tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14154315054461712082024-02-20T08:30:59.331-08:00Stained Glass<p>February 2008 - Chaos Marines storm Diaryland. Imperial Guard driven back to Yahoo Chat. Contact lost.</p><p>
June 2008 - Necrons swarm MySpace. All 76 blog entries rendered useless. Site cleansed from orbit. Fear is the mindkiller.</p><p>
August 2008 - With help from Imperial dropships of the Blood Angel legion, Stained Glass is relocated to the relative safety of the Google Cloud.</p><p></p>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-44144793591648840492011-10-18T18:43:00.000-07:002011-10-20T23:25:05.685-07:00Happy New Year!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><a href="http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/6323/bioshockhappynewyear195.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://img827.imageshack.us/img827/6323/bioshockhappynewyear195.jpg" width="400" /></a>Batman: Arkham City arrives today, and the new video game year officially begins. 2011 AD will rage on like a dying tiger for another two and a half months, chewing up the clock and spitting out holidays, but 2011 VG ends here.<br />
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So how did 2011 VG pan out? I wonder. It all goes by so fast. In such a blur. It seems like just yesterday I was moving my X-Com team into Cydonia and mastering the Chenjesu Broodhome. The truth is, I'm probably more interested in seeing where this goes than you are. The question that always fascinates me the most, about my own gaming, is simple: what did I buy compared to what I actually played? I think I'm about to play a lot of Arkham City, Skyrim, and Saint's Row 3. Am I right? Or will Rugby Challenge and Hot Shots Golf hold my attention against their new rivals? Do I affect the outcome of these contests by being aware of them?<br />
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You see how this line of questioning can consume me. Best to get it out of the system.<br />
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So now, by combining the resources of all seven internets, the game stacks around me, achievement and trophy lists of all flavors, and my own pixel stained memories, let us peer back across the only year Earth knows where 12 months are entirely optional.<br />
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2011 VG began quite late: last November, with the arrival of Kinect, and then Call of Duty Black Ops a few days later. Ahh, Black Ops, the game half my 360 friends list claims to hate while still playing daily... <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/8428/sunnyarmykids.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="366" src="http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/8428/sunnyarmykids.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Your Call of Duty experience may vary with online play.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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<b>Call of Duty Black Ops</b> - I'm not the biggest fan of the CoD series (I liked 4!), but even I was stunned to find Black Ops looking and playing like a 1st gen 360 launch title. I took this dog back to Gamestop and traded it in faster than you can say "Why are all these polygons glowing? Did the Taliban invade Battle Arena Toshinden?"<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/1305/kinectsportsdlcpartypac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/1305/kinectsportsdlcpartypac.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Everything you know about meeting girls is wrong.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Kinect Sports</b> - This one did quite well around here. Surprisingly well, considering the only thing my Wii did right in four years was Monster Hunter Tri. A year later, I'm still playing Kinect Sports, although it has lost a lot of its field time to Tiger Woods 12 and the PS Move controllers.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5057/lagunasecaraceway6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img171.imageshack.us/img171/5057/lagunasecaraceway6.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gran Turismo 5 - The Official Racing Game of People Who Hate Rainbows.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Gran Turismo 5</b> - GT5 got to be the main racing game for about a month, during which time it got played daily. Since then it hasn't seen a ton of action, but it's likely to get a second (brief) chance soon, because I haven't seen it in 3D yet. After several days of meticulous head to head comparisons between Dirt 3, Forza 3, and GT5, I did determine, beyond a shadow of doubt, that GT5 was the superior racing engine. I just wish it was presented with a little more style and fanfare than a T&E Soft golf game on the Genesis. Or that it exceeded the confines of the Genesis colour palette.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7075/limbo300x168.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://img833.imageshack.us/img833/7075/limbo300x168.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gran Turismo called. It said you're wearing too much orange.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Limbo</b> - Can I get this on my phone? It belongs on my phone. It's good, it just belongs on my phone.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/6231/20090426hatsunemikuchib.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="270" src="http://img266.imageshack.us/img266/6231/20090426hatsunemikuchib.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh, Psyduck, just let it go, man. Let it go.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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<b>Project Diva 2: Hatsune Miku</b> - I've played this one less than its predecessor, but I still love the Project Diva games. It's actually not even Miku's fault; my psp has just seen a lot less action this year, in general. (See Monster Hunter Portable 3rd.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/672/gearsofwar3t.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://img571.imageshack.us/img571/672/gearsofwar3t.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In space, no one can hear you dressing up like a Volkswagon to abuse steroids.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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<b>Gears of War 3</b> - A fairly amazing end to the 360's second most lackluster series. (I know the core 360iots will report me to Master Chief for saying that, but coddling them makes it worse.) I only bought Gears 3 because I needed to buy <i>something</i> and I knew it would present tons of co-op, if nothing else. Maybe it was my super low expectations, but I've had a blast with this one. A full campaign in 4 player co-op, a drastically improved and expanded horde mode, and a killer new beast mode that's probably best described as Gears vs. Oddworld. AND it's in 3D, even though it's just a 360 game! (Ok, not good 3D, but still...)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/65/fromdust610.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="356" src="http://img641.imageshack.us/img641/65/fromdust610.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This incredibly interesting piece of promotional art for From Dust could not be more of a lie. =[</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>From Dust</b> - Eric Chahi is the only video game designer I have ever truly revered as an artist. Not only do I consider Out of this World to be the finest video game ever made, it represents, to me, the most heartbreaking of all the gaming roads untraveled. Twenty years later I'm still waiting for contextual controls to catch up with OotW. (Almost) needless to say, From Dust was a disappointment of epic magnitude. It might have worked 25 years ago during that initial Populous/Power Monger phase. It just seems like so little so late at this point, even when it's only compared to other XBLA titles. (I have multiple versions of this one, and believe me, it's an XBLA game no matter where you play it.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/3351/mickeymousex.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/3351/mickeymousex.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hi kids! Remember, pirates get candy! Support your local torrent sites!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Epic Mickey</b> - Was this the moment I finally gave up on the Wii forever? Maybe. Probably. Maybe. It's too bad this game didn't come out five minutes after Mario 64. It coulda been a contender.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/4310/ebaytronlightcycle2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="458" src="http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/4310/ebaytronlightcycle2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm absolutely not having sex with this motorcycle. Still, if you could come back in 15 minutes...</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <b>Tron Evolution</b> - One of those extremely rare titles where the psp version is better than its console counterpart. As a console game I couldn't make it to minute 4 of this title if you held a gun to my head. The controls seemed to work off a flounder based engine. As a psp game it was at least playable, if uninspired, which is actually high praise for a non-AAA psp title.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/1606/nabeshin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="484" src="http://img401.imageshack.us/img401/1606/nabeshin.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The real Nabeshin when a crazy chick tries to mind game him.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Catherine</b> - Nabeshin!!! No, wait, nevermind. You're just some imposter with a J-fro. This was a good game, with killer presentation, it just wasn't a game I was going to play again. Traded.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/479/sbastionp6200022.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="137" src="http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/479/sbastionp6200022.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A bastion.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Bastion</b> - This looked ok, but then I was incredibly bored from the moment it started up. I don't know. I wonder sometimes if sprite based gaming has a different charm for people who didn't already sit through the 17 years of sprites literally being the only game in town.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/9972/batoriginal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="560" src="http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/9972/batoriginal.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Thanks to DC Universe Online, this really happened.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>DC Universe Online</b> - This isn't an mmo. It's a suicide note from a game developer. Go find a youtube video of the opening cinema and see if you can watch it without needing to cut yourself. Then know that that video was the soaring epiphany of the DC Universe experience.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/4804/sackboyk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://img12.imageshack.us/img12/4804/sackboyk.jpg" width="616" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm absolutely not a horrifying Sackboy monster. Still, if you could come back in 15 minutes...</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Little Big Planet 2</b> - I swear I want to care about this game. It's been sitting here for months. I refuse to take it out of the "active" pile, even though I don't play it. I wish they'd fix the super floaty controls on Sackboy. He'll never be in Mario's, or even Sonic's, league until they fix his interface. And as a game I'm bored with LBP, which makes it hard to appreciate the fact that it's one of the most interesting game systems ("system" used here in the traditional tabletop rpg sense, not as a synonym for console) ever designed. What's perhaps most telling is that I actually know a lot of people with LBP2, and we all spend a fair amount of time trying to find things to do in co-op, and not once, ever, has one of us suggested playing this game.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/8808/twoworlds28.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/8808/twoworlds28.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You look familiar. Were you also green and half naked in Morrowind?</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Two Worlds II</b> - If I could design my own character in Two Worlds II, I'd be playing it right now instead of writing this round-up. It's a cool game, and I've liked everything I've done in it so far, but it's so hard to invest in a massive open world sandbox game where you're stuck playing some computer geek's homoerotic fantasy of the perfect alpha male. Wait! Come back, every Grand Theft Auto game ever, I didn't mention you by name!<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/8711/vietnamwarprotest1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="486" src="http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/8711/vietnamwarprotest1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is this why we only got 4 maps? You dicks!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Battlefield Bad Company 2: Vietnam</b> - Fun, but it made me miss the real Battlefield Vietnam even more than I do already. Which is a lot. Also, it's possible I've finally heard Fortunate Son enough times.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/7287/mhp3blacksmith.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/7287/mhp3blacksmith.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Choosing outfits for your cats wasn't always the hardest part of monster hunting.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Monster Hunter Portable 3rd</b> - Nothing but improvements for what was already one of the most cleverly designed franchises in history. Except for the one problem - Portable 3rd is painfully easy - which is the exact opposite of what Monster Hunter is all about. In Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, it took me roughly 300 hours to complete all the basic single player village quests. Not even the single player cat quests, just the ones the village elder lady gives out. There were monsters that took me days to defeat. <i>(Sometimes many days.)</i> I got incapped at least a hundred times in those 300 hours, and failed dozens of quests. In Portable 3rd, I completed not only all the village quests, but at least a third of the four player quests (alone), getting incapped a grand total of twice, and never having failed any quest at all. All without using armour until the final hunt for the monster from the cover. Part of the lack of challenge is the improved engine - it was much harder to dodge in Unite because the hit boxes were insane and monsters could damage you without actually touching you (without even coming close in some cases), but most of it is just Capcom toning the game down for wider audience appeal. Which might have been worth it if Capcom had actually ported the game for Western markets. I've got about 85 hours in Portable 3rd: the Monster Hunter equivalent of 15 minutes.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9939/killzone3violence.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9939/killzone3violence.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The 3D glasses might feel weird for a second.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Killzone 3</b> - Not only is Killzone 3 the star of the Sharpshooter library, it's also the pinnacle of Sony's 3D! I don't play this regularly, but it's never left the rotation either. (I'd play it more if it wasn't constantly resetting my progress. I'm not sure what that's all about, but I'm really tired of escorting that robot and covering those windows.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6458/crysis208.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="350" src="http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6458/crysis208.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This has all happened before. It will all happen again.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Crysis 2</b> - AKA Generic 2: the Genericing. The first Crysis was slightly frustrating at times, but fun. This one is just balls out boring. It's years too late for corridor games. They were never very dynamic, but at least they made sense in 1995. Now it's just inexcusably lazy game design.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3282/ponpsppaper052.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3282/ponpsppaper052.png" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My other car is a snorkawallapus.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Patapon 3</b> - You build a near-perfect game that ignores all kinds of conventions, and then proceed to video game it to death a little more with every iteration. It's Twisted Metal all over again. Not everything benefits from having cookie-cutter industry standard concepts injected into its mix. Twisted Metal was never the same once they implemented those awful Street Fighter style weapon/shield codes, and Patapon has never recovered from being infused with power ups, hero units, and less abstract scripts. If Sony really wants to apologize to me for all the weirdness this year, saving this artwork from its developers would be a great start.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/9968/tacticsogreletusclingto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/9968/tacticsogreletusclingto.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gaze carefully, for these are the tiles of infinity.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together</b> - Fun for the first 20 hours, but eventually you realize you're playing<i> That Game</i> again, and must either, 1) choose to commit to 200+ more hours, or, 2) get the hell out. Only people with a very focused library or a deep passion for tile tactics games can afford to choose option 1. I am neither.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2849/dogz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/2849/dogz.jpg" width="524" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hi, we're here to audition for the lead in Dragon Age III.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><b>Dragon Age II</b> - Why is there a II on this? This isn't a sequel. That's not even my character. If I'd met this title as "Another Game with Dragon in its Name: Part 1", I might have liked it. As the sequel to the just-better-than-average game that was <i>supposed</i> to be a sequel to beloved Baldur's Gate I+II, all you've done is convince me that Baldur's Gate is finally dead. Insert unhappy emoticon here.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8053/cimstop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="412" src="http://img197.imageshack.us/img197/8053/cimstop.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When simulating people riding buses is the <i>only </i>thing your game does, it seems like it should at least get bus stops right.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Cities in Motion</b> - Pirated it, loved it (despite the fact that its inherently broken), bought it on Steam with all its DLC. I don't know why a game where all I do is set up bus and train routes/stops is so great, but it is great. Even if it will never work right. (There's an issue with punters over-queuing that the devs refuse to fix, for reasons that remain lost to me. They keep patching the game, but they never fix the one issue that we've all been complaining about forever. Like I say - inherently broken. But also addicting and fun!)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4919/01brinkhero.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/4919/01brinkhero.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">NOT the character design of people with good instincts. </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</tbody></table><br />
<b>Brink</b> - Unplayable. I don't know what possessed someone to take Bethesda's insanely clunky Fallout engine, which is barely adequate for a sprawling, pause anytime, RPG, and turn it into an online arena game, but the person responsible should be beaten, then sold to gypsies, then beaten again.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/1049/socom4getskevinbutlertr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="362" src="http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/1049/socom4getskevinbutlertr.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This looks like a joke, but my friend has moleskin grips installed and uses a laser pointer as a sight on his Sharpshooter.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>SOCOM 4</b> - Would I even notice this hopelessly linear spec-ops-by-numbers game if it didn't use the Sharpshooter? Probably not. Luckily, it <i>does</i> use the Sharpshooter, so instead of competing with Metal Gear 4 and Deus Ex: HR, SOCOM 4 shifts into the realm of Time Crisis and Virtua Cop 2, where it can bask in the peaceful glow of diminished expectations. (Honestly, until sometime in the middle of 2013, anything that lets you snipe with the Sharpshooter is going to be awesome.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/688/finalgladosbychatterhea.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="456" src="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/688/finalgladosbychatterhea.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Even GLaDOS loves Miku!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Portal 2</b> - Hands down winner of the 2011 Thirdrail Trophy for Best Writing in a Video Game. The gameplay is impeccable, but GLADOS, the hardest working AI in show business, is the game's real star, and well worth the price of admission.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7884/4686587260d2804cb5cd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="356" src="http://img543.imageshack.us/img543/7884/4686587260d2804cb5cd.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The world died. Turbochargers didn't.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Motorstorm Apocalypse</b> - Assuming you like racing games, you need two kinds: a cheap fun arcade racer and a heavy sim racer. Motorstorm Apocalypse is cheap fun arcade racing with bells on. Killer 3D and some of the best track designs I've seen since F-Zero was in vogue. Like every good bubblegum racer I've ever met, it will stay in occasional use until a replacement arrives. This is the only game I have<i> ever</i> played where I skipped every cut scene immediately. I don't know why the game even<i> has </i>cut-scenes, but I'm here to race a rocket propelled dune buggy across the rooftops of collapsing buildings, not listen to the ramblings of some moron who'd be better off on pokemon.net writing Ash/Misty shipper fanfic.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/5725/virtuatennis4kuznetsova.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/5725/virtuatennis4kuznetsova.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tennis AND break dancing? Get out of my head!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Virtua Tennis 4</b> - Ever since those old Nintendo Vs. Tennis arcade machines, I've been a fan of tennis games. if this one had decent Move support, it would be getting played every day, instead of just messed with on the rare occasions I turn on my laptop.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7837/ddffevent06.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="181" src="http://img717.imageshack.us/img717/7837/ddffevent06.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(It really doesn't.)</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>D</b><b>issidia 012</b> - Still more technically impressive than fun, just like its old man. Between Dissidia I+II, XIII, and XIV, I think I'm finally burned out on Final Fantasy.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/7629/rugbychallenge1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img52.imageshack.us/img52/7629/rugbychallenge1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is from the angry dancing portion of the rugby match. No, I don't know either.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Rugby Challenge</b> - I'm just starting this one, and it's been a little crashy, but the game itself is great. I knew nothing about rugby a week ago, and I already like it much better than its two dopey sisters, football and football. Especially football! Plus, it's always neat to play a high quality sports game (stability issues aside) that has nothing to do with EA.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1706/img0435ajb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="425" src="http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/1706/img0435ajb.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We can't have bunnies in Tiger Woods 12. I assume it's because Tiger Woods hates animals. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Let's Golf 2 HD</b> - I show up for a golf game on my cell phone and what do I find running around the first hole? An ostrich! A few holes later, a giraffe! Tiger Woods 12, what the hell?! It's basically just another anime golf game, but it's fun and pretty and has a soul, unlike some golf games I play every day.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/6343/grandprixstory007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="192" src="http://img692.imageshack.us/img692/6343/grandprixstory007.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Go as fast as you want, you'll still be on an iPhone!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Grand Prix Story</b> - Full disclosure: I used to spend <i>way</i> too much time building and watching go kart tracks in Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 and 2. Racing Story turns that fetish into a full scale racing management game that makes Gran Turismo 5's B-Spec look about as sophisticated as a cell phone app (which Grand Prix Story actually is).<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5428/thesimsmedievalstockade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/5428/thesimsmedievalstockade.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I take it back! I really enjoy your rolling papers!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
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<b>The Sims Medieval</b> - I probably got three solid days of fun gameplay out of this before turning it off and walking away forever. That seems to be my relationship with Sims games. I've never played one I didn't like, and I've never played one for longer than 5 days. I've never missed a Sims game, and yet I've also never reinstalled one once I took it off the drive.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5271/witcherfoxnews2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="378" src="http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/5271/witcherfoxnews2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Long hair, tons of scars, and a wolf necklace. Easy there, slut magnet, you're not the only one in the Winn Dixie.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Witcher 2</b> - This is the best game I'm not playing even though I should be. I keep meaning to get back to it, and keep getting distracted. It came with all this really nice stuff too, like a little map and a guide/art book. And CD Projekt has given the game a ton of post-launch support. This is probably going to end up being my big March game or something.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4246/legostarwarsdiorama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="576" src="http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4246/legostarwarsdiorama.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Never forget.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars</b> - The more I think about it, the more I'm coming to realize that Lego games are the perfect home for what Star Wars has become. This is the Clone Wars material presented at its correct level. It's fun like all Lego games are fun - in that "I like this level, but did it need to be 45 minutes long?" kind of way.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/2631/legopiratesofthecarribe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="209" src="http://img411.imageshack.us/img411/2631/legopiratesofthecarribe.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Finally, a game with Johnny Depp in it!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Lego Pirates of the Caribbean</b> - The best part about these Lego games? They run great on a 3 year old gaming laptop. Emergency gaming.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/6779/screenshot1121939056128.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/6779/screenshot1121939056128.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Once upon a time, the squandering of such a visceral opening sequence was the sole prerogative of filmmakers.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Homefront</b> - Best first person on a rail cinematic opening ever! I was completely invested in this setting by the 90 second mark. Until the gameplay started, I couldn't believe this wasn't one of the biggest titles of the year. Then I actually had to play it, and it all came crumbling down. There's nothing worse than being stuck in the middle of a big open looking map and then realizing you're in a hallway. Crysis 2 did the same stupid thing. It's infuriating. If you want me in a corridor, don't set your damn game in the backyards of a suburban neighborhood. <i>Set it someplace where your forced, linear, geography at least makes some sense.</i> If I'm in a subway train, or a submarine, or a hallway, then being in a hallway is fine. But if you put me in an intersection downtown, and then restrict me to a narrow mono-directional track no wider than a highway, it just makes your game seem shitty and lame. And then I uninstall it, and go play a better game. (See also: using bittorrent to test things before you buy them and how much money this can save you.)<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9207/1293002254.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9207/1293002254.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">According to Relic, I could be anyone.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Warhammer 40K Dawn of War II: Retribution</b> - They seem to be getting farther and farther away from the original Dawn of War games, which is fine, I guess, because they've pretty much taken that idea as far as it will go, but none of the Dawn of War II games have felt like they knew what they wanted to be, or be doing. This is the least focused, least interesting iteration yet. Six playable races, but they all get the same campaign. Tyranids and Space Marines aren't interchangeable. You'd think someone at Relic would know the universe well enough to mention that long before Retribution reached the shelves, especially after making a half dozen 40k games, but apparently no one there has ever actually played or read any of the real 40K material from the tabletop war game.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/8624/2132427810view.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="226" src="http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/8624/2132427810view.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you could marry Cloud's sword, game designers would be extinct in one generation.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>God Eater Burst</b> - Not bad. Also not Monster Hunter. Sadly, that really is all the meaningful information there will ever be about God Eater Burst. I wish someone <i>would</i> come up with a decent MH clone, but so far all the attempts to endear new IPs to the hunter audience have been pretty weak.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/3636/tigerwoodsmistresses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://img510.imageshack.us/img510/3636/tigerwoodsmistresses.jpg" width="636" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is not the Tiger Woods EA Sports wants you to think about. Well, you should have given me that duck.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12 The Masters</b> - If EA actually cared about this game, or anyone who worked on it cared, I'd probably give it GOTY. We've played a ton of it. We still play it almost every day. It's simply the best game for either Move or Kinect right now. The problem, as with all EA games, is EA. This is in-house EA, so it's not like they only show up in the end to suck the life out of the publishing and support phases. No, in this case, Tiger Woods, from the foundation up, is plagued by EA's persistent ennui. They just make so much money, and face so little real competition, that no one at EA ever seems to have any reason to lovingly craft anything.<i> And Tiger Woods 12 is many things - clean, adequate, statistically sound, teeming with courses once you shell out $80 on DLC - but it is never lovingly crafted.</i> Much like Tiger Woods himself, all this game's personality seems to have been eradicated in favor of the vanilla kiss of simple function.<br />
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Here's an example: on every hole with water you can hear ducks quacking. They sound very near you. But there are no ducks. $80 worth of DLC (19 DLC courses compared to 14 included in the game, available day one), $10 online passes, and prominently featured in-game advertising, year 13 of one of the best selling sports franchises in Terran history... and no one can be bothered to model and path a 25 polygon duck? How much <i>would</i> I need to spend? How expensive would Tiger Woods need to be before EA had the resources to add that duck? I'd just like to know. And it's not the ducks specifically. <i>The game is full of that kind of empty. </i>Anyway, I suspect Tiger Woods 12 will have serious problems staying in rotation once there's any other real (non-Sharpshooter) games for the Move. (If Minna no Golf 5 had Move support for online, instead of just single player, TW12 would have already been replaced by a golf game we can't read from 3 years ago.) <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/5579/shift2paganiinterior.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img580.imageshack.us/img580/5579/shift2paganiinterior.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking at this picture, I wonder why I'm not playing this. That looks great!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Shift 2: Unleashed</b> - I'd swear there was some problem with this one. Now I can't remember it, but there was some technical issue that quickly ended my relationship with this game. I think. I guess now I'm going to have to play it again and figure out why I don't play it. Thanks, stupid list.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/1470/lanoirescreenshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/1470/lanoirescreenshot.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">By the time you get here, you'll envy her.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>LA Noire</b> - For the first few hours all I could think about was the fact that I was finally playing a Rockstar game that wasn't written by a high school sophomore for other high school sophomores. It was kind of a magic moment; there are few things in the video game universe I find more grating than the faux-juvenille writing in GTA games. The investigations are great to start with too. I enjoyed finding clues, and interrogating witnesses. For a while. The farther you play, the more you're forced to realize just how very, very shallow LA Noire's waters run. You play Cole, but you never meet him. He's just a clue finding interrogation machine, magically appearing at the police station each morning to follow a waypoint through a massive city that's just as empty as the experience of playing in it. I'm so glad Team Bondi is over.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3953/persona3portable2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/3953/persona3portable2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maybe you're calling the wrong game. How would you know?</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Persona</b> (two of them) - I'd like to stand here and tell you that I can tell Persona games apart. I really would. But it would be a lie. I've never been able to tell them apart, and I'm not getting any better at it. That said, I played two Persona games this year. One was very dry and boring, despite the whirlwind it created in the rpg community, and one was less dry and boring, with more contemporary graphics. The second one was good. It was another one of those games that's designed for people with a total library of three or fewer active titles, which rules me out, but I liked it and I'm glad I messed around with it.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4864/dirt3screenshot2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/4864/dirt3screenshot2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rally is just like NASCAR, except it involves driving.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Dirt 3</b> - They put the rally racing back in the series that Colin McCrea built. Yay. I had a lot of fun with Dirt 3 for about a week, then I wandered off and I haven't played it since. It still has the weird float in the controls that you get from driving games that are meant to be played with a wheel. I need a good hovercraft racing game to clear my palate after so many real car games this year.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7607/tropico404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="441" src="http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/7607/tropico404.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I assume there's some kind of contest to see who can take the most misleading screenshot of an RTS game. This should win. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Tropico 4</b> - I don't know how to feel about Tropico 4. On one hand it's a marked improvement, in terms of UI, over Tropico 3, and the game is presented in a far more fun and accessible way. On the other hand, it's really just Tropico 3.1, and it's being sold for full retail. So it is fun, and I like it, but I can't, in good conscience, recommend it to anyone. At least not until it's $9.99.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8643/spacemarineencounterbym.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/8643/spacemarineencounterbym.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bathing suits from the 50s always look so frumpy.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Warhammer 40k Space Marine</b> - The first half of an excellent game. After so many Dawn of War titles, and so many years of 40k figures themselves, to be seeing the 40k universe from the first person perspective. It's all very epic. You simultaneously feel very heavy in your armour and very small compared to everything around you. At one point you're loading a cannon with a shell so large, so silly, so gratuitously 40k, that it (the shell) has stained glass windows. The thing is, Space Marine isn't a full game. As a single player game, it's a cliffhanger that will never be resolved (they've already said there's no room in the world for both Space Marine 2 and the upcoming 40k mmo - Dark Millennium), and as a multiplayer game it's like a three mini-map demo. I wonder if Space Marine isn't really a field test for the third person shooter engine they're going to use with Dark Millennium.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4039/61584.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img231.imageshack.us/img231/4039/61584.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes you chase the goat mountain. Sometimes the goat mountain chases you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD</b> - It's Portable 3rd all over again. With 3D support. So obviously there was no way not to buy it once I had the 3DTV. It is fun to see all the MH stuff 1) clearly and 2) in the beautiful realism of 3D.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5576/infamous2615.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="338" src="http://img14.imageshack.us/img14/5576/infamous2615.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The white girl represents good and the black girl represents evil. I'm not even gonna say anything.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>InFamous 2</b> - The first InFamous is the only ps3 game I've ever platinumed. I really, <i>really</i> liked it. We connected. You'd think I'd like the second one too, since it's just a reskin of the first game, but somehow, showing up and finding that even the architecture was identical, just re-textured, completely killed my ability to happily explore. Assassin's Creed: Whatever, I'm not giving you your own entry, but everything I just said goes triple (quadruple?) for you.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7638/resistance3s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/7638/resistance3s.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This doesn't look like the Resistance 3 I played at all! Dammit!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Resistance 3</b> - I wish I'd played this before I played Killzone 3. My least favorite Sharpshooter game so far. Way too low key for me. I wanted a giant, epic, alien invasion and instead got Fallout 3: The Prologue. <i>Edit: Looking up screenshots for this piece, every single one looked awesome, and way more like the game I thought I was getting into in the first place. As I type this, my Sharpshooter friend and I are chatting on Live, agreeing to re-investigate this one after the holidays.</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6595/184459childofeden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/6595/184459childofeden.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No matter how many drugs Child of Eden inspires you to take, you will never forget this space whale in 3D.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Child of Eden</b> (Twice) - Everyone went so crazy for this on Kinect, I had to get it. It was ok. There's not much there, really, but what is there is pretty, and I've done more than enough acid to appreciate zapping trippy space fish with an outstretched arm. But it just didn't get played much, so I finally traded it. Then I upgraded my tv to 3D, and realized the ps3 version supported 3D, so I re-bought it for the Sony. And... wow. Seriously, wow. The difference between Child of Eden in 3D and Child of Eden regular is like the difference between hours of sex and glancing at a picture of a naked lady. Why Sony doesn't have this set up to demo every 3DTV they sell is beyond me.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6383/alicevsteapot1873638b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/6383/alicevsteapot1873638b.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm 90% sure the original Alice in Wonderland involved less stabbing. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Alice Madness Returns</b> - The art direction on this game is so gorgeous, so out of hand, that it's easy to forgive the prosaic game play. At the same time, it <i>does</i> seem like you'd be able to harness the imaginative horsepower of such an obviously gifted team into creating gameplay that revolved around something more unique than hacking things with a knife and double jumping. Although, to be fair, Alice's butterfly teleport is brilliant - both in look and implementation - it's incredibly fun to use. <br />
<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6146/fear3201104110410553406.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6146/fear3201104110410553406.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I was going to accuse your game of being uninspired, but now that I see you included dual wielding...</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>F.3.A.R.</b> (FEAR 3) - In two years I'm going to be trying to remember which one was FEAR 3, and which one was Homefront, and which one was Crysis 2. And I'll fail. Yet another mind bogglingly average shooter.<br />
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<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/1841/60222yakuza404normal1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/1841/60222yakuza404normal1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It should probably be illegal to want anything as much as I want Akiyama's jacket.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
<b>Yakuza 4</b> - It's amazing how much you can play and how much you can still miss. I've been meaning to play Yakuza since the original, and finally just got around to it. Aside from the typical boring button mashy fight scenes that Japanese guys seem to require, this has been one hell of a game. It's rare that I genuinely like characters in video games. At best they're like spending time with a 14 year old boy's D&D character (think Gears), and, at worst, they're so demographically tailored as to be unrecognizable to any human with a soul (think Halo). Akiyama, Yakuza 4's eccentric loan shark, is one of the most likeable characters I have ever seen. I had rented this, and finally just got my own copy a few weeks ago, so now, much like Witcher 2, Yakuza 4 is sitting here on hold until I find the time and inclination it deserves. (i.e. February!)<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/745/deuhumanrevolutionk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="378" src="http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/745/deuhumanrevolutionk.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After I finish this cigarette, I can't smoke again for 17 minutes. That's how long my smoking battery takes to recharge.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Deus Ex: Human Revolution</b> - I'm maybe 6 or 8 hours into this one? I play it and have fun, but I can only stand it for so long because of the part where I have to wait 60 seconds for my stabbing battery to recharge before I can stab a second person.<i> How do ideas that stupid make it into publication? </i>I keep hoping they'll fix that with a patch and I can go at Deus Ex full bore. <br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6803/totalwarshogun2screensh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="356" src="http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/6803/totalwarshogun2screensh.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wait a minute. Boats don't have fireplaces... <i>boats don't have fireplaces!!!</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Total War: Shogun 2</b> - I've been a tactical board gamer for many years, and one of my all-time favorite strategy games is an old Avalon Hill game called Samurai, which was a variant of an even older game called Kingmaker. There's a lot of Samurai in Shogun 2 (no pun intended). The internet has been less kind to tabletop games than it has their pixel counterparts. Games of Samurai, Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars, and Ogre are hard to come by these days. Shogun 2, on the other hand, is never farther away than Steam. This is one of those slot games that will continue to stay on semi-active duty until I find its replacement.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/7025/zeldarl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="478" src="http://img703.imageshack.us/img703/7025/zeldarl.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whatever's happening here, it's <i>far</i> less gay than an actual Zelda game.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Legend of Zelda OoT </b>- Link and I have a dysfunctional relationship. There's no other way to say it. I'm hopelessly attracted to his ultra-high production value, and lured by memories of his brilliant snes game. And yet, I am simultaneously repulsed by Link himself, and by the torporific stink of Nintendo's endless regurgitation. <i>Deja vu isn't supposed to be enforceable.</i> I don't know that we'll ever work things out, but it seems likely I'll keep trying, like the fool I am.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/1717/kungfupanda22.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img850.imageshack.us/img850/1717/kungfupanda22.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am absolutely not excitedly kicking this lizard in his penis. Still, if you could come back in 15 minutes...</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Kung Fu Panda 2</b> - Unplayable. Even by "this game is for 8 year olds" standards. There are a few Kinect games that just don't function correctly, and this is one of them. It did have one of the better Kinect menu systems among the early launch titles. All I can say for myself here is that I think my attempts to work with Kinect prove I don't have any commitment issues.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5953/redorchestra229620x.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img191.imageshack.us/img191/5953/redorchestra229620x.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There's always one building where both sides end up mushing together, which turns a supposedly objective based game with vehicles into team deathmatch.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad</b> - EA is fighting with Valve, and I can't side against the people who have been piling free Left 4 Dead 2 DLC onto me for years. So, I'm trying to find a Battlefield alternative. Red Orchestra isn't it, but it has some cool ideas - like a morale system where allies dying near you affects your vision and aim for a second. With better map design, it definitely could be a replacement for Battlefield, but the maps it has are<i> so</i> awful that I'm afraid that's never going to happen. Oh well, back to Arma!<br />
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<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/3475/shadowofthecolossus2b.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/3475/shadowofthecolossus2b.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guess which one is the bad guy. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<br />
<b>Shadow of the Colossus/ICO</b> - The ps2 was easily my least favorite console ever. (And mind you, my first console was a used Magnavox Odyssey.) It was the most poorly designed hardware ever (The 360 didn't exist yet! I'm sorry! I had no idea!) and it had a library of shovelware not even Japan's PC Engine or an iPhone could ever hope to rival. I got out of the ps2 early, and was glad to be rid of the thing. <i>Shadow of the Colossus was the price I paid for that escape.</i> I never got to play it. Not a week has passed in the last six years that I haven't thought of it. The number of times I stood staring at ps2s, calculating exactly what it would cost me to play that one game...<br />
<br />
Thank Yig I waited. The new HD version supports 3D, and 3D, which spends most of its time just being a luxurious but ultimately unnecessary graphic enhancement, changes Shadow of the Colossus so deeply, so fundamentally - the feeling of actually being up on those massive things as you clamber around on them - that I've now made a miraculous transition. Instead of being the only gamer I know who never played this classic, I'm now the only one who <i>has</i> played it. The key now is not to rush through it, as tempting as it is, because not only is it a unique and amazing experience, it's currently the closest thing I've got to a real Monster Hunter game.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7250/galaxyonfire2foriphonei.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/7250/galaxyonfire2foriphonei.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh yeah? Let's see you play X3 or Darkstar One in line at Chik'fil'A.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Galaxy on Fire 2</b> - I just wanted a smart phone for the GPS and the ability to Google products while shopping. I never expected this goofy little thing (a Droid X2) to come straight out of the box and put my psp and 3DS to shame. But it did. And it has. With a library of games costing no more than $9.99, it has relegated both of the "real" handhelds to supporting cast. Galaxy on Fire 2 turned out to be one of the most important games I bought all year, if not the most important, because it completely destroyed any prejudice and misconceptions I had about this upstart genre of cell phone software. This is a huge, fully realized, space sim with tons of smooth, innovative mechanics. I've been absolutely stunned by the number of clever things they've done - flawless motion controlled flight, equally flawless motion controlled mining, dialog windows<i> so </i>well designed that you'll wonder why they haven't all been that way in every game for the last 30 years. It probably has more cool ideas in it than every other game I've played this year, combined. If anyone had ever put this much effort into designing psp games, the thing would be as ubiquitous as the iPod. <br />
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/130/radiantsilvergun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img834.imageshack.us/img834/130/radiantsilvergun.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When you hang up my little laser copy poster of this image, it falls down every 2-3 weeks.<i> (For like 10 years, off and on.)</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Radiant Silvergun</b> - I remember waiting for Radiant Silvergun to ship. To understand how much this game meant to me, you'd have to understand how terribly, terribly bleak the Saturn's non-Japanese library was. Anemic doesn't even begin to describe it. It made the 3DO's shelf look positively robust. This game, along with an imported copy of Iron Storm and some colourful little isometric platformer I can never remember the name of, rescued an entire system for a year. I've literally been homeless in a park between then and now, and I still have my original copy of Radiant Silvergun, despite all the years when it was the most valuable thing I owned. It's been great playing it again. I even unlocked a remote control Silvergun for my Xbox Live avatar. <i>Score of scores.</i> I hope so many copies of it sell that my original ends up worth a penny. This game, along with a handful of other half-lost Saturn titles, truly deserves a new life on a console that isn't being systematically starved to death by its caretakers.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/852/450x288algghostreconsha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="204" src="http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/852/450x288algghostreconsha.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">When shmoos attack.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Tom Clancy's Shadow War</b> - So far, this is the only fun thing I've seen my 3DS do. (Aside from being an awesome 3D camera that takes unsharable pictures.) It's not a great game, but it's solid enough to give the 3DS purpose for 5-7 days. It teaches you that 3D is less about things sproinging out at you, and more about making things look real, as you move tiny soldiers around a map that looks more like an HO train village than a polygon driven landscape.<br />
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<br />
<b><span style="font-size: x-large;">OUTSIDERS </span><span style="font-size: small;">(They aren't from 2011 VG, but they are from <i>my</i> 2011 VG.)</span></b><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2931/mgolf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/2931/mgolf.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's almost impossible to find a picture of Minna no Golf<i> without</i> wildlife.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Minna no Golf 5/Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds</b> - I don't generally pay much attention to Hot Shots Golf games, because I'm familiar with them from the psp universe. Then I saw a video of Minna no Golf 5 running on the monitor at a local import shop here in LA. It was beautiful and Move compatible AND supported 3D! It came right home with me! The western version, Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds, is not Move compatible or 3D (sad face, sad face), but does make it a lot easier to learn the nuances and many, many weird house rules of Minna no Golf 5, which are far beyond my primitive Japanese skills. Apparently this game is from 2008. You'd sure never know it. It looks a million times better than Tiger Woods 12, and is, all the way around, a <i>far</i> more sophisticated game design than EA's golf flagship. Plus it has ducks.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7159/mafia2v.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/7159/mafia2v.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every morning I call Grand Theft Auto and describe speedometers.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Mafia II</b> - To be clear, I pre-ordered this game when it launched last year, but it and my least stable gaming rig could not get along with each other. I put a new pc together this year, and was finally able to play it. It's done ok. It has a lot to compete with. And it's open world, but not a sandbox. In fact, it's probably best I played it after LA Noire, so I have some perspective on what it looks and feels like when someone<i> really </i>wastes their map.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3765/4140136aaa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="179" src="http://img13.imageshack.us/img13/3765/4140136aaa.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You have to pause the game when Spiderman calls for advice.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Just Cause 2</b> - @toomanywires mentioned this on his site, so I grabbed a copy, and it was awesome. Assuming you're willing to embrace the clunky learning curve and master the grapple, it becomes a super hero game like no other. The things you can pull off with that wire are totally sick. I was at 50-something hours before I even did the second story mission. Then I realized there was an even nicer pc edition, so I traded my 360 copy and restarted it on the computer, where I continue to terrorize Panau on a semi-regular basis. If Just Cause 3 manages to link your infrastructure damage with the actual capabilities of the people you're fighting, so there's some real cause and effect to your anarchistic shenanigans, it could be the greatest sandbox of all time.<br />
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<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/1989/fishq.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/1989/fishq.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sometimes you eat the little Asian man. Sometimes he eats you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Rapala Pro Bass Fishing</b> - The out of nowhere superstar of this gaming year. It was Move compatible, and it came with a fishing rod peripheral, and it was on sale, I wanted to buy something, and, most importantly, I knew almost nothing about fishing games. Instant favorite! I'm now pacing myself, because I know once I reach 100% completion, there's no next fishing game to play. This is the only one compatible with its rod, and the reviews of every other fishing game are terrible.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5033/worldendsguide121158753.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5033/worldendsguide121158753.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Apparently the world ends with me squinting.</td></tr>
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<b>The World Ends with You</b> - For a DS rpg competing against the tide and tumble of my arcade, TWEWY did very well. It didn't get finished, but it definitely got noticed, and got to be the game of the day at least once. That's pretty impressive. It's entirely possible this game and I will meet again, once it's ported to a phone, as every popular DS game surely will be one day. <br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/3285/deadspace1o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="157" src="http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/3285/deadspace1o.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Is the one on the right shrugging? I'm with him.</td></tr>
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<b>Deadspace</b> - Ehn. If we're not going open world sandbox, I think I want your game to be short. I certainly don't need your narrative artificially lengthened by a bunch of boring, repetitive fight scenes, which has been the norm in video games for at least two decades too long. I'm also certain that nothing robs a horror game of its scariness faster than those constant retreats into conventional video game gameplay.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/2951/thebeatlesrockband20090.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/2951/thebeatlesrockband20090.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brace yourself. I don't really like the Beatles. I just think Sgt. Peppers is the best album ever. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Beatles Rock Band</b> - Certainly the best game of the Rock Band games, as far as the raw game design goes, in that it's a much more coherent and focused experience than the typical Rock Band "cover band on the rise" scenario. The thing is, I can no longer tell if I buy Rock Band games because I want to play Rock Band, or just because I need to justify dragging this plastic drum kit around for the last three years.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5904/vivapinata2review.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img40.imageshack.us/img40/5904/vivapinata2review.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The friend who introduced me to Viva Pinata grew up to be a World of Warcraft player. I also lost a friend to heroin once.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Viva Pinata 2: Trouble in Paradise</b> - I still consider the three Viva Pinata games the best reason to own a 360. The week I spent with my pinatas this summer only reinforced that notion. This era of gaming has been fun, but I don't think I've ever seen so many cool games fail to find an acceptable audience. Anyone who thinks we don't need the ps3 and pc to be viable platforms, just look at how much damage Microsoft has done to the more imaginative side of gaming in the last six years. Compare the quirkyness of any current system's year one library to the library of year five. The people who check "eclectic" before taping their penny to the card have really taken a hit.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2110/bsrps05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/2110/bsrps05.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not one dial, gauge, switch, toggle, lever, button, hat, or slider in this picture is decorative. Wrap your mind around that.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>DCS Blackshark</b> - One of the things I love about pc gaming is the simulators. Airplanes, helicopters, and even giant robots get ultra-detailed treatment on the computer. That said, this game, if you can even call it a game, is unbelievably complex, even by hardcore flight simulator standards. It was too much for me. But if you wanted a single game that could be as complicated, time consuming, and ultimately (I'm sure) as rewarding as a real life job, DCS Blackshark would be an excellent place to start looking.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4865/apacheairassaultgamepla.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/4865/apacheairassaultgamepla.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ok, still not as accessible as Rogue Squadron, but you can learn to play without getting a Master's degree.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b>Apache Air Assault</b> - Reeling from the near-life experience that is DCS Blackshark, I set out to find a helicopter game that was sim enough to not insult me, while still being game enough that I wasn't insulting it. Apache Air Assault to the rescue!<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/9913/11131fa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/9913/11131fa.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I once attended a convention where the Napoleonic miniatures players set up on a<i> massive</i> table and then spent all weekend trying to get their troops across the expanse and into combat. When we left Sunday afternoon, they had never fired a shot.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b></b><br />
<b>All the Total War games</b> - Shogun 2 was so good, and the last one I'd played was Shogun 1, so obviously the only reasonable thing to do was to buy every modern Total War game and try them all. I miss the old siege rules, even though they're technically the newer siege rules from my perspective.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/6881/afrikagiraffejpg.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://img594.imageshack.us/img594/6881/afrikagiraffejpg.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Norman was the tallest kid in class. It made him self conscious.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<b></b><br />
<b>Afrika</b> - The ps4 era will end and I will still cling to Afrika. Twice my game has been derailed by the elephant glitch, but my third and current play-through has escaped it, so I can finally continue forward into the artificial wilds. That I would even keep trying to get a game that's glitched 20+ hours of my time into the ether teaches us that my love of giraffes is<i> so great</i> that it actually outweighs my lifelong hatred of poorly constructed games.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>GAME OF THE YEAR FOR 2011 VG</b></span><br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5483/deadisland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/5483/deadisland.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No one stole your umbrella. Just settle down.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Dead Island</b> -Yeah, look, I'm as surprised as you are. If you'd told me a year ago that the most fun game in my arcade was going to be a blatant attempt to cash in on the success of Left 4 Dead, by the Call of Juarez people, I would have assumed you're using better drugs than me. And yet, here we are. <i>I've played through it alone, and with friends, and with more friends, and with less friends, and played it alone some more, and the only conclusion I can come to is that Dead Island is the best all-around game to show up since that week when Kinect and Black Ops dropped.</i> It's been the most fun. It's been the most engaging. I've finished it, I've got at least 200 hours in it between the two versions I own (pc and 360), and I still haven't seen everything. The story is solid. The core gameplay, running, searching, and fighting, is great, particularly on the pc.<br />
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That said, it's easily the best port I've seen in the 360 era. The transition from a high end gaming rig to the consoles is usually a brutal drop. I barely notice the shift in this game. (If the consoles could run all the combat<i> smoothly</i>, instead of just running it, I probably wouldn't notice at all.) <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/4688/deadisland2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img803.imageshack.us/img803/4688/deadisland2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Life" guard. Haha! I see what you did there.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
It's huge. Like Oblivion huge. With the most relaxed and forgiving multiplayer to single player transitions ever. You can play any amount of the game alone or in groups, with any combination of people, much like Borderlands. Game of the Year awards should go to the games that aim the highest, and come closest to the mark. I think the "aim the highest" part gets lost sometimes in these discussions. It's a technologically based medium. Forward momentum <i>has</i> to be a requisite. Dead Island might not be the most polished contender for GOTY, but it<i> is </i>the most ambitious, and it manages to hit most of its intended beats with clarity and confidence.<br />
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I don't believe in spoilers, but I'll say this - do yourself a favor when you play this game and turn everything off. The autopathing, the damage meters, all their wannabe rpg readouts. You don't need any of it, and the game is far more immersive without their game mechanics cluttering up the screen, or their cartographic training wheels impeding your sense of the space around you. And, perhaps most importantly, remember that the 15 minutes it will take you to get comfortable with the analog combat controls are 100% worth it.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/1933/deadisland1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://img59.imageshack.us/img59/1933/deadisland1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I put on my lipstick with a Hot Wheels.</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-large;"><b>My mon Bats don't shiv. You see.</b></span></div><br />
You know, at some point, in the near or distant future, you may find yourself thinking "Hey, a round-up of the year in gaming would be fun! I should totally do that!"<br />
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But it isn't. And you shouldn't. Because first you're like "Oh, this is fun.", but then you realize it's turning into a wall of text, and that the only thing that will make any of it legible is pictures breaking it all up. So then you spend 12 hours google image searching and trying to figure out where the hell Steam puts your screenshots. All to realize you're not actually done and have forgotten another game. And another one. And that you haven't actually written the Game of the Year section! <i>All on the day Batman came out, which is it what makes it a (expletive deleted) holiday in the first place.</i><br />
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So don't. Just: don't. This is my advice to you, many long hours after starting this stupid thing. The original opening line was "Batman Arkham City comes out in three days..."<br />
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I've gotten maybe four hours of play time in since writing that sentence.<br />
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Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go get some coffee, put on these 3D glasses, and use my ps3 to <i>pretend</i> that I'm man enough to dress up in pointy ears and fight crime.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3194/thedarkknightreturnsbat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3194/thedarkknightreturnsbat.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I am absolutely not going to make out with that bat. Still, if you could come back in 15 minutes...</td></tr>
</tbody></table></div>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-58594177873726484722011-02-16T22:34:00.000-08:002011-02-16T22:34:41.663-08:00Sympathy for a Bullet<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">With the news of Borders filing for Chapter 11, and closing 200 of its stores, there has been some discussion today of the underlying causes. One of the theories I've heard posited a couple of times is book piracy. Since piracy and books are two subjects I'm intimately familiar with, I thought I'd take a moment to break this down. <i>(Plus I have this great title that deserves to be more than a hashtag.)</i><br />
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First off, understand that you can only pirate ebooks. Real books still have to be shoplifted, which, for whatever reasons, isn't called piracy, but shoplifting. Probably it's the lack of cool hats, parrots, and eye patches among the shoplifting community. Posers. Anyway, most, if not all, book pirates are people who use eReaders.<br />
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As of 2011, ebooks account for roughly <a href="http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2010_Oct/AugustStatsPressRelease.htm">10%</a> of all the books (not including text books) being sold.<br />
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Within that 10%, Amazon.com represents <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-18438_7-20012381-82.html">70-80%</a> of the ebook market. I'm guessing it's closer to 70 than 80, since Apple claims to have 22% tied up with its iBook store. That leaves 8% unaccounted for. But let's be generous and assume that a whole 10% of the ebook market is divided between Smashwords, Sony's Reader Store, Barnes and Noble's Nookstore, Kobo, and the Borders ebookstore, which is separate from, but powered by the Kobo system.<br />
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At best then, any discussion of Borders vs. book piracy is only really applicable to one-fifth of 10% of the 10% of all books being sold anywhere, which ebooks represent. That's one fifth of one percent of all book sales, for those of you getting lost in the math. That means for every 500 books Borders sold, they could have sold 501. If only it weren't for those darn pirates. Even homeless people wouldn't notice themselves losing 1 out of every 500 dollars, so I seriously doubt it's enough to put a corporation the size of Borders into Chapter 11.<br />
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And remember, this math assumes that <i>a full 100% </i>of all<i> </i>Borders ebook sales are lost to piracy. <i>And</i> that Borders even has that much of the ebook market share, which I also doubt, seeing as the Sony eReaders seem to be most popular after the Kindle and iPad.<br />
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It also ignores the fact that book piracy is primarily costing Amazon and Apple money at this point, both entities that actually <i>compete</i> with Borders.<br />
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Now let's take a moment to look at the piracy numbers.<br />
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<a href="http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6061975/Kindle_Books_Collection">Here</a> is the most popular ebook torrent on Earth (in our dimension). It contains 976 books from a wide range of authors, starting with Frank W. Abagnale and ending with Markus Zusak. (Zusak's stolen book, coincidentally, is called <i>The Book Thief.</i>) How popular is this particular bundle of pirate booty? Well, it has 754 seeders, and 208 leechers. That means 754 people, globally, are providing the full file for download, and another 208 denizens of our small blue dot are currently downloading it from them.<br />
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That's comparable to, say, the dvd rip of 2010's "Machete". (Which has 759seeders, 189 leechers.) Or the "Wiz Khalifa Discography". (623/214) Or yesterday's episode of InSecurity. (804/370)<br />
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Yes, that's right... 1000 ebooks, including the (nearly) complete works of Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, Douglas Adams, J.K. Rowling, William Shakespeare, William Gibson, J.R.R. Tolkien, Kurt Vonnegut, Dean Koontz, Stieg Larrson, and many, many others... <i>combined</i>, are currently generating as much pirate traffic as a single (essentially unwatchable) B movie from last December. And some remix bundle from a DJ none of us have ever heard of. And a TV show most of us would have to google if we cared.<br />
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If that's the kind of math that hammers nails into the coffins of national chains, every business everywhere is in dire and immediate danger. It can only be a matter of weeks before we're plunged into a hellish Mad Max-ian dystopia, where we'll be forced to wear the pelts of feral cats and hunt radioactive pigeons for sustenance. I sure hope you can mutant-proof a soap box...<br />
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I guess if you're really intent on nailing yourself to the cause, you can take the Borders downfall as a moment to decry the evils of book piracy. I can't stop you. Neither can these numbers. But you'll be lying. To everyone that hears you, and, worse, to yourself.<br />
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Perhaps most importantly, that misguided rally won't help books, or the people who write them, or sell them, just as rants about the dangers of marijauna only make people less likely to heed later warnings about harder, more dangerous drugs they really should avoid at all costs. Misinformation has a price, and that price is trust. In 5 or 10 years, book piracy really <i>could</i> be a problem for the industry. It might help, at that point, to still have some credibility laying around.</div>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-70496353488115596422010-05-07T15:55:00.001-07:002010-05-07T16:30:42.199-07:00The Line ImaginedYou live in a house with your family. The house catches fire, and everyone is trapped inside. You could put the fire out, but that would be 1) difficult and 2) very dangerous. So instead, you leave your wife and kids in the burning house while you sneak into your next door neighbor's yard and set up a tent. Now you can mow his yard, and he'll pay you enough to buy gas masks and maybe some fireproof pajamas for the kids you left in the burning house. Coincidentally, your neighbor owns the world's largest firetruck, but he doesn't want to help you because 1) he'd have to hire someone less desperate, and thus more expensive, to mow his lawn, and 2) the firetruck is very busy in the next town over, hosing down Muslims for being violent, antiquated, mall haters.<br /><br />This is the story of Mexico/US immigration. It's easy to get angry and confused and think it's about sweeping concepts like racism, or historical injustices, or patriotism, but, in fact, it's just the story of two lazy dicks living next door to each other.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-45122778327674313392009-02-18T07:45:00.000-08:002009-02-20T09:04:21.881-08:00Drafting the Forever WarIt's time. After extensive time with both the Xbox 360 and the ps3, I will finally end the argument. System supremacy will be declared. There will be no further discussion of this topic.<br /><br />Graphics, loading times, joystick sensitivity, high def specs... no. Done to death. It got us nowhere.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thunderdome Living</span> [[melee and lethality]] - Sony's ps3 is heavier, and has sharper edges. The black shell, though unfortunately glossed, is better for stalking prey than basic 360 white. Neither system has stock wired joysticks, so you can forget the morning star modes of fighting afforded by previous console generations. As ranged weapons, the 360 controllers hit a little harder. <span style="font-style: italic;">Advantage - ps3.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Kessel Run</span> [[smuggling your weed]] - With removable faceplates and optional casings, the 360 wins this category faster than you can say "twelve parsecs". Additionally, the 360 can be purchased in stoner friendly Halo green. <span style="font-style: italic;">Advantage - 360</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Remember the Alamo</span> [[coonskin cap replacement]] - Because of technology's exponential curve, each successive generation of consoles have made better hats than their predecessors. The ps3 and 360 are perhaps the finest example of this dynamic yet. Hollowed out and strapped as head wear, both systems provide a wide ceremonial outline and plenty of enigmatic lightwork. However, while the potentially dual colour rings of the 360 <span style="font-style: italic;">are</span> swanky, the ps3's sleek imperial linework and formidible leading edge make it the beangear of choice for a hopeless last stand against Santa Anna and a horde of excited Mexicans. <span style="font-style: italic;">Advantage - ps3</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sexual Chocolate</span> [[rocking the porn bot]] - While neither system has a hole big enough fit your junk in, the smooth rounded edges of the 360 make it the obvious choice for anything past second base. It also comes in a variety of sexy colours, and again, optional faceplates spell win in the secret language of Sorayama. <span style="font-style: italic;">Advantage - 360</span><br /><br />It's a tie! We knew that. The correct answer is always "D) Stack both systems on top of your Coleco Adam and play all three."Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-78381756240665164272009-02-12T09:36:00.000-08:002009-02-12T10:57:15.825-08:00Being ThereDarwin Day. I like it. A science holiday! Even though no one stays home and there are no presents. It's ok, we'll work on that. It will evolve.<br /><br />The only part that bugs me is the "Darwin". Evolution has two dads.<br /><br />History and convenience have naturally selected Charles Darwin as the spokesmodel for natural selection. Which is fine. Darwin did a lot of good work and he did, technically, make the discovery. But then he sat around with it. One of the most important ideas in modern history languished in a notebook while Darwin refined data and fussed over numbers.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Alfred Wallace wandered around the jungle taking notes. The guy was a dauntless adventurer and explorer. Extremely clever. David Quammen wrote a wonderful book called <span style="font-style: italic;">Song of the Dodo</span> that tells the story better than I ever could, so I will simply point you in that direction for further edification, rather than trying to recount it all here. But Alfred Wallace figured out evolution too. Just by wandering around with it. Wallace decided to actually share the information with the world, and started writing up papers.<br /><br />A mutual friend of Darwin and Wallace alerted Darwin that he was about to lose his precedence. At which point Darwin finally discovered natural selection for the rest of us. Bio-nerd facepalm. To be fair, he shared credit with Wallace. They had an amicable relationship and Wallace himself was a staunch defender of Darwin's work. I do not mean to imply that there was bad blood between them, or that you should dislike Charles Darwin.<br /><br />But it's Darwin Day. If we're going to have a science holiday, it shouldn't be tainted with stolen credit. Science has enough of that already.<br /><br />Charles Darwin may be evolution's dad, but Alfred Wallace was evolution's <span style="font-style: italic;">cool dad</span>. We should be thanking both of them.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-37121390342502014452009-01-28T02:21:00.000-08:002009-01-28T04:34:02.404-08:00They have a plan. [Just kidding.]While we're on the subject of television, I guess I'll cover Battlestar Galactica too. It's been one of my favorite shows for a couple of years now. Like Lost, it just picked up again. Unlike Lost, BSG has finally reached the endgame. We're two episodes into the ten episode finale.<br /><br />Since the finale of last season, the show has gotten a little strange. The writers are purposefully rocketing towards darkness, and they're doing it well. [It's led to some amazing performances. Edward James Almos in particular.] I don't doubt that the show is doing exactly what the producers want it to be doing.<br /><br />The problem is, what they're doing isn't any fun. It's bleak. Everyone is unhappy, and once again the fleet's leadership is in turmoil. Which is fine, except we've seen this arc. We've seen it more than once. Roslin vs. Adama. Zarek vs. Roslin. Lee vs. Adama. Lee vs. Roslin. Baltar vs. Roslin. Blah vs. Blah.<br /><br />It's a real let down to get all the way to the ending, just to watch the same horse get beaten one more time.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Yes, I know, the horse will get beaten harder. It will be even more gritty, dark, and vicious<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>than it was the last six times we watched it<span style="font-style: italic;">... </span><br /><br />People's faces will turn red. Guns will be pointed. Unthinkable executions will occur. Ambiguous nobility and faux realism will clash to the sound of an angry drumbeat while handcams wobble and obscure the action. [The drum and wobbling camera will help you understand just <span style="font-style: italic;">how</span> intense and gritty the action really is.] <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span><br />Worse still, the traditional Battlestar Galactica "serialize as you go" system is finally catching up with the storyline. The farther we get into the ending, the more it looks like this last season will retroactively cheese up all previous installments. I'll explain...<br /><br />For the first sixty-something episodes of Battlestar Galactica, the whole concept of the show revolved around the cylons "having a plan". They reiterated the cylons and their plan at the beginning of every single episode. In season four they just dropped it, and apparently the cylons have a lot less of a plan than they did before. So now when you go back and watch the old ones, it just comes across as a campy lie born of formulaic television plotting.<br /><br />I'm even more concerned about Head Six. The Caprica Six ghost that only Baltar can see. There was an episode where we learned that Caprica Six also sees a Baltar. I've waited very patiently for that to be explained. We don't seem to be getting closer to any kind of answer.<br /><br />"Two people from completely different species simultaneously developed a unique new mental disorder."<br /><br />If <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> is the final explanation, as it appears to be at the moment, then every episode of BSG just got much, much dumber than it was before. They don't even show Head Six anymore. On a personal level I find it very disappointing; the cleverest idea on the series now threatens to transmogrify into the lamest thing to hit science fiction since Jar Jar Binks.<br /><br />Of course, it's not just those two things. As important as those two plot lines are, they still aren't the whole show. It's many little things.<br /><br />Last season ended with a "cliffhanger' that had no emotional resonance whatsoever. It was supposed to be this big important moment, and an overwhelming realization. Instead it just felt empty.<br /><br />They got to Earth. Earth was dead. No part of me cared.<br /><br />I'm the guy who cries at sad <span style="font-style: italic;">car commercials</span>. To have me watch your big emotional moment and just shrug... that shouldn't even be possible. Especially not with characters I've known and liked for years. Yet the Galactica writers pulled it off.<br /><br />Then they revealed identity of the fifth cylon. That was built up for longer than a season. The answer was meaningless. It may become meaningful, but at the moment you make your big reveal, your big reveal should have some weight behind it.<br /><br />Ellen Tigh? Who cares. It didn't change anything. Watching the show knowing "Ellen Tigh" is exactly the same as watching the show without knowing it.<br /><br />It's starting to look like the old OP was autobiographical material.<br /><br />They <span style="font-style: italic;">had</span> a plan. It got lost somewhere between seasons. Just like the writers.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-81346845420983801112009-01-25T19:49:00.000-08:002009-01-25T20:16:12.703-08:00Hush now, Clarence Boddicker.Lost started up again. I miss Shannon.<br /><br />She was the bratty little rich girl that wandered fussily around the island for the first season and half. It's possible she annoyed you. To understand why I loved Shannon, you have to rewind to the beginning of the show. It went something like this:<br /><br />"We've been on this island an hour and half. Jack, you're the mayor and sheriff. Kate, you and Hurley start building a windmill out of coconuts. The rest of us will construct a village and form hunting parties!"<br /><br />Meanwhile, Shannon sat by the luggage and stared at the ocean, waiting for the boat to show up and rescue them. She had an organic sense of inertia. Like any normal person.<br /><br />Shannon was the anti-Locke. Perhaps that's the key to my chagrin. I find John Locke as grating and insufferable as many people found Shannon. Now that everyone on the show is essentially Locke, I miss her even more.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-15469501442640354682008-12-16T02:23:00.000-08:002008-12-16T03:06:19.491-08:00The Levar Burton EffectThe most frustrating part of having a genius level IQ is the constant discrimination. Sadly, most people are too clueless to even realize it's happening.<br /><br />If you're taller, or faster, or stronger you get to just be taller, faster, or stronger. No one expects a hulking person to pretend everyone he interacts with is equally capable of lifting things. Not true if you're smart. Being smart is like being black.<br /><br />"It's cool. Just try to be non-threatening if you want people to like you."<br /><br />I walk on eggshells with the universe. Friends, family, passersby... they all expect me to treat their goofy ideas as if they were equally valid. If they are, I do. If they're not, I'm still expected to coddle. So generally speaking, I coddle.<br /><br />It's an extremely frustrating way to live. It fosters an internal sense of hostility that I can't always hide. It attaches a clock to most of my relationships, because I can't keep it up forever.<br /><br />And on top of everything, somehow <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm</span> considered the arrogant one. That is, of course, exactly backwards.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-67253804281699903092008-11-21T03:54:00.000-08:002008-11-21T04:58:55.166-08:00So your sackboy wants to go to art school...So there's a lot of buzz right now about Little Big Planet hasn't met sales expectations and (gasp) might not be the silver bullet savior of Sony's undernourished ps3. It seems like every place I go for gaming news, I'm finding articles about the situation. Predictably, almost everything being written is sheer stupidity. No one seems to have the foggiest idea why LBP isn't blowing up the charts. Sigh. Let me explain... since apparently I need to.<br /><br />Since arriving on the scene in 1993, Sony has done virtually everything in its power to be the anti-Nintendo. They sell slick. They sell cool. They sell high tech 14-29 year old male demographic gaming. Playstations are where games like Grand Theft Auto, SOCOM, and Gran Turismo live. ok, stay with me, I'll try to keep this simple.<br /><br />Whether you call the ps3 a failure or a very late bloomer (this quiz accepts either), it's easy to see that it's in last place in this generation of systems. There just aren't that many out there. The people that <span style="font-style: italic;">do</span> have them, have them for Metal Gear Solid 4, Resistance: Fall of Man, and a handful of shooting/driving games. They're mostly Sony diehards. See above.<br /><br />The ps3 has a small choir and Little Big Planet wasn't designed to preach to it.<br /><br />That's it. LBP may be a masterpiece, but it's a masterpiece on a third place, testosterone-driven<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> console. A console that's not particularly friendly to casual gamers. LBP is a killer app, not a fairy godmother with an army of time machines.<br /><br />Now please stop pestering the LBP dreamscape with your bizarre mathematical expectations.<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">In a broader sense, it's wrong to even treat LBP like a game. It's not a game. It's a game system. The first truly functional game system in the pixel driven world. Comparing its sales figures to Legos or Dungeons and Dragons would be more accurate.</span>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-91818481690936949162008-10-25T19:32:00.000-07:002008-10-25T23:23:42.414-07:00Politics of Dogs and ChickensIt's not easy to find a good veterinarian. It's even harder in Mexico. Weeks of trying to get Emma the kitty decent medical treatment led to the diagnosis of liver disease. That confirmed my own suspicions, since Google and I had also concluded Hepatic Lipidosis. Emma the kitty has been doomed for close to a month now.<br /><br />I was really having a hard time with that. Emma was the kitten that picked me out and followed me. Because she fell in love with me at first sight, I decided to adopt a girl cat, and my girlfriend at the time was sort of fenced into taking Emma's brother - Spike the kitty. When we broke up, I stole Spike and kept the family together.<br /><br />Fifty thousand miles and one international border later we're missing Spike and Emma has been failing rapidly. It's been long and heartbreaking, but she never stops eating. It's hard for me to give up on an animal that's ravenous. Something in that doesn't feel right. Maybe it's just that watching someone die slowly can force an addiction to hope.<br /><br />So the third vet... the desperation vet... the 'I can't stand to see Emma wither away for six more hours, so please just tell me something better' vet... whose office is more like an urban barnyard pet and feed store, takes one look at her and literally makes a "pssh" noise at the idea of liver disease, and sentences Emma to four days of shots for parasites.<br /><br />Four days later she's getting her fourth shot, and Emma the kitty is much improved. We pay the second half of our 300 peso vet bill and we go home. Everyone is going to live!<br /><br />Well, not everyone.<br /><br />A few hours after giving Emma her last shot, and telling us to come back in three days for a check-up, the veterinarian and his two helpers, along with a 15 year old boy, were gunned down in their shop. I don't know anyone's names. If I did I'd recount them uselessly for you.<br /><br />Nor do I know exactly why it happened, although it's pretty easy to connect the dots if you start with the roosters and consider our local cartel wars.<br /><br />What I do know is that Emma is sleeping on a green towel right now, and the guy who saved her life is dead.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-79864539866216397062008-10-12T05:15:00.000-07:002008-10-12T05:36:10.778-07:00I laughed, I WAAAAGH'd, and it became a part of me...Every time Blizzard releases a new Warcraft game, I have to remind myself that they do not have the official Warhammer license. It's hard to tell. Warcraft is a direct copy of Warhammer, right down to the most minute stylistic details. Make no mistake, Warhammer existed long before Blizzard started stealing their ideas and using them for RTS games. By the time WoW debuted, they'd been biting on Warhammer for almost a decade. So this game, Warhammer Online, had two difficult jobs:<br /><br />One, be a better mmorpg than World of Warcraft.<br /><br />Two, steal back the Warhammer identity, and return it to its rightful owners - Games Workshop.<br /><br />For the first twenty minutes of Warhammer Online, I thought it was a tie. Honestly, Warhammer just seemed like a different version of WoW; as much a clone as WoW had always been itself. Then the details started to bleed through...<br /><br />Warhammer classes are interesting and well designed. Archetypes you've grown used to from every game since Everquest suddenly have new twists. My Battle Priest, for instance, must melee to recharge her healing spells. My Dwarven Ironbreaker is a tank that can make an oath to protect another character, and share his combat activated defensive buffs. (I can't say enough about the social/personal investment dynamic this ability creates!) My Dark Elf Sorceress tempts backlashes of magic energy as she collects greater and greater amounts of dark energy, becoming more dangerous to others AND herself. Every character class has their own little special mechanic that adds a dimension to their skills and abilities. It's really quite clever.<br /><br />The PvP section of the game, a segment of massive online gaming I tend to ignore outside of Eve Online, is structured and implemented in such a way that it's fun, engaging, and perhaps most importantly, directly rewarding. Go play arena scenario games against the opposing force of Order or Chaos, and earn cool renown awards - from new goods at merchants to actual loot on the bodies of dispatched players.<br /><br />Warhammer just brings so many good ideas to the table, and carries them out so well. Public quests that are fun and interesting foster a sense of community and teamwork among strangers almost from the moment the game begins. Npc banter is well written; for the first time since... well, since ever in a mmorpg... I find myself reading the quests. Grinding has been rendered ineffective and useless; virtually all gameplay is purposeful and quest driven. Exploration is rewarding and fun; the maps are littered with clickable objects that bestow experience and quests or new entries in your Tome. And the Tome!<br /><br />The Tome of Knowledge is perhaps the greatest single addition to massive online rpg theory I have ever seen. Imagine a slick, user friendly combination of your journal from Oblivion, the statistic tracking reward system of Madden football games, and Xbox Live's achievement system. Plus a lot of other cool stuff. It brings the game together into a cohesive presentation that would be very impressive in a well designed single player game. To see something that good in a massive is a rare moment indeed.<br /><br />I think that's the most basic truth of Warhammer Online - it's the first massive online roleplaying game with a design that genuinely compares to the best experiences of offline, single player gaming. It doesn't require (or ask for) your forgiveness for being an mmorpg. After a couple days of playing Warhammer, you'll understand why Blizzard stole every idea they ever had from these people.<br /><br />And you'll be glad Warhammer just stole them back.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-22359684414345409852008-10-04T11:59:00.000-07:002008-10-04T12:25:14.112-07:00What Chuck Woolery has always known...Politics, for those of you taking notes, has almost nothing to do with issues or logic. Democrats should be careful about getting smug, and republicans should be even more careful bandying about a defeatist attitude.<br /><br />Because politics is really all about the romance.<br /><br />Either side could still easily win or lose this election. Since I'm playing for red team this year, I'll tell my people how we win.<br /><br />We win by being nice. I'm not talking about John McCain or Sarah Palin, though they could certainly chip in. No, the real road to red team victory lays with us, the supporters.<br /><br />Don't fight. It's retarded. The only people who will fight with you about politics are the people you will <span style="font-style: italic;">never</span> convince. So while you think you're "standing up for what you believe in", what you're actually doing is damaging our cause by driving off the spectators we desperately need to be romancing.<br /><br />Nothing is decided yet. We've just got two proposals. America still sleeps with no ring on her finger. Our plan is simple.<br /><br />Be upbeat. Be strong in your kindness. Be good natured and funny.<br /><br />BE ON FIRST DATE BEHAVIOR.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-29010143607038045072008-10-02T21:10:00.000-07:002008-10-02T22:23:04.568-07:00Class Act - 75APDear Sarah Palin and Joe Biden,<br /><br />Thanks for a really fun debate. Genuinely fun. Whatever people say about you... and I'm sure we're all going to keep saying a lot... I'm proud of the two of you for <span style="font-style: italic;">finally</span> representing <span style="font-style: italic;">my</span> United States of America: the one that's civilized and good natured.<br /><br />For ninety minutes you didn't annoy me. Neither of you embarrassed me or yourselves. You didn't get snarky, condescending, or interrupt each other. I laughed a lot and cried a little and found you both very likable.<br /><br />Keep this up, and you'll actually foster a sense of inclusion in this election. Randomly placed decent human beings will be encouraged to vote and participate in their republic. I have no idea if we've even got chairs for them, but we'll figure something out.<br /><br />And so I award each of you the 75pt Acheivement - Class Act. Please make the corresponding changes to your gamertags.<br /><br />Again, thank you for a lovely evening.<br /><br />~ Reed W. Decker, Red TeamThirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-41496726862888126902008-09-16T00:13:00.000-07:002008-09-16T02:06:09.547-07:00Old Yeller - A solo adventure for levels 1-4Among the people who come from broken families there is an oft repeated saying.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">My friends are my family.</span><br /><br />It's almost like mantra for us. Friends said it with conviction twenty years ago, and different friends say it with conviction now. I've said it many times myself.<br /><br />We say it because we don't have actual families. We know it's not quite accurate, but we hope it will be. We're social critters. We need to feel connected and loved. So we project a prophecy outward, and pray it self fulfills.<br /><br />The problem is it rarely works. The combination of timing, chemistry, and personal commitment required to pull it off is extremely rare. The most common result is complete failure; someone simply disappears.<br /><br />Paths diverge and people vanish. Sometimes they fall. Sometimes you push.<br /><br />The next most common result is limbo. People wander forward, together but apart. Everyone is in contact, but there's no actual substance to the friendship. New families, new jobs, new hobbies and interests.... priorities shift like glaciers, slow and irrevocable.<br /><br />This is where it falls apart me. I just can't stand it. I don't like human bookmarks. They're placeholders in an hourglass that can never be flipped over. Which brings us back to "Go" again. Everyone collect $200.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">My friends are my family.</span><br /><br />There will be a purge soon. For most of my bookmark friends, and it's stunning how many they number, these are the last days we'll ever know each other. It's not malice that brings us to this final rail stop.<br /><br />It's social economics. I can't afford to have a family full of almost empty chairs. They can't afford another significant person in their busy lives. I'll miss them, but I miss them now.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-15593742783882844102008-09-14T00:36:00.000-07:002008-09-14T03:52:43.625-07:00Life after Little Wooden Boy...My anime collection is nearing the terabyte level. There will be a celebration. Sometime in the spring.<br /><br />There's never a good time to stop and list all my recommendations. I'm always in the middle of new series and always telling myself I'll attend to the "master list" in due time. My friend Roland and I were talking about anime the other day... and I realized the time to make some list, any list, is now.<br /><br />Some of these will be old, some will be new. I'll even throw in one or two current suggestions. In all cases... I mean "when watched in order" and the subtitled version with the original Japanese voice cast. The first series on the list, for instance, is almost unwatchable in dubbed form.<br /><br />...<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Magical Shopping Arcade Abenobashi </span>- One of my all-time faves. Abenobashi basically dares you to declare it juvenille and silly...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mushishi</span> - Low key paranormal investigations in provincal Japan. Lots of neat stuff goes on in this one.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Now & Then, Here & There</span> - This is a tough one. You can't not recommend this series, because it's really unique and well done. But it's also a deeply brutal story that revolves mostly around little kids.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Denno Coil</span> - The best cyberpunk ever constructed in any medium. So relentlessly brilliant that you'll feel terrible for not thinking of virtually everything that happens for all 26 episodes.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Edo Rocket</span> - A fireworks maker tries to build a rocket to get a friend home to the moon.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Code Geass</span> - Robot tactics/fighting, high school drama, world domination story with more characters than you could fit on a steamboat... very well done and home of the most advanced plotting I've seen since the Watchmen. Their trick is different than Moore's highly synchronized clockwork storytelling, but no less impressive. This is currently in its second season and is being fansubbed by Eclipse.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Melancholy of Haruhi Suzimiya</span> - A deranged chick starts an after school club with no discernable purpose. Very funny and strange.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">FLCL</span> - If there were some way to describe it to you, I would try. It's six episodes and possibly the coolest thing ever animated. It seems short, but then you have to watch it several times anyway, both to understand what the hell just happened to you, and to bask in the amazingness... so it actually works out to be about normal length.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Clannad, AirTV, Kanon 2006</span> - The old joke "I laughed, I cried, it became a part of me." is finally brought to the dreaded "five over five" status. All three of these are done by a company called Key and they all alternate between funny and heartbreaking. I'm just a huge fan of Key. Also noteworthy (!!!), they have excellent, clever, three dimensional leading male characters.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Read or Die</span> - Both the three part mini-series and the full length television series are excellent. Highly recommended. Sort of a British spy meets pulp level metahuman thing they've got going on. It's eccentric, heartfelt and imaginative.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Higurashi no Naku Koro ni</span> - There's three of these now, and I'm not through the third one yet... they're all very (very) dark civic horror stories. They're roughly Lovecraftian in pacing, and they're oddly veiled behind a bunch of total lolicon characters... but all of them so far have been very intricate and well conceived. <br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha</span> - The first two series of this are great. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span>Imagine the best days of Beta Ray Bill being relived by a nine year old girl. It's like that, but to be honest Thor never had fights this good. Remember to drink each time you furrow and say "Damn."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Magical Girl Squad Alice</span> - Amazingly, this series is nothing like the previous anime that began with "Magical Girl". Alice is more like Alice in Wonderland meets the old American cartoon movie "Wizards". Every episode is ten minutes long and there are fifty something total. It had neat art, a lot of good ideas, and an interesting storyline.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Rocket Girls</span> - High school girls get drafted into an underfunded space program. It's impossible not to begin this series with a facepalm, but then it turns out to be a charming story with a lot of really cool educational stuff about rockets. This should be the first anime on PBS.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bokurano</span> - Part giant robot battles, part sci-fi horror, and part dramatic vignette. It's not a happy story, but I liked it a lot.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Paranoia Agent</span> - A murder mystery presented through a lens of Bhuddism. Another of my all-time favorites and another anime that flops like a thrice bashed fish after dubbing. <span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />This is really just scratching the surface. We could go deeper in many directions, but these anime are all solid. And there's a lot of anime that is perhaps more foundational, like Bebop and Ninja Scrolls, but presumably you can find that with any "best of..." google search.<br /><br />I've watched tons of anime, so if anyone has questions about anything specific, don't hesitate to ask. I suggest bittorrent and www.fansub.tv as good places to look for free fansubs.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-48720498249671482762008-09-07T10:23:00.000-07:002008-09-07T11:53:07.966-07:00The World of Burning EarsSarah Palin is too ordinary to be qualified. If being mayor of a little, moose adjacent town is laughable, imagine what they must think of us. I'm just a broke writer. My friends certainly aren't as "special" as a small town mayor. They manage hotels, go to college, design web pages, work in cafes, etc. I had been under the impression that all people born under our flag were gifted with unlimited potential and equality. I thought one of the great strengths of American freedom was the beautiful idea that <span style="font-style: italic;">anyone</span>, representing any of our widely varied hopes and faces, could become anything they wished to be. I must have misunderstood something.<br /><br />Well, at least I'm not involved with the real idiots - the community organizers. What a bunch of incompetent losers... ok, wait. Charity work doesn't count as community organization does it? How about years worth of essays trying to impart a more reasonable sense of perspective to the world around me? What about my mom's job with the LA County Park Service? Helping local families find and enjoy public parks is different than community organizing right? I mean just because she's technically organizing sections of her community... No, I'm certain that Rudy Giuliani, a man I've spoken well of for years, did not just laugh as he made fun of my mom.<br /><br />...<br /><br />Everyone's gotten awfully comfortable insulting me. That's an interesting way to try and make friends. I can't say I care for it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">There's a knock at the door. It's Ralph Nader. He jabs you in the eye with a pencil and says "Sorry it took me so long. I had to ride my bike." </span>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-75825835909558372282008-09-04T19:17:00.000-07:002008-09-04T19:27:14.772-07:00Play Freebird! For my HAT!!!<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzcsi7R1GkGUt42UaiJA8Vfl31fxw3bqsb11jNGqlpfGQ4CCn9jUArrDaYCYZGCc4l_pcLY7r4HqzwyJDMpuw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-47453776691989463292008-09-04T11:43:00.000-07:002008-09-04T11:46:53.824-07:00It's not that you don't matter, it's just that you don't count.<object width="425" height="350"> <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YHd6oYFWPtQ"> </param> <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/YHd6oYFWPtQ" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="350"></embed> </object>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-37235703007745566122008-09-01T18:12:00.000-07:002008-09-01T18:25:14.253-07:00News so fast that the hounds couldn't catch it...<span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="http://independentreport.org/"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">FASTNEWS</span></span></a></span>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-83681436807334211732008-08-30T18:38:00.000-07:002008-08-30T19:27:15.025-07:00Little Known Facts of the Magic 8-BallLittle Known Fact: Sarah Palin...<br /><br />...is the 494th pokemon, and she wants to pwn your pikachu.<br /><br />...can squeeze rocks into other rocks. With her eyes.<br /><br />...used her snowmobile to take Gary Gygax's magic dice to the vault at the Fortress of Solitude.<br /><br />...fought Chuck Norris until the entire planet of Namek was destroyed.<br /><br />...can talk to beavers.<br /><br />...occasionally stops time to help Doctor Who fight the Daleks.<br /><br />...wrestled Cthulhu to steal ellipses for this blog.<br /><br />...has tiny Magic 8-Balls behind her pupils.<br /><br />Magic 8-Balls say...<br /><br />The Daily Show dynamic might be in for a major backfire. There's a pretty huge swath of young democrats that have been trained to align their politics with their sense of humor. Many of those same people would happily follow Chuck Norris into the sun.<br /><br />Absurdism has become an actual cultural force. As it should be. I, for one, couldn't be happier.<br /><br />[This blog entry is a forgery created by three different Andy Warhols.]<br /><br />LONG LIVE THE BROTHERHOOD OF DADAThirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-83164407190953701812008-08-29T19:47:00.000-07:002008-08-29T19:53:52.547-07:00A word, by any other name...It's Friday night and I'm sick with some kind of Central American Lizard Flu. What a pain. I could be nerding out with the other virgins right now, but no, instead I'm sniffling and tracking down ex-girlfriends in Guadalajara.<br /><br />Anyway, I thought I'd stop by and give the award for the best internet expression ever. Bruce, if I could get a drum roll. Thanks, Bruce.<br /><br />And the winner is...<br /><br />roflcopter<br /><br />Alright, that's all. Get out.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-8519354059413298782008-08-28T09:50:00.000-07:002008-08-28T10:23:40.083-07:00Vancian SpellcastingThe only Jack Vance book I ever read was fascinating. It was all about language, and how the very words you speak shape your thoughts and experience. The premise of the book was that whole worlds could be redesigned with linguistic overrides and manipulation.<br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Languages_of_Pao">The Languages of the Pao</a>.<br /><br />The basic idea is so clear and obvious and correct... I doubt I'll ever stop thinking about it. It's one of those concepts that shifts your perspective into a slightly different place. The words you know, and the structure of how they flow together, affects your future and potential just as clearly and impeccably as your genetic heritage. The way you learn to speak is the way you learn to <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span>.<br /><br />Interestingly enough, Vance himself has an unrivaled vocabulary. Click click click...Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-5732215346852471662008-08-26T05:57:00.000-07:002008-08-26T06:44:16.448-07:00EMOTICON DIPLOMACY FAILS - U.S. at war with Chinese gold farmersRead a <a href="http://www.wired.com/gaming/gamingreviews/commentary/games/2008/08/gamesfrontiers_0825">good article</a> about gaming yesterday. The most interesting part is this idea that major corporations are going out of their way to hire WoW guild leaders for their organizational skills.<br /><br />Topical, because only a week ago I tried to drag one of my arch-gamer cohorts over to Eve Online from Xbox Live. The results were disastrous. My friend, Killer, who is an utter badass with a 360 joystick, was 100% dysfunctional once you took away the spoon fed tutorials found in his "native" software. It was just sad. Like trying to teach a dog to fly a helicopter. Seriously, his intellect and the game's level of complication were <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> far apart.<br /><br />Aside from the direct personal ramificiations, I was highly disturbed by the realization that my friend is actually one of the smarter kids I know. I immediately wondered how things like business and government were going to survive Killer's generation.<br /><br />The answer, apparently, is that at least the people running World of Warcraft guilds will have the skills required to maintain infrastructures.<br /><br />Well, I stand corrected. Problem solved. Silly me for worrying.Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-56779584030682859872008-08-25T05:49:00.000-07:002010-08-24T03:02:28.152-07:00Olympics!Congratulations to Maria del Rosario Espinoza and<span id="Zoom"><span style="color: navy;"> </span></span>Guillermo Perez for winning gold medals in Taekwondo! And to Tatiana Ortiz and Paola Espinosa for bringing home the bronze in Synchronized Diving! [1]<br />
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Very cool guys. Way to represent out there.<br />
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ok, the truth is I didn't watch much of the Olympics. I rarely do. The most exciting part for me personally - getting to try Microsoft Silverlight. [2] Still, it was much more fun to eavesdrop on the games this cycle than usual. The opening cermony was insane and wonderful, and when Tatiana and Paola won their bronze medals I was pretty excited for them. [3]<br />
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Perhaps more interestingly, so was my mother, who lives in LA and visits me down here very rarely. In fairness, she doesn't always have the best experiences as a tourist in Baja, but she still considers Mexico her other home team. Which if I'm not mistaken, is actually the point of the Olympics. [4]<br />
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[1] <span style="font-style: italic;">I'm going to let you guys slide on making up new sports, but only because you invented one where hot chicks jump off things. But I'm watching you people. You are not to show up in 2012 holding lawn darts.<br />
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</span>[2]<span style="font-style: italic;"> Silverlight seemed nice... but I think mine's broken. I can't get it to transform into the robot at all.<br />
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</span>[3]<span style="font-style: italic;"> The other little girl was cute too, China! Are you all licking pandas to get high?! Hold on. I'm training fifteen hundred people to stand on a LCD screen the size of an aircraft carrier and facepalm in perfect unison...</span><br />
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[4] <span style="font-style: italic;">Apparently that magic torch they stole from Zeus is working.</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Death to the gods!!</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Peace in our lifetime!</span>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1415431505446171208.post-61258880126157671982008-08-23T13:15:00.000-07:002008-08-23T15:25:24.667-07:00Thirdrail InkI bought my first Tablet PC, a Fujitsu Lifebook [T4220], about a year ago now. Her name is Daisy. I never thought much about tablets until I wanted one for drawing. Now I can't imagine ever going back to the oldtech laptops.<br /><br />I'm also certain Bill Gates is right about tablets being the future of educational computing. Any computer task even remotely resembling schoolwork, writing, or note taking is many times easier on a tablet. It's also a more casual experience. The tablet sidekicks like a clipboard, not a computer. It's that simple. The difference is amazing.<br /><br />There have been a number of telling moments since Daisy's arrival.<br /><br />Fujitsu, unlike any pre-built pc company I've ever dealt with, put virtually nothing extra on my hard drive. Some little photo handler program called "Picasso" and a Realtek audio manager program are as close as they got to saddling me with "bloatware". [I've dealt with HP, Compaq, Gateway, and Dell pre-builts in the past, and always had to spend the first day clearing drives of their nonsense and then defragging.]<br /><br />She's the first computer to get dragged around the house with me. In tablet mode, it's just so easy. The DS is the only other device I own with comparable tote-ability.<br /><br />Kid's <span style="font-style: italic;">adore</span> Daisy. My friend's daughter never asked for my DS again. She only wanted to draw on the tablet. [Kudos to Alias Sketchbook on this one too.]<br /><br />When I brought Daisy home, I was hanging out with a lot of Mac users. It was the first and only time I've ever seen Mac people feeling inferior without the words "game" or "market presence" being involved. The two classic strong points of Macs, ease of use and technological superiority, both seem outdated in the presence of a tablet.<br /><br />When life outside the tech belt brought my desktops to their knees, Daisy was forced into being the "main computer" for several months. Despite having no real video card [965 chipset, at best a pseudo-card even by laptop-go standards] Daisy managed to play Dawn of War games and made Eve Online [classic graphics] look good at 35-50 fps.<br /><br />Stepping up as prime game machine and holding your ground... there's probably no better way to prove your technological qualifications here in the kingdom of the Thirdrail.<br /><br />Which in turn earns Daisy and the tablets their two cents. There you have it.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Interesting footnote - Daisy stopped me from going Apple. I left the house that day thinking I would check out the tablets while buying my first Mac laptop. I was literally obsessed those beautiful backlit keys and I wanted a smaller, lighter computer than my HP Notebook. After comparing the two formats, I was blown away by how cool the tablets were. Apple didn't make one, and still doesn't. [Except for their phones.] Which is sad, because the Mac Air as a tablet would allow me to declare the future officially open for business...</span>Thirdrail1http://www.blogger.com/profile/10146517404953253440noreply@blogger.com0