Jeff and I broke the air-hockey puck at work yesterday. It is a somber air-hockeyless time.

It was a special lightweight triangular puck that was much more exciting to play with than the heavyweight round pucks. Bank shots become unpredictable and, truthfully, randomness is the spice of games.

The puck didn’t break immediately; it was something that occurred over a few days until the final break. We first noticed there was a problem when it sounded different. The way the table we play on is constructed, the goal “buckets” don’t retain the puck very well and, more often than not, the puck flies out of the retrieval hole across the room, rattling and bouncing all the way. We play so regularly, the sound it made as it bounced was just “the sound.” When that sound got low-pitched and hollow on one of its trips across the break room and upon examination, there was a faint crack in the plastic. Not much, but this was the beginning of the end.

We’re not the only two that lpay with this puck either, so when we found the puck yesterday, the sound was worse and there was also a seam in the sticker. The sticker was practically all that was holding it together. As we played, the sound got worse still until Jeff made a shot at my goal and it split in two pieces! The smaller chunk went right in my goal and the larger piece flew off the table.

“You get an eighth of a point! I’m counting it, but that’s all you get.” Jeff tried to protest, but I immediately fetched the larger piece and served it. He scored the rest of point and sent an email to our facilities manager:

Subject: Man Down

Tom,
        I regret to inform you that on this day during an intense match of skill and power we have suffered a casualty in the heat of battle.  I am uncertain of whom is to blame, but I will blame Steve as he is not composing the email and can not currently defend himself.

Tom is a great guy so he immediately came over and gave us hell for it. Jeff and I play nearly everyday at around the same time and Tom catches us in the break room often and jokingly tells us to get back to work. Hopefully that puck will get replaced soon – playing with those ordinary pucks is bland and not really fun.

So I’ve cancelled my WoW subscription. I knew it was going to happen. Hell, I’ve cancelled it twice before now and this is number three. In the cancellation form, there is a space for additional comments, so I decided to start writing. Apparently the form won’t accept anything over a certain character limit because every time I tried to submit the form, I got some odd behavior. (Oh believe me, I tried different browsers, toggled javascript on and off – no dice).

I figured the third-best thing is to post what I was going to send to Blizzard and Activision to Pie-Hole (with the second-best somehow getting this to their customer service department). Without further ado, the letter follows after the fold.

I play WoW very casually, and I struggle to play catch-up with my guildmates. The grind, while it has been made easier with patches in the past, is still a chore.

I am leaving WoW for Battlefield: Bad Company 2. Its online component features a leveling system as well, but is far more granular than WoW. In a single casual play session of 30-45 minutes, I can almost be guaranteed a new unlock or upgrade of some sort. Loot in WoW is technically supposed to fill this gap between levels, but at the core of WoW are simple quests: 1) Go here; 2) Kill X number of that.

Battlefield is similar in simplicity (Capture that flag), but more fun because killing foes is more than highlighting an enemy and activating an ability that might even loop automatically. WoW is simply too passive an experience for me.

I will say the art direction is phenomenal though! Massive high-fives all around for the art department. I love exploring new areas and finding little nuggets of detail tucked away off the beaten path. The dungeon-finder concept is fantastic – matching folks up across different realms ensures there is almost always a dungeon to play.

If I had to choose one thing to improve, it would be to make the individual combats more engaging. As a player, I feel removed from the action as I tell my character what to do rather than becoming immersed and feeling as though I am the one performing the actions. Possibly investigate a way to make each individual action interesting by say, play a Simon Says sequence on the keyboard, or rotate a shape into a slot, or perform a DDR-esque sequence, something! Something more than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 2, 3 – or worse: the oft-referenced “faceroll” technique.

The social aspect not-withstanding, it is a game that you can play by not actually playing it – or rather robotically going through the motions. EVE Online solved this by leveling up via time whether logged in or not. Fallout 3 (and for that matter, any recent Bethesda RPG going back to Morrowind), while not online or even multiplayer, is similar to WoW in that there is a world with zones and quests of fairly similar style. The key difference is interaction with the world, NPCs, and monsters is active, and I have a say how a sword is swung or a laser rifle fired.

I am one subscriber of millions though, and I marvel at the business Blizzard and Activision turn every day, let alone monthly. I’m sure my $14.99/month will not be missed in the grand scheme of things, but you could have it back if the game were more fun for me.

After digging a bit, I can only find links to forums on the WoW site regarding customer service. Blah. Is there a known email address I can send this to? Not that I feel I will be taken seriously, it’s the principle of the matter.

Some friends of mine play World of Warcraft and it is something in which they really get invested. If you’ve been living under a rock for the last 6 years or so, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a computer game people play online with millions of other people around the world.

Players make characters of all kinds and take them into the game to all sorts of things – I won’t expound upon them here, but if you’re curious, visit the official website. Doing things earns points called Experience Points (XP). Amass enough XP and the character earning them “levels up” in tiers and gets more powerful as well as gains access to more abilities. The game currently has 80 of these levels, so it can take a fair bit of time to get to this far.

For a quick shortcut for what the game world is like, start at Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, add more fantastic races of beings like humanoid cows with an American Indian bend, toss in a tiny bit of steampunk for what passes as high-technology. The lore upon which WoW is built upon is not the same as Lord of the Rings of course, with other computer games and books fleshing the story out to provide a rich background.

Some players role-play (RP) as part of their play and pretend to be part of the game world as a significant character. There are some servers dedicated to this play style so those who don’t wish to devote their time to this can choose not to. Take Player-vs-Player (PvP) Realms (the in-game term for server) for example. WoW is a massive war between two factions and on PvP Realms, the game greatly rewards players of opposite factions killing each other . As such, this can lead to a very competitive game experience. All’s fair in love and Warcraft (hurr!).

My friends are kind of in the middle. They play the game to get ahead and they don’t RP, but they do consume the lore and get involved in the hero characters’ stories. I still believe they take it a little more seriously than is practical though. I was told a story about how, due to a dramatic turn in the storyline of the evolving game world, they believed they wasted 75 levels of development and thought the game would permanently kill their character. They told me they literally wept and felt despair – not for the fact their character might be killed forever, but that it was completely justifiable for the game to do so because the twist of the story was about a massive betrayal my friend’s character was wrapped up in.

I don’t mean to betray my friends’ trust here. I love them, but damn. I play WoW myself, but when a dialog pops up with a quest description, I skip all the text and read the reward section. Then, just like all the other hundreds of quests I’ve started, I just hit ‘Accept Quest.’

At least that’s what I think on Microsoft’s new super-feature, the Natal (Nə-tahl). My office is kind enough to provide satellite TV in the break room, so I tuned in to E3 on G4, and saw a Microsoft mouthpiece giving a talk about it.

At first I was thinking it could never work – a pie on the sky piece of vaporware. But from what little I saw, it is an add-on device bigger than the Wii Sensor Bar with more brains. There are apparently 2 cameras to sense 3D movement as opposed to the more “traditional” one, like webcams or the EyeToy and PSEye for the PS2 and 3 respectively. Coupled with a microphone (stereo?), it can pair an audio source with a physical moving body. Neat.

I’m skeptical though, so we’ll see…

Ame and I are hosting a Dungeons & Dragons game at our place with a bunch of people that I’ve known through the years – all from my alma mater. I’ve mentioned Chad and Bobby before, but Dave and Matt and their wives have joined in as well.

I haven’t played or DM’d in awhile, so it’s a lot of fun. I’m running a 4th edition home-brew campaign and so far, the players are really liking it. Ame started off as the Dungeon Master, but I have since taken over duties and made the campaign my own.

The first week, Ame and I thought Snickers would be a big butthole and get in the way. In reality, he caused the least amount of trouble and people spilled their drinks on the floor at least three times. Eris wanted nothing to do with the whole group and sulked in the furthest corner she could find.

Since then, it’s been hard to get people together due to real life getting in the way, even when we try to hold it on Saturday. So far Ame, Chad, and Dave and his wife Traci are the core members. Matt and his wife have since dropped, not because they don’t do D&D, but they’ve moved quite far away to be practical.

This last session though was a blast: Under cover of darkness, my players infiltrated (ala Rambo: First Blood Part 2) and torched the bandit camp west of town and discovered the trapped, secret vault of treasure. Chad’s character, a druid named Elgar, brazenly walked into the main building and threw a Molotov cocktail at the guards and caught them all on fire. As that fire quickly spread, Traci’s cleric, Sam, blocked the door and wailed on them as they vainly attempted to escape.  Ame (Orianna) and Dave (Lyfe) have just discovered the vault of treasure that I’ve yet to roll up. They should hope I roll well!

These characters and players (except Chad) are all still new, so this whole bit of adventure should push them over the top to level 2. I hope they don’t find the treasure disappointing though – they are level 1 still after all. It shouldn’t too bad though, they’re all gamers (except Traci), so they should understand a level 1 treasure might not be the best, but should only get better.

Let me start by saying I love the Ratchet & Clankseries and their double-entendre subtitles for their sequels (except Deadlocked, which, if that’s some sort of freaky sex position, I don’t think I want to know), and Size Matters does not disappoint on that front - just every other front.

I finished the game in about 6 hours, there were only a handful of pea-shooter weapons that upgraded just a couple of times, the comedy “spark” was completely absent, minigames were uninspired and boring (except for the Lemmingsclone), the music repetitively and annoying, unbalanced boss-battles (I found myself tearing my hair out over copious amounts of bullshit), and individual levels that seemed truncated at best.

What happened to you Ratchet & Clank? You used to be cool…

High Impact Games? Where the hell did you come from? What happened to Insomniac? Those are the real developers of any Ratchet & Clank game of mine.

Lowest rating I think I can dole out in my rating system: Half a star out of five. Gross.

I first picked up Super Paper Mario when I bought my Wii in about April of 2007, and I’m finally done! No, It’s not an epic^epic game, but it will run about 20 hours before you’re done, and that’s only if you so some of the optional stuff, so as Mario adventures typically go, it’s got some meat to it.

I’ll be blunt, the game is slow compared to Super Mario Galaxy (a real Mario adventure in my mind). This game is more text and dialogue driven than most platformers I know, and the difficulty level is also much lower. I imagine this is the Mario game that gamers get their girlfriends that “like videogames” but have never played or heard of Battletoads. 

The game starts off pretty exciting though, and the hooks are pretty fierce at that. Running, jumping, hitting blocks – all great Mario stuff. They even put new twists on old staples like the invincibility star. In SPM, collecting this powerup makes Mario grow to fill the screen, and he becomes his 8-bit sprite from the original Super Mario Bros.. While massive, Mario can plow through any obstacle and is unstoppable as enemies bounce off and a path of destruction is left in his wake. The first boss battle against a giant dragon is fairly epic too

Then world 2 starts, and there’s nothing really “new” until world 8. Along the way, you get additional powers like the ability to shrink and enter small spaces or become paper thin and float on the wind.  Most of the puzzles in the game use these new abilities, and while some of them are clever, most of them are fairly uninspired. I feel good for finding hidden chest and items though, so there’s a sense of accomplishment there – that’s good. There are also Cards for all the enemies and characters in the game. You can use Catch Cards to ensnare the soul of an enemy and place them on a card. Possessing a card doubles the amount of damage you do to that enemy, but other than that they are useless. Even more useless though is there are hundreds of enemies with a dozen types of  goomba, so the odds of having the right card in your deck is slim unless you’ve invested gold coins in buying Catch Cards.

There’s a level-up system that I wish was implemented in more games anymore. Your score increases as you kill enemies, and when it gets high enough, leveling up increases Attack, Defense, and Hitpoints. Nothing too deep or innovative, I know, but wish action and action-like games incorporated something like this more often. Also, as a Mariogame if you hop on a string of enemies without touching the ground, you get even more points – and more points still by shaking the Wii-mote a bit to add a flourish to your bounce.

Visually, this game is very clean and clear most of the time. Some things get muddy when flipping to the 3D, but 2D looks pretty damn gorgeous. Everything looks drawn in vectors with a turtle program and an Etch-a-Sketch, and is showcased upon entering a new world: The canvas starts blank, lines draw along outlines, the backdrop props up, colors fill in like a paint bucket, and then Mario enters the scene. I simply love the presentation there.

The controls work great in the 2D plane we’re all used to, but with the ability to flip into a 3D space, things get a little tricky. So very much of the game world is designed on a 2D plane (even though most of it is built and rendered as a projection from 3D to 2D), and the directional pad is only so versatile, movement here, especially jumping, is difficult.

Sound is what you’d expect from a Mario game – a lot of boings and smacks, so not annoying to the player as they’re all well-placed and paced. If you close your eyes though, the sound could get really annoying, so it might not be the best for a mix-tape. I’m not going to knock a lot of points off for this though – this game is a colorful platformer at heart. Charles Martinet once again reprises his role as Mario, so that’s pleasant.

I glossed over it before, but the chief complaint I have about the game is the story. This stilted mass of crap belongs in a bargain-bin RPG setting, not in my platformer thankyouverymuch. The scenes are long, the text windows are small so each speaker has several dialogs to click through, and the worst part is they’re unskippable. Gross, gross, gross. The most offending piece is, there are sometimes important clues for where to go or what to do next hidden in these sections, so if you don’t pay attention, you might wander around in the hub-level aimlessly.

A close second in my beefs with this game is the puzzle scripting and level design. I’m a huge proponent of figure-eights in level design – it minimalizes the amount of back-tracking required. Off the top of my head, Jak II  for PS2 (the sequel to Jak and Daxter) did it best in my opinion, but SPM is very poor in this regard. In one of the later worlds, the game has you searching for an item of an unspecified type from an unspecified set of items. Basically a needle in a haystack that could be of any size, and when a needle is found, I don’t know if it’s the right needle. Later on in the same level, game-progression relies on you remembering a previous wrong items’ effect. I Hope you remembered a item that went in the trial- failure bin; and if you did, hope you picked up two; oh wait, you only needed one before for the trial, so I hope you remembered where in the platforming maze you got it; No? hope you like annoying mazes, twice.

When I buy I game I usually keep it, as it has some redeemable value as a game. This one is going back to a retailer’s shelf for store credit.

This week’s been kind of heavy hasn’t it? With implications of intelligence and such along with my vengeful tree-hugging, let’s lighten the mood a bit.

I’m working on my backlog of games lately. I typically don’t have a lot of time to devote to video games, or I get sucked into games that don’t have an end like Quake Live and Team Fortress 2. I’ve finished Super Paper Mario for Wii (Yes, I know it’s old), and moved on to Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters for PS2 (Yes, another old one).

I’ll have a review for Super Paper Mario coming soon, but I’m looking back and seeing what else I haven’t tackled yet in the past few years. I was briefly considering Halo 3, but why? I was pretty on-top-of-things with the whole Gears of War, so I feel like I’ve gotten my fill of AAA shooters for a while now.

I need a puzzle game, I might pick up Puzzle Quest. We’ll see…

I know this is old news, but whatever. I’ve been looking forward to this going live for months, and I’m very happy that it’s up and running. It’s still technically beta, but the core is there, and that’s what matters to me.

If you don’t know what it is, it’s Quake III Arena plus a lot of extra tweaks (namely, a game that’s actually finished) and it runs directly in your web browser. Best of all, it’s free, and funded by in-game advertising while you frag. I think the model works, and I’m glad to see it being seriously attempted by id software.

See if you can find me, or better yet: add me as a friend.

Hello [carpal tunnel], my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

I’m not an original thinker on this one (Google Image Search), but I want to make a suitable-for-framing personal take on Team Fortress 2 with female characters. There’s only one out there that’s any good, and I think I could be on par with the quality, but be thematically better.

This might take awhile, and I’m definitely going to make each individual class member full size, meaning that if I wanted to, I could make a print of just that class and be happy with its resolution. This will be my most ambitious project yet, but it is very reminiscent of something I did in high school.

I made sketches of everyone in the drumline, including myself and the directors and put them all on a shirt. It took a few retries, plenty of scanning, and laying out on a computer that could barely handle the task, but it turned out pretty awesome – and it was in glorious color! There must’ve been thirty or so people in the section, so it was no small feat to pull it all together, but I think this will be even bigger and better because:

1. Just like webcomics, nobody knows who your friends are on the Internet, so leave them out of your comic; make new characters or use pre-existing characters that people know
2. Hi-resolution baby! Each of the class members will be printable at 14 inches tall and look nice. The drumline shirt only had to look good on a t-shirt at a couple feet away
3. My computer doesn’t suck nuts!

I’ll post my progress as time permits, hopefully I’ll have at least one to show off this week!