Official Scrabble For Facebook does, in fact, suck

So over lunch I decided to give the Hasbro branded Scrabble the benefit of the doubt and loaded it up into Facebook.

Say what you might about the copyright wranglings of the clone Scrabulous - it had one distinct version over this now officially sanctioned one from EA:

It worked.

Loading the flash app was a long wait in the first place, and it took a reload before it seemed to acknowledge my IP address at all. Finally it did and I was pretty much just staring at a blank splash screen with little notion as to how to actually being a game. So I finally clicked the small text link above the huge flash animation to invite a friend and was greeted with this:



Wow. Every word really is a winner.

iPhone Pick: Galcon

I had gotten addicted to Galcon on the Mac, but the iPhone version is very much what you expect: a lot of twitch strategy in the palm of your hand. Basically you have a group of planets, you click on planets to send your armada to other planets and try to rule the galaxy. There's no resource allocation or unit distinctions - just click and go. It's simple but very fun.

It lacks a multiplayer mode, which is a bit of a shame as people make for far more interesting adversaries than the computer, but the game still manages to make for a decent challenge on the go. Also, the current version crashes occasionally on load - a problem that is currently plaguing a few iPhone apps. Hopefully a patch will resolve it.

Did Scrabulous Get Shut Down?

Signing into Scrabulous today brought back the following message:

Scrabulous is disabled for US and Canadian users until further notice. If you would like to stay informed about developments in this matter, please click here.

With "here" going to a very sparse page with an email signup form. The U.S. version of Scrabble recently released, and that might have sparked an injunction.

Webisode Watch: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

Apparently Joss Whedon got bored during the Writer's Strike and this project came forth. I'm willing to say it's the best thing to come from the WGA ordeal because it is completely excellent. Starring Neil Patrick Harris as a the budding titular supervillain and the always great Nathan Fillion as his nemesis, the show is formatted in part as a video blog and in part as a musical.

Highly, highly recommended - just get it now.

Blu-Ray Watch: The Other Boleyn Girl

There's two ways to talk about this movie. First is as a purely visual experience as pulled off a Blu-Ray disc and onto a decent HDTV. In this case, it's near glorious. The fabrics on the costumes alone will stun you. The settings are excellent. The lighting will give you a range from inky blacks to heavenly lights.

And then, as something other than a demo, the movie is pretty so so. It loosely follows history and The Girl couldn't really vouch for the accuracy with the book, the plot certainly falls under that category of adaptation which feels like it has been chopped into portions and some of the pieces which might have been important left on the cutting room floor.

It's not bad, it's somewhat entertaining, but I think I'd recommend The Tudors for your old English plot twists instead.

iPhone Pick: Urbanspoon

While it has yet to actually be used to determine our choice of dining, I have played with Urbanspoon enough to see that it is at least a great way to browse local eats. Basically you shake (or push the shake button) and the location, cuisine type (Asian, Italian, etc) and overall level of expense randomize jackpot style to make a choice for you. It works great in Chicago, I can't really confirm for other, or non, metro areas.

Game Play: Civilization Revolution Demo

There's a whole subset of games I've always respected but never really got hooked on. Strategy games often come under this heading as my strategy gaming hit something of a high watermark with X-Com and has been in drift ever since.

I played the original Civilization back in college (yes, I'm old) and it's practically the poster child for such games with me.

Civilization: Revolution has managed to change that for me. Sure, the hardcore Civ fans may complain ad nasuem about ... stuff. Honestly I don't know what they'd be complaining about since I don't really play the "full" version of the game. Civ:Rev does not, however, feel watered down or truncated. It feels streamlined and accessible. It doesn't feel oversimplified, just manageable.

More to the point, there are great little points during the game where you can get a thrill outside of the normal strategy routine. Berating former allies is always fun for a laugh, but I think my favorite was when I uncovered a tank from the Knights Templar and took it aboard my galley.

Sadly the demo ended about two turns later, but c'mon - tank. Knights Templar. Large wooden boat. How is that not awesome?

For Sunday: "Bringing Down The House"

From Snopes:



The driver and his 10-year old son were apparently (amazingly) fine.

Wii Motion Plus

I watched the part of the Nintendo E3 presentation where the Motion Plus was demonstrated. My first reaction is gee, thanks Nintendo - I really needed another accessory (or peripheral as I would call them, but The Girl mocks me so for it). I've wrist straps, plastic jackets, plastic steering wheels, numchucks, and a charger. I'm eyeing that darn balance board too. Now I've got to get some little dongle too? Does Nintendo make games or just video components to justify some weird plastic fetish someone seems to have.

And watching the Reginator drive a jet ski by leaning forward and twisting his wrists real fast doesn't help that "Wii gaming makes you look like a jackass" feature either.

But of course, the Wii Motion Plus has a very redeeming feature. It will finally give you that lightsaber game you've been craving to play. The real one, where you'll have duels and everything.

Which is pretty awesome.

iPhone Tip: Mail To Blogger

Sometimes I'm so dumb I could slap myself. Thinking that an app that would make it easy to upload posts and images to Blogger was missing from the appsphere, I started looking into way of making a native app do just that.

And then remembered that you can setup your blog to accept email posts quite simply in the settings and that you can just attach images that way. Quick and easy.

HDTV: Evening One

If there was ever a night not to have a somewhat contentious condo meeting about finances, it would be the night of the day your fancy new HDTV arrives. For most of the afternoon I looked on as the new TV merely stared idly at me, wondering what the hell it was doing on a floor without any fancy graphics to display. The old 36" RCA stared idly onward.

As a gadget addict, I rarely maintain the same electronic gizmo for more than a handful of years. Record setters include the PS2 and my old Toshiba DVD player - now both replaced by the PS3. However, nobody has anything on the RCA. I got it shortly after college after landing my first real job working on State Farm's then nascent intranet. That TV has seen girlfriends come and go, the dotcom crash, 9/11, our wedding and a truckload of digital entertainment. Now it waits to be pick up by and hopefully used by a happy family for what I will guess may be more years than anyone would suspect.

By the time we got everything cabled up it was about time to go to this meeting, but I did manage to see GTA IV as it was intended. Details about Liberty City cropped up everywhere, HUDs were perfectly readable and it seemed God was in his heaven and all was right with the world.

When I got back, The Girl and Leepus had been throwing virtual people in PAIN enough to start what was referred to as "a vendetta". Once again, details about the game popped into full view that we could barely make out before. Words on signs, details on models, that kind of thing. As Leepus tried to escape the vibrant phosphorous glow of the set, I pulled up fl0w and it was simply hypnotic compared to when we played it last, at the RCA's going away party.

Yes, I held a going away party for the TV. And while on that note, it's true that the title of this blog is now officially an anachronism. But so is "carbon copy" and saying that we should "tape that show while we're gone", so the name will remain the same.

We ended the night watching The Amazing Screw On Head, which the PS3 upscaled quite wonderfully. We tried to push through all of 300 off Blu-Ray but eventually high def fatigue set in.

I'll have a post about the general purchase logic that when into the TV later.

GTA Comes To DS ... Wii next?

I've been largely ignoring E3, but this tidbit that a DS version of the Grand Theft Auto franchise is inbound reminded me of a question:

Why wouldn't Rockstar, with one of the most popular game franchises on the planet, be putting considerable resources to getting it on the most popular platform on the planet? Surely a Wii version can't be far behind.

For Sunday: Dead Space "Lullaby" Trailer

Update: Apparently this trailer was banned by the ESRB and only released in Europe.

iPhone Games

What are people playing off the fancy new App Store anyway? I've heard horribly mixed things about the flagship game, Super Monkey Ball. It also occurs to me that some people may have to embrace a two fold app offer - one that is free as a trial and one that is pay. Getting people to pay a couple bucks off a screenshot can be risky business, as my old cell phone can attest.

I have three projects in mind now, but only one with any code to it. Now I just need time, time, time...

Some Catch Up

Everything has been about three shades of insane lately. The Girl and I have escaped at a friend's behest to the upper reaches of Wisconsin. My cell phone is even on vacation. My brain might be able to reboot at this point.

A bit of housekeeping though:

EA dropped by to say that they are having a sweepstakes to promote Dead Space wherein you win a copy of all the movies the creators felt influenced the game. There are a hundred sci fi and horror titles in the bag (see list) so statistics say there has to be at least three you like.

Alexander from Avatars United wanted to pimp, well, Avatars United, one of the fancy social networking type things for online players. He was flattering enough, so pimp I have.

I've been looped through several emails now about the fact that Slamdance Games will not be in existence this year. There's some grass roots effort to get it running in someone's garage or backyard or whatnot. Personally a bit mixed about this as I'm certainly of the opinion that the more community around indie gaming the better, but I'm still way on the other side of opinion that Slamdance was in the wrong last year concerning the whole Super Columbine Fiasco and can't help but think there's an ounce of irony here. The competition that turned its back on a game because it was too risky for sponsors now can't find the sponsors it apparently needs.

Probably needs a reboot too.