The Common Sense Cowboy

My Life as a (Hot Dog) King

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:21:28 GMT

Acting on a friend's advice, I decided to take a break from my workaday drudgery, and try out the glamorous lifestyle of the executive class by opening my own fast food chain. I figured such a major change in profession warranted a matching change in scenery, so I packed up and headed off to the great Pacific Northwest. It sounded good on paper.

I checked the real-estate listings, and found myself a "nice" hole-in-the-wall type storefront near the harbor. It was pretty terrible on the inside, some kitschy faux-tree decor that looked more like something you'd see at a lodge in some tourist pit stop, rather than near the hustle-and-bustle of a major city like Seattle. Of course, all of the available properties looked like this, which is probably why they were so cheap. I'd have to do something about this later.

There were more pressing concerns, however: the counter and menu blanks were all there, and the walls were painted and the floors freshly-tiled, but there were no appliances of any kind. I hopped down to the local wholesaler and picked up a commercial refrigerator and microwave for a grand total of $500. Things were definitely looking up! I also grabbed a smattering of pre-packaged quickie-mart foods, since my "restaurant" didn't even have a place for a kitchen. Huh.

Now, since I was on the fast track to the nouveau riche, I sure as heck wasn't going to run the place myself! I decided to check in with the local staffing agency to hire some help. Now, I don't want to come off as elitist--no, wait, I should start practicing; this staffing agency required me to log on using a PDA. Because apparently we're still living in 1998, where people who haven't heard of Blackberries have to use their Palm Pilots to feel self-important.

Of course, immediately upon booting up this relic, I found that it had been infected with a virus that forced me to play through a Space Invaders clone before I could access any of its functionality. Nothing I couldn't handle; turns out my youth was not so misspent after all!

This is where things first started to get strange, though. You see, every single applicant was a mildly attractive female between the ages of 19 and 21, each one from a different country. Clearly, this was a rather..."selective" agency; the strange thing was they were apparently the only game in town, so I went ahead and hired one of the exchange students. Of course, before she started working, I had to get her a uniform. Apparently, Seattle differs from everywhere else in America because your average food-service grunt isn't forced to buy their own uniforms.

So I went to (again) the only uniform supplier in town. I asked for the uniform selection, and they just showed me a bunch of swimsuits. I told them they had misunderstood, and that I was looking for food service uniforms, and they showed me the swimsuits again. Aha. I was beginning to see how things operated around here. As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound. I looked for the ones with the least amount of fabric and made my purchase.

The swimsuit cost $1200. The shoes $900. If I was saving money on appliances, here's where I was making up the difference. I guess the exorbitant prices included bribes to the city health inspectors.

I had my storefront, my product, and my staff. I was ready to get started. Not half a day after my doors opened, however, my restaurant was already infested with rats. I was thinking about calling an exterminator, but my bikini-clad server co-ed informed me she was all too happy to deal with the problem herself. I told her to knock herself out, so she grabbed a ladle from my non-existent kitchen, knelt down on the floor, and began whacking the rats as they scurried from corner to corner. Each time she hit one, she shouted "PWNED!" It was kind of cute.

The rest of the first day went rather uneventfully, so that night I decided to check the comment box. About half of the responses were "staff showed an acceptable amount of modesty." I assumed they were being sarcastic, but after everything else, I wasn't sure in which way. Half of the rest were complaints that we didn't have what they were looking for. Of course, they made no attempt to indicate what it was they were looking for, so screw 'em.

After I read the comments I was about to head home, and I realized my server was still working and there were still customers coming in. I was not under the impression I was operating a 24-hour establishment, but she apparently assumed her shift never ended. And was kind of pissy about it. I figured if I didn't do something, she was going to just keep working herself into a labor law violation, so I hired me a second bikini girl and told the first to go home. The new girl seemed to immediately know what she was doing, so I just went home and left her to do her thing.

The next day, I came back from the food wholesaler to find a small flying saucer buzzing around my restaurant. I was a bit baffled. A customer walked in, and was immediately vaporized! My jaw hit the floor, but the girl behind the counter just kind of watched with a bored look on her face. Apparently this had been going on all morning! I decided to find out what was going on. I took a trip downtown, and discovered the entire city had been invaded by aliens!

Wait, what?!

None of the city officials seemed to care enough to do anything about it, either! Having aliens vaporize my customers was bad enough for business, but this was something else. About that time some shady looking fellow came up to me and told me he had this friend. His friend had a news helicopter. His friend had put missile launchers on his news helicopter. He figured that I, being a respectable restaurateur, would be just the man to pilot this attack news chopper and fight back the alien invaders.

So I did. And then I left the Emerald City and the fast-food racket for good. I just don't need that kind of headache--if I wanted to save the world, I'd join the space marines.

For all I know, one of my counter girls is still working the register.

This is a Twitter Post

Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:31:34 GMT

63 point Race to the Galaxy hand, not playing with any of the bonus objectives. That's a new personal best.

Grey and Grey

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:25:13 GMT

One of the big marketing points about Dragon Age is about how the player is forced to make tough decisions. How the game takes place in a world full of shades of gray. How there's no clear line between right and wrong. Maybe it's because I've only been playing for a few hours, but this mostly seems to boil down to filling your party with jerks. Let's take a look around the campsite, shall we?

Alistair: Your first and by far most--if not only--likable party member. He used to be a Templar initiate, even though he doesn't care much for the church for whom they work. 'Course, he became a Grey Warden before he was fully initiated, so he's also the only member of your party who isn't a criminal or a heretic. He's got a sarcastic streak but is rarely a full-on ass, and when push comes to shove, he's actually a pretty nice guy. Plus, he's generally in good humor, and his quips are pretty funny sometimes. This is why he's got a permanent place in my party, even though he's specced almost exactly the same as my main character.

Leliana: Leliana is the least unlikable of the rest. She's got some kind of pseudo-French accent, but that's not the problem. She used to be some kind of cleric, but was thrown out of the church because she wanted to rewrite their entire doctrine. They make her out to be some kind of flower child, though, who is just trying to preach love and happiness, and the stodgy old church ain't having any of it. All it really boils down to, though, is that she gets pissed off when you're mean to villains and murderers if they ask for forgiveness, and doesn't give you any credit for helping the church.

Sten is a dick. He barely says 3 words at a time, and they're all three negative. Sten is a member of a race of assholes, who was doing a little scouting in your country when he decided to murder an entire family on a whim. He said he wanted to repent, and by that, he basically meant "die fighting the darkspawn invasion instead of in a cell." I thought that sounded reasonable since we needed all the help we could get, but that wasn't really very smart, because this is an RPG, so he's not in a lot of danger of dying in battle. It looked like I had the option to kill him when I met him, and judging from the fact he's not that handy in a fight and has given me nothing but grief, I regret not doing so. Now I'm stuck with him, because there's only an "I think you should leave" option, not a "time for your repentance" option. Maybe if they pull a Mass Effect and make you pick a party member to die, I can pick him.

Morrigan: The obligatory giant bitch. She's a rogue mage who practices magic without the sanction (and against the wishes) of the folks trying to make sure mages don't get out of control and destroy the world. Again. She's also the one they put in to make the 13-year-olds happy, since she walks around with her tits hanging out and thinks everything is ironically funny, and that everyone and everything is dumb. She hates me for being a generally decent person, and always has some smarmy response or insult to fling at NPCs or my other party members, mostly Alistair. As enjoyable as it is to listen when Alistair insults her, the only reason I keep her around is because she's the mage, and in this game, your party goes down without a spell-flinger. As soon as I get myself another mage, she's out on her half-exposed ass.

Ogre: Ogre is an ugly-ass dog. And also technically your first party member. Ogre tries way too hard to be charming, like a television Jack Russel, but again, he is butt-puckeringly ugly so it doesn't play off that well. That said, he's not a jerk, so he's pretty high up the ranks in this party. Of course, he can't open locks or freeze zombies, so he is of limited use.

So there you have it. An ex-Templar with no love for the church, a blasphemer who wants to rewrite said church's teachings all by herself, a multiple-murderer, and an illegal magic user who is messing with power that once destroyed the world without adequate supervision. Edgy! Guys, if you really want shades of grey in your game, you don't do it by forcing the player to pal around with outcasts and criminals. You do it by letting them build a party of respectable, upstanding folk, and then putting them in situations where they have trouble deciding what the respectable course of action is. To be fair, they look like they are trying to put the player into these sorts of situations, and I can see that I might come across some actual tough decisions later. But when the deciding party is a rag-tag band of assholes, it's not so big a deal when they bend the rules.

Torchlight

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:20:30 GMT

Anyone who loved the heck out of Diablo back in the day would do well to check out Torchlight. It's a whole lot like Diablo without all the BS, which I guess makes sense considering I hear it's made by a lot of the same people. Or, to be less negative, it's like what you would expect the natural evolution of Diablo to be after 10+ years. I mean, you can load up all your crap common items on your pet dog and send him back to town to sell them for you while you're in the middle of the dungeon, to give an idea of how streamlined they've made it. Plus, you can cast spells off your quickbar, instead of using it only for potions, like anyone who's ever played an MMO would expect you to be able to do.

Honestly, Diablo was a pretty simple game, and from what I've played so far, Torchlight has absolutely captured its essence. Diablo 3 is going to have to be pretty mind-blowing to beat this out for my click-on-dudes-for-phat-lewt gaming mindshare. Or, you know, just spend another 2 years in development so I'm ready for a new one by the time it hits.

The funny part is that Torchlight, a brand new game full of gorgeous graphics (that can do widescreen if you like) and all manner of gameplay refinements costs exactly as much as buying Diablo 2 from Blizzard's website (not including the expansion). Heck, you'd be hard pressed to find Titan Quest cheaper (it's also $20 on Steam), and that was arguably the best Diablo clone up until now. If you're like me, and only played Diablo-style games single-player to begin with, Torchlight is really a no-brainer, especially for only $20.

Man, Trine, 'Splosion Man, Shadow Complex, and now this? I can really get used to all these super-awesome, cheap, downloadable games with modernized classic gameplay.

Also, the music for Torchlight is done by the same guy who did Diablo's music, so fans of the Tristram theme (like me) are going to be quite pleased by the new town theme.

Small Worlds

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 01:11:19 GMT

Alright, let's everyone stick their heads up their butts and let's start talking about Games As Art!

Ugh, let's not. Let's just talk about Small Worlds and why it is so good.

Small Worlds is an exploration game, and that's all its about. That's all you do. You cannot die, you cannot fail. The game-rules goal is to get to the glowing thing, but that goal is really secondary to exploration. The genius of the game is that everything in the game works toward that goal.

You begin each area zoomed in on your 3-pixel character, standing in a small bit of visible area surrounded by blackness. As you explore, the blackness recedes to reveal more scenery, and the perspective zooms out so that everything you have explored in that area is visible at once. And as the perspective zooms out, the initially dirty-looking textures on the individual pixels fade together to give the completed image a soft, almost needle-point quality.

The real joy, though, comes from the scenery itself. Each of the game's small worlds clearly has its own story, and its own feel. The great thing is that you are free to decide much of what that story is yourself. The game merely presents its worlds to you, and they compel you to explain them. I'm one to find heavy-handed messages even where they might not be intended, but I found the game refreshing in its hands-off minimalism with respect to storytelling. It simply paints a picture, and invites you to imbue it with your own narrative.

The great part about it is that because it is a game, and you are exploring yourself, you will often discover details that change your narrative as you reveal more of the picture. Or maybe they will reinforce the story you've come up with. It's sort of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the box art. Then once you've revealed everything, you've got the whole scene there on the screen at once.

It's also worth mentioning that this is a game worth playing with the volume on. Generally when I'm playing a Flash game, the first thing I do is find the mute button. In this case, however, the game's soundtrack provides an ambiance that complements the solitary exploration quite well.

Really, if I have any complaints with the game, it's with the ending. And the unresponsive jump controls (protip: sometimes it's easier just to hold down the jump button and approach the jumps like a bouncy ball). All things considered, Small Worlds is a great way to spend the next 15-20 minutes. If there is such a thing as an "art game," this is the only enjoyable one I've seen.

On Batman and Agency

Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:32:18 GMT

Most people probably already know this, but I would like to make this point very clear: Batman Arkham Asylum is a fantastic game.

Something struck me while I was playing it, though. Batman is weak. At one point, the Joker is standing over a deadly drop, precariously perched on some sort of machinery. He has just escaped from captivity and his stooges have taken control of Arkham Asylum, killing half the guards in the process. The other half are fighting for survival against apparently dire odds. Oh, and the Joker may or may not have planted bombs all over Gotham. The Joker has just told Batman that he has to go, because his plan still isn't complete, but before he goes, he tells Batman "or, you could just kill me right here, and end this right now," as he dances on the edge of the precipice. Batman thinks about it, but puts away his batarang. Because, you see, Batman doesn't kill. Because he's too damn weak to deal with some personal guilt in order to save hundreds of lives.

Shortly before or after that scene, there is another scene in which Batman is sneaking around, and he watches two guards mercilessly gunned down by a couple of inmates. Just before the trigger is pulled, one begs "You don't have to do this! I've got a kid!" The murderer's retort of "I know, I don't have to do it," suffices to prove his complete lack of remorse. Those murders are on your head, Batman.

A bit later in the game, you collect an audio recording of the new warden interrogating the Joker. That means that even within the continuity of this particular game, the Joker has been incarcerated in and broken out of Arkham asylum within the past three years. At what point do you realize that a criminal is un-reformable? At what point do you realize a criminal is un-containable? How many more people does he have to murder before you are finally ready to put a put a stop to his rampage once and for all? Apparently, for Batman, that point is somewhere completely out of view. I know what Jack Bauer would have done when he had the Joker there on that precipice, though.

OK, so I know it's pretty silly to go this deep into rhetoric for a video game. Especially one based on a comic book. Indeed, this was initially going to be a much shorter post. But then I kept on thinking. What if you could go ahead and pull LT to have Batman finish the Joker in that scene? What if there was a "Batman's finally had enough" button? Maybe that would end the siege of Arkham, or maybe it would make it worse! Either way, it would be giving the player an actual, meaningful choice about how he wanted things to turn out. And it would have been done in a much more graceful and immersive fashion than the "Good Ending/Bad Ending" dialog option you see at the end of games like Mass Effect that are all about player choice.

Preferably, you wouldn't even get a popup telling you how many "morality points" you just lost, you would just be choosing how you dealt with the situation. You would be given the choice of whether or not you stick to your Ethos as Batman, or whether you will do whatever it takes to save the lives of the remaining guards. And what if the game gave you this option all the way through? What if, after watching the guard gunned down in the scene I mentioned earlier, Batman decides this particular henchman isn't going to live to kill again? Or what if your partcular Batman decides to use lethal force on the armed henchmen who pose a higher risk to him and any bystanders? Or what if you just decide to become a homicidal vigilante, bringing ruin to every offender in Arkham?

If you did, maybe Commisioner Gordon would have words for you when you next saw him. Maybe he would decide you were just another criminal, and the police consider you just another baddie who needs to be locked back up in Arkham. There really doesn't even need to be that much of a gameplay element to it, either. One of my favorite parts of Deus Ex was right after the first mission, when you were in UN headquarters. Since your orders were to use non-lethal force, the guy running the armory would dress you down for crossing the line if you had gone around killing the enemies, and he wouldn't give you more ammo. That's the extent of the gameplay penalty--you missed out on a few bullets. But just the fact that he told you to act like one of the good guys was pretty powerful.

That could easily work in Arkham, as well. Throughout the game, the Joker is taunting you on the loudspeaker. As you disable thugs in a room, the remaining baddies get progressively more nervous, until the last one standing forgets his patrol and just starts walking around randomly while freaking out. All the time, the game is giving you these subtle reactions to your progress. If you made a few corpses in there, imagine how much more freaked out the henchmen would become. "What's going on? I thought he didn't kill?" Maybe a few would abandon their posts. The Joker (or any surviving supervillains if you decide to finish him) might also start getting nervous. Or angry.

Maybe you could drag their entire plot (or the entire game, for that matter) off the rails, just because the player decided he'd had enough of this mollycoddling and opted for a more permanent solution.

I don't know if that'd be a Batman game anymore, but I would love the hell out of it. Even more than I already love Arkham Asylum.

Overambitious

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:17:10 GMT

Scribblenauts is pretty much completely jank. Lord knows what's gonna happen if you click anywhere near your dude. And you can forget jumping--ever--unless you have a jetpack. It's become the first thing I type on any level. Also, let's say you want to stand on a stool. You have a 10% of doing that, and a 100% chance of just knocking the damn thing over instead. You'll notice from those odds that even if you manage to get on top of it, it will be sideways and no longer where you wanted it. And don't het me started on how easy it is to get eaten by a shark because dude decided your click was a walk command instead of trying to pick up an item.

It has taught me a few important life lessons, though. First, you cannot ride a unicorn into battle wielding a lightsaber, because unicorns are giant pussies. Second, a single Orc is able to take down an elf, a halfling, a dwarf, and a ranger, but a full-on demon is no match for a construction worker with a power drill. I also dicovered that rat poison does not actually kill rats, it just makes them kinda sick for a bit. PETA can stop worrying about that, I guess. Finally, I learned that vampire hunter hunters are surprisingly pacifist when confronting their quarry.

I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that this was destined to be a game where you make your own fun, and it's a terrible shame that almost every input mechanism stands in the way of doing that.

EDIT: Allow me to further clarify now that I am not typing on my phone, and therefore it is no longer an ordeal to write every sentence. The puzzles in Scribblenauts, at least as far as I have played, are not terribly clever. You could probably go through the whole game using only a handful of items. The game's conceit is that is meant to allow you to create clever solutions. In practice, however, the game cannot keep up with the player's creativity.

Say I have a switch. I can press that switch with a box, a hamburger, a hippie, or a house. But I will always be pressing that switch by dropping something onto it and leaving it there. Levers are even worse, since there should be a lot of different ways to pull levers. With another lever, for example, or tying a rope to it and pulling it (maybe with a dinosaur), or gluing metal to it and using a magnet to move the metal, or putting a hobo on one side and some change on the other. But you can't do any of these things. If you need to flip a lever, you need to move your dude over to it and click on it.

And don't get me started on trying to use ropes (or chains, or whatever). This is in exercise in sheer frustration, for several reasons. First, you move a rope by dragging one end, and the other end always follows the front end (not your path), so if you drag one end around a corner to tie to one thing, chances are some point along the length of the rope will intersect with something else, and the entire rope will be considered in an invalid position, so it won't attach. That's bad enough, but if you ever get the rope where it isn't touching anything, letting go will immediately cause it to become part of the scene and subject to physics. So you move one end to your point, it doesn't attach because the other end is touching something, so you move that end away, but now it falls to the ground and starts sliding off the corner of something, getting further away from your tie-off point, so you pull it back to the tie-off point, but now it's touching something again, and you repeat until you take the game back to the store.

The good news is that you will never ever need to use a rope, because it is not good for anything whatsoever. You can't attach it to the level, only other objects, you can't climb it because if it dangles down over a corner, dude will not climb over that corner, and you'll never be able to make the elaborate rope and pulley system you want to because, because you can't hook a pulley to anything, either. Hell, I don't even know if you can run the rope through the pulley, because I haven't been able to get that far in my construction.

So in essence, the game pretends it gives you the option of using any solution you can come up with, and then makes you feel bad because you solve every level with a jetpack, a box, a gun, and a pickaxe, even though that's really all you can do. I mean, sure, you could use wings, a basket, a laser pistol, and dynamite, but it's still the same damn solution. About the only creativity it really allows is coming up with one animal that will eat another in your path, and then putting something there to kill that animal before it eats you. But again, the gun will work just as well.

Bottom line, go find The Incredible Machine and play that instead. Scribblenauts is nothing but hype and frustration.

On Culinary Simplicity

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 17:03:19 GMT

Whatever catering outfit my company hires to provide lunches needs to learn how to make a damn salad. Let's take as an example of a good salad the perennial favorite, the Caesar Salad. Here's what you'll find in a Caesar salad:

Lettuce
Cheese
Croutons
Dressing

Furthermore, the cheese is generally a Parmesan or other sharp, pungent cheese designed to work well with the bit of kick a Caesar dressing has. That's how you make a good salad. It's simple, and everything works well together. If you're a fan of protein, wing some grilled chicken in there, and it still works.

On the other hand, our catering company conforms to no sensible theory on salad assembly, opting instead for what I like to call the "Yuppie at Jason's Deli" school of salad crafting. This view uses ingredients like marketing bullet points on the back of the box, the more numerous and exotic-sounding, the better. Here's what I can see in my damn salad:

Iceberg Lettuce
Some kind of Leafy Lettuce, or possibly some other sort of green
Cabbage
Onions
Tomatoes
Carrots
Tomatoes
Zucchini
Radishes
Red Bell Pepper
Celery (no, really)
Croutons
Dressing

Excuse me, what the fuck am I supposed to be tasting?! Every bite is a different sort of bullshit! And who puts celery on a salad?! Celery has a very strong flavor. This is fine if you want to eat celery, but presumably, by getting salad, you want to eat salad.

Look, even your average student bachelor has learned that when it comes to cooking, more is not always better. You learn that the first time you think making a single package of ramen using 3 packets of spice is going to be awesome. If you are going to cook professionally, at least take the time to learn what makes food taste good.

Oh, and also, while I'm schooling you guys, if you are offering cooked vegetables, cook your fucking vegetables. This has been a disturbing trend I've run across of late, and the next time I order steamed veggies and bite in to raw cauliflower, it's somebody's ass.

A Bipartisan Referendum

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:08:06 GMT

I've finally found something on which Obama and I can agree:

Kanye West is a jackass.

Mmm, Bacon

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:23:37 GMT

While "driving" home from work today, I saw a pickup truck with a rear windshield that read "FREE WILD HOG REMOVAL" followed by a phone number.

That's pretty brilliant, right there.

What? Why?

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:39:45 GMT

The moment you've all been waiting for has arrived at last! After 17 long years in the making, the blockbuster sequel to Don't Copy That Floppy is finally here!

I wonder what we'll be pirating in another couple of decades when they round out the trilogy?

Grill Skills

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 19:14:45 GMT

I have just purchased 50 feet of sausage casings, which should make about 40lbs of sausage.

Our first cold front blew in, and we may finally be done with triple-digit heat for the year.

Sporadic storms and high winds over the spring and summer have knocked several large branches from our trees, which we have saved to use as firewood.

And I think we've even got 10 or 15 pounds of excellent beef left (including a half-rack of ribs) from the grass-grazed cow we had slaughtered a while back.

Let grilling season begin.

Twilight

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 15:15:28 GMT

I was watching the Twilight Rifftrax, and there was one scene where the author of the books gratuitously inserted herself into the movie. I had no idea what Stephanie Meyer looked like, but upon seeing the scene, I automatically assumed it had to be her. Upon reflection, I'm pretty sure what immediately and subconsciously tipped me off was the fact that she was the only person (extras included) in the entire movie with more than 5% body fat.

I'm not griping about this though; There are at least a hundred other things in that movie I should harp on before I start getting around to the sorts of things that every other movie and television show does too. For example: this movie made millions, so I hope that for the inevitable sequel, they can afford to buy some colors.

The Problem with Obama

Sat, 22 Aug 2009 17:18:07 GMT

Lately, on the internet, I've been seeing Obama referred to as "PBO." I'm assuming this is short for "President Barak Obama." Every time I see that abbreviation, I can't help but wish his last name were "Jones." Or maybe "Roberts."

Health Care

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 23:28:42 GMT

To make a long story short, I racked up about $2500 in medical bills over the past week in order to find out I have...a sinus infection.

The bright side is...well, the bright side is I don't need anything drastic like surgery. The other bright side is that's a hell of a lot less than the shyster in the Oval Office and his band of Congressional thieves would like to bleed from me in order to have gotten all that for "free." Of course, that's not entirely accurate, because if he had his way I'd probably still be waiting on diagnostics, hopped up on prescription painkillers, just treating symptoms while missing work and passing the time by wondering if I had a brain tumor.

In My Head

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 23:31:39 GMT

OK, you know things are bad when you are able to think far more clearly under the influence of prescription narcotics than without them. And I don't mean that like some crappy musician who, like, totally writes way better music when he's smoking pot. This is demonstrable; I got more work done this morning than I did all day Monday or Tuesday.

In celebration of being able to think again, here's some random crap I've been thinking about:

If you want to be taken seriously, do not employ Paris Hilton. Case in point: Repo: The Genetic Opera. In the movie, Hilton plays a rich, spoiled heiress who is addicted to drugs and plastic surgery. Aside from the natural fit, it turns out that in the few numbers in which she participates, she is able to sing and dance about as well as just about anyone else in the (low-budget, independent) film. But you know what?　Every time you see her, you do not see her character, you see Paris Fucking Hilton. Even in this day and age, there's only so much mud you can drag your image through without completely ruining it.

I am sick and tired of hearing how PSN is on the cutting edge of new, innovative, independent and experimental games. PSN is an arid wasteland that is made unnavigable by the almost universal lack of demos. What are these people basing this misconception on, anyway? PixelJunk? Monsters is yet another stupid tower defense game, Eden is a glorified Flash game (which held my attention about as long), and Racers is so critically panned I haven't even bothered. Is it Flow? No, Flow is bullshit. If you have to be high to enjoy a game, as many reviewers seem to insinuate, it's a failure as entertainment. Is it TheLastGuy? While more entertaining than PJ Eden, it's really no more compelling. It sure as hell isn't Noby Noby Boy, because that's barely even a toy, let alone a game. So what's left? Flower? Yeah, it's a darn good game, but does one awesome "indie" game constitute the place for innovation? (If you're wondering why I put "indie" in quotes, just watch the credits.) Look, the bottom line is you'll play as many interesting indie games watching the Indie Games Weblog for one week as you will poring through the entire PSN catalog.

What the hell is up with these Time Warner commercials that keep trying to convince me that only being able to record two shows at the same time on a single unit is a terrible inconvenience that needs to be rectified immediately? I mean honestly! How soft are we?

Finally, the EEEPC keyboard really sucks.

Oh yeah, one more thing: on the bottle of medicine my doctor gave me to reduce dizziness, it literally says "May cause dizziness."

Nerd Rock

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:26:43 GMT

I just recently broke the 100-mark on the listener "rankings" at Rainwave. I'm not sure why I feel that's an accomplishment, but I can't help but feel somewhat proud.

In related news, I think my Video Game Name That Tune contest is shaping up better than I would have expected for how late I actually started putting it together. Unfortunately, I'll be surprised if I have time to finish integrating the content into the buzzer front-end before go time now that I have to get my truck running again before this weekend as well, but luckily I still have the Buzz controller buzzer controller prototype I threw together Friday night.

Speaking of plans, I've already got some notes on how to make this thing even awesomer next year, and I'm looking forward to see how difficult the stuff I threw together this year actually turns out to be. It's always easier to recognize the tunes when you're the one picking them out.

The Underside

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 03:07:01 GMT

Anyone who enjoyed Cave Story or Earthbound would do well to check out The Underside, because it's basically Cave Story and Earthbound put together. Like a delicious peanut butter cup. ...But with monsters. ...And all the terrible Dragon Quest crap removed.

Also, I'm pretty sure blunderchief plays the part of Johnny Five Aces.

Good Question

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 19:09:08 GMT

I was playing 1 vs. 100 on Friday, and one of the questions was "Which Food Network show is NOT hosted by Rachael Ray?"

That's a damn good question.

Trined for Justice!

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:40:10 GMT

I don't know if you've heard yet, but Trine is way past awesome. I mentioned I was excited a while back, but man, has it ever not disappointed. Exceeds expectations. The artwork is gorgeous, the music is fantastic, and it contains both a wizard and a grappling hook. I don't know what more you could ask for. Except maybe local co-op...which it also has!

Crapple

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 23:11:17 GMT

Things I have really wanted from my iPhone since day one: A2DP support.
Things inexplicably unsupported by the iPhone, which have led to actual loss of usability for me personally because the workaround is so stupid and broken: MMS.

Things added to the iPhone 3G in the latest update: A2DP, MMS, Copy/Paste.
Things added to the iPhone in the latest update: Copy/Paste.

Fuck you, Apple.

Going Limp Bizkit

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 03:48:27 GMT

Turns out the bathroom we spent 3 months and over $800 rebuilding is leaking through the walls again.

I need to buy a sledgehammer tomorrow. ...Unless, of course, anyone knows where I can find some detcord.

World of Goo

Sat, 13 Jun 2009 06:34:59 GMT

No matter how often I kept hearing World of Goo was super awesome, I avoided it. This is mostly because I had played its precursor, Tower of Goo which is not at all engaging or entertaining. I mean, if you're going to make a physics game, it's not going to be fun if your physics are terrible. Building a bridge or tower out of overcooked macaroni is not my idea of a good time, and worse, if your gooballs start wobbling, more often than not instead of settling down, their motion will actually amplify--with no action on your part--until your structure reaches catastrophic failure. I was afraid World of Goo would be plagued by all the same problems as Tower of Goo, and just couldn't imagine a game built around that premise being at all enjoyable.

It turns out I was half right. World of Goo does, in fact, incorporate all the mechanics that made Tower of Goo a miserable experience. Yet somehow, for the vast majority of the time, the game is ridiculously fun. A lot of it has to do with the excellent art and the awesomely understated--yet at the same time often rather epic--ambient music (you can download the soundtrack for free, and I recommend you do so). But most of the reason its fun is that while the overall building mechanic remains the same, its broken down into (generally) smaller and far more manageable challenges with a varied array of additional gameplay mechanics mixed in with the basic gooball stacking. In fact, in many levels, there's no actual "building" taking place at all.

Now, there were a few exceptionally frustrating places (almost all of them involving large free-standing structures) where I was still stymied by the gooballs' flagrant disregard for entropy, but for the most part, the game was a fun, light puzzler. Much like Braid, the gameplay concepts were constantly built upon from level to level, so you never found yourself doing exactly the same thing twice. This kept the experience very fresh, and helped keep me engaged even during the frustrating portions.

As far as I'm concerned, every game should do this, and just thinking about it makes me want to cancel my WoW account and swear off JRPGs for good. I mean, I'm not in school anymore, and I just don't have the kind of time I used to. Show me what you've got to offer and wrap it up, I've got stuff to do. World of Goo, Braid, Portal; I could get used to the idea of the $20, super-tight, 4-hour video game experience.

Box Quote of the Year

Sun, 31 May 2009 18:05:47 GMT

And the Amateur Marketing Award for the most unintentionally vindictive box quote goes to the 1996 PC game Obsidian for this gem:

"We hope you have as many sleepless nights playing Obsidian as we had making it."
- Adam Wolff, Howard Cushnir, Scott Kim, Obsidian Game Designers

Executive Decision: Infamous

Sat, 30 May 2009 00:00:05 GMT

Welcome to my new journal column, Executive Decision, where I make snap judgments based on limited information. It differs from the rest of my LJ mostly because I make that conceit clear.

Today's column: My impressions of the game Infamous based on the demo. The demo it took several days to download because the PS3 is a poorly-designed, overcomplicated, user-unfriendly, big dumb crappy pile of crap.

You see, suddenly and for no reason, my PS3 stopped connecting to the internet. Everything else in the house worked just fine, but the PS3 kept getting a DNS error. It wasn't a DHCP problem, because I entered in all the settings manually and it didn't help. It wasn't a Wi-Fi problem, because I ran a cable and it didn't help. 6 lengthy posts over 4 different forums later, I was able to make the problem go away by manually configuring the PS3 to use two specific DNS servers. Not the DNS forwarding on my router, not the DNS servers every other internet connected device in my house uses, no, just two random but somehow special DNS servers floating out in "the cloud."

So finally, I was able to download the demo. After I found it on the newly-redesigned-to-be-even-less-easy-to-navigate PSN store.

Anyway, I had the demo, so let's get on to My impressions of the game Infamous based on the demo:

"I really wish I were playing Sly Cooper 4 instead."

That's the gist of it. The rest of it is that the game is sort of like Crackdown, except your superpowers never seem all that effective, and buildings actually seem tougher to scale even though you can technically climb on more stuff, just because there's very little indication what you can and can't latch onto. Not to mention the all-too-literal superpower juggling necessitated by the unfortunate control scheme that seems more like some terrible mental and physical dexterity crash training regime. See, if you hold L1 you can target and fire with R1 or throw grenades with square (normally your melee attack), or do a "force push" with jump, but if you're already jumping, you use square for an area attack and R1 to glide, but L1 will ruin either of those, and sometimes triangle interacts with environment objects, except when R1 does, but only if you're not already pressing anything else, and then there's L2 which will suck power out of some things sometimes, but also seems like it does something else if you press it when you're not close enough/facing the right direction (but I haven't figured that out yet), but if you do start getting the hang of that, you can press down on the sticks for more context sensitive stuff, but not to duck, because to do that you have to hit the otherwise "roll" button when you're next to something you can duck behind, but not if you're on a ledge, because then you will just drop down, and not if you're holding a shoulder button, because then it does nothing. Got it? Good, because that 1-hit-kill suicide bomber is 2 feet from you and closing fast--don't throw a grenade!

It's also sort of like a stealth action game, in that you have to engage 1 or 2 enemies at a time to survive, and if you get hit more than twice you're dead, except you can't hide from the enemies, and they will start taking potshots at you before they're even close enough to show on your radar. Cover doesn't even work in this game--I mean, you can take cover, but you will still get shot. Also, your guy feels like he's running too fast most of the time, but lacks any sort of dash attacks to really close the distance when required, so when speed counts, it feels you're just kind of loping forward soaking up shotgun pellets.

I'm quite disappointed by Sucker Punch's output here. I really wish they would have spent that time making a really awesome PS3 Sly Cooper. Heck, I'd settle for if Infamous even felt like a darker, more "grown-up" Sly Cooper, but it's pretty clear they were trying to branch out into new territory they didn't have a great feel for.

Bottom Line: If Infamous sounds fun to you, but you haven't played Force Unleashed or Crackdown yet, you'll be far better served by either of those. If you've played both of those and are looking for more, just keep looking, 'cause it doesn't look like you'll find it here.