First impressions

• There are some very cool tracks in III. Disappointing that they didn't get more master tracks, though. Also, just like in the last three, there are some cover singers that do an awful job.
• The on-screen streak counter is a great idea. Finally, we can get an idea of exactly how long we've gone ... on the other hand, it can be one more thing to distract you while you're on that streak.
• A menu item to view your achievements would have been nice. Not sure why that isn't available.
• For some reason, the leaderboards weren't working. Maybe I was looking in the wrong place.
• Battle Mode is interesting, but I think it'll be better to do co-op. Now if only I can find someone who can help me through career co-op ...
• There are some really cool encores and some that are eh. There is also one song that has ABSOLUTELY NO BUSINESS BEING IN THIS GAME! (You'll know which one it is when you see it.)
• Finally, cash for completing tracks on Easy! Makes it a little less painful to work on the five-stars-Easy achievement. Also, you get quite a bit of money for completing a set.
• Bonus tracks are eh once again.

I'm glad I got the game-only deal. Between shady package deals and problems with wireless guitars, there were a lot of potential hazards between me and an evening of rocking out. Then again, the rumor mill says that the Rock Band guitar won't work with GH III. Good thing I've got two guitars already ...

I wanna rock!

Your package is on time with a scheduled delivery date of 10/29/2007.

OUT FOR DELIVERY

Yeah!

Good thing I'm doing my presentation today. I won't even see GH III until after it's done. Now I just have to figure out how to catch up on my charting ...

XBLA review: Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords (10/10)

Crackdown, Forza 2, and the Orange Box are sitting on my entertainment center. Haven't played 'em since Tuesday.

Yeah, it's that good.

So what's got my attention? Well, it's a straightforward turn-based RPG, so you know it's going to score points with me, but it's also not heavy on the RPG stuff. (For an XBLA game, that's a good thing.)

To start up, you simply pick a class and play. You defeat monsters to win experience and gold so that you can increase your attributes and get better gear. You can make your own magic items with runes that you find in certain places (if you defeat the Runekeepers guarding them), capture enemies so that you can learn spells or even train them as mounts, and build a citadel where you can do all this.

The catch? You're playing Bejeweled to do it. Yep, lining up three or more gems in a row, alternating with your opponent. There are four colors of gems (to match the elements: earth, fire, air, water), plus coins for gold, stars for experience, and skulls to damage your opponents. As you progress, you learn more spells and have access to more items: in towns, you can buy items of certain types, but many have level or skill restrictions.

You can carry a weapon, a piece of armor, a helmet, and a miscellaneous item into battle with you. Items can have many different effects (more damage, more gain from gems you match, reflective effects), and between the store-bought items and crafted items, you'll have many different combinations you can choose.

Movement in the world is similar to Heroes of Might and Magic, except you move directly from town to town instead of a certain distance per turn. Some creatures will appear randomly on the map and block your path, forcing you to defeat or capture them. (Unlike combat, capture is a chess-type puzzle: you must remove all gems from the board. Succeed and capture, fail and try again or give up and fight.) Others are quest-related and are fought in towns and cities.

The storyline is well written and even has contemporary dialog: it feels like it's been translated into modern speech rather than stilted, ancient, by-the-book speech. You'll know what I mean when you play it.

It's very easy to get into and very easy to play for long periods of time - the "just one more battle" force is strong in this one.

I'd definitely recommend giving this one a try. It's $15 right now, but it's a great deal, and you can get all but one of the achievements offline. Go forth, young warrior, and puzzle.

zlionsfan's rating: 10 coins out of 10.

The rabbit is back

Watching the Iowa-Purdue game (muted half the time - the production is awful as usual. Can't wait for someone at ESPN to get fired so that the new head of programming shows football instead of interviews and movies), and after one of Purdue's touchdowns, a rabbit ran on the field to celebrate.

No word as to whether or not he's related to the award-winning rabbit. In 1993, a rabbit ran the length of the field during a break in the Michigan-Purdue game. (He led the Boilers in rushing.) He ended up winning an ESPY for it.

I'd love to see that on YouTube ...

Slacking off

Sorry for not posting more often. It's a busy time. I'm desperately falling behind with respect to XBLA reviews - I'll work on catching up on those this quarter. Between class and the Orange Box and Puzzle Quest (can you really be between three things? should that be among?), with Beautiful Katamari on the way, a few Crackdown achievements left, and Forza 2 wondering why I'm ignoring it, I should have plenty of games to cover soon.

Plus Guitar Hero III is just around the corner. (Right about when my first presentation is due, which is right before I leave for my weekend in Virginia. Good timing.) And then Rock Band is a few weeks later ...

w00t!

Ha ha ha ha ha

33-19. Purdue is now five games better than Notre Dame. Ha ha ha. (Of course, Purdue's had a pretty soft schedule, but still.)

Notre Dame hasn't lost five in a row in the same season since 1963, when they went 2-7 and lost their last five.

They've now lost seven straight, dating back to the USC game last season. They haven't lost seven in a row since 1960, when they sandwiched a pair of wins around an eight-game losing streak.

Charlie Weis is on the verge of making history at Notre Dame. I'm just glad we're all around to see it.

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Now playing: Chesnutt, Mark - I Don't Want to Miss a Thing
via FoxyTunes

XBLA review: Geon: Emotions (6/10)

Okay, I've been slacking. Too much Crackdown and not enough reviewing. I'll work on catching up.

Geon: Emotions is a cute little game: you roll around various 3D boards, picking up emotes and scoring goals while your opponent does the same. From a distance, it almost looks like a New Wave Pac-Man ...

which, well, it is. It has some interesting tweaks: there are eight different "emotions", each of which has a corresponding powerup that works better for that emotion than the others (for example, Rapture gets extended speed from the speed burst). The boards are fairly simple at the beginning, but get more complex twists as the difficulty increases.

In Time Attack mode, you race the computer to five goals with time as a factor (you score a goal by eating a certain number of dots, flipping over to his side of the board, and returning to the center); in Duel mode, you simply play to five; Minigame mode, for some reason, is just Time Attack mode with automatic bad guys and no computer opponents.

The gameplay is interesting, and over time, it becomes a bit more natural, but it's still just fancy Pac-Man with no ghosts.

Now, imagine Super Pac-Man (yes, when you've eaten the super dot) in 3D, and you may spot a problem.

Oh yes, frustration. It doesn't happen much, but when it does, it maxes out very quickly. It's easy to miss a dot because you went up instead of over; worse yet is when you spend an extra 10 seconds in one corner of the board because you keep missing your turn, or because the stupid moving platform flipped you over instead of letting you cross, or some nonsense like that.

On top of that, as the AI gets better, it's more likely to reach "spoiler mode": rather than trying to win, it simply tries to stop you from winning. On one board, it decided to sit on a switch and prevent me from activating a slide for about 2 minutes. (You can clear most board in 2 to 3 minutes.) Then again, once he moved, I still couldn't activate it, so that one was probably a bug.

Naturally, some of the achievements require online play. I guess you can do that, if you really want to play Pac-Man against someone else. Some people would rather play, I don't know, Halo 3, but what do they know?

Overall, Geon: Emotions is a decent game, but not much more than that. Enjoy it during the breaks you're taking from a Halofest. You are taking breaks, aren't you?

zlionsfan's rating: 6 fears out of 10.


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Now playing: Simon & Garfunkel - America [Live]
via FoxyTunes

teh Haloz!

Sweet!

I wasn't going to get Halo 3 at launch. I figured I'd get around to it someday. However, the reviews looked pretty good, so I was thinking about it.

As if by magic, costco.com made the decision for me: Halo 3 for $50. The message arrived on the 19th. I placed the order on the 20th. No way it would arrive on launch day.

way.

So now I have a copy of Halo 3. Awesome!

And now I'm going to finish charting the first half between the resistable force and the movable object.

And finish my reading for week 1 of the fall quarter at PSU.

Yeah. that's it.

How to catch a cat

If you have a cat, you know how difficult it is to catch. A cat's first step is much faster than yours, and it's not possible to reach down in time to grab the cat if it wants to take off, so if you need to catch it, you must get within arm's length before even thinking about catching it, and even then it's 50/50.

Today was another chemo appointment - well, blood work + chemo, because they didn't draw blood in between like they're supposed to, and I forgot until it was too late - so I did my normal late-morning routine. There have been enough of these now that the cats know something's up when I'm home early (at one point, Calle was going under the bed every morning just to be safe), so even though they greet me at the door, they're ready to run at a moment's notice.

This time, it was a little different. Both cats were sleeping in the bedroom, so they were standing near the bed when I saw them: Calle at the foot, Josie next to it. I did a quick calculation and estimated the chances of me catching Calle with a lunge at something like 0%.

I began to walk slowly toward her, no arms outstretched or anything, trying not to think of anything, least of all the clinic and the cat carrier. I got within about 6 feet before Calle did the same thing: realizing that my chances were now greater than 0%, she turned and began to go under the bed.

In the past, when she'd meet me at the door, the first thing I'd do would be to close the bedroom door. My bed is pretty low to the floor, so I can't get under it. Other than that, there's really no place in the house where I can't get a cat if I need to. (I couldn't do that today because they never left the bedroom.) The end result is that I have to move both the mattress and box spring, which basically adds 10 minutes, 15 if I'm not careful with the covers.

However, the bed is also low enough that she can't just walk underneath it: she has to squeeze down a little bit, and that's what saved me. As I saw her duck down and start to disappear under the blankets hanging off the end of the bed, I apparently leapt forward (my knee informed me I'd done this later) and lunged under the bed.

Unlike Madden AI, instead of aiming for where the cat had been, I aimed for where the cat would be. Grabbing a cat by the hind legs will get you nothing if you're lucky, and a skin graft if you're not. Instead, as my arm disappeared under the bed, my hand found a cat chest. I scooped her back out from the bed, picked her up, and eventually coaxed her into the carrier. (By "coaxed" I mean "kept her in front of me and moved the carrier forward until she was already halfway in it.")

Owner 1, Cat 0. (Total score at this point: Owner 24, Cat 37,844.)

ESPN sucks, part 290

So I'm blessed with the Purdue-Central Michigan matchup on ESPN2 today. Bonus! HD football ... except that late in the third quarter, ESPN decides that we want to watch Auburn-Mississippi State instead, so they push the Purdue game onto the SD alternate channel.

Oh, and they also keep going back to the studio in between, instead of showing us, you know, football, which is kind of the point of watching in the first place.

So CMU goes on a roll, capitalizes on a couple of turnovers, and just as I'm sending in my complaint (I wasn't going to say anything, because ESPN doesn't care, but when the fourth quarter started, they showed the "also available in HD" lie, so I had to write. They're lucky they limit comments to 500 characters), they switch back. Maybe they should have just left it there. You know, there are other channels. If I want SEC football, I'll go find it.

jackasses.

Jelly beans

I'm getting my braces off in 22 days.

It's a pretty cool 40th birthday present. My orthodontist did "promise" they'd be off before I turned 40. I didn't have the heart to tell him I was a morning baby. (Clearly, that was the last day when morning was acceptable to me.)

Anyway, I am looking forward to it, just a little bit. Basically, I'm thinking

jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans jelly beans

AT&T sucks

I'd like to dump my long-distance carrier, because long distance is a ripoff, and I'd like to do it online, because I don't trust the CSRs.

However, AT&T has thwarted me. For three straight days now, their site has been unavailable to me. No reason why, no apologies, just hey, you can't get in, try again later. And why not stop by att.com, because what better way to sell you on more of our crap than by not letting you see what you've got now?

Yeah, the whole reconsolidation of the phone industry, not a good thing.

The problem is that my local cable company sucks, so I won't get digital cable/broadband through them, and I want Sunday Ticket, so I have to have DirecTV, so I need a phone line.

At least my DSL service is pretty good.

Anyway, AT&T sucks, but everyone knows that.

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Now playing: Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive
via FoxyTunes

Cyberball!

Yeah, I know, I should be blogging more, but I've been busy, running here and there. Nothing like being rained on at Wrigley, you know.

Anyway, Cyberball is coming to XBLA next week. Sweet! I might have to play a couple of MAME games just to get in the mood for it.

Hurray!

I mean, "It's about f-in time." That's not nearly so friendly, though. Apologies to those who prefer milder language: for you, pretend that I said "fire-truckin'".

Someone finally figured out that chess would make a good XBLA game, and better yet, it's not alone. Let me get this straight: for 400 points, we get chess, checkers, reversi, and mancala, and we paid how much for Pac-Man?

Anyway, good to see the trend toward thinkers' games (Catan, Carcassonne) is continuing.

PS2 review: Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s (6/10)

Warning: spoilers involved. Don't read this unless you want to know all the tracks in the game.

Let's go through each set, one at a time.

Set 1 songs

• Quiet Riot: (Bang Your Head) Metal Health
A good start.
• Go-Go's: We Got The Beat
Kind of a surprise, but it works here.
• Flock of Seagulls: I Ran (So Far Away) [as performed by]
Not bad, but it seems like they took some of the keyboards and made them into guitar notes.
• Accept: Balls To The Wall
Standard metal fare.

Set 1 encore

• Skid Row: 18 And Life
Nice encore tune. Moves around a bit, but not too difficult on Hard.

Set 2 songs

• Scorpions: No One Like You
Good song, and a good way to start the set.
• Eddie Money: Shakin'
Not bad, I like this one too.
• Asia: Heat Of The Moment
My favorite Asia song, one of the best in the game. Too bad it's not the original and they don't do the guitar solo correctly.
• White Lion: Radar Love

whaaaaaaa?

no.

Not only did they defame the game by including a cover of the song (hey, the original was a '70s song anyway), but it's a bad cover. Bad. Loss of one point.

I mean, seriously. There's a White Lion song in here and it isn't Wait?

Set 2 encore

• Limozeen: Because, It's Midnite
Um ... what? Did someone break into the game and wreck the last half of set 2? This isn't even worth putting in the game, and on top of it, you won't get points from it. I posted a perfect 55K. boo.

Set 3 songs

• Dio: Holy Diver
Okay, back on track. Good song.
• Vapors: Turning Japanese
Uh, whatever. The pop influence, I guess.
• 38 Special: Hold On Loosely
I really like this song too. Not a bad set so far.
• Scandal: The Warrior [as performed by]
Nice. Get rid of Turning Japanese and we could have had a really solid set.

Set 3 encore

• Twisted Sister: I Wanna Rock [as performed by]
Awesome! The one thing they should have added was the lead singer asking the crowd what they wanted to do with their lives. This was a solid set.

Set 4 songs

• Romantics: What I Like About You
Not a bad song.
• Police: Synchronicity II
Sting is not a good singer to have to copy.
• Krokus: Ballroom Blitz
I couldn't tell right away if this was real or not. I like Krokus' version better than the original.
• Oingo Boingo: Only A Lad
Um ... this isn't Karaoke Revolution.

Set 4 encore

• Ratt: Round And Round
Nice. Songs by the two artists at the first real concert I went to see (they opened for Billy Squier).

Set 5 songs

• Poison: Ain't Nothin' But A Good Time

um ...

that's not the title. Those lyrics don't even appear in the song. This is inexcusable. Loss of a point. (At least the song is good.)

• Billy Squier: Lonely Is The Night
Good song.
• Faster Pussycat: Bathroom Wall
Hadn't heard this one before, but it's not bad.
• X: Los Angeles
Who?

Set 5 encore

• Iron Maiden: Wrathchild
Nice. I forgot about this one. Unfortunately, The Trooper is 10x cooler.

Set 6 songs

• Judas Priest: Electric Eye [as performed by]
Hadn't heard this one before. Nice touch to get their version of it.
• Dead Kennedys: Police Truck
One punk song per game, huh? It's not a bad song, I guess.
• Winger: Seventeen
Nice song, but not sure this is the type of song for this set.
• Anthrax: Caught In A Mosh
eh.

Final encore

• Extreme: Play With Me

Okay, it's nice that it has Mozart stuff in it, I guess, but seriously? This is the best you had? From the '80s? Seriously?

I never heard this song before. Sorry, not impressed.

So that's it. Hmm ... where to begin.

No Van Halen? No AC/DC? No Bon Jovi? No Cinderella? No Def Leppard? No Dokken? No Tesla? No Autograph?

And that's just from my own collection.

No additional songs to unlock. (Maybe the developers ran out of their own tunes to include. Ha ha. Oh wait, that probably wasn't a joke.)

No career score. Like GH II, there isn't even a cumulative score for each level like they had in GH I.

This is very Madden-ish: the exact same game, only with new songs. (Actually, it's not even as much as you got in GH II.) At least they have the working hammer-ons and pull-offs.

Sorry to say it, but I don't recommend this game at full price. You won't get your money's worth. I hope Rock Band and GH III are worth it, because we're definitely getting screwed for the time being, between this and the lack of track packs (four in all, after the last one, but still only three songs per pack).

zlionsfan's rating: 6 rounds of sardonic applause out of 10.

6s

Got what's probably my first 600 series, a 622. (208-217-197) I still can't put more than four strikes together. That last game raised my skill a whole 6 points, to 1206.

Wait till my next precipitous plunge. I don't think I can afford a 170 now. Poor me.

I wonder what happens at 2000? Guess I'll find out in tennis ...

Big hair, loud music, and regrets

It's true. Rocks the 80s is here, arriving promptly on the 26th (although they did that awful hold-the-game-until-we-say thing that I dislike; I guess the flip side is that I know I'll get it on launch day). It was almost like going to a high school reunion, running into an old flame, and making plans to hook up that evening.

Don't get me wrong. It was good - heck, parts of it were great - but really, it wasn't what I was hoping it would be, and honestly, it's probably because my expectations were too high. This was only supposed to be GH II with '80s songs, and that's exactly what it is. After all, there's a reason why she's an old flame ... and remember, your friend's cousin is coming into town later this year, and she's supposed to be smoking hot.

I'll have a more detailed review later (with spoilers, sorry, but it would be hard to review it accurately without listing all the tracks).

Low red count

Calle passed her first blood test. The second one was today, with chemo scheduled for tomorrow.

The hospital called me back today. Turns out her red blood cell count was about half of the lowest acceptable level, so we canceled the appointment. I've got antibiotics to give her, and next week, she'll go back in for another blood test. If that's okay, we can proceed with chemo.

Naturally, she doesn't care. Looks like the same old Calle, except with a bit less fur (the stomach fur is starting to grow back; the neck and leg won't stay regrown until we're done because they need the leg for chemo and the neck for blood work).

Well, she probably won't like 14 doses of antibiotics. Neither will I. I did get a useful tip, though. We'll see how it works out.

AOL sucks

Football.

Their fantasy football site is awful. Still is. But the commissioner likes it.

Also, it's free.

So my job is to document why it sucks so that we can compare it to better sites and use one next season (or maybe this season).

Let's see:

Slow updates. It was not at all uncommon for Tuesday to roll around without final scores and standings.

Counterintuitive design. If you saw a list of items like this:

Views » Team Records » Standings » Head to Head » Hall of Fame

you'd think it was where you were in the site, right? So under Views, there would be Team Records ... but that's not how it works. These are all equal options under Views.

There doesn't seem to be any place that shows past champions or past playoff results.

That's all for now. More later, I expect.

Wii Virtual Console review: Gradius III (6/10), $8

Oh no, it won't be like Xbox Live. For one thing, I already own most of the games I'd want to play, and I still have the original systems (NES, N64, and Genesis). For another, well, they're not new.

Anyway, Gradius III is pretty much like you played it on the SNES: same preset ship configuration, same customization options, same gameplay, same customizable controls.

The Classic controller is very lightweight, almost too much so. The default configuration is almost unplayable (you've got shoulder buttons - use them), but it's very easy to reconfigure.

For some reason, the game doesn't size properly on an HDTV. Yeah, I know, the Wii itself doesn't provide HD graphics, but the regular Wii games are sized right. Hey, put in a little extra work and let us configure video (16:9 or 4:3). As a result, you can't tell what your score is, because it's off the top of the screen.

It does, however, save your high scores. Hear that, Microsoft? It saves your high scores.

So it's a nice little game if you enjoyed it in the past, but if you didn't, it's not really a game I'd recommend. Play one of the more modern versions.

zlionsfan's rating: 6 options out of 10.