I had this plan

A couple weeks ago we went on vacation. Our usual one week in Walt Disney World, this time at Coronado Springs instead of Animal Kingdom Lodge because of the construction going on at AKL on the new Disney Vacation Club building. I was going to update the blog daily with the days happenings, the dining experiences, and the park conditions. That didn't happen, mainly because when I got back to the hotel at the end of the day I found myself, not tired exactly, but fulfilled to the point that I didn't even feel the need to pull out the laptop. So no daily updates, no daily pictures, just some photos of about half the days on the memory card, still needing to be uploaded to picasa.

Which is what I was going to do when I got home, but that monday was a little busy with unpacking, and I never got around to it. The following morning, I got a call on the way in to work that my grandfather was back in the hospital and was looking really bad. Anna said she'd come pick me up at work as soon as I got there (because I was in the carpool). Ten minutes later, I got another call saying that he'd passed away. The last week has been one of the saddest times of my life.

This week we're starting to get things back on track a little. We got a tree yesterday but weren't able to get it inside and into the stand until today. Christmas shopping is halfway done, those who remain are problem children who need to learn to embrace online wish lists. Not to mention all the late falling leaves which I haven't been able to get to yet. But things are coming back together. Maybe soon I'll get the pictures up, and I can write up a small over view of the vacation.

Laugh along @ Jack Thompson

Yeah, I screwed with the embed code so it would fit my blog column size, and it messes with the buttons. But it still plays, so please enjoy.

Louisville has a new home for Breakfast

Wild Eggs on Dutchman's Lane, in the building where Tumbleweed used to be. Best breakfast I've had since Key Lime Bistro on our honeymoon on Captiva Island. Anyone in or visiting Louisville really should give it a try. On our initial visit, I had the Stuffed French Toast (two slices of sourdough bread filled with cream cheese, fresh strawberries, and fresh blue berries, with a healthy portion of whipped cream) and Anna had the Surfer Girl Omelet (filled with avocado, cream cheese, mushrooms, green onions, tomatoes, and topped with alfalfa sprouts) with a side of their grits of the day.

Now, I hate grits. I've never met a grit that I liked. Yesterday morning, I kept stealing bites of Anna's. They were awesome... fresh grits (what a difference that makes) with lots of cheddar, bacon, and tomatoes.

Wild Eggs is definitely going into our rotation. Anna rarely is up early enough for eatting out at breakfast, but after we finished she remarked that she may now have a reason to get up before noon on Saturday....

Disappointment: Kenshin Big Edition volume 1

Just a quick note before I go into work this morning... major disappointment stemming from a much looked forward to manga release. In January Viz are beginning their new Big Edition line of omnibuses containing three volumes in one, restored color pages, and larger trim size. Much like the japanese kanzenban, but with more pages in each volume. I was really looking forward to this line of books for fairly obvious reasons. This morning the cover art for the first volume of the Rurouni Kenshin Big Edition Volume 1 was found on Amazon. Behold:


Glory in the mediocrity... for comparison's sake, please see the cover art from Kanzenban volume 1.


Why Viz? WHY?

Playing Catchup

It's been about a month since I've posted, but I'm pretty sure Alan is the only person reading anyway. Regardless, lots of stuff to catch up on.

When last I posted I'd started going back to the gym. Gym has been replaced by physical therapy sessions for the last three weeks. The ankle joint is feeling largely fine but aches are persisting in my Achilles tendon. Only 38 days from our trip to Disney World now, so I really need to get this cleared up. It's making me quite nervous. Some progress has been made, but not as much as I would have liked. I still have another week of PT, and then it's back into the orthopedists office on 11/5 for what will likely be my final check up with him since the ankle joint itself is pretty much healed up.

The last month has seen a dirth of game purchases. I went a little crazy on Xbox Live Arcade; having added four or five games easily. The biggest surprise for us has been Puzzle Quest. I'd resisted the game on handhelds for quite some time, knowing that it was coming to XBLA in beautiful high definition. Plus, the DS game didn't support multicard play so Anna and I would both need a copy, and we only have one PSP. Clearly XBLA was the only choice for a satisfying multiplayer experience, and this assumption has proven correct.


I'd been under the impression that Puzzle Quest was merely a puzzle game with a thin veneer of RPG elements taped over the interface to provide a new dynamic to the proven Bejewelled style puzzle mechanic. Oh how mistaken I was! The RPG elements are far more robust than I would have expected. You move your character from location to location over a simple Final Fantasy Tactics-styled map. Along the way you fight orcs, trolls, undead, and various mythical beasts. You recruit companions to aid in your fight, capture enemies, and lay siege to neighboring cities. You must invest in the construction of your private citadel by building a dungeon to keep prisoners, a mage tower to research spells, a forge to fashion new items, and much more. And everything is accomplished by completion of puzzles and in competition with NPCs. Puzzle Quest is so much more robust than I could have hoped, and it's proven a real surprise hit with the both of us.

Last Friday I picked up WarTech: Senko no Ronde for 360. It's a fairly niche Japanese title that combines shmup with 1-0n-1 fighter. I was shocked when Ubisoft brought it here. Even MORE shocked that they debuted it at full retail. These niche Japanese games have typically been brought over at a modest $40. I wasn't having it for $60, especially with the busted americanized cover art and horrible new moniker of WarTech (the original title was simply Senko no Ronde, at least they had the decency to leave it as a subtitle). It was reduced to $30 eventually, but I still couldn't part with the cash. Last week saw EB/Gamestop reduce the game to $10, so it became a no brainer.

In the TRU B2G1 sale last weekend, I also picked up skate., Eternal Sonata, and Halo 3. Even though I've never cared much for Halo, I realize this is something people will be playing for the next 5 years easily, so I might as well get some play time in with friends online. I'll get to them when I get finished with Blue Dragon, which I've returned to and managed to finish the first disc, finally. The rest of the game should go faster, I'm giving up on inspecting every last bread box and shrub in the hopes of gaining a tiny fraction of increase in abilities and resources.

That's about all I can stomach wrestling with blogger's poor interface. More updates on the last month tomorrow, perhaps.

back to the gym

I haven't been in the gym since around the end of July last year. That's when I had my odd ankle injury that had me limping around for two months last year, which finally culminated in arthroscopic surgery about a month ago. In the mean time I've gained somewhere around 12 lbs, all around the mid-section. I am not a happy cookie.

Thankfully on my last visit to the orthopedist, he suggested that getting on an excericise bike a couple times a week would help regain strength and flexability in my ankle. I didn't actually go until today. Why? After more than a year away it's just difficult to go back. It's hard to get up those extra thirty minutes in the morning to get in to the gym. But once you do, you settle right in.

Twenty minutes this morning of relatively light intervals on the excersize bike. Tomorrow night I'll go back to restart the weight training. Hopefully by this time next month I'll progress back up to the elliptical with my old pattern of high intensity interval training. With any luck, I'll be back down to about 155 by the time vacation comes right after Thanksgiving.

$400 PS3?

From Ars Techinica.

This is exactly the direction that Sony SHOULD be headed in. Which could be it's bogus.

If it's real, it could be the move which finally results in a PS3 in my living room. Anna gave the thumbs up to the Sony Credit Card deal if I wanted to do it, but I wasn't really comfortable with that. I don't like the idea of opening a credit card just for a purchase discount... especially when it's not so much a discount, it's a credit issued to your card sometime after the purchase. Maybe it wasn't so bad... I'm just uncomfortable with it.

But $400 retail? We'll likely have a 10% off card for Target floating around, bringing it to only $360, plus a free copy of Spider-man 3 on Blu Ray. Good enough for me.

I know, if the report is correct, it'll only be a 40GB HD. I'm not much fussed over that. I've barely used the 20 gigs on my 360 after 4-5 months, and by all accounts it's very easy to switch out a drive on the PS3. And yeah, it'll be an emotion engine-less unit, but again it matters very little to me.

In response to a response: HD Format War

Contrary to what a friend's reponse to my post on HD media says, I did not indicate that things might be looking up. Rather, I posed a question. Last I checked posing a question does not equate to indicating anything is. However, I will certainly endeavor to explain my rationale for acceptance of combo players, especially in light of the extremely sparse nature of my original comments which elicited a fairly impassioned and detailed response.

The main flaw I find in Alan's argument is that he apparently believes that there's only one way for the format war to end: for one format to be taken off the market. Would I rather have a single format? Certainly. Which one would I prefer? Blu-ray, hands down. But at this point, I want the war over by any means necessary. If HD players migrate to being by and large combo players then the end result is the same. Why? Because consumers want to buy one player and know they aren't screwed out of material only found on a competing format.

Is there some branding confusion? Sure. I hate to tell him though, HD in general presents a number of confusion issues to the general consumer. An alarming number think anything on an HDTV is automatically in HD - this has been documented in numerous customer surveys and articles as insane as it sounds to us. Thankfully recent studies have demonstrated an understanding of the need for special programming to have risen from somewhere around 50% last year to apparently about 86% this year. Also, all too many think regular DVDs are already HD. And even many of those who understand the difference don't feel like HD discs are enough of an upgrade over DVD to care. And therein lies the only real problem.

People don't care. It's not customer confusion creating problems, it's customer apathy. Alan mentions consumer apathy, but he directs only towards combo players when it really should be directed at HD disc formats in general. Alan cites the failure of SACD and DVD-Audio as an example of consumer confusion killing two competing formats, but it's a bad analogy. It's hard to be confused about something when no one even knows what the bloody hell your talking about. Take a poll on the street, take a poll of your family. Unless they're audiophiles (and audiophiles make up a very very small part of the consumer base), they aren't going to know what SACD or DVD-Audio is. I know what they are and I never cared. That's why those formats failed. Not confusion, apathy. For the vast majority of people CD quality is good enough. Hell, for most people lossy MP3s are good enough.

However, HD media have at least two big advantages over both SACD and DVD-Audio. One, it's much easier for the average consumer to see a difference in picture quality than it is for them to hear the difference in audio quality of a music recording over what is currently available. Two, it has an entry route that is finding it's way into consumer's homes whether they like it or not. While many people still don't have a reasonable understanding of HD, the numbers of sets sold are increasing all the time, simply by virtue of the fact that very few standard def sets are even sold now. As the technology becomes more universal, understanding too will come with time, and as discussed above, we're already seeing improvements from even a year ago. With that level of understanding, so comes a proliferation of HD programming entering people's homes through cable and satellite. And after they get used to watching a season of Lost or Heroes in HD... they have a hard time going back to standard def DVDs and at that point they start to care. The hook has been set. Now they are ready for HD disc formats, when before they didn't see it as big of a deal.

And that is a BIG key here. The whole HD migration is taking time, but it is happening. It's bound to take time, and the HD disc adoption isn't going to be a nearly over-night revolution like DVD was. The expense to change over isn't minimal, but it's coming down all the time, as technology is want to do. But we're still in the early adopter phase here.

Which, bewilderingly, is why Alan feels screwed now. Yes yes, he has a Blu-Ray player in the form of a PS3, and he feels like he's getting screwed by recent deals such as that made between Toshiba and several studios. This shouldn't really surprise him, though - we all know early adopters always get screwed. Just ask iPhone owners. But Alan's the kind of guy who already understands this, even if he is not outwardly accepting of it. Again, this is even something he touches on early in his article, but by the end he's brushing it off when it affects him directly. I'm sorry if he has to end up buying another player. I would have thought he would be expecting to in the next couple of years anyway.

When we move OUT of early adopter phase, and people start caring as discussed above, then the market needs to be ready with a winner. If that means combo players are the norm, and people walk into a showroom and the dealer says, "this plays all HD media available" then that's good enough.

Again, I certainly agree a single format would be the best outcome, and my personal choice would be Blu-Ray. But pragmatically, that may not be in the cards. The next best solution is for dual format players to become the norm. I ask you, how do we all lose if multi-format players become the norm? We don't. When dual format players are the norm, we are completely unrestricted in our choices. I don't call complete freedom of choice being screwed.

Things looking up for HD formats?

Took a quick peak into a few blogs before going to bed. EngadgetHD is running stories today about new combo players from both LG and Samsung, and will debut at CEDIA this week. As much as I would prefer to have one prevailing format, I'll be reasonably satisfied with dual format players becoming the norm. It's looking more and more like the eventual outcome. Will the two formats be eventually be merged in the minds of consumers if not in specifications? I wouldn't be at all surprised. Then we can get rid of those ridiculous Blu-Ray and HD-DVD cases.

Teen Titans #50: Back in the list

I've made no secret of my opinion that Teen Titans has lost it's way. Johns and McKone's issues are some of my favorite Titans books ever, but it really got off track during Infinite Crisis, and simply couldn't recover with the Death of Conner (Superboy) and the removal of Bart (Kid Flash) for the artificial aging to adulthood and subsequent death barely more than a year later.

Sean McKeever appears to have a solid grounding for the characters. Issue #50 gives me hope that this run of Titans isn't going to die. I've been on and off with the Titans since the A Lonely Place of Dying crossover arc with Batman in the late 80's. A lot of Titans teams have come and gone since then and the four who graduated from Young Justice were one of my favorites. It's been a sad slow decline in enthusiasm for me since the afore-mentioned sundering of that team but in #50 McKeever makes me think I could come to love these newer characters as much as those we've lost. It's always been about the interpersonal relationships for the Titans. If he can concentrate on that aspect of the book while keeping firmly within superhero adventure, then he'll have me for a long time.

The only doubt I have is the chosen artist for the new run. Ale Garza is a very talented artist, don't get me wrong. But I have a firm belief that even supremely talented artists are not the right fit for any story merely based on their talent. Art style has to match well to the tone of the story. Comics are a blending of two halves which only work when one dissolves into another and makes a whole. Personally I don't feel Garza's style works well on superheros. A fantastic artist, but in my opinion, the wrong artist for the job.

Dennou Coil

I started doing some catchup work on some spring anime series. My new favorite is Dennou Coil. The show is incredibly refreshing. There was a time when nearly every anime show had a distinct look but for much of the 2000's there has been a trend towards homogenization of styles in TV anime. Dennou Coil is at the forefront of a number of programs bucking that trend. It seems to draw more from Studio Ghibli than anything from television, and manages to evoke that feeling without copying styles outright.

It takes place in a future world, sometime in the 2020's, where humans use a special system of cybernetic glasses to interact with a world of data around them - it's a world of augmented reality where virtual object exist as overlays in the real world. The exact nature of this world of virtual objects is unclear, but I'm only up to episode three myself - fortunately the mysteries feel less like mystery for mystery's sake and is more a natural evolution of the story introducing the viewer into the strange world in which humans now live. The main character is an 11 year old girl who moves with her family to the town of Daikoku where the government has, as of late, been introducing upgrades and new technology to the spaces (short for cyberspaces, the virtual 3-d areas overlaid onto the real world and seen only through visors/glasses). Shortly after arriving in town, her cyberpet dog Densuke is infected with an Illegal (a virtual organism comparable to a computer virus) and this begins her decent into an underground youth culture of Daikoku and membership in a children's detective agency armed with powerful virtual objects and metatags (bits of virtual world code given form as long post-it like notes which bestow abilities, properties, and markers to both virtual and real objects).

Dennou Coil is a real keeper. Interesting concepts mixed with a fantastically fun and original style that breaks away from the rest. Check it out if you get the chance.

On a more general note, I've added a list of the anime I'm currently watching on the side. It's a short list right now, as I've lost interest in a lot of the shows I was watching earlier in the year. Bleach and Naruto came back strong from fillers, but both went back to old tricks far too soon. As interesting stylisticly Moonlight Mile was, it just didn't hold my attention. I might try it again as the show has finished it's run and is available in whole. Given that it's getting a second season already, it probably deserves a second shot. Gurren Lagann, while a favorite, was licensed very quickly, and so I've just decided to wait for the domestic release. Claymore was always a treat, but for some reason I always dreaded starting to watch a new episode, and eventually let it fall by the way side. My mind is an odd one.

There are very few shows coming up in the fall season that I'm looking forward to. Gundam 00 is the main one, but it's a new Gundam show so that's a given. I'd probably be REALLY into seeing Genshiken Season 2, if I'd ever got around to seeing Season 1. A few others here and there I might look into, but nothing worth really mentioning till I see them....

skate.Reel finally works for me

And here's my first skate video.

I thought I'd editted the first half out... it was only supposed to be the last long grind. Oh well, it's Beta right?

Catching up with the Gaijin

With all this extra time sitting on my butt at home this last week, I've been catching up on a few things. Some anime I'd not watched, som comics I'd not read, some games I'd not played much lately (set new high scores in Pac-man CE and Geometry Wars, woohoo!) and today, thanks to an offhand comment from Erich, I thought to get caught up on Gaijin Smash. This week's stories about the train and the $1200 Cell Phone Porn bill are classics.

If you're not familiar with it, start reading now. You'd benefit from reading some of the early posts. Especially the first one. It really sets the tone for whole blog.

The Inevitable

VGChartz announces the Wii has finally surpassed the Xbox 360 in total sales.

After next year I fear a drought of epic games. Why should anyone bother but for the love? If casual gaming pulls in these kinds of numbers for such ridiculously low development costs, where's the benefit to the company? *shrug* I love the Wii but in some ways I fear for the future.

What a week

Last Wednesday at work I started receiving files for a big project that warrant speedy attention. I'd been anticipating their arrival for some time. They are part of a larger issue that has been going on for years before I was even in this position and there's some pressure to get it resolved.

But, of course, last Thursday I had ankle surgery. Off Friday and Monday for recovery, back on Tuesday. By which point MORE files on the project had arrived, also needing review. Fine fine, I got some work done Tuesday, but was still a little bit behind.

Wednesday morning I get up and my car won't start. Quick clicking sounds emanate from the dash... I figure it's the batter, alternator, or starter. Nothing much I can do while I'm still on crutches, though, so back in a go and wait for Anna to get home from work. The car is parked in the carport with no good access to the front though, and there's no way we're moving it out on our own. Any normal day would be fine, but while still recovering from ankle surgery? No, I think not. So she goes to bed, and that night we go out and buy one of those portable jump starters so we can get it moving. That done, I get the battery replaced and the charging system tested the next morning (Thursday) and all is well.

But Thursday I also had another Doctor's appointment so, between the battery and that, it's another day off. Only the Doctor's office disagreed. They didn't have me down for an appointment that day. In fact they didn't have me down for any upcoming appointments at all. Thankfully the physician's assistant is sweet and saw me anyway.

This morning I planned on returning to work... lots to do ya know? Get in my car and realize it's been broken in to. My fault, I left it unlocked, but now the car is full of the out turned contents of my glove boxes. I don't think there was anything in there particularly worth stealing, but I called all of my financial institutions anyway. Got new CC numbers, put a credit alert on file with credit bureaus, and file a report with the police. If I were to leave for work now I wouldn't arrive until almost 11 o'clock, half the day wasted, vacation leave taken for the morning. The heck with that, I'm staying home.

And I have another doctor's appointment on Monday. What a week.

Chibi Block Dropping Salvation: SPFIITHDR Dated

Thanks to my friend Nick for pointing out Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has finally been dated. And it's coming next Wednesday! For what will most assuredly be the best XBLA release ever. I really can't wait.

2k, really?

What do you do when you have one of the hottest selling games of the year?

First, allow direct2drive downloads with a preloader from IGN, then start threatening to sue customers who discover you put the authentication server up early.

Second, implement widescreen incorrectly, making it show LESS than the 4:3 mode.

Third, implement draconian DRM requiring an internet connection to register and play, and only allowing 2 installs of the game, ever.

Fourth, explain to all your customers why they are wrong, and widescreen really shouldn't give them more picture.

O_o

skate.

The demo finally was released yesterday and it's great. Really everything I wanted it to be. It's such a pleasant departure from the Tony Hawk trick chain fest bs. It was awesome to grind on telephone wires at first. But really, telephone lines? Ridiculous. EA's skate. feels like skating, and I couldn't be happier.

Out of surgery.

I've been out of surgery for 26 hours, and my leg is still numb from the nerve block. Apparently I'm a complete lightweight because I was out way before they expected me to be. They gave me a light sedative to get me loose for doing the nerve block on my ankle because they said I couldn't be completely under when they did it. Yeah, well, I remember rolling on my side for them to start the block, the next thing I know I'm waking up in the recovery room.

The numbness is wearing off, but all that means is the pain is setting in.

Countdown to Cancellation

Countdown just isn't working out for me. For all that I enjoyed 52, I certainly wanted it to. I've given it 14 issues now, however, and it still isn't clicking, so I think that's enough. I've actually removed it from my weekly lists in various discussion forums, but have failed to make the change to my pull list at the comic shop. That changes today, however, as the book is officially pulled from my list.

The biggest problem for me is that too much of the book is given over to fleeting glimpses of events occurring around the DC Universe. I understand the logic behind device: in the stated goal of the series to serve as a spine for the DCU books for the coming year, it gives readers a look around at events important to the eventual 2008 big crossover. However, these glimpses often glaringly contradict the events in the books for which they are considered home. Ostensibly they are shown in Countdown to round out the important events for readers not following the "home" titles, but at times they never receive closure in Countdown leading to narrative discontinuity. It would be far better if Countdown formed a backbone storyline for the DC Universe with everything tied up neatly in Countdown, allowing the monthlies to tie into events when it makes sense to demonstrate the far reaching implications.

One of the most problematic storylines running through Countdown is the search for Ray Palmer, which involves Donna Troy, Jason Todd (who I guess at this point has dropped the hood from his "Red Hood" disguise so I guess he's just the "Red Mask" now?), and current Atom Ryan Choi. The story is billed as an important one, developmentally, for the DCU. The problem is that it's occurring in both Countdown and All-New Atom. With entirely different events. At a completely different pace. Maybe it's working for some, but it isn't for me. So as of now Countdown is dropped and I'm officially adding Booster Gold, Brave and the Bold, and Flash to my pull list.

Booster Gold is a welcome return. Booster was a favorite of mine as a kid and well into my teens as part of the Giffen Justice League. He was mishandled terribly in the 90's, but after a rough ride last year in 52 through some dubious moments, I think it's time for the Goldstar to shine again under the guidance of Geoff Johns and Dan Jurgens, Booster's creator.

As excited as I am for Booster to be back in the spotlight, I'm also ecstatic by the creative team leading it. Geoff Johns rarely goes astray. His DC books of the last few years have been some of my favorites of all time. His run on Justice Society is unmatched, his Teen Titans were as definitive as the Wolfman/Perez years, and his work on Green Lantern has been a renaissance. I have no doubt in my mind that his Booster will be of similar quality.

By contrast, Dan Jurgens has been something of an unknown quantity over the last few years, at least for me. The highest profile work he's done has been the History of the DCU back in 52, and the History of the Multiverse backup in Countdown. I do count this as a negative against him… only by virtue of the fact that I hold him in high regard as an artist. Jurgens is a remarkable representation of the superhero illustration classicist. His figure work is dramatic, his lines are clean, his anatomy is solid, and his backgrounds are anything but neglected. I'm very happy he's not only on a monthly book, not only on a monthly book that I want to read, but he's on a monthly book that I want to read about a favorite character which he created, written by a man I consider to be, perhaps, the best new comics writer of the last decade. I really couldn't ask for much more.

Rounding out the additions: Brave and the Bold I've been buying since it first started four or five months back and for some reason never got around to putting it in the list. Waid and Perez's BATB feels like every good DC comic I've ever read rolled into one. Classic comics in a modern format. Love love love. However, Waid's return to Flash in #231 has me a little on the cautious side.

The basic concept is that Wally West, the third man to bear the Flash name, returns with his family to the DCU after what was apparently about 10 years in some alternate dimension. Does anyone see the immediate problem readers might have? Many people hold the aging of previous Kid Flash Bart Allen to the twenty year old Flash (only to then kill him off at the end of a year when it wasn't working) as the biggest mistake DC comics has made recently. When last we saw Wally the kids were infants, now they are preteens. The implementation of the son's abilities has me the most doubtful – he can temporarily accelerate myofibril hypertrophy in his body (his muscles get big). It can look a tad ridiculous. Still though, Waid has a proven track record, so I remain optimistic. Acuna is definitely a rising star as well, but I think his style is better suited to special projects than a monthly periodical. I look forward to this continuation of the Flash, though, and if nothing else it will be interesting.

XBL Download Assortment

• Bioshock Demo - Thankfully it completed over night, I had my doubts for a while. It's an impressive effort in world design but it plays much like a dozen other FPS games played over the last ten years. It looks to be worth a play through, but not the hype being built around it in fan circles, both amature and professional, across the internet. A pretty game, a moody game, but a game I've played a hundred times over without any real new mechanics.

• Beautiful Katamari Demo - It's three minutes of the game you've already played on PS2. Fun, and prettier, but the same game. And only three minutes. Not that it was a masterwork of coherent story telling, but I doubt someone unfamiliar with previous versions would walk away with any clue as to what was going on.

• Guitar Hero II download packs - I've said before I'd never buy one of their download packs. This conviction was built upon a strong foundation of pathetic and random groupings of songs, and the exorbitant pricing of 500 points per three-song pack. The new pack is a My Chemical Romance song, and I do like the MCR. It's still over priced at 500 points, but I have a feeling this is a concern that will never be addressed, so I might as well enjoy the result of one adjustment to the norm. (And yeah I know blah blah blah emo sucks... tell it to someone who buys into the emo-hate bs).
  

A New Direction... and a few words for the passing of a great

Sometimes there are things I want to say that have nothing to do with gaming, and sometimes I have nothing to really say on gaming for months at a time. Witness the two month gap in postings when I first began. So why define the blog so rigidly? From now on it'll be a general blog... probably with mostly video game content for the time being, but lots on comics, toys, anime, and other subjects wondering in and out.

Yesterday afternoon I learned that comic book artist Mike Wieringo passed away on Sunday August 12 of a massive heart attack. He was only 44. He maintained a healthy diet and exercised every day. He didn't register in any risk group. But he's gone from the world, when he still had so much to give. By all accounts, he was the best this industry of prima donnas has to offer. He was kind, humble and generous, constantly denying his own importance and artistic brilliance. He lived and breathed comics and his death is a loss for anyone who loves comics, whether they knew him, knew of him, or had never heard of him. He is already greatly missed.

Bioshock Demo

It was my intention tonight to play the Bioshock demo.

Since it's been going for almost four hours and is barely past 25%, I think I'll pass on that tonight.

Very frustrating, though it did force me to finally sit and finish out the achievements on Pac-Man CE.

Stranglehold Demo

After an excruciating 1.3 GB download last night, I spent the scant few minutes before needing to be in bed, having past the "should be in bed" point by nearly an hour, with the John Woo 'presented' Third Person Shooter, Stranglehold, based on the continuing adventures of the lead character in the modern classic, Hard Boiled.

I've said before that a console shooter really has to work hard to make me care. The diversity of control on a PC makes the basically simple premise of a first or third person shooter feel a little too shallow and clumsy on a console. Proponents argue that reliance on the console controller introduces a higher degree of challenge and strategy to the mechanic. There is a boon, they suggest, to the inability of the opponent to simply whirl around double jump off a wall and pop you down instantly with a rail gun shot to the face, denigrating the game play as "twitchy." In this argument all I hear is "waah waah my reaction time sucks and I get owned!"

Not that all FPS games should be lightening fast frag fests but let's not pretend that slowing the competition down creates a superior environment. A different environment, yes, but that's it. It's just something different. Nor does it necessarily make it more strategic. There's something to be said for strategy in an FPS, but Halo isn't it.

I'm rambling. Where was I? Console FPS games, right. Generally I have no interest. It takes a special play mechanic to get me interested.

Stranglehold delivers. It's not an FPS game, and really doesn't even feel like much of a shooter in general due to the emphasis being placed less on the shooting and more on the movement of the player. Certainly the gunplay is an important part of the dynamic, but it is far from the whole. As important as your ability to aim and shoot is the players ability to negotiate the various urban environment obstacles that clutter the game's landscape. Sliding across table tops, diving through the air from around corners, sliding down banisters and riding on dining carts kicks you automatically into a bullet-time (called Tequila Time after the protagonist) slow down transforming difficult to impossible kills into manageable shots, while simultaneously creating around the player the feel of a Hong Kong action flick. This game has a style all it's own.

Now I may be biased on console shooters, I'll give you that. I once turned to my friend in college in the middle of a round of Quake II mod LMCTF and said that what I really needed was a girl who appreciated the aesthetic value of a quad damage rocket gib (luckily for me six years later I found one, and life is now quite perfect). But it's not that I find no value in console shooters, it's that historically, I've found them ill-suited to the control and wanted something a little different that took advantage of the differences in setting and interface. Gears of War did, though it was sort of on the cusp. Stranglehold does it in spades. It doesn't feel like a PC game trying to sell itself to the console market. It feels like a console game. And for a shooter, I can't give it any higher praise than that.

Nintendo finally learns: match making w/o friend codes

News out of the Nintendo Media Conference this last week seems to have slipped under the radar a bit, but a spot on this week's 1up Show discusses Nintendo's implementation of matchmaking in Mario Strikers Charged, Pokemon Battle Revolution, and Big Brain Academy Wii Degree.

Still need codes for a friends list though. Maybe they will come around to unique player IDs eventually. But this is at least a positive sign.

R-Type... Tactics?

It would be unsightly for me to adeqautely make us of explitives to emphasize the confusion that this creates in my tiny mortal brain.

R-Type Tactics Site Opens (story from Kotaku)

Starcraft 2: Told ya so

Ok, maybe I didn't tell ya so HERE, because I got kinda busy and just didn't have the time to make any entries. But those of you I've spoken to individually know what I'm talking about.

Anyone who thought Blizzard would actually invest in a SECOND MMO, doubling their overhead and splitting their audience into two, was completely fooling themselves.

Starcraft II

Wii Blaster - don't call it a light gun

Of late a particular pet peeve of mine relating to the Wii has been increasingly exacerbated. Several games in the offing are shooters for which many are touting the need for the "light gun" attachment. What all seem to forget in this regard is that the Wiimote is a relative, and not absolute, pointer. However, the compelling feature of light gun games is that the interface behaves exactly as one would expect of a gun - you hit what the object at which you are aiming. The game, the skill it tests, is your ability to point accurately, is that of aiming with an actual gun.

The Wii remote is not capable of performing this feat. The best you can achieve is an onscreen reticule which is moved relative to the movements you make with the Wiimote. On SOME setups the 1:1 performance is better than others. Usually the smaller screen the better. But it still isn't completely right, and it certainly is not a universally achievable effect.

Any gun like attachment to the Wii remote is only going to make these glaring innacuracies apparent. Forget a gun "shell" and give us an actual light gun.

Square-Enix Party 2007: Don't let me down

Setting myself up for disappointment has ever been a favored pastime. Rarely can a press event or convention present itself without my mind forming an indelible list of expectations which could never bet met. In just a few short days, the Square Enix Party 2007 begins. For surprise announcments I expect:

Final Fantasy VII remake announcement for PS3/360
Final Fantasy XIII and Vs. XIII becomes cross-platform to appear on 360
Kingdom Hearts (new series) to appear on consoles instead of the reported handheld/mobile

Come on Square, is that much to ask in exchange for the servitude and loyalty I've given you these past twenty years?

Prepare to party

It's been a long time since I actually bought a Mario Party game. At the time that the original was released I frequently hosted gaming parties for college class mates. Tetrisphere and Puzzle Fighter tournaments were the rule of the day. When Mario Party was released, I gleefully purchased it the day of the next gathering. It was a surefire hit.

Except that everyone hated it, save for me. Even the shortest game settings provided less than acceptable levels of gratification. My friends all insisted on a clear winner after rounds of no more than a few minutes. The trivial winnings garnered by the mini-games of Mario Party were not enough to massage their egos into a moment of victorious extacy.

A few years later I'm at a friends house. This friend had not been a part of that afore-mentioned group, being an aquaintance made as many of those class mates were moving away to high paying jobs in other states. We're playing some games and he busts out Mario Party 3. I'd previously enjoyed several rounds of the original Party, but I'd since soured on it after many attempts at getting people to play, and most giving up halfway through. I didn't even want to bother at first when he presented his copy of 3, but I relented. I discovered that not only could I enjoy Mario Party still, but in the company of someone who truly enjoyed the format of mini-game competition it held the potential of inducing me into a state of gamer rage. It can get ugly.

When I started dating my wife, I learned that she had a certain passion for the Mario themed video board game. She wanted me to play with her, but I resisted for a long time for fear of scaring her off with a fit of anger inspired by Bowser taking all of my stars and givine them to my competitors (ie, her). Eventually she won out, and obviously everything turned out ok.

This weekend, I placed a pre-paid pre-order for Mario Party 8. It's the first time I've given a pre-order as a gift, but also the first time I've bought a Mario Party game since the original, and I'm just as exicted as she is.

Cross-regional Content Lockdown for XBLA

Over the last few days a number of people have expressed displeasure over Microsoft's recent announcement of their decision to begin closing up certain loop holes which have allowed Live users to download content intended for regions other than their own. For those not in the loop, a user can currently create a fake Gamertag marked as being located in another country in order to access Xbox Live downloadable content from that region. In truth the how of the matter isn't as important as the what. Users are gaining access to content they weren't intended to have in the first place.

I understand that people are upset by these actions. None of us wants the world to end when they can't download those amazingly cute bunny-slippers for their iDOLM@STER character. But they are really looking at it from the wrong angle and not keeping control of their expectations. Let's take a moment to consider several facts:

1) The company is Microsoft
2) As stated above the content in question was never intended to be accessed outside of specific regions
3) You had to create a fake account, misrepresenting who you were to get to it

It doesn't require a herculean effort of logic to realize that this window would only be open for a limited time. You had a good run guys. But you had to know it was coming.

EA's "skate." demos new stick-flick controls.

For my inaugural posting I direct you to this GameVidoes-hosted presentation of the analog stick control scheme implemented in EA's upcoming skateboarding game "skate." Yes, just like that, no capitals and with a period. Expressive of the games rejection of the fantastical trappings of the older Tony Hawk games, EA tells us to leave behind infinite combos strung together by ridiculously long manuals and simply "skate." Appropriate for a game that intends to strip away the nonsense and bring a graphical exploration of the technical aspects of skateboarding to the living room.



Keep in mind I've not played Tony Hawk's Project 8, and may eventually. I appreciated the ideas behind the 'nail the trick' functions and isn't entirely unlike the ideas behind the entire framework of "skate." But the philosophies behind the game are mutually exclusive approaches to the sport. For now, my faith is placed in "skate." for a renewal of my love of video-game skateboarding.