09 May 2007
I’m a bit behind the times, because I only just got around to seeing An Inconvenient Truth. It’s definitely a “must see.” Not like “must see TV,” more like “must see or we’ll all die.”
The picture Gore paints is pretty grim, but it comes off as informational rather than sensational. The film works very well for raising awareness, but not so well as a call to action, leaving you with this “now what?” feeling. But that’s probably a smart decision. By choosing to concentrate on presenting the non-debatable facts the film doesn’t give people much room to question whether we have a serious problem on our hands. But what to do about is mostly left as an exercise for the reader.
The one firm call to action is to visit the web site, which in general focuses on small things you can do, not large lifestyle changes. That’s cool, I guess, but that’s kinda like trying to lose weight by switching to low fat cookies instead of, you know, diet and exercise. Now I’m not saying the solution has to be unnatural liposuction (Which I guess in this context would be what? Stop driving cars altogether? “Reducing” the world’s population by half?). There has to be some achievable middle ground. But to think that we can fix this problem by switching to a different kind of light bulb is pretty naïve. We should do those little things, but they’re not going to be enough.
The title of the film is perfect: there’s a clear truth here and it is pretty damn inconvenient. The facts presented to us demand that we change. What worries me most is that I don’t think people are naturally good at change or compromise… especially Americans. Our whole culture is founded on stubborn individualism. Our days of driving huge cars everywhere to eat heavily packaged fast food have to come to an end. And I don’t trust the average American to let that go. Which I guess means we’re all gonna die… which is also pretty darn inconvenient. Drat.
03 May 2007
GameSpy has a periodic article that they do called What We’re Playing where all the staff weighs in on what games they’re playing (aptly named, yes). I find it interesting because comparing all their lists can give you an idea of what games have broad and/or lasting value. But it’s also nice because you get little two sentence impressions without the pressure of a full preview or review. And as I continue this blog I’m seeing the value in that from their end. I try to complete every game I come across and have something interesting to say, but sometimes the journey to get there is so long that it’s worth throwing in offhand comments along the way.
It’s hard to say how much I love this game. Currently I’m working on 5-starring Hard and scraping by in Expert (currently in tier 6). Both of which are totally owning me, so I don’t know if I’m gonna make it, but it’s still fun anyway. Seriously, if you have a 360, get this game.
I’m towards the end of the GDI campaign. The game totally brings together the classic C&C setting with streamlined gameplay from Generals. However it does seem like I can always succeed by just turtling and then building the uber army (no unit caps FTW?).
Holy crap old school RPGs are long; I’ve been playing this one pretty solid during my commute for months. But at least the job system is interesting, making me feel like I’m not grinding the whole time. After killing lots of time getting uber job combos and all the legendary weapons I’m finally enroute to the final boss.
I’m actually approaching my criteria for being “done” with the game. I’ve completed every soloable quest in Outland and most of the group quests, leaving me for a relatively small quest log. It’s actually kinda annoying because there’s no longer a point for me to play at any time other than in a group. The stuff coming in the next patch looks interesting, but outside of that I may end up putting this game down for awhile after a couple weekends more.
Haven’t got back to this for a couple weeks because of other games. I’ve only finished the first dungeon so I’ve got a lot ahead of me. I’m not yet sold on the wiimote gestures for fighting but everything else seems pretty good.
In my commute time I’ve decided to put this on hold so that I can focus completely on finishing FFV. But I’m eager to return to it as that I had a good time with its predecessor.
27 Apr 2007
Played on Wii
There was an article over on GameSpy awhile back about how innovation in games is overrated And I agree with them - there’s nothing wrong with an incremental evolution of an old formula. But it is quite refreshing when something totally different comes along. Trauma Center: Second Opinion is one of those games (links: GameSpot, GameSpy, GameFly). In it you play the role of surgeon, using your wiimote to slice, dice, and stitch your patients into good health. It’s the sort of experience that couldn’t really happen on any other platform (save the DS).
I was surprised by how approachable they made a game about surgery. I’ve had people with almost no experience with the Wii jump in and start removing tumors in a matter of minutes. The controls are easy to pick up, but the game is crazy intense. You’ve got this clock ticking down, the heartbeat monitor beeping, and if you screw up this person is dead. Well, not quite; if you lose a senior doctor scolds you and takes over… even after you’ve become world renowned super surgeon. I guess they figured the whole “Game Over” screen meaning “You Lost a Patient” would be too much for people to bear. Instead they put in probably the most ego destroying Game Over message ever. But all of this together just builds together to make you feel like a total badass for every operation you complete successfully.
You may feel like a super surgeon while playing the game, but it’s a far cry from being medically accurate. I’m pretty sure that most illnesses are not caused by medical terrorism. And I’m positive I’ve never seen anyone on Scrubs fix anyone by removing biologically engineered creepy crawlies (and obviously Scrubs is the bastion of medical legitimacy). So if you’re looking to use this game as training for your future career in medicine… well, good luck with that. I just hope I don’t find myself on the other end in the O.R. with some Trauma Center grad smothering antibiotic gel on anything that moves.
Occupation viability aside, Trauma Center is an easy game to recommend. It’s fun, makes great use of the wiimote, scales to different skill levels, and is basically unlike anything else out there. Plus chicks dig surgeons.
18 Apr 2007
The Washington Post had a very interesting article (which I found via Raph Koster’s gaming blog, of all places) describing an experiment they did to essentially see if people would inconvenience themselves for something unexpected and beautiful. They took a world renowned violinist and plopped him down as a street musician in a commuter packed metro station. It’s a really interesting article, so you should just go read it.
There’s a lot to think about in that article. But I’m going to take a tangent off of one small comment from it on our willingness to experience new things:
“For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.”
It’s one of those odd human truths that at some point in everyone’s life they experience a cut off point past which they cease seeking out new things (in particular, music). It’s the scariest thing to me about aging. Having my body fall apart pales in comparison to losing my desire for new experiences. The unknown and unfamiliar are particularly uncomfortable things for me, but I consider it part of my human journey to push myself and try to grow as much as possible.
It’s ironic that our technological revolution has empowered individuals so much that we’re growing apart and losing our ability to do anything truly interesting with that technology. Technology has always been pioneered by the socially inept (i.e. nerds). But the time has come to blow past that and start making technology something social and collaborative. Most of the interesting individual software pieces have already be written - the true next frontier is technology working together, and technology working for real people. And this technology can’t just aim to satisfy our every selfish indulgence - we should have software that actually makes us better people.
There’s so much to be done here. In the realm of music, Pandora has made a great start. The whole concept of “play me something that I want to hear, but haven’t necessarily heard before” is brilliant. It needs to explode into other places. Movies, TV, news, food… really just about everything is in need of some quality individually-tailored recommendation system. All the content is there - the problem is that no human can parse all the information available today. People will stick with what they know because finding something else is too hard. We need to make it easy.
17 Apr 2007
I recently caught Unbreakable on TV. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy that movie. It’s so… understated. I guess you could say it’s about a superhero, in that you’ve got a person with a superhuman ability who does something heroic. But that sounds too grandiose. It’s more like the story a dude who learns something about himself and does some stuff. At no point would a moment where this guy gets into yellow spandex or form fitting leather seem normal. For a comic book themed movie it’s very down to earth.
Comic book movies got a resurgence after the releases of X-Men and Spider-man back in 2000 or so. Everyone on some level likes these kinds of stories, because the underlying message is plain and simple: “you’re special.” But if you just blindly go for the whole superhero theme, you’re missing the point. X-Men is great because each character has a ridiculously specific power that often alone would be useless (making much of it about character interactions), and it’s also got this interesting political story of the how the many treat the few. Spider-man is great because the character is a total geek (young, awkward, and flawed), but also because his heroics are on a small human scale. Both these franchises are relatable on some level. Especially in the beginning, where it’s basically just glorified adolescent awkwardness. The discovery portion is consistently entertaining, but afterwards… not so much. When it goes from personal to epic… ugh.
And of course we’ve got Batman. He doesn’t even have super powers… unless money counts as a super power. He’s rich and pissed off - what’s not to like? Well, when he gets too campy, that’s no fun. As long as its dark, gothic, morally ambiguous batman… that’s good stuff. Again, imperfection is relatable.
So far so good, but then there’s Superman. Superman can do everything. He can fly, melt stuff with his eyes, deflect bullets, lift just about anything, and of course rewind time by flying around the sun real fast. He’s so ridiculously overpowered that they had to write in some crazy green crystal to give him a weakness. And on top of this he has the most boringly good personality ever. Why should we care about this guy? Honestly, who gives a crap? I get that in the beginning he came in a time where we needed heroes, and that he wasn’t always so ridiculously super. But at this point I’d rather we just call it quits and never return to this franchise ever again.
These days we have Heroes. It’s part Unbreakable, part X-Men. And the TV format lets us spend more time getting to know the characters. The announcer for the commercials and spoilers drives me nuts, but the actual content of the show is quite good. They stuck us with a big break mid season, but thankfully there’s only a week left before I can get my fix again. I just hope they don’t all meet up to form a Justice League to discuss their new spandex uniforms.