The Matrix Online: Things to do part 3

Merry Holidays to all

Seeing as it's currently running in-game then I figured it was time to let you know about the MxO Winter Holiday event that's been running for four years now and is a lot of fun for all players. One of three big annual events in the game this one is almost certainly the most popular with special missions, new "winter clothing", and of course tons of snow! So allow me to run you through some of the fun and frolics to be had in Mega City this winter.

Snowfall and Snowballs

A treat devised during the first winter holiday and a continuing feature due to it's popularity is snowball combat available during the winter period. The mass of snow that rains down is pretty, but it doesn't stick so players have to go and hunt to have their fun. Dotted around the city are snowmen from which players can acquire four different types of snowball to add to their arsenal. These can then be traded to a "Holiday Helper" for a 'festive hat.' Once one of these hats is worn then battle can commence with anyone else wearing a hat until the hats become destabilised and unwearable, making 'last hat standing' a fun game - the hats come in red and green so teams can be organized. The helpers also trade shiny 'party hats' that shoot confetti.














Presents and Prizes

The following year new content was added in the form of winter missions. A charitable organization contracts players to give out presents to people in need of cheering up over the winter. On the way they are attacked by giant monsters made of snow who throw deadly snowballs, but when defeated drop 'perfect snowflakes' that are valuable and can be traded for special clothing. This has slowly built to a collection of 'formal' clothing, such as gloves and hats and other winter items such as large coats and snow boots. The missions have stayed the same since, but new items and variations have been added such as 'ruby snowflakes' which can be traded for red and white versions of some items.

I'll leave you with some images of this year's clothing items, which come in a myriad of colour beyond the examples shown - which are yours to acquire this holiday, only in The Matrix Online.

Wolverine Trailer, Oh Yeah

SF at the Movies - December 08

We've rolled on into December so let's have a quick peek at what's on offer for the geeks.

The Day The Earth Stood Still

Released 12/12/08












A remake of a classic Sci-Fi thriller, this modern version, starring Keanu Reeves and Jennifer Connelly manages to put a 60s shocker into a modern setting without losing any of the thrill or pace of the original. A vast, glowing sphere lands in Central Park, and from it emerges a man named Klaatu, who must get past the nervous U.S. government and military to complete his mission to "save the Earth." But as he does the scientists who help him realise his intentions might not be what they understood them to be and that saving the Earth might come at a terrible cost... Well worth seeing, a good bit of engaging cinema.

And that's it as far as I can see, next year is set to bring some big hitters with Terminator 4 and Star Trek 11 well under way and there's a few Fantasy hits such as popular vamp romance Twilight and classic Jim Carey in comedy Yes Man so we won't be short of entertainment this month.

Power Trip 6 - Empathy/ Ability Acquisition

Woah, it's been a while since I did one of these...again! Well series 3 is trundling along nicely so I think I'll take another peak at some of the characters in the show and the powers they possess. The third series has really stepped up and made things very interesting for our heroes and none more so than Peter Petrelli, who'se ability has made him a closely watched subject by more than just the viewers.

Peter has an ability known simply as empathy, he is able to take on the abilities of others simply by spending time with them and then 'unlocking' that ability in himself. Initially he only had abilities in the presence of others or for a short duration after meeting them, but in the thrilling episodes of series 1 he discovered that he could call up any ability he'd encountered at will, though his control was a problem for much of the early series - especially when he got the power of nuclear explosion! Peter has since learned much greater control over the multitude of powers he has 'absorbed' but things don't get any easier for him!

I'm struggling to find any 'classical' references to empaths of the kind that Peter is, though my searches are admittedly a lot more cursory than the in depth academic exercizes I once envisioned. I guess it's because people with 'powers' weren't as prolific in classical writing as they are in contemporary fiction. People with abilities generally were Gods or blessed by the Gods for something, and someone who could nick their gifts wouldn't fit well into the story I guess. Empaths of another kind have been around for a while, these are generally seen as people who heal by empathising with, and even absorbing, another's pain or sickness. A contemporary example would be Sean Farrell of The 4400.

Now there aren't many empaths in the Bible, but I will slip in a few references if I may. The 'powers' that occur in the Bible, primarily in the Old Testament, such as superhuman strength and speed come through God the Holy Spirit and abilities always come at the direction of God when he appoints it. This might not be particularly relevant, but when we tie it into to Peter's intense sense of destiny it is quite intriguing. Peter feels he is meant for something greater and is satisfied when he gains his abilities, though a great destiny isn't all it's cracked up to be. The Bible teaches that God is in control of man's destiny and it is at His discretion when gifts are given. The gifts He gives and the purpose of our lives might not be as dramatic, but the Bible teaches that all people are of extreme value to God and to those He has saved He gives gifts and blessings that don't involve flight or telikenisis, but are enough for them to depend on and to fulfil His purpose for them. That might not be clear enough, if so let me know.















The most famous character with the same ability is Rogue of the X-Men. She also has the ability to take the powers of others, though it affects her in a different way to Peter. When Rogue touches someone she absorbs their knowledge, skills and, if they are a mutant, special abilities. However when Rogue does this it drains the person she touches to the point of unconsciousness or death, making physical contact or relationships impossible for her. I find Rogue to be one of the most real of the X-Men as her ability does grant her power, but it does have an enormous cost on her life rather than just having something that's handy in a fight.
















Well I said that Series 3 was making things interesting for Peter and when longtime villain Sylar has found out that he is in fact Peter's brother things get even more so. When they both confront Peter's father Peter himself loses all his abilities, but Sylar is trying to find redemption and has learned to take abilities through empathy and satisfy his 'hunger' without his usual method of removing the skull, making him much more like Peter, who now has to struggle to find out what his purpose is without any abilities - but then again with the Eclipse in this week's episode, he might not be the only one to ask that!

Any other empaths we should know about Sam?

SF Masterworks # 13 Martian Time-Slip

It's been a long time since I've read this so to attempt a review would be perhaps a little foolish, buy I've never made it my aim to be a reviewer on this site, but to write about things I enjoy and to share them with you all. One of the things I do enjoy is reading classic Sci-Fi and in particular Philip K Dick, whose gigantic presence in the Masterworks list marks him out much better than my vast appreciation could. Anyway, I do think you are entitled to a review of sorts, and so I'm going to be cheeky and borrow one from www.sfsite.com who have an excellent database of the masterworks series - hope you don't mind guys (I also pinched the image from there!)

"First published in 1964, this is recognized as one of Dick's better novels. Although he was certainly a man of vision with consistently brilliant ideas, his writing style is not at all consistent. Sometimes, it seems to me that Dick's writing reads like a translation from another language. Perhaps this aspect contributes to some of the humour in this novel, for it has some very funny moments.

Jack Bohlen is a repairman on a desolate, dry Mars, inhabited by poor colonists and the remnants of the poorer native population, the Bleekmen. Jack's bored wife is addicted to barbiturates. His father is a ruthless land speculator. His neighbour's young son, Manfred, is an autistic with untapped paranormal abilities. His new boss, Arnie Kott, has a virtual monopoly on the available water on Mars. Arnie wants Jack to devise a contraption to communicate with Manfred in order to capitalize on the boy's theoretical ability to glimpse the future.

It's an odd setup, but the payoff is stunning. The same scene in Arnie Kott's dwelling, the same moment in time, is played over and over again, each time shown from a slightly different perspective. Which interpretation of reality is really real? Are any of them? It's a chilling, haunting, beautiful piece of writing." - by Neil Walsh

A lot of the detail is foggy in my mind, but it was still an excellent read, bringing classic PKD themes such as colonisation and precognition, but giving them a fresh and original context. The Martian setting was entirely believable and I can still catch glimpses of the more memorable scenes in my head as I write this. The autism angle made it particularly interesting for me, but what really captivated me was how engrossing and believable the world and characters were - which is also a typical PKD trait. It is typically mind bending and yet easy to follow and while it isn't my favourite of the authour's works it isn't because it's bad, it's simply that some of his books manage to be even better than this one - quite an achievment considering this is a "Masterwork"

I can highly recommend this one to you, and I'll try and keep up with these posts and I'll do another book soon and...guess what? It's another Philip K Dick!!

OK, that probably says just as much about my reading...but we'll ignore that eh?

Game Review: Halo 3

This one has been out aaages and so I thought I'd better tell you about it before letting you know about some of the newer releases I've been playing. By the way I'm assuming that all people interested in Halo have probably completed it already and if you want a game review then there'll be thousands probably only a short Google search away. But I'm under the immodest assumption that you're interested in my opinion so I will intermittently post up reviews and thoughts on video games as and when I play and complete them. So anyway on to the conclusion of one of the biggest video game trilogies ever.

Rough Plot

Well as the astute amongst you will have noticed Halo 3 follows on from two previous games so there's a lot of story to catch up on. Humanity is at war with a number of alien races who have formed a military and religious union called the Covenant. The beginnings of the war have yet to be fully explored, but there are more Halo games on the way. The first game begins with one ship, Pillar of Autumn making a random jump to escape a Covenant attack and lead them away from Earth, which had not been discovered. They happened on something incredible though, a ring shaped world they came to dub Halo.










They were followed to the planet and the battle continued, but they found an even greater enemy - The Flood, a parasitic race that infected, killed and possessed the bodies of the dead and were considered a threat to all life by the mysterious Forerunner who built this ringed world. The humans did have one weapon though - the Master Chief, one the enhanced super armoured SPARTAN II soldiers commissioned by Earth's military. They found a way to stop both the Covenant and the Flood, with the help of the Chief's AI, Cortana, they found that the Halo was a weapon that could wipe out all life in the galaxy - the only way to stop the flood. They couldn't halt the installation so they rigged their crashed starship to explode before narrowly escaping the installation.













OK, that was a bit longer than I wanted, but I guess I had to stuff a lot of key concepts in there. In Halo 2 we have another side seen, the side of the Covenant. The battle leader who failed to stop the Master Chief is condemned and given one last chance of glory in the suicidal warrior role of the Arbiter. Things are looking bad on the home front when a Covenant fleet arrives at Earth, destroying ships and dropping troops and monstrous scarab tanks on the surface. The fight rages and another installation is discovered and, you guessed it, more Flood who start infecting the Covenant and even form a vastly intelligent Gravemind. The Covenant Prophets want to activate the rings but are stopped by the Arbiter, who has realized that the prophecy is a lie and that activating the rings won't start a spiritual journey, but will kill them all. He and his species leave the Covenant and now fight alongside the humans. They discover an ancient massive starship that goes to Earth with the Chief on board, Cortana is captured by the Gravemind and I'm really bad at being concise!!!

OK onto this game - the Chief returns to Earth and joins the Arbiter, who he grudgingly recognises as an ally. They battle Covenant forces and regroup at a military base, which is also attacked, but they arm a bomb and evacuate, wiping out the pursuing forces. They head to the starship which has landed and is the site of a Covenant excavation. They assault the forces there, but a portal is opened into which the Covenant ships go. All thoughts of pursuing are lost when a covenant ship infested with Flood comes through and crashes on Earth, the Flood spill out and are defeated, but at great cost. Finding a message from Cortana the Chief and the Arbiter's forces go through the portal, with the rest of Earth's fleet staying to defend the little humanity has left. They arrive at The Ark, a massive structure which builds Halos and can control their firing sequence. That's a chunk of the plot, I'll say no more other than WATCH THE CREDITS!!!

Gameplay

OK, enough of that storyline stuff I think and onto the game. The Halo trilogy is FPS, that is first person shooter, where you spend most of the game looking down the barrel of a gun. It is one of the defining games of the medium, particularly in Sci-Fi and the range of weapons and enemies make it exciting, challenging and above all fun to play. I think the fun element is an important one as the game doesn't rely only on it's cool storyline to hook the player, actually just running through the level with plasma rifles blazing is incredibly fun, and this is augmented by a great multiplayer feature, which makes is still the most popular game to play online. There is also a range of vehicles from tanks to the two seater Mongooses introduced in this game, there is also equipment such as a bubble shield which protects from any attack for a short time and features like turrets that you can pick up and carry around with you. It's strength is in being a fairly standard shoot 'em up, but having a number of nifty techniques and tricks you can master and work out for yourself - for example, by trial and error I found a really good way to do jumps while driving that don't bounce your vehicle everywhere and lots of other nifty fun ways that don't just involve trigger pulling or button mashing.

Sci-Fi Stuff

OK, this game is clearly loaded with SF stuff so I'll focus on one or two things that stand out for me, and maybe do a follow up if necessary.

The Halos

I can't discuss Halo 3 without discussing the Halos themselves, the idea of an artificial ringed planet is fascinating and I was in awe when I played the first game and saw the land ahead of me stretch out and reach up to the sky, from then on I was hooked. I will just note that I discovered that this is not their first appearance in Sci-Fi, winged worlds have been a feature of SF for some time it seems, but I still think what the Halo team did with the concept is original and fantastic. These structures were built by a mysterious race called the Forerunners, who may well have been human, or who certainly have a link to humanity. The rings are colossal, have natural vegetation and water as well as housing sophisticated structures built a long time ago. From the outside they are visibly artificial with machines and structures to keep it in place and presumably to maintain atmosphere etc. And just as you start to ask why they were built, you regret asking...














The Flood

The Flood are a great aspect of Halo, as it makes it about more than just a war between aliens and mankind there is also a greater element that threatens all life in the univese which humanity must stop while still barely holding off a vicious enemy. The Flood are very clever as to one extent they are essentially zombies, passing an infection that turns a human or alien into one of them. But they are done so cleverly and differently that you get none of that idea, yet the same creeped out feeling of watching a horror movie. The Flood don't bite you, instead little annoying infection forms come at you, which are easy to destroy but deadly if they contact a person without the shielded armour of the Chief. They also get more intelligent as the infection spreads and can eventually create their own forms without needing to infect another life form. They even grow a super intelligent Gravemind. They make a great element when they first turn up as you go from fighting a war to fighting to survive. The mystery and intrigue surrounding them drives the game on and makes the characters risk everything to stop them. They fantastically animated and presented in this volume, making them seem very real and very scary.

Worth Playing?

Definitely - nuff said!

Well I've written more than enough on this one, I would reccomend the Halo trilogy to you, especially with three more Halo games in the pipeline. I will maybe do a Bible based follow up like I did with Creed and at those to my reppertoire, but I'll see, maybe a huge war with a race based on a false religion might give me enough to go on!!

The Matrix Online: Kill code

It's been a long time since I've done this but I'm going to give you a bit more info on the storyline of the continuous online game The Matrix Online. This is of course an attempt to plug the game as well as a geekish delight in sharing the details with you all. I will just say that at the moment we are living in fairly exciting time in the game with a bit of a redesign in the mission system and storyline progression.

Funding and workload and other issues had lead to a decline in the storyline, but the devlopment team and "Rarebit" in particular used this to revitalise the game. 'Rare' personally drew and animated new cinematics, which were one of the things that had to be cut. These have no sound and aren't necessarily as smooth as the earlier ones, but they've used that to make them longer and more widespread in terms of impact. I have to say I'm pleased to be playing a game where a developer would go to that extend to make the game more interesting and exciting for players.

Anyway, on with the story eh?

System Reboot











The major thing going on at the time, so major I didn't even know the other event was going on, was that Sony Online Entertainment was taking over the game. The game had low sales and high costs and so it could no longer support itself, which meant it was handed over to SOE who run games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars Galaxies. This meant quite a reduction in events and live content and it meant that things never quite returned to the glory of the original days, something that is still resented to this day. Nonetheless SOE have kept the game afloat and the Matrix story alive for three years so far and the game runs pretty solidly still and I'm still intrigued by what the story turns up.

Neurophyte returns

Back to the story...again! At least on the servers where she had been kept alive Neurophyte made a return to the stage in a drastically changed way. She first appearad at parties in the city, taking orders to rest and relax seriously.

Meanwhile things were sturring in the Merovingian camp as the Frenchman tried to find out more about the red eyed agents and the masked men. He also confirmed what was now widely assumed to be true, that he was indeed responsible for sending the Assassin after Morpheus. This coupled with reports of Zion trying to find a way to kill him, made things ready for a showdown. The Assassin himself even showed up in the Matrix, but evaded attempts to stop and kill him.

Neurophyte showed up again, this time looking weak and shaken, and sometimes speaking words that didn't appear to be her own. She was being followed by the Red Eyed Agents, but she had known they were coming and fought back. She still had a remnant of the "kill code" that had infected her - a powerful remnant. Code lightning struck the impostors, killing them in large numbers. Neurophyte had returned in force!




















But then one of their "Super Agents" showed up and fought her. These agents had also been able to summon similar lightning in their initial engagement with the redpills and he seemed fairly immune to Neurophyte's power and quickly seized the upper hand until help came from a very unexpected source.

The Assassin appeared on the scene, easily destroying the agent and evading the attacks of Neurophyte and other redpills. After staying for a short while the Assassin typically slunk back into the dark recesses of the Matrix, leaving Neurophyte weakened and tired. While a powerful force to be reckoned with the events had taken their toll on her and things were not going to go well for her crew as we will see soon. As far as I'm aware this was the last time we saw Neurophyte, and pretty much the last time we saw the Red Eyed Agents, out in force like this anyway, but the power behind them was not far from revealing itself...

Hope you've enjoyed this, the story around the takeover period is pretty sketchy in terms of chapter divisions and ordering so I hope I don't miss too much out or get things in the wrong order, but yeah - this was the kill code event - it happened, lots of other stuff happens too in the never ending story of The Matrix.