Saturday, September 15, 2007
My Xbox 630 Chatpad arrived today in the mail - nifty little device. Barely feels like it will fit on the controller, but with a little force it pops on and feels very much a part of the controller. The key travel is nice, but they are spaced more widely than i usually like. Its lighter than I thought it would be, but does change the balance and feel of the controller quite a bit.
It makes both using the 360 implementation of Windows Live Messenger and the Xbox Live messaging service much easier to use. I wonder how long it will take before shooters and RPG’s start taking advantage of the extra buttons to make weapon switching and action selection easier - I suspect the day of the 360 MMO is drawing near now that both text and voice communication are so easy with the Xbox 360.
“Xbox 360 Chatpad” by sparktography
Monday, September 3, 2007
I’ve actually had quite a nice Labor Day weekend so far. This photo is unfocused, just like me - Today I thought I would use my day off for some photography but felt uninspired and unfocused. I didn’t really get any shots I loved, but somehow this one called out to me for some posting love. The processing I gave it was highly inspired by my latest fling: Bioshock.
On Saturday morning Brien and I went to Northgate to buy copies of Bioshock and I ended up spending most of the weekend playing it. Bioshock a very amazing game - I normally hate/suck at first person shooter games, but Bioshock does a great job of minimizing the twitch factor, and making combat much more strategy oriented. The game features a terrifying dystopian 60’s feel and genuinely manages to feel scary at times - best enjoyed in the dark with the 5.1 sound cranked.
Much like my favorite game Oblivion, Bioshock lets you play your way - creeping in the shadows or all out combat, it’s your choice. I love the Plasmids (magic in most games, bio-engineered superpowers in Bioshock), and find that they add a rich element to the game. Surprisingly for being a shooter I use almost no guns - my plasmids and the wrench you get in the opening scene carried me through much of the game.
“Sparky in a dream” by sparktography
Twitter - I first experienced Twitter back in February and didn’t really get into it at the time, letting my Twitter page fade into distant memory. Recently I got the unlimited SMS textng plan from AT&T and decided to give it another go via my mobile phone - a much better experience all in all. I’ve been having much more fun with it of late - not only are more of my friends on Twitter, but I’ve found new meaning and writing inspiration in the art of concisely crafted content fitting within the 140 character confine put in place by the medium.
iPhone - I still love my iPhone! I’m really surprised at how long the honeymoon is lasting - I’ve had my iPhone for about two months now and I still find myself quietly gibbering about how cool it is. Most gadgets have a 2-3 week honeymoon phase with me before I take a flight of fancy to some new toy, and the best of gadgets sometimes make a month - my iPhone has not only blown past that limit, but doubled it. What makes it so worthy of praise I ask myself: a fun to use, well implemented device that does pretty much everything I need it to.
PAX - The Penny Arcade Expo happened this year in the Washington State Convention Center, a big improvement over the overcrowding of last years shoulder to shoulder overly-olfactory cluster of un-bathing gamers. The extra breathing room this year helped make for a more open experience - much easier to get around. When compared to other technology conventions I’ve been to PAX has a certain charm in that it’s much more focused on the consumers (gamers in this case) than the technology. This leads to a more causal vibe than so many other events.
My non-vacation vacation is turning out beautifully! Yesterday I had a bunch of friends over for my ‘drinking and driving’ event featuring 2 Xbox 360’s, 2 Xbox 306 Wireless Racing Wheels, Forza 2, and Project Gotham Racing 3, and a pair of displays for some drinking, driving and mayhem!
Today I decided to go for a walk downtown with my camera. I walked down Olive, around Westlake center, and then back up Denny. I found the below shot of a worn down sticker on a power transformer:
I took a couple of other shot’s including a nicely framed Space Needle iPhone wallpaper, an antique power connector, and a neat stack of chairs.
“Mirror” by sparktography
Last night was driver-racing-tastic! Mike picked me up a copy of Forza 2 and the Microsoft Wireless Racing Wheel for the Xbox 360 and boy is it fun! Forza 2 is not a racing game, but rather a racing simulator. Rather than focusing on being a fun game to play and tossing physics out the window it focuses on accurate physics simulation, and really creates a highly immersive and realistic racing experience. Forza 2 makes every effort to correctly calculate all the forces taking effect on your engine, car, and tires and calculates their interaction with various road surfaces and the laws of inertia to make your in game car handle identically to a real world car with the same conditions and engine tuning. The difference makes it much more difficult to control your car and takes the fun out of the game for people who just want to go fast and crash hard - but bumps up the fun factor for geeks like me!
The Wireless racing wheel only helps in this endeavor: the force feedback and ‘intuitive’ interface make for a drastic improvement in game play. I’ve never really gotten into racing simulations before - a few ‘racing’ games like Burnout Revenge caught my attention for moments here and there, but the true sims were rather boring without a steering wheel, paddle shifters, and gas/brake pedals. Being able to feel understeer and oversteer make all the difference in understanding the laws of physics and their effect on my car, and gives the driver a much stronger connection with their virtual car.
The icing on the cake? They have over 300 cars to choose from including the 2003 RS6, which is close enough to my real-life car to give me the chills. Obviously a single night into my Forza career I haven’t earned nearly enough in-game currency (credits) to buy the RS6 but the mere thought of buying, tweaking, tuning, and painting the car of my dreams keeps me coming back for more! Until I manage to come up with the 100,000 odd Forza dollars I’ll have to be happy with my starter car: a 1995 Volkswagon Corrado VR6 - a decent track car, and one that brings back fond memories of when my friend Eric used to have (and tinker with) a Corrado.
After spending a final weekend catching up on stuff around the house and resting I finally am 100% healthy again! I got out of the house on Saturday long enough to finish up all of my errands, and went downtown to pick up a few things I’ve been out of for a while. I picked up a copy of Marble Mania, and got my place kicked into shape from being sick.
On Sunday I had planned to hang out watching the BBC/Discovery channel miniseries “The Planet Earth” on HD-DVD (my copy arrived earlier this week) with Troy, but he ended up sleeping most of the day and I was still feeling slightly under the weather and ended up not doing much. In watching a few episodes I highly reccomend it to anyone even remotely interested in nature - It’s some of the most stunnging footage I’ve ever seen, it’s beautifully mastered for 1080p on HD-DVD, and so far it’s done a great job of exposing me to facets of the worlds I didn’t even know exsisted previously. I’m looking forward to watching the rest of it over the next couple of days (and yes Troy - I will gladly watch it again with you).
I watched a couple of episodes of Planet Earth on Sunday, but for the most part just played Marble Mania and relaxed. In doing so I finally feel like I’ve shaken the last of my Pneumonia and feel ready to tackle my big week at work. Here’s to health and hoping the sickness is behind me!
One of the delightful things I found this weekend was a copy of Kororinpa: Marble Mania for the Wii at Gamestop downtown. It was a Japanese Wii launch title, but the localized version has just recently to US shores. It’s another marble game similar to Archer Maclean’s Mercury for the PSP, Marble Blast Ultra on the Xbox 360, or the Super Monkey Ball series available on various platforms, but this is the cleanest control implementation I’ve seen yet. It uses the tilt sensors on the Wiimote to control the playing field, but with far more precision than any other game I’ve played of the genre. It even allows (requires even on a few levels) turning the wiimote sideways or upside-down to navigate the 3-demensional mazes and catch your marble on a platform as it falls through space.
Having always been a fan of the marble maze genre I’m happy to see it continue to gain traction in the gaming market. Kororinpa: Marble Madness is tied for best implementation with Mercury in my book, although by using the tilt sensor on the Wiimote I would have to say it edges out Mercury in the controls book, but lacks the depth of Mercury – Marble Mania only manages to have about 50 levels, (with a mirrored option after you beat them all) and I was able to ‘beat’ it in an afternoon. I still will get some playability out of it as I need to improve my time in most of the levels to get the gold medal (and thus unlock a few more secret levels, and some new marbles to play with), but for most gamers it will be a fairly short lived title.
Here’s to hoping that Archer Maclean’s Mercury gets a Wii port at some point in the future, and that Marble rolling games in general continue to find homes on consoles, both in this generation and the next!
