Andy Laub

My iPhone 4 arrived two weeks ago while, fittingly, I was in the middle of what would be my final phone call from my iPhone 3G. I was caught somewhat off guard, as I hadn’t been following FedEx as closely as I sometimes do and it was arriving nearly a week before schedule. I managed to make it through the rest of the call without any sort of drooling or heaving breathing so I feel like I handled the whole situation pretty well.

The unboxing process was nice enough but I wasn’t nearly as excited about this iPhone as I had been about the 3G, mainly because I didn’t expect this transition to be nearly as drastic. I was both right and wrong about this, in a good way, so let’s break it down:

Design

This – THIS – is what an iPhone should look like. I liked the original aluminum iPhone, and very much disliked the glossy plastic 3G and 3GS so this new design is a very welcome change.

Unsurprisingly, it feels great to hold – Apple has few peers in this area. In recent history their influence over competitors’ designs is somewhat obvious, but photos can’t portray just how big the difference in build quality is. At the risk of stepping into fanboy territory, it’s often the difference between buying a gadget and a functional work of art.

Interestingly, I did run up against what is mostly a psychological problem when setting the phone down. In a situation where I’m about to put the phone on a desk or other flat surface, I’d tend to hold it with my thumb on the left, four fingers on the right, and the screen facing up. The curved back of the iPhone 3G meant that the back of the phone would make contact before my fingers, so I could then release. The flat back of the iPhone 4 results in the opposite, meaning I either have to reposition my fingers or “drop” it slightly. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it an issue as it doesn’t result in any harm to the phone; it’s just an oddity.

Experience

I found the initial startup to be a little underwhelming, actually. I think there was a lot of buildup for the Retina display and at first I didn’t notice a tremendous improvement. It is definitely nicer – a little whiter and a lot sharper, but it’s something that requires a slightly closer look for me to really appreciate. Where the difference is most pronounced for me is the app icons, as some of them are still formatted only for the old resolution and are quite grainy as a result.

What I wasn’t expecting was for the increase in performance to be so noticeable. Everything is significantly faster than on my old phone, but for me the two most useful instances of this are:

1. The camera. It still takes a couple seconds to launch, but shutter actuation is much, much faster. It could still benefit from a bigger lens, but so could every camera ever made.
2. Wifi. Locking the iPhone 3G would result in a loss of wifi (understandable), but it would take its sweet time reconnecting when unlocked. Not so with the iPhone 4, which retains a wifi connection even while locked (presumably for short periods of time) or reconnects almost instantly when unlocked.

The wifi in particular is an example of what Apple does well: continually refining things that were already okay until they’re great. The 3G’s wifi performance was a little annoying at times, but it wasn’t a situation where identical behavior from the iPhone 4 would’ve prevented a purchase. The newfound responsiveness has been particularly useful when using Touchpad, the remote app for our Windows Media PC.

Gripes

I may be a fanboy, but I’m not so rabid as to admit that Apple’s devices don’t have their flaws. In this case, though, I think the nits I have to pick are mainly software-based except for two, both of which are self-explanatory:

1. More storage is always better.
2. The camera could be better still.

Even iOS 4 is pretty solid, in that it would take me a fair amount of time to remember and compile any of the complaints I would’ve had. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is with Apple’s implementation of Facetime. I certainly understand their reasoning for putting it front and center within the in-call menu, but they did so at the expense of the hold button. This resulted in a panic when I tried to put a call on hold the first time, and the end result was not pretty.

There’s been some coverage of this already, with the “official” response from Apple being that hold is just a glorified mute button. I get that, and now that I realize there even is a mute button I find myself a bit less peeved by the whole thing. The obvious question becomes: why did the two exist in the first place?

Also, I guess they’re having antenna problems or something? I wouldn’t really know as I haven’t experienced any.

And finally, still no 3G around here. Just go suck a dick, AT&T – you guys are terrible. On that note, though, I am now on the new DataPlus plan so I don’t feel like I’m being totally robbed every month. I guess that’s an advantage.

“Are you gonna get Red Dead Redemption?” they said. I said I didn’t know; I knew the game was a reboot of sorts for the franchise, but having never played the original (Red Dead Revolver) that didn’t mean too much to me. There was a lot of talk about how this new installment in the series would be taking a lot of cues from Grand Theft Auto 4 (the Best Game Ever™) to the point where the proper title was eventually replaced with Grand Theft Auto But With Horses for the sake of convenience.

And that was really my hangup; I wasn’t sure if I could love a GTA game sans the A. I enjoy those types of games because even after the game proper is long since finished, it’s fun for me to drive around the city and just play. I couldn’t picture doing that on a horse (or really any other means of transportation). Honestly, the earlier the game’s setting, the less interesting I find the driving experience. The Godfather or The Sabotuer are both good examples of games that are just not modern enough to make the driving element engaging to me.

So I didn’t buy Red Dead Redemption. My recent changes in both mindset (don’t buy every game) and cashflow (inconsistent) have prevented that, so far. However, when I got a “we miss you; free rental!” call from the local video store (yeah, we have those!), I knew what I had to do. Three days should be enough time to get to know a game, right?

I think it was somewhere around hour ten when the truth really hit me. This isn’t just Grand Theft Auto But With Horses; this is a real, bona fide Grand Theft Auto game that just happens to be set in a world before the automobile was ubiquitous. Everything else – the mission structure, the tone, the general story, the gameplay, the feeling – fits seamlessly into the GTA framework (I sincerely hope to come across at least one ancestor of a current GTA character), and when you start to think of this game as an endeavor on the same level with such a behemoth it becomes that much more impressive.

Suffice it to say, Red Dead Redemption is a very good game that I had a lot of fun with in my limited exposure to it. There are a few nitpicks, the biggest being that it’s difficult to tell friends from enemies which wreaks havoc on your reputation; the auto aim isn’t particularly picky about who it points your barrel at and then suddenly you’re WANTED and all hell breaks loose. I still can’t figure out the fast travel system, if there even is one. Something about setting up camp and then jumping from there to a previous settlement, which I never experienced.

In typical Rockstar fashion, though, the pros far outweigh the cons. Visuals and design are solid, and audio continues to be a strong point just as it has in the GTA series. With no radio the music instead is sparse and appropriately Western, mellow when appropriate but becoming more frantic during shootouts and other dramatic sequences. Voice acting is superb, especially in the case of main protagonist John Marston. He reminds me very much of Timothy Olyphant’s character in FX’s Justified.

Unsurprisingly, gameplay is nearly identical to Grand Theft Auto IV, with a few notable exceptions. The new(?) DeadEye system (which effectively lets you slow time to pick off a number of targets) is an absolute joy to use and may stand out as the defining mechanic of RDR combat versus GTA combat; I don’t foresee it working in the context of a more modern setting but it’s very appropriate here.

Most exciting though, is that we’re finally seeing a game from Rockstar with no health meters! RDR has gone the way of many modern shooters in that you still have a finite amount of health, but as your condition becomes more critical the screen turns red. If you can find cover, the reverse happens after a few moments. It makes for a much less stressful experience and unlike DeadEye, I hope this propagates to all future GTA games.

In short, Red Dead Redemption is both a great game by itself and, if you’d like, a worthy entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Three days was enough to get to scratch the surface but I definitely look forward to spending more time together in the future.

The Matrix is a great movie. Somehow, in an age where we thought we’d seen everything, it managed to bring something completely new and innovative to the action/sci-fi genre in terms of both plot and filmography. It’s a film that is wonderful all on its own, which is why there were tremors of confusion when the Wachowskis announced it would be a trilogy.

Similarly, Bioshock is a great game. If you wanted, you could call it innovative simply because it was a first person shooter in 2007 that didn’t have you fighting aliens or Nazis. But beyond that, Bioshock furthered gamers’ assertions that games could indeed be art. The plot, while still dependent on you fighting your way through… things… was refreshing in the context of this beautifully creepy underwater world. And, like The Matrix, Bioshock has that single moment of clarity in which the jarring reality of things completely blows your mind.

Of course, it could also be argued that Bioshock didn’t need a sequel. And I agree; the game is a work of art that begins and resolves an interesting story, and I would’ve been content with that. But 2K didn’t agree, and so Bioshock 2 is upon us. Like many jaded gamers, years of Tony Hawks and Call of Dutys have made it clear that not all sequels are good sequels. And when I first sat down to play this new installment, it was with much skepticism.

(I could go on an entirely different rant here about how reading reviews and previews of games can drastically and irreversibly alter someone’s opinion of them for better or worse, but I will save that. For now.)

Suffice it to say, I had been reading a lot of reviews of Bioshock 2 because I was genuinely looking for an excuse to skip it. Reading reviews is not something I do for games that I know I want to play, for reasons stated above. But the reviews all played the same tune: yes, Bioshock didn’t need a sequel, but here is one, and it’s pretty good, so get over it.

And they’re right. Unlike the rest of The Matrix trilogy, this new Bioshock turns out to be a lot of fun for those of us who enjoyed Rapture the first go-round. While it would’ve been impossible to do anything but put you in the (very heavy) shoes of a new protagonist, the strategy works. You get to experience some things that are only made possible by who you are in this game, and another layer of the Rapture saga is revealed as well.

All in all, it comes down to this: the original game is so highly-regarded partially because there was a certain novelty about it. That the second installment is enjoyable and interesting even now that that novelty has worn off speaks volumes about how ripe the setting and gameplay are for further exploration.

I bought Mass Effect a month or so after it was released in late 2007. Even after playing through the roughly 20-hour campaign (estimated), I didn’t give it more than a sentence of attention:

Mass Effect was pretty darn good once I figured out how to play it

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it; it just didn’t register as much more than a tiny blip on my “totally hawesome games” radar. There was some neat stuff that happened, and that’s all I could really say about that.

Suffice it to say, I was wrong.

I decided to embark on another playthrough of the game when I was going through my annual pre-Christmas gaming drought, in anticipation of the soon-to-be-released sequel. I spent significantly more time exploring and talking the second time around. In some games all this would do is add time to your play clock, but in Mass Effect every conversation, every scan, every hacked computer terminal held the potential for a new discovery; a little more insight into the universe Bioware labored to create.

As the first in the series, it wasn’t surprising for a game of ME‘s scope to have some teething problems. Many of the side missions were a little too generic; the environments just a little bit sterile. The inventory system was frustrating to deal with. The loading screens were frequent and generic. The elevator rides were… long. But in spite of all this, you could see what the game wanted to be, and you could appreciate it for that.

Now let’s take all of those complaints and throw them away, because they’ve all been remedied in Mass Effect 2. Bioware could’ve continued down the same path. They could’ve used the first game’s mechanicals in their entirety, pasted a new story over the top, and called it good.

But they didn’t do that, and the sequel is better for it. Yes, it’s a little different than the first game. Especially if you just (re)played the first game. But it’s for your own good. You may find it off-putting at first – get over it. If you use that as an excuse not to play it, then you’re just stupid and your face is stupid.

Here’s the thing, though: some sequels are way better than their predecessors. The Uncharted series is a great example of this. Drake’s Fortune was good, but Among Thieves was GOOD. As such, it’s easy to take that knowledge and skip the first game completely. You are doing yourself a massive disservice if you do this with Mass Effect.

Unlike Uncharted, ME‘s central focus is your relationships and interactions with other characters. And I mean all characters, not just your squad. I can’t imagine how uninteresting or confusing some of those conversations would be if you didn’t have the context and experiences of the first game. There’s a reason that the first option when starting a game is to import your character from the original: the decisions you made there do affect the ME2 universe, albeit in generally minor ways.

Bioware is trying to tell a cohesive story here, and each game is an important chapter. These add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, and anyone who doesn’t experience all of those parts as they were meant to be played is missing out.

In retrospect, I’m not sure this is what I meant to write when I sat down, which means there will probably be another Mass Effect post in the near future. Still though. Seriously.

You may have heard some fuss about a new game that came out recently. I think it had something to do with warfare that takes place during modern times, but I’m not quite sure. There are apparently snowmobiles in it?

Indeed, Activision’s Modern Warfare 2 has touched all of our hearts and souls since its release earlier this month. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, but you wouldn’t know it from their pushing it as “MOST ANTICIPATED GAME EVAR (until the next one)”. And I suppose they’re right – MW2 gives you a lot to be excited about.

For one, it’s a direct sequel to 2007′s Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Yes, there was another CoD game last year: World at War. No, that one took place in World War 2 and doesn’t fit into this chronology. And it was developed by somebody else.

Wait. Yes, that is confusing. Recall this post, if you will, about my dislike for the two-developer system (specifically one of the two developers) that Activision uses to push CoD games out the door on a yearly basis, quality notwithstanding. In that article I wrote:

What if Infinity Ward stopped making COD games, leaving the franchise to Treyarch, and instead used the technology they’ve already developed to create a new, self-owned franchise with similar content? Presumably it would continue in the modern warfare vein and would play the same.

Interestingly, that’s sort of what’s happening here. I don’t know what the plans are for the seventh installment in the CoD franchise, but presumably it will be a Treyarch effort once again. But in the meantime, notice that the “Call of Duty” label on MW2 was extremely downplayed. Initially they had planned not to include it on the marketing at all, but I suppose it’s helpful in that most people are totally clueless and wouldn’t make the connection. So in a sense, Modern Warfare is very much poised to be its own franchise at this point (or already is, I suppose).

With all of that said, I hadn’t picked up a CoD game since the first Modern Warfare. World at War and its return to the WW2 setting didn’t entice me enough to buy or even rent; only when one of my CoD-addicted friends finally replaced his WaW disc with a shiny new one with the words “Modern Warfare 2″ on it did I ask to borrow the old one to give it a try.

Call of Duty: World at War

In a few words, I found World at War to be very, very good. As is typical of the series, you’ll frequently be switching between two protagonists (in this case an American and a Russian) as they embark on their distinct tours of duty (plan on visiting the Pacific and traveling from Russia to Germany). The characters are likable enough, with excellent voice acting. Your immediate superiors are voiced by Kiefer Sutherland and Gary Oldman, respectively (wow!), as are the narrations between missions.

Speaking of “between missions”… holy shit. Even if you have zero interest in the game whatsoever, you NEED to see these cutscenes. They are simply gorgeous examples of motion graphics:

Seriously, this game has no right to have graphics this nice. I think that’s a compliment. Other than that, it’s pretty much all standard Call of Duty fare. I enjoyed playing through it even thought the missions were not without their frustrations, but I can only handle so much trench warfare before wanting to move on to something else.

Modern Warfare 2

Enter “something else”. With all the ruckus about the newest member of the family, I knew I had to give it a try. I managed to find a lone copy available for rental yesterday and figured I could hammer through it by the end of the weekend. Well, I was right, but change “end of the weekend” to “one sitting” and you’ll find my single-player experience to be comparable to that of anyone else who’s enjoyed the game.

I think we’re almost at that point where the single player campaign is becoming token addition in Call of Duty games. You don’t buy this game to play it alone. Well, you can, but that would be a waste of $60 (this coming from someone who has wasted $60 several times). Single player is good for about a week of entertainment at best, which is why it’s fine rental fodder for folks like me who are adverse to shooting strangers online. And by “shooting strangers online” I mean “getting shot by strangers online”.

And in this case, the campaign is not only short but somewhat disheveled. As I mentioned before, MW2 is a direct sequel to the first game, in that you see the return of some of the original characters. I think this is great, because it’s already a huge divergence from the traditional Call of Duty “slice of life” model where you see a little bit of everything.

I don’t know that they take advantage of this as much as they could, though. As with World at War you’ll be switching between protagonists constantly, each of whom has missions that feel quite different. I understand the reasoning for this mechanically, but it also seemed a little unbalanced. Then again, that’s easy to forget because I spent a lot of time trying to figure out exactly what was going on.

I think that in writing the “story” for the game, Infinity Ward had a meeting and said “okay, we want to have missions that take place in A, B, and C, with combat that features X, Y, and Z” and then they wrote some scripts that vaguely made that possible. That’s not to say the game isn’t a lot of fun to play; it’s just more disjointed than usual. The fact that MW isn’t tied down by a factual background and has gobs of technology at its disposal means that you can cover a much larger variety of terrain in a much smaller amount of time.

Epilogue

You’ll notice that I didn’t really go into any detail about graphics or sound, but if you’ve played any of the CoD games on the new generation of consoles, you know what to expect. They’re both great, and they remain great year after year.

Even though I’m not interested in what is really the focal point of the games (multiplayer), I’m still interested to see where the series (plural?) heads after this. Treyarch really pulled a 180 with World at War, and Infinity Ward can do pretty much anything they please with a title as vague as “Modern Warfare”.

After what seems like decades, Abe and I finally have a week where we don’t have extracurricular activities eating up every evening. Thanks to a Target gift card and some smooth talking on my part, we decided to spend some of that time with New Super Mario Bros. Wii.

We played through the first world last night, and looking back I think I enjoyed it. The game looks great, and we did a decent job of remaining alive (a definite plus) and so I hope that trend continues. Similar to 2006′s New Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo DS, this game is a spiritual successor Super Mario Bros. 3 from the NES days. A prime choice; I consider SMB3 to be the pinnacle of Mario side-scrollers. So all is great, right? Well… no. While the game in and of itself has a lot of potential, there were also some attributes that really felt detrimental to the whole experience.

The big news in NSMBW is that you can play with up to four people simultaneously – no waiting for your turn; everybody’s on the screen, all the time. Except when they’re not. Unfortunately, it is possible for players to find themselves scrolled right off the screen, which can be overcome but may also result in death if they’re beyond the threshold of what the game decides is “safe”. Fortunately, the deceased player will quickly return in a bubble that you need to pop to get them back into the action (imagine Baby Mario in the Yoshi’s Island series).

Player interaction is another iffy item. For better or worse, your characters cannot all occupy the same space at the same time. This becomes problematic when two overzealous teammates decide to tackle the same obstacle simultaneously and instead end up as obstacles themselves. You can overcome this by constantly trying to call out your plans (“okay, now I’m going to jump on this Koopa”) but that seems like a strange thing to need to do for what should be a relatively casual experience. At the same time, it really does add to the atmosphere of the game and make it more interesting.

The biggest problem with this game, though, is where it is. My opinion is and always will be that the Wii platform is a hinderance to “normal” games. The controllers suck, not only in a physical sense but in an “it takes me 5-10 minutes to even get them to work” sense. By the time I’ve gotten the console to function I’m already beginning a game with a feeling of disappointment. Maybe it’s a repetitive fluke (oxymoron?), but how can Nintendo expect the console to appeal to non-techy casual gaming types when they can’t reliably sync their controllers to their consoles?

And while I realize that motion control is the Wii’s bread and butter at the moment, I think it’s ridiculous that they feel obligated to tack it on to every game just because it’s there. Making the game rely on motion control means that we are stuck with the basic Wiimote turned sideways (ugh, just like Super Paper Mario) instead of being able to use a Gamecube controller, the Wiimote/nunchuk combo, or the classic controller.

And that interface! Still so terrible.

I took a brief hiatus from my Forza 3 marathon on Thursday to pay a final visit to Liberty City with The Ballad of Gay Tony, Rockstar’s latest (and likely last) installment of downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto IV. Given my fondness for all things GTA, it shouldn’t come as much of a shock that I was watching the credits roll by lunchtime Saturday.

Rockstar’s approach to TBoGT doesn’t differ much from the previous installment – once again you’re put in the shoes of what was previously only a supporting character. As I said before, the experience you enjoy the most really depends on which character and lifestyle you are most comfortable with. In this case, that character is Luis Lopez, ex-con turned bodyguard of/business partner to nightclub impresario “Gay” Tony Prince (who bears a remarkable resemblance to Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark).

As a result, the game is centered around Algonquin, Liberty City’s equivalent to Manhattan, and the high-roller atmosphere extends to fast cars, great new music, and a slew of new over-the-top missions. Of course it’s not all fun and games, but I’ll just leave it at that with regards to plot. You’ll run across plenty of characters that you’ve been previously introduced to, including one loose end from the core game that I was glad to see tied.

I have to say, I really liked Luis as a protagonist – while he kept getting thrust into situations that were less than ideal, I never felt that things were completely out of control like I did with Niko or Johnny. One constant across all GTA games is that you can continue to experience the city even after completing the missions. You may find it telling that when presented with that option in TLaD I opted instead to return to the original game. I don’t expect that to be the case this time around.

I bought my Xbox at the end of the product cycle. It was late 2005 and the 360 had just hit the market, but I wasn’t ready to make the leap yet (mistake). The Xbox was intended as a sort of stopgap, and a way to catch the games I had missed out on in the years where my time was occupied first by the Gamecube and later by the PS2.

One of the first games I bought was Halo – a staple for any collection. It was enjoyable enough, and was really one of my first experiences with the modern first person shooter (FPS). I was indifferent to the overall art direction (generic) and level design (repetitive) but I played through it with Abe and it was a fun, co-op way to kill some time.

Halo 2 followed shortly thereafter, but for whatever reason didn’t receive our immediate attention. By the time we started to play through it, it was on the Xbox 360. Console choices aside, Halo 2 was a struggle for us to stay interested in. The frequent switch between characters and storylines was confusing, and the environments weren’t any better than the first game. We spent a fair amount of time just trying to figure out what we were supposed to do. I’m being generous if I say we made it roughly halfway through the game before it got shelved, and that was my last experience with the Halo series aside from some occasional local multiplayer on Halo 3.

So maybe it was the lull in games, or the recent release of Halo 3: ODST that made me want to try to continue the adventure. Two weeks ago I put in Halo 2 once more in hopes that my interest would be rekindled. A couple ugly, repetitive, frustrating levels later, it was becoming clear that this was not going to be the case. With no achievements to keep me motivated, it was roughly a couple of hours before the game found itself shelved once again.

Still lacking for games to play, I ended up borrowing Halo 3. I’ve been told that a) I didn’t miss much by skipping the rest of the second game and b) the third is a much stronger game. Both of these assessments proved to be accurate, for while I still experienced some of the same typical Halo frustrations, I can look back and say that I did enjoy playing the game when all is said and done.

The Good

As the first of the series to appear on the Xbox 360, you’d expect that Halo 3 would be both visually and aurally superior to the previous iterations, and it is, if only in a technical sense. I found the story to be engaging enough that I at least wanted to continue playing through the game, and the gameplay is solid as ever; even the vehicle controls felt much less frustrating than the previous games. There wasn’t nearly as much repetition to the environments which meant that I spent less time getting lost and backtracking and more time enjoying myself, and I also enjoyed that a good portion of the game took place on earth. I also especially liked the sequences where I fought alongside the Arbiter and/or the Covenant Elites – both make solid teammates.

The Bad

The thing is, where Halo was once the king of shooter games thanks to its solid gameplay, it seems like dozens of similar games have since flooded the market, some of which offer things that seem to be a staple in games nowadays. Gears of War and its emphasis on finding cover during battle comes to mind, something that a first person game such as Halo would have a hard time dealing with. The problem is, there are a myriad of situations in Halo 3 where running and gunning is the last thing you should be doing; you need to hunker down and pick off enemies from a safe vantage point, but there’s no mechanic to encourage this sort of behavior.

Aside from that, all the processing power in the world can’t disguise the fact that this is merely an update to the artwork from the original game. Obviously trying to change character designs midstream is a bad idea, so I suppose more of my issue is that I’ve always found Halo’s style to be incredibly generic. I also had trouble occasionally following the story, particularly in one sequence where I felt as though I missed a cutscene.

Fortunately for me (and for Halo 3), I didn’t go into the experience expecting something groundbreaking; I just wanted to shoot guys for awhile. Which brings me to my final critique: it’s hard to shoot guys when you can’t find any ammo.

In the past week, two iPhoners friends with iPhones have asked me what apps I’m currently using on my iPhone. And while I’m not writing this down with the pretense that anyone will actually care, I figure it’s a thing appropriate for a blog such as this. Yes, I’ve covered this topic before, but this is a more comprehensive listing that also accounts for my tastes having since changed.

The List

I have my phone divided into four pages, plus the typical quick launch bar at the bottom (Phone/Text/Safari/Mail):

1. Primary Apps (11 + Settings)
2. Secondary Apps (16)
3. Games (8)
4. Web Shortcuts (3)

I’ve decided to include arbitrary ratings for usefulness (how good it is at what it does) and frequency (how often I use it), 5 being the highest.

Recommendations

I’ve already covered Twitteriffic, TWC, and WhitePages Mobile; my reasons for liking them still stand. But here’s a quick rundown of the others:

• CameraBag is a nice little filtering app that makes the photos taken with your phone not look quite so lame. You can either shoot directly from the app itself, or edit photos after the fact. Here’s a quick example: before and after.
• Delivery Status Touch is the best package tracking app I’ve found with support for every delivery service imaginable. As a bonus it’s updatable from the web.
• Aurora Feint: The Beginning is a really fun game, when it works. It used to constantly throw out errors when it couldn’t talk to the server, to the point where you couldn’t even resume a game you were playing. It looks like the original free version had been removed from the store, replaced by Aurora Feint II; perhaps this newer iteration works better.
• Sol Free Solitaire is solitaire, with a few variations. Go play Demon – I’ll see you in a few hours when you realize what time it is.

It was big news when Rockstar announced that Grand Theft Auto IV would see a simultaneous release for both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. Arguably even bigger news was that Microsoft basically showered Rockstar in cash in exchange for the exclusive rights to two episodes of downloadable content.

That was in 2006; Grand Theft Auto IV hit stores in April 2008 with the promise that the first portion of DLC would follow in the fall. And true to form, it was delayed. But finally, last Tuesday, The Lost and Damned arrived and set out to redefine what downloadable content can be.

Instead of continuing your experience as Niko Bellic (protagonist of the core storyline) TLAD puts you in the shoes of biker Johnny Klebitz (of The Lost Motorcycle Club), one of the ancillary characters that you previously crossed paths with. I really like this approach, as the entire cast of GTA IV is ripe for this sort of extrapolation. I was a little hesitant about the choice of a biker as I wasn’t a huge fan of the motorcycle-oriented missions in the original game, but fortunately those fears turned out to be unfounded.

Whether you prefer Niko or Johnny as a “hero” boils down to personal preference; I found both to be likable enough, with a sort of “why does this keep happening to me?” quality about them. As noted above, you’ll end up in a few missions where both characters are involved simultaneously and that may be my favorite aspect of this whole experience – seeing a whole new viewpoint of a scenario that you had previously only witnessed from one angle. Furthermore, relationship between Niko and Johnny versus Niko and the rest of TLMC is quite interesting to follow as they rarely seem to be consistent.

Aside from that the missions are par for course, but enjoyable. I probably spent around ten hours on the story mode, and didn’t find any one level particularly frustrating. Interestingly, Rockstar has reworked the continue system with this expansion, so restarting the mission often puts you at a checkpoint instead of at the beginning, finally.

Liberty City has also received some upgrades in the form a couple new interiors and some new vehicles; most of which are motorcycles. But most notable is the addition of all sorts of new music and dialogue on the radio stations. It’s pretty rad and remarkably satisfying to hear Deep Purple’s Highway Star and Bon Jovi’s Wanted blaring over the exhaust of your bike. Odd though – I can’t help but notice that Rockstar seems to have raided the Rock Band catalog. And while I believe the new vehicles are only available when you’re playing TLAD, the media additions are universal.

So is it worth $20? If you spent countless hours with the original, then yes, no thought required. Buy it and see Liberty City in a whole new light. If you weren’t crazy about the core game, than nothing TLAD brings to the table can remedy that aside from perhaps the continue system. Still, though, it’s not nearly as satisfying or interesting to play if you weren’t already emotionally invested in the characters. It’s not an entirely different game, and it’s not an entirely different story. What it is, is a very strong addition to what was already a very good game.

Yesterday marked day 120 of Wii Fit, so I’ll start with the numbers:

BMI: 22.18 / Weight 167.3 for a total loss of 6.51 BMI percentage points and 48.7 lbs.

Not bad, but it’s slight increase from my all-time low of 21.83 / 164.7 lbs. And the numbers aren’t nearly as impressive as they had been the previous three months. But that’s because I stopped worrying about it.

Two weeks ago, something in me snapped. I had reached the point where I was sitting just around BMI 22, and not losing any more weight. By anyone’s standard, this is a healthy number, but I had become addicted to the process, to the thrill of seeing those numbers drop.

I realized it was keeping me from enjoying food, making me skip the occasional breakfast, pushing me to work 20 more minutes on top of what I was already doing. I decided it was time to let it go, and just enjoy eating again. So I did. I kept working out, but I stopped measuring for a week. And I ate horribly and indiscriminately: Pizza Hut, pasta, cookies (I missed them so), muffins – you name it.

When the next week rolled around, I stepped on the proverbial scale again, dreading the inevitable increase. I figured it was going to be big, regardless of how much exercise I had been doing in the meantime.

I was very wrong. It was two pounds. Two. It was then I realized that I don’t need to worry about this anymore. I’m going to enjoy eating again, and I will keep working out. But to lose nearly fifty pounds (with a video game!) during the middle of winter is a pretty fantastic victory for me.

So with that, consider this my wrap-up review of Wii Fit. It works.

I was extremely happy to reach the conclusion of Dead Space for a number of reasons:

1. No more monsters jumping out of vents
2. I can play another game without feeling guilty

I had initially started playing Far Cry 2 while in the midst of Dead Space, and all the freedom it offered had the interesting effect of making me long for the more structured missions of the very game I was avoiding. I managed to put about five hours into it before giving it up and returning to the land of linearity.

And so with the conclusion of Monster Zombies in Space™, Far Cry was forgotten in favor of a new contender: Metal Gear Solid 4. I’ll be honest; I didn’t have high hopes. I’ve played games in the series before and not done overly well, but given that this is the flagship game for the PS3 and beat out my favorite game ever for GameSpot’s Game of the Year, I expected that it would at least provide for an interesting and entertaining experience.

I was not wrong.

Like other games in the Metal Gear Solid line, MGS4 has a healthy serving of dialogue and cutscenes to accompany the gameplay – there’s a pretty good chance you’ll be watching just as much as you’ll be playing. But the Metal Gear universe is so deliciously convoluted that every bit of dialogue becomes important to understanding just what the hell is happening. Before playing through I had only a passing knowledge of the series, and even I wasn’t completely confused.

That’s not to say it’s brilliant or clever; more appropriate descriptions would be weird, or twisted, or just plain crazy. Still, it’s definitely interesting and keeps you intrigued. And you’re rewarded for your wait with some really good gameplay. Metal Gear games have always relied heavily on stealth elements, and while this one certainly is no exception, you’re provided with adequate firepower from the get-go that will make the occasional skirmish less of a punishment.

There’s not much else I can really say about this game except that it’s really fun, and you should play it if you have a PS3. After a stream of averageness, this is the first game I’ve played that really gives me hope for the console.

On Christmas day, I found myself with a conundrum: four games with great potential, accumulated at various times leading up to the holiday season, sat before me and I had to figure out which one to play. I made Abe choose for me, and that’s why I am playing Dead Space, a survival horror sci-fi spaceship 3rd-person shooter thing with an emphasis on “strategic dismemberment combat.”

Why did I buy this game in the first place? I am not sure. I hate horror anything. I dislike being scared. Playing through Bioshock was a stretch for me. And yet, I elected to spend money on something that I knew – knew – would not be a good fit for me. The problem is, the game is good, both technically and creatively. It’s so good at what it does that I don’t want to play it anymore.

I am trying to force myself through at least a chapter a day (I started out strong, hitting the first 7 chapters on Thursday and Friday, and I’m up to chapter 10 now), and then when it ends I can finally play something I actually want to be playing. Everything about the game is too stressful for me. I’m not a fan of scary alien combat. I’m not a fan of not being able to find enough ammo. And I’m definitely not a fan of non-regenerative health, which shouldn’t even be allowed in a shooter in this day and age.

Seriously, give me a damn break. I am stuck on this mining ship, 600 years in the future, wearing what is some sort of incredibly advanced armor that allows me to store a ridiculous amount of weapons and ammunition (if I can find it) without weighing me down, but the same suit can’t restore my vitals over time? To me that just smells like an arbitrary way to make the game harder – it doesn’t really add any enjoyment or value. Alternatively, as you upgrade your suit throughout the game, make it an unlockable ability. But really, health packs? So 90′s.

So yeah, Dead Space – once it’s done, it’s done.

I mentioned on Black Friday that I had taken advantage of a couple of Amazon’s video game deals, among them PS3 staples Resistance: Fall of Man and Motorstorm. I figured this would be a cheap way to beef up my library and get to know some of the franchises that are laid the groundwork for this newest generation of PlayStations, and after playing them both I can see why it’s selling the way it does – poorly.

Motorstorm

Motorstorm is an off-road racing game. I’ll be honest – I wasn’t expecting a lot, and at $15, there wasn’t very much it would’ve had to do to make me happy. I played it briefly on a demo PS3 last year it seemed perfectly acceptable – all it had to do was provide some fun multiplayer and not crash. Fail.

Local play is limited to one (very bored) person. I think they made the excuse that the all-powerful God that is the PS3 couldn’t handle split-screen multiplayer. So you’ve spent months (years?) talking about how the PS3 is the be-all, end-all of console gaming, but it can’t let two people in the same room play a racing game together? Nice.

After that, I was pretty much done. The gameplay was fine, if a little unforgiving, but it’s not a game I feel like playing alone.

Resistance

There is no argument that Resistance is the better of the two. It received decent marks on release, probably because it was the only vaguely playable game available at the time. Also, it seems like it should be pretty easy to make a first person shooting game, since all you have to do is decide where and when you want it to take place. The controls are pretty much decided for you, and should never change. I am not trying to say Resistance runs contrary to this formula – I am just making an observation.

From the beginning I had intended to play through the game with Abe, much like what we’ve done with the Halo series. The story, from what I had heard, never struck me as particularly compelling (it isn’t), and so it seemed like a good “play a level here and there” type of game instead of bombing through it like I tend to do when playing alone.

And in that regard, it is good. But it’s not as good as the games it was made to compete against. The whole experience is, well, generic. The story is generic. The one class of enemy is generic. The settings are generic. And they look okay, but while the graphics go through the motions of telling you this environment is one ravaged by war and infection (broken walls, conveniently placed debris), it doesn’t hold a candle to the same style as done by Gears of War, which was released at the same time.

In both cases, multiplayer was/would have been the saving grace. Both games control just fine, and there really isn’t anything technical to complain about. But there’s nothing genuinely exciting either. I suspect that’s because I’ve seen some amazing things on the 360, and both of these games are version 1.0′s that are two years old. I hear the new Motorstorm has local multiplayer now too, so there’s that.

But as games that were marketed as AAA titles, they left a lot to be desired. I know I would’ve been pissed if I had paid $60 for either game, especially after having paid $500-$600 for the console to play it on. I’m still chafing at $15 for a racing game with no local multiplayer. Sorry. I had to.

Microsoft blessed the Xbox 360 faithful with a dashboard update this week. But this wasn’t just any old update – this was a complete rethinking of the interface from the ground up. Their moniker for it – New Xbox Experience (NXE) – is certainly apt, and I for one find it to be a welcome change. There was a lot to like about the old dashboard, but as time wore on, it started to suffer from feature creep to the point where the once-logical layout became cluttered and somewhat confusing. A big contributing factor to this was the Xbox Live Marketplace (XBLM), as it added a completely new section to the dashboard, and was never particularly well laid-out to begin with.

But after spending a couple of days with the new dash it’s safe to say that it’s a solid improvement over what was there before, both visually and functionally. They took a page from Sony in terms of an overall metaphor – both the NXE and Sony’s dash, the Xross Media Bar (XMB), use one axis for your main navigation and the other for sub navigation. That’s pretty much where the similarities end, as the PS3′s nav stretches horizontally across the screen while the 360′s scrolls vertically.

They both seem to operate in a reasonably snappy fashion – there was a bit of slowness (mostly in the marketplace) when the NXE launched, but now it performs at a speed that feels faster than the original. Even better, it doesn’t feel like an afterthought anymore. It’s clearly intended as part of the dashboard instead of feeling like an added application on the PS3. It matches everything around it and makes great use of the new interface.

But what about the other content? The NXE presents the information in big bold boxes, so there’s rarely any guesswork to be had as far as what exactly you’re getting into. The information is the hero, and it’s provided in easy-to-read type on a pretty blue gradient. It also just seems to relish the ability to give you that information. Sony opts to use small, monochromatic icons for most functions, which doesn’t really hinder anything, but it doesn’t really make things easier to find either; I sense that most either rely on labels or memorize the icons that they most frequently use. It’s kind of like comparing Web 2.0-style information delivery to that of a 1337 Flash Developer from the early 2000′s.

While that my sound like an insult, I think it’s just very indicative of Sony’s style of doing things. They’re giving you an icon and a title; consider it a bonus if you get more information than that as it would be an aesthetic sacrifice to do so. Microsoft clearly doesn’t think that way, and never has. Their information delivery has always been dictated by space on the 360, and now they’ve given themselves much more flexibility in that regard.

All in all, I think Microsoft hit it out of the park here, and has the best dashboard experience of any console.

I think this will be the last of this series, as I’ve covered everything interesting that I can think of. We played some Little Big Planet for the first time on Saturday, and it was a bit overwhelming. They throw you right into the action and start explaining things as you’re wanting to do other things, which makes it easy to miss some of the tutorial stuff.

The game plays decently well – controls are straightforward as one would expect for a platformer, although the surface that you’re moving along generally has 3 different “tracks”, for lack of a better description, ranging from closer to further away. Obstacles and platforms respect these tracks which makes for some interesting little puzzles (moving things in the foreground and the background and then using them as steps, for example). And while I respect the idea and agree that it adds to the gameplay, sometimes moving between the different lanes can be difficult or impossible for no good reason. And sometimes you’ll find the opposite is true – you’ll have switched lanes unintentionally, causing you to end up somewhere you don’t want to be.

But overall it’s good. Customization and creation are the true driving factors here, and the options abound. I haven’t been overly compelled to create any kind of level yet, but the stuff that you can do is truly epic. I am pretty sure that all the different elements within the actual game levels can be recreated with the level editor, which is impressive. What I’ve been enjoying is the levels that people have already created and shared online – my favorite so far has been a marathon level that starts you in a prison cell and lets you gradually work your way out, ending in a police chase! The only major fault I ran into (and I believe Sony has acknowledged this) is that playing online with other people in the same level is incredibly laggy, to the point of being essentially unplayable.

Unfortunate

One of the few other games I’ve been looking forward to trying was Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune. I was happy to find a demo available for download, and in retrospect it saved me a bunch of dollars. The game plays fine – there’s not really anything technically wrong with it – but it just felt off. So for now I’ll continue to chip away at LBP when Abe has free time, and explore the user-created stuff when I’m on my own.

Super Summary

The PS3 is a respectable piece of hardware with some really cool and impressive features and interesting games that I still wouldn’t pay $400 – $500 for. That money would get you much farther if spent on an Xbox 360, which has many of the same games and more attractive exclusives.

Yesterday I watched Prison Break. On Hulu. On the PS3. So there’s that. The browser seems to work well – a bit laggy at times but considering it’s essentially a bonus over all the other capabilities the hardware has, I can’t complain too much. I did also have a minor freak-out yesterday morning when I thought the second controller wasn’t charging, but as it turns out it can only charge when the console is powered on. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I think Sony is operating under the assumption that PS3 is going to be an always-on sort of console (see below).

Making Connections

Today the HDMI cable and adaptor that I previously mentioned arrived, so I could finally see the PS3 in all of its 1080i (that’s the best we can do right now) glory. What a difference! Text is crisp and clear, and everything looks so much more right. Another side note – I had originally ordered the component cables from Walmart using the gift card that came with the PS3 – but when I returned them they gave me cash; I found that odd. Great, but odd.

I also picked up an ethernet hub, as our router is completely used up when it comes to wired ports. Everything worked immediately as it should on both the 360 and PS3, so I was happy not to have to play network troubleshooting.

Customization

I still have not played any games, but I downloaded some themes. Like the 360, you can change the backgrounds and such to better suit your mood, but the PS3 takes it one step further and includes a new icon set with each theme as well as some wallpapers. And like the 360 (again), you can mix and match somewhat, so you can have a certain set of icons tied to a different background image.

Even better, you can download images via the web browser and use those as your backgrounds – there’s a whole Flickr group dedicated to it.

Life With Playstation

There’s one other interesting tidbit, and then I’m off to play some Little Big Planet for the first time – Life With Playstation. Picture the channels that the Wii has – weather, news, etc, and you’ll already have some idea of what this is. There are two sections right now – the Live Channel, which provides a global view of weather and news headlines on a regional basis (served by Google!), and more interestingly, Folding@home, which adds the PS3 to Stanford University’s Distributed Computing Project, intended to “research protein folding and misfolding to gain an understanding of how these are related to disease.”

As weird as that sounds, it’s really quite an amazing feature to include in a video game console. I’m not sure what the project has accomplished thus far or will accomplish in the future, but the fact that Sony has contributed to the effort with the PS3 is really pretty cool.

It’s no secret I was amazingly reticent about Sony’s PS3 when it first launched. There were a lot of things wrong with the picture. Over time, my coldness became more of a lukewarmness – still not completely satisfied but more impressed with particular aspects of the experience. As the price dropped and software/hardware updates became a regularity, ownership became a real possibility and I added it to my list.

So when WalMart in all of their WalMartiness offered a $100 gift card with the purchase of an 80GB PS3, I jumped on it. I opted to order it from their website rather than drive out to the store (which is kind of a lose-lose, really) and it arrived yesterday, in the midst of a million other things I really should be doing instead. So far I’ve only spent about an hour with it, but it’s such a different feel from other consoles I’ve experienced that the initial impressions are probably some of the most interesting.

Packaging and Pack-ins

Since this is just a base-model, 80GB unit there’s nothing really to write home about. It includes a DualShock 3 controller (finally) and… not much else. There’s no power brick as there were with the Wii and 360, which is nice, but seriously, Sony? Composite cables? Those are worthless. I initially decided to get the component video adapter ($20) since our TV doesn’t have HDMI, but I remembered that it does have DVI, and so instead the plan is to use a DVI/HDMI adapter with a standard HDMI cable – it’s about half the price and we can continue to use it when we upgrade to HDMI eventually. The cables are all still in transit, which means that all of my experience thus far has been through the included cables.

Setup

Physical setup: no different than any other piece of hardware, so it’s worth skipping. Except that when you first turn the unit on you have to plug in the wireless controller… okay, whatever. The initial startup process begins with an orchestra tuning their instruments (this is the startup screen?), then guides you through establishing the date and time (can’t this be pulled from the network?), giving your name, and optionally connecting to the internet. Nothing particularly difficult, though it felt more tedious than setting up the 360. Or a computer, for that matter.

Which brings me to an interesting point. The moment you’re launched into the dashboard (Sony calls it the Xross Media Bar, or XMB), you’re bombarded with stuff. Not visually – the layout is very clean, but there are sooooo many features and they’re all much more apparent than on the current 360 dash. It seriously does feel like Sony was out to design some kind of living room computer and decided that they might as well add games to it and call it a PlayStation.

After this, I left, because it needed to download a software update (140MB!) and I had an appointment. An interesting side note here: you have the option of downloading the update on your computer and sticking it on a thumb drive for the PS3, instead of getting it on the machine directly. Anyway, when I came back, it was done, and I only had to spend 5 minutes scrolling through the EULA to get it to install. Then I created a PlayStation Network account (for free, which is great), where I had to do the same thing. I was almost worn out from all the scrolling, but then I got giddy that I could actually use the unit and not have to install anything further (for now).

It still looks terrible, thanks to the composite cable. Type is blurry, and it’s just not the crisp HD that it wants to be. I’ve played with the XMB with a proper video connection and it’s downright gorgeous. It needs to be that when you first turn it on. But other than that, it’s fine for now. Like I said before, it’s very computer-like, which means there’s a LOT of stuff there. Some of the options in the settings, while nice to have, would benefit from a line or two of explanation.

Surfing the Net on the Information Superhighway

The PS3 includes a web browser. I like this. I was anxious to find out if it would work for the only things I would really use it for – watching videos. So I tested it with a couple of sites, with cautious optimism:

• Adult Swim: Because I never know when I’ll need to watch some Aqua Teen Hungerforce or Superjail. It works!
• Hulu: Because watching Prison Break and Chuck when they’re on TV is too much work. It works! (I think)
• YouTube: Because the world needs kitten videos. It works! (Probably)

Everything seemed to be functioning. I want to go back and play with it some more once I have it on a proper ethernet connection, and then I can give final impressions. But still, I was delighted to see that Hulu apparently works, because we had been debating the purchase of a cheap media center PC for similar purposes.

And that’s all I know. Next time: I don’t know yet. Maybe the PS Store or something.

This morning I opted for some McDonald’s breakfast as we’ve had coupons for free (!) chicken biscuits sitting on the table for a couple weeks now. Anyone who knows me can tell you that I’m all about the sausage patty when it comes to breakfast sandwiches, so we’ll see how this new contender can compare.

7:52 – Biscuit, hash brown, and medium Sprite are in front of me. I spent $2.51 on the group – a good value, considering the normal meal retails for $1 more and the biscuit alone is almost that much.

7:53 – Food has been debagged.

7:54 – First bite. Okay, I guess. Kind of sweet in the same way their chicken breast sandwiches are.

7:54 – No napkins were supplied. Good thing I have a supply at my desk.

7:55 – About halfway through the sandwich. I think the biscuit is the saving grace.

7:55 – Hash brown delicious as always.

7:56 – I would estimate this sandwich has about 3 bites left. But I take big bites.

7:56 – Chicken has toppled off of biscuit. I repeat: chicken has toppled off of biscuit. Why are breakfast sandwiches so delicate?

7:57 – Down to final bite.

7:57 – Sandwich eaten.

I won’t bore you with the rest of the breakfast details, but rest assured, if this sandwich had not been free, there’s no way it could dethrone the sausage (“king of breakfast meats”). But don’t feel bad. Chicken is still a shoe-in for 2/3 of the meals of the day.

For the last 3 weeks I’ve been away to Liberty City with frightening regularity. That’s Grand Theft Auto talk, but I have a feeling that you knew that. I’ve killed pigeons, jumped rivers, fallen out of helicoptors, and ridden motorcycles through the subway. This week I wrapped up the single player game 100% and finished up some miscellaneous achievements that have been eluding me, so I feel compelled to take a break from the gaming and the rest of my distractions and finally sit down and tell you how much I like this game.

One of the factors that has made GTA such a compelling series of games is Rockstar’s persistence in getting the environment just right. Not just in terms of buildings and appearance, but overall feel – sounds, conversations, advertising, and more. The PS2 generation of games were amazing for their time; everything felt so lush and fleshed out. The veneer has since worn a bit, mostly thanks to the huge leaps with this generation of consoles, but you can still pop in any of the games and appreciate the effort that’s gone into them.

But let’s talk about this generation. I’ll admit, I was a little let down when I learned (last year) that Grand Theft Auto IV would be set exclusively in Liberty City (same location as Grand Theft Auto III, but there’s little to no resemblance). I had been spoiled by the vast environment of GTA: San Andreas, spread over three cities and an entire state. But Rockstar had their reasons. Instead of simply making GTA IV larger, they wanted to make it deeper and more detailed. And considering the game was delayed by six months, I’d imagine trying to model another city with the same depth as Liberty would’ve added even more time. And finally, disc space was already at a premium, at least for the Xbox 360 version.

Given all this information, you get a sense that Rockstar really has their priorities straight. And when you play the game, your suspicions are proven correct. I could write pages about all the aspects of this game that I love, but to sum it up, I appreciate that they’ve given you a protagonist with a tangible background, and logical motivations. Then they’ve created a cast of interesting, funny, and sometimes annoying supporting characters and then wrapped that all up in a compelling story with many twists and turns. They’ve given you the opportunity to make some of your own decisions this time around, and while they don’t necessarily affect the story as much as you might expect, they’re still interesting and some will really have you digging deep to determine what decision you’re more comfortable with.

Visually the game is everything you’d expect. The surroundings are beautiful in that gritty sort of way; perfect in their lack of perfection. The vehicles this time around are especially nice. There were lots of oddly-proportioned cars in the previous games, but at the very least these cars are good-looking, if not downright sexy. The audio is up there as well, with the perfect amount of ambient noise, interesting pedestrian voices, and radio with humorous dialogue and well-chosen music. I especially enjoyed the cameos from Bill Hader, Jason Sudeikis, and Fred Armisen from Saturday Night Live.

The only thing that I had issues with at first was the updated control scheme. GTA IV introduced a new cover system and slightly different shooting mechanics. They also tweaked the handling of the cars to be slightly more realistic. I’m still getting used to the new controls, even after having spent nearly 100 hours in the game, but I do like them significantly more than I did when I started. Ars Technica’s Ben Kuchera summed the game up perfectly in his review:

This is not a game that instantly impresses, and the more time you spend seeing what surprises the game holds for you, the more you will be drawn in. By hour five you’ll be happy, by hour ten you’ll be impressed, and by hour thirty you’ll be blown away.

Plus, it’s the highest-rated game on Metacritic and holds the title for the biggest video game launch ever.

The other day I had a brief phone conversation about video games:

X: “So yeah, my friend is really into video games.”
Me: “Cool.”
X: “He thinks Mario Galaxy is the best game ever!”
Me: sighs

Over and over I hear about how amazing Super Mario Galaxy is. Seriously.

But I wonder if those people have played the same game that I’ve played; my copy is definitely lacking in the “super” territory. Graphics and sound are good, but not mind-blowing; am I supposed to lower my standards because this is a Wii game? Story is… well, it’s the same basic story that we’ve seen in Mario games since the 80′s. Except that was never really a story. Controls get some points for being better than Super Paper Mario, but I could’ve had just as much fun with a more conventional controller.

But I feel like I’ll be chastised if I say that Mario Galaxy isn’t all that. I was really excited about Mario Sunshine when that came out, and it turned out to be pretty average. Galaxy is not some amazing revolution in storytelling or graphics or sound, and the controls are gimmickry at their finest. Yet Metacritic shows an average score of 97/100.

I’m coming to terms with the fact that I’m no longer a subscriber to the Nintendo school of gaming. I’ve certainly enjoyed my share, and maybe I’ll pick up the new Mario Kart at some point, but I can’t think of a recent game of theirs that I want to play and keep playing. Perhaps I will plod through the rest of Galaxy, but at the same time I’ve been thinking about just ditching the Wii altogether.

It’s hard to really qualify Driv3r at this point. I like the additional vehicles and the detail in the cities seems to be adequate. The problem – well, the main problem and the biggest difference between the Driver series and Grand Theft Auto is that Driver’s environments are very stark and artificial while GTA’s make you feel much more at home. Simple things are missing, most notably interaction with others. There’s not a lot of this in GTA but it makes you feel like part of the world. I also prefer the radio stations of GTA to the ambient music of Driver (and The Getaway), especially with the commercials.

I have yet to play the missions at this point, since I spent most of the night getting acclimated to the new surroundings, but Driv3r will shape up to be a decent time waster if nothing else.

Despite the advice of Gamespot.com, I went ahead and bought the Getaway anyway. My main intention was driving around london instead of Miami or somewhere else, and it had some added appeal in that it used licensed cars (ie Lexus, Rover) instead of making them up. But I have to say that after completing the game over the weekend (it loses some points for shortness), I am looking forward to the next installment. The driving is average, and the cutscenes are sometimes ridiculously long, but it remains fun to play, and less frustrating than others when it comes to the combat side of things. And I think that combat is where this game really shines over its peers, the sole reason being Stealth Mode. More things should have stealth mode. Anyway, stealth mode is a neat little series of actions that allows you to (easily) strafe along walls, and crouch behind boxes. It is this feature alone that makes me really relish the combat in the game instead of dreading it. Things are straightforward instead of being overly complicated, which seems to be a theme. It doesn’t have you doing side missions and have big plot twists, and I think it works without them. I also really enjoyed the detail and accuracy of the game. Abe and I were actually able to find the dorm he stayed in when he lived in London for school, which is pretty neat. The only thing I could really ask for is more length to the game, and also more interior environments, which will hopefully be remedied by Black Monday.

So yeah, on to the part that sucks. The weather here has been absolutely terrible for about 90% of this month, so far. According to the forecast for the rest of the week, it’s either going to be cloudy or raining. I guess that’d be fine if I lived in Seattle, but then again I wouldn’t have to deal with excessive cold so it’d be a nice trade. Here I get both. Yay.

I watched Kill Bill again yesterday, and it was still awesome.

At some point earlier in the year I started to go through motor vehicle withdrawal (I abandoned my poor car when we moved, since I live just across the river from my job). Abe has been obsessing on and off about scooters since a couple of years ago. He’s been anticipating the purchase of one in June of 2005, when he finishes his master’s. I’ve always just gone along with it, but I’ve been longing for a vehicle with an engine more and more. A scooter seems to be the solution, since I know I couldn’t trust myself with an actual motorcycle (and I couldn’t afford one anyway). So then the question was: which one?
There were a few formidable options. I really liked the Aprilia Mojito and SR50, but we don’t have a dealership around here, and I didn’t want to deal with getting one home. The SR50 was just too pricey, anyway, albeit really, really handsome. With locality factored in, the competitors were narrowed down to just two: the Honda Ruckus, and the Yamaha Zuma. It was a tough decision. Here’s what I figured out.

Advantage : Ruckus

Well, it’s a Honda, and you know how I feel about those. As a matter of fact, the whole spur of this scooter craze was the Honda Metropolitan. The Ruckus has a great look to it. The finish is great, and it’s a downright cool vehicle. The sheer utilitarianism makes it really fun. The gage finish is also strongly utilitarian, similar to that of an old tire pump. It was comfortable, too, and very quiet.

Advantage : Zuma

Well, the Zuma has pretty much every other advantage. What it lacks in appearance (which is subjective), it makes up for with performance. Acceleration and top speed are noticeably better than the ruckus, and the exhaust note is a little more aggressive. It has a nicer cockpit, despite a cheaper gage finish, in that it has a separate gas gauge. There’s an extra storage pocket in front of the left knee (nice for a cell or sunglasses), and the under seat area is enclosed and lockable. Stopping is also faster thanks to a front disk brake, and the wheels are alloy as opposed to steel. The body panels seem to be easily unbolted which would make for a seemingly easy repaint, since the available colors are somewhat cheapened by the ultra-glossy plastic.

The Decision

I wanted the Ruckus. I really did. But I needed/wanted a scooter that wouldn’t struggle to maintain the speed limit. As a result, we now own two red Zumas. I’d really like to refinish mine, ideally in a neutral color. It might be fun to do a flat color with a clear coat, and perhaps get some decals before clear coating it as well. We’ll see where it goes from here.

So I finally got a chance to sit down and get in some quality time with Gran Turismo 3. Problem is, it doesn’t seem to be an improvement over the plain ol’ GT2. Granted, the graphics and sound are both much improved, but the game play really isn’t. To begin with, it has less camera angles than the previous game. Whereas before you had two third-person views, there is now only one, plus the requisite first-person, in-car view. Problem is, this view is completely inadequate. The camera sits too low and too close behind the car – to the point where the road ahead is sometimes obstructed by your vehicle, usually when a turn is immediately ahead.

Another feature that this game is noticeably lacking is some kind of brightness adjustment. Shaded areas of the track tend to wash out to the point where, again, you can barely tell what’s happening, if at all. I am very pleased with the current settings of our WEGA, and I don’t think it should be necessary to adjust the brightness just for this game. The game I’m comparing this to which shall remain nameless does have brightness options. Thankfully, GT3 does at least have an aspect ratio option.

Game play is up to par with the others in the series, not noticeably different (which is a good thing). What GT has yet to nail down is their segues between races. GT2 had the unavoidable automatic replay. So far in GT3, all I’ve done is the licensing tests, but that’s enough to drive me insane. If you fail one of these, the most awful music ever begins playing, and the game just sits for 5 or 10 seconds before relinquishing control to you. This means that you’ll probably want to pause and restart instead, which is instantaneous. I’d like to see Gran Turismo take note of the not-quite-so-popular Vanishing Point.

See, Vanishing Point has similar tests, but if you run into something that would cause you to fail, the action immediately stops. Two or three options pop up (I think quit, retry, and replay) and the camera begins to pan around the car, so you can see what hit where. You can watch this if you want or you can immediately try again. There’s a bit of ambient music and noise, but it doesn’t sound as though the game is celebrating your defeat.

Overall, GT3 is still a fantastic game, marred by little things that may really irritate some people (ie: me). I may be writing this out of bitterness out of the licensing tests, but the truth is, I really do like the game. I will probably pull out of this mood after those are completed, but these are still issues that shouldn’t show up in a game with these production values. I look forward to seeing how GT4 compares.