More E3 Gaming Goodness

So for day 2, Nintendo and Sony were up to offer their new gaming wares to the masses. Since Microsoft did a pretty good job of being the company to beat with announcements yesterday, I was curious to see what big guns both companies would throw out to stay competitive. Up first was Nintendo.

 

Wii Motion Plus: Not exactly “new”, Wii motion plus got a lot of face time once Nintendo was done delivering statistics to the audience. Probably the biggest thing for Nintendo is that they have an actual release date and the item is not to be had at a later date as are the motion offerings from Microsoft and Sony. Wii sports resort looks to be a lot of fun.

 

New Super Mario Bros. Wii: This was a bit of an odd choice, seems like they wanted a Mario party game that got rid of the game board. The game play demo they did on stage made me think of Little Big Planet for some reason. I know they said the inspiration for this came from the re-make of the original for the DS which was a great game, but I’m not sure this title needed to ever be made.

 

Wii Fit Plus: Well it was kind of expected that this would come out. It would seem there are so many options for getting “fit” using the Wii, is anyone actually using any of them?

 

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story: This will be a great RPG, as a fan of the previous ones I’m looking forward to this.

 

Women’s Murder Club: This is an interesting move for Nintendo, looks like they think this will sell to a particular segment of DS users, I’m not so sure.

 

Mario vs. Donkey Kong: Minis March Again: Again this reminds me of Little Big Planet for some reason, pretty cool idea but I’m not sure if I’ll ever touch a copy.

 

Wii Vitality Sensor: This seems really odd to add to the Wii, but I guess it would be useful for the Wii Fit line of products.

 

Super Mario Galaxy 2 & Metroid Other M: Obviously the biggest announcements from the show for Nintendo. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a little odd they aren’t going for an Xmas launch but they probably feel they have enough titles for the gaming wallet. The big surprise is Nintendo hooking up with Team Ninja to do a Metroid game, and boy does it look good.

 

Last but not least, Sony finished up the big three with some rather large announcements. I couldn’t help but feel they are still playing 3rd and catch up to Microsoft and Nintendo.

 

Uncharted 2: Probably one of the few exclusives PS3 is holding on to which is good for them because the game looks very good.

 

MAG: Crazy huge squad based game play. This is right up my alley and almost worth getting a PS3. It looks like they took some of the best parts of Planetside and put a modern warfare kind of spin on it. The 25 player battle they demoed on stage looked pretty intense. Wish I was down there to get my hands on it and try a few rounds.

 

PSP-GO: Yeah the worst kept secret of E3, nothing really unexpected with this announcement, but really is it even necessary? I guess we all have tons of cash to drop on portable game playing devices.

 

GT on PSP: It’s really cool that the most realistic driving simulator can fit in the palm of your hand and run at 60 fps looking incredible. But I really have to say, how do you play something that “realistic” with using buttons that only work in on/off for steering?

 

Metal Gear Peace Walker: So I’m a little confused as to how Microsoft was able to steal away a Metal Gear game from the series but apparently there is no love lost between Kojima and Sony. I wonder which game was in the works first? Still I think Microsoft wins out by pulling a previously exclusive series from Sony.

 

New Eye Toy + Motion Wand: Sony is a bit behind the ball with this one. It would be ok in my mind if they brought something more than a “prototype” and tech demo because to me it makes it sound like this thing won’t be in production until early next year at the earliest and who knows what/when games will come out for it. Going with the “wand” makes it very Wii-like. The good thing is that they are able to utilize lots of power of the PS3 so they can do 1-1 tracking very seamlessly. I’d honestly feel a little sheepish though having to follow shooting virtual arrows after the Wii Sports Resort archery demo.

 

ModNation Racers: Perhaps the coolest thing Sony showed today besides God of War 3, this looks to borrow heavily from Mario Kart and Little Big Planet, but it does it so well that it’s going to be a really fun title. The track editor looks really intuitive and easy to use. I like the fact that you can literally create what feels like a full track in a few minutes.

 

God of War III: Obviously their big hitter saved for the end. The final game in the series, this one doesn’t look like it will disappoint anyone at all. The game play they showed today which was part of a middle area of the game was pretty intense.

 

Other notables from today:

 

Assassin's Creed 2: The sequel looks amazing, even better than the first. The expansive environments of the first game have been out done here. Today’s demo showed off some new nifty moves and the double hidden blade take down (which was quite awesome!). I’m eagerly awaiting this one.

 

Mass Effect 2: Another amazing sequel, looks like they’ve taken care of all the little “issues” with the game play I didn’t really enjoy in the first one. Much smoother action and less having to stop and keep the AI partners from getting killed or walking into oncoming fire for no reason. If they can manage to keep the load times low, this will be another winner.

 

Dragon Age Origins:  I’m glad I pre-ordered this one already for the PC. The game looks amazing and one thing not even touched on today is the fact it will have tools for building custom modules which is where this game will really take off once the community has a hold of it for a year or so.

 

Final Thoughts on Day 2: To rate the big three companies today, I’d say they fell in the same order they presented. Microsoft clearly has their sights set on being the definitive entertainment device in the home living room for games, movies, TV, music. Nintendo is a close 2nd, sticking to their core philosophy which has worked well based on the number of units they have been able to move. It’s clear they want to slowly enhance that base step by step. Sony is making progress but essentially it comes down to them losing 2 big franchises and only adding a motion unit that seems very Wii-like. Sony is huge and not going anywhere anytime soon, but I have a feeling they may just need to start focusing on what to do better for the next console war. I’ll be back again to recap some news from tomorrow’s day as well.

My take on some E3 Monday Highlights

 

So E3 kicked off today with a bang. Microsoft drew the long straw it seems and got the lead off position which was good for them since they had quite a few little digs against Nintendo and Sony. The show started a little slowly, Rock Band Beatles is slightly meh and really old news. Nothing too amazing there, but things quickly picked up after that.

 

Modern Warfare 2: I was really happy to see a fully fleshed out trailer instead of the little teaser from GDC earlier this year. Also the level they demoed on stage looked pretty darn good and I can see some intense multiplayer matches in the snow coming our way in October. This one is on my must buy list.

 

Full Retail Games Delivered via Live: This is pretty big, but it also has me worried I’m going to be forking over some bucks for a larger hard drive. I’ve got the 120gb on my Elite, but between copying games to the hard drive, Xbox Live Arcade downloads, and then lots of demos to boot, I’ll be filling that thing up really fast. This was the next step, however, and I’m glad we are seeing it sooner rather than later. Putting something like this in now, makes it a requirement for the next generations of systems.

 

Project Natal: Ok the name is retarded, but I like the system. It reminds me a lot of what Sony tried to do with the Eye Toy, but only enhanced with what the Wii has brought us in terms of animating video game playing couch potatoes. This single add on has quite a lot of potential in the gaming world. Besides that, with all of the Wii fit games that have been recently coming out, I have a feeling there will be quite a few Natal fitness games as well. Looking at what Lionhead has already done with this system pretty much says the sky’s the limit.

 

Halo 3 ODST:  As a fan of the series, I’m always looking for more games to continue the story of the Halo universe, ODST looks like it really is going to go in a route specifically designed to tell stories of other soldiers in the struggle against the Covenant. Not sure if this is a must have on launch day, but I think once I see some of the Co-Op mode game play that will clinch it for me.

 

Halo Reach: Wow, I had a feeling ODST wouldn’t be the last we saw of Master Chief. Too bad it will probably be quite a while before we get too many details on this one.

 

Facebook/Twitter on Xbox Live: Big freaking deal, nuff said.

 

Last.fm on Xbox Live: Kinda cool I guess, I have so many devices that can stream Internet radio that this isn’t really earth shattering for me. It makes sense as a multimedia platform for the Xbox, but they shouldn’t limit the streams to only Last.fm but any Internet radio stream.

 

FFXIII: Microsoft makes a big play by snagging this franchise, while it wasn’t exactly new news, it was still nice to see some game play on screen. Really makes me want to be sure I’ve got a nice brand new 60’’ plasma ready for playing this to relish in all the highly detailed glory.

 

Metal Gear: What is Sony going to do for platform exclusives? They seem to be dwindling into nothingness.

 

Shadow Complex: Epic has a great little Xbox Live Arcade title coming out this summer. Reminds me of an old school Nintendo title but expansive in all the right areas. Part action game, part RPG, part exploration game, something I really want to get my hands on.

 

Splinter Cell Conviction: This looks to be the quintessential “Jason Bourne” game done the way previous attempts were done and yet it stars Sam Fischer. I’ve gone away from the Splinter Cell series for a while but this one may bring me back, much more visceral then it has been in the past, has a very badass feel to it and more continual player narrative driven story then mission after mission.

 

Alan Wake: Finally we will see this game, not until next year though. At least it is looking good. Going to be one to play late at night in the dark with the stereo cranked.

 

Final Thoughts: So far it looks like Microsoft is the clear leader to beat at E3 so far. Of course they have the benefit of going first and so they got to set the bar. Overall I’d say they set the bar pretty high. Quite a few big announcements, Sony really has some catch-up to play and we’ll have to see what Nintendo has up their sleeve as well. Day 1 is done and we’ve still got 2 more days of gaming goodness to go. I’ll toss up another recap and my thoughts after Tuesday’s announcements.

The Future of Gaming is Now!

I’m sure many of you are following the news coming out of the Game Developers Conference going on this week. Probably the most exciting news released thus far is details about the OnLive gaming service that looks to be pretty revolutionary for the gaming industry.

For those not following the story, OnLive is basically “cloud computing” for gaming. It’s platform agnostic, meaning that you don’t need any particular console or PC to play the games offered by the service. You can use a PC or Mac or a little console-like device provided by OnLive to plug into your TV and play all of the games available on the service as if you had them exclusively on your home device. The service takes care of all the thinking your machine is currently responsible for and off-loads it to their own servers where it renders the game play and video and sends the data back to your machine via the Internet. What the means is that you don’t need any particular set of hardware requirements for your games. PCs/Macs don’t need beefy system specifications and consoles will all be essentially equal in terms of horsepower because they aren’t using anything but input/output and data transfer services in order to play the games.

 

Besides offering gaming that doesn’t require any specific platform to play games, the service also is said to offer a greater community aspect then you find with most games. Essentially the streams that are sent to your machine in order for you to play the game can also simultaneously be sent to other spectators who want to watch you play. The service also offers a “brag” feature that will capture the last 15 seconds or so of your play and let you create a shareable moment of awesomeness that others will be able to view through the service. You will have the option of adding voice over to these streams so you can record specifics. I can see this being helpful for people providing helpful walkthroughs or tips to get through parts of certain games much like you find currently on YouTube.

 

This service has great potential to change gaming as we know it. Going into beta this summer and a launch some time next winter, we will soon get a peak at whether or not the Internet is capable of delivering this kind of content to individuals at it’s current state. The Internet has always been a pretty sloppy delivery medium and you have no direct control over the speed your end users get which can ruin their experience with a service like this. It’s possible that this service may end up being ready before the Internet itself is ready to handle delivering this content to users on a large scale.

 

The other issue that crops up is latency. Online gaming is already plagued with problems when it comes to latency and can directly influence the end result of the game for the user. When that happens, it’s only sending small bits of data to the server and then to all clients. Imagine having to send that data in addition to the large stream that is containing HD video content for your TV. It will also be interesting to note how much data the service ends up sending over the home connections and whether or not bandwidth limits imposed by ISPs start coming into play. I could imagine that some individuals who spend many hours a day playing video games may reach those limits quickly.

 

It’s a great idea that I hope is successful, it may take a few years after launch for the service itself and the Internet to actually be up to the task of making this concept a smooth reality, but I will keep my eyes on this as I’m sure many of you will as well. Here are some videos detailing the OnLive service.

 

 

 

Another great movie about the service can be found here: http://i.gizmodo.com/5183416/onlive-demos-streaming-games-yes-thats-crysis-on-integrated-graphics

Bend it like Beckham (your contract that is)

Being a week away from the Seattle Sounders FC home opener, I’ve got soccer on the brain. I’m eagerly anticipating the inaugural season of the latest expansion team to join the MLS. Seattle is a great soccer town and it’s about time we finally got our own MLS team. It turns out the timing couldn’t have been any better as the Sonics have left, the Mariners and Seahawks are doing fairly dismal, we have a great team of talent and high hopes to enjoy.

 

One of the great opportunities having the Sounders FC provides is to have lots of other soccer stars come to play in our stadium and to get to see these players in person for 90 minutes. David Beckham is a great soccer player and I’ve always wanted to see him play in person but figured there were slim chances of that. When he joined the LA Galaxy over a year ago, those chances suddenly jumped off the page as we were getting our own expansion team in Seattle. It was only a matter of time for a home game hosting the Galaxy that would most likely bring Beckham to our stands.

 

Unfortunately, it would seem that fate has thrown that chance into the wind. Sounders are set to host the Galaxy on 5/10/09, it will be without David Beckham who will be continuing to play for AC Milan. I’m not sure why the Galaxy ever “loaned” him out in the first place it’s a bit of a slap in the face if you ask me. If Beckham wasn’t ready to fully commit to the MLS because of World Cup 2010 goals then he shouldn’t have done it. LA offered him too much cash and gave him too much leeway in his contract that now they have this odd situation that makes their front office look to be getting a raw deal.

 

 

This is the 2nd time I’ve missed out on seeing Beckham play in Seattle. In 2004, Qwest field played host to a Manchester United vs. Celtic match that was a great game to see, however at the end of the season prior to that year, Beckham left Manchester United to play for Real Madrid.

 

It seems like Beckham will never play here, which I guess is fine. While I used to actually give it thought, we have our own team of stars now and Beckham just seems like an over paid NFL player. All he needs to do is blame his team mates on his playing performance and he could be T.O.

The Legend of the Seeker Continues to Disappoint

I have a feeling that for many fans of the Sword of Truth series watching the TV show “Legend of the Seeker” is like seeing  a car crash. It’s horrible to see, but you can’t help but not look away. At least that is how I feel and why I continue to watch. I guess there is a part of me that keeps hoping each episode that they will some how fix some of the major plot problems and complete inaccuracies they have presented in the series so far.

I still don’t understand why they settled on the concept of the series. Instead of using the books for more of a guideline on how to tell the story of Richard and his ever changing quest of being the seeker, they instead chose to take the universe created in the books and then create other stories that never happened in the book series. This format lends itself much better to be told as a prequel or rather taking place in some other timeline than when Richard and Kahlan are adventuring in the Midlands and beyond.

 

The last episode “Remnant” (Episode 13 of the 1st season) sort of had that quality to it, telling the history of a previous Seeker and his confessor. They did a good job of creating something that was believable in the universe of the history of the Midlands, however, the need to tie it together with Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd was unnecessary and just made for more discrepancies between the series and the books. About the only good thing in the latest episode was Bridget Reagan’s cleavage, it practically should have had a credit in the opening sequence.

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Speaking of Bridget, she and Craig Horner who play the two leads of the series can’t act themselves out of a paper bag. But considering the type of show, that really isn’t too surprising and I didn’t expect much out of either of them from the beginning. They somehow managed to not meet my already low expectations. The delivery of dialogue is weak and uninspired. Horner lacks the depth to play a complicated character such as Richard. Richard has many sides to his personality and yet Horner only ever really shows one, maybe two if placed in an appropriate situation in an episode’s storyline. Reagan delivers all of her lines with the same monotone flatness completely lacking emotion most of the time.

 

Bruce Spence who plays Zedd is one of the better characters of the series. The only flaw I see in his performance is that he’s too serious in playing Zedd. In the books Zedd comes across more whimsical, with a very distinctive style and his own funny quirks and habits. There was only one episode that partially explored some of Zedd’s funnier traits and they should delve deeper into his character if they want to help the series.

 

Based on the preview of the next episode, I’m already cringing at more murder to the storyline. Apparently Richard will be heading home to Hartland (which he never returns to in his fight against Darken Rahl in the first books) and for some reason is dressed as a D’Haran soldier for all if not most of the episode. A gar will make an appearance again which hasn’t happened since the first or second episode and I have a funny feeling Richard will make friends with it and call it Gratch.

Mastermind

Just found this little jewel and it’s way too fun to put down. Mastermind is a great little flash strategy game that puts you as an evil overlord who builds up a criminal empire complete with your very own minions to do your bidding. It’s a lot of fun and has some campy humor to go along with the solid game. Not too terribly complicated, Mastermind is a take on the Dungeon Keeper type of strategy game that makes you the evil doer. Evil Genius was a less successful version of the game that came out a while back. Good concept but didn’t really follow through in the game. I’d write a little more but I’d rather go play some more. Enjoy!

More Guitar!

Well like I said, I'm going to try and do one of these a week to help with my progress on the guitar. I think it helps a lot to force yourself to try and teach something to another person because you then have to think about it a lot more. Also I tried to make the video a bit better and edit some parts together instead of getting it all in one take. So without further ado, here is the video.

Here is the tab to go along with the video so that you can follow along more clearly. I made some annotations at when I switch chords as mentioned in the video. Good luck and keep practicing! (click to make bigger).

Guitar!

I found a couple of other blogs about people and their trek to learn the guitar. I thought that it may be helpful for me to keep motivated for practice if I put up a little something here from time to time. This is the first one, I know it kind of sucks, but I will hopefully improve as I do some more of them.

 

The video is basically just an finger exercise I thought is pretty good for improving your fret hand accuracy and dexterity especially for the all important pinky finger (4th). Usually your 3rd finger, at least in my experience, gets a pretty good workout but lately I've found my 4th finger lagging behind in skill. The following is a good way to improve accuracy with your 4th finger especially as you move this exercise to thinner strings.

 

 

Here is the tab to go along with the exercise.

Any String (6th and 1st used in the song)
|-0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8-|-0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8-0-5-8-|-0-5-7-0-5-7-0-5-7-0-5-7-|-0-4-7-0-4-7-0----------|

Remember these are tripelets and the 5 and the 4 respectively fall on each of the 4 beats of each measure.

More Blackjack Tips and Tricks

There are a few more tips I can pass along to newer blackjack players that you can only learn from experience. Most of this has to deal with the types of blackjack games you will encounter in different casinos and different types of players. Other players is a big part of the game and can have a great affect on your blackjack experience.

 

Game Types

Standard blackjack games don't have any other special bets on the table. In general these games can be played with regular blackjack rules, but you should avoid the special bets as they are what are termed as "sucker bets". Usually they involve some kind of side bet that if you match the dealers up card or you get dealt a certain pair of cards you win a large amount of money because the odds are very high. The reason the odds are so high is because it rarely ever happens, and for it to be useful you'd need to place that bet every hand and thus it's just a waste of money. The exception to this rule is Spanish 21 which is a blackjack variation that has all of the 10 cards removed (face cards become the only 10 value cards in the deck).

 

General Table Etiquette

Always remember that people are there to have a good time and hopefully make a little money doing it. If you find a table where someone is playing all by themselves, ask if you may join them. Some players prefer to play with the dealer one on one. If they do invite you to sit down, wait until the next shuffle before you start playing. Same rules apply if you find a couple at a table or two or more individuals that look to be a group of friends. The only time you don't have to worry about this is if the casino is packed, the dealers will be trying to fill the vacant seats at the table. As a rule, don't tell people how to play a hand, even if you know better than they do, they usually won't like the help unless they ask for it. I've found that most newer players will explain they are new at some point while they play and may ask for advice from the dealer, at this point you can offer some help but don't feel offended if it's not taken too heart. If it starts affecting your hands, it's best to find a new table. A way to keep the atmosphere fun at the table is to congratulate those who get a natural blackjack, I've found this almost always gets the table cheering after a few more rounds and makes it a lot more fun to play.

 

Other Players

I've encountered several different blackjack personalities over the years and I wanted to put some tips out for who to play with and who to avoid. You will run into these people at various times of play depending on when you choose to go to a casino. Newer casinos on Friday and Saturday evenings tend to have the least experienced players while off-popular times tend to have the more regular experienced players. This doesn't mean you can't have fun with the inexperienced players, but depending on what you are looking for you may want to avoid playing at certain times.

 

The "I'm here to pick up chicks" guy

The way to spot this player is usually pretty easy. I just recently encountered this type of player along with his friend. The give away on this guy is if you see someone with a large stack of chips in front of him, but only betting a small amount of money per hand, for example the guy I saw had about $2500 worth of $25 chips in front of him, but each hand he was only betting $10. It would have made more sense for him to color up the large stacks, but he wanted them there for show, draw in the females displaying he had lots of cash to throw around. There isn't any real reason this player should be avoided unless you are female because he will probably try and hit on you.

 

The "I know how to play blackjack, but really don't" guy

These players are easy to spot, obnoxious to play with, and generally should be avoided unless you are looking for a funny story to tell your blackjack buddies. Watching a few hands at a table should instantly point these players out, just watch their play, do they split 10s? Do they not double on 11? Did he split Aces or 8s? Worse yet, do they make a bad play and think it was correct because they won anyway? What usually makes these guys obnoxious to play with is they can be loud, spitting out incorrect advice on how to play a hand to other players at the table when not even asked.

 

The "I'm upset that someone took my card" guy

This is almost two kinds of player and also similar to the person who doesn't really know how to play but thinks they do. This person will get upset at a player who is in front of them in the deal rotation for taking a card that would have made their hand better. Now if the person didn't need the card (sitting with a 16 while the dealer has a 6 showing for example), this is a legitimate complaint. Now if the card was needed, say the player had a 8 instead of the 16, and the player is still upset then these are players to be avoided. Generally this will make for an un-fun table because less experienced players will start to second guess their play worried they may upset this player. Also related is someone who is sitting in the last position and is afraid of taking the dealer's bust card. You should never sacrifice your hand for the good of the table, no one knows the next card from the deck so you can easily make a case for when you hit and should've stayed as much as staying when you should've hit. You are always better off playing the proper strategy for the hand. Those players who don't know this can actually ruin hands for you more often than not.

 

Final Thoughts

To re-iterate yesterdays post, the most important thing in playing blackjack is the preparation. Learning how to watch a table and weeding out the personalities listed above can greatly improve the amount of fun you have while playing. Remember that win or lose, it's just a game and should be played for fun. Never gamble with more money than you can afford to lose and remember the old adage, if you are unlucky with cards, then you're lucky with love.

Blackjack

I don't have many vices, but I do enjoy playing blackjack at a casino. I used to think I was pretty good at the game, but to be honest at that time I was really just lucky and didn't play the correct strategy all the time and once in a while made some stupid plays that looking back make me shake my head. In the past year, I've tried to get a bit better at this very popular casino game. You can always find blackjack in any casino you visit and there are usually lots of variations and deck configurations you can play. To be successful at the game of blackjack you have to get yourself into a certain mind set before you even play a single hand. The prep before you play is without a doubt the most important part of sitting down at a blackjack table.

 

Preparation

1.) Determine the amount of money you feel comfortable losing.

No matter what, gambling is luck based. There is no sure fire win system that will have you beating the house every time. The odds are stacked against your favor, it's the nature of the game. When I play I bring $200 of session money.

2.) Only bring the amount of money you are comfortable with losing. Don't bring means of additional funds like credit/debit cards with you.

This can help take the edge off wanting to toss more money away if you happen to lose your session money at a table. Losing is a part of the game, at least have fun if you happen to run a streak of bad luck. Better to end there than return with more money to lose.

3.) Similar to 1 and 2, know when to stop playing. Set yourself a small easily attainable goal and walk away as soon as you reach that goal.

The easiest way to win at blackjack is over small periods of time. The longer you sit at a table, the greater the chance you will hit a streak of bad luck and lose your session money. When I play with $200 of session money, my goal is about $90, once I hit that, I walk away.

4.) Choose carefully the table you want to play. There are lots of tables, different minimums, different numbers of decks involved, and most important different table feels.

I usually will look for a double-deck game of blackjack as my preferred game because the house has a lower edge and I've found the deck to be less streaky for wins and losses. Table feel is something you can only get by watching a table for a few rounds, are people there friendly? Are they winning/losing? If there is a good vibe, sit down and enjoy, otherwise keep looking.

5. Play perfect strategy.

Most important, you should play strategy correctly to ensure you keep the house's edge at a minimum. There are some exceptions of course, however, you won't learn when to adjust the strategy in your favor until you've had  a lot of experience and can employ some rudimentary card counting scheme.

6. Practice makes perfect!

If you are serious about getting better at blackjack there are some very easy ways to improve your game. At home you can play online for free at Bodog Casino or use a blackjack trainer to teach you strategy. Playing for real has a bit of a different feel, so I suggest you find a local casino that offers a weekly or monthly blackjack tournament which gives you the opportunity to play for real but with a small cash buy in (usually about $20-30).

How to bet in Blackjack

Whew! Look at all that prep before we even talk about the game itself. I can't tell you how important it is. There have been a few times where I just plopped down at a table with a few bucks and quickly was relieved of all of it in just a few hands. When I make a conscience effort to plan ahead, I always make a few dollars at the tables, and have a fun time doing it as well.

The basic strategy I use to control my betting is based on my previous hand. I start with my base bet of $5, if I win, I continue to bet $5 (doubling and splitting as the cards permit). Unfortunately you never just continually win hand to hand. When I lose, I double my bet up to 4 times ($10, $20, $40). If I haven't won by 4 hands, then I go back to the base $5 bet. Once I win again, then I bet 40-50% of what I'm down in total. If I win, I go back to starting at the beginning, if I lose then I go back to $5 bets until I win and I can try to re-coop some of the debt.

The point of betting this way is to win back the money you lost on the previous bet when you lose. If you continue to only ever bet $5 then you will never recover your losses. But this system has one fault, and that is the back to back win happening when you go into loss recovery mode. This one crux is why the preparation steps are so important, and also why if you find your table taking a turn for the worse in luck, it's best to find a new table.

 

This method works for whatever you want to use as your base bet. You can bet $10 as a base, just double the values I listed for $5 and have $400 with you as your session money.

 

It's easy to think that $5 isn't a lot of money per hand to bet with, however, you may possibly bet $80 in a single hand while using this method. You need to be comfortable betting this much on a single hand. If you are more adventurous you can go the big $25 route but that will require session money of $1200 and your maximum recovery bet would be $200 in a single hand.

Legend of the Seeker

 

So you may have seen this show if you are a fan of the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. I started reading the books a few years ago and thoroughly enjoy the series. When I heard in November that ABC studios was doing a show based on the Sword of Truth series I was both excited and afraid at the same time. As with most book adaptations it seems they fall into either one of two categories. Amazingly awful that you want to rip your eyes out of your head and are sorry you ever watched or they manage to do a decent job of only butchering the story somewhat.

 

Unfortunately, so far the Legend of the Seeker series seems to have done the best it could at butchering the original story. My question is "Why?". During the shows opening, it explains that the show is based on the Sword of Truth series, it should be changed to say "Based extremely loosely on the Sword of Truth series", as the show takes bits and pieces from seemingly wherever from any of the books at will and decides to make an episode. On top of that, some episodes are completely made up as if there isn't enough material in the books to make episodes. As a fan of the books I would have been much happier if they just retold the first book more or less as it was without all the unnecessary fabrication. They are doing an episodic series, which gives them the ability to provide back story to fill in a new audience about the world in which Richard, Kahlan, and Zedd reside.

 

Why in the hell didn't they take advantage of that? Movies often fall short because you can't make a 10 hour long epic that explains every little detail so book adaptations almost always disappoint because they can't simply include everything. A TV series doesn't have to sacrifice as much, but for some reason the shows writers decided to completely wipe out some major plot points in the first couple of episodes for no reason. When watching the show it's almost like you can feel the writers/directors fighting about which direction to move the series. On the one hand, there are a few of the early episodes that were completely created out of nothingness. It's as if they wanted to treat the series as the old "Kung Fu" with David Carradine, one single man who moves from town to town solving problems except he has a fancy sword. Then suddenly, they throw the plot of the first book back into the mix, like "Oh yeah, we were going to go stop this Darken Rahl guy... totally forgot about that, my bad. Wait, why are we against him? He is bad, but who cares... oh yeah he wants this box of Orden thingy, yet we don't know why that is bad."  Anyone care to explain to me why it took to get to episode 7 before we find the plot of the first book, except they don't even fully explain why the 3 boxes of Orden are important?

 

Now that the series seems to be ending it's first season which looks like it will culminate loosely with the end of the first book, at least the episodes aren't completely off topic but they aren't that close to the mark either. I can't help but shake my head when certain things happen for no reason like in the last episode "Denna". Even though Kahlan is the last of her kind and Mother Confessor, let's just have another Confessor hiding out in a town not far away who has confessed all of the townspeople. I mean what the hell is the point of that? Instead this episode should have been split into two areas, Richard getting trapped by Denna and experiencing the TV-PG version of his Mord-Sith training while the rest of the episode could have explored the castle in which the 3rd box of Orden was hidden by the wizard Giller and Rahl's attempts at finding it. Totally setting up what looks to be the conclusion of that in the very next episode. Instead they for some reason decide to make a point of showing that Richard can use the magic of the sword to turn the blade white to kill Denna, but have Kahlan there to rescue him? And then on top of that Denna comes back to life? They hardly explore the fact that Denna falls in love with Richard and wants to be free of her Mord-Sith life knowing that Richard is her only way out. They briefly mention Richard partitioning his mind, which essentially is one of his most important skills, but these trivial references which have major impact on the plot of the book are basically useless to the direction the TV series has taken.

 

Despite these faults, I still have my Tivo set to record the episodes, I figure I'll ride out the rest of this first season and see if they manage to make it any better, but it's fast becoming the show I love to hate. Maybe it's worth taking a shot of whiskey every time there is another inconsistency in the plot of the series. I can't see many fans of the books being happy with they direction they have taken the show so far. I have a feeling the show will be canceled after this single painful season, in fact it would have to be since they can't do the 2nd book of the series. Episode 5 ruined the entire plot of the 2nd book.

 

In other recent news, another of my favorite series "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan has been licensed for an MMO video game and they plan on making movies of all the novels. Again I find myself anxious and dreadful at the same time. Hopefully they will fair a bit better in their exploits with that series than ABC's studios venture "Legend of the Seeker".

Global Warming

Global Warming is one of those topics that can get you into hot water no matter what side of the debate you fall. I've always felt that the basic arguments behind global warming make sense logically and that to me has always been that the amount of industrialization we've seen in the last 100 years on our planet is something that has never happened in the world's history and it could have an impact on the planet's atmosphere.

 

That to me is the basic premise that global warming proposes, whether or not it will affect the planet in a warming way or a cooling way or whether or not it will have immediate effects are the deeper below the surface issues that are a bit open to debate and interpretation.

 

Today I watched the YouTube videos of John Coleman's views (4 parts in all) on global warming, and for the first time while watching I came to the realization that global warming has lost the Republican vs. Democratic battle that originally created most of the divide as to where people fell on the topic. For years the debate traditionally lined up the value difference for both parties, Democrats became Global Warming proponents while Republicans took the opposite side of the debate. Since that divide is now seemingly over (except with a few holdouts) and politicians on both sides of the political ticket believe that global warming is a real threat to the world, this has actually made me re-question what I think about global warming and it's affects on our planet.

 

Coleman makes some interesting points about global warming and what his thoughts are on the subject. He basically puts it in the realm of if people believe in a giant flying spaghetti monster due to a media blitz and some scientific jargon explaining that one exists, eventually the general consensus will be that a giant flying spaghetti monster is out there threatening us and we must do something to fight it.

 

Essentially Coleman doesn't believe in Global Warming because the scientific data to back it up is not agreed upon by all scientists who have done studies. He also believes that there is a large potential for people to want to believe it exists which causes them to draw the wrong conclusions when finishing studies or potentially massaging data to get the conclusions they purposely set out to achieve. Basically proving your conclusion regardless of what information you find out during the course of the investigation. Now that both sides politically are aligned to combat the threat, there is no longer questioning of the proposed evidence and people gladly drink from the water cooler to serve their own political agendas.

 

That's all fine and good he makes some good points, but while watching him explain the doubts he has and the causes as to the public's beliefs in the global warming threat, I couldn't help but ask myself "who cares?".

 

It may sound a little cynical, but I can't help but look at the larger picture which really is the world's energy use and the source of that energy being fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are a limited resource, period. People disagree on how much longer we can solely survive on them and how much remains, but it remains that at some point they will run out. As far as I am concerned that is an undisputed fact.

 

So to me, the question really becomes how to replace our reliance on fossil fuels for the sole purpose that at some point we need an alternative to generate the massive amounts of energy we rely on them to provide the world? And further more, how do we motivate that change to the alternate energy sources or at least accelerate their research and development? This kind of change is a massive undertaking, fossil fuels are cheap to use and easy for businesses to generate profit. They are widely used across the world in a variety of applications.

 

So at the end of the day, whether or not Global Warming actually will do anything to the planet that wouldn't already happen naturally is pretty irrelevant. It is the catalyst that will be the driving force that helps convert the world from fossil fuels to different energy sources. Coleman would say to that point that it's stupid to have to create a false reason like Global Warming to use in this manner, and I would agree with that observation, however, I also believe that people are naturally a little too complacent and resistant to change especially when talking about changes of such a grand scale. In order for their to be a driving force behind the change, everyone must feel a bit threatened. The threat that the world may end is a lot scarier than the threat of just running out of fossil fuels. While both are extremely catastrophic, it's much easier for the average Joe to picture the world being destroyed by severe climate shifts (thanks to movies) than gas pumps running dry.

The real question posed by the "Global Warming Threat" is actually a philosophical one. If the belief in the giant flying spaghetti monster proves to be false, but as a result of that belief we as people of the world are able to make advances in science that reduces or removes the world's reliance on fossil fuels, are we not better off? Or in other words do the ends justify the means?

Fun Demos to Try

At the end of last week I took the opportunity to download the demos on XBL for Mirror's Edge and the new Tomb Raider Underworld games which are soon to be released. I took notice of Mirror's Edge when E3 hit and it really appealed to me as a genre-changing type of game. I really like the idea of taking the first person shooter type of game play and re-tooling it into something similar and yet new at the same time. As for Tomb Raider, I wasn't originally too interested "oh gee look, another Tomb Raider game..." but then I saw it with a little demo time on Xplay and it looked worth a try.

 Mirror's Edge

I'm going to really have to give this game a solid play through, it will be worth a rent for sure, possibly a buy. There are a couple of things that irked me about the demo, but let's talk about the positives first: the graphics are very well done and while the environments which are mainly the tops of buildings and once and a while indoors a bit while atop those buildings, the feelings of scale in the city really sell the visual quality. You really get immersed in seeing a building ledge off in the distance and knowing that you can make some amazing jumps to get there. The story is interesting enough to carry the game and at least give you a reason for all the death-defying leaps from building top to building top. The combat or really fleeing from combat except for those few in your way is fun in a frantic feeling that adds pace to the game play. What I'm not really to happy about is the controls. The default buttons seem odd and uncommonly used for a first person game. Moving yourself and the camera are controlled with the left and right thumb sticks as you would expect, but then the similarities sort of disappear. LB and RB will be your main button presses in the game instead of a more normal A or X to jump, roll, etc. I found this a little awkward, especially using LB to jump and I really hope I can map that to a better button that I'm more likely to press. Instead they have a bullet-time mode mapped to the X button but I don't think I will ever use it except in combat which is how they choose to teach you about what X does.

I really had fun with the demo, I think the way they have presented the 1st-person shooter is really more of a new 1st person action game. Now the best thought I had about using this game play model while running around building tops was to use this method of presentation to make a Batman or Spiderman game, that would really be something.

Tomb Raider: Underworld

I was a fan of the very first Tomb Raider game from way back when. The puzzles were fun to solve and the environments were really well done and that to me was what "made" the game stand out on it's own. The series sort of lost that a bit as it had various sequels try to improve upon the original game and as a result I lost interest long ago. I thought this latest version would also pretty much suck but I happened to catch a 5 minute hands-on demo on Xplay and it looked good enough to pay attention to it. Once the demo became available on XBL I snatched it up and I have to say it's very much reminiscent of the original. The demo gives you a look at the Thailand level which you approach via boat with a quick swim and then climb and Croft-ian jumps and flips up a few ledges. While going through this exercise, I became familiar with the controls which were fairly well done. You have to do battle with the camera once in a while but that is pretty much standard in any 3rd person action game (when will a camera ever just work?). Graphics in the game definitely have a good level of polish. I found myself pulling out the binoculars to have a good look around whenever I got up high and had a great view or just wanted to check out some of the areas better. I'm looking forward to this one now as well having played the demo, it really gave me the old feeling I had when playing the original game.

So now of course, I have to add these to my list of games to get this season. I'm going to go broke with all the great stuff that's out there.

Fable 2 Review

Since I've gotten my new laptop and it came with Windows Live Writer which is a fancy blog-a-ma-bob application, I've decided to try a post through it to see how it goes.

Fable 2 is pretty awesome. For once I don't think anyone is going to be disappointed in this title in the way the first game had a few let downs. The only real issues have been the crazy stuff that happened to the Collector's Edition and how it essentially got whittled down to nothing but a bit of downloadable content that even got screwed up this week.

 

Game Play

Fans of the first game will feel right at home with the sequel. The overhaul to the combat system was fantastically done. One of my gripes about the original Fable was that it was too difficult to use magic in combination with other melee or ranged skills. Fable 2 corrects that by making single button presses (X, Y, B) to handle melee, ranged, magic attacks. The combat is simple to use, but difficult to master. You can easily mash buttons and kill enemies, but there is a lot more involved if you want to pull off cool combo attacks using different types of attacks in combination with each other. You also are rewarded with experience bonuses when you show your prowess with combat.

 

As you can see from the video there are lots of ways to mix and match attacks and they all work very well and are pretty easy to get the hang of within a few minutes of your first couple of fights. There is also a "cool" factor when you kill an enemy with a single critical hit and the camera zooms in and shows you in bullet time the result of your kill. Also magical spell effects are really well done, they all are very impressive and sometimes I find it hard choosing which spell to use to kill enemies with because they are all lots of fun. So far I've been sticking to shock and fire which are great. Shock will stun enemies temporarily so you can use other attacks to finish them off.

 

Story

So far the story isn't blowing me away, it's a pretty normal RPG-like plot, quickly sets you up with an antagonist and gives you a reason for not liking that person (they kill your sister). So you grow up and have a reason for vengeance and in addition to that, this bad guy is also trying to rebuild a mystical tower that was responsible for blowing up part of the world back after the first game takes place and so it's probably not a good idea. But really that is all well and good, there are so many Other things you can do in the game to occupy your time with, that you may end up only following the main quest when you get bored.

 

Other things to do in Albion

I'm hardly sure where to begin with this, there seems to be almost an unlimited amount of ways to entertain yourself within the world of Fable 2. Besides progressing along the main quest line, it's nice to stop a bit and take a look around to just explore the rich environments. The developers and the art direction paid a lot of attention to adding little details here and there in every area you encounter. Also the areas themselves are about 2-3 times as big as they were in the original Fable, that you can almost get swept away off exploring. I took a quick trip to explore the graveyard in Bowerstone and ended up spending 30 minutes looking at gravestones, and even finding a couple of secret treasure chests and on top of that noting some things I will most likely need to come back to later as the story progresses.

 

Here are just a few other possible things you can occupy yourself with:

• attract members of the opposite or same sex
• get married to someone, get divorced
• purchase a house to live in or rent
• redecorate the homes you own with different furniture
• have some children
• get fat, drunk, lazy
• take up odd jobs to earn cash, blacksmith, woodcutter
• play some pub games like keystone or fortune's tower
• take up side quests for loot and experience
• play fetch with your dog
• roam the country side looking for chests and pools to dive in

 

Those are just a few of the many things I found so far, you can even earn money from the homes you rent out or businesses you purchase while not even playing.

 

Fable 2 Pub Games Integration

I noticed when I sat down with a game master to play a round of Keystone I had the option of merging with a patron from my Fable 2 Pub Games on Xbox Live. Since I hadn't played the games since they were patched and reset to fix the cheat in Fortune's Tower, I had 500,000 gold available at my disposal to have fun with. There were some consequences for my actions however, while my main alignment of good/evil didn't change, the bar underneath went far down into the "corrupt" level. But the good news is that it is still early in the game so plenty of time to undo the damage and salvage it back to the light. So all in all, there isn't much wrong with cheating in the pub games and then getting that loot in the real game. The pistol I got from the pub games is actually pretty nice. Haven't tried out the fancy bed yet.

 

Final Thoughts

Well if you haven't gone out and picked up a copy of this game, then do it now! There is really no way you can be disappointed with this game unless you absolutely hate action RPGs or don't even like dogs. I swear the first time your dog finds you some treasure you would have completely wandered by you will wish you had a virtual milk bone to give him.

Update:

Here is are some tips on making money in the game. I found the two for upgrading your dog's treasure hunting ability very useful. There is one note they don't mention in the video. You have to find the first book upgrade before your dog can sniff out the 2nd one. I had trouble finding the first book so I went after the 2nd (very easy to find the location) but the dog couldn't find the spot without the first upgrade.

Fable 2 is almost here!

Well just a few short hours more to go until I get my hands on a copy of Fable 2. Supposedly it will ship overnight through ebgames.com and the street date delivery garuntee. We'll see if they can live up to the promise.

A couple of things to note:

I have not patched my Fable 2 Pub Games so I'm wondering if I can still merge the hundreds of thousands of gold I have gotten through the cheat into a character in Fable 2. I'll let you know how that goes.

It also has been mentioned that we will be getting the multiplayer co-op patch tomorrow upon release which is great. Although from what I've heard, the single player experience is really well done and we wouldn't have missed the co-op anyways. Still it's good that it won't be missed from day one of the game's launch. It's a little more surprising that consoles are electing to pull the old PC release game tossing out patches on or just after release in order to make release dates.

XPlay has also reviewed the game today, getting a solid 5 out of 5 with only one small gripe about the cutscene animation. Looks like another must-have title for the Xbox 360. I know my Xbox blog has been complaining of me not spending much time with it, but now I'm sure I will be spending a lot of time in Fable for the next couple of weeks.

Update: Seems there are still troubles for the Limited Collector's edition. It's been reported that some of the copies that were distributed by one publisher did not include the cards that allowed access to the exclusive downloadable content. Supposedly the copies that have the orange LIVE sticker on the package do have the cards, so if you are going to purchase one, you may want to check the packaging. Microsoft has stated they are looking into the issue and expect to resolve it for customers by the 28th of Oct. As for me, I didn't bother with the collector's edition and after all the issues it's had, I'm really glad I didn't.

Dell Customer Service Sucks Big Floppy Donkey Dick

Never order anything from Dell period.

I've made a few purchases from Dell in the past, and everything worked out as expected. In the past the process was painless and items were recieved as expected.

Unfortunately, Dell now sucks.

Needing a new laptop, I decided to purchase a XPS 1530 system this week. I modified the base system to include a slightly better processor, better graphics card, the max ram the system would take, and also the larger faster hard drive. Then removed all of the extra junk they pack on in the customize section like the virus software and Microsoft Works.

The system ended up being around $1500. 

I logged onto their site today with a pleasant surprise that the order was shipping today and I would get it early next week, much sooner than anticipated. 

In my email, a special offer from Dell, in which I noticed that the system I just purchased may be on sale even more than it was at the earlier part of the week. Thinking it's probably a special build of the system they are offering at a cheaper price, I go ahead and customize it the same as the one I purchased on Monday.

Lo and behold, the price comes in at about $1300. Same system, 4 days later $200 cheaper.

At first I figured I probably missed something that would make my system a bit more expensive, so I compare my build out confirmation email with the one on the web page, and everything is the same. So I decide I would contact customer support to help out with this, I choose the chat method from the page.

I only need to wait a bout 2 minutes to get connected with someone, so far so good, but after explaining the issue, they tell me all I can do is call XSP Customer Support. I thank them and pick up the phone.

This is where things take a turn for the worse.

After navigating their voice menu to get to a human that can help me, I give the order number and verify shipping information and explain the issue about the lower price. I immediately get transfered to someone else who tells me there is nothing they can do about the price, and that the "prices change everyday".

I simply tell them that this is an unnacceptable level of customer service, and I should not be penalized for purchasing an item not 4 days earlier at a higher price. Furthermore, since my system is shipping today, the start of the sale, they should honor the lower price for me since this is when I am actually being charged. Still they explain to me that there is nothing they can do to the price once the order is placed.

Furious, I yell a few obscenities at them about how prepostorous this is and hang up. Drinking a shot of vodka, I calm down and then decide this is not over.

I call back, this time I don't get transfered and the idiot on the phone tells me the same thing as before, they can't credit me the difference in the price even though he agrees with me. I ask to speak to his manager to which he informs me that no one, not even the manager can change this policy. So I continue to speak with him, explaining similar circumstances with other companies always result in a way to make the buyer happy within a time frame of a new sale price on recently purchased items. Hell I used to do that sort of thing all the time when I was in retail. If you make a purchase on something within 30 days, there is a cheaper price, then bring in the receipt and we will refund the difference. Why not? Why punish the consumer for being a little early.

Even though this customer service rep still agrees with me, he won't connect me with the manager who is apparently busy with "3 other calls at the moment". I tell him this is not surprising considering how poorly they are handling this issue.

The rep then comes up with a brilliant plan. He tells me that while he doesn't want me to return the system that was shipped today, I could return it, get a refund, purchase another system today with the sales price and then everything would be fine.

I explain to him that I don't want to spend $3000 just to have $1500 refunded back to me so I can save $200, just credit me the difference and there is a lot less work involved for everyone, no reason to build 2 systems, just let me use the one I have not yet recieved and don't make me jump through all of these hoops to save a few bucks.

He remains steadfast that this is the only option I can proceed with. I ask yet again to speak with the manager who is now on "4 concurrent calls". 

I ask, what the hell kind of bullshit is this? You mean to tell me that if I purchased this system yesterday at $1500, there is no way you can today give me the $1300 price on the same system? The only way to make this work is to buy yet another system at the better price? 

He replies "Yes..."

After a few more obscenities, I hang up the phone. Why the hell do consumers get the shaft all of the time? How hard is it to help ensure that the customer is happy and will continue to return to the company for future purchases? While faced with an opportunity to make a customer for life, they have lost a customer for life instead.

The moral of the story, don't buy a Dell. "Dude you're getting the shaft!".

Been Busy

Whew! Been a busy past 10 days or so, haven't hardly had time to even update this blog at all. Just wanted to post a couple notable things that I've seen lately.

Fable II Co-op patch

It looks as if we will be getting the Co-op patch on or near release day for Fable II which is great. I was really worried that we wouldn't be getting it until a week or 2 later. I'm also a little more relieved by this news as maybe the game won't be lacking the polish I previously thought. It's going to be tough to play the game and forget all of the hype and look at it from a fresh perspective as it is, lots to live up to in this game.

Richard Garriot in Space

Sunday is the big day as Lord British himself will be making his way into space. You can watch live coverage of the launch and ISS docking events on TV if you care to stay up late enough. 2:00 am CST on Sunday is the launch and Tuesday at 3:00 am will have docking coverage. Maybe he'll play some Tabula Rasa from space? Maybe that will boost the failing MMO? Doubtful.

New Xbox Live Experience

It's finally been announced that we will get the new Xbox live experience on Nov. 19th. I'm looking forward to pretty much everything that it has to offer, the avatars are a bit meh and I will not be spending money on getting new "clothes" for it. Actually it might be fun to create the worst looking avatar on the system.

Creative Xdock iPod System

I recently purchased a Creative Xdock iPod system and reciever off woot.com and I have to say it is a pretty cool product. It ran $50 new on Woot, and usually retails for $90 or so getting a main dock and a reciever. Basically the product allows you to wirelessly stream music from one source ipod dock to any number of reciever docks in a 100ft range. It supports a digital out on the base station which I have plugged into my home theater and then the recievers can plug in to a speaker system via RCA or standard mini-jack. There is absolutely no delay in the music transmission and the included remotes work well. I was even able to program my universal remote to work with the system right out of the box which was pretty awesome. If you do any playing of your ipod on a home theater and want to also be able to pump it through your house, this is a great setup and well worth the $50 price if you can find it. The regular sales price is a bit up there, it's a good product, but you really need to be pretty hard up for the solution.

Palin email hacker to face up to 5 years

Man this kid was dumb. I knew this would happen as soon as they announced they were going to get the FBI and secret service involved in the investigation. The guy should have just keep access to the email a secret, done a thorough search for a while, archived anything incriminating and then unleashed his own version of an October surprise to smash the McCain/Palin campaign if that was truly his intent. If he had found anything really bad, people mainly would lose sight of the fact that he hacked the account and maybe even branded him a hero, or if jailed, a martyr. Either way he'd probably end up more famous instead of a soon to be forgotten felon.

More XNA 2.0 Development

I've been working a lot on learning the XNA development framework. So far I like it a lot, the objects are really great and always seem to have the properties I'm looking for in order to accomplish some kind of effect. I'm currently working hard at getting particle systems going and have a pretty good base particle system engine object. I will be trying to refine it a bit and then probably moving on to developing a pac-man game using the knowledge I have just to solidify everything I've learned so far. Back in college I had to write pac-man (then called Slackman) for homework in CSE 142 so all the game rules and everything is old hat. I do get to make it look much nicer with some high quality sprites though. Once I start developing my real game I will start a new blog dedicated to it's development, I'll need a name for it though and that may take the most time to come up with.

Dissapointing Fable 2 News

As the Fable 2 launch is fast approaching we are starting to hear some disturbing news about items not in the final version of the game that will be shipping on the 21st. 

The first of these is the online multi-player co-op mode will not be available when you put the game disc in your Xbox, but will be released (hopefully) that week as a patch. I'm pretty worried about this fact since in all of the most recent demos of the game since E3 have shown the multi-player working in the game. They've been touting it being so special and revolutionary, and now it looks as if the first "patch" that actually will add the feature may be a bit buggy. I've been worried that something like this would happen since the announcement of a patch that fixed the Pub Games cheat in Fortune's Tower, starting to make it seem like we may not get everything we were promised in Fable 2 right out of the box. I hope that whatever is lacking from the finished product is put into place asap after release.

Also the limited collector's edition has had some issues. It was just announced yesterday that due to supply issues, the collector's edition will no longer include a fancy tin, the printed "fate" cards, or the Hobbe figurine. To make up for this, they are knocking $10 off the price putting it at $70, but it hardly seems worth getting in the first place. I have been known to snag the collector's editions of some games because of the offerings of great extras. I have the Warcraft III collector's edition, World of Warcraft Collector's Edition, and the Burning Crusade Collector's Edition. Coincidentally, they are all from Blizzard, but Blizzard always does a good job of making them worth the extra money. The art books that came with them are just simply amazing, and worth the price alone. Suffice it to say, I didn't order the Fable 2 Collector's Edition and I'm glad I didn't. If anyone hasn't already done so, I'd change your pre-order to the regular version and save yourself another $10.

XNA Game Studio 2.0

Instead of just playing games, I've decided to try my hand at making games. I've always had a few good ideas for different types of games, but really didn't have the time to invest in all of the development. Besides being able to do the programming, there are lots of additional resources necessary for putting together a gaming experience. It can all be a very daunting task to start with, deciding what platform/language to develop in, look and feel of the experience, artwork & sounds to build.

While I have heard of the XNA Game Studio, I hadn't really taken too deep a look at it until recently. The XNA framework really does a good job of making some of the more tedious game development tasks easy. Handling resource based content loading pretty much all automatically and allowing you to take advantage of very rich classes that expose useful methods that work on either Xbox 360 or Windows platforms. In fact, one of it's greatest strengths is that you can develop a windows or 360 game and change the project to the other rather easily. You do need to take into account some coding differences with pre-compiler directives, but once you know which areas you need to watch out for, that is easy to accomplish.

I went ahead and got the Visual Stuido C# 2008 Express product and the XNA Creators Studio 2.0 (3.0 is currently in beta and also available) and picked up a couple of books to go along with the tutorials they offer online. The first book "Beginning XNA Game Programming From Novice to Professional" is a decent book but I do have some gripes about it. The title of the book is a little mis-leading. This really isn't a book for someone who considers themselves a novice. You need to have a good grasp of programming concepts and some background in C, C++, or C# or you will be quickly lost as you progress out of the first chapter. The code examples in the book are good, but also lack some important information and have some errors as well. They have corrected these issues in the online source code available for the book, but stuff like that can cause real headaches for someone who is a novice. For me, these mistakes of omission actually help me to learn, because it forces me to think ahead of what the book is telling me and decide if I have to do anything else on my own to make a sample project work, which in turn reinforces what I'm learning, but without having 8+ years of real-world programming experience in a variety of languages, I would be frustrated by the missing information in the book. Consider this a book for the intermediate/advanced developer and not for someone who doesn't know anything about programming.

The 2nd book I picked up, also by Apress, was "XNA 2.0 Game Programming Recipies: A problem-solution approach". This book is much better, but it also geared more towards someone who has already got some development experience with XNA. The problem/solution approach provides real world examples of things you need to accomplish for different game types and while I've only glanced through a few chapters so far, I find it to be a good no-nonsense type of approach.

So now all I need to do is solidfy my gaming concept and get cracking. Unfortunately this is the busiest time of the year for me work-wise which means I won't really be hard at development until sometime in November, but until then I'm open to any game design ideas any fledgling game developers out there have in mind.

Classic Games I Love

The recent purchase of Xcom: UFO Defense and it's sequel Xcom: Terror From the Deep via Steam has reminded me of some classic games that I will always love to play. There is something about them that was done so well, they were great to play, and even after completing them, I can always go back and re-play them again and enjoy them just as much as before.

Xcom: UFO Defense

Created by Microprose, Xcom is one of those rare games that successfully blends 3 game genre's together to create it's own type of game. It's part turn based strategy, RPG, and civilization all rolled into one fantastic game. The turn based strategy is where you spend most of your gameplay time, and while it is very simple in nature, it's very fun and can be extremely challenging. The RPG element deals with your squad of soldiers, they get better in different areas after each successful mission. The civilization aspects deal with building and maintaining your bases around the globe, reasearching new equipment, and manufacturing new facilities and equipment your squad can use on missions. The goal of the game is to protect the world from invading aliens, intercept their spacecraft as well as protect innocent civilians from attacks on world cities. As the game progresses you learn more about the aliens themselves through your research and eventually the aliens begin to attack your bases directly. The game culminates with a final showdown attack launched against their home base of operations.

Xcom: Terror From the Deep

The sequel to the original Xcom, takes the same game and puts it underwater. I actually enjoy this version of the game more than the original because of the updated graphics and other all around improvements on the original. The gameplay is the same, just underwater, the story is also essentially the same as well. While it may sort of lack originality, they knew the original gameplay wasn't broken so there was no point in fixing it. Alas, they did change everything for the 3rd and 4th installments of the series which I ended up avoiding like the plague.

Syndicate

Syndicate was created by Bullfrog and was originally a Peter Molyneux creation I believe. Bullfrog was responsible for quite a few great games and Syndicate was one of my all time favorites. Essentially a mission-based, action RPG, you are put in the control of a squad of enhanced cyborgs and tasked with various objectives to increase your Syndicate's influence in the world. Battling rival syndicates for world dominance is the ultimate goal of the game, and you also have RPG elements and research that allow you to upgrade your cyborg squad with enhancements you can activate during gameplay to literally reign in complete destruction in the mission environments. It was always lots of fun to activate your squad and watch them go on a killing spree, mowing down police, civilians, rival syndicate cyborgs, and usually blowing up half the screen in the process. The sequel Syndicate Wars, messed with the game enough that it wasn't enjoyable which was really too bad.

Dungeon Keeper

Another Bullfrog classic, Dungeon Keeper was the first game I remember that took a different perspective on the player being an evil dungeon master instead of the expected benevolent protagonist. Another Molyneux real time strategy game, your goal is to build a dungeons that can attract strong and powerful monsters while holding off would-be heroes from cleansing your taint from the land. The notable things about this game were the ability to treat your minions with an iron fist making them work or train harder. You could also step into any of your minions viewpoint and get a first-person view of your dungeon which made the game a lot of fun. Not only could you walk around in your dungeon, but you also took on the abilities of that creature, so that if you were an imp you could dig walls and fetch gold, or as a monster you could engage directly with fighting heroes that entered your dungeon. The game also offered multiplayer where competing dungeons would be built out of the same earth, but that was only so fun. The games always ended up in one large conflict, where the victor would destroy the other player's dungeon heart. The bigger draw to the game was the single player campaign and it was a lot of fun. The voice of the narrator was deliciously evil as well. I never got a chance to play the sequel, and it's something I need to try and find somewhere and give it a playthrough.

A Halo MMO?

It was revealed yesterday that soon to be closed Ensemble Studios was at one point working on a MMO set in the Halo universe. The project was killed by Microsoft, which was probably a good thing.

While the Halo universe is most likely rich enough to support an MMO game, I don't think it would really work too well in practice. There is a continuing struggle between 3 different races, a war that rages across many different planets and locations, but that really wouldn't fit the game play mold for an MMO in my opinion. Maybe it's just that I've played too much WoW, but whenever I've tried the futuristic scifi based MMOs such as Anarchy Online, they always seem to have something lacking.

I think were a Halo MMO would work, would be something similar to Planetside in which it's a class based first person shooter set in a persistant world where battles are continually on-going. The problem with that is it would compete too much with Halo's multiplayer already and not bring anything really new or different to the series.

The released concept screenshots, look like something right out of WoW and I don't see 5 spartans joining up to investigate a bunker and rid it of flood or covenant. I think that the game would have to go away from a class-based MMO and allow players to customize the type of game play they would want to have and it would largely be based as a single-player multiplayer game similar to the first Asheron's Call. Players could accomplish 90% of the game on their own but have a social component built into the game to group up with friends and have fun.

All in all, I'm glad this project was scrapped because I think it would have just cheapened the Halo series. The upcoming Halo Wars on the other hand looks to be a good game and something that works perfectly well within the Halo universe. I'm looking forward to seeing how they make the controls fit the console for a real time strategy game that are traditionally only worth playing on a PC.