A Black Day

So I get home from Atlanta last night, not late late by most standards, but feeling late enough when you've spent hours in the air that had been preceded by hours in an airport which had been preceded by wondering if the rental car was going to get a flat which was preceded by driving in Atlanta in general which really kinda sucks and ... well, you get the point.

So I wanted nothing more than to see The Girl, have a beer and play a little Fallout 3. A little Fallout 3 turned in a lot, and that finally panned out as I finally found that damn Museum of Technology. I was toying with the Mutant Army camped outside and ended up getting killed quite a bit.

One time, the PS3 didn't come back after trying to load the last save. So I restarted it. Then I died again - and it didn't restart at all. Just got nothing but a black screen.

It had been running hot, so I let it cool a bit and then tried again. I wasn't getting any screen. I thought maybe the OS had reset the video settings and the HDMI wasn't getting anything to show, so I spent a few hours toying with turning it on and off in a variety of ways to force the video to reset, but didn't get anywhere.

I decided to get to bed, in the morning it would boot up and then freeze. I tried taking the hard drive out, but even without the drive it just freezes up on the orchestra / boot screen.

While I'm sure this just karmic justice for all the comments I've made about the 360's Red Ring Of Death, but it appears to be completely beyond normal repair at this point. All snide remarks aside, finding decent information about this kind of thing is hard when it comes to the PS3. I think the fan died, though, the console had been running louder lately and now the fan doesn't seem to kick in when everything is starting up.

So I'm pretty bummed. I'll need to call Sony and get what is apparently called a coffin to see if I can get this refurbished. I'd love to be able to keep the hard drive intact, but I'll settle for at least getting a 40GB again.

*Sigh*.

More On Fallout 3

I think the short version is this: I am freaking loving this game.

If you've played either Bethesda's previous Elder Scroll offerings (especially, obviously, Morrowind or Oblivion), or if you're a fan of the Fallout franchise in general - this is an easy recommendation. People, particular the Fallout fans, complained early on that it would be "Oblivion with guns" and I secretly thought to my self - like that would be a bad thing. And I wasn't wrong. VATS works brilliantly and is one of those rare successful blends of turn and real times based systems that complements rather than annoys. The most complicated combat I've gotten into required several retries until I finally flanked the guys behind me, bludgeoned the scout before he could cause too much of a racket and then tossed fragged grenades into the house before the Super Mutes could do too much damage to the caravan.

In terms of a story, this game approaches Deus Ex levels of good for me and honestly blows Bethesda's previous attempts away. This doesn't feel like the story about gates or a story about some weird messiah - but it feels like your story, about you entering a wasteland of a world in search of your father. While the main character is mute, you do control the conversations with the other characters and feel like you have a part to play in the world.

You can wander off on side missions or continue on the main quest, although I'm not sure how much the game allows you to just plow through the main plot without leveling up a little first. That said, I don't feel like I've embarked on any "kill five rats" type of missions. They feel like solid role playing adventures. Not that there isn't plenty of emphasis on combat - the vast majority of the game is spent trying to blow some crazy thing's head off.

Sure, there's a few foibles. The graphics are mostly great, but the character models are not the best in the world, comparatively speaking, and occasionally the animations are a bit off. A couple of times my dog has been floating about. When I nuked a massive beast, it stay aloft a bit longer than it should. This is still the Gamebryo engine, after all, and if you played Oblivion, you know what I'm talking about.

Also, navigation around the ruined parts of downtown can be a massive pain in the ass. The city is walled off by rubble, forcing you to use the underground systems. This is sometimes fine, and does encourage exploration - but can get frustrating when you pop out in a completely unexpected location, sometimes far past your goal.

There's a few other things, like the fact that herding your dog can get a bit tiresome ... but c'mon, you get a freaking dog - so who really cares.

A big thumbs up from me, can't wait to play the game all the way through. Easily one of my favorite games of the year, if not my favorite game of quite some time.

Conversation on Dead Space

Matt of the Curmudgeon Gamer blog was playing Dead Space at about the same pace I was, so we got together a running dialogue of the gameplay (Matt is JVM, I'm JB):

JB: This is a beautiful game. I saw a couple of collision problems (one humorous one where the undefeatable deadite was sticking his head out of a crate) and occasional the physics on the bodies was odd. The HUD is design genius. The Girl kept telling me to turn the sound down, too, because I really liked playing this game in the dark with the volume cranked up. The Ishimura just breathes at times.

My real complaint visually is that we didn't get enough views of the scenery. When I first hit the bridge, I saved the game just to show The Girl the meteor storm. The inside of one Chapter begins to feel the same as the next by the end of the game, but the outside is usually interesting.

JVM: Dead Space communicates very effectively with sound. Obviously the scary noises are important, but the atmospheric sounds flesh out the world and enhance the sense of spatial relationships. What really blew me away was the effect of almost no sound when Isaac had to work in a vacuum. After the game trains you to know the sounds of your enemies, you suddenly find yourself in an environment with practically no sound at all. That contrast is one of the game's high points. Each time Isaac had to enter a vacuum after that, I shifted my play style to constantly scan the corners of the room for any movement, relying on vision almost exclusively.

-- Dead Space: A Conversation

We hit on the narrative, the graphics, the gameplay, etc. It was a pretty interesting kind of peer to peer gaming, not connected directly in any way - but through trophies and the like, we more or less knew where each other was in the title. He even noted our different play styles by the awards we had earned. Matt finished the game before I did and headed off to the land of BioShock, so it will be interesting to follow up later and compare notes on how the two titles match up.

Movie Watch: Quantum Of Solace

So I'm something of a Bond nut. Seen every movie at least once, can usually remember George Lazenby was that middle Bond guy, try to see the openings in the theater, etc.

One of the things that I love about the Bond franchise is that it has changed and mutated over the years. Craig's Bond is a far cry from the Roger Moore days, Dalton and Brosnan were different takes on the character than Connery, etc. Craig makes for an impressive bond and the whole "who was the best Bond" question gets more complicated with every outing.

Casino Royale introduced not just Craig, but a new angle on the franchse. Less gadgets, less over the top spy stuff and more upfront action movie action. Quantum Of Solace moves farther in the same direction with slightly less success, although it does still make for an entertaining film. Parts of the plot never quite connect with neither other parts of the plot nor the audience in general. It's not bad B-movie writing, but if the writers want to make a more realistic and gritty Bond, they'll need to make sure they have realistic and gritty stories to tell.

Part of me wonders why some of the people behind MI-6 (Spooks) haven't been previously tapped.

While Solace isn't great, it is still a lot of fun. I don't think it's as good as Casino Royale in general, it does keep a sharp character focus on Bond himself and the ties back to Royale (much of plot gravitates around Vesper) and there's enough artistry in the action scenes that we're still above the cheap jokes of say, The World Is Not Enough.

In short: a good, though not great, Bond flick which values action scenes over nearly everything other than Bond himself.

Game Play: Alone In The Dark Demo (PS3)

This is almost an exact duplicate of the post I just made.

I really wanted to root for this game, and for the first brilliant five minutes of the demo I was totally rooting for this game. It felt like a tight gameworld that might be capable of telling a story that I was actually feeling like a character within. I kept blinking, and blinking alone made me feel part of the scene - a brilliant use of cinematics and controls. This continues with the walk to the stairwell, and even the "realization" of the third person perspective.

Then it was like I was playing a completely different game. Then I was playing some Resident Evil knockoff (and no, you do not need to email me to remind me that Resident Evil was originally something of a AITD clone). The controls were lousy and when I died it felt like the game was fighting me more than some horrible nightmare in the dark.

What I wonder is - what would this rendition of Alone In The Dark had been if it had stuck to more traditional adventure genre roots? What if the gameplay had followed the first five minutes? The puzzles could have been logic, not twitch, based. What if this game had taken cues from The Seventh Guest more than Resident Evil 4?

Coulda, woulda, whatever. Hopefully other game designers will at least play this title to riff off of, but I don't see myself doing the same.

Game Play: Soul Trapper (iPhone)

I would love to recommend this game. It's basically an audio adventure title, replacing the basics of classic text adventure/Choose Your Own Adventure with audio clips. The writing seems pretty decent, as is the voice acting and the sound effects are really pretty damn good.

The gameplay itself needs another round in the cooker, though. On the second chapter, I was first intrigued by the "heart puzzle", where you are listening to the sound of your heart and try to control by pressing a single button. It's quirky, unique and potentially the kind of immersion that would really sell this kind of story.

Problem was - ten minutes later I'm still just listening to the stupid heart. I had no idea what I was or was not doing correctly. No clue as to how close I was to potentially solving the puzzle. Worse, when I backed out of the chapter - the game forgot I had completed the first chapter. So if I want to get back into the game, I'm starting from scratch (thankfully it was only the second chapter that tripped me up).

The game could benefit from a demo so that players could see if this kind of thing is for them. I appreciate where this game wants to go, but at $7 my experience with it doesn't really lend to a recommendation.

Why Exactly Does Netflix Hate Blu-Ray So Much?

OK, so I already complained about the tax Netflix has levied for renting Blu-Ray movies. They're more expensive, it's more manpower to sort, it requires yada yada yada whatever. Don't care. Paid it.

But why did they have to break the setup on their site? When I first set my account up for Blu-Ray, it offered and then subsequently updated any film in my Popcorn profile to the format. Perfect. Simple and easy. Was happy as a clam.

When the tax hit, they removed all the preferences. Everything reverted to DVD. I tried to update the profile, but was told I had to do it in the master account. I did that, and told the master account to choose Blu-ray over DVD.

Not only did this decision not descend down to the profiles, but the profiles were automatically set to "let me choose the format". Which I could not actually do since there was no dropdown to do just that. So then I went into the profile itself and was now able to tell it to choose Blu-Ray instead of DVD - which it also did not do. Instead, now I got the drop down where I could chose the format - but that format defaults to DVD.

Excuse me - I'm paying extra so that I can have worse service than I was getting for free. Anyone want to send the clue train over to Netflixville? I think it missed the stop.

It does at least now add new movies in Blu-Ray, but still - annoying.

Truly annoying.

Game Play: Fallout 3 First Impressions

I didn't get a lot of time with Bethesda's latest, but I got through the tutorial and (I don't think this exactly constitutes a spoiler) out of the Vault. My impressions so far are almost universally positive, I think everything from the interface to the voice acting feels solid, VATS seems like a great concept for mixing up FPS and RPG style combat, and the world (sorry doubters) feels like Fallout to me.

I know there will always be some dissenting views on it, but just like there were people walking out of Jackson's Lord Of The Rings thinking it just wasn't exactly like the book, sometimes we'll just have to agree to disagree.

I'm willing to guess that this will be Bethesda's best so far, but its still very early in the game for me, so give me a week or so to beat on it.

TV Watch: Heroes, Villains

I was not, in general, a fan of this episode.

While I agree with The Girl that seeing past moments interwoven with each it often a pretty neat idea, and in some parts this works pretty well in this episode - the only real meat here feels like the scenes with the Petrelli family. Everything about Sylar just feels a bit surreal and potentially unbelievable. Why would The Company risk keeping him out "in the wild" when their entire reason for being is a deep paranoia about the potential dangers of the superpowered? It kinda undercuts all those "can you imagine letting Generic Example X walk around freely" moments when you know someone was thinking "let's keep psychokiller who steals powers off the hook for a while". It was clearly a forced setup to get more Gabe and Elle time.

It was nice to get more depth on Ma and Pa Petrelli, though, as it gives them some added weight as the prime motivators for the plotline. I would have liked to have know more about the experiments, the "artificial" heroes versus the "naturals" as it were - but I get that they have to save stuff for later.

I do think it's interesting that two of the most overpowered characters are the clinch of the cliffhanger...

Game Play: Mirror's Edge Demo

With NaNo about, I don't have much time for either blogging or gaming, but I thought I'd get a quick note about EA's much anticipated Mirror's Edge based on the brief demo that came out recently.

In short - I found the tutorial portion of the demo to be incredibly frustrating. It's a toss up for me, actually, which was more of a pain in the ass - "balancing" on the stupid pipe or executing the run, turn, kick as specifically as the computer wanted. In the first example, the mechanic just seems insanely poorly tuned - for someone as capable and balanced as Faith seems to be, to fail repeatedly at the task felt like a break in immersion and a ridiculously tedious exercise. In the latter, I kept managing to make it to the point I was going for - only to have the game pull me back because I didn't get there in the prescribed arc or something.

Some redemption kicks in when the story starts up and absolutely - the art design and use of first person perspective is unique and engaging. It's just that that jumping mechanic means that the game is in part at least a first person platformer and brings in some of the weight that genre implies.

I'll have to wait for a full review on this one to see if the "jumping, exploring and fighting" parts outweigh the "stupid balance beam, missed timing and potential jumping puzzles" parts, because as it is I'm not too sure.

Back In Town: Dreamforce, NaNoWriMo

Plane arrived last night - got more or less a full night's sleep and I'm back in the office now. I'm going to be a little incommunicado though, because post conference mania has not yet subsided (it's taken me about twenty minutes to type this far), and I'm hitting the road for Door County at the end of the work day.

I'm crazy behind on my NaNoWriMo, at least by 5K right now, 7K if I use my usual 2K/day standard. To help motivate, I quickly tossed together an app called WriMoWar which will let you see how poorly you're doing against other authors...

Po Little Co: Bill Kristol On Daily Show

I'm watching Bill Kristol talking with Stewart right now and it is completely disturbing. Almost sad. The intellectual dishonesty is clear and seems a little hard to wear.

For Kristol, I mean, of course. Every time he defends McCain he gets this look on his face like he is about to cry and laugh at the same time.

First - can we stop pretending as if Palin has gotten a bad rap? What? She can't take some Tina Fey jokes? This is a woman who is repeatedly trying to call Barack a terrorist so don't give me this crap about how Caribou Barbie is unfair.

The woman is a radical right wing religious hardliner who has just won the political lottery of the century. She was also brought in during one of the most negative campaigns run in some time. Obama called off the potential scandal of her family, told a rally of his to stop booing McCain - but she won't even pause to perhaps suggest that the n-word might be off base.

The current talk is that the Republican think tank is considering pushing Palin for a 2012 run. I can only hope this is true. Perhaps in hindsight they'll realize that this election year has been a repudiation of the Rovian tactics which may have served well in simpler times and before the veil of 9/11 became as transparent as it was - that perhaps drumming up the fringe while hoping the middle won't notice. While McCain has been courting the same groups that helped push Bush over the narrow margin, the Democratic party has been actually getting some smarts when it comes out to pushing early voting, getting out the vote and maintaining focus on the issues.

Kristol seems to be stuck in this paradigm as well. His support for a campaign which has clearly gone off the rails, as well for a woman that - as John himself pointed out - would be far more likely to attack a man in Kristol's shoes as not being part of "Real America" than do the same - must be as painful of a position to keep as it was to watch.

Is LittleBigPlanet A Better Spore?

I'm not going to say LittleBigPlanet is a better (or worse) game than Spore. They're just too different in most ways for a decent comparison. It's a flame war that doesn't have to be fought.

But there is a thread where the two are very alike. Both games are driven by user created content. Both games offer an online universe to share and play this content. Both games offer an innovative editor to generate the content.

And I think in nearly everything along the thread, LittleBigPlanet edges out ahead. Bouncing in between user generated levels, story mode and the editor is a lot different than having another random creature come over the edge. The scale of the control that you have in the editor is empowering, whereas Spore's felt a lot like window dressing.

This isn't so much a critique of Spore, but rather a preference and some praise for LBP. However, I did have one crash last night while trying to leave a game - hopefully LBP will be successful in both generating good content and keeping the lights on.

Game Play: LittleBigPlanet Quick Thoughts

I only had enough time last night to do a quick dive into Sony's much anticipated hit, Little Big Planet. So here's a few quick thoughts:

This may be the best tutorial ever made for a game and will be damn hard to beat for a while. It's entertaining, it feels like you're playing and not being lectured, you get to explore and it has Stephen Freaking Fry.

I've read some complaints about Sackboy's jumping controls. I don't know if they were tweaked in the patch at all, but I didn't have any real problems. I'm not a huge platformer fan in general, but in the first few levels very little annoyed me.

The LBP servers were down last night. Boo. I didn't miss much as I had just gotten to the "larger" game, ie where I think you can start playing with the creator, but the grace period won't last long.

Even as someone who doesn't like platformers, I had a lot of fun.

If the design doesn't make you at least a little happy - you might need medication. This is one of the most adorable games in the wide world of adorable games.

TV Watch, Heroes: Eris Quod Sum

A pretty even episode, all in all - more of a bridge episode than anything else as with the exception of Sylar and Suresh, very little moved. And in Suresh's case, his flip to Pinehearst happened so fast that I blinked and nearly missed it.

But really my pain point is Claire at the moment. I'm just not buying the whole "going painless breaks me" routine. It feels forced and overwrought. Honestly I would think it would be more logical to become afraid of not being invulnerable than not feeling pain.

A close second is Black Fear. For one thing, the show should avoid any character that is required to describe his power every time it's used. Second, the whole bogeyman routine just doesn't cut it for me - there's not much reason I see for people to actually be scared in the first place.

The plot hangs more or less together and the show is starting to dip into the backstory pretty well. The formula and how it ties into the characters makes for a nice container to the events in general. Heroes confounds me a lot, but I still find it pretty compelling overall.