Monday, July 14, 2008Miscellany It's hard to imagine that in less than twenty four hours I'll once again be jetting off to San Diego to visit the family. Here are updates on recent goings on before the San Diego/Comic-Con stuff fills the blog.
Labels: animals, anthropology, games, Keeley link : 6:11 PM
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Tuesday, June 17, 2008Singing, Strumming and Standing Still Games My birthday wish came true when my family conspired to get me Rock Band and an Xbox 360. Kind of... it's almost a month later and I think the statue of limitations on hijinks has expired. Well, what really happened is that I couldn't take it any more after my Illinois trip and ordered Rock Band a few weeks early. Then my family said they were going to order it for me. I quickly calmed down and told them I was already on the case, not really mentioning that I've been playing Rock Band for a week by that point. =)
Rock Band is as incredible as I remember it from Anna and Anthony's house. Unfortunately Kristin and her boyfriend were very unimpressed by it so I'm pretty much playing this party game sololy with me trying out every position. I've taken to vocals and I'm actually doing the best in that area at the moment with a firm grasp of expert mode. Guitar is a close second with me in the last set of hard (curse you Flirtin' With Disaster, Train Kept A-Rollin'' and Green Grass and High Tides!). Drums is giving me trouble and I'm struggling at medium difficulty in the drum tour. There's a subculture of Rock Band players who play "voxtar" or sing and play guitar or bass simultaneously... like Jewel does in real life. I've taken up voxtar, even buying a real life mic stand to make things a little easier to manage. Voxtar is really fun, and makes doing vocals or guitar by themselves kind of empty-feeling. It's a challenge though as you can guess: I'm working on simultaneous hard vocals and hard guitar at the moment and some songs are very troublesome. It helps if I know the words already like I Think I'm Paranoid or Sabotage. Rock Band was not all that happened around my birthday. A mysterious package from my family had arrived a little before the date. Since Rock Band was well out of the bag, I kept the box sealed until May 28th so I'd something to open on my birthday. It was a rather large Amazon box and very evenly dense and heavy. I had absolutely no guesses what it could've been. When I opened it I was completely stunned because out slid out Wii Fit! Wii Fit is another unique Nintendo game. Jokingly I call it The Scale Game, or Standing Still: Hyper Turbo Championship Edition. While there are a lot of active things to do in Wii Fit, many minigames just as yoga or the balance tests simply asks you to hold a pose perfectly still. It's certainly a different gaming experience than the norm of pushing buttons as accurately as possible, and therefore quite a challenge. With all these new games, a job, and research my plate is so very full. I haven't played Warcraft in almost a month. I wonder if my guild hates me. Labels: games link : 5:00 PM
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Friday, April 4, 2008Declassified Story from Work and Other Notes
 {Rawr.} link : 10:25 PM
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Tuesday, February 19, 2008I'd Like to Be... Endless Ocean (link warning: creepy music) is one of those non-game games that crop up from time to time to remind people that games aren't all about shooting and competition. At it's core, it's a marine biologist simulator. You dive in the fictional Pacific tropical reef of Manoa Lai and look for fish. Upon sighting a fish you have to obtain information from it. Strangely, this is mostly done by rubbing the fish (waving the Wii remote), though you can also feed them. When they like you enough, sparkles appear and you can read a short blurb. Sounds kind of trite, right? But it's all in the presentation:
 {Look, a sea star!} The graphics are wonderful. It's not real-real, but it's more than enough. Besides swimming around and rubbing fish, there are a few other objectives. You can also lead people on dives to find the fish they want to see. Someone working at a magazine will send requests for photos of certain fish. Your financial backer will point you towards certain features like shark spawning zone. But it's all very open ended and these tasks can wait if you just want to dive. There are of course some amusing things that crop up in this open-ended game. After a point, fish started to like me so much that they would follow me wherever I went. Sounds cute... until you want to take a picture. Then they ruin every photo I try to take by swimming in my face:  {A nice photo of a hammerhead shark, except for the fish-in-my-face.} The fish-rubbing mechanism is also questionable in places, like when stingrays are involved: Petting a lionfish is also a bit weird, since they have poisonous spines and all. And of course, one liked me so much it started following me. Safest. Dive. Ever. To my surprise, the game has a basic plot involving my fellow researcher's family issues and how they're linked to her work. Also, I branch into underwater archaeology as the obligatory underwater ruins are discovered. It's like I'm working... kind of.  Endless Ocean is one of those "edutainment" titles that is actually engaging. It doesn't take itself so seriously, which keeps its flaws in check. How could you not smirk when "Amazing Grace" starts playing upon seeing your first whale shark? Update: I forgot to mention, the game can read mp3 files off of an SD card and play it instead of its own Christian tunes. Can you say "Octopus's Garden?"  {This game should be rated Mature because it has boobies.} Labels: anthropology:archaeology, games link : 2:33 PM
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Sunday, January 6, 2008This Year is Warmer Than the Last (A True C!G!A! Update) Today was unseasonably warm when I stepped outside to attend to the chickens. The cats all ran out and had a good time. I did not really partake in the outdoor activities though and went back to my basement den.
In said hideaway I've been getting more things done. I've been coloring the next few pages of Keeley's comic. The settings are far less complex so it shouldn't take me a month like the 9th street adventure I just posted. The pages I'm working on now set up the second half of the issue, which is another exploration of Keeley's social life. Sometimes I emerge to the surface world, where my Wii is. I bought Super Mario Galaxy for myself for Christmas. I've heard good things about it, but I really did not like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. I was very pleasantly surprised by Galaxy. The levels are all very creative and it really pulls me into the world(s). Playing Mario on an upside down world or running along the surface of a sphere was a lot easier than I had imagined though sometimes I take a long jump out of sight and into a black hole. This time I am not doing any more work that what is required of me at the step I'm on. I was bitten last project when I went ahead of myself and did a big chunk of research before the concept was accepted. The step I'm on is just a mini-proposal, around 2 to three pages. It's the hardest 2 to 3 pages I've ever written, but dammit, when I'm done it will be the best 2 to 3 page essay ever. Distressingly enough I was alerted by Kristin to the fact that yesterday was already Saturday. For some reason I had lived my life yesterday thinking it was Thursday. I did find it weird that some websites I visited mysteriously had their weekly posts done, but I did not think much of it. Losing two days in my mind means I've made less progress than I had thought. On the bright side, since the weekend snuck up on me, I can take a break. link : 10:28 AM
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Wednesday, January 24, 2007Space Battle I somehow missed the birth of networking sites like Friendster and Myspace but all of a sudden it seems like this type of site is almost ubiquitous with casual internet use. Specialty sites have come up to cater to specific audiences. There isn't one for anthropology yet so I'll write about two that cater to the other two-thirds of this site's theme.
1up.com is a networking site for gamers. I usually go there for the news, though I've visited it less as less since it is so complex. I just want my gaming news! The news sits in a little block of text surrounded by links to blogs. I don't want to see what Joe D. Gamer says on his gaming blog. I have my own! Why read the World of Warcraft Blog when I can just play it with the other eight million people who have it? Anyway, I wanted to see how the networking part of the site was going so I went profile hopping. I even found someone I know! So I set up my own little profile and tried to invite him to be a friend. And... nothing. I have no idea how to do it! The site is just so cluttered. The obvious "Invite Friends" button is actually for spamming my friends who don't have a profile so they will join. But how do I send and invite to someone who is already here? I still haven't figured it out. The help link, buried in the lower right of the page, leads to a single page that only shows me how to sign up for this monstrosity (using outdated screenshots no less). I give up. My reunion with my friend will have to wait until I get some more patience. On to other things, like writing this post. I've dumped on 1up.com a bit now so it must mean I have a solution for all of their flaws. Well, to show an example of a networking site that works in its simplicity, I present Comicspace. Yes, it's a blatant name-ripoff of Myspace, but it is so much better in execution. Just compare the two home screens. Comicspace has a tasteful row of ads at the top, and the rest of the page are large blocks of information. there is a lot of information here but it is given room to breathe. And once you start clicking links and filling out text boxes, it works flawlessly. Comicspace is run by one person with volunteer programmer helpers and it just plain works. Myspace has all kinds of money backing it and it fails. There are errors that show up for the most mundane tasks like sending a message or seeing someone's profile. It's shoddy while Comicspace is expertly designed. Just look at it! It's, dare I say, a beautiful site. link : 7:44 PM
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Sunday, January 21, 2007Blizzards... Everywhere! Columbia got covered in sheets of ice over the weekend, causing all kinds of hilarity... if inching along the sidewalk and then feeling that moment of terror as I slip was hilarious. School was supposed to start on Tuesday but it was canceled due to the icy conditions. Still, I braved the outdoors that day for something way more important than school: to get my hands on the Burning Crusade.
Walmart was out (I was there to get contacts) but Best Buy had lots and lots right by the door. I don't know if I was trying to act cool or what, but I walked by the display and went around the store before returning to grab a copy and check out. The cashier tried to start a conversation about it, but she knew nothing about the game. She asked if I "had everything I needed to play." My mind raced. Did she mean actual real life things like a computer, and a copy of World of Warcraft? Or did she mean in-game things like a level 60 character to take advantage of the new areas? I answered with a ambiguous "Almost!" She then asked me about what Warcraft is exactly and what the goal is. By then I knew the context of the conversation so I was happier to keep talking. Labels: games link : 9:51 AM
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Wednesday, January 3, 2007 I realized that Comics! Games! Anthropology! still lacks a games article so here goes. While I'm vacationing in Poway I'm having a severe case of game withdrawl. At my parents house, the only machine capable of playing games is my mom's G3 iBook. It's so old it couldn't run Warcraft III. Well, it could, but it's hard to get into the medieval strategy when all I can see is a green and red blob attacking a blue and yellow blob at five frames per second. I bought the Starcraft Battlechest at Target, and that was a lot of fun. I haven't played Starcraft since it was the newest thing when I was an undergrad. The gameplay still holds up. It's a lot of fun for such a simple system of upgrading one's units. I wish my armed forces would know when to attack and retreat on their own though, but I guess there has to be some control on my part.
When I'm bored of Starcraft (and Diablo II, which I also installed), I found that reading about games was a good substitute for actually playing games. In particular I found this website, Hardcore Gaming 101, which as many articles about old games. They're all very thorough, detailing every version of a particular series such as Altered Beast or Prince of Persia. There's also articles about niche games like Cho Aniki (um, probably not safe for work). I could read these articles all day... which I sometimes did. There's another site called NFG Games which has some nicely researched articles on the history of different characters such as Sonic and Mario through the years. They focus on how their graphics have changed as they starred on more and more advanced articles. Fascinating! Labels: games link : 6:31 PM
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