/dev/null/kevin

Male nerds, geeks and gamers have the stereotypical reputation of being absolutely clueless when it comes to women.  Conan O'Brien and his writers love to poke fun at nerds this way.  Of course, this isn't true, but it just might be true in the case of the geeks who wrote Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07.

We rented this game for our Wii.  My 4 year old daughter's favorite part of the Wii is the Mii editor.  She had lots of fun making herself and all of her friends.  So while she wasn't into playing Tiger Woods' gold game (that was for Daddy), she did want to use the game's character builder.

The in-game "Game Face" character builder is much more complicated than the Mii generator.  The characters are much more realistic than the Miis.  We built Daddy first, and it looked pretty close to me (a very athletic version of me).  We then tried to make my daughter.  The process first asks some quesions:

• Gender.  Female.  At least the have that option.
  
• Age.  She's almost 5, but 8 was the smallest value we could choose.  Fine, eight years old it is.
• Height.  The smallest value was 5' 0" (152 cm).  While that is short, I know some adults who are shorter than that.  Hmmm.
• Face.  No matter how hard I tried I couldn't get this girl to look younger than 20, let alone 8.  Did that parameter mean anything?
• Body.  Here's where it gets good.  I now needed to select how big to make this "8" year old's boobs.  Hello!

Like the other attributes that wouldn't scale to the 8 year old level (let alone 5), the choice for breast size ranged from a B cup to D cup.  I don't know what they were thinking, but my first reaction was "stupid horny engineers!"

Yes, this game probably isn't for little kids, but it could be.  Michelle Wie started playing golf at age 4 and turned pro at 15.  If you're going to make age a parameter, and let me select age 8, then you'd better actually support it.  Don't just make all of the female avatars be your virtual fantasy girl.

BTW, if anyone knows of any good Wii games that let the Mii characters play together, let me know.

Gamers are fighting mad about the termination of a game reviewer who gave a low score to a game promoted heavily on his site.

Gamespot reviewer Jeff Gerstmann gave a score or 6/10 to Kane and Lynch.  Publisher Eidos, who paid big ad bucks on Gamestop, wasn't happy, and Gerstmann was fired.  Read all about it here: 1 2 3

But gamers are getting the last laugh.  Upset at such blatant interference, they are giving the game scores of 1/10 and writing their own bad reviews using Gamespot's own user feedback section.  As such, the game's average user score is at 2.8/10.  Web 2.0 is a two-edged sword.

So, let this be a lesson to other companies.  You do more harm than good throwing your weight around.  Perhaps all of this negative attention will also boost sales, but I sure hope not.

Update: There are also reports that he left after his written review was edited.  CNET's daily news podcast, Buzz Out Loud, was told not to comment today (CNET own's Gamespot) so perhaps they will have something to say on Monday.

Rock Band is coming.

One of my favorite games, StarCraft, finally gets a sequel.  Yesterday Blizzard confirmed the game is coming with a preview at Blizzard's World Wide Invitational in South Korea. 

• Screenshots
• Video of Cutscreen
• Video if Gameplay
• Same video, but direct feed (better image, but no crowd reactions)
• Update [05/22/2007] Hi-def devloper's walk through.  Wow!
  

Should be fun!

Tags: starcraft2 | starcraft | blizzard

I really don't haven't anything against CNET, but their sloppy reporting once again forces my blogging hand.

This time it's CNET's list of the 10 Most Important Games of All Time.   The list itself is pretty good (and it is subjective, so I can't fault them there), but the #3 entry for Zork says this:

Well, that is just wrong.  Anyone who knows anything about text-based adventure games, knows that they all came from a game called adventure!  a.k.a. "Colossal Caves" or ADVENT.

I checked the Wikipedia entries for Zork, ADVENT and adventure game, and none of them make that claim.  In fact, they all say that ADVENT was the first adventure game.  Yes, Wikipedia entries change, but I checked the history for the Zork entry and as far back as 2001 (just weeks after the entry was created) it states that Zork was influenced by, and came after, ADVENT. 

It took me two minutes to make those checks.  For people who pretend to be reporters, they should try harder.  This isn't to say that Zork wasn't important and shouldn't be on the list, but they should get their facts straight.

Read hear more about ADVENT.

Tags: cnet | zork | advent | adventure games | games

Linda tagged me with with the new meme on music:  Name five songs (or artists) that you love but annoy your significant other.

Since my wife is into pop music and light jazz and I am into heavy/progressive metal, I could list anything on my iPod.  In the car we listen to the news, or play our kid's music.

1. Dream Theater
2. Primus
3. Evanescence
4. Linkin Park
5. Enchant
   

Tagged: Mocker, Tong, Rama, Steve, Trevor (if only to get him to blog this year).

BTW, use of the word "meme" is itself meme, since in the old days we used the word "fad."

Tags: meme | music

This past weekend A few weekends ago, I helped stress test the new Lord of the Rings Online Game.  It's a MMORPG similar to World of Warcraft.  I'm not a big online gamer, but the both the download and account were free, and I'm a big LOTR fan, so I deiced to try it.

Short Review: Pretty Good

MMORPGs never really were that appealing to me.  The idea of continual payment never sat well with me, nor did the idea of the game never really ending.  Many of the early MMORPGs weren't that good: lots of repetitive tasks and high death penalties.  WoW really raised the bar for MMORPGs and it's the standard by which all others are now judged.  However, since I don't really play WoW I can't compare, so I will just list the features the I liked and didn't like.  I'll let the WoW players make up their own minds.  In talking with some WoW players, it sounds like LOTRO has borrowed/stolen many of the good features from WoW.

Good Stuff

• Fellowships - You knew it was there, right?   Fellowships are quick ad-hoc groups that players can form to tackle a larger challenge.  Smaller than a guild or raid party, you can easily join, and leave, a fellowship.  Members get a private chat channel, split all money and experience earned, and share in any quest tasks or items.  Those last two items are the most important because you don't have to worry about those limited spawn areas where a group of players are camped waiting for their chance to kill the quest target.
  

• No Death Penalty - Dying really has no penalty, other than transporting you back to your "home" city (which you can move).  Your equipment may take some damage (I never checked) but there is no need to retrieve your body or anything like that.

• Instances - Small, or large, parts of the game can be instanced to a player or group based on their situation.  Unlike the traditional MMORPG, parts of the game are linear, meaning that a location may change based on how far into the story you have progressed.  A town may get attacked at some point, so for everyone who was part of that battle, the town will show damage from that point on.  I didn't get far enough into the story to see how much changes, but the few examples that I saw seemed to work.

• Lots of Content - Granted, I just started the game, but there was no shortage of things to do.  Also, the automap feature lets you zoom out to see all of Middle Earth, so you can see how much content they have the capacity for.  There was also no shortage of quests.  I had anywhere from 5 to 10 active at any one time and most are interesting or move the story along.  There are also many types of quests covering all aspects of the game.
• Kill Quests - Typical monster quest: find it, kill it.  Or kill X many Ys.
• FedEx Quests - Take this object to Joe, or just talk to Joe.
• Skill Quests - Build or farm something.  You can either do it yourself (assuming you have he skills), or find another player to do it.

• Auto Journal - Will so many quests (and quest chains), the journal keeps track of all conversations relating to the quest, where you need to go to achieve the quest, and where to go back to collect your reward for the quest.
  

• Lots of Races - You can start off the game as a human, elf, dwarf, or hobbit.  Each starts the game at a different location on the map so each gets a different set of training and low-level quests.  I think that this makes for great replayability, as you won't get bored with the same stuff over and over again.

• Quick Transportation - Covering large distances quickly can be achieved by spending a little money.  You can only travel to a place that you've visited before, but you'd expect that.

• Ability to Become a Monster - I never did this, but it was advertised that once I became 10th level I could go a place to join the forces of darkness.  I don't know more about this than there are some limitations places on your character, but it sounds fun!
  

Bad Stuff

There wasn't too much that I didn't like, and I will say now that some of these problems might have workarounds that I just didn't find. 

•  With fellowships such an integral part of the game, there wasn't an easy way to create one quickly.  As it is now, you must invite each player one at a time.  It seems like there should be a "invite all players on the screen into a fellowship" command.
• It also wasn't immediately obvious how to leave a fellowship.  While I did figure it out (double click on yourself (i.e. talk to yourself), and then right-click on the second image of yourself to get the menu of options) this feature wasn't in the "Social" Tab with the other fellowship options.
• Inventory control seemed kind of random.  You have 6 separate bags to put stuff in, but when you pick things up it goes into a random bag.  Thus, it's hard to keep stuff sorted.  Also, as you acquire and sell items, your bags become fragmented.  Not a big deal but why not just have one large bag?

While the game makers say that you will interact with characters from the books (and movies) you won't be directly involved with the main quest of the the ring.  You will, however, follow a parallel story to the main ring story.  I'm curious as how they will keep things moving along since there is a linear element to this game, but as a MMORPG there can't be an ending.  Do the highest level chracters simply have the option of joining the huge battles of Helm's Deep, Minas Tirith or Mordor?  How does becoming a monster change things?  Answers to these questions are compelling reasons to try the game.

Since I had a previous posting on HDMI problems on the Playstation 3, I figured I should include this update about generic HDMI problems on all devices for everyone who still has a PS3.  Both of you.  According to Popular Mechanics, there are HDCP handshaking issues that can cause problems (no sound and flashing picture).  The good news is that there is a simple work around:

• Unplug the cable and plug it back in.
  

 Next, how to fix your Nintendo Wii by kicking it a few times.

Tags: ps3 | playstation3 | hdmi | hdcp
 

This guy claims to have lost nine pounds in six weeks by only adding a 30 minute Wii exercise program to his routine.  The best game for burning calories is the boxing game, according to him.

Meanwhile, the PlayStation 3 has a similar exercise program called "taking it back to the store."

In spite of all of the damage caused by the Wiimote, including this latest one, I still want to get one.  I might have to put a Lexan shield in front of my TV, however.
Tags:
December 07, 2006 11:05 AM PST Permalink | Comments [1] |

I blogged about this last week, and now there is a site devoted to destruction caused by the Nintendo Wii.  Who knew such damage was common place?  In spite of the dangers, I'll probably still get one.  Penny Arcade has also taken notice of the trend and Nintendo has released a warning.

Tags: wii, games, nintendo
 

I've heard lots of great things about the Nintendo Wii, but this isn't one of them.  Oops!  Apparently, the "wiimote" wrist strap broke while this guy was playing bowling and it flew into the TV, breaking the glass on his 60" TV.  I'm sensing a word... it's "recall."

Tags: nintendo, wii, controller, wiimote

Those of you who have the new Playstation 3 and want to use it with your HDTV and the HDMI interface, take note.

First, if you have an older HDTV, i.e. one that doesn't support 720p resolution, prepare to be disappointed.  The PS3 will down-rev your revolution to 480p, not up-rev it to 1080i.  Sad.

Next, it's being reported that there are small, non-fatal, glitches when using the HDMI interface.  You can see the report from the CheapAssGamer.com of view the YouTube video from CheapyD.

What you may not notice is that buried in the comments are a fix from CheapyD himself:

Sadly, this "fix" uncovers a new problem. Stay tuned for if there is another fix.

I don't have a PS3 yet and I may hold off on buying one. 

Update [01/18/2007]: This may be a general problem with HDMI and HDCP.  

Tags: ps3, hdmi, playstation3, hdcp

What's the most amazing thing about this Falling Sand game?  That's right, it's written in Java!  Good ol' Java applets.  Makes me kind of misty-eyed.

From their web page: