Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Interesting factoid of the day

If you consider Medal of Honor for hte PC as the beginning of the industry's obsession with WW2, gamers have been playing WW2 games longer than the war actually was.

Its kinda sad, if you think about it.

Monday, November 21, 2005

Oh, yeah, right...

Xbox 360 comes out today.

Apparantly has a good opening volley with Call of Duty 2, Kameo and Project Gotham Racing leading the pack, with Perfect Dark Zero coming in with some mixed reviews and the sports games, well, falling flat.

It should be noted that the launch window (which runs for three months but might as well go until the PS3 and Revolution are released) has some very strong titles in it, including Gears of War and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, so it ain't over yet.

I'm not exactly jazzed, though. I don't care about graphics so long as they don't detract from the gameplay (such as by keeping a good frame rate), and the sports games for the 360 so far are all looks with no depth (or no new depth when comparing them to this year's releases for the current gen consoles).

So, yeah, hold off on buying one till you see an exclusive that really rocks.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

Going from enthusiast to critic

At least in terms of mindset.

I keep seeing this commercial for "ESPN Shotblock Basketball", a toy that ESPN is peddling night and day. Its basically a basketball hoop whose rim occasionally flaps up to block the shot.

And, well, I see this and automatically see how foolish a concept it is as a toy or a game.

You see, a game becomes frustrating when the part that makes it difficult is either random or out of the player's control or, god forbid, both. Random works well for dice rolls, but when a hit or miss thing is completely random will soon wane on the player's patience.

It's the fact that I so readily recognized this fact that gets to me. Its like a fan of movies watching a movie and, at the end saying "act two was too long and act three was too short". Its the process of recognizing the patterns within the media that becomes second nature that gets weird for me.

I know my sister knows what I'm talking about...

Friday, November 18, 2005

...

http://www.hcn.zaq.ne.jp/cabic508/rsf/frame1.html

...

Just watch it. It'll be the weirdest thing you see today.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Starcraft: A truly interesting Sci-fi universe

I was thinking today about how much people love the Starcraft universe. For those who don't know, Starcraft is a Real Time Strategy game set in the distant future in a far off sector. The storyline, while strong, has a few cliche's and a villian or two whose motivations are never discovered, but on the whole its a very good storyline, especially for a game.

But what struck me about it is the fact that the Humans, on the surface, are pretty screwed. Or should be.

You see, they've got two enemies in that universe. There's the Protoss, a highly advanced race with technology we could only dream about. The Minbari of the Starcraft universe, so to speak. They've got the high tech, they've got psionic powers, and they're more powerful in every cataloguable way.

On the other side is the Zerg, the big evil collection of species. They've got near limitless numbers, an extremely impressive biology that matched the Protoss's tech stride for stride, and a ruthless cunning that doesn't care about their casualties so long as the enemy is defeated.

So high tech on one side, the pinnacle of evolution on the other, and these poor Terrans in the middle.

Who somehow manage to kick ass and take names.

If you've ever played Starcraft, you know the feeling. The zerg are more numerous by far, the protoss are more powerful, and yet the Terrans always have a chance, despite being only human and not having the elegant technology.

The thing is, they've got the war tech down cold.

Blizzard released a damn good book, entitled Liberty's Crusade, which chronicles the Terran Campaign of Starcraft through the eyes of a reporter. This is an exerpt that shows why the Terrans could survive:

----

Let's not kid ourselves, we got our heads handed to us by the Zerg and the Protoss. Yes, tehy were like nothing we had ever seen before. Yes, their biology was different. Yes, their technology, or what we would call their technology was more advanced than ours in dozens of areas. And of course, they were billigerent and aggressive to the extreme, they knew where we were, and they had the advantage of surprise.

But (and this is a rather large but) we humans are about the most ornery cusses in the galaxy. We had been fighting among ourselves for as long as we've been in the sector, and we had honed our own battle technologies to the point where we were their equal in many ways. We had the advantages of interior lines of supply (that's military for "surrounded") and native terrain (that's military for "we're fighting them in our living rooms"). We could have taken them if we had gotten our act together.

So what happened? The very thing that made us good warriors - the fact that we had fought among ourselves - also made us horrible at banding together in our hour of crisis. We could not unite under one banner or even form a coallition. In fact, every time there was a chance for that, one faction or another did something to enhance the advantage of their own political agenda over the other factions. Often at the expense of humanity. I can't imagine the hive-minded Zerg or the glowing Protoss falling prey to such basic human drives as greed and power and raw pigheadedness.

Of course. those are all basic human drives, and that's why nonhumans were cleaning our clocks.


----

Humanity survived, of course. After all, what kind of sci-fi game would it be if the humans are all dead!

Looking at the unit rosters for the three factions, you can see what the narrator was aiming at. Of the 15 or so Terran units, only two of them have no special ability. Fully half, if not more so, of the Zerg and Protoss troops have nothing special for them. It's a uniqueness that allows the Terrans to have a chance even when outnumbered or outgunned.

Besides being a good game balancing concept, it makes for good sci-fi lore. The low-tech race manages to hold its own despite going up against a theoretically superior force becasue they're just so damn good at war.

Its like Starship Troopers, where the Humans are on the wrong end of the numberical and biological fronts, but manage to succeed because of a few millenia of practice.

Just a random rant :).

Child's Play

Penny Arcade's Child's Play Charity is back

Please go there, pick a hospital, and donate. I have, bought the kids in Hawaii a book.

Feels damn good.

Do it. Every little bit helps.

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Prop 77...

This is the big proposition this year. The one that, if passed, could make major changes to the political universe in California and, eventually, in the entire US if this catches on.

Basically its an attempt to put theoretically non-partisan judges in charge of redistricting. A very good idea. It does put a lot of power in the hands of three people, however, these people would likely be extremely trustworthy former judges, people who probably could be trusted with this power.

And one has only to look at what's happened in Texas in the last decade to see how much power redistricting can give. A gerrymandered district attempts to put as many voters likely to vote against the party in power into as few districts as possible. This allows the other districts to be won easily, pretty much preventing the smaller party from ever taking control again without a major universal power shift.

Texas is full of these districts. Hell, pretty much all states are like this.

Its horribly undemocratic.

And, yet, California is a Democratic state. Hell, its THE democratic state. Others might be stronger, like Hawaii, but none are bigger.

And if California gets more competitive, then Democrats in the nat'l government might lose even more power.

I'm going to vote for it, in the hopes that other, more Republican states will follow suit. Everything else Arnold put forth is getting one big fat no vote, though. He's defending them by saying that the Sacramento fat cats (one of whom he is, by the way) don't want them.

Gotta love the quote "I don't know about all these propositions, but if the politicians are against them, then I'm for them!"

Ouch. Yes, lets vote on whether or not the people we've voted to know the most about politics like these changes to the government! Brilliant idea!

Friday, November 04, 2005

A mayor who will not get reelected...

Mayor: Cut thumbs off graffiti 'punks'

...

Cut thumbs off graffiters. Whip children.

Wow.

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Financial prize == Crappy game...

If you watch ESPN, you've probably seen an ad for the console version of EA's hit game Battlefield 2. A $250,000 prize for the best player!

Now, the PC version has become something of an instant classic. A massive military shooter game with deep strategic concepts is a great thing, and despite EA's best efforts to screw up the game post-release, Battlefield 2 has thrived.

However, the console version? Not so much with the good. Gamespot gave it a 7.3/10, while not a horrible score, certaintly isn't what one would expect given the spectacularness of the PC version. A missed opportunity, to say the least.

There are two other games that tried to use money to bribe people into buying the game.

First, there's Advent Rising. It offered a lot of different cash rewards, including a $1,000,000 bounty to those who found the secret icons that would be hidden in the game after Xbox Live updates. But the game was a stinker, the updates broke the game, and the prize was recinded after technical difficulties.

Ouch.

The other is a PC MMORPG called RYL, which offers a $1,000,000 for the best player after a year in the game. And the prize hasn't been taken back yet!

Probably will be, though, because the game isn't what you'd call good. Certainly not compared to World of Warcraft and Everquest 2.

So what does this mean?

When you see a game advertise a cash reward for playing, especially when the game hasn't been released yet, its time to run away. Quickly.

Its like seeing a movie advertisement quote "NBC-TV". BS detector going off like mad.