March 2005 Archives

I'm sure this was unintentional, but it amused me.

I never read the local newspaper(s), but I did manage to randomly see the Sunday comics this week. Which, of course, are awful. But what was funny was this unexpected convergence:

Dilbert, which stopped being funny about five to seven years ago, offered up this minorly scathing editorial.

And directly above it, Fred Basset - which has never, ever been funny - went with this typically banal and strained piece.

Man, the Sunday comics just suck.

Other items that came to mind on reading the Sunday comics, because it really is a depressing place:

I have no idea who any of the current cast members of For Better Or For Worse are, and I'm glad for that. If I wanted what FBOFW is selling, I'd watch Lifetime.

Marmaduke - always smelling freshly exhumed from the Mesozoic Age of newspapers - still runs that final panel "Dog Gone Funny" bit. Only now things have gotten so bad that they've resorted to listing dogs that chase each other. Dogs that chase each other! My lands! I'd suspect Marmaduke of being written by the World's Oldest Confederate Widow, but she's dead now. Or stuck in contract to Fred Basset.

Once again, Family Circus throws out the traditional holiday-timed Christian reference, for which I wish someone would get fired. This one featured Ghost Jesus and the little black maze path. Good thing everyone in America believes in Ghost Jesus, or someone might be offended!

So, against all possible odds, there's no PSP for me yet.

Not because they're sold out. As usual, my perpetually confused Toys R Us had plenty of them, even almost a week later.

A guy at work brought his in. He traded in his DS to get it, and if I were the type of person who used smileys, I would insert a frowny face right here. I imagine you're going to see a lot of pre-owned DSs show up across the nation as folks bail out on Nintendo's latest baby toy in favor of Sony's upscale convergent media device. Rolly-eye face.

But my dear aunt sally is that thing nice.

The screen is shockingly large. The resolution astoundingly clear. It's one of those things that you can't imagine getting any better even though all practical technoledge tells you it eventually will. You understand why it costs $250, simply because it looks like it should. Sony is pricing this right at the iPod demographic, which is something I had heard before but never really grasped until I grasped one. It's another example of the long-accepted Apple pricing argument: if it seems to cost more, it's because it's worth it, so shut up and buy it already.

The PSP's problems (aside from the high price point, which gets even higher if you want to trick it out with a better memory card) are mostly obvious ones. The front faceplate is stupidly shiny and delicate. It smudges like a bitch and gets ugly far too fast. The back of the unit is a nice textured flat-black affair and one has to wonder why Sony didn't build the front out of the same smudge-resistant stuff. I'm slowly coming to realize that this ill-conceived faceplate may be the main reason why I'm waiting before I buy one... because the damn thing is impossible to keep clean. It's like buying a championship poodle, wiping spaghetti sauce on it, and then wondering why it doesn't look as nice. Someone should adjust that.

I'm also severely spoiled by the DS and GBA SP clamshell design, nature's way to protect LCD screens. The PSP's screen, as massive as it is, looks fragile and needy.

The battery life is a well-discussed issue, but happily the PSP has an upgradeable battery bay. So, again, that will likely be tackled in a later model. I don't think anyone is overly excited about the launch unit's oscillating and unpredictable battery life, but I'm not going to worry too much about it since that sort of problem can only get better. I trust the nanotech here. Crappy game load times, on the other hand, don't always get better. It seemed bothersomely long to load Twisted Metal.

MP3s and movies? Who cares. Seeing as the unit isn't exactly sturdy, this is not something I want to hump around to listen to music with. The included storage memory card sucks anyway, so unless you upgrade you're getting, what, one album on the thing? I'd rather hum to myself than risk toting a PSP around just for Fleetwood Mac's Greatest Hits. I already own an iPod, which is 100x sturdier. And there is no freaking way I'm buying a bunch of movies on Sony's dumbass proprietary UMD format.

The analog nubbin is better than I thought, but I can see it taking time to master. It instantly reminded me of the first time I used a PS1 DualShock... you know, before you develop the feather thumb touch and you're jerking the analog stick all over the place trying to control your car/bandicoot/tomb raider. I can definitely see that as more intuitive than what Nintendo did with Mario 64DS, although I think much of Mario's control problems there are due to the camera... which actually seems to open up a huge gaming irony: the PSP is going to run platform games better and the DS is going to run FPS and RTS games better. What a crazy switch.

Because, yeah, the games are the thing. If I picked up a PSP today I would definitely get Metal Gear Acid, I would probably get Twisted Metal: Head On, and I would maybe get Ape Escape out of sheer desperation for something else to buy. $40 a pop on average, but that's not the top end of the scale... TRU had Tiger Woods PSP for $50, which is an insult. I'm annoyed when DS games land at $35; Sony needs to provide a lot of substance for these things to be worth as much as the couch-based games.

Wireless online multiplayer out of the box is a blatantly good deal, though. Nintendo still hasn't delivered on that one, and I'm positively beside myself waiting for it. Unfortunately for Sony, they don't have the particular brands I want to see hit that feature set - Animal Crossing and Pokemon, most notably - but I still wouldn't mind going online with a little portable Twisted Metal.

I'm much more excited about online multiplayer on these portable units than I have been for a while on PC or consoles. The reason is because I suspect it's going to be a lot harder for kids to act like smegheads on these games, when there's no voice chat or easy text chatting.

But would I trade in my DS for one? Absosmurfly not. Where the DS wins over the PSP is with the stylus. The DS's stylus-based games are the most fluid, the most accessible, the most elegant games I've seen. It strips away complexity. There's something pure about Yoshi Touch & Go, WarioWare Touched, Feel the Magic XY/XX, and the Mario 64DS minigames that I really like. It opens up a new demographic. There were very few GBA games I could get Rhonda to play... but I can show her a game controlled solely by stylus and she's in. The DS provides something we don't often get in a modern video game: simplicity.

I like that the DS is floating some new concepts out there, while the PSP is pretty much just PS2 games made portable. Not that I'm saying that's ipso facto baddo; I like great graphics and detailed, multi-layered, complex gameplay as well. But it sure is nice to have both options.

And if they announce a new Fatal Frame for PSP, this frugal attitude is history.

The Origins Pre-Registration Book appeared in our mail this week. Four times. Somehow Rhonda and I are both in their mailing list twice.

The pre-reg book lists all the events that have been schedule for the con, plus the first look at special guests, celebrities and speakers. Last year, the big celeb appearance was Billy Boyd, who later bailed and was replaced with Sean Astin. This year, the biggest non-gaming industry name is "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan so I don't think they've lined up a valid celebrity guest yet. Sorry, Hacksaw. And of course, I fully expect the entire supporting cast from Babylon 5 and Stargate to show up again, as they do every year.

This is one of the best designed pre-reg books I've seen in a while, although the bar for that doesn't usually ride too high. Recently, they insisted on printing highly detailed and colorful cover art that obscured every other bit of text... so this year's more sensible and restrained layout is better. Plus, you can read the event listings without going blind this time, which is another bonus.

We're still committed to going this year, even though we need to stay flexible should the big baby announcement overtake the timetable. So, assuming we're attending, I've been leafing through the pre-reg book marking the stuff I want to do.

There's a handful of name brand games I want to demo, if they're available for demoing... Teen Titans card game, Case Closed card game, Inuyasha card game. Inuyasha is already in stores, so I could pick up a starter of that one, but nothing beats a good, solid game demo. Give me a good demo and I'm halfway to purchasing. Titans is also supposed to be in stores in advance of the con. Case Closed is actually making its world debut at Origins, and they have a good sized demo event already on the books... unfortunately it's scheduled concurrently with this year's Doomtown World Championships, so hopefully they'll be doing informal demos in the Vendor Hall as well.

That's really what I like anyway, the Vendor Hall. I try to stay away from booking gaming events that cover up too much Vendor Hall time. In fact, I whined to the Doomtown people about Worlds eating up most of one day (roughly noon to five, plus finals), and they moved it to an evening event. Which makes me feel like an ass, but there you go.

I may do an Early American Chrononauts tourney... just because it's new (debuted at last year's Origins) and because I'm listed in the rulebook credits. Have I blogged that yet? I should whip up an entry on that.

I would love to do a Pokemon Sealed Deck event, but they're all so damn long. 4-5 hours of Swiss rounds, ugh. That's what tires me out on the Doomtown World Championship, but then again constructed deck Doomtown is much more cerebral than sealed deck Pokemon. Sealed deck games are more fun for the pure crap value than anything else anyway... here's your terrible deck, try and win against other similarly terrible decks.

Thinking back to what I liked/demoed last year, I didn't get a lot of hits out of it. I bought some Spycraft and have yet to play it, even though I like what little I know of it... I blame an awful demo and a confusing rulebook. WizKids' Pirates of the Spanish Main has lots of great cutout 3D pirate ships, but I haven't touched it either. Even poor Marvel/DC Vs. hasn't been played more than a handful of times, despite me buying a TON of it and me being absolutely desperate to like it.

In short, nothing last year was as big a hit as the Chrononauts, Battle of the Bands, or Lord of the Rings board game of years past. Case Closed, I'm expecting big things from you.

Picked up Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat and Yoshi Touch & Go this week. I'd call both games sort of medium level... they're far from AAA titles but still good enough. More importantly, they're different enough.

Jungle Beat is the long awaited second game to use the DK Bongos. And it's the more ambitious title of the two, since the first one (Donkey Konga) is just a rhythm game. I know lots of gamers go all fashion snob on the bongos, but it's exactly the kind of bizarro crap I enjoy, so bleah. I'm always on the lookout for games that play to wide audiences. Ever since the 32-bit era and the birth of the million button controller, the average non-gamer has developed an blatant fear of video games... usually citing complexity as the main reason to never bother playing. So I like seeing games like Donkey Konga, Katamari Damacy, WarioWare, EyeToy, DDR... games that can be easily explained and easily played. Maybe not played great, but still played and enjoyed. These games are helping video games stay on the option list for families and casual gamers (just like board games and card games) and avoid falling wholly into the kneejerk abyss of "all video games are played by pale sociopathic teens."

Although I'm not going to say Jungle Beat is as easy to jump into as Donkey Konga. Jungle Beat is a side scroller played with the bongos... beat on the right drum to run to the right, hit both to jump, clap to attack. Because there's so much jumping and clapping, it looks like a ballet onscreen but sounds like a construction site in your living room. You'll beat until your arms hurt, which isn't a sensation I'm accustomed to. I can see why the game is relatively short; I doubt your doctor would approve of extended play periods.

Wasn't there some dumb kid in Britain who used a vibrating controller until he developed permanent tremors in his hand? Wait until he gets his copy of Jungle Beat.

I'm only five kingdoms in - I couldn't take any more in one sitting - and my favorite bits are the boss fights. Particularly the very first one, where you have to box another ape. You clap to dodge, which is followed by hammering the boss's weak spot... bongo style. That's some satisfying boss beating.

Everything you read about Yoshi Touch & Go is true: it is an arcade game. There is no story, not much to unlock, and the nothing to beat. It's like Pac-Man; you just play it to play it. That said, I'm becoming a big fan of DS games (like Yoshi) that are entirely stylus-based.

First of all, it's easier on the hands. I find that my hands go numb faster when holding a DS than on my GBA SP. Which makes sense, the DS is bigger and horizontal. So when a game doesn't require the shoulder buttons, or the traditional left-thumb-on-d-pad / right-thumb-on-button-array, a miraculous thing happens. You put the thing down. You can sit the DS on the table, the bed, the couch and click away with the stylus. Or you can assume a non-traditional grip with the left hand comfortably holding the DS in such a way that you'd never attempt if you actually needed the d-pad or left shoulder button.

So, using the stylus, you tap when you want Yoshi to throw an egg, draw clouds for Baby Mario to float around, circle enemies and turn them into harmless bubbles. Your only goal is to travel X yards, get a high score, or beat a clock. You're playing it because you want to play it, not because you're wading through a storyline or struggling to collect all the gemstones. Yep, it's an arcade game.

As cute as it is, I'm still not sold that it's enough for one $30-$35 game. I think it would have been a better sell had they combo'd it with a couple other stylus-based games... like a DS version of Yoshi's Cookie or some revamped Game & Watch stuff.

Even better, it should have been hardwired into the DS a la PictoChat. Because a simple (albeit good) arcade or puzzle game isn't something I may have stuck in my cartridge slot on a regular basis for pick-up-and-play gaming. It's more likely I'll have a primary game, a longer game, an action-adventure game in play... and something like Yoshi Touch & Go will be in the carryall as a backup. Idea for the next DS hardware revision: add in two more DS cartridge slots so we can have three active games in the unit at all times. Four if they keep the GBA slot.

I really expected Nintendo to screw the pooch on this one. I mean, the DS shipped amid bright shiny specs of wi-fi online multiplayer... and then not a single game supported it. Just the local proprietary wi-fi. Which is cool enough, but realistically not much different from the GBA wireless adapter, Nintendo's 2004 entry for Most Underutilized Peripheral.

Then months fly by with a bare trickle of DS games, giving Sony ample time to reveal that the PSP will launch with full-bore online wireless multiplayer. And when we finally do get a new A-list DS game - WarioWare Touched - it has no multiplayer of any kind. Except for a simple little Pong style game that requires both players to be on the same DS.

Not that multiplayer games are the only games worth playing, just that those three little words have become the new marketing war: Online, Wireless, Multiplayer. Nintendo has to know by now that they can't promise something that everyone else is doing and then not deliver it.

One thing about Nintendo: they don't like to fight on other peoples' turf. Sony and Microsoft can scream each other blue as they war over online, over graphics, over exclusives, over demographics... and Nintendo will be off in the corner watching butterflies through a window. As gamers, we all know that Nintendo will eventually say something, even if it's completely unconnected to the other guys' conversation... there's just no telling when they'll say it.

GDC 2005 must have seemed right, because Nintendo tossed some serious moves out there. First, ol' Reggie starts dropping bombs, then Iwata-san confirmed everything.

Animal Crossing DS will have online wireless multiplayer.

I was all set to accept an Animal Crossing without online wireless multiplayer. I figured it would have local wi-fi, and that would fall under the familiar category of Nintendo Has Decided This Will Do. But the fever dream of online AC is approaching.

And other games too, but quite frankly, AC is so big that I don't have room in my brain to consider portable online versions of Mario Kart or Metroid or whatever else. Yet.

I don't know how they're doing it... other than some vague mentions of Nintendo just snapping their fingers and creating a free network for DS systems to seek and connect to, once they sense a local wi-fi connection. (Like my house!) Will it run just like the GameCube version, where each player gets their own town and a train connects you to whatever town you want to visit? Will players have to permanently live in shared towns worldwide, a la MMORPG? Will you be able to download new items into your game? Will you be able to have more than one character per game?

An Animal Crossing I can stuff in my pocket. I'll never miss the Spring Sports Day again.

Greg Costikyan has a great post-GDC rant where he flambes Microsoft's Bigger Will Be Better speech as well as Nintendo's "heart of a gamer" speech (slightly underbaked given their onetime status as the industry's dictator.) Having read them both, the differences are obvious: Microsoft is all about the hardware and Nintendo is all about the software. Hardcore online high-def graphics vs. a game where you talk to dogs. The Xbox is going to continue to battle with Sony over the teen testosterone set. Nintendo is going to continue being Nintendo. Xbox Live will be even better (they promised a "consistant interface," which is a phrase they probably copied directly from Apple.com); Xbox games will continue to look great but there won't be enough of them that are worth a damn. Nintendo will run their own race, aiming game after game squarely at those too young for Xbox and those too old for Xbox.

Nintendo had to reveal this news. With the PSP hitting soon, they needed to give DS owners something chewy. And they squeaked in some good GameCube news as well: new Zelda trailer, the Revolution will be GameCube backwards-compatible (there goes your weirdo no-controller rumors), and a new Pokemon GameCube game that won't suck.

I finally started X-Men Legends this week. I originally picked it up back in October (on sale) the week before San Andreas came out. That probably ranks as my stupidest game purchase ever.

It's okay. It's pretty much the X-Men version of Diablo. Your team piles into a room and beats the piss out of whatever enemies are up ahead. The character powers are all handled well enough, if erring toward the dull side... but I'm still early in the game so I haven't unlocked anything earth-shattering. Maybe the Cyclops-tears-off-his-visor move is coming later.

There is a weird RPG element to the game, exactly like the spell skill trees of Diablo. Everybody gains experience and earns skill points, which you then use to add/boost powers. So you could make a Wolverine that concentrates on the healing factor over a damaging claw attack. Although realistically, my goal for the end of the game is to have Wolverine be awesome in all the powers... so me going through the motions of specifically assigning the skill points is a waste of time.

And the game designers are aware of this, because they tossed in an Auto button. So when Wolverine levels up, you can select Auto and then the game distributes his skill points for you. However, that still isn't automated enough for my liking, because you still have to Pause and enter the Character screen to even get to the Auto button. I'd rather the team just upgrade on their own.

The graphics are lousy. The detailing on the characters is fuzzy and poor, making any zoomed-in scenes egregiously ugly. And the FMV cutscenes? Absolutely grotesque. Every character looks like somebody's First Poser Image.

And who is the dope at Activision that thinks we want to watch developer splash screens as part of the collected Cinematics? From the main menu, you can review the game's cutscenes (why would you want to) as well as all the annoying dev team logo movies visible on bootup. Spider-Man 2 had the same conceit. Legends also thinks it's "fun" to collect Loading Screens; you can review those on one of the X-Mansion's many computer terminals. Ah, the Sentinels-artwork load screen! Boy, the things we loaded on that one.

But you know, it all ends up with me watching three other AI-controlled X-Men pound the crap out of somebody with fists and feet while I snipe with distance attacks from the other side of the room. That's really all I'm in this one for.

So there's the minor internet rage going on called "1000 Blank White Cards." Now, it's no Dancing Baby. This isn't some insipid Flash movie where you push a button to make George Bush fart. In fact, I don't even know if it qualifies as a "rage," but I needed a starter sentence to the paragraph and that's what came out.

Anyway, here's the deal: it's a card game where everybody starts out with blank cards and a pen, and you just make up your own cards as you go. Credit: I first heard about it on the kokochi.com weblog, which led me to this site that explains the entire concept... and that site isn't even by the folks who actually invented the game. So there's something of an Open Source / Information Wants to be Free vibe to it already.

The rules, such as they are, emphasize creativity and fun over winning. On your turn, you draw a card and then play a card. You can play a card either on yourself, on another player, or to the center of the table where it affects all players. Generally speaking, the cards should have some kind of point value on them. The game is over when the deck is empty; highest point total wins.

However, the real gag is in making your own cards. There's an unspoken competition to see who can be the most random, the most clever, the most bizarre. We've been playing it over lunches at work for a couple weeks... so there's lots of in-jokes and junk that would be funny only to us, and your playgroup will naturally do the same. We're all really fond of coming up with ridiculous card combos... like when I started dropping "Dental Plan! +50 pts" cards for three turns, to be followed by "Lisa Needs Braces! +100 pts for every Dental Plan in play." We'll even waste turns playing cards that have little or no game value, just to do something funny and/or stupid, like Tony's "Discard... this card" card. Then there's the Double Dare style cards: Josh made a "Potty Emergency" card that requires you to run to the bathroom and bring back toilet paper within 20 seconds, at a point rate of 100 pts per square. That card is more fun within an office setting, where unaffiliated employees will witness you diving into the company bathroom. At the end of the game, there's a half-hearted attempt to tally points, but usually no one cares.

I prepped us with 200 cards (unruled index cards cut in half) and we have maybe 30 left. Here's some of my favorites so far...

I gather that Naked Mario is a perennial favorite doodle of Tony's. Or maybe an image he just can't shake loose, even when he closes his eyes.	This card of Josh's is funny not just because of the expression on the poser's face, but because 4 points is an inherently worthless value.	I made this card during a batch of dead animal themed cards, because I was working up to a combo...
Did we have a lot of cats in play when Tony made this one?	Josh wanted to use that famous Marco Polo phrase, but what sort of game effect would fit? Of course!	...and here it is. Now having a Carny Goldfish or Nebulous Horsehead or Garfield Roadkill amounts to +200 points apiece.
Tony gives us randomness combined with a great source of potassium.	Fran was dying to play a Magic Shield card that would stop any attack, so Josh countered with this Seinfeld ref.	I play this on myself, then slap a 20 on it. Instant 2000 points, although we have yet to figure out where the 20 goes should the card get Banana'd.