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Here’s a new game that I’m looking forward to getting. You may want to support the Kickstart, too. Unlike most deckbuilding games, where you stock your personal deck to deal with adversity, in MSfG, you stock your opponents‘ decks with adversity. A well-themed game if I ever saw one. So show some support. If the Kickstart makes the $55,000 mark, Kickstarters will get an exclusive box, among the other rewards. Miskatonic School for Girls Deck Building Game by Luke Peterschmidt — Kickstarter.  So, I’ve mentioned The Old Republic here before, Bioware’s new MMORPG set in the Star Wars universe a few thousand years before Star Wars: A New Hope. Just to refresh your memory here are a few cinematic trailers. If the game play is half as good as the scripted trailers, It’s gonna be awesome. And now I have the chance to find out early. I applied for an early testing account and was accepted. I’m installing the game now, and can’t wait to try it out. Watch this space for updates and reviews of the early play experience. Q Here’s a new product that might give the iPad a run for its money. The Vega, from Innovated Converged Devices (out of Seattle), runs Android 2.0 on an NVIDIA Tegra processor. With a built in 32 GB SD hard drive, support for an expansion SD hard drive, and a firkin’ huge 15 inch screen size (11 and 7 inch sizes will be available), not to mention freedom from the iPrison of Apple apps, the Vega could be the go to multimedia pad. And, come on, that docking station is just cute! Originally announced in late 2009 for a mid-2010 release, currently it appears only available in the UK with T-Mobile 3G connectivity. The video below is lousy, but it showcases some interesting feature of the prototypical Vega. Check out the product page at ICD.
Today I was catching the latest installment of Shamus Young Plays LotRO, when I saw an ad at the bottom for the latest installment of Rebecca Mayes Muses. Curious, I clicked on the link and got sucked in for several hours catching up on old posts. Below is the video that hooked me. Ms. Mayes brings something unique to the game-review industry. Rather than writing clinical reviews of games, she gives us aural discussions of the games she plays. And, this isn’t just some videocast babble. She sings about games and gaming. That’s right. Her songs are to game reviews what haiku are to poetry. She boils down the essence of the “reviewed” games into complex musical essays and sets them to video. Even if you are not a gamer, if you love good music, her videos are worth watching. Go on, give her a try.
I got a Barnes & Noble Nook for xmas, and (due to a shipping delay) I received it Thursday. Friday night I read a free book (Charlie Huston’s Already Dead) I had added to my B&N Library in December, when I knew I was getting the Nook. I turned “Airplane mode” on after downloading the book (which took about 1 minute. Maybe two.) and the battery level indicator barely dropped during the whole read (~ 5 hours. Finished the book.). That’s pretty sweet. Page turns were more frequent than with a paperback, due to the smaller screen size, but I quickly fell in to a rhythm and soon didn’t notice them anymore than I would with a dead-tree edition. The screen refresh during page turn seemed slightly slower than for a dead-tree, but only slightly. I’d estimate it takes about 1.5 times as long. The screen is totally easy on the eyes. Examining it under magnifying glass reveals a surprisingly paper-like texture to the landscape. It’s no wonder then that the text looks so natural. Overall, I quite enjoyed the reading experience on the nook and I look forward to trying more books on it in the near future. Q A while back I mentioned that Sony made an eComic reader part of it’s latest firmware update. I thought I’d share my experience with it. First of all, it’s very easy to use. It runs like a game, so just “click” on it to start it up. Though it acts like a browser, when you’re ready to exit, you have to quit it like a game, by pressing the PS button. The menus are intuitive, allowing you to browse your library easily. There is even a category for new titles, so you don’t have to shuffle through everything to get to the new book. The biggest problem is you can’t get new material from within the application. To do that you have to go through the PSN Store, then open up the eReader app. That’s something Sony should address in an update, IMO. You might be thinking that reading a comic page on the little PSP screen would be difficult at best, but Sony put some thought into that. The reader has a function that automatically pans to the next intuitive section of the comic, basically panel-by-panel. It’s smooth and for the most part works well. In the sample comics I read there were only a couple of times where the autoplay function didn’t capture the proper flow, or the flow I wanted. For those times it’s a cinch to zoom in or out, and pan with the analog stick. Zoom and pan are relatively quick and do not significantly impact the reading experience. After zooming or panning away, a button press snaps you back to the previous autoplay view. The resolution on the files is very good, so zooming in for small details still looks decent. Overall, a pleasant read. The comics at the PSN Store range from $0.00–$1.99, with very few free titles*, and the lions’ share split something like 40/60 between $0.99 and $1.99. I didn’t do an accurate count, and that split could have changed. In my opinion, a 25%–50% price cut is warranted. Two bucks is just too much to pay for so few pages of meager story, especially in a digital format. I might go $1.50 if I could be guaranteed a reasonably long read with good storytelling. And there is the bonus of no ads to disrupt the reading, so that may be worth an extra penny to some. A quick google shows me dead-tree versions run around $2.99 these days. That just can’t be cost effective, can it? To sum up, the new comic reading app for the PSP is pretty sweet. It may even bring a few lapsed comic fans back into the fold. Q *Yeah, those are the ones I evaluated.
Last night I finished the sixth book in the increasingly misnamed Hitchhiker’s Trilogy. Many of you may not have know there was to be a sixth book, after Adam’s death, but he had apparently been thinking of doing another to try ending on a less bleak note than that of Mostly Harmless. So, Eoin Colfer, of Artemis Fowl fame, was tapped to write the sixth book with a little help from Adams’ notes (I believe). This was, over all, a good choice, IMHO, as Colfer’s writing in the Fowl series often struck me as somewhat Adamsian, both in humor and cadence. On the whole, as a stand alone novel, And Another Thing… is a pretty strong book; perhaps 3 or 3.5 stars out of 5. The plot isn’t too intricate, and the prose seems forced in many places. As a follow up to Mostly Harmless, though, it is a very good work; 4 out of 5 stars. Colfer (+ Adams’ notes?) does a good job rescuing the main characters from the certain demise left to them in Mostly Harmless in a clever manner wholly consistent with the Hitchhiker mythos. The main problem I found with the book was the prose, as I mentioned. Adams had a knack for stringing together otherwise nonsensical combinations of words into something that made sense, and was funny. Colfer has to work at it, and it shows in several places. But in other places, he fairly nails the Adamsian style, so kudos for that. It must have been a daunting task. So, my advice is, if you were fence-sitting because you were afraid this book would just be a cheap sell-out, go ahead and read it even if you don’t buy it. If you’ve enjoyed the first five books as much as I have, you will appreciate seeing your old friends, some of whom actually have a bit of a character arc and learn a thing or two. Zaphod, of course, is always Zaphod. Q It’s been a while since I was able to post more than a “look at this video”, so…what’s been going on around here? Not a whole heck of a lot, really. Today was the last day of swimming lessons, and Kaylin is both happy for a break and sad that it’s over. She’s asking, “Now what are we going to do everyday?” I’m sure we’ll think of something. Monday we are heading up to the Great Escape with her friends, Lindsey and Deirdre. That should be fun, though the weather channel is predicting hot and humid. Blech. Guess I’ll actually have to get into the water if we go swimming there. Speaking of the weather channel, I just finished the 8th book in Rachel Caine’s Weather Warden series. If you are a fan of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, I think you’ll like Caine’s Weather Wardens. The series follows the exploits of Joanne Baldwin, a Weather Warden (there are also Fire Wardens and Earth Wardens that we meet along the way) and part of the supernatural paragovernmental agency, the Wardens. Wardens can control elemental forces and for thousands of years they have been mitigating the worst that Mother Nature throws at us. The first novel opens with a bang, as Jo is hunted for the murder of a man who dies while he’s trying to kill her. Not a good day. If you like strong but credible female characters, a fast moving and straightforward plot, and people you actually begin to care about, then I’d give this series a try. On the Windows Vista fiasco, I may have finally gotten everything back in order. I discovered that one of my 1000+ fonts that I’ve collected over the years was defective and causing the symptoms that I was seeing. Don’t know where this font came from or if it was a separate issue causing the same symptoms, but manthatsweird. Anyway, I tracked down the offender and it is gone. I look forward to smooth sailing for a while. Shyeah, right. Oh, I also just finished playing the movie tie-in game X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That’s a pretty fun game. A typical mash-button-combos-for-more-damage fighting game, but it had some cool cinematic kills, and, hey! it’s frickin Wolverine! Play was over too quickly, as it basically followed the plot of the movie. I’d love to see a sequel. I recommend the title, but I’d wait until you can get a less expensive used copy. Full price for such a short game with very little replayability isn’t worth it. Okay, Ta ta for now. Q A couple of nights ago we watched Burn After Reading, which someone had recommended to us as funny. Let me just start by saying it was not, not even for a dark comedy. Oh sure, there were some chucklesome moments scattered throughout, but the dominant emotion wasn’t humor, it was pity. Most of the characters are great and entertaining to watch, but the story is not very comedic. Mostly it induces a feeling of, My God, these people are pathetic. The funny bits were the five or ten minutes of two CIA analysts trying to come to grips with what the hell the other characters were doing. A bit more of that and it might have been a comedy. I give it two stars.
Quite some time ago we watched Traitor which was very well done. Don Cheadle brings out a wonderfully compelling performance and you’re left questioning his character’s motives right up to the end. The tricky subject of looking at terrorism from the terrorists POV is handled beautifully. I recommend this one, 4.5 stars. |
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