Free Candy For Everyone

The Wii has become an astoundingly successful console. Through all the hype, I still hadn’t managed to actually play with it, save for a quick hands-on at E3 back in 2006. My brother recently bought one so I went over and gave it a whirl. I have to say I stand by my initial statement - the Wii is not for me.

We played Tennis and Bowling on Wii Sports, Super Smash Bros Brawl, and then Super Mario Galaxy. Did I have fun? Sure, I was smiling and enjoying it. But I have a bad right shoulder from too many years using a mouse at the wrong height. It creaks and cracks and aches if I move it funny. Using the Wii-mote definitely counted as moving it funny. I was snapcracklepopping all over and eventually I actually switched the Wii-mote to my left hand to give my shoulder a little break. That’s not fun!

We switched over the Smash Bros and that’s probably the game I had the most fun with. It’s also the least Wii game of them all. It doesn’t make use of the motion sensors or anything at all. And amusingly, I am terrible at the game. I’ve played previous versions of it at parties before and I never quite seem to get the hang of it. Today was no different. I was pushing and mashing buttons but wins and losses seemed to have little to do with my actions. Playing as Pikachu always cracks me up, however, so I give this one extra points for style. Oh, and the speaker on the controller is ingenious. Whenever you select a character before a match they vocalize out of there, so you’d get a little “pika!” when you chose him. Totally cute. But fun for all of 30 minutes and I’m done.

Lastly was the great hope, Super Mario Galaxy. But I’ll let you in on a little secret - I have terrible 3D spatial awareness. I used to love platform games. The old school Super Mario games were awesome! But then these things went 3D and my confusion began. I’d misjudge jumps, I’d got confused about which way I was supposed to go. I’d wrestle with the camera, I’d get disoriented. It was all terrible. Well, I put platform games down for a while and haven’t touched any in ages. Played some of the new Ratchet and Clank but that was totally doable for me. Linear, clear paths, no crazy jumping puzzles or wonky camera work. I liked that one. Super Mario Galaxy was made to confuse me. The controls are fine, I get the pointing and the shaking (though this bothered my shoulder a bit and I kept tending to not shake it firmly enough). But having Little Prince-esque tiny planetoids that you walk on upside down made me keep tilting my head. My brother was actually laughing at how bad I was at the game. I just can’t quite judge where something is sometimes - is it on the ground in front of me or off the ground above me? Dunno, I can’t judge whatever cues they’re using to differentiate all that well.

All in all I had a nice time playing the games but I went home with any desire to buy a Wii killed. I don’t want to play those games alone at home. They’re little social games to share with friends, but when I game I want hours of solo entertainment and I don’t want to have to worry about injuring myself! Verdict, not for me.

For many long months, I have been the only source of Sims 3 information on the internet. Totally crazy, I know, but I saw a talk at an AI conference and apparently they weren’t really ready for that info to go to the press. I’m not really the press, so there you go, my info was out there for some of you to find.

Today the news embargo was lifted and the official site went live. In addition there are previews at 1up, IGN, and a little bit on Gamespot. I’m sure there’s more info out there but I saw enough to know that it looks kinda interesting and that it’s not coming out for a good long while. One of the sites has the date as 12/15/2009. I can’t even begin to think that far into the future of my game purchasing plans!

I never really played the Sims 2. I got it when it first came out and it blue-screened my PC. I tried it about 3 times then gave up forever. I was kinda busy at the time. When the first Sims came out I actually played it a lot. I got really really into it for a few weeks. Maybe months even. Then I realized I was dirty and neglecting my real friends in favor of keeping my sim clean and happy. That was the end of that.

Back in 2001 I had the experience of doing some work on the path finding system for the Sims 2. I don’t know if the code I wrote for Maxis ever ended up in the shipping project but it was a great learning experience. I got to work on getting the Sims to navigate around their houses better and to deal with imminent collisions with each other as well. It was quite challenging but rather cool. But that was way early in development and I’m sure that they changed things a lot before actually shipping it out the door.

Anyways, we’ll see what more info they reveal. For now I guess everyone will have many other outlets for their Sims 3 curiosity!

New websites comes along all the time. My friends call out “hey, I’ve got free invites for the newest hottest site, who wants?” and I’m always jumping on to see what it is. Most of them I can’t remember a day after I signed up. But the most recent one I’m playing with has gotten my attention. It’s called blippr and the tagline is “Radically Short Ratings and Reviews.” The idea is that people rate books, movies, music and video games with “blips” - 160 character or less mini-reviews.

Ever since I first started browsing the internet I’ve been enthralled by ratings websites. I remember the first recommendation website I found, way back in college. You could rate movies and it would suggest other movies you might like! I spent hours rating things on it, just stars, but I loved it. I think I’ve since gone though and rated hundreds of items on dozens of websites. I mostly use Amazon at this point and have given up on the rest. But this one seemed fun so I’m giving it a try.

There isn’t really enough data yet to give you recommendations yet, so I’ve just been having fun rating things. You rate on a 4 point scale - don’t like, whatever, like it, love it. The final score for the item is some sort of average of everyone’s ratings, but it’s fun to read what people have to say. The recommendations come in by the fact that it’s also a social network site. You can follow people you tend to agree with. You can also agree or disagree with any single blip. This information is compiled to give you recommendations.

I’m finding a lot of joy out of crafting the perfect 160 character blip. How can I say what I want in a concise and interesting way? Sometimes I get to the limit and go back deleting and rewording to get my point across. It’s fun!

It’s still in beta so you’ll need an invite, of course. Email me if you want one, I still have a few. Things I’d like to see - maybe some sort of authority rating based on how many people have agreed with you or disagreed. I’d also hope that the different types of media have separate recommendation scales. I find that while I may agree with people in regards to movies and books, my music taste is vastly different. I really doubt they’ll be able to recommend a music album for me based on what movies I like.

Overall, it’s fun. I find myself popping over there and reviewing at least one or two items a day. We’ll see how long they keep me interested!

There’s a new preview and web doc up on Yahoo with more info on the game I’m working on, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. Go check it out.

I completed my playthrough of Mass Effect this weekend. Total logged time played, 35 hours and 19 minutes. I did almost every side quest in the game. Well, at least all the ones I found. When I was done I only had about 2 collection quests I hadn’t quite managed to complete.

I have to say I changed my opinion on what I loved and hated a bit as I put more time into the game. I definitely got better at combat. I still hate the Mako. And I realized that there’s a NORTH arrow on the minimap, so it’s really quite possible to use it for navigation if you keep your eye on that.

I was a bit annoyed because I didn’t get some achievements I was expecting to get. There are achievements for playing through the most of the game with each of the squad members, and I swear I played through almost exclusively with two members. But right at the start, I was trying different ones out. Apparently, it’s a mission count thing, not a time played thing, because I probably used the members I had for 30 hours, but I didn’t get the achievements. Oh well, what can you do?

I’m still not quite done with the game, I started it up with a new main character, since I played as a woman the first time I was curious to see how it played as a man. I know that it’s the same, but I wanted to hear the dialogue, pick the “dark side” and be a renegade instead of a paragon. At least for a little while. And I also wanted to try out a different character class. So I’ll come back and give some more thoughts (if anyone can bear more thoughts on this game I’ve already written several essays about) once I’m really truly done.