The Last Candle

Valve, of Half-Life gaming fame, has released a teaser-slash-tech-demo for the upcoming Team Fortress 2 featuring the classic Heavy Weapons Guy and, oh boy, it’s goooo-od stuff.

<p/> The HWG has traditionally been featured in previous game iterations as the tank-type fellow you’d expect from his moniker, but he’s never inherited hardly any character past his functional appearance — i.e. you knew he was a dangerous brute by the size of his gun, nothing more. The rest of the Team Fortress characters have been historically given the same functional but stoic, feature-less treatment. (The lack of previous character in games is not a complaint of the games’ quality — after all, the previous Team Fortress was released back in 1999.) <p/> Valve is evidently cleaning out the stoicism for Team Fortress 2 and instead painting in gobs of liveliness and color. Here’s the video; note that this video was recorded using the Source engine in-game, showing off the new advancement to the facial animation technology.

Beautiful, beautiful work. I love that laugh towards the end. The previous Team Fortress game, Team Fortress Classic, is probably my favorite and most-played multiplayer game of all time, so I’m looking forward to this new iteration quite a lot.

Oh, but here’s the kicker. That last part in the teaser, where the HWG is firing his weapon into the characters on the other side of the chasm, is not only in-engine, but it’s apparently actual gameplay (besides, I assume, the cinematic camera movement). Chris Remo, a staff writer on the Shack who recently played TF2 during a visit to Valve’s offices (which also resulted in a Half-Life 2: Episode 2 preview), said the following about that final teaser scene.

You guys see that big crazy insane laugh he does while firing? That’s in the game, it actually looks and sounds like that. When you’re killed, the camera does a quick snap-zoom up to your killer and freeze-frames it, and if you’re killed by a Heavy you get a freeze-frame of this big beefy Russian dude with this massive grin on his face lit up by a muzzle flash. It is awesome.

That is awesome. Just one player class in TF2 has more humor and character than all of the classes in previous games combined and multiplied by fifty-two — and, as seen in the final shot of the video, there are seven more classes in TF2 to show off.

Valve may not be my favorite developer, but man, they can put out one hell of a polished product out after another.

Back from a super fabulous visit to CA — and I already have pictures ready! Here’s a snap of Charlie and Alice, my nephew and niece.

Actually, make that picture, as in singular-ish, as in I just have one. It’s a good ‘un though, to be sure.

Actually, make that that many more pictures were snapped, but they’re on a different camera — namely my Dad’s, whose camera beats mine in a snapping match. Best guess is that a gallery will be ready next week, but a more realistic timeframe is within six months.

Several videos of poor, cell phone-camera quality are currently in my possession too, and it’s all golden footage; the plans are to whip together a little YouTube video with the content. I enjoy doing video editing more than color correcting and cropping photos, but it also takes a heckuva lot longer, so who knows when that stuff’ll be done.

I still have some packin’ to do for tomorrow, but here’s the gist of Thursday’s itinerary.

As the arrow points. We humans will have to do a little airplane-ridin’ and a little car drivin’, but we will not be deterred from reaching our ultimate destination: the homestead of my sister, brother-in-law and nephew and niece. Should be excellent times, aside from the initial airport security search.

…Well, I was hoping to say next that I could do a little moblogging of lovely Southern California via Text America, but apparently my account’s been deleted. Gee, I would’ve liked an e-mail about that.

So, no moblogging! But I’ll bring back a few digital photographs, and some of them might even be posted on the ole’ blog this year (unlike last year, where I procrastinated posting any pictures and then totally forgot until now).

The old adage regarding first impressions and snap reactions goes, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. The aforementioned phrase applies to many types of advertisements, but a personal experience this past weekend gives me a concrete example of how easily the common wisdom can be excepted (like most old sayings).

But my dealings were not with a book; instead, I was tricked by a beer label.

Here’s a bottle of Spring Heat Spiced Wheat I purchased Friday night in anticipation of good times with friends, which I hoped to accompany by what looked like a quality pre-summer wheat beer.

Having never heard or seen this particular ale before, the label advertised what appeared to be marks of a good wheat beer. Here’s a close-up photo showing more label detail.

Note the qualifiers: the partially chopped-off words say “Limited Edition,” “Seasonal Brew,” and “Belgian-Style Wheat Ale.” Also visible in the lower-right corner is “Ale brewed with Spices.” None of these descriptions details a particularly full beer, but none of them are the usual “Brewed with Quality Hops and Barley” yadda-yadda on the outside of a Budweiser either, leading me to believe that this could be a decent wheat beer from a craft brewery.

The (literally) orange-headed fellow on the label also presumes some competance on the part of the brewery: wheat ales, due to the esthers released by the particular yeast needed to work with the wheat grain during fermentation, typically give off citrusy scents. And the citrus-man is standing in his natural habitat, a ripe field of wheat, which is, uh, worth a point or two on the brew-o-meter.

While the main front label of the bottle gives the impression of quality, the neck’s label purports even more premises towards a welcome conclusion: part of the neck’s label reads, “Brewed with Orange, Lemon & Lime Peels and Coriander.” Coriander is a typical ingredient in beer and is said by homebrewers and craft brewers alike to have many beneficial effects in beer, and the additional of citrus peel could be added with the intent to mesh the citrus yeast esthers with actual citrus flavoring in the ale.

All of those clues put together led me to think that Spring Heat Spiced Wheat ale was something new from a craft brewery and was worth a try. I even put back a six-pack of Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale, a great IPA.

But in my excitement for the bottle detailing, I forgot to check up on the most important detail of all: the brewery.

Later Friday evening a pal and myself both had ourselves a bottle of the Spiced Wheat. Personally speaking, I didn’t care for it at all. The color of the beer was a pleasant and summery bright yellow with a decent foam head, but the beer itself was lacking greatly compared to other wheat beers I’ve enjoyed (like Bell’s Oberon). The citrus was minimal, and the backbone of the drink had a bitter-sweet taste that was familiar but unpleasant.

The first Spiced Wheat that evening was also the last for the evening. Based on that first taste test I don’t intend to buy anymore of it either; once this first six-pack was exhausted, that would be the end of the Spiced Wheat — not a very good start for the brewery of this ale, whoever it was.

It wasn’t until today that I noticed the brewery’s name on the upper-left side of the front label, somewhat innocuously placed and surrounding by the much more interesting orange-fellow and the “Belgian-Style” descriptions.

Anheuser-Busch is the company that, of course, makes the terribly mediocre Budweiser, Michelob and Busch beers, not to mention the likes of the quality-poor Natural Light and a series of “Dry,” “Light” and “Ice” beers, all specially created with less taste to appeal to the typical the American palate. Gahh, I’d bought an Anheuser-Busch beer! Curses and damnation!

Looking back to the first tasting of Spring Heat with a new perspective, my low satisfaction with the initial test made much more sense: I realized that the familiar but bad taste in the structure of the wheat beer tasted a whole lot like Budweiser.

And when you start with Bud, it doesn’t matter how much lemon peel you add — the beer will still taste like bad lager. Additionally, Spring Heat, being an ale, proves that Anheuser-Busch doesn’t make solely mediocre lagers, but that they can produce a variety of sub-standard brews in different styles.

So, lesson learned. Trying out Spring Heat without knowledge of the brewery unwittingly created a blind taste test. The results of the surprise test didn’t produce evidence of any bias on my part, having not known Anheuser-Busch was behind Spring Heat: it was a bad beer no matter what who was on the label. Meanwhile, A-B’s streak of sub-standard brewery continues, even into the faux-craft brewery market. Give them credit for trying, but the Busch boys will have to deviate from their usual formula a little (or a lot) more to get my patronage.

The Beer Advocate folks think the beer is decent, though. If the idea of Blue Moon mixed with Budweiser sounds appealing, give Spiced Heat a try.