One Man Star Wars Trilogy

Last night Karin and I went to San Francisco to see One Man Star Wars Trilogy. I was pretty sure I would enjoy it of course, and I thought Karin would but that's a dicier proposition. I'm happy to report that it is very funny and she enjoyed it throughly. It's surprisingly faithful to the movies (he didn't actually do Greedo so I can't say who shot first), but has enough sly digs at all the cheesiness to carry it. And when he gets up to Kenobi's "What I told you was true, from a certain point of view." he elaborates on it with information from Revenge of the Sith - "I cut off his arm. And his legs. And then he fell into a river of lava. So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view."

Charles Ross is a very talented actor and mime - he can really carry Chewbacca's vocalizations and Yoda's motions well. His AT-AT and AT-ST were impressive - those are images that are graven on my brain and his evocation was as note-perfect as I can imagine a human body can get (including the ridiculous Ewok fights from Jedi.) Jabba pretty much brought the house down - he had to pause for a moment because of laughter - although I personally thought his Nien Nunb was funnier but you have to be a geek to even know who that is (he's the goofy guy with the huge jowls and ears who copiloted the Falcon during the battle at the end of Jedi).

The show is in San Francisco for another couple of weeks, and if you can get there I recommend it. It's right off of Union Square - you can park there in the underground garage, get some dinner, and see the show for a very nice evening out.


technorati tags:, , ,

Blogged with Flock

Read more

Good Job Amazon!

Musical Fountain.png

I'm used to Amazon's recommendations being really bad, but this seemed ridiculous. For one, I already own this cat water fountain (which I bought through Amazon), and I've bought filters for it in the past through Amazon. What, does Amazon reckon each cat needs their own? For two, what's up with it being a "Recommendation in Music"? It makes splashing sounds, but it's pretty damn minimal for "music". Amazon is never going to get itself straight until it groks that sometimes I buy things for other people. That's why the Electric Company thing is on there - Karin wanted some Electric Company DVD's a while back (rainy day indoor recess fodder). The last few times I've logged into Amazon it's been pretty convinced that I either want a Perl book or Electric Company DVD's. Maybe some Muppets? How about JavaScript? C'mon Mr. Bipolar guy! Buy something. Feed a brain half - we don't care which one. Most of my purchases are for me so they ought to be able to identify the core gameplayer/geek/programmer and throw out the odd thing that doesn't jibe. What's even worse is that I bought the DVD's from Karin's Wish List. You'd think that would be a hint that it's not for me. And yes, I'm aware that I could fine-tune what Amazon "remembers" about my purchases. I'm not sure why I would spend the time to help them market to me. Besides, I get more amusement from watching their algorithms try to keep up. "Wait. Does he or does he not like children's music? I just don't get it!"

technorati tags:

Blogged with Flock

Read more

Alien Hominid? Blargh

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:, , ,

Blogged with Flock

Read more

Crackdown

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:, ,

Blogged with Flock

Read more