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I saw yesterday’s PVP and it was like Scott Kurtz was inside my mind! (It’s incredibly important you view that comic before continuing. Go on ahead and look. I’ll wait.)

Did you read it? Good. (If you didn’t, go do so, but we’re not waiting for any stragglers. Keep up with the rest of the class!)

Explanation of Scott Kurtz’s mind-reading powers: I suck at losing. Which is a big problem for me, because I lose a lot. Munchkin? Settlers of Catan? Halo? (OMG am I terrible at Halo) Super Mario Brothers for the Wii? (There was much stress from badly losing the game)

The way it works for me is a series of if/then/else statements. If everyone has the same experience level then I am generally fine with losing. If I am the only one new to the game then I probably won’t play. My chances of winning are low and I won’t learn by continually being beaten. If I am the one with the most experience then I will play confident that I will win. When I lose, it is infuriating.

Wherever possible, I prefer cooperative play. Best-case scenario is playing a game where I am my only opponent. Example: DJ Hero. There are no goombas, orcs, flying-turtles, or spike deathtraps for me to blame for my failure. DJ Hero is learning music in easy mode. If I mess up a mix, I know I’ll do better next time and get five stars to boot. DJ Hero was the tincture that soothed the Super Mario Bros rage-beast (See Dex-Starr above for example of rage-beasts).

Now I have Starcraft II. Trey and I played each other last night and the first match, he crushed me. I got irritated, knew I couldn’t win and just surrendered. It made me grouchy. He gave me some pointers on how to do that role better and we played again. I won the next match, but he went a little easy on me so as not to upset the marital household. After last night, the PVP comic was just perfectly timed.

Continue reading »]]> For whatever reason, Comcast sent me a $150 Visa rebate card. I vaguely recall why having something to do with an account creation deposit and accepting the terms of service for my contract. Needless to say it was a pleasant surprise!

Last week, our Xbox up and red ring of deathed. First it was doing some fun video locking up accompanied by loud crackling. I found a trouble shooting article on Microsoft’s website for it and determined it wasn’t the hard drive. Yay! It was the actual console.

To be fair, it lasted almost 4 years of infrequent use as a first or second gen Xbox. Not too shabby. The timing of it just sucked. Trey was very much looking forward to getting his couch potato on in advance of the wedding weekend. We wandered out to Best Buy and bought the plain olds arcade Xbox with no hard drive. My rationale being if the hard drive from the old console was crap, it would still be cheaper to buy that console and a huge drive separately than the elite.

My cunning plan worked fine however and we plopped the hard drive on the new Xbox and were up and running right away. It was really nice not having to recreate gamer tags and restart all our games.

Yay technology and thanks for the happy surprise Comcast! I take back all the nasty things I’ve said about you.

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Best news I’ve had in a few days! Little Big Planet 2 is scheduled for release in Q4 of 2010! Details here (IGN) and here (Official Site). Amazon has it for pre-order here!

I originally wanted a PS3 for two reasons.

1. Blue ray Player
2. Little Big Planet

That’s it.

Little Big Planet is made entirely out of joy, unbridled creativity, and whimsy. It is in my top 3 of favorite games, ever. It beats out World of Warcraft. Yes. I just said that. If I have a bad day or feel sick or am just unnecessarily moody LBP makes it all go away and there is nothing but giggles and joy.

All this enhanced by the fact that you can hold the left and right rear triggers and both joysticks to make your sackperson raise its arms and wiggle with delight. Seriously. It is the best thing ever. I’m grinning from ear to ear just thinking about it. Can’t wait!!!

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In April of 2008, I bought BioShock for PC while out and about on a week-long training trip for work. I needed something to do with my evenings in my hotel room because the Internet connection was AWFUL and playing WoW was limited to Fishing because the latency was untenable. BioShock was my entertainment for a few days. The game itself is very fast, having ~10 hours of play in it. But those 10 hours are creeeeepy. It is a very immersive game (and submersive, considering the underwater setting of Rapture (see title of post)). I only have fond memories of the awesome of the game and my single lamentation was it was too short.

I received the sequel for my birthday and haven’t taken the time to play it until last night. I got the game installed, signed in to my Windows Live ID (yay achievements!) and got going. BioShock 2 is just as beautiful as its predecessor and 2K Games has capitalized mightily on the advances in computer gaming technology to make it MORE beautiful. Both games are very sensitive to environment interaction. The prime example being detritus moves when your character bumps into it. It’s such a tiny detail, but it MATTERS.

What they’ve managed to do with water is also beyond amazing. My fiance was watching over my shoulder as he waited for his StarCraft II beta to get its shit together and install and remarked in awe at the effects of my character walking under some dripping water. You are wearing a diving helmet and your vision is obscured by the water momentarily and then there are little droplets on the view area that dry slowly. He was simply awestruck at that detail. I agree.

As I started playing, I kept trying to remember some of the details of the first game. Names just utterly failed to recall. Helpfully, there are bits and pieces EVERYWHERE in the first 10 minutes of the game to remind you of Dr. Tennenbaum, Andrew Ryan, Atlas, and Frank Fontaine. Trey was trying to get me to give him a little back story on the first game. I would start to tell him some part of the story and just trail off not completing the sentence as I was sucked into the game. I bet it was super frustrating. But I couldn’t remember anyone’s name and when the name came back in my memory it was because I was playing the pretty, creepy game!

The other thing that Trey never got to see when I played the first game (due to a completely different computing setup at the apartment) were some of the odder, creepier, weirder things that happen. In one point, there’s a flash of a little girl pleading you to come and find her and protect her. He looked at the screen, looked at me, and said, “What the hell was that?” I responded, blithely, “Oh, a hallucination.” “Really?!” “Yep.” “Holy crap!” It didn’t phase me. It is simply a part of the games.

On the nights when I sign into WoW and don’t have any idea what to do while there, Rapture is waiting.

Waiting and watching.