That is not our plan going forward," Greenberg assured. "We are excited to bring Alien Hominid out next week; we are excited to make up for lost time."

What's Wrong with Xbox Live Arcade? news from 1UP.com

I'm not a fan of Alien Hominid. Frankly? I think it's a game custom-designed to make game designers drool over their childhoods. I haven't played it since the flash game was the buzz, but I really didn't dig it then. It's a complete throwback to arcade shooters of the 80's - single hit kills, memorizing AI movement patterns. But I'm not 12 anymore, I don't have hours to replay level 1 endlessly until it's ingrained in muscle memory. That's not a interactive game experience, it's a meditative hobby. There was a place in my childhood for such, but not anymore and if we're going to go dig "Things from the past I no longer have the patience for" up I'd really much rather dig up pencil & paper RPG's than arcade shooters.

I'll admit I actually bought Root Beer Tapper and I'm vaguely obsessed with the achievement of getting 7,000 points on level one without dying (much harder than it sounds!) I don't mind the arcade titles, but the steady diet of them from XBLA in 2007 is boring. And as everyone notes, the Wii Virtual Console is just making them look sad in terms of number of titles. Now, that's really not fair - the Wii games don't have custom soundtracks, they don't have integrated voice chat, friends list, achievements and leaderboards so it's really apples and oranges. But XBLA could be (and should be) so much more than Sherman's Wayback machine permanently set for the local Starcade.

Here's the part that I REALLY, REALLY, truly do not understand. 360 is just as predictable for shelf dates as any other console. When is GRAW 2 shipping? 3/6/2007. We've known that for months now, and it's almost certainly accurate. For all that a XBLA game may be complex, it's LESS complex than a Ubisoft Tom Clancy shooter. Why can the commercial disc releases be predicted months ahead of time, but not the download titles? I release part of that answer is the manufacturing process locks people in, but that's really a lame excuse. Pretend that the XBLA titles have the same manufacturing lead time and put them on the shelf that long. This stupid "Well, we have ten titles for the next 16 weeks and we have no idea what the hell is going on more precise than that" is sloppy and it's' unprofessional.

technorati tags:gaming, XBLA, Xbox360, AlienHominid

Blogged with Flock

So I've had Crackdown for a couple of days now. It might be short but MAN I really enjoy this game. Easily the most addictive game I've played in a while. I was showing Karin some of the things in the game and started doing the "Let me just do X and then I'll quit" thing. But then I got a new weapon and I needed to get back to a agency safehouse, but there weren't any close by that I had reclaimed, so I had to go reclaim one first . . . and so on. I find I'm doing that a lot - I say to myself "OK, let me just do this and hey - wait is that an Agility Orb over there?" and the next thing I know it's 2 AM, and I've just spent the last half hour racing up the side of a ridiculously tall tower, jumping from windowsill to windowsill.

The secret truth of Crackdown is that it's that most unpublishable of games - a superhero RPG. Admittedly you have no real character customization, but a superhero you definitely are. Last night I was cruising around in my spiffy Agency sportscar and I saw a race marker on a road that was nearby, but down a short drop from the road I was on, and then over a wall. No problem! I got out of my car, picked it UP, jumped over the wall and down to the start point. Dropped the car, hopped in and did the race. That's just effin' cool. Really recommend this game - AND it has open-ended co-op play!

I also picked up Supreme Commander, but I haven't had much time for it what with all the Crackdown-ing. It seems pretty good, and I'm very entertained with the dual-monitor support (each screen has a completely separate viewport that zoom from "whole world" down to individual units. So you can watch a map at good scale on one battle while playing on the other screen, or watch two battles simultaneously). I'm suspicious the AI cheats - I had a game where I owned ALL of the matter deposits and the AI was cranking out units way too damn fast for that sort of situation. It's possible they were using Matter Generators (which turn power (the other resource) in the game into matter) but I don't think so - they also had shield generators that use an immense amount of power.

And when did PC games take another bump up in resources? It requires *8 gig* of hard drive support. At least it came on a DVD - it's about time we stopped getting a stack of CD's for every game.

technorati tags:gaming, Crackdown, SupremeCommander

Blogged with Flock

Team 17 boss Martyn Brown says the developer is as frustrated as anyone about Worms' prolonged absence from Xbox Live Arcade, but he expects we'll see it very soon.

News - Team 17 boss explains Worms XBLA delay // Xbox 360 /// Eurogamer

Except the article doesn't really explain it. There's some sort of "Well it's tough to get through Xbox Live's certification process and Worms is a complex game" offered. But the thing is Worms isn't a complex game. You could make Worms with Flash if you were sufficiently inspired. And it's not like Team 17 is new to the world of TCR's for crying out loud.

I can vaguely see the point about XBLA titles are diversionary, not really something you spend hours in, but then again - is that true? I've spent entire evenings playing Poker, or Marble Blast Ultra. Heck, I've logged a lot of hours of Uno if you get right down to it. They are only quick diversions whey they are Paperboy.

Give me my Worms damnit! And then my Catan!

In other news I should get my copy of Crackdown tomorrow. If anybody wants to play some co-op let me know!

technorati tags:Worms, Xbox_360, LiveArcade

Blogged with Flock

Apparently now they air the Dresden Files after Battlestar Galactica - which makes much more sense to me. On the other hand BSG is 0 for 2 recently. Sunday's episode wasn't as bad as the one before that, but it wasn't good either. Hey, everyone gather 'round it's time for another episode of Maudlin Galactica! Ugh. The entire airlock plot was stupid and the whole thing felt like the writers were beating the audience with emotional 2 x 4's. "Cry Damnit! Cry! WHY WON'T YOU CRY?"

An unintended side effect of the move to Sunday nights is that it airs the night before Heroes, so it's much more likely that I might watch them both on the same night. This is not a comparison that makes BSG look good. Heroes has complex stories, solid characters, and a seasonal story arc that makes sense - all things that I thought made BSG stand out in its first season. But nowadays? BSG continues to become more Star Trek:TNG like with each passing episode. Seriously, if you missed the last two weeks episodes of BSG, what would you miss? Not a frakin' thing, that's what.

Heroes though . . . nobody can tell me they saw the end of that episode coming. Good, good stuff.

technorati tags:television, BattlestarGalactica, Heroes

This is primarily a post to myself for future Googling. It may help someone in the future, but it's not intended to be a fascinating read.

I talked Lee into getting an Airport Express because he needs to get his Xbox 360 on the internet. This was a bad move. It turns out an Airport Express doesn't bridge from wireless -> wired without being in WDS mode and Lee's router is too old to support WDS. While we were poking at it (over the phone - so I was at home) I decided to use the profiles feature on the Airport Express to try to configure mine like his. This was a worse move. I managed to put the AE in a mode where it was impossible to connect to it - requiring the old "Factory reset" trick - which trashed my saved profile. Grumble.

After some Googling about Lee and I were both convinced he needed to take his Airport Express back and get a Netgear or Linksys product. Now all I had to do was put mine back together. That turned out to be complicated and non-intuitive. If you do things wrong the Airport Express simply boots up into an unreachable alternate universe, forcing a hard reset of everything.

So, here's the working Jesternet configuration. DSL line comes into the DSL box. DSL box plugs into WAN port on the Airport Extreme (802.11g base station). Main switch plugs into LAN port on the Airport Extreme. Bunch of crap goes into the switch. At the other end of the house the Airport Express streams music to the family room and serves as a wireless repeater.

Settings for the Airport Extreme Base Station:

Airport tab: Name is set to Jesternet Base. Be sure to set the password for the box itself (via the Change Password button) Under Base station Options everything is cleared for "WAN Ethernet Port" Under AirPort Network the Name is set, Create a closed network is NOT checked. Click Change Wireless Security and set the security to WEP (can't use WPA with the Express or the Nintendo DS), enter a password. Set the encryption type to 128 bit WEP. The Channel is set to 10 and the Mode is 802.11b/g compatible (DS and PSP both need b) Under Wireless Options Multicast Rate is set to 1, and the Enable interference robustness flag is cleared.

Internet tab: Connect Using is Ethernet. TCP/IP is configured manually - with stuff given from the ISP.

Network tab: Distribute IP addresses is checked. Airport Client computers share a single IP address (using DHCP and NAT) the address range is set to 172.16.1.1Everything else is cleared.

Port Mappings tab is set accordingly - I'll document those somewhere lesss public thanks :-)

Access Control tab is blank.

WDS tab: Enable this base station as a WDS main base station. Allow wireless clients on this base station is checked. The MAC address for the Airport Express is listed

For the Airport Express

Airport tab: Name is set to Family Room. Set password and Base Station Options just like the Extreme. Under the Airport Network select "Create a Wireless Network (Home Router)" - THIS IS THE KEY BIT. Even though this is a WDS client of the Base Station it is NOT set to be a client here. If you do it will go conjure up a magical IP address that isn't reachable from the LAN and need a hard reset. Set the name to Jesternet and set all the other options to match the Extreme - except the channel is set to 10 and the Multicast is set to 2.UPDATE 3/1/07 The channel should not be set to 11, it should be set to 10 (same as the base station) Music streaming doesn't work right otherwise.

Internet tab: Connect using AirPort(WDS). Configure using DHCP. Also allow wireless client computers is checked.

Network tab: Distribute IP addresses is cleared. This greys out everything else.

Port Mapping tab: Blank

Access Control tab: Blank

WDS tab: Enable this base station as a WDS remote base station. Allow wireless clients on this base station is checked. Click the "select" button and browse for Jesternet Base.

Music tab: Enable AirTunes on this base station is checked. iTunes Speaker Name is set to "Family Room".

Whew! Never mess this up again.

Not the most interesting point I realize, but an important historical archive :-)

technorati tags:AirportExpress, networking, computer