Some reviews [r]

So Bungie finished their contribution to the Halo series and did the dreaded franchise handoff. This has led to the titles Halo Wars and Halo ODST. After Dan came down again I had a jones for more shooter action so I picked up the recent release. As expected, it plays pretty much the same as the last three with minor visual tweaks and new features.

The last game succeeded throwing action at you in a crescendo/decrescendo fashion, everything contributed to the mood. You knew from the music, the scenery, and the dialogue when to expect wandering and when to expect a scarab assault. ODST takes a stab at this, but doesn't accomplish it so smoothly - it fluctuates between Resident Evil and choppy, unpredictable action.

ODST's win comes from the set piece battles that are replayable in the team survival mode that I have yet to try (having no team). Maybe tonight intermixed with Beatles.

It's good and faithful/identical to the franchise, but some of the liberties taken by the designers don't work as well as others.



Also I've spent some time with a 2008 release, Sins of a Solar Empire. Hailed as the epic-est strategy game ever, I like their attempt to make Rebellion right and, to paraphrase their mantra, create a strategy game that doesn't base success on how fast you can click the mouse.

It's grandiose, with culture, resources, economics, tech, tactics, experience, topography, and the lot. It seems like everything, however, is a means to create the big fleet that you will need to win. This stands in contrast to Civ, for example, where you can succeed as an isolationist until the game ends.

But, like I said, it seems everything comes down to a large clash of fleets. This might be cool in most cases - it worked well when I played on the small map. But my two medium map games resulted in a fighting stalemate where I had enough resources to defend my planet but the ai could not be diminished. This owes in part to the number of tiny ships in its fleet and its ability to easily focus firepower while I had to do lots of clicking to send everybody after a particular target. To make matters worse, my ally kept announcing reinforcements had arrived - in the form of one or two light frigates.

The action leading up to this endless frustration is enough to let me give it a few more tries, but if every match is similarly predestined, it'll be a bitter end - like the pointy side of a Novalith Cannon.





I finally saw the last of the Futurama movies, Into the Wild Green Yonder. Excellent. The previous ones either had a muddled story, subpar slapstick, or sparing use of the characters' entertaining personalities. This one succeeds at all three.



Bacon gorgonzola barbecue burger gets an A+.



The grass is coming along.

Nevergreen terrace [s]

R, Dan and Dave came down this past weekend. Besides the requisite Halo, Winner, surfing, and tasty food/drink, we were on a mission to clear the rocks out of the second terrace. It's difficult to describe the size of the task. But I should add that Dan cleared out the three juniper stumps that confounded the other two a year ago. Also the pier for the late satellite dish was hammerdrilled down to size.

The surf session at Fletcher's was pretty exciting. Cleanout sets in September, E says he had an overhead. Warm water, too.



Now that the lower portion of the wall is exposed, I'm inclined to give it a fresh layer of paint since that light blue and tile is ugly. I'm inclined to go very dark green to match the house/deck trim and work well with the red brick.

We planted some grass seeds and I'm keeping it very damp. Out front I've set up the drippers - keeping them pretty close together. They do a good job of wetting down the whole area. I just need to partially bury them, though the grass will do a good job of that.

Christmas and New Year's [s]

Erik's got a blog now. My forecast is interleaved Penn and Teller Bullshit-style rants and updates on the reich rocket (pictured). If only Connie, Curt, and me could convince him to join the photo class there'd be some great imagery to go with it. Relatedly, sign up for intermediate black and white at UnEx if you like to party.

Rob's got another photo site/blog/what have you. How long before he assumes another alias and registers a new domain? Only time will tell.

To show my support for these newly registered bloggers, I'll throw some ancient memes into the rest of my post. But it's not all love toward StrippedThreads and RoughOperator.There's an enormous amount of material getting dumped in the tubes closest to mine, I hope this doesn't mean kilroy will get delayed or I'll have to get a separate internet for it.

On Wednesday I enjoyed a low key New Year's with the aforementioned Allegoren and two fine ladyfolk. Team xy maintained a 3:1 margin over team xx in both Trivial Pursuit and champagne. But it was all in the spirit of good holiday fun. High fives to Jes for triumphing in the battle of table talk/psyche outs, Kat for partying through sickness, and Erik for verifying the floor's resistance to ember exposure.


Notes: almonds in cashew jar, classy champagne bucket, Kat's characteristic trail of hair bindings, neatly-placed tools where the fire was burning the night before, painful new Trivial Pursuit color scheme.

Connie stopped by to say hi. She got me a house gnome. In case you don't know, but end up at my house, here is a gnome primer:

1. Gnomes are always on the move. If you see one, help him find a new spot.
2. Gnomes are like flies on the wall. They see all, but go unnoticed. Gnomes do not hide, but never stand out. Likely places to find gnomes are on bookshelves (at the edge of the highest shelf), on window sills, and occasionally atop a cluttered desk.
3. Gnomes do not like to be pigeonholed as lawn-dwellers.
   

You know that dream where you're on a plane and the flight attendant comes on the pa and shakily inquires if there's an electrical engineer aboard? So you retrieve the multimeter from your carry on, stride confidently to the cockpit, and save the day? Well it came true on Monday. Sort of. The overhead lights (fasten seatbelt, service, reading lights, etc.) on the port half of the cabin were nonfunctional and (presumably) faa rules wouldn't let the plane take off. Of course the Patriot Act would forbid any sort of superherolike intervention so we sat on the tarmac for over an hour while throngs of Virgin personnel stood around. The captain ineffectually 'rebooted' the plane and eventually resolved to fill out the paperwork required to fly without fasten seatbelt lights. Somehow the lightless survived.

So mixed impressions about Virgin America. It was nice to play Doom on the flight up and back even if I should have brought headphones. The jets in Virgin's flock are modern but euro-proportioned (Airbus, you know). When the electrical malfunctioned the crew didn't do much to make the wait more palatable, but at least they didn't cancel the flight and declare bad weather as most patriotically-branded airlines would.

The northward trip featured several grudgematches of Jon's new pasttime, Settlers of Catan (+ Seafarers). More complex than Risk, more distilled than Axis and Allies, Settlers is like putting Sid Meier on a coffee table.

The annual Christmas football game was great fun. Newcomers included Mom, Ted, and Christine. Team Laura/Ted/Chris triumphed over team Mom/Arthur/Jon. Keys to the match were Ted drawing the number one coverage while Laura raked in the receptions - not so much on account of loose coverage, rather a legendary ability to hang onto the ball. MAJ played the traditional no-huddle offense while LTC deliberated and fully utilized the reverse, flea-flicker, and wildcat. The play of the day had to be Ted's asomugha (read: awesome) pick-six, followed by Jon's failed attempt to juke a parked car.

It was good to see Dave in classic form. When I invited him to poker Tuesday before Christmas, he explained that he hadn't finished shopping, but could attend if he did. As I was taking a break from the table I got a text, 'Well so far all I've managed to buy is a latte. So, not that it needs saying at this point, but I'm not gonna make it tonight.' It happens every year...

He did manage a visit later that week, and capped a three hour stint of catching up/Halo 3 with, 'I've come a long way [since Goldeneye].'



Moving things to the new property was made difficult by the mud. The Bobcat was clutch, especially in setting up a decent failblog contribution.

Gears of War 2 [r]

Ty and I just finished Gears 2 with some help from Kevin. It was a two-sitting playthough thanks to a midweek cold.

As expected, the game mechanics are pretty much the same as the first, the graphics have improved, and Epic has added a few more toys. Some of the levels are visually and aesthetically quite impressive. The level design hasn't changed, it's linear except each area has a few dead end branches to make you waste time scouring them, or wonder if you missed something important.

The ai is coming along nicely, and that adds intrigue to what might otherwise be a shoot-duck-shoot adventure. On the subject of switching up the trench/barrier gunfight formula, Gears does something well. The go-to methods for preventing players from camping are to surround and/or charge. It's a crutch for adding difficulty when your pretty graphics don't let you send endless hordes.

The baddies in Gears do sometimes charge, and often flank - which is much different from having them pour in from every direction. This game presents a number of scenarios where the cover moves or disappears. The ars reviewer was all hyphy about this. It's okay but I'm glad they didn't overuse it.

What's really cool is the introduction of mortars. Fearing the vertical element you can still snipe, but not with complacency. It creates a distinct disincentive to be co-located with your buddy. There's just a whole new dimension when you can be surrounded by cover, but not safe. And it works the other way when you pick up a mortar tube.

Let's see... Epic realized that if there's going to be a trilogy, they need a story so that's been added (ahem, Halo). The in-game dialog is good and sometimes humorous (Marcus = Bender), the cutscene scripts are horrendous.

Great fun and a fantastic application of the media room.