I think the hardest difficulty exposes the (few) weak points in the game’s design. The most obvious one is the few places where there is infinite respawns of enemies in combination with the pretty obvious “tripwire” triggering of new waves of enemies. I thought this was pretty obvious fault in COD3 (nothing more awesome than watching a NPC pop into existence), which was considered a low point in the franchise. It’s not too noticeable on default difficulty, which I’m guessing Joe Gamer will be playing on, since you would move through levels fairly consistently, minimizing the number of respawned waves of enemies.

The tripwire triggering of infinite waves in a few places in combination with the increased difficulty (you only take 2-3 shots before dieing in Veteran, plus everyone has superhuman sharpshooting skills) makes it some of these sections incredibly tough. In a couple cases I think it came down to luck more than anything that allowed me to survive. Add the sometimes microscopic Checkpoint triggering, you can make your way pretty far into a firefight and completely miss  checkpoints.

On the flip side, I can also easily argue against the above. With percise enough timing between waves, you could make it through the infinite respawn area with quick enough shooting and sprinting to the next checkpoint. The only problem with that is you aren’t really taking a moment to really admire the world that Infinity Ward built.

All things considered, it is a well crafted experience, and I’m saying that after hours of swearing at the TV after dieing for the 50th time in the same place. Now, tonight, I subject myself to the hell that is known as the Epilogue mission on Veteran.

If that feature makes it into final release, but you can’t use the afp share on the AirDisk, you can mount it as a regular Samba share and go about backups that way.

full list at MacScoop.com

Of all the announcements at MacWorld, there was a couple of low points, at least to me. The first of which is the new Airport/NAS combination called Time Capsule. It works just like the old Airport, but with a built in HDD that can be used for network based Time Machine backups. The issue I, and others it seems based on discussions I’ve read on Apple’s own support board is that people understood the ability to do a network backup was possible using the AirDisk functionality of the Airport Extreme basestation. The information to do so was on Apple’s own website before Leopard was released. To cut to the chase, the information was pulled around the time Leopard was launched, and “officially” speaking, AirDisk Time Machine backups are not supported at present.

These events left customers (including me) with both an USB hard drive that was purchased for the sole purpose of backups. I wouldn’t be too bothered by it, but AirDisk support in Leopard is pretty flaky, so I can’t even rely on it to store and access data on it over a network. There are workarounds, but none I find acceptable for production level software.

As of yet, no official word if there will be future, official support for this type of backup, but I’m not holding my breath. If they fix the AirDisk/Leopard problems, I’ll be happy, and down the road maybe replace the router with a Time Capsule.

The other low point is the iPod Touch apps, it has been creating a buzz all over the Mac community. At first I was amazed Apple would pull a stunt like that, charging for apps that iPhone users got for free. After some reading, I can see why they do charge for the applications (my guess is the a combination of the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, much like they had to do for the 802.11n enabler a few months back, and testing the waters for seeing how many people will actually shell out money for a few iPod apps. Both of those guesses are out there, considering what they are charging it). In the end, I did purchase it today because I really wanted e-mail support.

The only part that I found odd is that the application package actually had core functionality attached to it that isn’t really documented anywhere. I’m talking about the wobbly moving icons, multiple page home screens, and creating links from Safari to the home screen.

I don’t know if this was intentional, but it brings up a question, are iPod Touch users going to have to pay for new, functional, non-application features that are added to the iPhone as the platform evolves? I’d hate to have to pay more for a copy and paste feature, although an extreme possibility, is it any different than paying for the ability to reorganize icons?

I purchased the HTC 621 from Rogers when it was first released a few months ago, and was extremely happy with it. My previous phone was an Audiovox SMT5600, just another rebranded HTC phone (I really dig HTC phones). It served it’s purpose for the couple years I have it, but I must say, the 621 is leaps and bounds better than the 5600.

As with most things in the wireless communications industry in Canada, the phone is lagging behind in terms of Windows Mobile 6 support. I hear it may or may not be coming as an update to what is on it now, which is Windows Mobile 5. I decided to take the leap and update the phone with HTC’s official firmware that was just released in the last couple days.

I must say, I’m pretty impressed by it overall. HTML e-mail support works great, especially in combination with my RSS feeds inside Outlook 2007. Yahoo Go is another app that came installed on it. It’s beta but it feels like a polished app, I really dig the flickr functions in it (I just wish data plans didn’t suck in Canada, I’d be using my phone for far more in regards to internet usage. Who knows, I would even start building applications specifically for the platform.)

As I explore functionality, I will be posting my opinion about it in the following days.