I had some down time so I decided to add some life to these toy robot models we had in our library. I am using 3dsMax and vray 1.5

   Let me start by saying, I like my PS3. For the past 13 months, it has been a very entertaining experience. As I took care of my PS3, I made sure to give it enough air to ventilate, and handled it gently. Back when I decided to purchase a "next gen" system I was faced with a serious choice. Should I buy an xbox 360 and have access to an established software library and connect with countless friends already connected with xbox live? Or should I go rouge, and get the system with a lot of potential, but still in a struggle to find its place? A big part of my decision was hardware reliability. Many of my friends have already experienced the RROD incident more than once. Enough of them went through that fiasco and it turned me away from the xbox360.
     So here I am, one month past warranty and my PS3 is dead. Yes, I should have forked out the extra money for the extended warranty at Best buy, but I was on a tight budget last year and I didn't think it would be an issue. After all, most defective products go bad before the first year...most. It seems Sony has designed a Fail-Fail clock in some of their PS3s  that Fucks over their customers once the warranty runs out. Kidding of course. This is just poor timing on my part, however it shows that MS doesn't have a monopoly on poor hardware quality. Sony could care less that my $400 purchase warrants another $150 after just over a year of normal usage. In my case, Sony has failed to deliver the quality product they claim their company represents. Yes I was naive to think a sony product was more reliable than MS, good/bad PR will do that to people. This is wishful thinking, but I feel companies should be more respectable to the trust their customers give them when we are willing to pay good money for their products.

     So, as gamers we should stop arguing over who has the better hardware quality. It seems to be a moot point and only pushes our community further into tribalism. Just go with the product you think will give you best experience, and have fun with it. Pure and simple. We have to accept the faults of mass produced electronics, assume all are poorly built, and always purchase the extended warranty.

January 17th, 9pm Est on ESPN. North Carolina vs Miami. We did all the pregame intro animations and transitional graphics for the game. The game was sponsored by Infiniti.  A few months of work for thirty seconds of show. Its crazy how this business works.

I googled my name just for the hell of it and I came across this. We finished this project about a year ago, and it was one of my favorites so far. CG channel did a nice job showcasing our work which was used for the Nissan GT-R launch site. Check out the link, an embedded video will start playing.
http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=7341

In response to the question of the day, I am only  looking forward to the next few months. Games RE5, SF4, and KZ2. Basically games that have two word titles with a number at the end. Easier for me to abbreviate. Beyond that, I will wait and see what is coming out. A lot of games look good half a year out, but never live up to the hype.

So sad to see it go. I've been a regular EGM reader since issue 18. It  was January 1991 when I first plucked it off a news stand. Back then, GI-Joe and the NES were still worthy of a cover story. I never really warmed up to the 1up network, but I still enjoyed thumbing through the mag each month. In an age of digital media, this event kind of marks an end to an era. Not just in video game coverage, but within print media itself. Good luck to all the EGM staff in future endeavors.

Old phone, you were a good one. In 2002 you were a bit pricey, but you had all the latest features. You did text, web, had a color screen and even supported down loadable midi ringtones! I know I wasn't always careful with you, but you were never lost or stolen. Every time I you dropped on the floor, you worked faithfully as if concrete were made of felt. Remeber that time I lost my grip and you fell into a pint of beer? I dried you out, and for a few days it was touch and go, but you got over it. Yes, people laugh at you, call you the "Zack Morris" phone. But after all these years you still worked, albeit not as well as you use to. That is why its sad to see you go.  I'll always remeber the good times, and long conversations we had together.
Farewell Sanyo 4900.

Maybe I'm just not the target audience anymore. But the VGA is off my radar for TV watching. I'd rather be playing games than watching some B list actors talk about how extreme they think Gears 2 is.

This is the promo we did for this seasons NFL on Fox program.

   First off, Far Cry 2 screwed me... no Ubisoft did!  Its very sad really when a company no longer cares for the quality of their products, or the consumers who pay their salaries. When I was a kid, I had a gen:1 Atari LYNX. After the first year the black paint started rubbing and chipping off the body of the LYNX making it look horribly disfigured. The hardware worked just fine, but I was pissed enough to write Atari about it. To my surprise they wrote me back and gave me a half off voucher if I wanted to buy the gen2 LYNX that had just come out (better design). So I bought the new LYNX half price, and that was that. Atari could have ignored me or wrote me a letter about proper user conditions, but they knew if they made me happy I would keep giving them money. Back in the day it seemed like the companies cared a lot more for their customers. Hell, back in 2001 nintendo got me drunk with unlimited free drinks and games at one of their Cube Club events. Now thats  customer appreciation.
   Back to Far Cry2 and Ubisoft. I was playing the game and ran into a game ending bug (an error in a scripted event). My friend also had a game ending bug in FC2, but in a totally different situation (corrupt save file). With my bug, I cannot advance any further in the game. My old save data has the same issue, or is too far back in the game to make it worth my time. I contacted technical support, my hope was that someone at Ubisoft coult tell me that they are aware of the problem and are working on a patch to fix the game. But that would be too easy wouldnt it? Instead they wrote me a Bull shit response stating my problem  was related to "gameplay and hints" and  I should consult the game manual or buy the guide. I guess they have morons working at Ubisoft tech support because I was very specific in the paragraph I sent them that explained the problem. Anyone with half a brain who read it would have known that I was describing a glitch in the game that had nothing to do with my ability as a player. I went onto their tech forum and found a few users who had a similar problem, and got the same response from ubi. All I wanted was a real honest response, maybe I should have written in French, no. I've been gaming for 24 years, and I can't remember the last time I felt so cheated by a game, and insulted by the company who made it.
Do yourself a favor and think twice next time you are considering buying a game from ubisoft. Its your money and they dont deserve it.