Digital experiences!

After ten days of snowboarding i am back at home now - with zero broken bones ;)

On the first three days of our trip we had lots of snow. About 50 cm of new snow came down every night. After our trip to munich - when we passed the austrian border - the streets became bad. Snow and ice everywhere, so we finally had to put on icechains for the last 500 meters of our journey.

The first day we took a one-hour lesson for snowboarding, because our skills had become a bit rusty. After Wilco, our teacher from holland, had corrected our boarding abilities, everything went great.

Passing by three days of snow the next days until thursday where even greater - sunshine all day long. The pists were well preparated so we had lots of fun with boarding. We went from Ellmau to Scheffau, Brixen, Söll, Westendorf and boarded on half of the available pistes.

Thursday the weather broke down. It was raining and snowing and snow-raining... We went up the hill about 1 pm and took two downhill trails after which we had a long break. After that break we went down twice more and stopped boarding for that day.

Friday was our last day boarding - and it was a great day again. Sunshine and again about 50 cm of new snow on the pists. It was real fun - even our little jump session in the snow was great.

Finally we went on a night-luge trip in Going, located next to Ellmau. We had three really funny downhill trips with two rented luges. The piste was lightened every 10 to 20 meters so we knew where to turn and where to break - but it was a really hard trip.

So, as i look back on the trip - it was great! You should all take the time to visit the www.skiwelt.at page and plan your own trip to that region!

Cost sideinfos:

- Single skipasse for 9 days: 215,-€

- Appartment per person for 10 days: 210,-€

- Gas costs for trip from Hamburg to Ellmau and back: 230,-€

watching an IMAX movie seemed to be a good alternative, so me and my girlfriend went into the IMAX cinema in berlin at the "potsdamer platz" (here: http://www.imax-berlin.de/). we bought tickets for the "forces of nature" movie, which seemed to be very interesting - and for sure it was a good interesting movie. there was only one problem: the theatre the movie was played in was an IMAX cinema.

 

- the picture was warped in many parts (e.g. watching a helicopter flight over istanbuls beatifull mosque 'hagia sofia' (see -> http://www.freenet.de/freenet/reisen/bildershows/istanbul/02.html), whose towers seemed to be bend)

- there was no focus point to watch the movie without breaking your neck

- in speedy passages of the movie the pictures were bouncing (which created a great headache feeling)

 

the movie was good, but we had to fight againt puking...

well i guess i will never again watch an IMAX movie.

 

i first got in touch with q4 when a coworker began playing it at work. it was about 7 pm when he asked me, if i wanted to play a bit - and so did i.

the next weekend, just one or two days later, i buyed the game at "atelco", a computer store in hamburg, for 44 euros. i expected it being worth this amount, as i was a former q3-arena esl league player ( i managed myself in playing for on the last 20 out of 1000 ranks there ;))

 

the day i bought q4, i just started installation and played the first quarter of levels of the game. i did pretty good with my - play, save, play tactics. it was real fun, when i reached the scene where the "hannibal" landed. the nice cutscene of the briefing held aboard the ship was really nice with smooth motioncapturing. the story was narrated in small pieces but good.

 

after lots of foot patrol i went on rails for the second day of playing. there were some nice scenes following, but the outdoor levels (by train, tank or walker) where very poor, compared to the indoor-levels. the rocks and mountains appear more like simple quads then like to be real. but the action in these parts of the game are fascinating. once you have run along with the walker-bot (some kind of small battle mech) you will like the fast 6er rocketlauncher which is auto-reloaded ;) - the big spider strogg will not remember, i guesss...

well, sadly i was turned to strogg at the end of this part of the game (after a fight with took me about 8 times to load again, before i could proceed - i thought, i should not have died there), so i told me to play on anotherday. the "transformation" scene was one of the most cinematic R+ event ever - thank you for the 18+ version of the game :D

 

how sad that our convoy with the emp did not succeed in destroying the strogg nexus, so i had to go on alone again. after managing an embush of some look-like-me stroggs with my new rail-gun, i reached a kind-of zombie land (the human-remains dump), which was sometimes really frightening. i remember one foggy-bluelight level with occurance of the first woman-strogg, which was creating a real great atmosphere.

 

í played on and on - until i finally reached the nexus. i felt like in old counter-strike times, crouched behind a corner i was demolishing the evil-strogg brains shields and finishing the game - without being hurt by any other monster... hmm... was that all? ahh, another cutscene, but far too short.

 

well, ok, i loved the athmosphere, played the game, but i was hoping for more genius cutscenes, more intelligent monsters and maybe more strogg women? ;)

 

my mark for q4 (us/uk version)

 

games page :

 

buy it at amazon.com (for real us/uk uncut version)

 

 

news:

 

extreme:

 

theres only 4 days left until september the 18th when germany has to vote again.

 

i wish that spd will make it - they have gained nearly 8 percent in the most recent opinion polls. they took off at 29% and landed at nearly 36% now. i am looking forward for them taking the pace to cdu and stay in the german bundestag as leading party.

 

hope that "die grünen / b90" will make it as well and the will form a coalition like before.

Its been some time since i last wrote down some words in here - now its time for some news!

 

The reason for my absence in this blog was fortunately that i got a job in the games business - i am working as software engineer at 49games in hamburg now for 3.5 months since my last entry.

 

Its a real great job - were developing several wintersport games for RTL entertainment for playstation 2 and pc platform. As far as game-development is the most exiting business ever, i hope that i will do a good job and will continue working there for further projects.

 

Well thats nearly all the news for now about my new job.

 

Last weekend i was in leipzig for the games convention 2005 - i will place some pictures in my gallery soon, so stay tuned in!