Andy Laub

I’m sorry. RAGE wasn’t on my list of games to play, but I was desperate for something to fill the gap between Forza 4 and Gears of War 3 and I had a very good reason for skipping the new Deus Ex game (because I forgot about it).

So I ended up with 3 discs of overwhelming under delivery. Based on the box and title, RAGE (all caps, but for good measure picture an anarchy symbol instead of the “A”) seems like it should be a high-energy hybrid of Borderlands and Fallout, both games that I really enjoyed (ahem… eventually). The premise certainly sounds familiar: lone wanderer emerges from facility where he was isolated from society for decades due to impending apocalypse and is greeted by post-apocalpytic world containing bandits/mutants/evil overwatch.

Of course you immediately turn into peoples’ errand boy. Listen, game developers, I understand that this is the mechanic for 99% of games out there, and there are even times here when it works. Want me to take those supplies to a neighboring camp or go talk to some guy for you? I can do that, just let me know when and where! Oh… you want me to plow through an entire gang of bandits with a pistol because you don’t like them? That’s… okay, what?

There’s a thing called context, and this game doesn’t have it. I’m not a super soldier who descended from the heavens to save the world. I’m just some random guy who stumbled out of a vault spaceship that had to be saved from those same bandits about 10 minutes ago – giving me a pistol doesn’t suddenly make me your conquering hero. But this is a thing that just keeps happening. Go wipe out [enemy group] in [location]. I won’t say the combat is bad, but it doesn’t seem to have any real meaning. None of the groups you fight ever go away; you just end up getting distracted by different groups.

As the game progresses you hop from person to person, doing what basically consists of that same mission over and over. I think there is only one location that you actually visit twice via the story missions, but the side missions of the game generally seem to send you to the exact same place you just were again instead of introducing anything different or interesting. Later in the game you inevitably meet a resistance group that does what any good resistance does in games like this: sends you, the guy they just met, on a bunch of “critical” missions while they hang out in their secret base (pro tip: that airship dock may be a giveaway as to the location of your hideout).

It is at this point where I wish games like this had a “fuck you” button, because I could press it and the game would eject itself and walk its sorry ass back to the video store so I could go back to doing something worthwhile. Because no such invention yet exists I finished the game and, to quote myself when I was telling Abe, “it was a bunch of bullshit”. RAGE had a solid chance to make up lost ground on the second disc (how a game that has less than twenty hours of gameplay in a mostly linear environment can require two discs is beyond me). They tease with some information about how overwatch has had a hand in creating the mutants, but you never resolve that. And there are tiny snippets of the game where you actually end up fighting alongside others for the same purpose, whether it be clearing out bandits, escaping from prison, or capturing a power station, and those are the parts I wanted more of. That’s what the endgame should have been.

Instead the final missions are solitary and feel inconsequential. You fight some stuff, and then watch an impossibly short cutscene (HOW IS THIS GAME TWO DISCS) in which the game halfheartedly tries to convince you the world has been saved because you’ve sent a signal to all of the other arks to “awaken” them. It’s not like anybody who already came from an ark was almost attacked by bandits or abducted by overwatch. I’m sure they’ll be totally fine.

As a sporadic gamer, it’s generally pretty easy for me to keep a running list of games that I want to play eventually and then just play each when I get the time. For the most part, this works fine, but it’s also important to add an asterisk next to games that need my immediate attention.

There are a few reasons for this footnote, but the most important of them is that the game has BIG DEAL potential. This does not happen very often, but when it does it’s important to play the game sooner rather than later before it manages to become a pop culture icon and spoilers references become omnipresent.

Portal is a great example of an unexpected BIG DEAL. People who have never played the game have heard Still Alive and are aware that the cake is a lie. That precedence coupled with a new co-op mode and a sale at Best Buy (also Amazon) led to my recent purchase of Portal 2, and I have no regrets.

All I can really say is that the game is absolutely amazing. There is nothing I dislike about it: gameplay, graphics, audio, music, story, writing, and acting are all top-notch. Pack it in, other games of 2011. Portal 2 wins everything. If you felt pretty well-versed on Aperture Science after completing the first game, this new installment will blow your mind with how much you didn’t know. It’s a wonderful piece of storytelling and a welcome bit of comic relief in the generally-dismal universe of Half Life.

You knew that Half Life and Portal (and therefore Black Mesa and Aperture) coexist in one cohesive universe, right? This is not new information, but it just… so good. Nerdgasm.

This is a BIG DEAL.

We went to the MALL OF AMERICA over the weekend as part of our occasional “let’s pretend we’ve never been to Minneapolis before” thing that we like to do (we also went to IKEA!), and while it was enjoyable enough (and at least good exercise – did you know that a lap around the mall is over half a mile?), we basically only spent money on lunch and that was it.

But I did make one very important observation. We had been warned before visiting that Microsoft has done what we in the biz call “copying Apple” and opened one of their famed(?) Microsoft Stores at MOA. Not particularly humorous – I don’t dispute that a branded store for a company with as many products as Microsoft is useful, and putting it in one of the biggest malls ever makes sense. The issue at hand is where in the mall it is: across from the Apple Store.

Seriously.

The problem here is that Microsoft’s stores, as implied above, borrow heavily from the book of Apple in every way; it really is like they took an Apple store and changed the logo. That wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t immediately from their “inspiration” – it was like looking in a mirror. Well, maybe a funhouse mirror. We even noticed that both (at least on the Saturday we were there) have greeters positioned front and center – I like to imagine they spend their day staring each other down when not dealing with shoppers.

But that’s not all! My most memorable mall moment is walking into the Microsoft Store after a brief visit to Apple: immediately upon entering, the floor slopes upward about 6 inches for no apparent reason and with no warning. it’s a little jarring, to be honest, because no other stores that we visited do this. I’m not going to get all melodramatic and say it’s a safety hazard – it’s just weird. I guess they must have done it so they could run wires, but what a lazy way to do things when you have that kind of money to spend.

Then I realized it’s all a metaphor, man. That little jolt you get when you enter the store is preparing you for every little nit you’ll have to deal with when using their products. Sure, they’ll get the job done, but you’ll be complaining the entire time about the dumb little shit you have to deal with while doing so.

Remember how I said I was going to play Crysis 2? I still am, I promise. I just… it hasn’t happened yet. I had planned to rent it shortly after finishing up Bulletstorm, but it was still nowhere to be found. In the meantime, reviews of Bulletstorm led me to Vanquish, a game released last year that is basically what happens when you combine Gears of War and Bulletstorm, then take Epic out of the equation and replace them with Sega.

The result is a third-person shooter in which you run around on a space station and shoot communist robots. Similar to Bulletstorm, there’s a button that lets you slide around on the ground, and also sort of do things in slow motion. And you have a gun, but your gun is special because it’s every gun (more on that later). Also there’s a button that you press to smoke a cigarette, in case you need to be reminded that this game is very, very Japanese.

This sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster, but the opposite is true – Vanquish is a very fun game. Unlike the plodding, cover-reliant pace of a typical shooter, the goal here is speed. I’ll admit that I relied on cover more than the game probably would’ve preferred, but the mechanics are there to keep you in motion a good portion of the time; rarely are there locations in battle that are truly “safe” so you have to use your maneuverability to your advantage.

I mentioned you have what is basically the gun. Your amazing, one of a kind suit of armor is impressive, but your gun? It can look at other guns and mimic them. Remember in the Transformers movie how the robots scanned the vehicles and then turned into them? That’s what your gun can do. Except it’s a little simple, so it can only remember three guns at a time. I don’t know why that distinction exists, but it does.

But your gun can upgrade itself. If you scan another copy of a weapon you already have, the first result is your ammo refills. If your ammo is full, you get a little mark next to that gun. Three marks and you get a star, and each star is an upgrade (ammo capacity, power, etc). But don’t die, because sometimes you’ll loose a mark if that happens. I’m not really sure how the logic for that works – sometimes marks were lost, and sometimes they weren’t, and the same weapon wasn’t always affected – but really, don’t die. It’s bad for your points.

Did I mention the points? This game has them! I’m pretty sure they’re a way of telling other people how great you are at this game. Or in my case, how great you aren’t. But at the same time, the game also has giant enemy crabs, whose weak points you can attack for massive damage. Then they turn into giant humanoid robots.

In short, you should probably try Vanquish if shooting things is something you enjoy. It doesn’t really take very long, and it’s very shiny.

I didn’t mean to rent Bulletstorm. Okay, I did, but it was not at the top of my gaming to-do list, nor (until yesterday) was it even on it. I’ve been itching for something new to play after finishing up Black Ops and that driving debacle game, and because Brink and LA Noire are still over a month away, I had to psych myself up for something I could play now. Crysis 2 was the immediate the frontrunner, but after many fruitless visits to the video store, it became clear that I should find something else to occupy my time.

I didn’t care for the demo of Bulletstorm until I played it the second time. Maybe I wasn’t in the right mood, and by that I mean “maybe I just didn’t want to be distracted by another game so I convinced myself it was nothing special”. Or maybe I just wasn’t doing it right, because I had a whole lot more fun when I retried it. Happily, Bulletstorm isn’t nearly as difficult to get ahold of, so I was whipping guys around and shooting them in the face in no time.

Let’s take a couple of steps back. If you’ve seen any of the ads, you’ll remember Bulletstorm as being the game that encourages you to “Kill With Skill” – in other words, you’re rewarded for finding creative ways to dispose of your opponents. The most prominent mechanism in this involves your leash – an electric whip attached to your wrist that you can use to latch on to enemies and objects from a distance, pulling them toward you (and in doing so putting them in a sort of mini-Bullet Time) so you can more easily target strategic areas (like their butts). The rest of your arsenal is somewhat more conventional but still fun to use, and the points that you receive from killing guys are used to restock and upgrade your weapons.

This whole system, while creative, is a little disconcerting at first because to some extent it requires that you forget some of the things you know about shooting games. While you can certainly make your way through the game with a series of headshots from your assault rifle, to do so would be to forego everything that it’s about. While it initially seems as though ammo is hard to find and somewhat expensive to buy, you soon realize that a) you’re able to kill a LOT of enemies without using any ammo at all and b) you’ll get a LOT more points for doing so, effectively making ammo that much easier to come by when you do end up needing it. The environment in this game tends to be just as lethal to your opposition as your own sidearm – never has rebar been such a deadly force. Or cacti. Or random, dangling electric wires.

And, as advertised, that’s what makes Bulletstorm fun and special. It doesn’t hurt that it’s made by Epic, the folks behind the Gears of War series, and it certainly shows. I like to think that the game takes place in the same universe as Gears, since the aesthetic is nearly identical (big burly guys and lots of masculine gadgetry). However, the mood here (on the resort planet of Stygia!) is distinctly lighter, as is the overall setting. The weather is generally bright and sunny, and you’ll spend a lot of your time outside (or sort of outside, since this resort is comprised entirely of structures that are on the verge of or in the middle of collapse). There are a couple of Gears-like moments where you’ll end up in a cavern or sewer, but they seem to be there only to remind you of how little time you spend in them. An objective like “find your way out of this cavern” would end up spanning multiple acts in Gears of War, while doing the same here means you may not see the sun for nearly ten minutes.

Also interesting are a couple moments where it seems inevitable that the game is going to throw one of the typical shooter cliches at you (ridiculous boss fight, drawn out puzzle sequence), only to send you on your way instead. The game seems to prefer that you don’t remain in a given place for too much time, and instead pushes you along with relative efficiency and urgency – a rare and fitting move since the events all occur within a few hours. I will say that there seemed to be a disproportionate amount of falling through or off of… stuff. That’s a shooter cliche too – especially in the Gears franchise – but in this instance I honestly think they wanted to see how many times they could fit that into the story.

With all this, it would sound like there wasn’t anything not to like. While that’s somewhat true, I can name a few things:

• There were two distinct times where my teammate needed to perform a particular action to drive the story and failed to do so. The first time this happened I had to restart the chapter; the second time (later in the game), I was able to resolve it by restarting from the last checkpoint.
• While it’s nice to have them around, teammates rarely became the focus of attacks. One particular enemy can only be downed by shooting him in the back, which is impossible because he devotes all of his attention to me and me alone.
• One particular class of enemy in the middle of the game completely takes the fun out of combat, in that you can’t use any of the techniques that are the foundation of the game itself. I don’t mind it so much in hindsight, but it was really irritating at the time.
• While occasionally entertaining, the profanity can get a little stale. Also the main guy kind of sounds like Tim Allen at times.

So while Bulletstorm represents a new IP, it really isn’t an unknown quantity. Think of it as a first-person, lighter-hearted version of Gears of War and there you go. The setpieces are colossal and fantastic, and the combat is a lot of fun, so I definitely look forward to future installments.

I realized after returning Gran Turismo 5 that perhaps part of my problem with it is that it just wasn’t the game I was looking for at the time. I like “owning” cars and being able to drive them around, and sometimes it’s nice to be able to do that in a non-competitive, non-track setting. Understandably, this is a feature absent in both the GT and Forza series’. It’s a logical omission; adding in something like that completely changes the scope of the game to something more along of the lines of a free-roaming arcade racer, like Burnout, Need for Speed, or, in this case, Test Drive Unlimited.

I wrote years ago about the original iteration of the game, or the demo, at least, and was not particularly kind:

Test Drive Unlimited is on [this list] for wasting two hours of my life. Those familiar with the demo will realize I played it to the maximum time limit twice, which is indicative of how crack-like it is. I play and play, and all I can think is “I’m totally wasting my time on this,” a feeling reminiscent of Driv3r which (surprise) is from the same company (Atari).

Harsh words, but the game just didn’t do it for me. Still, I really liked the concept (it’s billed as a massively multiplayer online racing game), and with the release of the sequel this past week, the least I could do was give it another chance.

I’m glad I did. Test Drive Unlimited 2 takes the formula from the original game and just adds more stuff – which, in a game where personalization is a big deal, is always a good thing. Most notable is the addition of off-road areas, and the inevitable SUV’s to traverse them. The car list has also expanded, as has the territory you’re able to explore.

Because I haven’t gone back to try the original, I can’t say for sure whether they’ve changed the handling of the cars. Regardless, I’m happy to say that the physics work, and don’t generally get in the way. That may sound like a backhanded compliment, but it is a good thing. There is a lot to like in the world of TDU2. The graphics aren’t anything revolutionary but are still attractive, and every car features a full assortment of driving views (cockpit, roof, chase car, etc). Convertible tops can be raised and lowered, as can windows. The map holds a wide variety of destinations, and when you enter these areas you are able to walk around in first-person view. This is especially interesting in the car dealerships, where you can open the doors and start the engines of the cars for sale.

All in all, it’s a fun enough diversion that I ended up ordering it. I hope I don’t regret that decision, and here’s why: the game, as fun as it is, has a couple of show-stopping bugs that desperately need fixing. One of the two biggest issues is the unstable servers, which causes the game to hang when starting, and if the servers are down the only way to play the game is to disconnect from Xbox Live. This is a big deal for a lot of people, considering the main point of the game is to be able to race online. However, I spent my time in the single player campaign and am somewhat reluctant when it comes to online play, so I didn’t feel as though I was missing out on anything major. Obviously it’s an issue that needs to be fixed, and the TDU2 team is addressing it.

The more frustrating of the two bugs for me is that it’s incredibly easy to end up with a corrupted save game (ask me how I know). TDU2 tends to save very, very frequently – entering a shop, exiting a shop, entering an event, pausing the game, etc, etc. The problem is, when you want to end your session, you need to worry about whether the game is saving or not, and when you press the Guide button (which brings up the system-wide menu on the 360), the game pauses… and saves. If you’re not aware of this, you’ll quit the game in the middle of the saving process and possibly lose your data.

This is a completely ridiculous issue. Listen: I understand that launching a game is stressful on servers, and so I get that there will inevitably be downtime with things like that. However, save data isn’t tied to server activity and therefore this is a problem that never should have made it this far. It’s compounded by the fact that there’s no way to quit the game properly – believe me, I scoured the pause menu in search of a “Quit” option and came up empty-handed, and as a result, I simply quit to the dashboard and ended up losing 3 or 4 hours of gameplay. And do not get me started on having to watch those (unskippable) cutscenes again. Absolutely, mind-blowingly terrible writing.

As far as I’m concerned, this is the issue that has me most worried about resuming my game when it arrives. I’ve been very careful not to quit while the game is saving but I’m paranoid about losing my data again; the sooner they can fix this problem, the sooner I can give Test Drive Unlimited 2 the recommendation it deserves.

I’ve been finding myself with a little extra free time lately, and given that I’ve pretty much sapped any remaining enjoyment from all the games in the house, renting something seemed to be in order. I’ve had my eye on Gran Turismo 5 since it came out, but my devotion to the Forza Motorsport series and previous sour experiences made me reluctant to run out and buy it without sampling it first.

Boy, am I glad I did. I’ve been playing both Forza and GT since their first iterations, and I feel totally confident in saying that Turn 10 has made more progress and improvements on the Forza series since its introduction in 2005 than Polyphony Digital has since the first Gran Turismo in 1998. Graphics on both have improved with each successive installment, as expected, but aside from that GT5 feels like the same game I played in high school. It’s like PD spent so much time working on making the cars look good in high definition (more on that momentarily) that they ran out of time to do anything else, like develop a consistent, useful, and attractive UI instead of just throwing in the same piecemeal menus they’ve always had.

It’s true, the game can be eye candy. This is provided that you’re driving one of the 200 “premium” cars and not one of the remaining 800 “standard” cars. Yes, there are two different car formats. GT has a long history of including more cars than any of its competitors and GT5 could not be the exception to that rule, so the result is that about 20% of the cars have a much higher polygon count and a modeled interior. The rest are “updated” models that were used in previous GT games. On the surface they generally don’t look too bad, but unfortunately the deficits of the standard cars don’t end there. Standard cars also can’t have any visual modifications applied to them. Most notably this affects the (painfully small) selection of aftermarket wheels, but also applies to any aerodynamic goodies you may have been longing for. The game’s photo mode is also exclusive to premium cars.

But enough about the cars – isn’t the racing fun? Well… sure. It’s okay, but I don’t enjoy it as much as Forza. That’s a subjective thing and I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you that Forza’s gameplay is better. The main issue with any racing game, especially more sim-oriented ones like these, is that you’ll likely be spending as much time in the menus and in your garage as you do racing. And as I said before, the menus and UI are really where GT5 could have used some attention. There are little things that are just wrong, like having an inventory of paint swatches (I don’t really know how this works), or not allowing you to proceed to the next race in a series after winning the current event, or being told that you can’t change your driver’s uniform (suit and helmet colors) after you start the game. What an odd decision to make so final.

Speaking of starting the game, let’s talk about what happens when you put the disc in for the first time. Forget that it recommends a 50-minute installation; Forza 3 has an entire disc of content to install so I call it a wash. But I did spend 15 minutes watching various updates (a noted PS3 weakness), prompts, and restarts before the intro video even started rolling.

Finally, I was able to actually play the game, and by “play the game” I mean “start navigating menus”. Like Forza 3, GT5 has a narrator to somewhat guide you through the beginning of the game. Also suspiciously like Forza 3, GT5’s narrator is a male with a British accent. After filling in some initial profile information and choosing (irrevocably!?) your driver’s apparel, you’re told it’s time to buy a car. Except that you are only allowed to drive cars that are at or under your current level (zero), so your choice is somewhat limited. Honestly, I’m not sure whether you can buy outside of your level – if so, that alleviates one major gripe, as I would’ve bought a level 1 or level 2 car and done the initial license tests until I could use it.

Yes, there are license tests. No, they’re not really that fun. Yes, they’re required if you want to advance to any of the mid to high level races. Fortunately they’re not tremendously difficult if you have some previous console racing experience, but they do expose a couple more flaws with the game – namely that the ghosts are somewhat broken. The purpose of a ghost is to represent a previous effort to complete the challenge; you can use it to gauge your progress as you move incrementally closer to your goal. Or you would, if it worked properly. There are two problems with ghosts in GT5:

1. It will only record the ghost when you receive a trophy for the first time, instead of automatically saving the fastest. You can back out to the menu and return to the challenge to get around this, but that’s ridiculous for what is essentially an AAAA game.
2. When racing a ghost, they have a tendency to disappear if your car gets too close (nearly overlapping), so you can’t actually tell where the ghost is.

Finally, PD also bowed to pressure and added the racing line, a feature I first experienced in Forza. Essentially it’s a dotted line on the course that gives you an idea of the best way to traverse the various corners. It also turns red in areas where you need to slow the car. But being used to the Forza version, the GT version seems foreign to me. There were a lot of instances where I didn’t feel like I was in the right place or where their recommended braking area or distance was suboptimal in that it didn’t slow me enough or slowed me too much to remain competitive. It’s almost something that’s better left turned off, which entirely defeats the point.

With all that in mind, I didn’t harbor much regret when I slipped the game back into the return slot at the video store. At some point down the line I’m sure I’ll own it, but to me it doesn’t feel like a $60 (or $50, or $40) game. It’s a title that’s putting a lot of weight on previous games and sentimentality, and we’ve all seen what happens to games that go down that road.

Somehow I ended up on an old post I made shortly after getting the Saab, about the things I planned to do to it (strikes added):

1. Alignment, check-up, oil change – scheduled for Monday.
2. Wash, wax, buff out the small clearcoat scratches – as soon as the weather gets nice.
3. New speakers – as soon as I can figure out how to fit the back ones.
4. De-badging – I’m thinking I might remove the “SAAB” and “9-3” from the trunk, but I’m not sure yet.
5. Possibly get some smoked side markers to replace the amber units – I don’t think this would be complicated but I’m on the fence about doing it at all.
6. Replace the black interior door handles with chrome ones – if I can freaking find any.
7. Replace the lower center console – the current one has a hole drilled in it and some scratches, so if I can find a cheap one it might be a weekend project.
8. New tires – maybe around fall, and these would possibly be accompanied by new, larger wheels as well.
9. Look into getting the one larger scratch buffed out – we’ll see how the car holds up before I decide whether professional cosmetic work is worth it.

Huh.

Sometimes I’ll look around and think I have too much stuff. And it’s true – I have a lot of stuff. We have a lot of stuff. No, it’s not an episode of Hoarders when you walk in the house, but it’s just… a little overwhelming sometimes.

Most of the time this feeling comes and goes, but occasionally it reaches critical mass and drastic measures are required. There was a period of time after buying my LeMond in which I owned three bicycles. I don’t think I ever tried to convince myself that this was logical; I think I just tried to ignore it. At a certain point it became clear the Bianchi was purely excess and was no longer a necessary possession, so I sold it.

When I was still in school and basically didn’t have any money, being able to own things was a sort of goal. And while owning things continues to be nice, I’ve also become somewhat attracted to the idea of only owning the “right” amount of things. In essence, carefully managing both the quality and especially quantity of what I have.

That’s why I’m willing to take somewhat of a hit when selling an old (in the sense of having been made redundant) bicycle or iPhone or television. True, making a little extra money is nice, but whoever buys whatever I’m selling is also doing me the favor of getting it out of my life.

At some point in December my left brain and my right brain finally got together on something and concluded that owning two cars is neither practical nor enjoyable. The Miata was fun for awhile, but I really just got kind of sad when thinking about it because I didn’t feel like I was being a good owner. And of course, having two cars means maintaining and insuring two cars, and while the Miata was never a burden, it was definitely excess.

So I sold it. Or planned to sell it, anyway. At the same time, the Saab has been getting long in the tooth, and without the Miata my sole car would be one with an automatic transmission and a lot of miles. So I decided to sell that too. This could have turned out really badly, with one or both cars languishing on Craigslist until I desperately accepted the first offer I received. Worse, I’d miss out on a car that I wanted to buy because of my self-imposed “all cars must fit in the garage” policy.

Miraculously, this was not the case. In what has to be the best Craigslist experience I’ve ever had, I managed to buy a car and sell two others in a span of four days, and actually be pretty pleased with how it all shook out financially. But what really makes me happy is that instead of having two marginally good cars, I now have one car that I can really get excited about.

When Apple announced Facetime as part of the iPhone 4’s myriad of parlor tricks, I wouldn’t say that excitement was my first reaction. Cautious optimism might be a better description: video chat is obviously a very cool and useful feature, but who would I even Facetime with?

A few months and one iPhone 4 later, I had still only used the feature a handful (har) of times. So when Facetime for Mac was announced in October, I was pretty happy to see Apple expanding the system across their other hardware. I was quick to download the beta and happy to see that it basically works as expected. At the same time, I had a nagging feeling that there were better ways to video chat with someone (probably because there are better ways to video chat with someone. Facetime is great fine for phone-to-phone or phone-to-Mac chat, but what about Mac-to-Mac? Or Mac-to-Mac-to-Mac?

It makes me wonder what Apple’s grand plan is for iChat. It’s standard on every modern Mac but is often overlooked; I suspect most users who rely on instant messaging (myself included) install a multi-service client almost immediately, while the rest have no need for any client whatsoever.

And that’s sad, because iChat is a pretty neat application for a few reasons:

1. It’s had video abilities for years, so you can have a discussion with one person or multiple people simultaneously.
2. Screen sharing lets you share what’s on your computer screen with somebody else (or vice versa) – perfect for giving a tutorial or presenting a document. And it works with audio chat!
3. It’s still an IM client, so you can send links, files, or just message in realtime without resorting to email.
4. Facetime doesn’t have any way of indicating whether the person you want to talk to is available because it’s still based off the notion of a phone call. In contrast, instant messaging revolves around availability status.
5. It’s on every modern Mac. And it’s free.

I’ll admit to being a bit of an instant messaging (and to some extent IRC) romanticist. I feel as though I write better than I speak, so the notion of being able to type in realtime has always appealed to me. Interestingly, it seems like instant messaging these days has become more of a business tool, probably a result of those of us who grew up with it (sort of) finding it to be a tremendously versatile medium for communication, and because the younger generation has (logically) moved on to instant messaging in its place.

But what of iChat versus Facetime? For now the two occupy somewhat separate spaces, but Facetime on the Mac is encroaching ever so slightly on iChat’s territory, and bringing with it some strange new standards.

If you own a Mac and you did your software update today, it’s likely you’ve had a bit of time to play with the new Mac App Store. I know I did, and the first (and only) thing I downloaded was Twitter for Mac, replacing Tweetie as my desktop Twitter client of choice. I won’t get into a written comparison (but here’s a side-by-side if you’re curious) since it’s not that big of a deal to me.

What did occur to me after browsing the App Store further was that I don’t really care that much about it. Obviously it’s a new and different way of acquiring desktop software, and I think it’s a good idea, but I’ve probably downloaded more apps for my iPhone(s) than I have for any computer, ever. I just don’t go out looking for new Mac applications very frequently once the need is filled, and new needs come along very rarely.

I’m willing to say that most of my needs are filled on my phone as well, but the two simply aren’t comparable environments. The need I’m generally still trying to fill when I browse the iOS App Store is that of a diversion – something that no one app can necessarily fulfill. When I’m at home on my Mac, I don’t need diversionary software because I have full-bore internet, a a big screen on which to view it, and unlimited bandwidth. On the phone, however, I’m probably more likely to be playing a game that works well on the small screen and with infrequent network usage, and the web is generally relegated to tool-status like many other apps.

None of this is to say that the Mac App Store isn’t a great success; I just don’t see myself as a frequent visitor. On the other hand, it’s already making for some great entertainment in and of itself.