Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

Body of Lies, Big Bang Mini, and the concept of Interesting

Thursday, February 5th, 2009

Crestfallen I am when a creator I respect falls short. Body of Lies, the Ridley Scott made middle east trying to be heady thriller/intrigue/action flick was written by William Monahan—the ridiculously brilliant writer who penned The Departed. Did I mention he won on Oscar for that? Yea. Even though the Academy nails winners like an elderly blind man in the late stages of multiple sclerosis hits a dart board’s bulls eye it’s worth mentioning because hey, it’s an Oscar.

I loved The Departed. I dug the way it was written, directed, cut, shot, all of it. Mark Wahlburg was fucking awesome. Just a great film. The writing in particular though was really well done. Dense, funny, fast, William Monahan immediately became one of my favorite working writers. His follow up? Body of Lies, out on Bluray February 17th.

OHYEAHH!!

OHYEAHH!!

In thinking about what makes stuff ‘good’ or more accurately why I like or dislike a particular thing I often fall back into that catch all word: interesting. Body of Lies, especially the first two acts, just isn’t all that interesting.

Big Bang Mini on the other hand, the SouthPeak Games published Arkedo Studio developed DS actioner is interesting. No long ’story’ intro full of next, next, next. No confusing control schemes or long expansive corridors of repeating monotonous patterns. Just a short tutorial on you’re on to blowing stuff up. And it’s fun. I was a fan of the SouthPeak published Ninjatown also on the DS so I’ll be looking forward to seeing more from this crew. Nintendo may have ultimate bragging right for selling bazillions of systems but the fact is their bazillion systems don’t have many good games out to actually play on them. Every time I get my hands on a good game for a Nintendo embossed box I feel like I just caught some sort of magical fairy or something, bright flickering moon beams shooting through interlocking fingers as I peer into clasped hands at my exotic prize.

So what is ‘interesting’? Why does one piece of media or person or moment pull us in and another inspire continual watch checking and mind wandering? I believe that’s out of scope for this particular entry but an interesting question to percolate on anyway.

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Lips for the Xbox 360

Friday, January 16th, 2009

I’ve been playing Lips for the Xbox 360. It’s a Karaoke game that comes bundled with two wireless microphones. The commercials look good, and like a lot of Microsoft ads lately (and that bizarre NXE intro movie that plays when you first update to NXE) are a weird hybrid of American, European, and Asian aesthetic resulting in something that’s slightly surreal feeling. But, I digress.

Here are my first impressions.

Some positives:

  1. It’s fun!
  2. The microphones are really nice, and wireless. And soon they’ll work with Rockband via a patch.
  3. It has more of a range of ways that you can do well (pitch, stability, rhythm, vibrato) unlike a game like Rockband.

Some problems:

  1. The pitch indicator is unnecessarily hard to scan
  2. The game slows down with custom videos and two players. Keeping time is probably on the list of things a game like this MUST do, but it fails in this circumstance.
  3. When someone sends you a challenge, you receive no notification. Instead you have to go to My Lips then select Friends, then look at your list of friends. This is really and truly unacceptable.
  4. If you win a challenge after one try, and the other person has made both their attempts, you are forced to sing a second time anyway. You can work around this by starting the song, then immediately selecting quit, but it’s not great.
  5. The microphone handling is buggy, I’ve had microphones drop out in mid song (bot not disconnect, as that would trigger an onscreen message) and then start working again in 30 seconds.
  6. Only 40 songs come with the game, which would be fine if they had a large variety of downloadable tracks. At this point, the downloadable selection is like a Christmas Music store with a handful of other tunes, approximately 20. Weaksauce.
  7. The onscreen introduction of the symbology used int he game is nonexistent. It took me a while to figure out what the 6 medals stood for, and that should have been apparent right away. It’s 2009, we shouldn’t have to look in a manual.
  8. No in-game leaderboards. Huh?

I’ve read in forums that some people had problems figuring out the syncing process for the wireless microphones. The game manual has information in it that conflicts with the wireless microphone mini-manual, and neither one is clear. I didn’t experience a problem, but I can definitely see why some people have.

There’s also a Lips website at lips.xbox.com that promises but as of this writing it’s almost all “coming soon.”

I’m keeping the game, because I hope they release some more downloadable tracks in a reasonable timeframe, but I’m not optimistic based on the rate of release so far. If I were giving it a star rating, I’d rate it 250/400 stars.

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Fable II Knothole Island DLC

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

I just downloaded the Fable II Knothole Island DLC. Spoilers follow.

So far, I’ve been digging up a lot of crap. My character is fully developed (only missing Backflip for Completionist achievement, send me a message if you can help me because I’m not forking over cash for Pub Games to get the book I need) and my dog is all powered up, so while I’m trying to fix all the weather problems, he’s constantly nagging me to dig.

Fable II

Fable II

When you get to Knothole Island, it’s all iced over. Everything is blue and cold and everyone talks about how they are freezing and how their fingers might fall off at any moment. You meet a guy identified as the Chieftan, turns out he’s the guy that summoned you to the island. Yada yada yada the weather is all messed up can you help, and then the Chieftain sends you off to find the “Sun totem” which will restore heat. This involves going into a dungeon, then solving a few puzzles to open up the final room where you turn the heat up to 11.

The reason I say 11 is that as soon as I came up from the dungeon, wow, was it hot. It wasn’t even subtly hot, the heat effects were on overdrive. the grass was brown, and I was like holy crap I bet I turned up the heat too far. Sure enough, the next main quest on Knothole Island is to end the drought. And now everyone’s hot and upset that you overdid it the first time around.

I’ll digress for a moment to say that there’s a store in town called the Box of Secrets. It has a whole bunch of gift-wrapped packages sitting on tables. When you walk up to one, you see a vague explanation about what category of item it contains, and information about what items you need to trade for whatever is in the box. When it was icy cold, there were only a few packages, but when you turn the heat up they get another shipment and more (but not all) of the tables have gift-wrapped goodness. Here’s an example of things you need to trade for the packages:

  • marriage and how to survive it
  • pretty necklace
  • puny carrot x2
  • table wine x2
  • murgo’s big book of trading x2
  • crunchy chick x3
  • crucible peanuts x2

Anyway, you get the idea. That list isn’t complete, because I don’t want to bore you to tears. Right now I’ll digress even further to list the three achievements worth 100 gamerscore that the Knothole Island DLC adds to the base 1000 Fable II score:

  1. The Meteorologist: Bring all of Knothole Island’s weather problems under control, or help another Hero to do so.Fix all of the weather problems on Knothole Island
  2. The Collector: Acquire all the mystery items in The Box of Secrets shop, or see another Hero do so.
  3. The Bibliophile: Find all the books detailing the history of Knothole Island, or help another Hero to do so.

So, now I’m off to find the Storm totem to fix the drought, but I will bet someone the 800 Microsoft Points the DLC cost that that’s going to result in floods that I have to clean up.

The books that you need are just like silver keys, only they’re books. Your dog will detect them as treasure if he sees them, and they float in space the same way silver keys did. Kind of lame.

Got that Storm totem. Also I have to say I’m going to slap my dog if he doesn’t shut up for a while about the dig spots. Anyhow, with the Storm totem, sure enough it’s raining like mad. And sure enough the island is half under water, which weirdly is the level the ice was at when this all started (I think I see where this is going). Storm Key then opens the Storm Shrine. Did I mention, 26 dig spots so far?

What Knothole Island Has to Offer

What Knothole Island Has to Offer

The Storm Shrine was definitely an exercise in programming those colored orbs in a bunch of different ways and then just throwing the kitchen sink at you. Orb puzzle, open a door, orb puzzle, open a door and pull a lever, orb puzzle, kill a banshee on your way to fighting one of those trolls with the bad skin / exposed nerves problem. Then you get the Ice Totem, and yep, suspicion was correct, the island is back to the way you found it, all iced over. And then you immediately fight another banshee and then your dog is off finding more digs spots. When you get back to the Chieftan, there’s a whole bunch of disgruntledness and you have to make one of those Famous Fable Choices, this time 10,000 gold or the love of the people of Knothole Island. After all that, you’re awarded with the Meteorologist achievement and the ability to control the weather as needed.

I guess my final verdict is the DLC isn’t really worth the 800 Microsoft Points, at least not to me. It boils down to three quests to complete (all virtually identical), find 10 “silver key” books, and then hunt around for the items you need to get the items from the Box of Secrets store. And 3.5 million dig spots, which adds up to not quite what I had hoped for. The story does have a few moments of humor, but not enough to make up for all that it lacks. I wrote this article while I was playing, and the whole thing took 3 hours.

(Also, pet peeve, I can’t believe that even in the patch they still have the default option when you start playing set to “New Game” when you only use that one time, and you use “Continue” every other time. Seriously.)

I’ve heard some talk about a resurrection shrine on the island to bring your dog back if you selected to kill him off, but I didn’t do that so it’s not relevant for me. But no, I haven’t seen said shrine yet. Oh yeah, and if you have a spare Backflip book, please send me a FR on Xbox Live, my gamertag is Minimalist360.

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Posted in Games, Microsoft, Review, Xbox 360 | 3 Comments »

SSD = Super Super Duper Fast

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

I bought a Dell XPS M1330 with a 64GB Samsung SSD in it, as well as some other goodies like Wireless USB and and LED backlight. I wiped most of the drive and installed Vista Ultimate x64.

I feel like I went into the future a few years, mainly because of the SSD. Holy WOW is that shit fast.

Booting is fast. Running Word or Excel results in teh applicaiton almost instantly appearing on the screen. Visual Studio 2005, which normally takes about a day and a half to install was finished in 15 minutes. And on and on. And the silence is eerie.

More soon, but holy wowsers I’m in love.

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Picross DS / Gemsweeper

Wednesday, August 8th, 2007

Back when I had my GBA, I really wanted the Nintendo Picross game, but it was really hard to find here in the states. I guess because of the wholly superficial resemblance to Sudoku, there are suddenly myriad versions of Picross available. I’m going to talk about two of them, Picross DS for the Nintendo DS, and Gemsweeper for Windows PCs.

Picross DS

Picross DS

Picross DS is a straight-up Picross game. Thank you, Nintendo.
The upsides here are:

  • Hand-held Picross goodness
  • Many single player levels
  • Awesome head-to-head Picross via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
  • Puzzle editor
  • Share your own puzzles via Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection
  • (Supposed) downloadable Picross levels from the previous Nintendo Picross games that Nintendo has offered
  • Low low price of $19.99.

The downsides here are:

  • The downloadable games are all “coming soon”
  • I am not at all happy with the zoom scheme they came up with for the larger puzzles. It’s really hard to keep track of the big picture while you work, at least for me.

So as you can see, the score is 7 to 2 in favor of the upsides. I’m a happy (addicted) camper. It made me stop playing Planet Puzzle League at least. At roughly the same time this game came out, I stumbled across another Picross game.

Gemsweeper

Lobstersoft’s Gemsweeper

First up, I’d love to include some kind of title screen or game logo here, but their product page doesn’t have one, just this screenshot and a picture of the game’s narrator.

Gemsweeper plays on your Windows PC, so it has a great big screen and doesn’t need any kind of zoom-in mode for larger puzzles. There is a typical casual-games “Quest mode” which, like in most casual games, progresses in difficulty way too slowly. You can play through 5 “temples” of 10 levels each and even though the puzzles get much larger, they aren’t much more difficult.

Pros:

  • Solid interface
  • Quick in/out play, much faster than most PC casual games
  • It’s Picross
  • $19.95 – 4 cents cheaper than Picross DS!

Cons:

  • Difficulty just isn’t there
  • The jokes the Professor/narrator character tells are really lame
  • No head-to-head online play feature

Two of the downsides aren’t really downsides as much as taste, so the score is 4 to 1 here in favor of the upsides.

The biggest problem with these two simultaneous Picross games appearing in my life is that I am not getting a lot of work done. If Xbox Live Arcade released one now, I think I’d be paralyzed.

Posted in Games, Nintendo, Review, Windows | 2 Comments »

Forza 2 is like Morza Poo

Friday, June 15th, 2007

forza 2 boxI’m not sure what exactly happened here.

Let’s see. I loved Forza. It had amazing graphics, felt real as all get-out, was fun to play, and I loved it. When I heard Forza 2 was coming out, I got all excited and thought about getting a force-feedback wheel and the whole nine.

So I bought Forza 2, and it’s all I can do to hire another driver to finish another race. I feel like I’m unlocking things as a part-time job, and I’m not sure where the fun is. Yeah, I know it’s a simulator, and simulation != fun in all cases, but I expected it to be a little bit fun, at least for as many minutes as I spent dollars on the game. (In this case, I did the Best Buy deal via the Xbox Live offer, so it’s $10 less than usual.) But.

I put it in, and was all set to spend like 5 hours driving. The interface looks amazing, the transitions and loading screens are all slick and pretty, but the actual driving feels like not much more than work. Yes, I know it’s a simulation, but I don’t remember Forza feeling like this much work and like zero fun.

Because I have an addictive personality, however, I’ll play it like a sports manager game, and load up new races and match a car against a race and hire a drive in an attempt to at least get some unlocks out of it before I sell it. I wish I had enough money to hire a guy to hire drivers in Forza 2 to earn achievements for me. That way at least I’d be giving someone a real job, as opposing to have to work at this myself for nothing. Maybe I was deluded. Maybe as driving simulators approach reality the driving experience is too real to be a “fun game” anymore (even if there are red lines appearing on the road surface telling me to brake, which never happen in real life (then again, maybe I don’t drive fast enough in real life to see these)).

I haven’t looked at reviews of the game to see if other people feel this way or if I’m just officially old, but Forza 2 makes me feel empty and sick to my stomach like I just binge ate 12 candy bars or something. I give it 2 out of 5 stars cos it sure does look pretty, but I am hoping someone steals it from me so I don’t keep unlocking achievements and feeling emptier and bingey-er.

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Digital Life 2005

Saturday, October 15th, 2005

I was asked by a client if I wanted to attend the DigitalLife conference. So, I went.

At the entrance, there was a booth called Tylenol Ouch, I’m not sure what they were selling there, but they were giving massages and they had these columns with Plexiglas around them filled with Tylenol. The booth was surrounded by a lot of young kids, and it was one of those science fiction becomes reality moments where the dystopic future society with drugs marketed as lifestyle choices and/or candy was suddenly front and center at a technology conference. Also, I guess it’s a-ok now to sell medication to kids using cute characters. Pardon the quality, but here are some pictures taken with my crappy mobile:

Maybe the message is, if you use all of this new technology, you’ll need painkillers. (Ha! I crack myself up!)

I took my 3 year old son to the event. Many of the exhibitors had Hummer H2s (Verizon, Hot97, some random game controller company, et. al.) and Cooper Minis painted up with logos and stuff on them, another booth had 7 or so scooters (of the motorized variety) in various colors, and my son kept telling me that “they have rides here” and tried
to climb inside random vehicles.

The biggest draw seemed to be the Logitech booth. They were giving away these clear round plastic discs with their logo, which had a flashing Logitech green LED in them. There was a line to get these things which was, I kid you not, about 20 minutes long.

Anyway, here’s what’s going to be new and exciting in your digital life:

  • HD DVD. They demoed HD DVD on large flat screens. 1080p didn’t look that impressive versus 480p without a comparison, lord knows why they didn’t have a 480p system right next to it. My guess is it doesn’t look that
    much better to most people. Or maybe the problem was display they were hooked to, they were supposed to
    be the bomb or whatever, but they were pretty weak. I don’t know, to me this seems like a pretty incremental increase in quality that the masses will probably never get behind.
  • Belkin had a display with the “Belkin Flip for Mac Mini” – it turns out that with this product you can have TWO COMPUTERS SHARING ONE MONITOR. HOLY CRAP! And not even at the same time, it’s just a KVM. But it was targeted at Mac Mini users and it looked like sort of a short Mac Mini so it’ll probably sell. For $80.
  • Lots of people hawking iPod accessories. Apparently, your digital life will be filled with semi-disposable electronic fetish items with large add-on aftermarkets.
  • GameTap had a DJ that was pretty decent, they were playing some cool music and they had displays hooked up where you could play their catalog of retro games. If you have Mame and MESS it’s sort of moot, but it’ll probably fly. This was probably the best exhibition in my opinion.
  • Xavix had some cool stuff. They seem to specialize in what used to be called virtual reality, at least the controllers end of it. They had some golf demos and baseball demos and fishing demos (I cannot bring myself to link to a fishing game demo) with untethered controls–think Nintendo Revolution with custom controllers for
    each game. It was pretty cool.
  • Intel had a controller that hooked up to a bicycle. It made it a stationary bike, and had a few pieces that hooked up to the rear wheel and fork, and the demo was riding your bike down a virtual road. Not in the Tour de France or anything, just a random road. I can’t categorize this as exciting, but I guess if you were to take “real life” and replace it with “digital life” this is what you’d be doing.
  • The New York Post always seems to have a marginal-looking guy selling subscriptions at the weirdest places, and this was no exception. If you subscribed for a year they’d mail you a $40 gift card to Best Buy or something.
  • The Cooper Mini I mentioned earlier was at an exhibitor that does in-auto video, and had a typical 7-inch widescreen display mounted in the center console, and then a 42-inch LCD display in the back, facing toward the back, like out the back window. Not sure that I get this, but okay.

Which brings me to Dance Dance Revolution.

Whenever I see clips of DDR compos, it’s almost always groups of semi-attractive Asian or European tweens/teens/young adults doing cool choreographed moves, or one player doing both sides with his hands and feet, or some other crazy-assed thing like Germans doing DDR on a moving subway. I know that when one sees something from another culture (like say British Comedy TV) one only sees the best of the best and can easily get a distorted view of what it’s actually like (British Comedy TV basically sucks overall, but you wouldn’t know it from Monty Python and The Office). I get that.

However, a typical snapshot-in-time moment was like this red-haired skinny freckled geek with long hair (did I mention it was red?) sporting the geek beard and “dancing” with absolutely no finesse and next to him on the next machine a decently overweight person (couldn’t really tell the gender). It always amazes me when someone seriously overweight can actually move like that.

No I’m not slagging overweight people, as I’d have to be slagging myself, but I can’t move like this person and I am maybe 4 inches taller and 75 pounds lighter than they were. It was impressive. But it wasn’t attractive squads of nubile
youth, either. Hopefully this improved as the day went on.

A huge line had formed at the entrance when they opened, and when I left a few hours later, the line was even more huge, winding up and down the inside of the Javits Center. I considered selling the 4 wristbands that I’d accumulated going in and out of the floor with my son to help pay for parking ($35), but you know, ethics.

So I sold two of them to people that already paid for tickets for $20, the marketing end of that transaction being “skip this huge line that you have to stand in even though you purchased your tickets online” which was snatched up right away.

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