled as a sell out and the ending will often feel hollow for the player. However should your game do well and you completely close off the option for a sequel all together you miss out on what could be quite a prosperous business opportunity, something which most publishers won’t allow. Still despite this tricky balancing act many sequels have graced our paths over the last few months (such as Uncharted 2, Assassin’s Creed 2 and Mass Effect 2) that managed to have a well rounded first game that lent themselves quite well to a sequel. Bioshock 2 is yet another sequel that was expected but not required to finish off the story of its predecessor and after a couple days of intense gaming I managed to finish it late on Friday night.

Before I get into the meat of the review I want to point out the phenomenal effort that went into designing and creating the collector’s edition of Bioshock 2. The original collector’s edition (which I sadly missed out on) was never initially planned and only after garnering 5,000 online signatures in under 5 hours did 2K relent and create one, but it was far from a rushed effort on their part. For the sequel they’ve really outdone themselves and when I picked up my copy I was extremely surprised at the weight the box carried and upon opening it at home I was greeted to a wealth of collector goodies. The art book and box are absolutely gorgeous and the posters have that distinct steampunk feel to them that gives you that feeling of having just a little bit of Rapture here in the real world. Whilst I’ve yet to play the EP its inclusion in the box set rounds off the whole “old but new again” feeling this collector’s edition gives off. This was definitely money well spent.

Bioshock 2 thrusts you back into the underwater world of Rapture 8 years after the events that occurred in the original as the original Big Daddy. The opening events of the game are a brutal representation of the seething evil that infested Rapture and instantly sets up your arch rival as well as your end goal. I must say it was one of the best orchestrated openings I’ve seen in a game in a long time as it raises so many questions that you’re instantly hooked, just waiting for the next bit of information so you can unravel your past that has been hidden from you.

The interface of Bioshock 2 will be instantly familiar to veterans of its prequel, save for a few key differences. For myself it was a bit of a struggle for the first half hour or so as I played the original on the Xbox 360 and this one on the PC. However after a while it all flows quite naturally and the augmentations to the combat system, namely the ability to use plasmids and guns at the same time, make for some very gripping combat scenes. Initially I was dreading many of the large fights as I felt I was constantly scrounging for ammo, first aid kits and eve hypos. However after a couple hours and some good plasmids under my belt I came to relish the larger fights of the game that really pushed me to the limits of how capable I could be.

The tonic and plasmid slot system makes a return in Bioshock 2 with some distinct overhauls. The three levels of plasmids not only increase their strength but also morph them with additional properties. The tonics have also been revamped allowing for some pretty hefty customization of your character. In the end my character ended up being a drill wielding maniac with 2 heavy security bots at his side constantly, but there were at least a dozen more very viable builds available, each with their own benefits. There’s no shortage of gene banks around the place so if you get bored of your current build you’re never more than 5 minutes away from changing it up for a refreshing change of pace.

Two more notable changes have occurred to the game play of Bioshock 2. The first is the hacking system which instead of the Pipe-Mania-esque get the fluid from one side to the other mini-game to a quicker click at the right time puzzle. It was a good change as hacking doesn’t break the immersion as much and is over a lot quicker than it was in the original. The second is the removal of the U-Invent stations so you won’t be building your own ammo in this game, but you also won’t be dealing with a innumerable number of useless items just to make a few explosive shotgun shells.

The simple moral choice system is back in Bioshock 2 with a slight difference. Since you’re now a Big Daddy the Little Sisters will trust you implicitly, that is once you take care of their current Mr B. Adopting one of these little critters lets you harvest Adam from bodies around Rapture and, should you wish to, you may still harvest them once you’re done collecting. Being an upstanding gentleman I couldn’t bring myself to harvest them and saved every single one of them. Sure its a simple binary choice but I always had a warm fuzzy feeling every time I heard their timid voices eek out a “thank you” before struggling to get back into the vent.

There are some additional moral decisions peppered throughout the game which will affect the final climax of Bioshock 2. Again they are still binary in nature although which one is good and which one is evil gets a little blurry at times, which is obviously the intention. Whilst I doubt a Bioshock 3 would take a cue from Mass Effect and let you import a save from a previous game (for reasons that are too spolierific to post here) the decisions would seem to have a longer lasting impact on the world of Rapture than just your little sojourn through there. Time will tell if I’m wrong about this however.

All of this would have been for naught had the story not lived up to its predecessor. To be honest the beginning had me confused for a good while as I struggled to make sense of the situation my avatar in Rapture had been thrust into. However the storytelling techniques used in the first Bioshock served its sequel well with many interesting plot points revealed to those who would seek out every corner of Rapture, usually in the hopes of ammo and supplies. The story begins extremely slowly and initially I became frustrated with what felt like an artificially slow moving game. However the final 2~3 hours are amongst some of the most gripping and intense gaming experiences that I’ve ever experienced. When a game can invoke in you a real sense of urgency, panic and fear you can’t help but become trapped in the world that they created.

The ending (for comparison mine was the “good” ending) was bitter sweet enough to draw me to tears. It’s not your typical Hollywood ending and that’s exactly the reason why it had such an impact. If anything the game is worth it just for those final 5 minutes you spend seeing the ends of all your efforts throughout Rapture and for an old softie like myself it was just enough to tip me over the edge.

It says a lot about Bioshock 2 that the criticisms that I’m going to level at it are really just nitpicking. The use of the train system to transition levels, whilst I can understand the decision from a design point of view, felt a little cheap when compared to the original Bioshock. The research system upgrade was a decent idea however I always found it a little awkward to use in the heat of battle. Lastly whilst I haven’t given the multi-player a go yet the replay value in Bioshock is quite small, as you can try out most of the tonic/plasmid combinations in a single play-through. Overall though these are very minor issues of a very well developed game.

It’s not often that we get a game as good as Bioshock that has a sequel that does it justice. Us gamers have been spoiled (and will continue to be) with many great sequels in the recent past and I’m glad I can count Bioshock 2 amongst them. Even if you didn’t play the original there’s definitely something to be had in just playing Bioshock 2, although you’ll miss some of the fan service that makes games from 2K well worth playing.

Rating: 9.25/10

Bioshock 2 is available for PS3, Xbox360 and PC right now for AU$108, AU$108 and US$79.99 respectively. Game was played on PC on hard difficulty saving all the little sisters with around 10 hours of playtime total.

Ever since the glory days of Gemini and Apollo NASA has struggled to figure out exactly what their goals will be with human space exploration. This is not to say that they’ve lost all direction, far from it. The majority of NASA’s robotic endeavours have been quite successful and they continue to push the envelope in this space. However when it comes to putting us fleshy beings into the great black vacuum of space they, and in the interest of full disclosure no one else, has managed to send humans any further than low earth orbit for the past 4 decades.

My regular readers will know that I put the majority of blame directly on the US congress as NASA makes for an easy target for budget cuts to spend on other policies. However NASA isn’t blameless in this either with nearly every program they’ve run coming in over budget, past deadline and not entirely to initial specification. The reason behind this is easily demonstrated when you have companies with employees totalling in the hundreds, ala SpaceX, managing to achieve what NASA has done with almost 18,000. A good chunk of that is dedicated entirely to the Shuttle program so NASA will look a lot leaner in the near future but the overwhelming amount of people and thus the bureaucracy that follows it have done nothing to help NASA in achieving its goals.

You might be wondering then what brought this rant on about NASA’s past when I only recently extolled the virtues of their new vision. Well it seems that NASA has failed to learn from its past and has set its sights on developing technology that it has already developed (and in fact, licensed out to a private company):

Astronauts may one day orbit the Earth in roomy balloons instead of cramped tin cans, now that NASA has made inflatable space habitats a priority.

The White House announced a change in direction for NASA on 1 February. Instead of the planned crewed missions to the moon, the agency intends to pour money into research and development (New Scientist, 13 February 2010, p 8).

The outline listed technologies on NASA’s wish list but provided few details. Now NASA has fleshed out its plans in a detailed budget proposal posted on its website on 22 February. One section notes that balloon-like habitats “can be larger, lighter, and potentially less expensive” than traditional ones made of rigid metal walls. They could be used as space stations, or eventually as moon bases. NASA may send inflatable structures to the International Space Station to test their mettle – including their ability to shield against space radiation.

Does that sound familiar to anyone? The technology in question was developed by NASA and called Transhab which was in essence an inflatable space station module that could fit atop of current generation rockets yet deliver almost 3 times the volume of the Columbus module. To say that they were a good idea was a bit of an understatement as not only did they deliver more space on the cheap they were also quite a lot more resilient to things like micrometeorite strikes due to the flexible nature of the material used.

They were such a good idea that space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow licensed the technology from NASA to develop his own line of space habitats under his own company Bigelow Aerospace. You could easily write these guys off as just another startup that had yet to produce anything but they’ve already launched 2 of their own modules with a third (which will be able to take humans on board) well on the way. It would make you wonder then that since the technology is viable, even from a commercial point of view, why did NASA drop it?

As always the blame lies with congress who passed House Resolution 1654 that effectively banned NASA from researching and building their own Transhab structures (as well as climate research, go figure). Luckily HR1654 doesn’t stop NASA from actually using inflatable modules on the station so we may just see some Bigelow hardware on the ISS sometime in the future, but only time will tell.

So you can see why I get all up in arms about the way NASA is handled by the US congress. They’re constantly meddling in their affairs which makes it extremely difficult for them to develop technologies that will make space cheaper and more pervasive than it is today. I’ll admit that this is out of a selfish desire to see cheap space access for myself and all of mankind but with the countless benefits of space technologies and exploration being reaped by us all you can see why I believe in it so much. Whilst the private space industry looks bright I still worry about our forefathers in NASA who’ve had their lust for being on the bleeding edge sated by the red tape of congress.

I picked something up yesterday, something looking suspiciously similar to this:

Yeah I think you can guess where I’ll be spending a good chunk of my weekend, firmly welded to the couch while I bathe myself in what is going to be one of the most enthralling cinematic gaming experiences to cross my path. The fact that the guy I picked it up from at EB asked me if I had played Fahrenheit shows just what kind of a following this game has and I’ve deliberately steered clear of any news or reviews of the game, lest they ruin my experience.

Now it’s one thing to get excited over a game due to the hype buildup or developer loyalty but, for me at least, Heavy Rain is in another category entirely. That’s not to say it’s the most excited I’ve been about a game, far from it. I was much more jittery when it came to picking up the Mass Effect series of games or even the first World of Warcraft expansions. No, there’s something different about this game that is tickling a part of my brain that I don’t think a game has ever triggered before, and that in itself is saying something.

I can probably put this down to the Four Days online experience that Quantic Dream put on. Basically it was a prologue to the game and involved putting you in the shoes of one of the characters of Heavy Rain who was investigating a murder. It played out over 3 days of each week for 3 weeks and to be honest the first one came and went with me barely giving it a second look. However things started to get interesting when the second one came along.

The event started with a series of interactive Youtube videos that put you on the other end of a 911 phone call. The idea was to keep her on the phone as long as possible so you could extract information about what she saw. If you do it right you’ll be sent to another website with a grab bag of evidence from the crime scene which contains various photos other bits of info. What drew me in at this point was a link to a Twitter account, and this is where things got a bit crazy.

It just so happened that I got the evidence package late at night and decided to check out the account to see if there was anything on it. Amazingly right as I was going onto the website the person behind the account started to answer questions about what he saw that night. Queue 3 hours of me furiously sending questions to him and refreshing the page, desperately hanging on for every little bit of information I could drag out of him. I went to bed before the whole event finished but as I drifted off to sleep my head was filled with even more questions that demanded answers and I spent the next day on the edge of my seat waiting for the mysterious character to return.

The next day saw me selecting the 4 most appropriate pieces of evidence from the crimescene to be submitted for further investigation. After a few attempts I got it right and was rewarded with a code for an early copy of the demo. Not wanting to spoil anything of Heavy Rain I filed it away and waited for the next challenge to begin.

The last challenge in the Four Days campaign wasn’t as enthralling as the one that preceeded it. Basically it was just looking at Facebook fan pages and figuring out who best fit the data. It was kind of spooky when I got an email out of the blue from another person who was apparently working the case for her own reasons, and the page she linked to instantly identified her as one of the characters right out of Heavy Rain. I still spent some time reading all the profiles but that initial buzz I felt from staring at SleeperInTheSun’s Twitter feed was a distant memory.

Despite the climax being somewhat disappointing (although the trailers that followed were amazing) it made me step back and take stock of the emotional responses that this little meta game invoked. Fahrenheit was one of those games that drew you deep into the story and its characters, even to the point of stretching the definition of what constituted a game (My game developer friend Tim doesn’t let me call them games, only interactive movies). Heavy Rain made no secret that it’s striving for an emotive experience first and gameplay second which has drawn some harsh criticisms from more traditional game reviewers. So far every one of the cinematic games I’ve played have been experiences I’ve savoured like a fine wine and if the small tidbits of Heavy Rain that I’ve indulged in are anything to go by this will be another fine addition to my shelf.

Way back when, long before I got involved in blogging as a means of chronicling my various exploits in relation to Australia’s Internet filter the policy itself was really nothing to get excited about. Taking a step back into the distance past we can find its roots in the NetAlert program that sought to provide free private Internet filters to all families that wanted them. To say that the program was a failure and complete waste of time is harsh but accurate, as the usage statistics showed a severely disproportional amount of money spent vs actual usage of the program. It was a fairly quiet failure to and if you’d pulled anyone off the streets you could easily have forgiven them for not knowing anything about it. Overall NetAlert was just another government boondoggle and it died the quick quiet death it deserved.

Conroy decided to up the ante a little bit and put forth the beginnings of the Internet filter proposal not too long after that. Having survived the NetAlert program without any noticeable damage to the freedom of the Internet and the IT profession as a whole the netizens community shrugged it off as well. At this time the filter proposal wasn’t as malicious as it is today with the option of being able to opt out being one of its defining characteristics. Sure we were annoyed that we’d have to tell our ISPs that we’d prefer them not to filter our Internet (which in the public eye puts you in the same category as paedophiles, criminals and sexual deviants) but it wouldn’t be too much hassle and the government could sing their success from the rooftops, even if we didn’t really agree with them.

It didn’t take too long however for a bombshell to drop, you couldn’t opt out.

And so spawned the No Clean Feed movement, along with this blog and many others. I’ve analyzed it from all angles and there’s not been one use case that’s had the Internet filter coming out smelling like roses. This coupled with the fact that the policy just doesn’t seem to die despite massive delays and public backlash makes it all the more scary that such an abomination make actually make its way into reality. There is however a small glimmer of hope:

Labor Senator Kate Lundy plans to propose a filter “opt out” when the legislation goes before caucus.

“I think there’s a lot of interest in my proposal,” she told The Australian.

“The feedback I’m getting back from colleagues is that there are concerns around freedom of speech and lack of parental empowerment.”

Senator Lundy said the Conroy filter took control away from parents.

To date that has been the only sensible idea that I could ever support with an Internet filter for Australia. Why it has taken over a year and a half to come full circle and propose that we let people opt out (or better yet, opt in) is beyond me, but it signals that there’s enough pressure from the wider public to make at least a few backbenchers uneasy about putting their vote behind legislation that won’t buy them any favours.

The interesting, but not unexpected, result of Lundy seeking to amend the legislation is the rest of the Labor government becoming rather uneasy about the whole subject. There’s tangible opposition mounting on both sides of parliament but many of the more conservative members are sticking to their guns and not renouncing support for the filter. The reasons for this are twofold. The first is that many members can’t quite bring themselves to oppose the filter save for associated themselves with child pornographers and other miscreants. I’d bet my dollar on this being a lack of education on their part as they don’t really understand how ineffectual and detrimental such a filter would be. Thus they tow the popularist line of protecting the children and the wider public from the deprived hedonism of that dark place we call the Internet.

The second is just pure politics, they don’t want to be seen as changing opinions lest they be seen as playing to the popularist movement. That I can understand, but will never condone.

I still hold out the belief that this will die a slow and agonizing death but every news story that crops up about the Internet filter is just more salt in an old wound. With people like Lundy causing a stir in parliament and making the appropriate headlines I’m sure we’ll soon reach a critical mass of public opinion that will help sway some of the more stalwart members across to our side but we’re still far from being in clear on this one and I urge you to support the No Clean Feed movement in any way you can.

As much as I love all things Chinese, I’d prefer my Internet to stay Australian.

I’ve got a not-so-secret man crush on the entire SpaceX operation. In a time of diplomatic turmoil and economic disasters they have continued to pioneer on with their founder’s dream of being the first fully private company to deliver launch capability to the wider world. It’s been quite a roller coaster ride for them but they’ve constantly shown that every failure is just another step towards ultimate success. With their Falcon 1 having notched up 2 successful launches in a row they have upped the ante quite considerably by rolling out their Falcon 9 rocket at Launch Complex 40 (home to famous launches such as Cassini-Huygens) and just recently, they moved it into launch position.

Tipping it upright might not seem like a milestone to celebrate but it marks the beginning of a very exciting series of events that are going to occur over the next couple months:

Fueling rehearsals, called a wet dress, and a short, 3.5-second static test firing of the Falcon 9’s first stage engines are the next major milestones.

“SpaceX has not set specific dates for wet dress or  static fire as [the] schedule will be driven by the satisfactory completion of all test objectives and a thorough review of the data,” SpaceX officials said in a Sunday update.

This is not the first time SpaceX has hauled its 180-foot (55-meter) Falcon 9 rocket vertical atop its launch pad. The company assembled and moved its first Falcon 9 to pad in January 2009 as part of integration tests.

So in essence for the past couple months SpaceX has been doing dress rehearsals for what it would be like to do a fully fledged launch of their Falcon-9 rocket. They’ve also been making modifications to their launch site in order for it to be able to handle the Falcon as it was previously set up for the Titan series of rockets. Whilst they may have erected the rocket like this before they weren’t doing it in preparation for an actual live fuel and fire test, which is scheduled to happen sometime soon.

This isn’t the first time they’ll be firing the Falcon 9 however. At it’s heart the Falcon 9 is just 9 Falcon 1 engines (called Merlin) strapped together but as I’ve said before adding more engines isn’t a trivial task and we’ve seen world superpowers try and fail to get them all working properly. Thankfully getting 9 engines to work synchronously is far simpler than 20+ and 2008 saw SpaceX successfully test fire the engines in several configurations. The culmination of which was firing all 9 engines at once for a full mission duration of around 3 minutes. Here’s a video of the test, well worth a watch in my opinion:

In the middle of all the controversy surrounding the future of America’s place in the final frontier it’s refreshing to see private companies forging ahead like nothing had changed. The public might not yet know about SpaceX and their various accomplishments but we’re only a short few years away from the first fully private company sending cargo and people into the great black sea that surrounds us all.

And I couldn’t be more excited!