One Schlock’s Requiem

On Tuesday, Fable II finally is released.  A game that I was once very much looking forward to.  But the more and more of this game I expose myself to, the more and more I cannot bring myself to hand over $60 or $70 dollars to purchase.

Thinking back to Fable

Fable was one of my favorite original Xbox games.  I have that thought in my head.  I really liked Fable.  But, why did I like Fable?  Oh right.  Because the game was completely ridiculous.  Because the English accents made me laugh every time dialogue was spoken.  Because I ate a bunch of pies and ran around as a huge fat guy.

I loved it for it’s B-movie qualities.  There were plenty of them.  But that’s really the extent of Fable’s quality.  The game is shallow and tedious, quite frankly.  It made me laugh because it was so moronic.

Would I pay $60 or $70 to be amused again by the same train wreck?  Hell no.  The memories are fond, but only because the price of entry was trivial.  I think I paid $20 for Fable and It was absolutely worth it.  Another Fable-like experience is not worth the high price of HD gaming.  It’s worth $30 at best.

Playing Fable at PAX

But times change, right?  Peter Moyneux (creator of Fable) has apologized for the mistakes made in Fable and says that he’s learned from them.  Fable II is fable done right.  Honestly, there are tons of problems with what I played at The Penny Arcade Expo, if that was representative of the final product: http://www.theschlock.com/blog/?p=476

The graphics were horrible.  The speed was slow.  The fighting felt a tad unresponsive.  It also felt more like a hack ‘n slash loot fest than an Action RPG.  And that’d be fine if I found it fun to play.  But what I played was boring and derivative.  It took resolve to make it to the end of the demo.  And I’m not going to pay $60 - $70 to play more of that shit.

The first 10 minutes

Kotaku posted an article today with a video of the first 10 minutes of Fable 2.  Some polish website has a copy of the game committed it to the internet: http://kotaku.com/5065434/the-first-10-minutes-of-fable-2-albeit-in-polish

That certainly brings back memories from Fable.  The goofy English accents and dim-witted humor.  But after playing Dead Space all weekend long, this feels cheap.  It feels like a joke.  And I’d feel like I’m at the butt of that joke for paying full price.  Dead Space is a fine polished work of atmospheric art.  Fable II looks bargin bin.

However…

One thing Fable II does have going for it is Online Co-op.  All my friends are interested in this game and have pre-ordered it.  So it gives me the chance to play games with friends!  I’m just going to clear out my gamefly list and have Fable II as the only entry.  That should guarantee that my next game will be Fable II and hopefully my friends haven’t beaten the game by the time I get it.

Hell, If Fable II turns out to be alright.  I can choose the “keep it” option from Gamefly, and it’ll only cost me $30, most likely.

Other upcoming games

As inferred, I bought Dead Space this week and Love it.  This week is Fable II.  Also this week is the new Castlevania on DS.  Next week is Fallout 3.  November 11th is Mirror’s Edge!

I can’t wait for Mirror’s Edge ^_^.  I wrote about it back on July 17th during E3 week and then played it on September 1st at PAX.  On November 6th, they will be a demo on both consoles.

The other day, I finally got around to selling some of my stuff.  I’ve had this long-time ambition to rid myself of possessions I no longer need, but I was short on motivation.  I attempted this a few times, but became overwhelmed with the flurry of options.  eBay didn’t seem permanent enough, Craigslist is still foreign to me and CAG is still to infantile.  I choose to go with Half.com since it’s listing are permanent, get a fair amount of traffic, and everything works like a store. ^_^On Sunday (or Monday), I listed 23 items, but for some reason…  it didn’t update.  I waited an hour… nothing.  I waited a few more hours… nothing.  I checked their forums and apparently they’ve been having servers problems and were incredibly back logged.  I continued to wait.  The next day… nothing.  The next day…  nothing.  Yesterday…  nothing.

Finally, this morning I got an email.  “Your item has been sold!”  Splendid!  I checked my account and all my items had finally appeared in the system.  Only a few hours after being live and I already sold something!  By the end of the work day, another had sold!

Have a look for yourself.  Here’s my Half.com Shop.

Listing items is far simpler than eBay and doesn’t cost anything to list!  You just enter in your item, assign a price and up it goes.  When someone buys one of my games, the money goes into my half.com account and then pays out twice a month to my back account.  Pretty spiffy.

So far, I’ve sold Final Fantasy XI and Ar Tonelico.  Final Fantasy XI sold for $10 and Ar Tonelico sold for $50, both at a $10 profit to myself. ^_^  In fact, the $40 price tag is still on Ar Tonelico.  hahah

Anywho…  so this is what I have listed so far:

And this is still what I have to list…

23 down…  about 1000 to go.  I’m still not sure how I’m going to list all my Japanese games..

Edit: I rewrote the beginning.  I wrote it WAYY too fast after drinking two red bulls…

At work, my ears have a lot of free time.  My eyes, my hands and my head is pretty engaged with what is going on, but my ears only get to do something when talking with coworkers.  So I listen to a lot of music and podcasts.  Usually back and forth between the two, rather than a mix.  Sometimes, I’m in the mood for music.  Sometimes, I’m in the mood for talking and chatter.  My job goes back and forth between planning and execution constantly, so it’s a great way to keep the boring execution phase of my job lively.

My favorite podcast shuts down its doors today, and that is the Brodeo aka GFWRadio formerly CGWRadio.  The Brodeo starred the editors of Games For Windows Magazine formerly Computer Gaming World, who were Jeff Green, Ryan Scott, Shawn Elliot and Sean Malloy with Robert Ashley and Anthony Gallegos.

CGWRadio began on February 16th, 2006.  The first couple episodes were a little odd, but they eventually figured it out.  On August 8th, 2006, they announced that CGW would become GFW and in November launched their first issue.

GFWRadio combined a unique brand of gaming humor with the trials and annoyances of working in the gaming journalism business and the joy of being in the business.

Content

After listening to GFWRadio, I never thought I’d have such an insight into the gaming media.  This type of perspective is something that I never even thought about 4 years ago being a gamer.  4 years ago, I was still writing about games, but I never had the insight as to what the game’s designers were thinking about, what the publishers were doing to promote the game, and what really went into making the game to begin with.  I know so much more now-a-days about the pressures these publishing companies put on game reviews and journalists on exactly what they say about a game.

They also talked a lot about the themes in games and what the game really meant to them and wouldn’t pull any punches.  They’d give you their complete honesty opinion on what the game did right and what the game did wrong.  They’d also completely deconstruct some games talking about character interaction, plot devices and themes.

Discussions on GFWRadio were a good balance between these industry related topics, and high-brow video game analysis, but weren’t afraid to go completely low-brow too and talk about stupid things they do or have done.  It’s really just a bunch of guys bullshitting about their jobs, lives and games they play.

That’s really where the term Brodeo came from.  Jeff Green was browsing around Urban Dictionary and found this definition: A get-together or a party where the attendance is predominantly male.  He brought it up on the podcast and the cult following of GFWRadio labeled it as such.

The real humor of the show came from “Hero’s of the Web”, Dramatic Readings, Stories of griefing and gaming, and other coined terms, segments and jokes that became running gags.

Ending

April 8th, 2008 marked the beginning of the end as Ziff Davis put a hard start to Games For Windows Magazine.  Actually, I suppose, Ziff Davis declaring bankruptcy was really the beginning of the end.  But shifting from a print magazine to the online space wasn’t really something the GFW editors had been prepared for.

I wish I would’ve evangelized this podcast more when it was in its prime, but oh well.  Popularity is not the reason it’s ending.  It’s ending because the key voices of the show have now gone on to do bigger and better things.

In June, Sean Malloy announced that he had gotten a job for Blizzard and left 1up.  Last week, Jeff Green recorded his final podcast and he left to work on the Sims with Maxis and EA.  And this week, Shawn Elliot finishes up the Brodeo and heads off to 2K Boston to work with Ken Levine (creator of Bioshock) on his next project.

Ryan Scott, Robert Ashley and Anthony Gallegos are still at 1up and have said that they’ll continue to podcast in some form or do something, but the actual Brodeo, has ended.

Times change.  Jobs change.  People grow up.  You complete college, you gotta move on.  You get your first job or your break in the Industry.  You usually start at the same place many other begin as well.  Eventually, you gotta move up in the Industry.  So that’s basically it.

A lot of voices have moved on from 1up, but there’s plenty of new voices as well.  With the Brodeo gone, I think I’ll turn my attention to 1up FM, 1up’s new podcast.

My hope is for a GFW Reunion at PAX 2009. ^_^  It was neat meeting Shawn Elliot at PAX, but I really didn’t get to say too much to him.

Errata

Anyways, You guys should definitely check out all the previous episodes of CGW/GFWRadio, which are hosted at gfwradio.1up.com.  I’m not really sure which would be the best to begin at.  Probably around May 2006, if you plan to go the full distance.

Also, last week’s podcast, Jeff Green’s final podcast can be found in its entirety on video. (part 1, part 2, part 3)

For the last month I’ve been sitting on the first two Blurays of the Terminator television program, Sarah Connor Chronicles.  I think the Xbox is largely to blame for that, but I finally switched back to my Playstation 3 and started watching.

Honestly, I think this show is pretty dumb.  The humor solely relies on Summer Glau acting inhuman because she’s a robot.  And the show comes off as shallow because it relies too much on the action which isn’t all that good because it has a Television show budget.  The humor and the action try way too hard to live up to Terminator 2.

And the unforgivable plot device used in the pilot episode completely breaks the mythos of Terminator.  YOU CANNOT travel forward in time.  Only backwards.  I’m sure fanboys were completely up in arms on the Internet after that aired.  Messing around with time is a dangerous plot device that I think Terminator skirted by only allowing backwards time travel.

Even after that travesty, I continued watching the show because…  well, I had the discs and wanted to return them to Netflix.

But some goods things have come out of the show after watching the first six episodes.  After having some time to think about it, my opinion isn’t as harsh as it initially was.  I’m still on record as saying it’s dumb, though, so I have my bases covered…

Alternative Missions

In each Terminator movie the plot was exactly the same.  Skynet sends back an evil terminator back in time with the mission to (effectively) kill John Connor, the future leader of the resistance.  Future John Connor, sends back a force of good, whether it be a good terminator (Arnold) or a resistance fighter (Kyle Reese) in order to save John Connor’s life from the terminator.

That’s pretty much the plot of the pilot episode, but afterward they run into other terminator with missions that didn’t involve killing John Connor what’s so ever.  In fact, they weren’t really even programmed to know what John Connor looked like.  So, Connor could walk right by one and it wouldn’t ever matter.  Of course, if these Terminators realized that this is John Connor, they would kill him.

Anyways, for example, one such mission was to gather Caltec (?) Alloy which is the base material for creating the Terminator Endo-skeletons.  The mission was to gather this stuff, bring it to this specific location and await further instructions.  The Terminator completely this mission and stood by the door awaiting further instructions.  His wait instructions was something like this…

while(door not open && not interrupted) {    wait(15000); }

Honestly, no one would really be coming to this specific location until after the machine war broke out.  So the Terminator would be completely standing still there for 5 straight years.  That’s computer logic for ya.

Time Travel Semantics

Traveling through time in the Terminator Universe will transport to a different time, but you’ll be in the exact same position on earth.  I guess that makes sense.  That’s also how it works in Back to the Future and other time traveling movies.  It doesn’t work that way in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure though.

Survival Instincts

In the first episode, they “destroy” the evil Terminator and travel in the future 8 years.  But, what d’ya know, the Terminator actually survived, but has been beat to shit.  The Terminator lies in pieces around the scene at which he thought he killed Sarah and John Connor, but they really went into the future.  8 years later, they appear and the Terminator gets a second wind.

This Terminator, whom they’ve named Cromartie, has had its head blown off and flesh completely rotted away.  So he must find his head, but still blend in with humans.  He finds his head, but must create a new skin for himself.  So he finds some scientist and gives him the formula to create the skin.  So now he has skin, but he looks like the Toxic Avenger.  So, he finds a reconstructive surgeon to make him look like an actual person.

Rather than just going directly after John Connor, Cromartie is rebuilding himself and camouflages himself to accomplish his mission.  He realizes his limitations and must adapt.  I wonder if this is what the Terminators in the future realized after some time fighting the humans.  You can’t win head on.  You need to deceive to conquer.  And even then it doesn’t really work all that well.
____

Anyways, I’m excited to see how the first season ends.  Though, I’ll probably be dissappointed.  I keep forgetting that the whole Terminator mythos is one that puts Action first, and other things second.  Hopefully, they’ll keep building up the mythos with these little tidbits rather than trying to make “awesome” action sequences.

We’ll see though…  The second season has already begun!

Last week, I picked up Involver 2 without giving it much thought.  I found it at the first place I went to!  But after researching it a little bit, it seems they released a Limited Edition version.  I’m not quite sure why I didn’t realize this since nearly every Global Underground release has a Limited Edition.  Buying it from Amazon was quite easy.  They had plenty.

Besides the nifty packaging, it also included a second CD with extra tracks and remixes, so that was reason enough to make the purchase.

Over the weekend, I went out to Milwaukee with Dave and hung out with Matt and Dan.  I popped Involver 2 into Dave’s car and we listened to it quite a bit.  It’s interesting how the CD takes a completely different form when the bass is the prominent sound.  Not saying that Dave has the most kickass sound system, but the Bass really takes on a melody of its own.

Man…  It really puts me in the mood to see him live again.  Or Digweed for that matter.  Digweed is a virtuoso of progressive pounding Bass.

Luckily, Sasha has a free mix on his website, which you can download directly from here.  It’s his “Thanks” to his fans.  It’s amazing how very very Digweed this mix sounds.  I wonder if his Sasha+Digweed reunion tour earlier this year really inspired him to pull into a deep progressive direction.

Like every new piece of music, I listen to it over and over again at work until I get sick of it.  I think I listened to it 3 times today…

When I returned from Milwaukee, I came to find that I had received my LE copy of Involver 2.  Here it is:

It comes in a nifty little pamphlet.  It’s a little different than the first Involver LE which came in a pillow-pack.

The second disc of Involver 2 is neat, but quite unloved.  The care and attention that was put into the album as a whole was lost on this extras disc, but I guess that’s to be expected.  Each song is very chill, even compared to the opening of Involver 2.  I only listened to it once though.  It didn’t hold my attention the same way the actual Involver 2 does.

I’m excited again for Sasha after hearing his recent stuff.  During his Fundacion phase, I was starting to feel unmoved by his music.  I was starting to wait for what he had next, rather than not wanting it to end.  In fact, I missed him once or twice as he passed through the midwest and really didn’t care.  But now I can’t wait for him to get back here.  Hell, if he’s in or around Tampa, I’d go visit Justin and make him bring me there. ^_^

Good Stuff.

I don’t keep up with music very well.

Ago

Over 4 years ago, I was going crazy when I heard the news about Sasha and Global Underground teaming to bring something new to the Electronic music scene.  The hype leading up to Involver was overwhelming for me.  I actually found the entire album on some torrent site, downloaded it, and listened to it constantly.  I loved every second of it.

It was very much the soundtrack to the Summer of 2004 for me.  I listened to it while driving from Minneapolis down to Chicago to see Sasha at Soundbar for his North American tour (pics).  I listened to it while in Cleveland, Ohio driving around with Justin, waiting for Josh to get married.  I listened to it nearly every day driving back and forth to work at the Pharmacy.  Ah Memories…

That’s in stark contrast to today where I didn’t even realize Invol2ver existed until I saw some forum post on hybridized 2 days after Invol2ver was released.  If I knew about, I probably would’ve been going crazy.  But oh well.  Later that day, I found Invol2ver quite easily at B-side Records on State St. ^_^

Today

Invol2ver is very much in the same theme as Involver, but has a slightly different feel that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.  Involver was a summer diary for Sasha.  Each track signified a moment or a sound that he shopped around to each venue he visited from the months prior. He selected his favorite tracks, tore them completely apart and put them back together.  His work on Involver was much more than a simple remix.  It was really a reconstruction like a full-on production album.

Before reading about and catching up on Sasha, I didn’t really feel like Invol2ver really lived up to the Involver name.  Some of the tracks felt very mute.  I didn’t quite understand what the point was, or what these tracks meant.  The beginning just melted itself into something like Fundacion with little hints of Airdrawndagger.  The album did, eventually, pull itself into the Sasha Involver style.

For some reason, the little booklet didn’t have any description or proof of concept like the first Involver.  But Global Underground had the description I was looking for.  And reminded me of what Sasha was up to lately.

Two Halves

The first half of Invol2ver is a diary of his emFire Collection.  It’s very chill and nature.  The emFire collection is a soundtrack to a bunch of surfer videos.  But it eventually builds into his DJ experiences as of late.  The second half and ending brings me back to how I felt when I first heard Involver.  Very distinct melodies built off the underlying bass and movement.

Overall, I think Invol2ver accomplishes its goals, but the 2 different feelings of the emFire collection and his DJ experiences clash quite heavily.

For a mix album, it may have been better to have the Day and Night cycles on two separate discs, rather than mixing into each other.  It does form a story though.  Starting from daylight, at the beach, then watching the sun set on Miami, and then going to a club and dancing into the late night.

I guess that’s why the 2 is smack dab in the middle of the title.  Invol2ver.

Sasha

It’s unfortunate that Sasha isn’t touring in the midwest for his Invol2ver North American tour.  I’d really like to see what his set says about his CD release.  Though, I suppose for June 2004 it was very much in the style of Fundacion than Involver, so his North American might not say much of anything.

I saw him back in April 2008 for his Spring Tour with John Digweed, but I’m not sure when I saw Sasha before that.  His style has become very undistinct for me lately and June 2004 was the beginning.

The ending of Involver 1 really felt like this was the direction he was going.  The final song just trailed off into the distance.  But the ending of Invol2ver put a very distinct cap on the album.  I’d like to see if this means anything. ^_^

This morning, I decided to come into work a little early.  A couple of months ago, I got some new RAM for my computer, but I had been too lazy to actually install it on my computer.  So today was the day.  Today I’ll finally do this.

A quick look at my computer specs revealed that I had 3gb of RAM installed in 4 slots.  Using my simple logic, 2 of those sticks in my machine must be 512mb and using simple addition, I can deduce that 1 + 1 + .5 + .5 = 3gb.  The new RAM that has been sitting in its shipping box on my desk contained two sticks of 1gb each!  Using addition again, 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 4gb!  Fantastic.

Even though, I had just gotten a new computer here at work, I should probably upgrade the old like I was supposed to a while ago.  I turned it off, removed the side panel, and began to hunt for the 512 sticks.  The first one I removed said 1gb.  Okay, that’s not it.  The next one…  also, 1gb.  Okay, so the first two were the big ones.  The next one…  1gb.  Huh?  The next one… 1gb.  Hmmm…  I already have 4gb of RAM.

I put the computer back together, loaded up windows xp and looked at the computer specs again…  3gb RAM.  What the hell?!  Something didn’t add up.

So, I asked someone about it.  Someone who knew what they were doing.  Looking at the Bios revealed that 4gb were registered.

They way memory is viewed in Windows XP is the amount allocated to Windows XP.  Other hardware on my computer were using the top addressed memory for their own purposes.  Hardware like the video card.  Apparently, when you buy a video card with 512mb of memory, it’s not something additional that gets tacked on to your system.  It’s the capacity of the memory that it takes from your onboard memory.  Whatever is left after all your hardware takes their share is left for the OS.

Windows XP lies about the memory you have.  It only tells you what memory it has.

Windows Vista, on the other hand, does not.  On my new computer, I only have 1gb of RAM (for the moment) and Vista clearly says 1gb in the computer specs.  The little memory gauge will allows be the absolute correct amount of memory eaten up by everything using it.

That’s somewhat interesting, though…  I didn’t know video card memory worked that way.

Bioware, creators of Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect, had a spiffy booth that always had a big line wrapping around the edges.  Inside, you could see a demo of Dragon Age, which I really know nothing about.

I did watch a little bit of the demo in the Main Theater, before Spore, though.  But what they demoed on the screen was a tool set to create whatever you want in the game.  This allows them to customize or create any NPC from appearance to dialogue and even down to specific quests and all the details of the quest.  Thus making the world of Dragon Age absolutely customizable and as massive as they’d like.

They didn’t show any of the story though, which is really what I’d want from an RPG.  Especially after playing Mass Effect, I’d love another Bioware RPG with a solid premise and story with solid characters to bring you through it.  Medievil times bores me, though, and I wasn’t really interested in this game from the start.

I’m not really sure why I wrote this.  I want Mass Effect 2.  Or at least some more Mass Effect DLC.  OR at least another stupid Mass Effect novel.

I think Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead tied as having the longest lines of the show.  Left 4 Dead is by Valve Software.  It’s a 4 player co-operative game in which you play 4 people surviving an onslaught of zombies.  These are boring stupid zombies either.  These are fast lethal fuckers out for blood.

There was constantly a horde of people lined up in a queue on booth sides of the kiosk.  One headed to the 4 PCs set up.  The other headed to the 4 Xboxes set up.  Lines for PC versus Xbox were about equal.

This is really where the hardcore video game enthusiasts came to play.  Everyone was yelling at each other what they were doing, working together to fight off the zombies.  Left 4 Dead had the most interaction out of any game on the floor and everyone I saw walk away from the demo had a smile on their face.  Players laughed.  Players cheered.  Players shouted their victories.

Left 4 Dead definitely feels like the feel good game of this holiday season.

This year at PAX, nearly everywhere you looked you could find a PC game.  If I had to choose which platform had the most diversity on the exhibition floor, I think it would be PC.  Also, If I had to choose which platform had the longest lines and the biggest games, I think it would also be PC.   Especially, the Blizzard booth.

Thankfully, each kiosk had two screens: one raised high enough for everyone to see, and another at the player level.  All the Starcraft II kiosks were linked together, and everyone battled against each other.

There’s not really much to say about Starcraft II though.  It’s…  Starcraft II.  Starcraft with updated graphics and game control.  It’s looks super pretty, too.

Of course, games of Starcraft II take a little time to play through, so that made the lines grow and grow.  They started installing Starcraft II on some of the Lich King kiosks so everyone could play. Hahah. ^_^

I’m not really sure why you’d really want World of Warcraft: Wraith of the Lich King on a playable kiosk, anyways.  All you’d really want to show off is the Death Knight and some of the new areas.  For a little while, I watched one guy play and he was a Gnome Warrior running around…  What a waste of time.  They did have some demonstrations of Lich King, though, so it wasn’t all a waste.