Portal!

I received a free demo of Portal when I nabbed my 9600GTX video card but I wasn’t willing to start a game I wouldn’t complete. My mistake! A close friend just gave me the Orange Box and I must say this: Portal Roxxor!

When I cancelled my WoW subscription I didn’t think I would be able to replace the joy of gaming with anything, but Portal has shown me that not only do I enjoy video games, but I can enjoy a video game that doesn’t require a grind or a gun! Portal is a puzzle! You get a gun, but it’s used to teleport. You can die, but only if you set up your portal incorrectly. I haven’t seen any NPCs, but there is a nice robotic overlord who coaches you through the first few mazes and then tells you s/he isn’t going to lie to you anymore. I am not sure if I believe him/her since I have already died twice. But my deaths are similar to the deaths I suffered while playing “The Floor is Lava! Game” as a child. You only die if you touch the floor!

I will continue to work through levels and will keep you posted if I decide the game sucks, but for now, if you have Portal, Steam, the Orange Box or a new video card you should DEFINITELY check out Portal!

Snake! Snake! Snake!

This is about two minutes long. If anyone knows any of the history of this stunt, feel free to post. If not, just enjoy the vid!

Jedi Fanboi vs. Noob!

There is an odd line in the game review of Star Wars: the Force Unleashed over at the Wired.com blog. The author states,
“I don’t know much about Star Wars.”

I was taken aback. How the hell could they expect someone who is a self-admitted Star Wars Noob review this game? Are they seriously suggesting that it is OK for some jerk who doesn’t care about Star Wars to get a copy in advance, and then gets to offer opinions to the world on the game?

Oh hell no. That is not a good idea, that is a slap in the face.

Am I fanboi? Probably. But whether or not I am doesn’t matter. What does matter is some flippant jerk got to review this game for the entire world and he doesn’t really give two-cents about the Star Wars fanbois across the globe!

I am also a Lucas Arts fanboi. I have played a variety of games from back in the 1990s up until now. I have several opinions about the good, the bad, and the laggy. I have opinions about why some games were better than others, and why I skipped some titles altogether. (Mostly drunkenness).

I don’t generally flame how a company decides to do business, but the Star Wars franchise is just that, a franchise. Even if they secretly mock us behind closed doors while sipping latte and eating their granola bars, they could at least assign this gaming topic to someone who has at least a little consideration for the fanbois. That would be far, far better than some fly-by-night hack who can’t tell a Wookie from a Wendigo.

GHIII Patent Infringement!?

Gibson is claiming that Activision’s Guitar Hero III is violating a patent filed by Gibson in 1999.

According to their complaint filed in US District Court in LA,

Gibson’s 1999 patent covers a virtual-reality device that included a headset with speakers and that simulated participating in a concert.

If this is the basis of their legal claim, then I would suggest they start filing patents for things like, “possible future profitable thing that simulates something we not yet created or thought of but if someone else creates something nobody else is currently producing and selling we will use this patent to stake our claim.”

C’mon Gibson. You may have thought of something about simulating a concert, but clearly, if you were going for a VR headset-type thing, you were watching too WAY many pornos (or maybe the same skin-flick over and over over and and - OH MY!) where a lone stroker sits in a room with a VR headset and enjoys act after act of mind-blowing orgasms.

Activision is being sued not for patent infringement, but for producing a profitable game franchise. There may be some behind the scenes things going on we will never know about, like Gibson licensed something to Activision or vice-versa and one of the companies thought nothing of whatever legal arrangement they signed off on, when suddenly this game took off like a rocket and now the company who signed the crappy agreement is feeling robbed. Who can say?

Ah hell, I am heading down to the courthouse to file a patent on something not yet created but might produce a profit for someone at some future time. Or maybe I’ll just go play Virtually Jenna.

Three Ways to Improve Rock Band

I’ve been playing Rock Band for a few weeks now and I’ve concluded that it’s a great social game.  However, it could be improved.  Here’s how:

1  Multiple instrument support.  If a song has two percussionists we should be able to use two drum sets.  Same for two guitar songs and especially for backing vocals.

2  Different peripheral support.  I don’t just mean the keyboard device.  I want dance pad support for dancers.  Light gun support for security, it could be a taser to keep the crowd from rushing the stage.   Camera support for gratuitous groupie flashing.  Rob the Video Robot support for… well…  I don’t know but  you get the idea.

3  More diverse music.  After looking at many of the forums about the downloadable content for Rock Band I’ve determined that I’m the only person on earth excited for the Grateful Dead pack (all 18 songs–I’d even take different live versions of each).  I still want more diverse stuff though.  Especially the BEATLES.  I want every song recorded by the Beatles.  They could be released chronologically, a couple songs at a time or as one giant pack…  whatever, just give me every Beatles song.

Google Trent Lott and Benjamin Nicolas to Find Out Why Trent is Resigning

My experience with the Xbox 360

About two weeks ago I received an Xbox 360 for my birthday from my wife. She did a lot of research and got a really good deal on a refurbished machine with an extra controller and a copy of Halo 3. Now, I know that 360s are notoriously unreliable and one might immediately assume getting a refurbished machine is a bad idea, but the reduced cost and the supposed elimination of the red-ring-of-death problem (that’s what they refurbish) made it seem like a good idea.

Once opened I immediately activated Xbox live and went to a store to pick up a game with the 25$ gift card that some friends had given me. I expected to get Gears of War or Crackdown because they’ve been out for a year–I was wrong. The used version of each was pushing 50$ which I found astonishing. It turns out that triple-A 360 titles are holding their value as much as triple-A Nintendo titles (go try to find a used copy of Smash Bros or Mario Kart). The only good game that I could afford was Dead Rising by Capcom. I think it was a launch title and it was still 30$ so I had to pay a little. I’d never played the game before but I know it reviewed well and I trust Capcom with zombies. The game turned out to be great (lawn mower + zombies = awesome), I had a fellow eightandfiver over and we played passing the controller. We also played a little halo but the game isn’t that good to watch and my wife was playing with us and wasn’t a big Halo fan. We actually ended the night playing Super Mario 3 that was just made available on the virtual console–score one for the Wii.

Within the next week I had gotten Bioshock and Orange Box through game fly. I also had Gears of War briefly but there were too many new games to play before I went through the catalog. I sent it back and got Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles (another good Capcom game, this time for the wii, also with zombies). I also managed to throw down a reservation for Rock Band that involved trading in an assload of games to get to the $160 and the last 360 reservation available at the GameStop I shop at.

Bioshock was great, although with Orange Box I had trouble committing to it, I’m sure the significant other and I will get around to it at some point. I put a lot of time into portal and even started replaying Half-Life 2. Damn these are great games. I had trouble playing team fortress 2 because all my multi-player time was going to Halo 3 (also a great game). I really felt like I had in the heyday of the PS2 when we had just tons of great stuff all at the same time (GTA, SSX, Burnout, Katamari…). I was in heaven—and it was during a game of portal just after I got the weighted companion cube that my 360 froze for the first time.

I restarted and started to play Half-Life 2 and got pretty far when it froze again (thank god for tons of auto saves). This time when I restarted the 360 it was flashing red. It was the standard red-ring-of-death that a refurbished Xbox isn’t supposed to get. I know this because the towel trick worked. The problem lies in some solders that fail to connect. The towel trick involves wrapping the console in a towel to deliberately overheat it so the solder expands and connects again. A temporary fix at best.

The real downer was that the next day I got to pick up Rock Band and then leave the house and spend thanksgiving in North Carolina (where I had a marvelous time). I got back on Sunday ready to try the 360 again, with the towel trick if need be, to finally get to try out the killer rock band drums… I couldn’t get past the title screen.

I managed to get a hold of the company that refurbished it and get a return authorization. They were really responsive and allowed me to keep the hard drive and all other accessories. The system is currently in transit to them, they’ve assured me they have a quick turnaround time and that they’ll mail off another system within a day of receiving mine.

I hope I get it soon. I’m afraid my weighted companion cube is going to miss me.

Fred Thompson was remarkably unspectacular at the debate yesterday and CNBC pigeon-holed Ron Paul and Huckabee just like the rest of the corporate whoring media always does.

Last night Super Smash Bros Melee was revealed to have Sonic in it. Which is super cool, but really not the best news to come out of Nintendo yesterday. The great news is that Capcom’s Monster Hunter franchise is coming. This is the best selling game in Japan at the moment and I love this game. I’ve played it on PS2 and PSP and it’s really a blast. At it’s core it’s a multi player game where people team up to go and hunt monsters all the while collecting loot and leveling up. With a decent wii interface and strong online play this could be the break out third-party hit that the wii needs to be considered a real console as opposed to something that’s aimed at my grandma and the 43 people who still think Metroid is a good game.

Here’s some of the sugar that this iteration of Super Smash will be packing: Apart from Sonic there will be Solid Snake and his box (mangina?) and pit (better known as Kid Icarus). Every other character that appeared in the series is expected back, even the ice-climbers. I expect we’ll see a few more sonic additions like Tails and Robotnik. There is a Pokemon trainer now which has the three starters in their evolved forms from Pearl/Diamond that the player can switch between. The online play sounds very robust. There is the standard friend code stuff but also random matches. There is a sort of ranking system and a tournament mode which allows up to 32 people to take part in a standard bracketed tournament either on or offline. It takes the winners and moves them up to the next round until the winner is determined. There’s also a cooperative (up to two players) beat ‘em up side-scroller called the “Subspace Embassy” complete with bosses and lots of meta-story to justify all of the characters participation. I can’t wait.

Metroid Sucks and Vagisil is NOT Manly

As a wii owner for nearly a year now I’ve yet to feel like it’s a solid video game console.  Sure I still have fun with people playing wii sports and to a lesser degree wii play.  I even like to pick up some single player monkey-ball once in a while.  I’ve yet to try some of the sports games like The Bigs (baseball) and Super Mario Strikers (soccer) and I expect them to be passable but I’ve never defined my gaming experience by sports games and I doubt I ever will.  So where are the wii games that I want to play?

I had very high hopes for Metroid, I’ve always loved first person shooters (even on consoles) and I was psyched to use the nunchuck wii-mote as the natural fps controls that they are (I liked the controls of call-of-duty wii, but the game was lame).  So along comes Metroid and I was expecting something solid, and maybe it is, but it certainly isn’t fun.  I suspect I had too high of hopes, I really expected multi-player.  It was on the DS Metroid, why wouldn’t the wii have it?  I have no idea.  I’d have rather had a multi player only Metroid than a single player only, alas.

Metroid is a puzzle game disguised as an action game and with out a really fast puzzle-solve-time an fps is a terrible interface for puzzles.  Apart from the anti-intuitive design concept the game is full of other crappy game things like back tracking and looking for differences in textures to identify hidden shit.  I want to shoot things not spend my time combing levels through a black and white filter that requires me to hold a button for about three seconds every time there is something that might be necessary to complete the next section but usually isn’t.  Please.  In the review by Game Informer (a Minnesota grown gaming magazine) the editor had the balls to suggest that there wasn’t enough back tracking in this game and that the backtracking is what made Metroid special…  I’m canceling my subscription.

I guess there’s still some hope.  There’s a new resident evil coming, a shooter on rails that looks promising.  There’s also a new Fatal Frame being made by Suda-51 the guy who gave us Killer 7 one of the strangest games I’ve ever had the opportunity not to finish.  Apart from that powder is of importance.

Since I’ve been biking to work I’ve found that when wearing business clothes during the commute it’s helpful to apply a powder to strategic areas.  At first I used some powder I found laying around–Goldbond.  I liked the effect but Goldbond has a distinct mediciney smell that I’m not fond of.  Sometime later my significant other was heading to the drug store so I requested that she pick up some powder that was a little less mediciney, a little more manly and a little more sexy.  She brought me a big bottle of Vagisil powder.  She still claims this meets my criteria…  I disagree.

“Settlers” Goes Live

The big news for XBOX Live this week is Settlers of Catan will become available Wednesday, May 2nd. No Xbox? No problem. Unlike the Nintendo Wii, you can stroll down to your local Target and pickup an Xbox. You can even accessorize…but most importantly you will need an XBox Live subscription…plus, you will need to be willing to shell out an extra $10 bucks to download Catan.

First person to port it to PC for a Linux version wins a cookie. If anyone finds a torrent of this I would be interested.

Of course, it just doesn’t have the same appeal to me of sitting across from human beings and drinking and joking all night.

Then again, I have a level 70 ‘toon in WoW so I can’t really say I need human interaction to enjoy a video game.

I do enjoy video games more when I know a human is controlling the “other team” as opposed to just trying to figure out a really hard puzzle.

Go buy an Xbox kids! The Wii is sold out forever!

Web Pages to be Visited Regularily

Here are a couple Blogs that everybody needs to visit occasionally:

The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society
This site is all about natural/scientific curiosities and it’s wonderful.

XKCD
The best comic online since The Masked Mushroom. Make sure you read every single one.

The Last Psychiatrist
Not sure how sound his medical advice/observations are but they are entertaining and he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

1up Yours
This is the best video game podcast, give it a couple of episodes–it grows on you. Also at this site: 1up Podcasts there are some others by the 1up/egm/gfw teams includint a World of Warcraft specific podcast and the GFW (games for windows) podcast. The latter of which has some of the best voice work you’ll hear on any podcast (dude does a nerd voice and the whiskey nerd–also “heroes of the web” is always great).