My First Week at PDI

First off, Happy Thanksgiving! I'm still waiting on my furniture but I found a fantastic place overlooking the Bay and it's only 10 minutes from work.

So if I had to describe PDI in one word, it would be 'Happy'. The place is a buzz with good vibe. Everyone seems cheery and eager to work and I think I'm quickly catching the bug. I'll be in training for another month or so but Madagascar 2 (Mad2) looks amazing. My supe and team seem extremely nice and knowledgeable so I'm anxious to get started. Not getting a chance to go home for Thanksgiving, I'll probably spend the holiday going over tutorials and getting ahead of the curve on all this training. I really want to hit the ground running when they give me my first shot. I've already seen the sequences I'll be working on and they look like they are going to be awesome.

I haven't really gotten into anything pipeline-wise so I can't say how complicated it is.. but I hear it's pretty challenging. We'll see here in few weeks.

CoD4, It's Like Crack with Machine Guns

Being a big Call of Duty fan, I was quite nervous about the latest installment, Call of Duty 4. I was a big fan of the WWII era of the game but Infinity Ward has ditched the period for a current day insurgent situation. You play both USMC and SAS tactical officers working toward the same goal of taking down some Russian terrorist guy... or something like that. Nobody really cares because this is just the training ground for the real thing, the multiplayer game. Not to say that Infinity Ward doesn't make a darn good single player game, but nothing challenges the reflexes like a 15 year old that's dedicated his life to mastering the age old tactic of run-n-gun.

The game is very well balanced right out the gate. You will need to get your arse handed to you for a while to earn the experience to get some better weapons. That can be a bit discouraging but when you earn your experience, you can create new profiles with a selection of your choice. So you prefer flash-bangs when you carry a sniper rifle? No problem. They even go as far as to have you choose what perks go with what profile. If you want your sniper bullets to penetrate farther or you want your assault guy to have more stamina... no problem.

Speaking of bullets penetrating, this is the first shooter game that I've played that understands the fact that bullets penetrate walls. This is a fact folks. Those giant 50cal rounds will go through concrete like it's paper and CoD4 has built that in. Bravo!

The highlight of the game, in my opinion, is the graphics, animation and physics (the geek stuff). But that 'geek stuff' makes the game extremely immersive. The detail in the environments is absolutely stunning. You just want to walk around and take it all in. It's not on the level of Gears of War but it's so much better than most the crap out there right now.

I have to recomend this one. I wish it were a WWII simulation but none-the-less, it's very good.