Dark Side of the Carton

Endless Ocean and the new Advance Wars: Days of Ruin are both dropping on Monday for the Wii and DS respectively, but I got my copy of both games today. As I try to do, I am posting pictures of the “swag” that accompanied them even though it is less swag and more nifty promotional packaging I still appreciate the effort that Nintendo/Golin Harris goes through to pretty these things up for us.

Ooh. A message in a bottle. Too bad it is just the stock info sheet that comes with all the games.

Another view:

Days of Ruin came a few promo stat cards on a few of the in-game vehicles and an invitation to jump on the Wi-Fi connection tomorrow for some pre-release multi-player action. Maybe I can actually make it online then.

If you aren’t familiar with the situation, here is a brief summary. Rock Band launches to massive fanfare and clamor for additional guitars to make a full band. Standalone guitars won’t be available until sometime next year. Standalone Guitar Hero guitars ARE available so why not use them? This is a non-issue for Xbox 360 owners as Microsoft required a standard controller configuration from both developers. Sony, however, did not. Where that leaves us is that the Guitar Hero controller does not work on the PS3. Not without a patch that is.

This is where things get tricky. Rumors trickled out that Harmonix had prepped and tested a patch for the PS3 version of Rock Band that would allow gamers to use the GH controllers. Activision, however, kindly told Sony not to allow Harmonix to release the patch effectively ensuring that their controllers couldn’t be used on a competitors game.

You can’t really blame Activision for this move. I mean, initially it sounded like a dick move, but the more I think about it the more I side with Activision. If you let anyone use your controllers, then others can skip the need to develop a controller and profit greatly on the heels of your work.

Back to the story at hand, Activision looks like the bad guy preventing gamers from using something they already own to play another game. In reality, Activision went on record saying that they gave Harmonix the opportunity to work with them for the right to also use the GH controllers. What this means in PR talk is “We told Harmonix they could use our technology with Rock Band for $XX.xx and they said no dice.”

Again, I have to side with Activision. It’s not Activision’s fault that:

1. There are no stand alone Rock Band controllers
2. The Rock Band hardware is having serious issues aka The guitars just don’t work

I haven’t really been keeping up with that the gamers think of the whole situation, but I personally don’t see anything wrong with what Activision is doing. The only bit of advice I have for anyone considering jumping into this fiasco is to buy the Xbox 360 version of Rock Band and forget this ever happened.

I recently blogged about making the jump into the high definition format war with my purchase of a Toshiba HD-A2 player at Wal-Mart’s special friday sale. Now that I’ve taken a good hard look at the movies available on each format and the amount of titles that retail stores and online stores are stocking, I think I am going to have to re-think my stance of supporting only a single player.

If all goes well, I’ll have a Playstation 3 in my possession in the next 2 weeks and then I can start building my Blu-Ray library up in parallel to my DVD and HD-DVD one. I guess I grossly mis-understimated the strength of having Disney on board. I mean, I have kids so most of what I watch is Disney or otherwise animated. That makes Blu-Ray an obvious choice for parents that can get past the cost of entry.

I’ve also mentioned to numerous people and seen the topic discussed online in recent days that Microsoft is supporting HD-DVD purely to prolong this format war so they can perfect digital delivery. I don’t find this to be so far fetched as I can actually see how that is beneficial to Microsoft. I mean, how much money does MS get when you buy a Blu-Ray movie? An HD-DVD? Now, how about if they act as the reseller of the movies via digital distribution? There we go.

You can’t exactly fault them for using their power to build another stream of revenue. They already have the software and system in place via the Xbox Live Video Marketplace, but they need more time to establish a larger base and maybe even port the software/system over to other devices before this can really be ready for primetime.

In the meantime, I’m going to be buying movies in whatever format I want and I honestly don’t give a crap who wins the format war. Until we have a clear winner, I’ll be enjoying my movies in high definition, either natively or via an upscaler.

I’m a big fan of skateboarding games for some reason. In High School I was an “aggressive rollerblader”, a term that I hate to this day. It just sounds so… gay. I mean, skateboard just kind of rolls off the tongue and “ag-gres-ive roll-er-blade-er” doesn’t. In fact, it kind of struggles to make it to the edge of your tongue and then trips and falls off in spectacular fashion.

At any rate, I love skateboarding games. The market to date has been totally dominated by a little series named Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. EA decided to challenge Activision’s dominance and NeverSoft’s formula with their own title that emphasized somewhat realistic moves and a real hands on approach to controlling the skater and the board. What they ended up with was skate.

I had a pretty tough time jumping into skate. I kept wanting to Press A to do an ollie or jump. This is not how things work in skate. You have to Flick-It to jump. Basically the whole paradigm of pressing A to jump and then execute the trick in the air is out the window. skate allows you and forces you to be more hands on by essentially controlling the feet of your skater with your right analog stick. Hold down and then flick up to do an ollie. Slight variations of direction combined with slight rolls of the stick create an endless stream of wicked tricks. Once I got over the massive learning curve and broke free from the years of THPS training, I really got into the title and I am loving it.

There is nothing easy about executing some of these tricks, but it takes patience and a calm, collected, composure to really stick some of these tricks in the heat of the moment. I’ve still got a long way to go in this game, but so far I think EA did an amazing job building a new title from the ground up that is going to change the genre in a big way.

Super Mario Galaxy just showed up at the house and with it came a pretty nifty Commemorative Coin. Apparently these coins were given out for pre-ordering the game, although I am not sure which store was actually giving them out. Regardless, here are a few pictures of the swag.

Back when I had a disposable income that would buy more than a pack of chewing gun I used to buy all sorts of expensive gadgets. Those days are long gone. Having a family tends to do that, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. The reality is that having a family keeps things in focus for me and forces me to be this frugal person. Trust me when I say that I’ve become a total bargain shopper. I don’t buy anything at full price anymore and that is ok.

Switching gears a bit, the next generation console war is pointless. I mean, the competition generated by the ebb and flow of the industry is good for everyone involved. The next generation dvd format war, however, is totally stupid. So stupid that I sometimes want to bang my head against the wall until I pass out. Ok, I’m not that invested in the format war that I’d knock myself out over it, but it still irritates me.

From an IT standpoint I really like Blu-Ray. The higher disc capacity rocks and the idea of a 4 or 8 layer disc with 25-50GB per layer makes me salivate. On the other hand, I don’t trust Sony and their licensing. I also don’t want my old DVD collection to be useless and have to keep another player around to play them. HD-DVD satisfies that aspect of my needs.

The other factor is price. HD-DVD players are dropping like rocks in price and the Blu-Ray ones are not dropping as quick. With that said, Wal-Mart went all Black Friday a little early today with a special on Toshiba’s HD-A2 HD-DVD player. They had the things marked down to $98. $98 borders on insanity and would definitely move a lot of players. I know it convinced me to go buy one, and at present the only way a Blu-Ray player is going in my home is if I somehow end up with a PS3.

I also bought Transformers on HD-DVD. Now I can’t wait to get this setup and running. I’m so very excited. $10 says I can’t find my extra HDMI cable now that I need it.

Most nights I stay up way later than I should working on freelance coding projects. Last night I opted to take a break from that and spend a little time relaxing with The Orange Box. The Orange Box is Valve’s newest release and comes packed with essentially 5 total games. 3 of those games are in the form of Half-Life 2 content, but that’s not important. What is important is the fact that the other 2 games happen to be Portal and Team Fortress 2.

I started Portal about a week ago and just hadn’t set aside some time to finish the game as I knew it was relatively short. I finished it last night and I am still having sweet dreams about the endeavor. I can’t remember the last time a game left me with such a splendid taste in my mouth. Even at $60 for the whole package, it could be argued that the price tag was worth Portal alone and that the rest of the content is just gravy. I decided to find out by jumping online and playing a little TF2. Let’s just say that I wasn’t very good and I racked up a whopping 2 kills. I played a few more rounds, each as unsuccessful as the one before it.

I’ll have to make it a point to keep playing TF2 as it was quite enjoyable, but I’ll need to do a little research on what exactly I am supposed to be doing as I kind of just wandered around until someone snuck up behind me and killed me.

At any rate, picking a Game of The Year for 2007 is going to be no small feat. With BioShock and Halo 3 preceeding it, things could get ugly. I think it’ll end up coming down to perceptions. There was no way that Halo 3 would ever live up to the expectations that had been set for it, so unfortunately it’s viewed as a disappointment. BioShock on the other hand had people describing it as interactive art so it’s easy to see how your expectations change how a game is viewed post release.

I think with The Orange Box everyone expected it to be awesome and then Portal was just so much better than anyone could have imagined that it really made the whole experience almost euphoric. For what it’s worth, I am calling the shot now. There will be a huge number of sites giving The Orange Box the Best Overall Game Award. I’m not saying I won’t do the same thing or that it won’t be warranted, but I am still calling it.

The RIAA has had a death grip on the music scene forever now. The antiquated business model they use was made obsolete when the internet became a mainstream reality, but they held on. They’ve held on and alienated their customers by suing first and asking questions later. It never occurred to them that the reason their customers were stealing from them was because of the way they were acting. I don’t condone stealing, but I also don’t condone being stolen from. That is what I equate buying music to, theft. It’s voluntary theft, but it’s theft all the same.

That said, Radiohead started offering music directly to fans a while back. This was the first step in eliminating the RIAA and it’s bullshit methods. The snowball is getting bigger now with Nine Inch Nails announcing on Monday that it has dropped it’s label and is moving to a direct to consumer model. Oasis and Jamiroquai are also on board and now the original Material Girl Madonna is on board. Madonna announced that she was dropping her lable and signing with Live Nation to deliver 3 studio albums, concerts, and merchandise. Live Nation is a promotion firm and not a record label so it’ll be interesting to see how that portion works out.

What I know is that I hope more and more artists are empowered to drop their labels and get the bigger piece of pie they deserve. Artists create the music, they deserve to be paid for it

They say that the first step is to admit you have a problem. I have a problem. My problem is not drugs or alcohol, but Chuck. I’m a Chuck-oholic. NBC has lured me in with this super spy computer geek combination and I can’t get away. I know that TV is largely trivial in the grand scheme of things, but Chuck is the best new show I’ve seen since The Office and that is saying quite a bit.

If you haven’t checked it out, you are missing out and you need to start watching it. Hit the Chuck website for some background on the show. I give my guarantee that you will enjoy the show. If you don’t, you must not be human.

We had some stuff going on Monday night and didn’t get a chance to see the second episodes of the new Monday night shows until last night. Despite being exhausted I made it through Chuck, barely. In it’s second episode the show really gets going and comes into its own. I am really enjoying the mix of humor and action and I am beginning to develop a need for more. We’ll have to see how the story goes, but Chuck might end up being one of those shows that I love to watch, but can’t possibly go past a single season.

Journeyman, well… I was asleep for most of it. I have no idea how it was.

The Big Bang Theory was better than last week by a long shot, but it still went too over the top on the jokes. I totally get that is what the writers are going for, but they are pushing a bigger audience away by going TOO high level. Throw in a few very high level jokes and tone down the rest and you’ll see a lot better response. I’ll watch next week, but I’m not so sure how long this show is going to last.