Tilt-a-Whirl

It’s E3 time and my interest in video games has begun to creep, ever so slowly, back into the realm of significance. You might have noticed, but I’m just making it easy on you by saying it outright. Anyway the point is that with all the news related to gaming flying around the Webs for the next week or so don’t be surpised to hear me yammering on about it for some time.

No, that’s not a threat. A warning, maybe? I’m not sure where you stand on the topic. Wherever it is, you might want to sit instead. Your comfort does concern me, regardless of how my writing skills may make that seem.

Anyway so Sony announced that they were ripping off taking a page from Nintendo and doing the motion-sensitive thing with their new controllers. Also, or perhaps as a result of, they have removed the “Shock” portion from their Dual Shock moniker and cut out the vibration feature.

This is a disturbing development to me. I admit that when the “Rumble Pak” feature for the N64 first appeared, I was unimpressed. It seemed excessively gimmicky at the time and I didn’t understand what the point was. Since then it has become fairly standard and I have to admit that it’s become a pretty integral part of most modern gaming experiences. Sure I can live without it: The Gamecube doesn’t have such a feature by default (at all? I never bothered to find out; I’m certainly not married enough to rumblin’ to go out and purchase something to give me the capability) but it has been done extremely well in some cases.

I remember the first time I played Silent Hill and your life gauge was given a tactile sense by putting a heartbeat-style thump in the feedback when you were low on health. Of course, it has been done poorly: I hate to keep harping on Indigo Prophecy but buzzing the vibration when your character picks up a bottle from a table? Huh? Lame. Still, well-designed force feedback can add to a game’s atmosphere, offer game status info without HUD elements and improve a game’s immersive qualities. So I’m not too happy to see it disappear from these newer controllers.

I’m also unhappy about this new directional sensor approach to games. I’m not discounting it outright because it’s something I’d need to try (recall that I more or less discounted the DS’ touchscreen thing but I’ve obviously changed my tune in that regard) but I find it hard to believe that this is something that’s going to really make gaming more fun. It’s interesting, sure, but do we really want to be standing in front of the TV waving our arms around and gesticulating wildly trying to rescue the princess or whatever? Because I’m kind of thinking no, not really. I’m sure things like EyeToy and other physically interactive control mechanisms have a certain novelty appeal, but I think it’s pretty obvious that it is just a novelty or else we’d be seeing the next Metal Gear Solid use the EyeToy or tilt controls and I really don’t see that happening. I’m kind of with Microsoft on this one in thinking that it’s interesting, but not really the way to go.

Especially for Sony. I can see Nintendo pulling it off because they’ve always been about making things that are just fun regardless of how hard core they may be. But Sony really only excels when it comes to catering to the baseline gamer crowd and I’m guessing this isn’t part of why that demographic is looking forward to the PS3.

Also, pricing the PS3 at $599 for the decent configuration… ouch. Especially since fairly logical rumors abound that around the time the PS3 is hitting shelves the XBox 360 will dip down to around $399 or $450 for the non-Core (ie non-nerfed) system, that means consumers will be presented with gift giving options of either the “good” PS3 for six bills or the “good” 360 for $150-200 less. Oh and don’t forget the PS2 rarity fiasco which we all should fully expect to be par for the console-launch course which means you’ll probably actually be able to find 360s. And one more thing: Launch titles are generally bootypants so the 360 should be sitting pretty come November.

Brief Hockey Interlude

I want to take a quick second to say that I’m tired of the officiating in the playoffs this year. They’ve gotten so much back-patting from the media and I honestly can’t tell if these pundits are watching the same games I am. They were supposed to call the games the same way they did all year, right? Ha. They have swallowed their whistles and are letting things go right and left; the difference is that they’re letting them go disproportionately.

Edmonton is a bunch of dirty cheaters. I said it. Those guys hook and paw and act like whiney babies all night long. They get a handful of penalties called and the announcers are like “those officials sure are taking care of business this year!” Sure. The Sharks are getting away with a few as well but we’re talking about the difference between getting away with a minor holding the stick call versus getting away with attempted murder on Milan Michalek (which should have been a five-minute major if not an ejection).

I mean come on, Ekman gets a 2-minute sit for not hearing a whistle and as a response he gets a pile driver from a tag team and they only get a two-minute roughing call? What? Unreal.

But I have to say, that penalty kill was astounding. I totally jinxed it afterward by mocking Edmonton mercilessly (I think I said something about grandmothers that could have scored in that situation) and they responded by laying down on Toskala’s leg and cheapshotting it in the net, but whatever. We still won.

I do think the Sharks need to just open up the hurt on these sissies and do an eight-goal whipping tomorrow night in Edmonton or something just to show them what losers they really are because I don’t like anyone the Sharks have to play but I forgot what it was like to have utter contempt for an opponent until now.

Man, I love the playoffs.

I Offer Aspersions Regarding Your Heritage

Interesting article over on Wired about video game boss fights. I think my favorite bosses are probably the ones who taunt you openly. Best boss fight of all time has to be Psycho Mantis from Metal Gear Solid, though. The worst boss of all time is the beast from Resident Evil: Code Veronica who cannot be killed and you have to run in terror from. One or perhaps two hits is all it takes it to kill you and it is literally luck that keeps you alive. Both HB and I gave up on this game after being slain by this stupid, stupid “boss” forty bajillion times over and finally giving up for mental health considerations. Neither of us have ever actually finished the game as a result.

On an only semi-related subject as I was sort of browsing around Wikipedia reading about video game bosses, I started thinking about older games that I never got around to playing but often wish I did. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time which everybody says is the best Zelda (or the best game) ever. They even have a version I think for the Gamecube that I’m just too lazy to track down.

Which got me thinking about games I wish would be either remade or re-released for current systems as ports because I would like to give them a shot sometime.

  • Resident Evil 2: Okay, I actually played this but it was a rental and I didn’t even get 25% of the way through. I tried to go back and play it on the Gamecube re-release but the graphics are so 1997 it was painful. It’s a shame because most of the series’ storyline (at least in terms of understanding the subsequent game plots) stem from this game. If anything needed the remake/facelift treatment, it would be this game. Maybe even a DS port would allow me to get over my graphic snobbery enough to push through.
  • System Shock series: Adventure-style games that people swear scared the heck out of them. Count me in.
  • Maniac Mansion/Sam and Max/Grim Fandango/Monkey Island: Lucasarts used to put out stellar PC games. I mean, I guess, because people are pretty hyperactive about them still to this day. So much so that they have a mechanism to allow them to be played on modern hardware. I never played any of them but they sure looked interesting and if they were available again (without hoops; I’m way too lazy for hoops) I’d definitely pick them up.
  • Final Fantasy VII: Okay, I actually played this game. A lot. But I think I’ve explained before that I never finished and it still bugs me that I didn’t to this day. Of course now the graphics look dated but since it was the last FF game that was actually playable, I would sure love to see a facelift on this puppy. And please, like a re-released, sexified new PS3 version wouldn’t sell 200 bogrillion copies in half an hour. If you don’t believe me, are we reading the same Internet?
  • Honorable Mention for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, because I could probably pick it up cheap and play it on the backward compatible PS2 but am too dim to actually do so. Plus it wouldn’t suffer from the RE2 issues because it’s 2D sprite-based and so it probably looks pretty good. In fact, maybe I’ll do that. Yeah.

False Though it May Be, One Can’t Hear ‘You’re a Genius’ Too Often

Weekend Bulletin:

  • I went ahead and put in a pre-order for my DS Lite. I don’t care what you say, that thing is smooth and I mean, c’mon: New Super Mario Brothers and new Secret of Mana game? You just don’t know.
  • As a matter of fact, for a system I once derided as something I didn’t really see the point of there are just so many games I want to play for it, I’m not sure where to begin. Aside from the above mentioned Mario Bros. and Children of Mana, there’s also the new 3D-ized Final Fantasy III (no, not FFVI, the real III); some sort of Dragon Warrior (Dragon Quest, whatever) where you play as a blue slime (I know, right?); the non-optional Mario Kart DS; Metroid Prime: Hunters; Age of Empires (turn-based!); Advance Wars: Dual Strike (more turn-based strategy joy!); Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow… that’s not even talking about my weird desire to check out the girl-targeted Princess Peach platformer nor the Resident Evil remake and oh hey, did I forget to mention the puzzle games? Yeah, Tetris DS, Meteos, Puyo Pop Fever and Bust-a-Move DS. Considering how hard it has been to come up with games I want to play for the systems I have at the moment (recall that I went back and played an old game over again because pickin’s have been so slim) a wealth of options is a blessing.
  • The Sharks won last night and for some weird reason they play again tonight for game two. I also caught some of the Ducks/Avalanche game yesterday afternoon and I have to say that Bryzgalov isn’t some lucky Duck. I mean, he’s pretty impressive. The side-to-side glove stop robbery on Alex Tanguay’s open net gambit was flat out brilliant. But the Ducks in general made the Avs look silly. In fact, considering how much the Sharks owned the Oilers in the second period, making them look pretty silly for not even coming up with a shot on goal for over ten minutes, I’m just about set to see a Ducks/Sharks Western Conferenece Finals.
  • Also? They play Pennywise at the Pond when the Ducks score a goal. That’s just cool. I mean, I don’t like the Ducks (I’m not allowed, see… I’m a Sharks fan), but I’m only saying they impressed me and I want to see the Sharks beat them to make it to the Cup series.
  • First things first, the Sharks need to finish off Edmonton. I liked that Marleau’s line was still cookin’ and the top line played well, but I need to see Cheechoo beat some of these chump goalies. I mean, Roloson? Seriously? Seriously?
  • Gin and HB picked up RAZRs over the weekend and after stuffing ourselves with barbequed ribs and chicken while cheering the Sharks to victory yesterday evening I showed them how to transfer files from their iMac to their phones via bluetooth. They expressed that I might be a genius which is patently and provably false but I had to forgive them because the beauty of bluetooth has been known to spawn uncontrollable fits of hyperbole in the past.
  • I caught an episode of a show I’ve been meaning to watch for weeks now called Deadliest Catch about Alaskan Crab fishermen. It’s pretty much as good as I had hoped and if you have a chance you might want to check it out. Those dudes are pretty hardcore. What else are you going to watch? Desperate Housewives?
  • What I wonder is whether the camera crews have to be as crazy as the fishermen to stand out there on those boats filming while they haul in those big crab traps. I guess it isn’t as bad as having to do the work but I still don’t think I’d be too cool with waiting for a wall of freezing Alaskan water to hit me in the face so I can get a shot of freezing Alaskan water hitting someone else, just in case the footage might make it in the show.
  • My iPod is starting to go south on me. The headphone jack is dirty and has poor connections now so it hisses, gets quiet and crackles when the jack gets twisted around or even nuged the wrong way. Plus it resets itself probably once every two or three hours of use and holds about half the battery charge it once did. Granted I’ve used and abused the heck out of the thing for two years so I’m not making any quality comments here, I’m just saying it may be time to start saving up for a new one.
  • So we’re going shopping tonight before the game to look for a new couch and possibly some sort of book storage unit. Our old couch was one of the first things we bought when we got married six and a half years ago and it was a cool couch back then: Two reclining seats, leather, pull-down center console with built-in heat and massage features plus cup holders and flip-up armrests with remote control storage. Fast forward to the present. As a state-of-the-art sofa it fails. As a comfrotable place to sit, it fails. As an attractive centerpiece to our living room, it fails on about sixteen levels. So it’s gotta go. I’d rather be spending the money on, say, an HD TV set, but even I can see the logic that having a super sweet TV wouldn’t matter if you didn’t want to sit in front of it.
  • The bookcase situation has gotten pretty dire, itself. Nik and I are both readers and, perhaps more pointedly, avid book collectors. We have about six bookshelves already stacked and stuffed with hundreds of books plus there are about six or seven other places around the house where books sit piled on top of each other. I originally thought I could just put some cinder blocks and plywood together but then I remembered that our apartment floor is not level and slanted surfaces and cinder blocks on the second floor… I mean, what could go wrong? Also, I remembered that I’m married and not living in a fraternity house so, you know, yeah, right.

Movie Meditations

I’ve watched a bunch of movies lately, partly because I’ve been sick but I’ve also just slipped into one of those moods. I mostly wanted to ruminate on horror movies but I realize that the number of people interested in such a subject is probably 1/32 the number of people who actually read this site which means roughly -25 people. So before I start talking to less than nobody, I should point out a movie that does not involve teenagers being stabbed in the spleen with a crowbar or whatever. I’m talking about “An Unfinished Life” with Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez.

I realize I kind of have to sell this movie because for one thing it has J.Lo in it which I fully understand would turn some people off to it right away but if you can forget all the Jenny From the Block–Bennifer–”Gigli”–Tabloid stuff for a second you might recall that she first hit a lot of people’s radars with a fine performance in a pretty good movie called “Out of Sight.” So regardless of anything else she can, when she bothers to, actually act. For another thing it’s a very low-key, quiet sort of movie that I can best describe as old-fashioned. There’s not a lot of high intensity happening here, the performances don’t involve people channeling dead celebrities and the most action you get is a short scene of an old man kicking a domestic abuser around a bit. It’s not even your average emotional drama where they play the tearjerker card half a dozen times to get the wimmin folk to break out the hankies.

And yet, it’s absorbing and it’s subtly funny and a bit touching but most of all it’s entertaining and—how’s this for a shock—when it’s over you just might feel better than you did before you started watching. I’m not guaranteeing you’ll love it, I’m just saying you might want to give it a shot because you might be surprised, pleasantly, like I was.

Okay, now let’s talk about movies with axe murders.

The Decline of Horror

There was a time when I would have gone as far as to say I was a fan of horror movies. Somewhere between my youthful fear of pretty much everything and my adult cynicism for everything else I absorbed cheesy slasher flicks and serials with a pretty impressive appetite. Part of it is that I really like special effects. Of course my favorite special effects are more of the Sci-Fi variety with spaceships and robotic warmachines but SF movies are usually expensive and tend to be event pictures which really don’t get made that often. But I like make-up effects, too, and since latex suits and red corn syrup are cheap, lots of horror movies get made. Special effects geeks have to either get used to droughts of new material to pore over, learn to live with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal or learn to appreciate horror movies.

The other part is that I think scary stuff is fun. The psychology of horror fans has been discussed a lot since people started paying to get frightened and it usually comes down to something like “we’d rather do it voluntarily in a way we know isn’t truly dangerous” and/or “the adrenaline rush from fear is addicting in a similar way to the pain of eating spicy food.” Whatever it is that makes people like to be safely frightened, count me among their number.

But lately I’ve gotten tired of horror. More than tired really, I’ve gotten just about downright sick of it. And it isn’t that it started scaring me more or even that it started scaring me less (although that’s sort of true—I’ll make more sense in a minute) it’s that horror has changed in recent years. Horror isn’t horror anymore, movies that are billed as genre flicks are becoming almost exclusively murder pictures. And that’s the opposite of what I like about horror movies.

I think about it like this: Graphic gore doesn’t really bug me in movies. It’s all special effects. And like I said before, I like the special effects. The thing is, I want there to be at least a passing stab made at giving those effects some kind of context. I want them to be the climax of a building suspense. I want them to be shocking or frightening or something—anything except for what they’ve become which is numbing. I’m going to annoy some horror fans here and say that gore is not scary in and of itself. Gore without a sense of psychological fear is just… well, gross. And I’m going to take another stand and say that psychological fear wrought by putting some human villain behind the machete or scalpel or whatever is a different kind of horror than what I’m looking for.

Look, I know that people are sick and sadistic and twisted and capable of revoltingly unspeakable acts of cruelty against each other. I got it. If I need reminding, I can watch the nine o’clock news. So thanks but no thanks when it comes to movies whose only idea of what might be scary is some dude with a pitchfork or an axe. That’s not really all that scary, it’s just depressing. It’s also about as uncreative as you can get. As clear as I am on how stupidly evil people can be, I know everyone else is, too, including Mr. Screenwriter. So if that’s the best you can come up with: Spare me. Spare us.

Give me some supernatural terror. Give me Jason. Give me Freddy or zombies or ghosts or vampires or something. Come up with something new. Make a twist on something old. Bring me a giant mutant termite or a living doll or a rampaging possessed washing machine, anything. Let those things spatter fake blood all over your set and give you a reason to cast decapitated molds of your actor’s heads, but I can’t stand to watch another pointless murder shown without any hint of subtlety or even fun (quick hint: extra sadism does not equal fun) just to put another point on the make-up guys’ resume. Seriously. Count me out.

If you want to have a human killer, it’s called a mystery. Give me some suspense. Make me guess. Show me a character I can root for who is trying to figure out who it is or why they do it so they can stop it from happening. Don’t toss in some fourth-rate teen idol on the way to a career making bad Japanese soap commercials as a hapless stooge just running away for 45 minutes. If you want to do real horror then do it right, come up with a monster. Give me some camp, a little cheese and a few laughs. Make it fun and then turn off the lights and give me a creepy score as the pajama-clad heroine goes the wrong way up a flight of stairs.

Or do it good and give me some fiction I can sink my teeth into. Move me to the edge of my seat like in Alien. If you can’t write it well enough to suspend my disbelief then head back to community college and pick up your accounting degree ’cause this just ain’t your bag, man. Write me something scary, not something sad. Not something sick. I’m tired of it.

Okay, deep breath. Rant off. I feel better. Now maybe I should go work on that possessed washing machine story. Someone’s gotta show these idiots how it’s done.

Toothy Grin

My medicinally-slowed brain forgot the other reason I fired up the ol’ WP Editor: The Sharks.

So we now know that the Sharks are the top seed still standing in the West. You will note that this is the first time such a thing has transpired since the current playoff system was established where the four bottom seeds all upset the top. So the Sharks play Edmonton and the Ducks play Colorado. Edmonton isn’t a bad team by any stretch but they didn’t look too good against the Sharks a couple of months ago (which is the only thing from the regular season I tend to take into account since the Oilers beat San Jose their other three meetings, those were early in the year and two were in shootouts which are a non-factor in playoff games). I will be heavily disappointed if the Sharks don’t take care of business in five games or less.

Colorado/Anaheim? I have no idea. Anaheim beat a very sound Calgary team and they even made the Flames look pretty silly for a big chunk of last night’s game (the Flames went for like 13 minutes without a shot on goal… in their own building) so they have good momentum. But Colorado beat a pretty solid Dallas team quickly and have had a lot of rest (the Ducks get one whole day). I wouldn’t be surprised if it was another seven game series and I wouldn’t mind at all if the Ducks came out on top which would bring a weary Anaheim team into San Jose for an all-California Western Conference finals.

Out East the opposite came to pass where the top four seeds did as expected and since I don’t follow Eastern teams that much you can apply liberal sodium to my predictions but don’t be surprised to see the Senators continue their playoff choking ways and bow out to the Sabres and I fully expect the Devils to make short work of Carolina. San Jose/Buffalo for the Cup? Yes, please.

Also the finalists for the NHL hardware were announced today. The Sharks have a few possibilities: Thornton for the Hart (MVP) and Pearson (Peer-voted Best Player) trophies and Marleau for the Lady Byng (Best Sportsmanship). Considering how rare it has been for San Jose players to even be considered for prestigious awards like this in the past, I think it’s pretty cool regardless of the outcome.

Still, I think the Thornton/Jagr race for the Hart trophy is an exact 50-50 toss up. I might have been able to make a case for Thornton over Jagr until New York’s meltdown in the postseason once Jagr got hurt and proved once and for all what he meant to that team. The Pearson will probably go to whomever doesn’t get the Hart so call those a wash. As for the Lady Byng, Marleau had 86 points and 26 penalty minutes while Datsyuk from Detroit had 87 points to 22 minutes in the box. Brad Richards from Tampa Bay had 91 points to 32 PIMs. I don’t know how the winner of the Byng is determined but mathematically speaking Datsuyk ought to win with a slightly better points to PIMs ratio than Patty.

Back to the playoffs, the best article I’ve read about the upcoming Oliers/Sharks series is the one on NHL.com, but the thing I think they missed is that San Jose will take Edmonton down provided Toskala is better than Manny Legace was for Detroit. The Sharks will score on Roloson, and Edmonton doesn’t have very many terrifying offensive weapons. They try to make up for this with a balanced, consistent attack across all their lines but as long as the young Sharks blueliners don’t make idiot mistakes and Vesa stays sharp, it should be too much for the eight seed to handle.

Dog, Sick As A

I’ve spent the last couple of days suffering through some sort of bizarre springtime cold/flu thing which has been not just uncomfortable but put me far behind in terms of work and other things that need to get done. And I’m still not much better than I was yesterday, but I’ve dumped my workload on my co-workers enough this week that guilt alone dragged me out of bed and into rush hour traffic.

Of course it hasn’t been all bad. I played my way through Resident Evil 4 for a second time since after finishing Indigo Prophecy I was disappointed enough with the last 2/3rds of it that I needed to remind myself how video games can be, you know, good. Not that RE4 is flawless, but on a general comparison scale we’re talking about a stack of fifty dollar bills versus a bit of lint culled from one’s bellybutton.

The strange thing about that is I hardly ever play through games twice. Especially if I went all the way to the end the first time ’round. And you know, I wouldn’t be opposed to doing again. Part of the fun is that the game is roughly 6,000 times easier each time through since you keep all your weapons and money from the previous completion which in my case means I have fully upgraded shotguns, sniper rifles and .357 Magnums plus ample cash to burn on rocket launchers pretty much whenever. All of that means that the tough bad guys are, uh, not so much. The comedy of the week came when I wandered into a cave-like area and the game went to a cutscene of a vicious-looking baddie leaping down from a platform weilding a chainsaw that I just knew was going to be aimed at my neck. Normally these guys take several shots from the most powerful of guns, but as he approached me all Texas Massacre-style, I put one lone round into his shoulder and just happened to spin him off the cliff in a pirouette of anticlimax.

Comedy gold. Or, possibly the DayQuil. Take your pick.

Anyway, I didn’t stop by to ramble about games I beat a year ago, I actually came to express my enthusiasm for the announcement regarding the DS Lite. I had heard since the Lite was essentially flying off the shelves in Japan that NOA might take that as a sign that they had sorely underestimated the profit potential of the device and would introduce it to us with a price tag in the $200 neighborhood. That caused some consternation because as much as I’m eager to try some of these games I’m thinking that $200 goes a long way toward an XBox 360 or a Playstation 3. Heck, that’s even a pretty nifty dent in the price of a decent games-playing PC. But Nintendo proves once again that they really understand the handheld market and offer this tasty treat for a mere $129.

I have nothing but rampant speculation to back this up but I’m thinking the original DS will dip to $99 and by Christmas you will be able to snare one for $79 or so. Not sure why you’d want one of those clunkers, but to each his own.

Also, I’d like to point out that this is my favorite picture of Joel to date. Sleepy nephews are awesomely adorable.

Divisions by Design

I was reading the lamentably sparse postings on Websnark the other day when I saw this entry about how Palladium games is in big trouble. As in, if they don’t get some cash to pay their debts in a hurry they may be out of business.

I should clarify a bit here. Palladium games makes an eponymous fantasy role-playing game and back in the 80s/90s had licenses to Robotech and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which were both really big at the time. (As an aside, you might be tempted to think that a TMNT role-playing game would be really lame but in fact it was quite a lot of fun for one-off adventures and character creation was a hoot as you weren’t limited to turtles, you could be a mutant of pretty much any animal.) Palladium also had a superhero game, a horror-themed game and a pretty popular game which touched on some Alias-type themes long before Sydney Bristow was ever a gleam in J.J. Abrams’ eye called Ninjas and Superspies.

As the license agreement time began to expire, Palladium introduced the Rifts game which promised “Megaverse” settings where magic and technology were combined in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future where there were portals (the titular Rifts as it were) that granted players access to other dimensions. Ideally this meant that players could put their characters into pretty much any setting as you could simply write it off as a Riftworld. This more or less drew all the original Palladium games under one umbrella since they could claim that the TMNT setting was a particular Riftworld and so on. Plus Palladium games used a company-standard system so in theory all games were compatible with each other.

Now, Palladium games weren’t my first foray into role-playing. In fact my friends and I used to play a diceless variant of Dungeons and Dragons during recess (yes, we were total geeks waaaay back) and the first actual game system I owned was Mayfair Games’ DC Heroes. After that I think I picked up some Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Second Edition books before finding Robotech. Robotech was our preferred game for quite some time because for one thing we were total Robotech nerds and for another it felt like a more advanced game than DC Heroes in terms of mechanics. It sounds stupid to say it out loud now, but at the time the fact that it used more than just a couple of ten-sided dice (which were essentially used as percentage dice) made it seem like a more “mature” game.

Robotech begat some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games, we dabbled with Ninjas and Superspies a bit and got accustomed to the Palladium system enough that by the time Rifts was announced we were pretty hyped to check it out when it was released.

The problem with Rifts, in the end, is that it does neither of the two things that I feel a good role-playing game should strive for: It isn’t a really solid universal system nor is the setting detailed and unique enough to really act as the primary draw. If you recall this is my same general beef with Dungeons and Dragons although I at least concede that D&D is good in that it is the sort of baseline standard for role-playing gaming in general so it’s perfect for putting together a one-off adventure or as a starting point for a group of players who may be relative strangers since if you collect 100 role-playing gamers I’d put money down that 99 of those are familiar with D&D and at least 95 of them have played it at least once. Which is generally enough to get a game going.

Rifts’ problem is that it doesn’t even have that standard of familiarity going for it so in order to play and enjoy Rifts you have to put up with or modify the game mechanics or you may just really like the general direction the game designers decide to take the setting. I suppose there are people who like the Palladuim system and I admit that in my younger days I thought it was pretty cool but in retrospect I note that my Palladium campaigns tended to have a lot of pretty generic combat partially because I was unimaginative but also because generic combat is pretty much the only really fleshed-out part of the system.

These days I prefer a system more like Hero where the game mechanics are enjoyable even if the party never even finds any combat to get into. If nothing else I prefer a game like Shadowrun where the combat is among the weaker points of the system and the skill checks or character creation is better. Combat in role-playing games is easy since as the GM you can pretty much guide it whichever way you want anyhow (“Oh, these guys just got an order to disengage—miraculously saving your lives”).

But Rifts had some interesting ideas. Clever character classes like Juicers and Glitter Boys were inspired and the attempt to include a mechanism for combining Big Robots with spellcasting fantasy characters and modern combat type archetypes was admirably ambitious if nothing else. I think that generally speaking I would prefer to try to implement something like this in a GURPS-style system instead but you can’t casually disregard the inspiration they provided.

I guess part of what casued the company to have trouble was a poor licensing decision to grant the Rifts license to a developer making a game for the (snicker) N-Gage. Now I’ve heard the game is good, which may well be true. But no one cares because the N-Gage was a horrible platform from the very beginning. It wasn’t some big secret either. I think it must have been Nokia and Palladium that were the only people who though the N-Gage wasn’t DOA before it even shipped. And once the reports came back after the E3 where it debuted in all its battery-covering-cartridge glory, it was all but settled that the thing was going to tank.

My point is that I don’t think that poorly managed companies should be rewarded for their mistakes just because they have done some interesting things in the past and I don’t think I’ll be helping with the drive to help keep them afloat. However, I don’t like to see game companies die. I still sorta hope they pull through just because of that, but I have little hope.

Pity.

Quick Note

So the Sharks made it 3-1 despite making it way more tense in the third period than was strictly necessary. One thing people keep forgetting in their exaltation of Patrick Marleau’s hat trick (not that it isn’t worthy of praise) is Patrick Rissmiller’s initial goal. If there was ever a dude who earned a goal, it was that guy. He pushed for that to happen about three times on that shift, working hard, forechecking, staying with the puck and not giving up. It wasn’t as pretty as the Bernier to Marleau dish, but it was more impressive from a strictly work ethic perspective.

Also, after looking like they might pull the upset for a moment it seems likely that Edmonton won’t be able to hang on against Detroit anymore. Since Colorado all but has its series in the bag that means that Detroit will likely play the Avs in Round 2 leaving the Sharks (assuming they can finish the Predators off, which they certainly should—I’m predicting they do it in six back at the Tank) to play the winner of the Anaheim/Calgary series. At this point it’s probably closer than most people thought between those two teams but I’m pulling for Anaheim because playing them in Round 2 would make for an easier series and the Sharks would get home ice advantage.

All Teeth and Fins and Poor Demeanor

Let’s talk about the Sharks for a second. Wait, what?

Oh. Yes, again. We’re talking about the most legitimate Cup-contending team San Jose has seen yet. What else are we going to talk about?

So I was fairly harsh a few weeks back on several Sharks players. I got into a discussion with Lister and HB about some of these players the other day after the Anaheim game HB and I attended. It was your typical guy/sports conversation in which guy A posits controversial theory 1 and guys B and C argue vehmently over theory 1, possibly suggesting counter-theory 2 and generally questioning guy A’s sanity at every turn.

In this case my beefs were with Scott Thornton, Nils Ekman and a general mistrust of the Sharks’ defense. I understand Lister’s indignation: He’s been a Scott Thornton fan since he turned some guy’s face into hamburger a few years ago. They made a fairly strong case for Ekman’s role on the top line as being all about skating away from the puck and opening up ice for Cheechoo and Joe Thornton. And they suggested that I was being too hard on the young D.

My approach to sports fandom is with great cynicism. I’ve been that Great Believer sports fan in my younger days only to watch teams stumble and fail, often spectacularly. My response has been to continue hoping for the best while building a careful protective layer of criticism so when my team finally does succumb to idiocy all I need to is point and say, “See? Called it.”

But I must admit that Scott Thornton has had a quietly impressive series thus far and Ekman—aside from business as usual taking the worst possible penalties—has looked pretty good as well. In fact, since the first game the Sharks as a whole have looked good. Tuesday night they essentially ran amok on Nashville, only rescued from a blowout by some early acrobatics by Chris Mason. You could point to the short handed goal as a sign of weakness on the Sharks part, and indeed it was a boneheaded play but a couple of things rang true about it to me. One is that the Preds executed that 3-on-1 rush flawlessly. They took the D-man out of the play and used the late attacker to simply burn Toskala with a shot he had no chance to get. Second was that it looked more like a case of exhuberance to get on the board in front of the home crowd than a seriously broken play. Had the pinch not been quite as deep or the bounce not come right at that moment and things might have gone down differently. I’m not saying they deserved commendations for the play in the least, but aside from that play and two, perhaps three slip-ups behind their own net on defense and I thought the Sharks looked pretty unstoppable the whole game.

A couple of additional notes:

  • The Sharks cycle the puck like absolute madmen. But I feel like they haven’t quite figured out that the Preds have watched enough tape to realize that just possessing the puck won’t win games so they cover the passes and the Sharks control forever but only get a few halfhearted shots on net with no dynamite scoring chances for all the effort.
  • Note where two of the Sharks four goals came from: Rushing players taking the shot. Outshooting the Predators 40-17 is good, but when 25 of those shots come after three or four minutes of cycling and funky passes and the end result is pretty much right into Mason’s breadbasket, I mean, they could have peppered him with 55+ shots if they’d stopped horsing around down there and just fired pucks in.
  • Especially in need of more shooting: Power Play. I get so frustrated on 5-on-3 situations especially when they sit there and play catch. Hello!? You have two extra guys. Shoot.
  • The Avalanche have a 3-0 lead over Dallas. Edmonton has a 2-1 lead on Detroit, with Yzerman improbable for game four. Assuming Calgary goes on to beat Anaheim and the Sharks can finish off Nashville, San Jose will have home ice for round two versus Colorado. Benediction!
  • Of course, that would mean it was up to Edmonton to beat Calgary because while it would be a fun Western Conference finals rematch, I do not want to have to play the Flames at all this postseason. kthx.

More Hockey

Not had enough? Okay, check out this site with some of the year’s best goals. Note Jason Spezza’s slick move (and the utterly useless defense trailing the play) in the “October” clip.

So I was listening to the local sports talk station on the way to work the other day and they had this… “band” in there. It was pretty much two dudes with guitars and I think one of them was the co-host of the show. Anyway, they decided to do this cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Suzie Q” only they changed the lyrics to “Jon Cheechoo.” I was seriously embarrassed for them.

Misc Weirdness

I stumbled across an interesting comparison image showing the various iterations of Lara Croft from Tomb Raider. If nothing else it gives one a pretty good appreciation for the graphics advancements in modern games. I was also interested to note that Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (IV) had the most unrealistic looking Lara of them all, in terms of her physical dimensions. Note how stupidly thin her waist is compared to her, uh, upper torso. I’m thinking spinal fracture city.

Here’s an article on the BBC (featuring dubious science) about cow farts. No, seriously.

Oh, and here’s a pretty nifty collection of links worthy of a bookmark featuring freeware to solve common computing problems. If you’re into the whole frugality thing.

Lastly, it seems that Nintendo has given the official name of their next-gen system: Wii. It’s pronounced “we.” I’m so not making any of this up.

Tales of the Customer Crazies: Volume Two

A couple of months ago I wrote about totally insane technical support customers. The condition continues. Witness this email service request I received from a customer:

Hello Support,
We are trying to configure our application servers to use our local authentication method. Using this method our users would log in with their network credentials which would map to application users that are configured to be guest accounts. Below I’ve attached instructions for the technical engineer to use with our requirements. That programmer/engineer will work with our analyst in order to set up our application to use the described authentication procedure. They will (shadow the database ID values in order to) configure this to allow employees to access the application. Then your analyst will do the testing of this system.
I need to receive the contact information for this programmer/analyst so that we can have our analyst contact them to develop an action plan. Please respond as soon as possible as I will be out of the office tomorrow (I’ll be returning Tuesday, September 6).
Thanks,

In case it wasn’t stupefying enough, let me clarify the point that this was sent to me. My role (in fact my job title) is Technical Support Analyst and as far as any customer is concerned, I’m the only person they should expect to deal with when they contact our support center. Sure, some issues get escalated to senior engineers, but there is no such thing as a “programmer/engineer” or a “programmer/analyst” who would ever contact a customer to implement a customized login routine.

We do have a consultation team which charges like any other on-site consultant to do this sort of work, but it most definitely isn’t covered under anyone’s support contract. Also note that of the five or so different support contracts we offer, they have one of the two cheapest which means that their expectations ought to be miles below what they seem to be expressing here.

Most baffling is the last line. September 6th? As in four and half months from now? I had a very hard time not replying with, “Hey, we’ll work on this when you get back from your trip to the moon.” And she prefaces the statement with “I’ll be out of the office tomorrow.”

I mean, that’s like saying, “I’m taking a fifteen-minute break. I’ll be back next Thursday.”

We often have problems on the support floor because our product is massive and it interacts with so many other products. For example, the team I work on is charged with supporting the web client portion of the software, but in order for it to work it requires a Webserver capable of processing Java Server Pages (JSP). This server must then be accessed by a web browser. So at minimum the product I support requires the use of a third-party webserver, a third-party servlet engine (JSP processor), the OS the webserver is installed on, and a third-party web browser. Oh, and the server needs to run Java (also third-party). On top of this we support a variety of each: Apache, IIS, WebSphere for webservers; Tomcat, ServletExec, JBoss for servlet engines; Red Hat, Solaris, Windows 2000/2003 for server OS; Mozilla and IE for browsers and the list actually goes on.

Technically we’re not required to troubleshoot other companies’ products, but we often do it when it’s clear that the problem isn’t really a bug with the other software but a configuration issue between their stuff and ours. This translates into a necessity for support personnel to understand a lot of various software packages. But sometimes customers don’t quite see the distinction.

Me: Tech support, how can I help you?
Customer: Hi, I’m having trouble with one of our applications. It looks funny.
Me: Okay, what are you seeing?
Customer: Some of the tabs are overlapping. You can’t even click the ones that are behind there.
Me: Hm, I see. Do you have any customized stylesheets applied to your IE settings?
Customer: Oh, I don’t use IE.
Me: Ah. I understand. Well, you can still use custom styles in Mozilla. Do you have any of those applied?
Customer: I’m not using Mozilla, either.
Me: …Okay. What are you using currently?
Customer: (proudly) Opera!
Me: Uh, yeah. Sir, we don’t support Opera.
Customer: Why not?
Me: Honestly, sir, I’m not sure. Probably because it has such a small market share that it’s not economically feasible for engineering to—
Customer: I don’t care about your economics! I’ve been using Opera for years, and I’m not about to stop now! We’ve standardized on Opera!
Me: I sympathize, sir, but—
Customer: I’ve never had a problem with your product and Opera. Don’t tell me it’s not supported!
Me: But I thought you just called because you were having a problem with Opera. And it isn’t supported.
Customer: Can’t you just download Opera and test it out to see if you get the same glitch?
Me: Well, I suppose I could, but—
Customer: Great! Let me know what you find out.
Me: The problem is that even if I confirm the problem, there’s nothing I can do about it. Engineering won’t fix anything to correct a problem with an unsupported third-party application. That’s what unsupported means.
Customer: Just look at it. You’ll see what I’m talking about.
Me: Couldn’t you have just shot me in the chest instead, sir?

Of course, sometimes it’s not just the customers that lose their bearings. We have a system that interfaces our telephones with our computers so we can track and correctly assign incoming calls. It works by doing a call transfer to the extention set via software preference whenever we pull a live call from a community queue. I worked from home last week so while I was there I had to change the extention preference to my home number so calls I pulled would come to me.

A couple of days later I was back in the office and a call came in. I pulled it from the queue and sat patiently with my little headset ready, waiting for the phone to ring. Nothing.

Several minutes later I got an IM from Nik:

nchamilton: There’s someone on the phone for you.
ironsoap: Uh, take a message?
nchamilton: It’s one of your customers.
ironsoap: ??
nchamilton: His ticket number is AC1566012.
ironsoap: lol

When I finally got it all straightened out, I waited for the call to show up in the queue. Finally it did and the queue info listed the call had originated from a contract number associated with the Central Intelligence Agency.

When I pulled the call and talked to the guy, he acted like nothing at all had happened.

It was like he already knew.

Rebarbative Rally

I’m lazy today but I want to update. This sounds like a job for…

Bullet Points

  • I attended a corporate meeting in San Francisco today. It was an hour bus trip (one-way) with some company provided snacks of dubious quality as an incentive. Unlike the Microsoft company rallies you see in famous internet clips, this was less of a pep rally as a sort of drab, state-of-the-company report. Turns out, the state of our company is “pretty okay, probably.” Inspiring!
  • I’ll count it as acceptable that the Sharks managed to draw a tie from the opening road games in their series. That basically puts them in a best-of-five with home ice advanatge. What I don’t find acceptable is the officiating so far in the series. It’s not that they call too many penalties (although I’d prefer a lot fewer, thanks) it’s more that they are so mind-numbingly inconsistent with them. Both ways. Each team has alternated in the young series from penalty box parade to getting away with murder. The series is tied but I’d basically give both games to the refs had the Predators managed to make the game yesterday even remotely interesting. As it is I’d say the Sharks were robbed of any legitimate chance to win on Friday and the Preds had the wind sucked out of their sails by a bunch of really random calls on Sunday. Going forward with the series I really hope these refs can get out of the way and let the teams decide who wins.
  • I caught Silent Hill on Saturday with HB since both of us are pretty big fans of the game(s). The movie wasn’t preview screened for critics (bad sign) and got a lot of bad reviews from those who made the effort to give it a rating. I don’t necessarily disagree with some of the criticisms (bad dialogue, some questionable acting, too much/not enough exposition) but I think considering the source material games are basically incomprehensible as well and horror movies aren’t exactly the place to go to see fine Academy Award-worthy performances that it did what it was trying to do pretty admirably. At the very least I was entertained for a couple of hours. I can’t exactly recommend it, but I wasn’t sorry to have seen it. What I was sorry about was spending $4.00 for a small diet soda that tasted like regular soda that had been sitting in melted ice for about eight hours.
  • I went over to HB’s place on Friday to catch the game and while I was there I tried to do a bit more work on the network I messed up. I was able to determine that their net connection was fine by plugging the ethernet cable right into my laptop so with no other troubleshooting steps revealing any useful information I diagnosed the AirPort Express as having some sort of issue; possibly a faulty ethernet connector. After we caught the movie we headed over to the nearest Apple store for our appointment at the Genius Bar to have it looked at. The Genius plugged it in and it worked fine for him which left us back at square one. I had to take Nik out to Whimsy‘s place for some tea party/Mary Kay pusher meeting so I couldn’t follow through with the new info, but HB called and said that he got home and just unplugged everything and plugged it all back in and stuff started working again so the final diagnosis is: Who knows? Man I love computers.
  • We caught the end of The Next Food Network Star last night and Guy won, which is what I was hoping. The funny thing is, I don’t know that I’d actually watch his show or not because I get kind of tired of generic in-studio cooking shows, but at least that unpleasantly-shaped, uncomfortably effeminate goofball Reggie didn’t win. Seriously, dude, dry up the waterworks. Even the chicks weren’t as weepy as you.
  • I picked up Indigo Prophecy for the XBox over the weekend as well. It’s a very curious game that I knew only from a comment made by a friend and the description on the back of the box so I had very few preconceptions going in. It works like an adventure game, mostly, where you wander around and try to figure out what to do. Usually it isn’t too hard to determine and the story is cinematic and intriguing enough to keep you pushing along, trying not to get stuck up in the game so the story can fight its way out. The strange thing is that all the “gameplay” elements are very abstracted from the action on the screen, such that action sequences are handled via a series of rythym game-style follow-the-leader joystick movements. In this way it’s kind of like Dragon’s Lair, which is sort of unfortunate because it kinda pulls you out of the action and forces you to think about something other than what your avatar is actually doing. It works in certain cases like when playing a guitar (the rythym element makes logical sense there) but when fleeing from a horde of mutated insects or kickboxing a punching bag it feels divorced from what the character is actually doing. Also failing in certain tasks merely ends the game forcing a restart which, for a game that is trying really hard to be an interactive movie, feels forced and simply reminds the player that—despite the sheen of freedom—they really are still on a rail. What’s almost the most frustrating is that I’m really interested in the story but I feel like I’m being needlessly thrust into interaction where it doesn’t add to the enjoyment. I’d almost rather be watching Indigo Prophecy: The Movie than guiding these characters through their morning shower routines and whatever.
  • Nik and I stopped by the mall for a bit yesterday so I could look for a plain black zip-up sweatshirt now that the weather is finally threatening to get nicer. My agitation at being shut down in this endeavour has led me to a brilliant business idea: Normal Clothes. I’d sell plain T-shirts without any Socially Inexcusable If Spoken Aloud and Largely Offensive Statements Played For Laughs Because They Appear On a T-Shirt; clothing that doesn’t force one to become a walking billboard; jeans that don’t cost enough to dent the National Deficit and seasonal clothing available year-round because weather doesn’t really care about our human calendars. Okay so maybe as a business it isn’t brilliant, but if such an establishment existed, I’d be their #1 customer.
  • I did find a pair of sunglasses that were relatively cheap. Of course, they were broken and I had to take them back.
  • Whomever said that shopping was therapeutic does not own a dictionary and clearly mistook “therapeutic” to mean “capable of inducing suicide.”

Dee Zyne

I got a chance to work from home today in an effort to figure out how to get our car back. It was cool because while I’ve sorta-kinda worked while not actually being in the office before, this was the first time it actually counted as a day of work. That my boss was cool enough to let me do this already (I mean, I’ve only been working this job for about four months) either means he’s got a lot of faith in me or he has no idea how clueless I am.

At least in this case I’ve done the self-motivation thing before so I’m not concerned about my own performance in that regard, it’s more of an issue where I really would like for this to be something I can continue to do on a semi-regular basis. In order for that to happen I need to show that not only will working from home not be problematic but also that my overall skill in my job is continuing to improve despite being away from the office on occasion.

Of course in terms of the car situation, there was some miscommunication with the insurance company and I’m still not completely clear how we’re supposed to get it back in our possession (I thought I would need to go with Nik to the tow yard it’s being stored in so one of us could drive it home). So in the end my working from home was not strictly vital but it turned out to be a good thing that I was here to help Nik sort out the confusion with AAA.

Anyway, the only other thing I thought might be of interest is that I’m working on a new design for the site. You can see a preview here if you like and I’m happy to get any feedback you might have.

Network? Yeah, Right

For someone who is ostensibly a computer geek and who makes a living solving computer-related issues, there are few things more frustrating than running into a stumper which negatively impacts someone I care about. Last night Nik and I went to HB and Gin‘s place for some barbecued steak to celebrate the first reasonable weather day in what feels like forever. The food was good, the company was excellent (as always) but after dinner Gin suggested that I give her new Sony Viao laptop a look to see if I could get her on their wireless network.

Troubleshooting network issues, especially wireless network issues, is not exactly my forte. It’s also not exactly my idea of a fun evening, but HB and Gin are exceptions to the rule because a) they seem to have mostly converted to Mac folk which I certainly respect and admire and b) they’re good people who had just fed me a marvelous dinner. What was I going to say, “Yeah, thanks for the steak but I’m not interested”? Hardly.

It became pretty clear off the bat that the Belkin PCMCIA wireless adapter Gin had and its associated software was designed by feral orangutans so it wasn’t going to be easy. But I forged ahead, fiddling with the connection settings, SSID keys and whatnot until I got to the point where it should have been online and working but I could get no traffic coming in from the Internets. Puzzled, I tried to transfer some of the settings I found on their AirPort Express configuration over to the laptop for a while and while I was doing that HB decided to show Nik a website he had found.

As he fired up Safari, it said there was no connection to the Internet there, either. So switching gears to troubleshoot the Mac, I started investigating. It was possibly the weirdest network issue I’ve ever seen: Everything was fine. The internal network worked just dandy, with the APE receiving the signal from iTunes to play over the stereo and the AirPort status was listed as on, active and connected to the Internet. Yet there was no signal coming from the outside world. Gin even kindly called Comcast to see if there was some freaky, coincidental outage at that moment but, alas, no.

What really baked my noodle was that I hadn’t touched a single thing on the Mac. Other than opening the configuration panels for the APE to look at the settings, none of them had been messed with. It made no sense. After an hour or more of frustrating trial-and-error, I was pretty grouchy, Gin seemed to be concerned for my sanity, HB was asleep on the couch and Nik was gently urging me to give up so she could head home. Somehow leaving their network in worse shape than I had found it when they had merely requested some help seemed very rude.

Eventually, on the verge of doing what inevitably leads to nightmarish support calls and wiping everything clean and starting from scratch, Nik and Gin finally talked me in off the proverbial ledge and promised that it wasn’t a big deal. After all, they reasoned, I was coming back on Friday to watch the playoff game so I could maybe sleep on it, get some inspiration or look up some online help guides and get it all back to normal in a jiffy. Unconvinced but now thinking clearly enough to not desire any kind of major catastrophe wrought by frustration, I conceded.

The funny thing about being a geek with a certain sense of pride in the moniker, I didn’t sleep well last night as my dreams were plagued by uncooperative network adapters who, for whatever reason, were semi-sentient and acted vaguely like domestic chickens.

No Gnus is Good Gnus

CALIFORNIA—Law enforcement officals noted today that a stolen 1997 Saturn SC2 was found only a few miles from the scene of the crime, parked near an elementary school. It is reportedly in rather good condition, parked with the doors locked. It has been towed to an undisclosed location for review by the owners’ insurance adjuster.

Short Attention Span Theat—Hey, Who Has Some Gum?

  • So I caught the Sharks game on Saturday with HB, which was a lot of fun. Afterward we convinced Nik and Gin to drive out and meet us at Lister and Whimsy’s pad with a cameo by RR for a fairly raucous but tasty trip to a local steakhouse.
  • So, Saturday was the second game I managed to attend this year. Jonathan Cheechoo scored a hat trick at the game I went to see for my birthday back in January. Cheechoo scored a hat trick on Saturday, too. I’m only saying.
  • Sadly after Saturday’s winning performance and eighth victory in a row, they basically rolled over on Monday for the Kings whom they most certainly could have beaten. Yeah, the game didn’t matter for much and no one wants to go out with an injury in a “pointless” game (anyone else get kind of jittery when Cheechoo went down from that collision?) but getting shut out? Not a good note to start the postseason on, I’m afraid.
  • So Thornton and Cheechoo managed, despite getting blanked by the Kings, to take home some league hardware for points and goals scored, respectively. Congrats to them both as I think they very much deserved to win. I doubt Thornton will be able to shine bright enough for the east coasters to have a legitimate shot at the Hart trophy for league MVP, but we can all rest assured that he is the most valuable player, trophy or no.
  • You know, ever since I saw Waking Life I’ve thought that animation-over-film is a very nifty effect. Check out the trailer for the upcoming film A Scanner Darkly and tell me that doesn’t look super rad.
  • I rented Tomb Raider: Legend over the weekend. Of course by weekend I mean “Monday I took off because I couldn’t stomach the thought of working another five days in a row,” but whatever. I beat the game in a day which suggests that the game is way too short (which it is) but does not suggest much about the quality of that brief experience. Overall I’d say Lara has her mojo back, although the combat needed more slow-mo effects than the one or two moves that provided it because those involved getting all up in some thug’s face (putting one scantily-clad adventurer in rather perilous circumstances). The story was a bit hard to follow since I haven’t completed a Tomb Raider game… uh… ever, I think. And I haven’t even picked one up since the Sega Dreamcast days so, you know, it’s been a couple of weeks. The fun factor of the puzzles and the visuals are quite nice but I really feel sorry for anyone who actually dropped the coin on the game. Ten hours. At most.
  • Beating TRL so quickly got me thinking about the sweet spot for game purchases. Basically it’s like this: Either you buy a game hoping you’ll play it for months and months and never really bother trading it in (lots of sports games fall into this category, as do really good multiplayer games like Counter-Strike and Halo 2) or you hope that you buy a popular game and manage to push through it in a reasonably short amount of time—but not so short that you would have been better served just renting it. For example, a $50 game will, within about a month of release, get you maybe $35 in trade-in value. Which means you take a $15 hit from buying the game. If you can make up that amount of gameplay in a shorter amount of time than it would take you to rack up $15 in rental fees, you come out on top. Since most rentals are about $1 per day, you’re looking at games that can be finished (without getting too stuck in one spot) in roughly 30 hours.
  • Finding 30 hours in a few weeks to devote to a video game… you’re on your own there.
  • The one bad thing about the car being found (okay, not bad per se, but sort of sad) is that the rental car we got from the insurance company, despite being a crummy Ford, is much nicer than the Saturn. It even has a CD player that understands MP3 discs. Mmmm…. 700MB commute goodness…
  • Public Service Annoucement: Roast Beef + Beano’s Horseradish Sauce = teh yum.
  • Also tasty: Woebler’s Spicy Mustard. Semi-related lameness: Woebler’s does not have a web presence to speak of.
  • Finally, Ryan points out that last week was the first time, at least since switching to the 888.net server, that I’ve updated five days in a row. Nice eye, Ryan. In other news, my buddy Ryan has no life. Film at 11.

A Chance to Shine

I don’t know if you recall, but I posted a long ol’ rant about why I wasn’t going to watch Alias anymore a while back. Since then, I haven’t, just like I said.

But you know what? When it starts up again next week in the final run toward the series finale, I actually am going to watch.

So what changed?

Honestly, nothing at all. As far as I know they still tried to let things go on too long, they still folded to stupid actor demands and they still have displayed no indication that they have a clue how to wrap this all up. Yet, I feel as though I must watch. Not because I care about Alias any more, but rather because seeing what they do with the endgame on that show will give me a good indication about where I need to set my expecations for Lost.

I look at it this way: The Alias crew (including Lost creator J.J. Abrams) has written itself into a monster hole. Getting out with any semblance of grace is going to require some very, very good writing. I see this going one of three ways:

  1. The end is a massive letdown. In keeping with the direction the show has been going since season three, there is nothing redeeming about the series finale. In this scenario, I lower my expectations for Lost to the floor. As in, “I’ll enjoy it while it’s good but the moment it starts getting lame, I’m outro.” I have no interest in investing myself in shows that are just going to end up sucking eventually.
  2. The end is a Matrix-like disappointment but not a complete failure. The Matrix could have ended any number of ways. The way I would have preferred it is not the direction they went, but I could at least see what they were trying to do and respect their choice. If Alias pulls something like this off I’ll remain cautiously optimistic about Lost and hope I never end up writing a bitter diatribe about it down the road.
  3. The end is a bonafide blockbuster, shattering my expectations with its awesomeness. If Abrams et al manage to pull this steaming pile of poo out of the fire and craft something worthy of the early seasons from it, I will gladly retract every negative thing I ever said about them and put my trust fully back into their capable hands. I will fear no Lost development and all will be well.

I don’t know how likely that last one is, but I think a clever writer could do something to shake things up. But here’s the catch: Even my all-time favorite TV hero (Joss Whedon) didn’t exactly knock it out of the park with his Buffy and Angel series finales. I’d classify both of them as secret option #4 in which neither show actually ended because you never know when you might want to head back to the well and have some sort of reunion TV movie or whatever. Not exactly the kind of thing that would inspire confidence for Lost, I think something like that would fall into category 1 or at best 2, depending on how clever the execution was.

But either way, here’s my prediction: If Lost doesn’t end after season four, it’s going to totally suck. Someone on a message board suggested that the only acceptably cool conclusion to Lost would be for it not to end and the mysteries to never be revealed. As endlessly frustrating as that would be, I gotta say he had a point. I still say that the show can be done and completed in a satisfactory way if this season’s finale marks the mid-point of the entire run, but unfortunately no one bothers to ask me how stuff should work; so with history as my guide I only hope that this Alias experiment works enough to allow me to keep enjoying Lost as long as possible.

No pressure or anything, Mr. Abrams.

On a Clear Day

So in case you didn’t quite catch the drift from the “More Stuff I Could Do Without” post a couple of days ago, my car got stolen. I had parked it in the train station lot, roughly as far from the one exit as you can get, underneath one of the “security” cameras’ lens. The car was locked and there was nothing except an ice scraper and my iPod’s $8.00 tape adapter visible inside the car. Come to think of it, ever since last year’s window-smashing burglary I haven’t kept much of anything in there so that was pretty much the extent of it.

There was no glass in the vacant space the Saturn had once occupied so they must have jimmied the lock. The responding officer said that they were having an 85% recovery rate in the city (but no guarantees on condition of recovered vehicles) and most cars were located within 24-72 hours. As of tonight at about 5:30 pm it will have been 72 hours.

I’ll be honest with you: Getting ripped off really sucks. But you know, it could be a lot worse. The insurance company contacted us and said that our insurance wouldn’t go up at all since it is a no-fault incident. They’re going to wait 15 days to see if the car can be recovered and if so, they’ll evaluate it for damage and do the payout on that or if it isn’t located they’ll pay “fair market price” (whatever that means) to replace it. Plus we owned the car outright. I’m not sure what would have happened if we were still making payments on it, but I can’t think it would have been all that great.

Besides, I was about ready to trade that car in anyway; the only thing holding me back was that we did own the Saturn and I wasn’t crazy about taking on another car payment just yet. As of right now we’re a bit unclear on how Nikki’s physical state will be once her eligibility for temporary disability runs out so there’s some question marks about what she’ll do for income. That impacted the choice to not trade in the car sooner but in this case it may also impact how we proceed from here. If Nik doesn’t get well enough to go to school (something she’s talked about) or get a regular-type job, she may have to find some kind of work-at-home plan which would actually mean we might not need a second car for a little while since I have clear access to work via the train/bus and it’s (hopefully) not a vile imposition on Nik to drop me off and pick me up from the station two blocks away.

Of course I’m a bit miffed at the train company at the moment. I really don’t understand why, considering how much they charge for fares, they can’t have some better security. In a twist of Murphy’s Law, I got one of those annoying fliers stuck under my windshield wiper at the end of last week saying they had been seeing a rash of break-ins and vandalisms in the park and ride lot lately and were planning a community access meeting for the 17th of this month. Yesterday they posted them on people’s windows again, this time mentioning car theft. I’m pretty sure I know what spurred that particular action. As expected, when I got the flier last week I threw it away, having no intention of wasting a weeknight at some boring safety meeting. Mea culpa (that’s latin for “my bad”).

So it goes.

Rain on the Parade

I’ve already apologized for not believing the Sharks would make the playoffs. But now that they are in there, I have expectations. Remember that we’re talking about the defending Pacific Division Champs who were within arms reach of going to the Stanley Cup Finals the last time we saw them actually, you know, play.

I’m not asking for a Cup victory this year. The team is still very young. However, we know that they can be a phenomenal team—when they want to be. So all I’m asking for is forward progress. They don’t have to win the Cup this year, but I want them to make it at least to the third round if not the Finals. Next year I’ll expect a Cup.

So here’s what concerns me: I want this team to be legitimate contenders for the Stanley Cup, even if they may be a bit too green to actually take it home just yet, and there are a couple of parts of their game (as a team) that is going to have to get better in a hurry if they’re going to beat the Dallases and Detroits of the postseason.

First though, a couple of things that suggest the Sharks need to be thinking “Win this year” and not be as forgiving of themselves as I am prepared to be. One is that they are a remarkably healthy team. Where other teams are struggling with aging veterans fighting off nagging injuries (Hi, Hasek!), the Sharks have missed very few games due to injury and the ones they have missed have been from lower-priority role-players like Parker and Thornton (Scott). The other is that they have a psychological advantage right now, coming off a dramatic uphill climb into the playoffs, breaking franchise records right and left and generally having the right people hot at the right time.

Still, all is not roses. The Sharks won last night but I was very, very concerned by some of the stuff I saw there. Observe:

  • Evgeni Nabokov: Dude. Dude. The guy is listed as having 17 saves, but basically all those saves were little weakling “shots” or low percentage dinks on unlikely scoring chances. Basically, those were 17 easy saves. On the other hand, every time the Canucks got even a half-decent shot on net, it went in. Nabby has to make some key saves. He didn’t. He was spared because the Sharks played pretty good defense most of the night (at least in terms of limiting scoring chances) but when I start wishing Toskala was in the net because Nabokov is looking uncomfortable in comparison, something’s wrong with your number one guy.
  • Which brings up an interesting point: Toskala has been hot lately, there is no doubt. But is this Vesa’s push to be a marquee name, or is it a temporary insanity that will come crashing back down at the exact wrong time? I want to believe that he’s just come into his own enough that whether Nabby is on his game or not the Sharks could go all the way, but I find it difficult. If Toskala has a postseason meltdown, I’m not confident that Evgeni Nabokov is going to come to the rescue.
  • The Sharks played ugly. Coyotes ugly. I’m sorry but that Ekman goal was a kick. Whether he made the kicking motion before it went in or after it hit his skate, the replay was clear that he intended to kick that puck in, and to me that should not be a goal. Why look a gift horse in the mouth? Because hockey refs believe in karma, and if you think this won’t come back to bite the Sharks in the tailfin later, you’re wrong. Plus you have to imagine how differently this game might have gone if that goal doesn’t count. If that’s the case, then Carle’s third-period goal only draws the tie with 8:36 left and Vancouver doesn’t have to pull Auld out at all. Remember that Vancouver only needed a tie to maintain their playoff hopes. Without the empty net, Cheechoo doesn’t score and the game goes to overtime. I’m just saying.
  • Never mind the kick-in goal, the Sharks got away with murder out there. I saw Joe Thornton on I believe the empty net goal hook his man and drag himself up into better body position before even trying to move his feet. It was like he was water-skiing. No call, and San Jose gets a goal. Patrick Marleau got called for a penalty in this game and that’s only happened about 12 times all year. It was embarrassing to watch and if I’m a Canucks fan I’m livid right now at the officiating in a critical game. Admittedly, Vancouver didn’t exactly lose because of the refs (they lost because they couldn’t solve Joe Thornton) but it certainly would have been a different game with some tighter work from the refs.
  • I appreciate the fact that the power play has put up a lot of points for San Jose lately. It has certainly made their seven-game win streak possible. But the Sharks typically have four or more extra power play chances than their opponent because they (usually) play a much more disciplined game. Why are games being this close? I think it’s because the Sharks power play hasn’t been all that phenomenal, it’s just a matter of probability. Get enough man advantage time and eventually something will allow you to score. Compare that to the fact that while not often penalized, it seems like every time they are down a man, the Sharks get scored on unless their netminder comes up big. What happened to the dangerous short-handed team from last season?
  • Was it just me or did Joe seem like he really wanted to score an actual goal last night? Is he getting sick of playing the set-up man? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him shoot that much. Okay, I guess that’s not a concern but it did kind of make me think that the Sharks didn’t really take last night very seriously until it was getting late in the game. Kind of a “yeah, let Joe shoot. What difference does it make?”
  • The difference, of course, being whether or not the Sharks have to play Calgary (or, more specifically, Mikka Kiprusoff) whom they are 1-3 against this season, or Nashville (minus Tomas Vokoun) which they are a slightly better 2-2 against. That might not seem like much difference either way, but when you consider that San Jose has lost to Calgary twice since Joe Thornton’s arrival on the scene and they actually beat Nashville back in November (one of two wins that whole month) plus again last month and I’d say San Jose vs. Nashville would be a very good thing for the Sharks. Plus that would put them into a position where if they did have to meet Detroit in the playoffs, it wouldn’t be until the conference championships after that veteran team had gone through two rounds already. Given the Sharks’ relative youthfulness, that’s about as much as you can ask for. Well, except for having the Red Wings knocked out by an earlier opponent.

Are Pee Gee

I was thinking about Final Fantasy games earlier today. I’m… really not sure why. But then I noticed that Nintendo has released Final Fantasy IV Advance and I thought to myself, “You know, I never played through that one.” Of course it was originally released in the US for the Super Nintendo as Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy VI was released here as FFIII until everyone came to their senses and skipped to naming them the same as they were in Japan upon Final Fantasy VII’s release. Since then it seems there has been a push to go back and re-name everything according to the Japanese numberings. All of which has done little except confuse the heck out of everyone.

But anyway, I was researching a bit and it looks like they have Final Fantasy I & II on one GBA cart; Final Fantasy III coming out for the DS soon; the previously mentioned IV for GBA and I noticed a page for Final Fantasy VI Advance but the only information I could find about it from some Googling was that it is projected for a Q2 2006 release… in Japan. So maybe it will be out around Christmas in the US?

Either way I think that I might see if I can find a used copy of FFIV Advance and/or I & II so that by the time the DS Lite comes out in the States next month I can have III on the backburner in case they delay the release of VI, which is what I really want to play on the GBA.

Here’s something else that struck me as odd: I don’t think I’ve ever finished a Final Fantasy game except for the very first one. I didn’t play the US FFII because my brother and I didn’t get a SNES until III was almost out (by that time FFII was so yesterday). I played the heck out of III, but I was competing with Scott, Dr. Mac and one of Scott’s friends for battery-save space and I think eventually my game got erased by “accident” when I was near the end. I didn’t have the patience to push back through.

Dr. Mac and I split the cost of VII and took turns playing it when we were roommates out in Texas, but during the game’s extended final sequence, I used my one save mechanism way too early in the proceedings and by the time I got to the final boss my supplies were tapped, my party was weakened and I worked into a three hour stalemate with the end guy. Facing the prospect of having to go back through roughly five hours of game to try again, I tossed in the towel instead. VIII, IX and X I tried and thought were so weak as to not warrant the effort. I didn’t even bother with X-2 or XI. I’ve also put in a stupid number of hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but never bothered to get around to advancing the story toward the end: I just like levelling up my guys and looking for secret weapons to add new attacks.

Maybe they keep making the “Final” Fantasies because I never see the end! I guess it can’t be final if it’s never finished…

My Words: They Are Tasty

I predicted the Sharks wouldn’t make the playoffs this year. I’ve rarely been this happy to be wrong. As pennance for my doubt, I shall force myself to refrain from making further predictions about how those playoffs will turn out.

No, really. I’m not saying a thing.

I mean it.

Okay, okay, I’m not making predictions but I will make an observation: No matter what happens you have to recognize that this team is pretty dang good. You know, when they want to be. But once you recognize that and then you realize that the average age for the team is 26 years (and that would be less if they traded 35-year-old relative geezer Scott Thornton like I keep saying) it’s tough to see them not being legitimate Cup contenders for some time to come.

I’m not saying they’re necessarily Cup-bound now, I’m just saying they have the raw material there to make it happen.

That’s all I’m sayin’.