Good Advice

Proverbs 23:9 — “Don’t waste your breath on fools, for they will despise the wisest advice.”

Long Day

Yesterday seems to have been one of those wild, time/space anomalies.  While it was a 24 hour day, with an 8 hour work period thrown in, the entire day seemed to last an entire week.  Yes, it was a long day!

Meanwhile, I discovered a cool site.  Good Reads is a site for book lovers.  You can “build” your own library, offer reviews, create a “to read” list and tell others what you are currently reading.  There are even a few widgets that you can post on your site that will display these various catagories.

It’s not an earth-shattering discovery, but something I found interesting.  Check it out for yourself if you still practice the dying art of reading.

The Ashen Thing

Another stand-out Pseudopod presentation.  “The Ashen Thing,” by Paul Mannering, is a spectacular piece of short horror fiction.  You can check it out at the link below.

Pseudopod 126: The Ashen Thing

A Fading Melody

Available from the Xbox Live Marketplace: A Fading Melody

I haven’t played many "Community Games,” nor have I bought any out right.  Just demo’d a few here and there.  It’s a big pool to wade in to with little known developers and some amateur looking games.  But, as we should all know by now, you can’t judge a book by its cover!

I downloaded the demo for A Fading Melody today to try it out.  The first thing that struck me is, “This is like that Braid game.”  Minus the reversing of time.  Melody is a 2-d basic side-scrolling platformer.  Very little environmental detail, but a story and action to keep you moving.  Basic controls and straight forward gameplay. 

The game takes place in a dream.  You are Melody, lost in a forest in your dream with monsters wandering around.  The only bigger issue is that you are dreaming this from a hospital bed, hooked up to monitors and IVs in a coma.  The story unfolds between levels, Melody reveals bits and pieces of her life in text form.  Your dream world is dark, but as you jump on the monsters to kill them (very reminiscent to the original Mario Bros. on NES) the world slowly begins to brighten.  The premise of the story is: you are fighting your way out of the coma’s dream world.

Very calming music, somewhat repetitive gameplay but very creative on behalf of the developer.  Like I said, reminded me of Braid, in how basic the gamestyle was and brought back memories of my early days with Super Mario Bros.  I plan on buying the game, and I’d recommend anyone to download the demo if nothing else to give it a try. 

“What’s It Going To Take?” a Video by Karen Chu

Creator’s Page: http://vimeo.com/3756002

Sucky little WordPress won’t post a embed of the video, so please, visit the link.  It’s a thoughtful and thought-provoking video based on an open-ended question posed to 20 people of all walks of life.

Steampunk Cylons

Dvice, a Sci-Fi (Syfy) Channel online site, has released the results of a question they asked readers.  “What would a steampunk cylon look like?”  The results are crazy, and some even quite beautiful.  Check it out at the link below.

http://dvice.com/archives/2009/03/steampunk_cylon_10.php

Watchmen/Wall-E Mashup Trailer. Very Cool

A Jumbled Mess

I’ve been jotting down and tossing about a few ideas, but as far as working anything out into long form …  Meh.  It all sounds good in the planning stages, but once I start working on anything written, it becomes a jumbled mess in my brain.  There is a broken pathway somewhere between the brain and my finger tips.  If anyone knows of a good mechanic, let me know.

Meanwhile, I’m also thinking of a way to get back into blogging.  I may not be the most skilled at writing, but I do like to write.  So anything on here that I can discuss or present for your consumption (no matter how gassy it may make you) is good for me.

Game Party (Nintendo Wii)

For about a week or two my wife clamored over wanting Game Party for the Nintendo Wii.  Picking the game up for $19.98 at Wal-Mart, we were on our way to play an awesome party game fit for up to 4 players!  Or so we thought.

Game Party is from Midway Games, makers of the popular Mortal Kombat franchise, Unreal franchise and several other popular titles.  Included on the game disc are versions of: darts, hoop shoot, skill ball, shuffleboard, air hockey, ping cup and trivia.  Of these seven games, darts, shuffle board, air hockey, ping cup and triva are multi-player.  And of those five games, only darts and triva support 4 players.  Hopefully you won’t be having many people over to your party!

Darts is a fairly straight forward game.  You are required to do a few button presses, but other than that, you awkwardly hold the bulky Wii-mote in your hand like a dark and “throw” it at the screen.  It takes some getting use to, as do all the motion controls involved in the other games, but once you figure out your angles, you’re set.  I believe up to 4 can play this one.

Hoop shoot and Skill ball are what I call, “the Chuck E. Cheese” games.  In Hoops you have to simulate tossing a ball repeatedly into a stationary hoop before time runs out.  The highest number of baskets wins you a place on the Top 20 list of players.  Same with Skill ball.  If you’re familiar with this game, it has a “lane” similar to bowling, but that ramps up toward the end to launch your ball into one of several rings, each with a different point value.  This is one of the clunky control games as your swing has to be dead on and powerful enough to launch the ball, otherwise it’s a long, slow journey watching the ball struggle up the ramp, then roll aimlessly back down.  both of these are single player, taking much of the potential fun out of the games, and making the “Top 20” scoring function just a way of seeing your name on screen.

Air Hockey is probably my favorite.  It’s simple and straight forward once you realize that it requires only small delicate motions of up, down, left and right to operate.  It’s exactly like the real game, minus you actually being hunched over the vibrating table.  2 players can enjoy this one.

Trivia is a very basic game of obscure questions that I’ve never imagined.  The player with the highest score spins a wheel with multiple catagories on it.  You’re then asked several questions and the player to select the right answer first wins the points.  About 4 or 5 questions are asked each round before taking you back to spin for another catagory.  Boring.  Very boring and sometimes slightly confusing gameplay as far as who clicked on what first and should have scored.  It seemed to figure the winner a different way each round for the two sessions we played.  I believe this one is good for 4 players.

Ping Cup.  Ladies and gentlemen … if your party is boring enough for you to whip out Ping Cup on the Wii … you have larger problems.  The video game take on the drinking game has you fumbling the Wii-mote to toss a marble or coin or something into one of numerous drinking glasses.  If you succeed, then that glass is taken away, limiting your number of chances.  If you fail … well … repeat until you pull your hair out.  2 players.

Finally, there is Shuffleboard.  At this point in the lesson, my friends, I’d like to admit that I didn’t even bother playing this game.  I’ve never played real-life shuffleboard, and after playing the other games on this collection, I didn’t feel it necessary to play this version. 

I’m no longer 100% certain what type of party these games are fit for, but they are sure to kill the fun of a sober one.  Perhaps a few beers … perhaps even some whiskey, will make the difference.  But my ruling on Game Party for the Nintendo Wii is not good.  It’s a definate trade-in the next time we visit Gamestop.  If you are a single-player gamer and enjoy basic games like darts or the Chuck E. Cheese style gameplay, then it’s probably right up your alley.  They can be fun, as long as you don’t mistake them for a real party pleasing product.  Might I recommend the free sports game pack-in that game with your Wii for that type of entertainment. 

Summer Movies!

There are several movies coming out this year that I want to see.  I’m not usually a big “movie-goer.”  I hate the fact that they charge so much, these days, to get in and see a movie and then charge an arm and a leg on top of that for any drinks or popcorn you may desire to munch on.

This year, though, I am stockpiling some cash in order to see “my” movies on the big screen.  Currently the list is:

Star Trek

Watchmen

Land of the Lost

Transformers 2

G.I. Joe

UP!

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Terminator: Salvation

Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince