Sierra Kilo

L and I have been playing the Lumines Live demo. It’s strangely addicting. It’s way overpriced at 1200 points (that’s like $15!), but it’s a fun game to play together.

The Escapist listed a few new games coming soon. Of them, I’m looking forward to Paperboy and Worms. Band of Bugs sounds interesting and Castlevania would be good if I were into that.

Hopefully, though, they’ll all be adaptations and not ports. While I agree that nostalgia is nice, I’ve found that you can never go home again. Frogger looks horrible. Surely it’s not that difficult to reproduce the classic gameplay in Frogger using nicer, bump-mapped textures in 720p using a 3D top-down perspective.

While I haven’t read through all of these articles yet, it sounds like exactly what I was referring to in my Auxiliary Pervasive Gameplay and (unfinished) MMO For The Common Man articles.

Google maps of the game world, Wikis, and web-based mini-games are exactly the kind of auxiliary features that online games need. I often visit the Encyclopedia of Arda when I’m in the mood to get immersed in a fantasy setting. While not a Wiki, it’s a great source of information on the setting. I’ve mentioned the Elder Scrolls Wiki before. If the LotRO Wiki is half as good as that, it will be impressive. I’m on the fence about the player web pages and ‘blogs, though. On the one hand, it would be fun to read ‘blogs where the player journals his daily adventures. On the other hand, MySpace in Middle-earth would soil the experience.

Hopefully, it will all be done in a way that keeps the feeling of immersion. After all, isn’t “There and Back Again” just a diary/journal/’blog? What did Bilbo and the dwarves do in their downtime on their way to the Lonely Mountain? Web-based mini-games could represent this very well: brewing potions to practice your alchemy skill, shooting targets or hunting deer to practice your archery skill, or even tending in-game crops to practice your farming skill (a’la Harvest Moon).

Monster Play is also something that I’ve talked about before. I love the idea of being able to switch into a normally AI-controlled mobile and give other players a challenge. It offers a chance for run-and-gun-then-respawn play without worrying about corpse runs, lost equipment, and XP drains. It can also offer fun roleplaying opportunities.

This could be the MMO that gets me back into MMOs. I’ll definitely keep an eye on it and cash in my Beta invite. At $10/month, it plucks at the heartstrings of the tightwad gamer and the lifetime fee ($200) is also enticing.

K-Fed rollin’ VIP (Super Bowl commercial?)

iPod Shuffle, now in color (because silver is boring and you don’t have more than 1GB of music)

Vista is available (and?)

Vista SideShow looks good (but will it actually prove to be useful?)

Game physics are sweet (this could be related to this pre-vis animatic)

Still no baby (any day now. It’s a lot like when you order something online and don’t get a UPS tracking number…)

There are several posts relating to IPTV today:

http://www.pvrwire.com/2007/01/29/announcements-from-nds/
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/27/1820252&from=rss
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/28/1429249&from=rss

We missed the first part of Lost this season and wanted to catch up so we’re ready for the upcoming episodes. ABC.com streams their shows on their website, so we fired it up to check it out. Since my computer is hooked to my TV, the experience wasn’t too bad. The largest problem I had was that I couldn’t watch full-screen. There were 3 commercial breaks, except for the episodes sponsored by Verizon, which the player skipped over (Yay!). Each break was 30 seconds and required you to click a link to advance to the next scene. Not bad, but could have been better.

The Netflix “Watch Now” feature works fairly well, too. It’s got full-screen viewing. Unfortunately, the content is lacking a bit.

YouTube is a good delivery medium for the web, but the content just isn’t suited for TV. It’s a great way to share short videos, but I wouldn’t watch a TV episode unless they offered higher resolution.

The XBox 360 videos aren’t bad. The player is full-screen and easily controlled. I downloaded the free Skyland episode this weekend. The resolution was a bit small, but watchable. This would definately be a great content delivery system if the price was right. That being said, companies need to realize that subscription models are great for video, but purchase models are great for audio.

Here’s my view on price models. I buy music. I buy CDs because I can rip them in high quality and keep them for backups. I can listen to a single song several times in one week and still enjoy it months later if I want. I rent most of my videos (if you consider Netflix’s model renting). I do buy the occasional movie if I enjoy it enough, but rarely, and often only when they are on sale or available used ($5-$10 each). I’ve given up the old Blockbuster single-rental price plan, where you pay a fixed price for a single movie. Instead, I pay a monthly all-you-can-eat three-at-a-time subscription plan. This model works for videos. So, Microsoft and Apple: Give us a subscription plan for videos, but a purchase plan for audio. Heck, you can even offer a purchase plan for videos and a subscription plan for audio, too, just don’t expect to see as many people using them.

As for content delivery? The XBox 360, a TiVo, or an AppleTV are the perfect mechanisms. While not cheap, they are easy to connect to the TV and control with a remote. Combine content delivery with DVD playback and/or DVR functionality and you’ve got a superior device that could replace 2-3 others. The web will do for now, but to really break into the living room, you need to aim for the TV instead of the monitor.

R6 is definitely worth a buy. I picked it up the other day and played a bit this weekend. Single player is alright so far. I like the slow-paced strategy mixed with fast-paced action. I didn’t get very far, though. Multiplayer, however, is where the game probably shines.

You get to create your character and outfit him with clothes, armor, and weapons. As you play multiplayer rounds, you get experience points that allow you to get more gear options. I loved the experience (Honor) system of America’s Army, but this is a step above. It all still boils down to trying to stay alive while trying to complete your mission, though. The first game mode I played was Retrieval. That’s your basic capture-the-flag, really. You get a radioactive canister and take it to a disposal unit. I liked it, so I stuck with that mode. The voice chat feature is probably one of the best features in multiplayer. I’m not usually that big into chatting with people in games. They’re what I refer to as “temporary friends.” But it’s almost a requirement in this game, so I’m okay with it.

Gears and R6 have been taking time away from Oblivion, but I blame 24. Jack’s back and watching CTU’s finest breach and clear puts me in the tactical CQC mood. I’ll return to it soon enough, though. Send me an invite if you’re itching to frag a noob.

Read Damion’s post for my thoughts on Gears of War. I can’t vouch for the AI because I played the game co-op, but everything else is spot-on. I played through the game twice: once with a buddy, and once with my brother-in-law.

As far as weapons go, I carried the same two: the machine gun and the sniper rifle. The submachine gun was okay and you could always find plenty of ammo for it, but it didn’t have the chainsaw for the Wretches. I only picked up the shotgun by mistake. The Boomer gun was cool, but ammo was scarce. The crossbow was a bit boring and useless in a firefight. There’s nothing you can’t do with the machine gun, sniper rifle, and a few grenades.

The story was interesting, but was a bit like watching the second movie in a trilogy without seeing the first. There was little backstory and very little was resolved. It set up a sequel so well that we felt cheated. We only got about 6-7 hours of play out of it (not counting that I played it twice). That being said, for such a short game in story mode, you’d think that multiplayer would deliver more. Unfortunately, all you get is a couple of 4-on-4 game modes using the same maps from the story mode. Very disappointing.

I did enjoy certain parts of the game, though. The reloading minigame was excellent. That should be a feature included in every future shooter. The Berserker sections were fun, too. I also really enjoyed the Pitch Black-esque sections where you had to find/shoot the propane tanks to give you pockets of light to travel through or else you’d be torn up by the bat things in the dark. Why the refugees just left propane sitting around was a bit of a mystery, but it was fun.

Overall, I’d give it a 7/10. Passing, but just barely. The graphics were good, cutscenes were good, control was easy. I had problems with voiceover volume going too soft a lot. Ambient noise would often be louder than the actors. This is a game that I’m going to trade in the near future. Co-op mode was a lot of fun, so hopefully I’ll find a longer game that includes it. Does Rainbow Six Vegas include co-op?

UPDATE: Damion and the XBox site confirm that R6 Vegas includes co-op play, so it looks like Gears will make way for Ding and the gang. I haven’t played R6 since the original on PC, but I enjoyed it then and it sounds like things have only gotten better. The customizable multiplayer character sounds like it could be a lot of fun. I might have to brush up on my fragging skills a bit, though, because the 10-year-olds in Gears were wiping the floor with me. My skills are probably better suited as a medic, anyway

UPDATE #2: It looks like it might only be co-op over XBox Live. That’s a little disappointing because I can’t have a friend over to play. Instead, he has to have his own XBox 360 at home. I liked the split-screen co-op mode. I’m still making the trade, though.

Tuebit at WorldIV has a great article, which links to an article by The Ancient Gaming Noob. In it, Tuebit describes a method of determining MMO generation based on “genes”, which are basically feature set tags. Combined with userbase numbers, it’s a good way to see which features are the most popular. It’s also a good way to see how the industry iterates instead of innovates. Another good use of “genes” might be an expansion of the Bartle Quotient. That would be a good way to match players with games or even players with other players.

I am at the Lexus dealership this afternoon. I brought “Lilith” in for her first scheduled maintenance. They’ve remodeled since I was here last (in July) and it’s nice. They have (slow) WiFi and computers set up with (slow) internet access. Better than nothing, I guess. Actually, I should say, “Better than CSPAN”, which is what’s on the TVs. They’ve locked the pipe down with a cyber nanny program on the computers. So far, there’s no Meebo or GMail. I was able to get to Google Reader and my website (hence this post), though. So far, it’s a pleasant enough experience, especially since my first maintenance is free

This is a great idea. Basically, they’re talking about allowing other players to play the part of adversaries in a single-player game. You would play a single-player game just like you normally would, except that your enemies are not run by AI, they’re controlled by other players.

This is a concept for MMORPGs that I’ve tossed around in chats with my buddies. In most MUDs (DIKU, at least), administrator players have a “switch” command that lets them take control of a mobile/NPC. The most fun we had in our MUD days was when an IMM (administrator) or two would switch into an orc, clone themselves to create a raiding party, and storm the city. It threw an element of surprise into an otherwise static play session. There would be corpses littering the streets, shouts for healing, and often room lag. People would sometimes lose their favorite items in the chaos, but it was totally worth it.

In a setup like that, the protagonist would normally have more health, firepower, and armor than the minions. When a minion dies, the player controlling him would just switch into a different minion, or might even respawn. Fun stuff.

It looks like the developers for the MyDreamApp contest are rolling right along. One of my favorites from the beginning was the Cookbook application. From the look of things, it’ll be simple and pretty.

I’ve actually had an idea for recipe software that also tracks your grocery inventory, and can suggest dishes/meals based on what you’ve got on-hand and can help build your grocery list. There are a few kinks to work out in the design, but it would be a perfect use for a certain UMPC that is gathering dust.

MyDreamApp was a great way to get ideas for software. Each round of voting, the designs got reigned in and started being more and more realistic. In the end, the winners were the ones that could realistically be written. There were a couple that lost that would have been great, but were simply a bit too ambitious.