Unwanted Commentary

It was a mixed bag of a weekend. Friday night I went out to Mansfield to watch my Lorena Leopards battle the Carthage Bulldogs in a 3A High School regional playoff game. While Lorena sneaked into the Texas State HS playoffs under somewhat spurious circumstance, they had made the best of it by winning their Bi-District game against Palestine Westwood. That was unexpected, but well received news and when I found out that they would play somewhat close to me I decided I should go see them. I met mom there. Now we didn't expect a lot, but mostly went to cheer on our guys in their endeavor and to do what we could. Unfortunately we didn't do much and the might Leopards feel in fray 50-something to 14. I bought a program to mark the occasion.

I had really been anticipating the game between Texas Tech and Oklahoma on Saturday and this turned out to be a disappointment as OU pretty much made Tech its bitch. I was saddened, but not overly concerned and on the upswing didn't have to watch much of the game, and got to continue on in my adventures of Fallout 3. Damnable game took up most of my Saturday, except for the part where Mitzy and I went to her mom's house for mole. Her mom makes mole for birthdays, and it was her two older brothers birthdays, both of whom she doesn't care for, but I told her to do it for the mole, so she did. After lunch I played dominos for the first time and I did pretty well so says I.

Sunday was a pretty good day, we went downtown so Mitzy could take pictures and ended up at the Nasher sculpture center getting to see some free ballet. The Texas Ballet Company was doing a Nutcracker teaser, so we got some snippets of that for about 30-40 minutes. Which was just as well, because that may be all of that I can take at one time. We went to the Farmers Market and Whole Foods, and while at Whole Foods we got some ginger cookie mix for free because they didn't have our usual brand. That was pretty sweet, didn't know they did that.

After all of that I finally got a bit of Oracle class work in, I'm still behind, but so is everyone else and I'm hoping to get caught up a bit over the holidays. Hooray.

Posted by Jeff at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

1. WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names):
 Darlene Richard
(I think I would demand a new WPP name)

2. NASCAR NAME: (first name of your mother’s dad, father’s dad):
 Eugene Richard
(This one was pretty good)

3. STAR WARS NAME: (the first 2 letters of your last name, first 4 letters of your first name) Lojeff
(Meh, not so good)

4. DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal): Green Weasel
(Not sure why a detective would go by this name, but it sounds more like a superhero name)

5. SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you live):
 Michael Lorena

6. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite alcoholic drink, optionally add “THE” to the beginning):
 The Blue Bourbon

7. FLY NAME: (first 2 letters of 1st name, last 2 letters of your last name):
 Jery
(What is a Fly name anyway?)

8. GANGSTA NAME: (favorite ice cream flavor, favorite cookie):
 Neapolitan White Chocolate Macadamia Nut
(This one didn't quite work out)

9. ROCK STAR NAME: (current pet’s name, current street name):
 Blue Crowberry
(This one either, though I could have used Chacho Ignacio Narcisso Rodriguez, Nicholas or Martina "Tenacious" Apple)

10. PORN NAME: (1st pet, street you grew up on):
 Benji Longhorn
(PWN, though if I had used the original street name it would have been Benji Route 12)

Found via SEB

Posted by Jeff at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I just got Fallout 3 loaded up and running, spent a couple of hours poking around the first parts of the game, and as of right now I have to say that they've nailed it. It definitely has that Fallout feel and I'm impressed in that the first-person perspective is just as I would have imagined it when I was playing the 2-D isometric perspective from the original games. The world is disturbingly gritty, dirty and messed up. I had heard that the dark humor of the first games isn't there, and I can see that this may be the case, this game is much darker.

Not sold on the combat system just yet, and that may be an issue of dealing with the foundation the game is built on. I didn't play Oblivion, but I did play Morrowind and you can tell that the same sort of mechanics are in play. They did put in a system called VATS, and that allows you to pause time and pick out a body part to target specifically, once selected the game goes back to your character and into slow-mo. You get to watch the bullet sail to its target, and see the resulting damage. It's pretty cool, but we'll see how long that lasts. I miss the turn based mechanics of the originals. The enemy AI, so far, seems to be of the charge mentality. They just run at you until you kill them somehow.

Visually and audibly the game is great. The voice acting is good and the NPC models are eerily realistic, though I've noticed a few of them in some awkward positions where their neck bends at odd angles. The world seems to be very expansive right now, but I haven't gone too far. I've roamed out across the wasteland a few times, but I'm quickly devoured by mutated kritters. There also seems to be wide variety of paths to take, as far as playing as a good guy, a bad guy or some mixture. You get good karma and bad karma for actions, but the ramifications of this is not yet apparent. There appears to be some sort of "make-your-own-shit" portion of the game too, where-in you buy directions from vendors, find the parts and then build stuff. I only say this because the first general store you come across has a "rock-it launcher" schematic, and there seem to be a lot partsy type things laying around the landscape. Hopefully this will add a "neato" factor to the game. We'll see.

Posted by Jeff at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had initially written a long rambling manifesto on why Spore disappointed me, but I’ve let that lie for a while now and I think I can approach the subject on a somewhat more even keel. I’m disappointed by the game as a whole, even though it still managed to suck me in for a few hours, and for what it was worth those hours were entertaining. The game is well put together, it’s fun, it’s funny, the graphics are good, the sound is good and the customization is out of this world. It’s just that it didn’t deliver on what I had hoped it would be, which would have been a sort of SimEarth-lite, or some sort of simulation of evolution even if simplistic or lampooney.

It’s none those things, and what it boils down to is a really simplified real-time-strategy game that morphs slightly as it progresses along its stages. Intertwined amongst all of this is the creature creator, which also morphs into a different creator as the game progresses. This is the real meat of the game, and if you like endlessly customizing your creature, your creature’s outfits, your creature’s civilization buildings and vehicles then you’ll be endlessly entertained. I’ve never really been into those things on a deep level, so the game ran out of steam for me pretty quickly. Customizing the color of my creature’s ass is not game play.

The game play just isn’t there, no matter how charming or well put together the overall package is. I played a couple of different games, on various difficulty settings to get a feel for it, and I tried some of the different paths available, but I was more or less doing the same thing no matter what, only with different looking stuff. And I think that is what it boils down to for me is that my designs, no matter how clever, crafty or efficient, really had no bearing on how the game was played. I could create a well-conceived creature, building or vehicle, or I could create the most outlandish monstrosity, or I could create the most boring cube, blob or brick. The outcomes were always the same. This was the biggest disappointment for me, because I had really hoped that I would be rewarded for good design, creative design or efficient design, and once I discovered that it didn’t matter then I quickly lost interest in what is an otherwise shallow game.

What makes this all the more disappointing is that Maxis and Wil Wright have created great games and simulations before, but they seem to be on the pathway to creating easily playable schlock. I guess this is the price we pay for the Wii brand of casual, simplistic games that non-gamers will snap it up. And they do have to pay the bills. Still, I think for anyone who ever wasted hours modeling a planet in SimEarth I just don’t see how Spore can cut the mustard.

Posted by Jeff at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is an awesome feeling to be a part of this country right now. To finally see the diversity our country has so often ran away from, so often combatted physically and mentally, to finally see it triumph to allow ourselves to at last live up to the dream so long ago laid down.

Props to John McCain for a very well put concession speech. I still say I wouldn't have been terribly disappointed if he had pulled the upset.

But wow, what a night!

Posted by Jeff at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)