Kojima speaks...

Of course I watched the Tokyo Game Show (TGS) trailer the day the HD direct feed was out. Simply WOW!!! This game will really just tie all the lose knots in the Metal Gear Saga. I just can't wait for it to be released.

After being blown away by the Halo 3 review, I was browsing Gamespot when I came to this article. I don't know why I wasn't emailed about this from Gamespot. Anyway, it doesn't matter. I check Gamespot like 3-4 times daily!

If you haven't played the full MGS series, then don't bother reading the Gamespot article, for you it will be full of spoilers and jargon. In MGS you have to know who is who.

The article fully explains the SOP thing which was first revealed in the E3 trailer this year. SOP stands for Sons of the Patriots. A nanomachine system that was injected into all soldiers from Private Military Companies or PMCs. The purpose is to achieve total real-time control over battlefields by the Patriots. With this, the Patriots have supreme control over everything. The SOP system allows for integration between soldiers as if they were one unit. This was shown by the unit commanded by Meryl Silverburgh. They are not PMC, in fact they are anti-PMC. The problem with PMCs is that they have grown considerably. Their size has grown to rival the size of the US military.

Enters Liquid Ocelot...

Since Revolver Ocelot became possessed by Liquid Snake's arm which was transplanted to him, he started to act and think like Liquid. Liquid wants to destroy the Patriots, for revenge. So, he organized an insurrection. He forced Naomi Hunter, the original creator of the nanomachine technology first used by Snake during the Shadow Moses Incident, and the creator of FoxDie, to control the soldiers from PMCs and raise a huge army to make the vision of Big Boss true. He wants to create Outer Heaven... The one place where soldiers will always have a place.

Enters Solid Snake...

He is once again recruited by Colonel Campbell. Col. Campbell works for a UN organization, the purpose of which is to monitor PMC activity. He knew about the insurrection and he sent Snake to assassinate Liquid.


The best thing about MGS is the plot twists. You never know what's going to happen next. Since this game is a continuation to Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, then I hope it will have a highly convoluted and engaging story. I didn't like the fact that they over-simplified the story for MGS3: Snake Eater. I still liked the story a lot, but I wanted more twists! MGS2 made me crazy!!!

EVA returns in MGS4 as a 80 year-old woman, but still looks powerful, to combat the Patriots. She is called Big Mama. Kojima said that the name is indicative to something. I wonder...

As shown by numerous trailers, Vamp returns. He looks more dangerous than ever. I hope that Snake (or Raiden) gets to finish him once and for all.

There is a rookie in Meryl's squad. He is called Johnny and he looks to have some intestinal problems. I don't know who he will be. I thought he was Raiden in disguise. Maybe he is the young Snake shown in last year's TGS trailer.

And finally, there is the battle between Solid Snake and Liquid Ocelot in Metal Gears!!! Snake is using the old Metal Gear REX, while Ocelot is using Metal Gear RAY. I think it will be a spectacular battle. Something for the ages...

Solid




VS

Liquid

Halo 3 gets released!!!

The final chapter in the epic fight of Master Chief vs. the Covenant. It was released today on the Xbox 360. The Gamespot review gave it a 9.5. A game like this, you don't ask if it will be good or not, you ask, how much above 9, Gamespot will give it in the review!

Although I don't have a 360 and I don't intend to get one any time soon (for the lack of money, that is). But I am slightly reassured that I will, God willing, play this game someday. Microsoft will release it to the PC. The did it with Halo, Halo 2 and soon with Gears of War. But my guess that this will be in 2009 or 2010 (Maybe then I will have upgraded REX). MS is not stupid enough to do it before then. Halo 3 will be the spearhead of MS attack to dominate the gaming world, and so far, it's been successful.

Just imagine this: Halo 2 on the original Xbox made about $ 125 million in the first 48 hours!

Anyway, back to my life. I have got to stop dreaming.

I became a grandfather!!!

Not really! I am only 21! But my cat, Bondok, now has an offspring!

I mated him with a friend's female cat, Tweety. She stayed with him for 18 days. For 15 days, he followed he like her shadow and they had some fights. Basically, Bondok was the one getting his ass kicked. Tweety was 3 years old while Bondok was only 1 year old. She was almost twice his size. He claws were razor-sharp and I got to try them myself! Not to mention her wonderful bite!

Anyway, in the last 3 days, they did it. For 3 full days, they did nothing but copulate! Bondok didn't sleep or eat or even use the litter box. Just pure action! He lost a lot of weight in 3 days.

Then I decided that I (and Bondok) had enough, and I was lucky that the cat's owner wanted her. Bondok was like a lost baby when she left. He, then, remembered that he has a loving owner (me) and after 2 weeks, returned to normal.

Tweety, however, turned out to have missed her vaccine schedule. In her 3 years of life, she was only vaccinated once. A cat should be vaccinated annually. She had some kind of viral infection and had tongue and mouth ulcers which prevented her from eating. I have no idea how she got this infection, but I guess Bondok should know!

After receiving her treatment, we discovered that she was pregnant. And yesterday, she gave birth to 2 beautiful kittens. One of them looks just like her father. I don't know which is the male and which is the female and maybe they are of the same sex. She gave birth inside a wardrobe in my friend's house. She did it over a dozen or so bedsheets.

I went there and brought my camera. I started shooting like crazy, she and the kittens were so lovely.

Beggers are not choosers

On the 25th of September, Halo 3 will be released on the Xbox 360 and the Crysis demo will be released for the PC on the same day. It's clear that I won't be affected by either! I don't have an Xbox 360 and my REX will only (if) manage to run Crysis in slide show mode!

So, I will just keep myself busy and wait for Mandriva 2008 release on the 27th. Trying a Linux distro is not as fun as playing a game like Halo 3 or Crysis, but beggars are not choosers!

Distro Smackdown (First half, 2007)

So, I have tried all the major Linux distributions released during the months of April and May. These are: Mandriva 2007.1, Ubuntu 7.04, Fedora 7 and PCLinuxOS 2007.

Let's start with Mandriva:
Installation: The Free DVD version is much better in my opinion. The live/install One CD is good if you want to get to know Mandriva. But if you want to install it, go for the DVD edition. The Mandriva installer worked fine for me in both, although a very annoying thing in the One installer was that there was no "back" button!

Package management: I am a bit spoiled by APT, so Mandriva URPMI wasn't that good in my opinion. I did install Smart. But I don't like Smart that much.

Artwork: Mandriva Free has beautiful blue artwork, while One has an annoying orange one. You can change that but not easily. The icon of the K menu (if you use KDE) is not that easy to change, besides it is oversized. In fact, it's huge!

Package selection: You get all the usual suspects (Firefox, OOo, etc). But as you should expect, the Free DVD has more software.

Management: The Mandriva Control Center makes your life a lot easier. You almost never have to go near the Terminal or type any commands, except for adding repositories from the EasyURPMI site.

Thoughts: The most annoying thing that I encountered in Mandriva 2007 was that when there was an update, you will have to select the packages to be updated manually. This was very annoying. This was fixed in 2007.1. What Mandriva needs to get back to where Mandrake (Mandriva's precursor!) was, is to remove the confusion the users have developed thanks to a bad website and lots of versions to choose from.

I had Mandriva on my REX but removed it after sometime. I got bored of the slow URPMI (which downloads packages and updates one by one). REX is currently running Ubuntu 7.04.

I will revisit Mandriva when 2008 is released sometime this month, God willing.

Now it's Ubuntu's turn:
Installation: I use the standard (live/install) CD. I also downloaded those for Kubuntu and Xubuntu to try them. The installer in all of them was the same as the one that was introduced with Ubuntu 6.06. An addition, however, was the Windows migration tool. I didn't use it so I can't comment on how good it was.

Package management: It's based on Debian, so it has APT. Now add Automatix to install all the software that you want and you have one of the easiest distros to manage software in.

Artwork: It's Ubuntu!!! They will never change the brown theme! It's not bad at all, it's just OLD. They need to change it to add a touch of freshness to this distro. Artwork for Kubuntu and Xubuntu remained almost the same too.

Packages: The usual suspects. But you have a huge repo and Automatix.

Thoughts: Ubuntu Feisty (7.04) added some nice additions to Ubuntu like the addition of the codec installer, the restricted driver module and easy to use Compiz. Almost none of these features are available in Kubuntu or Xubuntu (except the restricted driver module in Xubuntu). Xubuntu is completely uninspired. It confused. It doesn't look like a regular XFCE distro like ZenWalk. Instead, it looks almost like Ubuntu. While Ubuntu is fine, but XFCE has it's own character that is different from Ubuntu's GNOME.

Kubuntu however is good, but it lacks the advanced features of Ubuntu, and it also lacks a characteristic configuration method of any kind. You only get KDE's configuration tools.

Ubuntu 7.04 is really good. I have my two systems running it. But I always wish it was perfect. Looking forward to 7.10, due in October.

As for Fedora 7, I have already stated my opinion on UbuntuForums. Here is what I said:

I installed Fedora 7 twice. The first time, installation went fine, I added Livna and started installing stuff using Yumex. Then I discovered that almost everything I installed had a missing dependency. This has never ever happened to me in any distro I have used. Never! I removed and reinstalled the packages and they worked fine. But I decided that I needed a fresh install.

On the second install, everything went smoothly, which gave me time to think about Fedora. The package manager is a pain in the back. For example, the update manager tells me that there are updates but doesn't tell me their size or how much time is remaining for individual packages. I have a slow DSL line (256 Kbps) and downloading updates without knowing when they will finish is annoying. Moreover, I don't want to use Yumex anymore, because of my previous experience. As for Smart, it's good but I didn't install Fedora just to use Smart, you know!

Apart from the package manager, I had a Gnome desktop. I realized that with the exception of a nice GUI to configure Samba, there is very little difference between Fedora and Ubuntu. I am not saying that Ubuntu invented Gnome. But when you have a distro with a better package manager, better repos, better forums and better wikis and documentation on the web, what will make me go and use Fedora... The Smaba GUI, no thanks!

The other RPM distros that I used and had to bear the bad package management were Mandriva, PCLOS and openSUSE. They had somethings to offer that Ubuntu doesn't have: Better KDE and a user-friendly control panel. Ubuntu doesn't have these.

That's what I think of Fedora!

Now, it's PCLinuxOS 2007's turn:

Apart from the cheesy name, this is a very good distro. A very, very good distro. The only problem that I felt (By the way, I almost didn't run into any problem using this distro) is that PCLOS is uninspired. I feel that it's not its own distro. You get the best parts of every other distro, but where is the PCLOS character? Even the looks was made similar to Windows XP!!!

The only missing feature is that Synaptic (the GUI for the package manager) lacks an "Update" utility, which means that you won't be notified of new updates, instead you will have to check for updates yourself using Synaptic or simply "apt-get update" from the terminal. But this is only a minor problem.

So for me, the winner was Ubuntu followed closely by PCLOS. The clear loser was Fedora 7!