11.30.06

True Horror

Posted in Site News at 11:21 pm

I know that none of my regular readers exist on the West Coast, but I still ought to pass this along: James Kim and his family have been missing for five days. They simply vanished without a trace on Saturday evening. Mr. Kim is a CNET staff member, so it is unlikely that if he was inconvenienced he would not call; put another way, a guy who works for a major tech review site will find a way to call assuming he is physically able to do so. I certainly do not want to speculate at all on the matter, even though the existing evidence does point to something beyond a mere misunderstanding.

Of course, I have hope. After all, the entire world is looking for him now.

Wii Like To Party

Posted in Anime, City of Heroes/Villains, World of Warcraft at 7:08 am

Quick shots before I head into work. I’ve undertaken a minor little side project to get all my music organized, and that means rating each and every one of my 18,000 some songs. Fortunately, I’ve managed to work it out; 1700 songs a day, and I should have it taken care of in no time flat. I bet I could even do better on the weekends, y’know, if I got really bored.

World of Warcraft continues apace. I figured out a system, actually– I play on the weekends, exhausting my character’s rest bar, and then let her sit idle all week. So, yeah, nobody here cares. Gotcha. Oh, and City of Heroes’ Issue 8 did hit on Tuesday. So full of love for that, but I need to play my villain more. I might go ahead and skip that, though, ’cause a lot of the new content is hero-exclusive. The one thing that would really help my villain is the trenchcoat, which is something that a Carmen Sandiego clone really needs to have, y’know?

I got my hands on a Wii. Well, a Wiimote, actually. I saw the EB demo kiosk running Excite Truck, and handed over my (almost empty) wallet to give it a try (the controller was not tethered to the machine, so to prevent theft it was necessary to temporarily trade your ID for the remote). I can honestly say that I’m underwhelmed by Excite Truck. The game uses the remote as an almost-traditional controller, except that steering and jumping are tilt-controlled. Overall it’s not a bad game, just kind of… meh. What did fill me with absolute giddiness was the Mii Channel (yes, I started poking around the system’s menu, what of it?). After taking a few seconds to orient myself with the controller as pointer, I was quickly zipping along. It was a pretty unique experience, making a replica of myself on this machine. While the proprietors weren’t going to change the disc (it was 8:45p by then and he was busy with other, paying customers), I was excited to know that once Wii Sports did make its way into the machine, ‘I’ would show up. Ah well. Maybe next time.

Last thing: I picked up the boxed set of Crest of the Stars last night. However, it was close to 11:00 by the time I got home and finished dinner, so that’s something that will have to wait until the weekend. But rest assured, I will (finally) watch it.

11.21.06

Mouth + Foot = Furry

Posted in City of Heroes/Villains, Gaming, Writing at 6:55 pm

OK, two things. Last night (or this morning, by how WP reckons) I mentioned that I thought City of Heroes’ Issue 8 would be out today. Naturally, this evening, Lighthouse (one of the NCSoft Dev Liaisons) says that I8 is set for a post-Thanksgiving launch. So, wrong on one.

Also today, I made a bet that one of the three current players in the industry would not be making a return engagement when the next run of consoles comes around. While that’s a good five years off, I was immediately told that I was going to lose the bet. With the penalty being that I would have to camp out for all three systems and buy them on launch day, only to immediately donate them to a charity such as Child’s Play or Get Well Gamers. Honestly? There’s no real “loser” in that kind of a bet. (Besides, I’ve always wanted to camp out for a console, and money restricted me from doing so this time around.) I’m not going to sweat the outcome. But I am, naturally, going to remember it.

Oh, and I’m still working on getting the outline together for Incon. My plan is to read through the story so far tonight, and re-formulate the chain of events. The current goal is the end of January to have a finished manuscript. I already think I know what parts are going to have to be cut/re-written, but I’m leaving them as-is for now to make sure that I don’t accidentally cut something that a publisher would think was gold.

11.20.06

Long Time Coming

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News, Writing at 11:02 pm

It’s been just about a month since I last gave you folks the full rundown of my life. There is, of course, a very good reason why, and that is because the adage “It’s going to get worse before it gets better” has applied to it for the past four weeks. However, without going into too much of the depressing details, I think it’s safe for me to say that I am past the part that could be considered “worse” and am now comfortably in the section known as “better”. So let’s figure out just why that is.

Let’s start, then, with the obvious– my job. Of all of the jobs that I’ve had in the past few years, this one actually freaking fits me. It’s not relying on me to learn new technologies as I go, it’s not dumping me into a backend nightmare that’s hopelessly undocumented. I’m doing work I enjoy at a difficulty level I am comfortable with and am feeling sufficiently appreciated. And there’s the little things, too; like for example the contracting company’s liaison consistently wonders why I’ve dreaded talking to him every single time he comes by, even though he’s never brought me a single word of bad news (quite the opposite, but I can’t really say too much about that). Oh, and the personal coffee/tea machine in the break room means I may finally remember to bring my own tea in; while I like sub-Lipton’s Earl Grey and Green Tea w/ Lemon just as much as anyone else, after a month I need to have the real stuff again (preferably without scalding the hell out of my hands). Finally, jeans are pretty much the de facto standard there. I tried, really I did, to remain professionally dressed, but when my bosses are wearing rock band t-shirts, it’s hard not to feel just an itty bit conspicuous. In short, nothing short of a major disaster will force me from this job; we’re talking wrath of God type disaster.

Since my last post, I have indeed put some time into Final Fantasy XII, taking me to just over ten hours in. I’ve just left the mines and am about to meet the Marquis, and so far I am astonished to find that the Gambit system does very little to break the immersion of the game. Contrary to the popular assumption, the system doesn’t “play itself”; it’s merely a very advanced scripting system for automating battles. There’s still quite a bit of engagement and strategy involved; at least until you get the Quickenings. At that point the game just becomes an “I win” situation. Put this way, there are a handful of relatively high-powered Werewolves in the lower part of the Giza Plains. These are intended to be almost overwhelmingly powerful, and are like as not to wipe out the party who dares approach them. One Quickening combo of about five or six attacks will wipe out a Werewolf, dealing close to 8200 damage, which is exactly 7500 more damage than the Werewolves can handle. Bear in mind that these are Level 10 characters, and that I really don’t have the practice needed to pull off longer combos just yet. It’s mitigated somewhat by the License Board requiring exceptional diversity to get everyone their first Qs, but still. That’s obscenely overpowered and I love it. Imagine how much more destructive the summons will be.

Speaking of strange aeons, City of Heroes is ramping up for Issue 8. The dev team was notably silent today, leading me to believe that they were concentrating on getting it ready to roll tomorrow. I’d place money that they don’t want to do it prior to Thanksgiving, but I’ve been wrong before, and the fact of the matter is, losing Thursday would not be such a bad thing. We’ll see. Anyway, the segue is due to a graphical glitch that was introduced into the game around the time of Issue 6. The signage for the Magic-origin Enhancement stores was inadvertantly swapped with an atmosphere sign for “El Supero Mexicano Fine Latino Food Restaurant”. This has led to much chortling on the forums regarding just what kinds of forms the enhancements must now necessarily take. The current widely-held belief is that The Burrito That Should Not Be is the most popular merch in the new hybrid stores.

I’ve cleared Medium mode in Guitar Hero II, as well. Oddly enough, there wasn’t much of a challenge to it. I didn’t fail any of the songs on my way to the top. Thus unsatisfied, I switched to Hard mode and was instantly schooled. I am now a humbled man. So I jumped back to GH1 and started Hard mode there; not nearly as tricky, but I’m learning more of what I’ll need for the sequel.

Oh yeah, Children of Mana is a very interesting game. It definitely plays similarly to Secret of Mana, which is a good thing; however, the out-of-battle segments seema little clunky to me, and not being able to change equipment during a dungeon dive is irritating to say the least; basically, every time I increase in level, I have to stop myself from quitting the dungeon just to go back an equip new stuff. Of course, it’s a moot point, really, because unless I’ve gotten much better at avoiding the enemy’s patterns, I wind up dying and getting sent back to the village anyway. I’m looking forward to multiplayer, if I ever, y’know, find someone else with the game.

Much talk has been bandied about with regards to the new consoles being released. Some say it’s a sad commentary on society as a whole. Others look at it as a grand experiment with regards to the nature of scarcity. Me? I honestly have been way too busy lately to contemplate either new system just yet beyond the decisions I’d made beforehand. However, my choices were made with the understanding that the games I wanted to play would be on those systems, and so far most of my assumptions have been correct. Once the first of the year rolls around, I’ll be going ahead and picking up the 360 for Dead Rising, Gears of War, and Rainbow Six: Vegas (not to mention the XBLA lineup). Thereafter, the Wii will be on the list to allow access to the GC titles I lost, along with Smash Bros. Brawl, Sonic, and the VC offerings. Pretty simple plan and with good reasons.

…Besides, let’s be realistic here. FFXIII is still at least three years out, and MGS4 at most two. By the time one or both hit, the PS3 may be at a reasonable price. Assuming the system doesn’t fold before its killer apps hit, then it’s practically an inevitability that I’ll pick one up. Then again, it’s not like we’re dealing with “cut-and-run” Sega here. If there’s any company on the block who knows how to beat a dead horse, it’s Sony.

In the meantime, I’m happy with what I’ve got.

EDIT: I added the Open Games List over in the Journal’s pages section, to your left. You can see what I’m playing at a glance. Saves me the trouble of building a “What’s he playing?” system from scratch.

11.17.06

And now, Hell on Earth, brought to you by Sony

Posted in Gaming, Rants at 7:13 am

Rioting!
Armed robbery!
Crappy launch titles!

Oh yeah, Sony. We’re all ready to “Play Beyond”– beyond the brink of madness.

In the interests of fair and balanced games journalism (read: SHUT UP, SONY FANBOYS), the Wii.Play launch party kinda fell flat. But let me put it this way– nobody did anything worthy of arrest there.

11.15.06

I’ll take “Anal Bum Cover,” Trebek…

Posted in Gaming, Rants, Site News, Writing at 9:04 pm

You might notice that I am, in fact, online. That’s definitely a big important thing worth mentioning, so I’m mentioning it; however, it’s not the reason for this post. Most of you folks may remember my minor little rant about Joachim Isaac Mizrahi on NPR’s “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”. Well, Big Miz is back in my brain. He managed to wind up on Jeopardy last night with Soledad O’Brien, who if they were the only performers on the episode I would have gladly skipped it– but no, the third guest on Celebrity Jeopardy was Harry Shearer. So naturally I was sort of compelled to watch and wince every time Isaac opened his mouth. Don’t get me wrong; great guy, nifty fashions, and no problem with the lifestyle. But his godsdamned voice is just so IRRITATING.

I’ve yet to get back into my online games just yet but I’m working on that. Also, FF12. With any luck, if nothing major happens on Sunday, I’ll log some more time in it; but right now, I’m digging it.

11.06.06

Delay Of Game, 5 Yards, Still First Down

Posted in Rants, Site News at 12:45 pm

All right, I’m taking a few moments to remind you all that I am, indeed, still alive. However, I’m also still disconnected from the net for the time being. I expect that I’ll be back in business by the 13th but can’t make any guarantees. Talk to you soon.