March 2007 Archives

This guy made a pretty amazing OS X app that lets one control beat triggering and pitch using the wiimote via bluetooth. Give it a go. I had trouble loading the actual loops, til I figured out that Stuffit was corrupting the audio files when I unzipped it.

Ok, I bit. They releasedTetris for the 360 as a full game(ie on a disc) though one would guess it to be a prime candidate for a Live Arcade release. At least it only cost 30 beans, the idea of paying 60 for any game makes me choke. I'm a fairly big Tetris fan and played a lot of it online with the DS release. Tetris Evolution offers online multiplayer as well but I am yet to venture there. The presentation is quite impressive, flashy menus and all that - but you can tell they're stretching for content; The play area consists of less than a fifth of the screen and the rest is filled with a hi def looping video of your choosing(which there are quite a few of). Some of the available background music seemed way off the mark with grinding guitar riffs and generally aggro feel. Luckily mellow alternatives are available. I hope there are at least other styles of blocks to unlock. So as you can tell I haven't played much of it yet. I'll update with more info.

So During a retrieval match in Rainbow 6 Vegas I hear one of my teammates speaking to someone else in his home asking them to make him a grilled cheese sandwhich. After receiving what I assume was a positive resonse he began talking about the game again, a bit overenthusiastically as before. After about 5 minutes of play, He suddenly bust out angrily and says Hold on guys, I'll be right back! I presume he pulled of his headset and then assumed none of us could hear him because he began screaming, verbally tearing into someone about the quality of the now prepared and delivered sandwhich. THIS IS JUST WET BUTTER WITH BREAD! YOU EXPECT ME TO EATE THIS?!? This was distracting to say the least and I attribute it to the opposing team's sudden comeback. And he kept on, and on. It sounded like he was going to get violent with who I assumed was his wife/girlfriend. The host kick/banned him after a minute or so of this. Post game the host started receiving voice messages from the vicious grilled cheese lover, the final one explaining how you don't know what it's like to have kids . God, it made it suck so much more that he was being such an asshole to his kid as opposed to a signifigant other . And why is this dude playing XBOX while his kids make dinner?!

Man, I love me some next-gen, texel shaded, dynamic luminescence transmogrified, 1200x aliased, straight up hi-tech good game graphics(no offense, lil' Wii). But in these next-gen worlds of lighting bloom, selective focus, and generally striking realism - I actually get a kick out of a glaringly obvious graphical glitch. I don't know why exactly, you'd think It would collapse the suspension of disbelief, spoil the realism, the tension. Perhaps it is somewhat disarming to the intended drama and I enjoy that. So aaaaanyway, I snapped a few blurry, badly angled ones from R6Vegas I thought I'd share with the class, Click on (index.php?option=com_easygallery act=categories cid=16 Itemid=28) to see.

Crackdown really is an amazing game. I love crackdown, there simple, said and done. . . . But really I'd say crackdown's not actually an amazing game, it's an amazing game world. yeah . . . ok an amazing sandbox. And there's some awesome toys in that sandbox; * cool weapons (well not a buch, but they're cool, right?)* great agency vehicles that transform as you progress (but gangs don't have comparable super attack battle tanks to challenge me?)* Bunches of aggresive enemy AI (that never seem to even come close to being a challenge, c'mon - they didn't have an evil agent they could throw at us?!?)* Cooperative sweetness (no versus bitterness?) I hate to gripe- really I love the game, and I know how much blood sweat and tears Realtime Worlds probably put into it - but it's just as IGN(or some other gaming site) said, It seems like a bit of an empty shell. An awesome building jumping, supercar morphing, orb grabbin', car throwin, game setup that maybe got a kick in the but out the door in the name of H3 beta and the promise of downloadable content to flesh it out. But man, we needs lots o' fleshin'! (yeah that last line sounds gross)

UPDATE: DAMN! They made good with the new downloadable content. Now the whole game seems much more complete.

Someone from my friends list recently requested a chat simply to mourn the loss of his beloved dog. The poor little guy drowned in this friends pool and the image doesn't seem to fade away for him. I spoke with him a while and tried to console; telling him about when I lost a dog very dear to me while holding him in my arms. I don't know if that really helped much bu the conversation ended with aforementioned friend deciding to go to bed. So perhaps I at least put his mind at ease. These type of stories are the great byproducts of Microsoft's social gaming network; people who wouldn't normally talk, share personal information, try to help eachother, actually can and do. I was always very frustrated with MS's products, namely their poor user interfaces, but XBL is really starting to show me a new side of the company. I hope they can see all the potential they have here for connecting people beyond a myspace level.

So you spend an unmentionable amount of time connected to your console of choice. You realize games aren't just for kids anymore, but you still feel conspicuous taking out your DS on the subway(even though you bought the black one because it seemed less obvious). What of your other hobbies? Your first life as it were. Well if I learned anything from people who are successful at doing something they love; it's the fact that they do what they love. And they do it a lot. So gamer, how 'bout a website, a blog if you will(and I know you will). Vent unexpressed longings, ideas, expressions and predictions. Celebrate the glitches and social oddities involved in your obsessive passtime. So time may still pass but at least the ideas that come with it will stay put.