As I learned to play guitar first, my bass guitar playing is a but too… guitar-like. Poking around on YouTube I came across a video that goes through 50 songs to learn on bass. I thought I’d try walking through that myself, grabbing tab for each. And as long as I’m doing that, I might as well share.
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My guitar pedalboard has continued to evolve from its last iteration, and after many stable months of the same configuration I’m calling this “version 3.” Why change it at all? Two instigating events:
MoreThe primary way my board game playing expanded this year was due to conventions like GenCon and OrcaCon; generally I aim to play games before purchasing them and conventions are a great way to do that. On the whole I had fewer logged plays than 2023. I think 2025 needs to be a year of reestablishing a game playing community. But for now, here are the board games that I played in 2024 that I have something to say about.
MoreFollowing up on the pattern set by my 2023 end of year wrap up, here are the movies that I watched in 2024 that warranted commentary.
MoreWhile 2024 was a challenging year for me overall, there were some good shows to watch (either new or new to me). Continuing on from my 2023 coverage of television, below you’ll find the shows I watched in 2024 that I want to highlight.
MoreI received a lot of positive feedback to my 2023 end of year wrap up on games and other media. While 2024 wasn’t as prolific for me, there were still many solid games. Here are some of the key video game experiences I had in 2024.
MoreMy friend Cody has been pitching a replacement for the granular 10 point BGG rating scale:
More1 - bad won’t ever play again
2 - didn’t care for it, won’t actively try and play it again
3 - liked it, would definitely play again, maybe even buy it
4 - actively want to play again and would like to buy so I can play as much as often as possible
After I created my first pedalboard, I learned so much, and assembled a second board. Let me go over the contents of my second board, in signal chain order.
After creating my first pedalboard and living it with it for a while, I had some lessons:
MoreThere’s no single agreed upon rating system for all things. Sometime we use a 5 star scale. Sometimes a 10 point scale. Sometimes A-F letter grades (where maybe “S” is part of system). Sometimes thumbs up or thumbs down. Sometimes a heart vs. the absence of one.
Different rating systems may be preferred depending on how much time we spend with media. A song, averaging around 3 minutes long, probably doesn’t require a detailed 5 star scale; a simple “heart or not” system is plenty. Movies we spend a couple hours with, so they seem to warrant more. Video games may get a dozen or more hours, and that seems more likely to land a 10 point scale. But hey, each reviewer is going to do their own thing. And review aggregation sites are going to turn that into number soup. But there is some rhyme to which rating scales we pick for which things.
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My first electric guitar was a hand-me-down from my uncle, given a few years after I started playing guitar in elementary school. It was the era of grunge, and much of the music I was listening to was filled to the brim with distortion. A stark contrast with my modest electric setup. And yet, when I assembled my own money to buy my first ever guitar pedal… I hipstered myself. I could have bought a distortion pedal like the Boss DS-1, used prominently by Nirvana and so many others. Or a Big Muff Pi fuzz pedal, used heavily by the Smashing Pumpkins. Or I even could have bought a delay pedal to do my best impression of U2’s The Edge. But no… I decided at the last minute to get something quirky and “unique”: an octave pedal, the DOD Octoplus. It was immediately clear I had made a mistake. An octave pedal can have its uses, but as a first and only pedal? A dismal choice. And I had no money for a second pedal.
The end result? I spent the next 25 years primarily only playing acoustic guitar.
MoreIf I’m being honest, the majority of the reason I’m making this post is so I have an excuse to gush about Hadestown. But once I started thinking about it, 2023 was a real return to form for me for seeing musicals, theater shows, and concerts. So let’s talk about what I managed to experience this year.
MoreI don’t read books quickly. I have a hard time creating large blocks of time for reading, primarily because I have many competing hobbies and media types. The main hack to increase my “reading” has been audio books, as I can fit them alongside a walk or commute. It still means my progress is broken up into ~30 minute increments, so it’s slow going (If you’re looking at a 300+ page 10 hour novel… that’s 20 daily trips to get through, or like 4 weeks). Also there are many times when I can’t focus enough for that (I’ve learned that during my commute home my brain is too crowded to handle an audiobook). But I still make progress.
MoreIn 2023 apparently all the pent up energy needed to come out and it was time to go to the theater. It looks like I saw ten movies in the theater which is… a lot for me, and certainly coming out of the past few years. Partially I was ready to get out, but also there were just some great movies to go see. I got very tired of that AMC movie quotes intro. Please stop.
MoreThis is a list of shows that I watched in 2023 that warranted commentary.
MoreThe year 2023 was a return to big events. I attended GenCon and PAX Unplugged (as well as returning to PAX West), all as a normal attendee not trying to exhibit or pitch prototypes. As such I had time to try new games and play with friends at conventions. The following are games I played this year that warranted mentioning.
MoreHere in 2023, my video game playing has been heavily influenced by two things. The first is playing with my ten-year-old daughter, choosing games that are content-appropriate and within her interests. The second is having an engaged group of friends that are interested in playing games together or apart, but then discussing them afterwards. These both have kept my playing dynamic and social in a way that really has worked for me. The following is a list of video games I played in 2023 (potentially released earlier) that warranted a mention.
MoreWe often bemoan the encroaching invasiveness of the modern digital age. Services like Facebook and Google are pretty notorious for collecting all kinds of data on us. The amount of information that they know about a single person can be a bit creepy. There’s a fair amount of faith required to trust that they will respect our privacy, and it’s clear that some are better at this than others. But there are times when I really appreciate my digital footprint. I like being able to explore my memory with the aid of some automatic stenographer in the cloud. It’s with this help that with a quick run through of Xbox and BoardGameGeek that I can tell you exactly what I played in 2012.
MoreWe celebrated Jessica’s thirtieth birthday with a disco house party. We’d warmed up with a number of excellent New Years Eve events, but this disco party was where the house dance floor really hit solid gold. People dressed up and really got into it. Of course, disco is genetically engineered to speak directly to the booty, so there’s no denying it.
MoreAfter nine years of courtship, I finally married Jessica. We had met so early in life, neither of us expected to find such perfection by then. So we felt no need to rush. Maybe we overshot a bit, but I’m much happier that we made our own decision on our own schedule, and walked into our wedding more confident and loving than ever.
MoreI’d been working on the same product at Microsoft for four years, and it had come time to change the scenery. My team was migrating from Media Center to work on this new music project called Zune. A friend of mine, Ian, was already over there, and was able to give me some preliminary info on what it was all about. Sometime before I’d made the switch Jessica and I were going on a trip (to San Francisco, I think) and Ian lent Jessica his Zune device for the duration.
MoreI was at the Experience Music Project for some reason that I can no longer recall. I remember getting my dad a pass as a Christmas gift, but this particular time I know that I was there alone. Regardless of the reason, I found myself in the attached music store, which actually had a decent sampling setup. I found myself reading some staff reviews and trying out some albums in the store.
MoreI remember having a rather vivid, deeply sad dream with this song as the soundtrack. I don’t think my dreams generally have soundtracks, but this one did. I hear the song now, and my breathing instinctively slows. It’s so sad, and so beautiful. Thankfully I know that I don’t process lyrics well enough for that dream to actually be about what the song is about. I can pick up on emotion, and melody, but lyrical comprehension is not my strong point.
MoreI don’t know what inspired Jessica to start delving into a 1971 album all of the sudden in 2003, but she did. It was less of a discovery of Marvin Gaye and more of a rediscovery. What’s Going On is a great album, but there was no question about what song to put in here. Makes me wanna holler…
MoreI remember listening to this song, lying face-up on the floor of the townhouse we lived in at the time. Jessica had put on this album on and it was this song that first stood out to me. Which is saying something, because the song is pretty deep into the album, and there are a lot of great songs that come before it. But it was the one that operated on the wavelength I needed.
MoreOkay, one more ambient track before we move on. Groovy, bluesy, relaxed, repetitive. Good for programming and parties. I like it, partially because of the fact that it doesn’t tax my brain.
MoreBeck went through a serious breakup, and he wrote an album. There is no denying the impact of one on the other. Gone is the manic spread of tunes from the previous albums. In their place is solid cohesive songwriting. This is the ultimate breakup album. Thankfully you don’t need to be going through epic heartbreak to appreciate it.
MoreOh “Buena”. So aptly titled. This song starts with such powerful elements, rolled out one at a time to slowly increase its hold on you. And when it stops it just drops you on the floor, ravaged.
MoreThe first time I heard G. Love I wasn’t ready for it. Despite the title Yeah, It’s That Easy was not an easy album to relax into. I know that Jessica tried to start me on “Willow Tree”, but I didn’t connect with that song. She was trying to pick a track with fewer of the hip-hop elements. But for me the pace didn’t feel right - it left too sloppy to me (at the time). The same idea is done better on the album in “Lay Down the Law” and “Take You There”, which are both great songs.
MoreI discovered John Mayer as a guitarist first. Yes, he was a singer/songwriter too, but for me it was his acoustic style that initially caught my attention. I scoured Napster for all sorts of bootlegs of his guitar work. Some of them were live recordings, some were apparently from this album. On Napster the metadata was always screwed so it was hard to know these things.
MoreI discovered Morphine through my dad, of all people. Although at pretty much the exact same time Jessica also came across it too. To this day I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but what I know is that me, my dad, and Jessica were all grooving on this at the same time. My mom couldn’t stand it, but she was outnumbered.
MoreI feel like I’ve been saying this a lot (and will continue to): this song is huddled inside, out of the cold and rain, in bed with Jessica. It sounds scandalous, but even though it’s none of your business I feel like I need to say I’m not implying any impropriety. We just spent a lot of time in bed, cuddled up, listening to music. Let’s be fair, we still do. But those first months were a huge injection of shared musical experiences. Some were new for just me, some were new for both. In this case it was an album from her roommate Erin, so we were processing it at the same time.
MoreI told you Crash was going to show up a lot on this list. This one’s special though, trust me.
MoreI was in Portland with Kevin for a show of this band I had been listening to called The Jazz Mandolin Project. I’d had a mediocre experience with opening bands before, but this one stole the show. The leader of the trio, Jarrad Kaplan, illuminated that difference between a drummer and a true percussionist. He was surrounded all sorts of things that made sound, and he worked each of them to his advantage. You can hear Jarrad in the background of this recording, vocalizing along with the guitar. Because he was so damned into the music that he couldn’t help it. Such an raw energy in that man.
MoreOkay, I feel terribly exposed talking about all these intimate details on the internet. When I started this project I didn’t realize how personal it was going to get. I guess that’s just the cost of telling my musical story. My relationship to music is intimate and steeped in memory. I’m apparently incapable of talking about one without the other.
MoreIn my last two years of high school I added on part time community college classes via the “Running Start” program. Between the two it was a lot of school. It was kind of ridiculous. For some reason I didn’t really question the sanity of it.
MoreThere is a drum kit in my basement. There isn’t normally, but today there is. That’s because there’s music brewing in the basement. Me and a collection of friends are recreating “I Could Be Wrong” to the best of our ability. Including drums. Including horns. This shit is happening.
MoreI put this song far later into the timeline than when I first experienced it (which would have been 1991-1992). That’s because to me it goes with a very specific memory, one which eclipsed whatever previous attachment I had for the song.
MoreThroughout all my musical explorations over these years Phish was part of my vocabulary the whole time. It’s not something that really any one else I knew was listening to, and it’s not like Phish got much play on the radio, but I kept on listening.
MoreIf I hadn’t done my research I would have placed this much earlier in the timeline. But thankfully my sketchbooks are littered with timestamps. They’ve been invaluable at times for ironing out these fine ordering details. I don’t think anyone else cares if this is strictly autobiographical order, but it is important to me. Anyway, the point is that the music I listened to had a tendency to creep into the art I was making. I found some pretty random sketches related to The Doors, and specifically “When the Music’s Over”.
MoreI have plenty of musical memories from 8th grade, and I have another significant spike of influence in 10th grade that continues onward. But my Freshman year is a bit of a musical mystery. I’ve been digging and there just hasn’t been that much that I’ve found. I guess in response to the extreme social changes of high school I didn’t explore any new music. I mostly stuck with what I was already listening to and held on to that as a comforting constant in a sea of new experiences.
What we have here are mostly 8th grade experiences that just bled on through, because I basically have no memory of what was going on in late 1995.
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In this musical timeline we have now arrived at the end of middle school and are about to embark on the journey that is high school. This seems like a good time to stop for a moment and take stock of where we are.
MoreIn middle school I took a music appreciation class. It was actually pretty fun and covered an extremely diverse set of music. I was at just the right stage in developing my own musical tastes to really be open to all of it. Traditional symphonic, avant-garde, musicals, it was all over the place and all very interesting.
MoreI keep thinking the first U2 album I experienced was Rattle and Hum. For some reason I forget all about Achtung Baby. I forget it until I put it on and roll into the B-sides, and then it all comes back. This album became part of my nightly cool-down repertoire. I would put on some music, read, and make the transition towards sleep. There’s just this relaxed wall of sound going on here that really works for me.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I feel compelled to write about Bastion. I mean, I could just say “it’s good, you should play it”, which is totally accurate, or “it’s so good I played it twice”, which is also definitely true, but I think the game deserves more than that. It deserves some gushing.
MoreWe just went through a rather cohesive set of grunge influences, where’s this Megadeth thing coming from? It’s certainly true that I never ended up a metal-head, but it’s not as if I wasn’t exposed to these things. We’re entering a period here where there’s a lot of divergent influences coming in from my brother and my brother’s friends. I remember this song specifically. Something about the hardcore music combined with the funny voice just stuck with me. That and “Symphony of Destruction”.
MoreI’m a child of the Seattle area, so even though I was too young and thoroughly uncool I was exposed to grunge music in real time. Of course at this age all music was essentially new to me so it’s not as if I was aware that this particular sub-genre was of the local variety. But this next block of influential songs should show some not-so-subtle commonality. Welcome to the 90’s.
MoreHere we continue on my musical autobiography. At this point in the story I’ve now entered school and am starting to be exposed to movies and other pieces of pop culture that will influence my listening tastes. Which, let’s be clear, are still far from my own. Let’s continue…
MoreA note about logistics: the only thing that has kept me from moving forward and posting this project is a complete inability to figure out how to best link the music for your consumption. There’s no one universal solution that’s going to work for everyone. I could go round up the links to iTunes, Amazon, Zune, Rhapsody, and whatever else, but that’s a lot of work for me and there’s still no guarantee it’d meet everyone’s needs. So instead I’m going to trust that if you care to listen along you’ll figure out how to get the music on your own (and if possible get more than a 30 second sample). I’ll be providing Zune links because that’s what I use, and if you’ve got the app and a Zune Pass this should be a smooth experience. If you do the leg work for another service and want to share in the comments, please feel free to.
MorePlayed on Windows Phone
I've had a couple people ask me if I could disseminate the results from my various Windows Phone gaming expeditions. I keep putting it off, but the fact that Fable Coin Golf is on sale this week reminded me to stop procrastinating.
MoreIn the olden days, software was bought in a real physical store, came in a physical box, and was written onto some piece of physical media. If that software had problems with it, or lacked important features, then there was no real way to get an update out to the consumer. I think once or twice I had a game with such bad defects that they mailed out replacement floppy disks, but it was exceedingly rare. In general the mantra was “get it the right the first time, or don’t bother.”
MoreIn late 2006 (yes, this story starts five years ago) Microsoft released the first version of XNA, a development platform for writing games on the PC and Xbox. It put all the nitty-gritty details that generally plague game development behind a modern type-safe programming language (C#). It let developers focus on the more interesting aspects of game design. As someone who has dabbled in game development in the past, this simplified platform sounded like a great way for me to get back into it.
MoreMostly on this blog I’ve posted about consumptive experiences. Video games, board games, movies, music… in short, “media.” I experience media, in whatever form, and then sometimes I post thoughts about it here. However I do feel like part of life is adding to the conversation, not just being a consumer. Writing is one form of contributing (given the sort of writing I’m doing is derivative, not purely creative, but it’s something). However there is a key way that I’ve been working on contributing over the past couple years that I haven’t mentioned here at all.
MoreContinuing our pictorial journey through Middle-Earth…
MoreIn the book High Fidelity (and the movie too, for that matter), the main character is obsessed with making “Top 5” lists and categorizing his music collection. There’s a moment where he decides to organize his records autobiographically - the order in which he experienced them. I’ve always been intrigued by that idea: trying to express one’s journey in life through the music that accompanied it. So I’m going to do just that, except instead of sorting stacks of records I’ll be producing a playlist.
MoreI’m generally not a fan of landscape photography. Maybe it’s because the subject matter is infinitely patient. In general the photo will have everything in focus, and whatever is being captured has been there longer than you or I. There’s no immediacy to it. Sure, mountains and trees and waterfalls are pretty, but I just don’t know what a landscape photo is telling me other than “doesn’t wherever you are now suck in comparison?”
MoreThere are many reasons that people who met me over a decade ago would see me differently than those who’ve met me recently, but there’s one reason in particular that secretly bothers me. Most people I know now would be surprised to hear that I used to play the guitar. A lot. The people I met before would be equally surprised to hear that I no longer do.
MoreAt last we’ve come to the reason that I’m even talking about Lord of the Rings Online again in the first place: the fact that it’s now to free to play. But what does that even mean?
MoreWe’re now at part five of my ramblings on Lord of the Rings Online. Time to stop beating around the bush and start complaining about what I really want to complain about: User Interface
MoreWell, this fourth part of my return to Lord of the Rings Online is maybe a bit more on the nerdy side. It’s not about what you can do, or where you do it; it’s about how you do it. The mechanics of the game.
MoreMy last article about Lord of the Rings Online focused on the solo activities one could undertake in Middle Earth. This article will focus on the “Multiplayer” part of the MMO acronym… probably what the rest of you play these games for.
MoreThe last post focused on the world of Lord of the Rings Online, because that’s the first thing you’ll see and care about. This post delves into the details of what to do within that world, once again comparing to my various quotes from three years ago.
MoreNow that I’ve put up my complete words from 2008, it’s time to re-evaluate the Lord of the Rings Online of today.
MorePlayed on PC
Recently Lord of the Rings Online went free to play, which is to say you can play the game without a subscription or even a credit card. Of course there are all sorts of potential microtransactions available so that Turbine can actually make money on their game, but these are all completely optional. Since there’s no cost to me I decided to log in and check out the game (the last time I played was alongside the Mirkwood expansion about a year ago). And as I evaluated the game in its current state against adjusted criteria I thought it’d be interesting to revistwhat I’d written about the game in the past here. It was at that point that I realized that there was a lot of content that I wrote about the game that somehow never got posted. So, I present to you what was intended to be an immediate follow-up to this post, further thoughts about Lord of the Rings Online, three years ago (circa early 2008).
MoreIt’s common to have a video game release alongside a film release as some sort of companion marketing synergy something-something. It’s rare that I actually experience those products in tandem as intended. But that has been the case with Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. So I have two pieces of media to process here, both of which have increased my curiosity about the original source material.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Before playing Darksiders, I had already heard a lot of press about how the game is just one big Zelda rip off. It is accused of unabashedly stealing mechanics from that franchise and others. And you know what, that’s no lie. But I fail to see how it’s a problem. The Zelda games are almost uniformly excellent. And there really aren’t many other games that attempt that gameplay style. So really, there’s low supply and high demand for Zelda-style games, and something like Darksiders should be perfectly welcome. I mean, were people really upset when Shadow Complex blatantly cribbed from Metroid? I’m glad the gaming industry isn’t as crazy about patents as the rest of the software world - it prevents the culture from stagnating.
MoreIt amazes me how much we communicate to each other with just our faces. With all the fine muscles behind them faces can be extremely expressive, so it’s not the capability that amazes me. It’s the accuracy with which its interpreted. Fundamentally, we rarely see our own faces. We even more rarely see them while they’re delivering all these subtle emotional cues. It blows my mind that we operate at this level where I can nonverbally make some facial contortion to represent a rather nuanced emotion and that someone else can understand that.
MoreSourcing off the same list that I got Let the Right One In, I added Thirst to my Netflix queue. This time the origin is Korean instead of Scandinavian, so it’s another subtitled vampire movie. Turns out not all of the best vampire movies out there come from America, go figure.
MoreThe internet is moving to a very democratic place where for all sorts of content there is the possibility for comments and ratings. This is generally a good thing, but transparency in the whole system is pretty critical because frankly most people don’t have a clue how to participate in a rating system.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
My love affair with rhythm video games has cooled a bit. I don’t lust after the experience like I once did. I’ll never turn down an opportunity to play, but it’s not something I’m generally seeking out anymore.
MoreSo I’ve been continuing my exploration of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And you know what, I took down the boss and saw the credits roll. So that means I beat the game, right? Apparently not so much. I just experienced the premature “bad” ending. In reality I’m only halfway through the game.
MorePlayed on PC
Okay, enough talking about games that used to be better. It’s time for some positive evolution.
MorePlayed on Nintendo DS
The new release of Spirit Tracks reminds me that I never commented on it’s predecessor, Phantom Hourglass. It’s not that I didn’t play it - I did. But I sent it back after only a couple sittings. I know, I know - I sent back a freaking Zelda games.
MoreIt’s kind of ridiculous, but the premise of Idiocracy basically convinced me to have children. Yes, it’s a comedy, and one with extravagant extremes, but the core idea isn’t wrong. And I can’t really sit back and complain about that while also being part of the problem. But I’m not here to talk about Idiocracy, which has uneven quality at best. I’m here to talk about Phoebe in Wonderland, which is amazing (and is available via Netflix insta-watch, if that’s your thing). It is in fact nothing like Idiocracy (I’m already beginning to regret using that as a segue), except that both of them made me think about parenting.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I’m not as much of a slave to my Gamefly queue as I am to my Netflix queue. Given the various platforms and their different economic models it’s hard for rentals to be a large percentage. At any point I’ll generally have a disc out from Gamefly, an MMO I’m poking around in, a handheld game for the bus, some slow burner on the console that would take too long to rent, and some downloadable game. But I’m always trying to push as much of my gaming to rental as possible, which is the smartest option for my rate of play. It has the side effect of encouraging me to try games I would never risk real permanent money on. Which means I throw stuff into my queue that is sometimes pretty borderline.
MoreI’m pretty much a slave to my Netflix queue these days, as that it is by far my primary source of video entertainment. Whenever someone recommends a movie to me, or if there’s some repeating pop culture reference to which I am clueless, the movie goes in my queue. The rate I feed the queue is definitely faster than the rate at which I consume it, so over the years the queue has grown obscenely long. Generally I try to manage the top of the queue to keep titles up there that suits my current mood or are at least recently contextual. But every now and then I lapse, and, well… get Scarface.
MoreAs promised, I’ve started playing Symphony of the Night. And I’m having a hard time developing an unbiased opinion. I’m comparing my current experience with the experience other people had in the natural evolution of gaming. I’m coming to this game after having already experienced a half dozen of its indirect sequels. It’s extraordinarily difficult to pretend that I’m not bringing a ton of baggage with me on this experience.
MoreI just polished off Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, while at the same time the Angry Video Game Nerd completed his four part series on the Castlevania franchise (told in parts I, II, III, and IV, and of course supplemented by his classic coverage of Castlevania II). Given the type of game the Nerd generally covers I usually only go to him for entertainment value, not critical analysis. But watching these videos on the Castlevania franchise I found he and I seem to be in exact agreement.
MoreWhen Halloween rolled around this year I decided that I was very much in the mood for a vampire movie. So I flipped through this article on Rotten Tomatoes of the top rated vampire movies of all time. I cross reference that against the list available for instant watch on Netflix and landed on Let the Right One In.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Like many, the first time I went roller skating I was timid and hugged the wall the whole time. But there was a turning point where I finally gained enough confidence to let go, power skate as fast as I could, and really enjoy myself. That point was when the Ghostbusters theme song came on. I remember later in my life, going to some skating birthday party where my mom told this little factoid to a girl I was crushing on. I was mortified, of course. But apparently it doesn’t embarrass me now, as I sit freely blogging it to The Internet.
MorePlayed on PC
This past Halloween weekend Cryptic decided to offer Champions Online for free for a couple days. Promotional weekends are increasingly common in MMOs, but generally they’re structured as a “welcome back” for old subscribers, and they’re offered for older games. But Champions Online is a brand new title, so having the opportunity to try out a fresh new game for free was quite a treat.
MoreI picked up a copy of A Touch Of Evil at PAX last weekend, and what follows are my impressions from the first couple sessions. This is by no means a proper review, since I haven’t played enough to really make any firm judgment (hell, I haven’t even moved beyond the basic rules set yet). Nor is it really a good session report. But I figure there are people out there who’d be interested in what I have to say given that the game isn’t set to officially hit stores for a couple weeks.
MoreSo there’s this HBO series called Big Love, which I am currently working my way through on Netflix. I’m two discs in, and I am totally hooked.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I’d heard good things about Braid, so I snatched the demo up as soon as it became available last Wednesday. I was immediately surprised by the visual presentation. In static screenshots you don’t really see the constant motion going on in the background that gives the game a surrealistic painted quality. It’s subtle but really beautiful. But the first level included in the trial didn’t knock my socks off from a gameplay perspective. So far the game had only shown me relatively straightforward platforming, and if I hadn’t hear so much praise for Braid I probably would have left it at that. Thankfully I trusted in the good things I’d heard about the game and slapped down $15 for the full version so I could see more.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved was the title that really kicked off the whole Xbox Live Arcade thing. It combined classic simple gameplay with high production values at a low price, making it hard not to like. It’s been quite some time since then, and this whole notion of small scale downloadable games on consoles has really taken off. And after all this time we now have a sequel, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2.
Honestly, I wasn’t super excited for this release. As good as Geometry Wars for its time, a lot has happened since then. The core formula was really simple, and since then two-stick shooters have become as ubiquitous on XBLA as first-person-shooters on the PC. I just couldn’t see how this little game about shooting shapes in a rectangle could really evolve into something more interesting.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
You see, the original Geometry Wars was pretty hardcore. The whole scoring mechanic celebrated The Perfect Game. Dying reset your multiplier, but the difficulty of the game constantly increased, so a mistake early on prevented you from getting a decent score. The beginning of the game was really easy, so it took awhile to see if you were going to cut the mustard and walk away with an awesome score. But difficulty skyrocketed from trivial to ridiculous in a short time period, and pretty soon you were dead and stuck with too many enemies and no multiplier. The end result was largely decided by one little split-second mistake. Although I appreciated the skill involved in it, I just wasn’t interested in getting that hardcore over a split-second.
The sequel innovates in a couple of key ways that dramatically improve the experience. First, your multiplier is not reset when you die, so there’s no need to get overly frustrated when your perfect run is flawed. Second, your multiplier is not defined by how many kills you get, but instead by these little green geoms that drop from defeated enemies. This forces you to balance your play between adding to your score and increasing your long-term score potential by gathering multiplier. It also forces you to play aggressively, flying head-on into enemies instead of endless circling. Finally, the game features a couple of truly innovative modes that feel unlike anything else out there and emphasize the best parts of the new Geometry Wars gameplay.
Probably my favorite of these modes is King. In King there are bubbles where you are protected for a short time, but you cannot shoot while outside a bubble. This creates a brilliant pacing between aggressive and defensive gameplay. One moment you’re unleashing carnage, the next you’re racing for your life. It’s one of the most brilliant gameplay innovations I’ve ever experienced. It effortlessly blends strategy into an action-packed twitch-fest.
GW2 also introduces multiplayer to the franchise, and King with four players is one of the best multiplayer experiences I’ve ever had. It’s not head-to-head in that you don’t shoot at other players, but that’s not to say that it isn’t brutally competitive. Do you put yourself at risk to farm multiplier or do you stay safe and shoot? Where do you shoot so that the geoms are most likely to benefit you and not your opponents? How do you plan your movement between bubbles so that you have a safe escape route at all times? How many bubbles can you pop to limit your opponent’s options without impeding your own strategy? The amount of stuff going on is gleefully overwhelming. And at the core of this is a fast paced action game, so pretty much every part of your gaming brain is being tickled at once. It’s incredibly fun, and thoroughly addictive.
King is great, but Pacifism is pretty awesome too. In this mode you can’t shoot at all. The only way to kill enemies is to fly through gates that explode as you cross through them. Instead of dealing with sparse nimble enemies you deal with lumbering swarms. By having your offensive capabilities crippled you’re forced to focus completely on movement, frantically bobbing and weaving through overwhelming odds. As far as I’m concerned the mode could have been called Balls, because without them you will fail. Just as in the other modes you have to balance multiplier and score, but in Pacifism getting that multiplier often means launching yourself directly towards the oncoming swarm. Seriously, balls.
Singleplayer turns out to be just as addictive as multiplayer in GW2, primarily due to the tight integration of friend leaderboards. You are constantly aware of your friend’s high scores and encouraged to better them. It feeds that competitive drive, but in an oddly social way. My only complaint is that there is no persistence to multiplayer scores whatsoever.
Achievements are often misused in games. They should add something to your game experience, not entice you with ridiculous goals that exploit your inner obsessive completist. Geometry Wars 2 strikes a perfect achievement balance. Each mode in the game has an achievement that encourages you to play it in a different way. Instead of merely awarding excellence, the achievement gives you new stuff to do. It enhances the core game.
All told, I’m happy to have been proven wrong. I wasn’t really looking forward to this game, and it’s completely surprised me. Geometry Wars 2 has brought some serious innovation to the two-stick shooter genre. And it’s only $10. So, um yeah. Hot.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Given the reviews I knew that Stranglehold (sorry, “John Woo Presents Stranglehold”) probably wouldn’t rock my world, so I guess I wasn’t too disappointed when it didn’t. It’s not bad, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend it over all the other games out there. The premise is solid: a shooter with crazy destructible environments and a combo system that awards you for taking dudes out with style. But the execution of that premise left something to be desired.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I’ve been doing the GameFly thing for quite some time now, and I’ve noticed that my play style has changed somewhat. Gone are the days of playing only a handful of games, but playing them so deeply that I know every last inch. I don’t think it’s correct to say my taste has changed, but I do think it has expanded. I now seek out games where the reviews criticize it for being “too short.” I often would rather have short but memorable experiences with multiple games than a long deep relationship with one epic game. I’ve shifted to be a gaming polygamist. That’s not to say that I don’t enjoy deep, long-term gameplay (just look at how much MMO blogging I do), but I’ve now got a soft spot for the short but sweet weekend rental.
MoreI’ve been having a good time with Last Night on Earth, but poking around on BoardGameGeek I’ve always been a little jealous of those swank miniatures that some people have painted. I’ve also noticed that it’s very possible to confuse the heroes while playing, so the painted figured do serve some functional value. So I decided to take up an arts and crafts project to paint the pieces from my game.
MoreI worry sometimes that I’m too negative. If I scan back through what I’ve written on this blog, I see more negative statements than positive statements. I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with criticism, but when that’s all you’ve got to say it’s pretty darn depressing. Saying the glass is half empty is fine, but focusing on the fact that it’s one eighth empty is taking it a bit far. I don’t want to be that person.
MoreI have no recollection of how Paprika ended up in my queue. Maybe someone else recommended it to me, maybe it popped up on a Netflix related list. Regardless, going into the movie I really had no idea what exactly to expect. I knew from the sleeve that it was an anime, and that’s about it.
MoreI think zombie movies are most successful when they focus on what it means to be a survivor. Take our world, fuck it up, and then tell the story of the people living in that world. The world is some modification on ours, so we can relate to it; but the world is also changed, so it’s a little more interesting.
MorePixar has a pretty strong track record. They don’t make many films, but every single one of them has been thoroughly entertaining. They might not all completely rock your world, but with those animators painstakingly scrubbing frame by frame it’s pretty hard for complete crap to make it to the final cut. WALL-E completely lives up to its strong pedigree.
MoreIn watching Wanted I kept thinking of Assassin’s Creed. Not just because they are both stories about leagues of assassins, but because they are both stories with a lot of style but not a lot of heart. That sounds cheesy, and in no way do I mean to imply that the film was lacking some awful stock romantic comedy love story. I mean that the story callously blew by some serious events that most humans would stop at. I felt guilty every time Altair needlessly knifed some guard who was just doing his job; similarly I couldn’t help but notice the extreme collateral damage left behind by Wanted’s Wesley Gibson. Seriously, train wrecks that kill hundreds of innocent bystanders are hard to let slide. I’m a reminded a bit of Die Hard 2 (which by the way is terrible), where McLane saves the day but somewhere along the way an entire passenger plane of people is incinerated and nobody seems sad.
MoreI quit WoW once I had seen all the sights I wanted to see and I knew that the rest wasn’t worth the effort. I quit Lord of the Rings Online when I realized that the gameplay just didn’t do it for me anymore. So why am I deciding that now is the time to quit Tabula Rasa? I’ve been totally digging this MMO. It’s managed to turn traditionally slow MMORPG gameplay into something much more exciting. So if the game plays great, then what’s the freaking problem?
MoreI don’t bust out the 1 star rating on Netflix very often, but Broken Flowers has received that honor. You’d think a movie with an 86% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes would guarantee at least some level of enjoyment. Nope. The critics seem to love it, but if you look around at forums or user ratings you’ll see I’m not alone in my disappointment.
MoreI quite enjoyed 28 Days Later. It’s a zombie movie that’s not a zombie movie. In this world it’s not about the dead rising, it’s about a virus that turns people into rage-filled assailants. This curates a different theme from the normal shambling hordes (even compared to those movies that do have fast zombies). The story is unveiled in an interesting way too, with the events of the movie happening well after the initial outbreak. You usually don’t expect mystery from a zombie flick, but 28 Days Later delivers. Thoroughly enjoyed it, and highly recommend it to anyone with the stomach for the thrills and gore.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
There was a fair share of controversy around Assassin’s Creed when it was released last Fall. There seemed to be a split between people who thought it was flawless and others who got caught up on something and ended up bashing it. And now that I’ve played the game I totally understand why it played out that way. Assassin’s Creed is a game that is so close to greatness that it’s few flaws stick out in sharp contrast. Whether you love it or are disappointed by it depends on whether those flaws are enough to pull you out of the experience. I personally was able to largely ignore the blemishes and really enjoy myself, but I was left with a feeling that this game could have been so much more.
MoreFrom the previews I thought that We Own The Night was going to be the story of two brothers who end up as enemies in the war on drugs. But that’s not really what it is. It’s more the story of two divided brothers reluctantly coming together in the face of tragedy; basically a tale of the bond of family winning over everything else. And watching the preview again now I probably should have picked up on that, but it’s hard to process all that information in a short time period.
MoreYou can currently get Tabula Rasa dirt cheap on Amazon. If you were on the fence but didn’t want to plop down the money for the initial purchase it should be a no brainer now.
MoreI recently finished the second season of Carnivàle, which since the show didn’t get renewed means I’ve watched the entirety of the series. Really puts a damper on that planned six season story arc. The show took an aggravatingly snail-like pace to unravel the primary storyline, to the point where I just stopped caring. There’s a personified agent of evil, his counter agent of good, and lots of tension… but they don’t end up in the same place until the very end of that second season. There are shows out there that string mystery along successfully, but this isn’t one of them.
MoreWhen it comes to martial arts, Jet Li’s Fearless delivers, but everything else is just blah, blah, blah. I realize that these movies aren’t really about the plot… but is it that hard to make it engaging? Fearless is the story of a prodigy’s reckless youth, the (self-inflicted) tragedy that causes him to go into exile and think hard about his life, and then his return with transcending maturity and eventual martyrdom. In no way does the younger character feel connected to the older one. It might be me applying Western expectations to an Eastern story, but I like to see a character grow instead of be replaced. We’re an individualist culture, and like to see the soul of a character persist through a transformation. Jet Li’s character’s change isn’t properly explained. It’s like you take trauma followed by a breath of fresh air and out pops perfection. Formula for success. Maybe I just demand a few more flaws from my hero characters.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
If you’ve played one Katamari game, you’ve played them all. There have been some small variations on the core formula, but it hasn’t strayed too far from “roll up stuff and get big.” Which is good, because that simple thing is so entertaining. If you’ve spent a lot of hours on the PS2 Katamari games, there’s not much new to play around with in Beautiful Katamari on the Xbox 360. But if you’ve never experienced the joy of rolling up huge balls of crap, Beautiful Katamari delivers. You’ll grow from the size of a penny to be bigger than the sun, all while listening to crazy J-Pop.
MoreIt seems like bad form to criticize a man’s peak performance so closely after his death. I didn’t plan it that way; the disc was already on its way back to Netflix when the news hit. And I know if I don’t write down my thoughts now I’ll have promptly forgot them a month from now. So, um, sorry for the bad timing?
MoreApparently I’m going against the grain in saying that Magnolia didn’t rock my world. It’s not that I didn’t like it; I enjoyed it very much, actually. But it’s fatally flawed.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Back in December I was harsh to Guitar Hero III, but with good reason. By the time I was trying to write down my thoughts on Guitar Hero I had already started playing Rock Band. And Rock Band blows Guitar Hero out of the water.
MoreI’d like to say that monster movies traditionally had a sophisticated sense of suspense and restraint, and that the modern CG movie has ruined that. But let’s be honest, monster movies have always been extremely dependent on special effects (even before the computer got involved), and they’ve always been about as sophisticated as a steaming pile of poo. However I do think that modern moviemaking technology has led to showing off the monsters too often and too early. The movie makers are no longer worried about you noticing that it’s just a Dude In A Suit, so they justify ramming their overly glossy 3D animation down your throat.
MoreThe new Zune software has added support for podcasts, so I’ve been spending the last couple months trying to find the right podcasts for me. Finding podcasts is really easy, but finding a small set of good ones to listen to regularly is no small feat. To really decide if you like a particular podcast or not it generally takes listening to a couple episodes, each with a running time that is often an hour or more. And there are hundreds of podcasts on each conceivable topic out there.
MoreI don’t read as often as I’d like, but that’s not the only reason you don’t see many book reviews on this blog. Although reading a book involves a similar time commitment to that of a video game, I usually don’t find myself with much to say after I’ve finished a book. I think that’s partially because for me books are more personal, and any description of them is littered with comments of “well, you really had to be there.” In contrast, games have such technically measurable attributes that it’s easier to arrive at some sort of review structure.
MoreIn continuing my exploration into zombie tabletop gaming, I decided to give ZombieTown a spin. From the reviews I knew that this was one best played with more people, and thankfully I had a set of patient friends willing to fill out a six player session. Unfortunately I didn’t anticipate the poorly written rules that turned the entire night into one big confusing… something. I want to say “tornado,” but that implies fast, which it was not.
MoreThere are some action movies that feature a rich storyline where rampant violence is contextually appropriate. But most are riddled with half-baked plots that are a weak excuse for a series of action set pieces. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, unless they take that plot seriously, which for some reason almost all of them seem to do. Thankfully some action movies realize that the whole genre is ridiculous and leave the plot behind entirely. Of course your enjoyment of these is gated by whether you can consider excessive violence funny.
MoreI think I was in middle school the when I took a test to find out my Myers-Briggs personality type. It’s the sort of thing they made people do to figure out what career they were best suited for. Hell if I can remember what I tested as, although I can say with confidence that it started with an “Introversion.” Well, a lot of time has passed since then, and we have this whole internet thing, so thankfully you can go take a Myers-Briggs approximation online in no time.
MoreAfter my first foray into zombie board gaming, of course I was excited to try out Zombies!!!, another entry into the genre. Unfortunately I walked away with a decidedly mixed experience.
MorePlayed on PC
I’ve been struggling to figure out how I feel about the MMO genre. I love the epic worlds and character persistence, but I hate so many of the game mechanics that slow enjoyment to a crawl. I definitely have the capacity to enjoy these kinds of games, but the concentration of good stuff is extremely diluted. I feel like I’m in denial about a failing relationship because once in awhile we connect and I forget about all the arguing and apathy.
MoreLet’s face it, I’m a gamer geek. I stand today as a video game playing computer programmer… but that pales in comparison to the path I took to get to be who I am today. In my days I’ve done everything from D&D to CCGs. And the sad part is that I played most of them in my head. Fellow geeks are hard to come by when you’re young, so I spent more time thinking about these games than actually playing them. I think that’s what defines a real gamer: someone who can fuel themselves with the mere idea of a game.
MoreI’ve been doing quite a bit of ranting about a potential zombie video game over the last couple months. And after all of that, I randomly came across a zombie board game at a store downtown. I had no idea such a niche existed. There are people out there that are so dedicated to their zombie apocalypse scenarios that they actually carry them out in real space with miniatures and everything. In other words, my kind of people.
MorePlayed on PC
When is the appropriate time to evaluate an MMO? I usually post a review of a game after I finish it, but MMOs are designed to have no end to them. I could give a first impression, but many of the finer gameplay elements are not immediately available or apparent. In fact, MMO systems are generally so large and complex that I might not understand the “bigger picture” until the time I’ve invested is approaching triple-digit hours. So it is that I’ve gone so long without saying much about Lord of the Rings Online.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
It feels silly to do a review of Halo 3. Given the ridiculous sales, chances are you either already own it or have decided you’re not interested. But it feels equally silly to not comment on the “largest entertainment launch of all time.”
MoreI recently watched Freedom Writers via the Xbox Video Marketplace. It’s not a standout film by any means. In fact, you’ve probably seen it before. It’s basically the same as Dangerous Minds or Take the Lead, or to a lesser extent Dead Poet’s Society, The Emperor’s Club, Mr. Holland’s Opus, or even Save the Last Dance. Take disadvantaged/disillusioned students, throw in an inspirational teacher, and have them overcome the system to create a heart warming, life changing story. This particular “naïve white teacher thrown in with inner-city kids” movie isn’t bad, but it certainly isn’t revolutionary either.
MoreOkay, I’m about to go off the nerd deep end and rant about RMT (Real Money Trading). But even the Discovery channel has recently discussed this space, so maybe it’s not too niche. I’d even argue that this topic extends beyond gaming. Increasingly our world is being defined by goods that are easily cloneable and have to be controlled by Intellectual Property laws and the like. With the music industry scrambling to figure out how it fits in anymore, it’s valuable to look at the virtual economies happening in online video games. I’m sure there’s a great discussion to be had there, but as I said, this is a rant…
MorePlayed on Xbox360
It’s hard to talk about Guitar Hero III without also blabbing about Rock Band, but I’ll do my best to fight the temptation. We’ll save that comparison for when I do a proper Rock Band review. But it’s totally fair to start talking about Guitar Hero III by looking back at what I had to say about /2007/05/16/guitar-hero-ii-xbox-360.html.
MoreIn general I make a point to not comment on my work. It gets enough of a percentage of my mindshare as is, and I have to try hard to force it to idle. But it’s also unfair to let key events go by unmentioned, especially when they directly contributed to the quiet months of the summertime and autumn for this blog.
MoreApparently I’ve got zombies on the brain, so I might as well get this out of my system while I’m at it.
MoreWhen making my request for a specific type of zombie game, I had no idea that there was in fact an entire web site devoted to that genre. So I went through and tried a whole bunch of them to see if what I was looking for already existed. Short answer: no. But some of them were close.
MoreSo I may not have found my game about zombie defense, but there are no shortage of movies on the subject. I completely stumbled upon Fido by chance last night. Nothing about the title or cover caught my eye, and honestly I would have skipped it entirely if it hadn’t been on Xbox Live Marketplace when I was too lazy to go to the video store down the block. The preview totally won me over.
MoreSo I recently ran into this little Flash zombie game called The Last Stand. Zombie games are plentiful, but this one is interesting in its focus on zombie defense with light RPG elements. Each night you defend yourself against the zombie horde, and each day you decide how to split your time between repairing the barricade, searching for other survivors, and looking for weapons.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I’ve already pumped a ton of time into The Orange Box and I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. I started out with Portal, which is a little slice of gaming perfection. I then moved on to play Half-Life 2 for my third time (yes, it’s that good), but for my first time on a console and my first time with achievements (Ravenholm with only the gravity gun = good times). I’ve only cracked open Team Fortress 2 for one round but it was a total blast. I’m big supporter of renting these days, but really no one with a 360 should be without The Orange Box.
MoreA healthy, balanced life is within reach - I can almost see it. I haven’t had much energy to post here, but thankfully I haven’t been completely absorbed in work during all this time. I figure the best way to get back into the swing of things is to recap what I’ve been playing over the last couple months during my radio silence. I’ve got a big fat pile of games that I’ve finished and should really give a proper review, but I don’t know if I’ll ever own up to the backlog. So I’ll just run down the list and keep it short:
MoreFor someone who’s such a Metroid fanboy, I’m actually not much of a fan of the original. I’ve been spending a decent amount of time on the Virtual Console lately, and the original Metroid hasn’t aged nearly as well other big franchises (like Mario and Zelda). Even when I know where I’m going I invariably get lost in the repetitive environments. And entirely too much effort is spent farming energy to fill up your tanks. In Zelda you may have more heart containers (energy tanks), but each heart drop gives you back a full one (not 5/100) and there are both fairies and potions to give you big refills in times of need. I’ve never actually had the stomach to finish the original Metroid, although I try every now and then if only to experience it’s historical significance.
MoreIf you couldn’t tell from my lack of posting, life has been rough lately. But not yesterday. Yesterday was a good day.
MoreWe love thieves. Not some dude who breaks into your car or pulls a gun on you in a dark alley. Those guys suck. No, we love heist-pulling, safe cracking, masterminding, acrobatically flipping, car chasing thieves. You know, the kind that only exist in movies. They act a whole lot like Bond, all classy, sneaky, and above the law. But instead of saving the world they’re sticking it to the man whilst serving themselves.
MoreCreated by the same people (and sharing some of the same cast) as Shaun of the Dead, I was totally excited for Hot Fuzz, even though I didn’t know anything else about it. Which is dangerous, because coming into a movie with expectations of any kind is basically asking for trouble. But Hot Fuzz totally delivered, and is definitely the best movie I’ve caught in the theater in a long time.
MoreIt’s been entirely too long since my last post. Work has been very demanding lately, and it’s left me tapped. All my critical thinking has been dedicated to my professional life. And I’d bore you with that, but I’d have to kill you afterwards. Which given the general anonymity of the internet is a task that I just don’t have the energy for.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
It’s hard to really explain how much I love Guitar Hero II. But I don’t really have to, because everyone else seems to as well (reviews: GameSpot, GameSpy, GameRankings). It’s one of those games that anyone can play and have a blast. I played the first Guitar Hero for the PS2, which totally rocked, but the sequel’s arrival on the Xbox 360 is a distinct upgrade. The graphics are totally better, although that’s more a feature for the spectators, not the player. There’s a cooperative mode where one player can play lead and the other can play rhythm or bass. There are more songs. As a 360 title there are achievements, which are well balanced. There are also leaderboards where you can size yourself up against your friends or the whole world (I’m currently ranked around 13,000). The gameplay itself is more of the same, but no one’s complaining about that.
MoreI’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.”
MoreGameSpy 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.
MorePlayed 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).
MoreThe 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.
MoreI 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.
MorePenny Arcade’s post today stirred some thoughts on the whole concept of “unlocking” in games.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I actually finished Saints Row a couple weeks ago, but I felt compelled to keep playing it because there was just so much extra stuff to do (links: GameSpot, GameSpy, GameFly). The game is an unabashed GTA clone, but it’s a pretty decent one. It nails all the core elements of driving and shooting, and gives you plenty of varied missions. It doesn’t hit the strong thematic stride of Vice City or San Andreas, making it feel more like GTA III but with more contemporary gameplay.
MoreGamasutra posted a great article on Rethinking the MMO. If you’ve ever played one of these games, it’s worth a good read.
I’ve pulled out some quotes that spoke to me:
MoreThis past weekend I watched Who Killed the Electric Car? (links: NetFlix, Wikipedia). And I’m having a hard time categorizing my thoughts, primarily because I have so many of them. I may have to break this up into multiple posts, so bear with me.
MoreThis last Friday I caught Bitter Sweet at the Triple Door. I first heard the band up on Zune Arts, which if you haven’t seen yet you should totally check out - there are a lot of cool animations up there. Bitter Sweet’s debut album, The Mating Game, is really solid; varied, yet cohesive. I wasn’t surprised at all when I heard that one of the Bitter Sweet duo was also one of the founding members of Supreme Beings of Leisure. There’s a lot of similarities in the grand instrumentation and the quality of the vocals (although it’s a different singer).
MorePlayed on PC
I held it off as long as possible, but at last I have hit level 70 in World of Warcraft (TBC reviews: GameSpot, GameSpy). I had no interest in rushing the journey from 60 to 70 because I knew that the returns diminish pretty dramatically after you hit the level cap. It’s likely that Blizzard has handled it better this time around, but it’s a fundamental limitation of this kind of game that at some point the content thins out and they have to string you along with a decreasing time/value proposition. So I’ve absolutely taken my time to smell all the flowers as I’ve strolled through The Burning Crusade.
MorePlayed on Wii
Warioware: Smooth Moves (GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly) is my fourth contact with the Warioware series. And it feels like all the previous iterations were just building up to this one. It arrived on the GBA. Multiplayer was added when it was ported to the GameCube. When it hit the DS it brought a more intuitive set of controls. And then it revisited the GBA to experiment with motion controls (which is the one title I missed). And now it’s here on the Wii, and the Wiimote makes it the best yet.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I usually wait until after I finish a game before I review it. But I’m pretty sure that Viva Piñata doesn’t have an end. I guess the closest thing would be getting all the achievement points. But given all the other games I have going on right now (ahem, new Wii), I don’t think that’s happening any time soon. So I’m going to jump the gun and tell you what I think now instead of later.
MoreOne interesting aspect of the new Armory feature for WoW is that you can now go look up that bastard who corpse camped you for half an hour. Now I know that I was only one of 49514 (Contrast that with my lifetime kill count of 2372, which unfortunately I was never able to add that bastard to).
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Well, that didn’t take long. I finished Crackdown (links: GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly) before I was even able to add it to my “Now Playing” list. Which you think would have me fuming about value or something. But I’m not. I actually had a blast playing Crackdown. I’d recommend you rent it, not buy it, but it’s definitely a really fun game that’s just different enough from the other games out there to feel fresh.
MorePlayed on Nintendo DS
I’m happy to say that after some difficulty I finally finished Final Fantasy III for the DS (Links: GameSpy, GameSpot, GameFly). And I’m having some trouble deciding exactly how I feel about it.
MoreI watched Hollywoodland the other night. And I was left feeling more than a little unsatisfied. It was no fault of the actors, they all had fine performances. And the colors and aesthetics of the movie made it quite pleasing on the eye. But it just didn’t go anywhere. It was pretty much the most anticlimactic movie I’ve ever seen. I guess there kinda was a partial climax, but it was smack dab in the middle of the movie, not closer to the end. Which left me with the feeling that I was still waiting for the real climax… and then the credits rolled.
MoreGameFAQs’s list of top FAQs is generally a really good indicator of what games people are playing right now. And it’s quite telling that Final Fantasy III (the DS port of the Japan-only NES original) is still hanging out on that list after 5 months. Because old school RPGs are fucking brutal. I’m glad to see that many of my fellow gamers are still working on this one. My commute gives me near infinite time to grind through any game. Unfortunately, RPGs demand just that: infinite time.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I really wanted to like F.E.A.R. (despite it’s really lame sub-title “First Encounter Assault Recon”). The reviews made it sound like it was going to be good (GameSpy, GameSpot). Kinda like Eternal Darkness meets FPS. But it wasn’t. Not even close. This is my first review of a game that I started playing after I had already started this blog. So my thoughts are pretty well catalogued. I even went so far as to even take notes while playing :O. And looking back on them just backs up what my gut was telling me 10 minutes in: this game kinda sucks.
MoreI’ve noticed a bad trend in the FPS these days: I can’t seem to hear what the hell is going on. Oh, I can hear the action all right. The sound of the gun rattling off. That grenade detonating right next to me (whoops). Those I can hear just fine. But that guy standing next to me giving me important plot details? Mumble mumble mumble. The guy on my radio telling me what to do next? No clue what he just said.
There are two main causes of this:
MoreLast night I went down to the Showbox to see one of my favorite bands, G. Love & Special Sauce. It was my first time seeing them in person, and they didn’t disappoint. Yes, they’re a motley band of dorks, but that’s how I like my musicians. Few bands that I know of put out such irresistibly danceable stuff as G.Love. And I love how in their crazy blues/hip-hop genre (which I’m pretty sure there isn’t a lot of competition over) they manage to sing about stuff that matters. G.Love tells us about how he likes his beverages cold, sleeps in his jammies, knows the best way to get downtown… you know, earth-shattering important lyrics. Which I’m all about. I don’t need my music to be negative and angry. Unfortunately if you look at the music charts I seem to be the minority.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
Considering that Quake 3 opted out of a singleplayer campaign entirely, I wasn’t expecting much from the Quake 4 singleplayer campaign. But it wasn’t half bad. It’s a title you’d want to rent, not buy, but at least I was entertained the whole way through.
MoreI finally got around to watching the Seattle auditions for American Idol. I generally don’t follow the show, although I have caught a couple other season’s audition portions. When the show starts becoming about actual talent, I lose interest. Which may seem odd, because it’s the same format as So You Think You Can Dance, which I enjoy. But it turns out that dancing is infinitely more entertaining to watch than singing.
MoreI wouldn’t call myself a fan of the whole reality television thing. But it has become such a large category that it’s really hard to ignore. So I find myself stopping to think about what differentiates a reality show that makes me want to throw up and one that sucks me in and won’t let go.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
The second campaign in Far Cry Instincts Predator for the Xbox 360, called Evolution, managed to suck a lot less.
MorePlayed on Xbox360
I finished the two campaigns in Far Cry Instincts Predator (Xbox 360) (GameSpy, GameSpot) and sent the game back to GameFly with mixed feelings. In many ways, the game was thoroughly disappointing. But in other ways it was inspiring.
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