I Already Typed Up My X '07 Experience Once

And I don't feel like typing it again.

So instead, I direct you to this.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Games, Gaming Industry, Guitar Hero, Journalism, Rock Band

Downtown

The only thing of note today was going with the Wife further into the downtown core to visit a magazine that she has done some work for recently, and which I may also end up possibly contributing to. Other than that, a pretty quiet day, with more Persona 3.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!

Oh, you bastard you are DONE.

Hanger 18, on Expert, as of today. I have once again achieved that state of happiness so intense that violent nausea is a side-effect.

Next up...

And this bird you cannot CHANGE!!

Labels: Guitar Hero

X '07

I am tired. I will write about X '07 on Friday when I make a similar post for GameAxis. In the meantime...

A Ferrari was available for spins around the block. I took one. He was accelerating to over 100 km an hour in seconds. I thought I was going to die.

More pictures and comments when I make my proper post about this on Friday.

And yes, I played Rock Band. Multiple times.

And it was BEYOND awesome.

Labels: Games, Gaming Industry, Journalism

Monday At Home

A little bit of writing here and there, but mostly, today is the day I prepare myself for my fateful visit with Dark Scourge of Gaming, Microsoft. They have an event for the press called "X '07" and I got an invite to go down and check it out on the western edge of downtown. Time to keep my bile and cynicism about the company in check and play nice-nice with the PR folks while scarfing down free food and taking their swag.

More on that tomorrow after I've returned.

Labels: Gaming Industry, Journalism

Sunday At Home

Persona 3 continues to dominate the PS3, although I finally also got around to watching Underworld: Evolution and boy am I glad that this thing only cost 1/5 of a postage stamp. On the one hand, it's definitely a nice show case of just what high def is capable of. The images are obscenely crisp, with tons of detail visible everywhere, and a quick comparison of the images as replayed in the standard definition video extras--compared with their HD source in the movie proper--is pretty distinct difference. This is definitely the kind of movie that would probably do well as a "reference film" in that you show it off on your TV to people whenever you want to explain what high definition video can do for an image.

On the other hand, the movie itself is pretty bland. It is by no means a terrible movie, the production values are through the roof, the visual effects are passable and the performances never really go sour... and yet for all that, the movie failed to really engage me or pull me in. It had some really interesting ideas--as did the first film--which suffered from being too crowded in with other ideas. At times it almost felt like the film really should been two or even three separate movies, taking more time to fully develop the themes and characters. On the one hand, you had a continuation of the revelations made at the end of the first movie, and this idea in itself, of a hybrid vampire/werewolf, could have carried an entire film exploring the neat consequences of such an idea. On the other hand, there was also a heavy component of "lore," exploring the origins of the vampires and the werewolves, and this, too, should have been explored in a movie of its own, rather than having the two try to collide head on, but instead missing, and settling for an uneasy jostling between each other from one minute to the next, which never really resolved either idea in a satisfactory manner.

Kate Beckinsale continues to do her slinky, Lara Croft-with-fangs gimmick and is definitely easy to watch, but aside from a few emotional moments that don't really feel "earned" she doesn't much to do in this movie other than look attractively dangerous--or dangerously attractive--and shoot guns. It's probably just a personal prejudice on my part, but I think the film probably could have benefited from more character development and fewer set-piece action sequences.

Labels: Games, Movies

Rain & Noodles

Saturday was a pleasant, quiet affair with a little shopping trip into downtown so the Wife could stock up on some art related materials. It rained and we walked in it, and I had to remind myself that here, when it rains, it only lasts for an hour or so, and is not a torrential downpour that renders umbrellas useless as the wind blows it in from the side. We ate at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown that had food good enough for even the Wife to approve of. Apparently she was amazed at the quality of the Cantonese food there which, while certainly available in Singapore at similar quality, would not have cost us the $12+ our entire meal totaled up to between the two of us. Then again, she had a good feeling about the place the second she stepped in realized that the service was horrible and smells coming from the kitchen were hideous. This, it would seem, is the sign of quality food in Asia.

Also, I finally managed to get up to 93% on Hanger 18, which, at current progression, means I should actually complete the song sometime after the next American President is sworn in. Or, possibly never, if the potential vortex that is Rock Band sucks me in, never to return to Guitar Hero.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Guitar Hero, Mean Streets Of Toronto, My Life

The Opposite Of Excitement

In that laundry was done, articles were written and forums were read.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts

Sheriffs In Town

Being originally from Edmonton and living on the north side of the city (where there were many, MANY stables) it was not unusual on summer evenings to be walking around, slurpee in hand, and notice a few folks slowly trotting down the street on horses.

I just didn't expect to see the same in Toronto, and I sure didn't expect it to be the police. But, it would seem, Toronto has actually maintained a Mounted Unit, and today, on Queen Street West (which was also drowned out by teens screaming at Someone Famous at the MuchMusic Building, I don't know who) I actually saw a couple of cops riding their horses in a leisurely fashion. They even jumped into action when some guy tried to beat the traffic lights while making a left turn, and somehow, incredibly, failed to notice that two police officers on freakin' horseback were watching him do it. The cops issued a ticket, or at least, one did. The other cop sort of tried to pretend nothing was happening while her horse urinated on the street. For several minutes.

Aside from that, we did a bit of shopping for art supplies, ate at a new favorite restaurant in the neighborhood, and then settled down to a bit of work writing reviews and playing Persona 3. I have many, MANY things to say about this game, but I'll wait until I'm done.

Labels: Mean Streets Of Toronto

Yay For Free Movies

Today I was pleasantly surprised when I went down to the post office--with slip in hand--to pick up a package that was delivered which I unsurprisingly slept through. I wasn't expecting anything at the time, but when I got home and opened it up, it turned out be five free Blu-Ray movies from that offer the Blu-Ray Disc Association is having to promote their hopeful pretender to DVD's throne. Part of the deal was that each of the five movies came from a particular "tier" where various selections (I think it was by studio) were available, so here's what I ended up with:

My first--and only--theatrical viewing of Species occurred in the mid-90's when I was living for a year in Thailand. The Thais have a strange way of censoring movies. They don't make cuts, they merely go for the film reel itself and block out objectionable portions, since they didn't seem to have much of a ratings system at the time. As a result, viewers in a theater with scenes of nudity can expect to see either a) black bits of "paint" or "marker" blocking out the naughty bits, or b) something akin to vaseline smeared on the screen to blur everything out. When I saw Species, it was the latter.

So now here, once again is the movie, in High Def glory, and I picked it largely because Species has... in the immortal words of the South Park credits, "That chick from Species." Only this time without vaseline.


This one is kind of a downer for me in light of recent events. I initially picked up Black Rain because it was the only film on the list that was directed by Ridley Scott. Now it turns out that it's about to become a collector's item. As of two days ago, Paramount, the studio that owns the film, has "defected" over to being HD-DVD exclusive, and will no longer be producing movies in Blu-Ray. This is unfortunate, because with them on the "Blue Side" the format war was actually shaping up to be pretty one-sided in favor of Blu-Ray and many were predicting that Christmas might be a clear cut end to it. Now, thanks to a rumored $150 million "incentive" from Microsoft, they are dragging out the format war, confusing consumers, and making this disc a soon to be rare, out of print collector's item. I am not happy about the callous way Microsoft is making consumers suffer so they can "save us" from the format war by introducing downloadable content via Xbox Live and Windows Vista, but what can ya' do...

I'd seen the first Underworld and while it was an uneven and not amazing film, it had some slick cinematography, some very interesting ideas, and, of course, Kate Beckinsale running around in a latex bodice, dual-wielding a pair of pistols with near infinite supply of bullets. Ever since I'd heard of the sequel, there had been a curious part of me that actually wanted to watch it, but didn't want to buy it. And every time I went down to the video store to rent movies in Singapore, I kept finding other films that I had a stronger preference for watching, so Underworld: Evolution continued evade my semi-apathetic curiosity. Now, for the price of a postage stamp, I can safely justify a "purchase" so I can watch this relatively guilt-free in the "I spent money on this" department, even though the film student in me is still probably drooping its head in shame at this vacuous, guilty pleasure.

This movie on the other hand, I am EXTREMELY happy with. Being a fan of most of Tim Burton's work (I'm still trying to pretend Planet of the Apes never happened) and the amazingly tedious work that Henry Selick had done for The Nightmare Before Christmas, this kind of animation is a treasure to me. It's kind of like a high-budget, much more polished version of the Christmas specials I used to watch by Rankin/Bass as a kid such as The Year Without a Santa Claus and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. We'd rented this film, loved it and wanted it, but for some reason they were never selling the Region 1 version of the DVD in Singapore. Now however, we've got it in High-Def which is a much better proposition anyhow, so I guess it all worked out in the end. The only thing I am left wondering about now is just how many more films is Tim Burton going to stick Helena Bonham-Carter in.

And finally there's this.

Because it was either this or Pearl Harbor.

Labels: Movies, Neat-O Gadgetry

Foldin', Foldin', Foldin', Get Them Proteins Foldin'...

Up until recently, whenever I felt the need to take the PS3 online, I would unplug the LAN cable from my computer and plug it into the PS3, a necessity to do things like surf the net on the TV, check out the Playstation Store for neat new stuff, and download things.

Now, however, the PS3 finally has its own dedicated cable and as a result, I've been taking advantage of one of the more unique features of the system. It's called "Folding@Home" and what it does is... calculate possible configurations for folding proteins.

It's actually a project by the Stanford University Chemistry Department, and it's a fiendishly elegant solution to using a supercomputer to get your work done. They call it distributed computing. Rather than simply get a whole boatload of proteins that need calculation and piling it onto one super computer and say "Call me when you're done," Folding@Home actually distributes "work units" (which is to say, a particular protein molecule) to PS3 owners that have activated the program. The PS3 then quietly goes through all the calculations required for its assigned work unit and when it's done, it sends the information back up to Stanford U, and gets another to work on.

The cool bit about this is that the "screen saver" that gives you something to look at when those numbers are being crunched shows you the particular protein you are helping to demystify, as well as globe with points of light. Every point of light on the globe is another PS3 owner that is "donating computation" time to the cause, helping scientists to figure out much, MUCH faster a better understanding of the protein molecules that are involved in things like Alzheimer's disease and certain forms of cancer.

To me, if this is going to help fight off hideous diseases one day, seems like its worth it to leave the console on for a few hours a day...

Labels: Gaming Industry, Neat-O Gadgetry

Breaking The Karmic Cycle

Persona 3 has finally arrived. I will not talk about it. Instead tonight's meditation is on the completion of the very weird, very dark, very Buddhist Digital Devil Saga 2.

The game is a direct continuation of DDS1, and while I like the game a lot, it is far from perfect. This is the sort of game that I played largely for the story, because mechanically, as typical Japanese Role Playing Game, it didn't do anything particularly new or innovative. Often it fell into the usual trap that many JRPGs do, of turning into a seemingly never-ending "grind fest" towards the ends if you were really serious about maximizing everything in the game, which I, quite obsessively, do. The first game was about a group (or "tribe") of warriors that found themselves battling other groups in a city. They were there for one reason and one reason alone; kill all opposition to ascend a central tower in the city and enter the state of nirvana. Through a series of extremely complicated turns of plot, the group finds themselves on Earth in DDS2, except that it's not our Earth of today, it is a wasteland, where the sun itself now turns people to stone if they are exposed to its rays, and the survivors live in a shielded dome city, trying to figure out how to keep humanity from the verge of extinction. From the story gets into some very dark and apocalyptic themes, looking at what happens when people are just waiting for the end of the world, and what that does to the psyche.

As per usual with an Atlus game, religious and philosophical references/iconography abound, and the spells and unique, turn-based combat system of exploiting elemental weaknesses have all carried over from previous games like Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne and Devil Summoner. But this game was meant to be played by people who played DDS1, and if you haven't, DDS2 will make very little sense as it continues almost directly after the events of the first. What I like a lot about the game is that it goes into some very uncomfortable places with regard to its characterization. In a world of RPGs where the stereotype is "orphan/amnesiac with good heart and special destiny saves the world and gets the girl" DDS2 shows us that sometimes even good people can do horrible things, and not because they thought they were doing the right thing, so much as they had a moment of weakness and acted out of selfishness, which is something that they NEED to take responsibility for and make amends. If not in this life, then the next, since the game is surprisingly Buddhist in its themes.

The ending of game, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey is cryptic and mystical in nature, but since this game is about the dilemma of the soul and how that can impact the world at large, you kind'a have to expect that. All in all, while the mechanics of the game aren't new, the pacing of it--especially towards the end--can be a bit off, the story itself is still very strong if you're willing to break away from the usual tropes of the genre. If I were reviewing the game for a magazine, I'd probably give it a 7.3 or something to that effect. The gameplay isn't rock solid, but the story goes a long way towards making it a worthwhile game. Perhaps not a game you NEED to play, but, like certain movies, books and comics, it has a unique, acquired taste for those that can break away from the mainstream.

Labels: Games, RPGs

More Comics

We were kind of on the fence about whether to descend to the Toronto Comic Art Festival site again, but in the end we decided it was worth it after all and made a second visit. This time we made a much more appreciable dent in the wallet.

If you click on the picture to the left, you'll get a bigger shot of it. It's a panel from NextWave: Agents of H.A.T.E. written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Suart Immonen. This time around, we actually brought our hardcover trade paperback (and picked up volume 2 while we were there ) and got both of them signed with a little doodle courtesy of Stuart. I am very happy about this as I can't remember the last time a comic made me laugh out loud so much... and for whatever reason, Warren Ellis hates French Canadians. Go figure. Strangely enough, when I asked Stuart about how much input he has into the creation of the comic, he seemed kind of torn about it. It would seem that during the entire run so far, he and Warren Ellis have exchanged maybe a total of 20 e-mails, and whenever he asked Ellis about how to approach a particular page or panel, the usual answer was "whatever way you think is best," and after a while, since that was the only answer he was getting, he stopped writing e-mails and just concentrated on doing the book.

I really have no words to describe just how hilariously psychotic this series is. Ellis has taken the Marvel universe and just attacked with a Great Sword Of Snark (+5 against Avengers Fans) that digs into every single thing about the Marvel universe that comic fans may have ever debated. The fact that makes extra-dimensional beings from the darkest reaches of pain and nightmare big fans of the Suicide Girls website is also so unbelievably awesome that if you punch the very concept itself, it explodes, which is par for course with NextWave.

This is the cover to one of my favorite Vertigo series, Fables, the revisionist, post-modern update to fair tale characters by Bill Willingham. James Jean is the cover artist and work is absolutely gorgeous. We were determined to get something signed by him this time, and so showed up good and early to a) be the first ones to actually form the line for his table and b) choose which table he was to sit at when we asked the Beguiling folks where he was to sit and they said, "You tell us, we'll put the sign up."

James Jean surprised the hell out of us by... not being white. At first I thought maybe some kind of volunteer or assistant was getting the table ready for him when an Asian guy showed up. But when he sat down, looked at us expectantly and said "Hi!" I had to reorder my reality for a brief moment from James Jean=White Anglosaxon Protestant type to James Jean=Asian guy with glasses. The confusion got settled when he explained that he was from Taiwan, and decided to change his last name to something that would be a little more palatable to Western ears. Still, my first volume of Fables is now signed by him, and I am a happy camper.

Our next bit of loot was a surprise purchase by the Wife. A local artist by the name of Jeff LeMire had created a comic in 2005 called Lost Dogs which won a Xeric award, which is something put out by the Xeric Foundation, a group composed of, amongst other people, Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The award goes out to promising new artists to help them publish their work and get into the industry. Our friend, Sonny Liew, was one such winner a few years back. Jeff ended up being a VERY personable, humble and friendly guy, and it was nice that the slower Sunday vibe allowed to just stand around and talk to him about various things. Unsurprisingly, he showed an interest in the Wife's artwork when she mentioned she was "in the biz" and encouraged her to keep pursuing it and self-publish if necessary, contrary to her own opinion that because she is a) a girl and b) wholly devoid of talent, she stands no chance in the industry. With any luck we'll be able to see the guy around more often, and perhaps within a year or two, it will the Wife sitting at one of these tables, signing and doodling for others.

The other acquisition, which was not signed, was Wimbledon Green, by Seth, Yet Another Canadian Artist, who has been winning awards and making a lot of waves in the Literati crowd that deign to read "graphic novels," but not comics.

I have to admit, aside from having seen his work on more recent compilations of the Peanuts strip, I haven't delved too deeply into his work, but he's another the artist The Wife has been aware of for some time, so hopefully this will give me an excuse to get a better grip on the kinds of stories he tells.

All in all TCAF has been a pretty big hit with us; the more laid back, "it's all about the artists and not the merchandise" vibe of the event made it enormously fun. And it's just a blast to be surrounded by so many comics creators. I have a feeling now that even if we ever do get a chance to go to the San Diego Comic Con, somehow, the cozier, more intimate feel of TCAF is going to keep this event at the top of our list. As far as Paradise ComicCon and others go, this is definitely the event to beat in our books. Although I still can't quite believe that James Jean isn't white. That'll take me a few years to digest.

Tomorrow, either my thoughts on Digital Devil Saga 2 (which I don't feel like writing today after writing this) or thoughts on Persona 3 which should be delivered to us by Monday afternoon.

Labels: Comics, Creating Comics, Games, RPGs

Of Comics & Cowboys

Today ended up being a long but pleasant day.

The afternoon was spent cruising down over to the University of Toronto campus where one of the old and currently under renovation halls was taken over by the Toronto Comic Arts Festival. While we did not achieve everything that we set out to do, it was for the most part a success. Our failures come in the form of completely forgetting that Stuart Immonen (penciller for the utterly hilarious Next Wave: Agents of H.A.T.E.) was there and bringing anything for him to sign. The other failure was missing out on James Jean (cover artist for Fables) who was in the middle of a panel discussion when we showed up, and the other miss was Paul Pope (creator of 100%) who we spectacularly failed to locate.

On the other hand, we managed to meet with Evan Dorkin, who has done completely psychotic Milk & Cheese comic ("When dairy products go bad!") and got him to not only sign our trade paperback, we came away with a Milk & Cheese fridge magnet. This is, of course, awesome. The other success was meeting Bryan Lee O'Malley, creator of local comic sensation Scott Pilgrim, and I finally got to ask him whether he liked moving from Toronto to Nova Scotia, since we were contemplating a Halifax move ourselves last year. It turns out he doesn't and will probably be leaving the province, so maybe we made the right choice after all in settling down here. I picked up the third book in the Scott Pilgrim series and got him to sign my first. We also ran into the Old Friend who was hanging out with her girlfriend, who, in turn was dating a guy that does a webcomic called Butternut Squash and seduced his lady love with a heart full of love and plastic guitar. The song? Freebird. The level? Medium. I give him credit for trying, but dude, Medium... Come on...

After that, we went to another part of the Annex to attend the Wife's Friend's 30th birthday party which had, wait for it... A COWBOY THEME! People were dressed as desperadoes and there was pinata in the shape of a cactus. Being the big Party Animal that I am, I immediately ran from the crowd in the backyard and retreated to the basement, there, to find (what in retrospect should been obvious) that someone had brought Guitar Hero II to the party.

As you may expect, it was all over for me at that point.

I am once again amazed at the continuing hesitation of people to play at Expert. I think I may have also accidentally killed the more innocent, "Hey, let's just have fun" buzz that the other party-goers were enjoying with GH2. I strapped on the guitar, warmed up with Sweet Child O' Mine and noted that the buttons were a bit stiffer than my hugely worn out Gibson SG at home, but got into it after a bad start and then after that went through a few favorites like Messenger In A Bottle, Carry on my Wayward Son and Monkeywrench at which point there were a lot of "Holy shit..."s, "What the hell level is he playing?!" and "HOW THE FUCK DID HE DO THAT?!"

Once I was done, fewer people were willing to approach the game, and some folks did attempt Expert, usually getting shut out within 2-4% of the song's beginning. I told them I wasn't that good. They told me to shut the hell up. One guy, upon leaving the party, put his hand on my shoulder and said "Dude... YOU are my Guitar Hero."

As befits the basement, this is where we found the Nerd/Geek contingent and immediately scored Respect Points with whole "She draws comics, he reviews videogames" thing. It is still baffling to me that people would now actually consider this cool, and that so, by extension, are we. Much talk of games, anime, illustration and comics ensued and I think these guys now have a far more heavily distorted and favorable view of our lives than we actually deserve.

Also we finally finished Digital Devil Saga 2, today, but I'll write more about that properly tomorrow.

Labels: Comics, Friends, Games, Guitar Hero, Mean Streets Of Toronto, My Life

New Neighbor, More Writing

It would appear that it will once again become necessary to make the distinction between Downstairs Neighbors and Upstairs Neighbor as we get another tenant moving into the house. This one is a mortal threat to anyone that's not a geek however, as not only is he a graduate student studying film, he also studies games.

Needless to say, when he accepted an invitation to a cup of coffee, the nerd quotient in the room rose to dangerously high, fission-worthy levels as the conversation turned towards everything from the bolder use of philosophy in recent first person shooters to the merits of full motion videogames such as Night Trap and Sewer Shark in the Sega Genesis era.

And... He has a Playstation 2 with Guitar Hero and a guitar.

The Wife now finds herself in the uncomfortable position of either having to scream at me, "YOU SUUUUUUUUUUCK!" when I screw up Hanger 18 for the umpteenth time, or tromping upstairs, knocking on the door and saying "YOU SUUUUUUUUUCK!" when the Uptairs Neighbor does similar, just directly overhead and muffled by the floorboards.

Or she can simply shout it at the both of us when he brings his plastic toy guitar down, which is pretty much a given at this point.

Tomorrow. Comics! The Toronto Comic Arts Festival begins just a few blocks down south at the University of Toronto campus and we go to prostrate ourselves before our ink fingered gods.

And now, back to writing an article about the Wii making the "hardcore gamer" an endangered species...

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Guitar Hero, My Life

Thursday Is Playstation Store Day

That meaning the virtual store available to PS3 users with an internet connection gets updated with shiny new toys. So apart from checking out the new additions, doing a bit of prep work for the second season of the animated series I once wrote in Singapore, and a little bit more grinding away in preparation for the penultimate confrontation in Digital Devil Saga 2.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Neat-O Gadgetry

Ho Hum

Did some shopping around the neighborhood, hung out with neighbor, played some Digital Devil Saga 2. That is all.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts

Quiet, Boring

Many e-mails were sent, a little bit of article research was done, and more DDS2 was played.

Just a few more days now and this thing will be done...

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Games, RPGs, Writing

No More Sweating To Death

A nice, relatively cooler day led to finishing up a comic script, and grinding the hell out of Digital Devil Saga 2. Level 99 has been achieved, seeking out Real Ultimate Power in terms of final skills/abilities to follow.

Also, I've been notified that The Essay is just about ready to be unleashed on the world. More on that soon-ish.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Games, RPGs, Writing

Sunday Is For Grinding

As Digital Devil Saga 2 continues to approach levels of near omnipotence. Such is the innate appeal of the RPG; you put in the time, you are guaranteed success.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, RPGs

Saturday With Scandal

An innocent "Hey, what's up" phone call with the Old Friend turned into a sudden, mandatory visit when I mentioned that I was messing around with the guilty pleasure that is Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's. She motored on down and in very, VERY short order, I was reminded that she happened to be a huge Patty Smyth fan.

The enormous smile on her face as she played--and sang--along with the tune was priceless.

She has apparently made sure that her other friends are introduced to the majesty that is Guitar Hero, and is now going to make sure they are also aware that the music of their childhood is now available for shredding in Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert flavors. I think if Rock Band's wireless Fender Strat actually manages to work and they can get it compatible with the previous PS2 GH games, I may just make my old PS2 and GH controller a present to her. With the addition, of course, of GH80's.

In other news regarding women with games, the Wife handedly played the remainder of Rogue Galaxy (The Pokemon-esque Instectron Tournament) and the game has now been played as much as it possibly can, with no corner ignored, no stone unturned, and it can finally be retired to the shelf. At this point I was trying to decide which of our unfinished games to hurl into the PS3 now when I remembered the excellent (and deeply twisted) Digital Devil Saga 2 had yet to be completed.

Wow. What a difference. As soon as a good ol' fashioned turn-based RPG was in the machine, the Wife was all over it like white on rice. Of course, it helps that the story is very, VERY weird and dark, two of her favorite qualities in... well, anything, really. In a way, I suppose it's good that Persona 3 (a game she really, REALLY wants to play) got delayed from its initial July release, because she's playing DDS2 hardcore, man. Once again, she is proving her organizational far outweigh mine by coming up with "optimal skillsets" for outfitting the various characters with certain spells, defenses and abilities based on what monsters are currently roaming the area. I gotta' hand it to her, in this marriage I may be the reflex guy who's better at games that involve climbing walls, unleashing combat combos and generally attacking things, but when it comes to planning and exploiting the potential of a character's abilities, she's definitely the heavyweight.

Yes, I know. The fact that we actually balance each other off with different gaming styles is indeed sad and pathetic, but I've made peace with that.

Labels: Friends, Games, Guitar Hero

PS3 Finally Smiles

Today our Playstation 3 finally lived up to at least half of its intended purpose. A quick check of the mail revealed that our first Blu-Ray movie arrived, Hellboy. Sony's "trojan horse" plan seems to certainly be working on us, since my rationale is, "Well, since we have a high-def TV, and a console that plays Blu-Ray movies, we may as well get Blu-Ray discs now, right?" Damn you, Sony...

It feels right, though. I'm probably anthropomorphizing far too much, but I imagine our shiny new black box must have been feeling--at the very least--jilted, over having been taken out, hooked up, given a proper HDMI cable for high-def images and then... used exclusively to watch standard definition DVDs and play last generation PS2 games. Today, I could almost feel a throb of relief surge though the thing as it powered up and actually detected a Blu-Ray disc which it was more than happy to play. The only downer is that not all the extras from the 3 disc DVD edition made it to this Blu-Ray version, which is puzzling to me in the extreme when you look at the math. The normal DVD has 4.7GB of storage space, 8.5 if you're talking about a dual layer disc. Blu-Rays have... 25GB on a single and 50GB on a double layer. Go figure.

To its credit, there IS a difference between watching a normal DVD, and watching a "BD" as some people call them. Whether that difference is hugely noticeable, or worth the initial expenditure is something that is arguable, and based largely on the personal preferences (or more specifically, nit-pickiness) of the viewer, but the improvement is there. At a practical level, watching Hellboy in its BD incarnation versus a DVD original is improved in two major areas; sharpness and color. Sharpness comes through mostly in the form of details that are suddenly quite clearly noticeable. Features of skin, fabric on clothing, detailing on carvings, walls, etc... all of these things are noticeably clearer and more obvious to see. I wouldn't say it's a gigantic leap in quality, definitely not as large as the immediate improvement I noticed between watching a VHS tape versus a DVD, but when you see the picture, you see the difference. Where the BD clearly wins out over the DVD however, is in "macro-blocking" department. On some transfers from film to a digital source like DVD, the space limitations of a DVD mean that sometimes corners have to be cut to ensure a film fits on the disc (or, in the case of Lord of the Rings, split into multiple discs). One of the side effects of this is that occasionally the hawk-eyed viewer will notice that details can look "blocky" or "pixellated" similar to what you sometimes see when watching videos on Youtube. Here's an extreme example:

What you see on the left happens as a result of the "compression" technique. Up until now DVDs by their space and so have had to have video images run through a special kind of software known as a "codec" or compressor/decompressor. This means that, in order to save space, the codec will make a "judgement call" on which parts of the image are less of a priority than others, and devote higher image quality/resolution to the pertinent elements of the image. The much larger capacity of the BD means that this isn't so much of an issue and movies can now be stored at a resolution and image quality approximating the digital masters made at "full resolution" that subsequent copies for distribution are made from.

Then, there's the color department and here things are even more apparent. One of the things that most people will notice when watching a DVD--if their picky about their image quality, that is--is an effect known as "banding." Banding is what happens when an image goes through very subtle changes in the gradation of color. As you can see from the example on the left, in the case of clouds, this means that a digital image with lower resolution cannot precisely mimic the smooth shift in color, and very clear lines of color become quickly apparent. DVDs have always been noticeable for this, particularly in dark scenes, where "blobs" of darkness would be noticeable within the darkness itself. Once again, the BD eliminates this completely and the colors blend naturally.

Speaking of which, the colors are also somewhat richer than before. Hellboy's red is more vibrant, Liz Sherman's blue pyrokinetic flames are bright and dynamic and everything has nicer saturation of color to it than what I've seen previously.

That still brings up the question of whether it's worth it. Honestly, I don't know. In our case, we have the damn PS3 there anyway, and moving over into high definition was an inevitability. Most home theater aficionados would be horrified to hear that we haven't bothered with a surround sound system, as a) that's pretty expensive and b) I'm just not that huge a perfectionist when it comes to audio. As long as I can hear my dialog, music and explosions, I'm a happy camper, and multi-channel sound is a nice--but ultimately unnecessary--bonus to me. It really all depends on how much this matters to you. If you're the sort of person that needs the absolute best, is willing to spend hundreds of dollars just on a set of audio/video cables alone, and bursts into tears if a room isn't properly rigged for ideal acoustic balance, then there simply is no choice; it just doesn't get any better than High-Def currently.

However, if you're the sort of person that values the content far more than the actual fidelity of said content, there's absolutely no reason to start upgrading your equipment. Especially considering that the prices on stand-alone Blu-Ray and HD-DVD players is astronomical right now. In a few years, as with DVD, those prices will drop and become much affordable, especially when one or the other format dies as Sony/Apple (Blu-Ray) and Toshiba/Microsoft (HD-DVD) fight out their little war of succession in a second visitation to the Betamax versus VHS format war of the 70's and 80's. Except that this time, Sony, with Blu-Ray seems to be winning.

Of course, the other excuse for getting a Blu-Ray player now (at least in the form of a PS3) is if your PS2 has died, and you know Rock Band is coming out in November...

Labels: Movies, Neat-O Gadgetry

Deeper Into Downtown

A little bit of writing during the day (and some "bug chess" in Rogue Galaxy, don't ask) gave way to me visiting the Old Friend at her new digs in the heart of downtown for a bit of talk and drink. As always, it was fun, and now, having crawled back home in the wee hours of the morning, I'm hittin' the sack.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, Friends, Mean Streets Of Toronto, My Life

Shopping & Failing

Not much going on today except making the usual run around the neighborhood Bathurst and Bloor for necessities such as coffee beans from Papua New Guinea, assorted meats, and other groceries vital to sustaining a virtual hermitage of writing and playing games.

Speaking of which, Guitar Hero II Encore: Rocks the 80's continues to kick me around. I managed to finish ONE song on the final tier of Expert level, Police Truck by the Dead Kennedys, and the others continue to be far too much for me. It's just a matter of practice, but the relatively new thing that GH80's introduces to the mix is its expected reliance on a staple of 80's rock; power chords. There's a LOT more three button chords going on in various combos that my fingers aren't used to, and it's this lack of nimbleness in the power chord department that keeps tripping me up during faster passages.

Labels: Guitar Hero, Mean Streets Of Toronto

Tuesday Means Sucking. Badly

On the one hand today proved to be a better day for tackling Play With Me on Hard, and after a few more much, much more focused attempts, I passed it and cruised into Expert. I also finished off Easy to get my ego up, and started on Medium before returning back to Expert.

As to be expected, there were a few hiccups here and there, but nothing too unmanageable, with a second or third try, and the songs started getting really, really FUN (as they always seem to) once I got to Expert and it felt eerily like I really was playing these tunes out thanks the complexity of the "note arrangements" at this level. With any luck, the kids will remember this Krokus version of Ballroom Blitz and not the Tia Carrera cover that forever butchered the song in the 90's from the first Wayne's World movie.

But all good things come to an end, and my steady progress was brought to a grinding halt in the final tier, with Judas Priest's Electric Eye, the very first song on the tier.

Oh well... That's what practice mode is for. That or else I could just go back to Guitar Hero II and get my ass handed to me once again by Megadeth's Hanger 18...

Labels: Guitar Hero

Semi-Productive Monday

The Essay is done. I may have to make a few changes to it, but hopefully it will be okay.

What is not okay is the fact that Nuno Bettencourt's (of Extreme fame, y'know, More Than Words?) insane guitar solos in Play With Me continue to kick my ass. ON HARD. After several attempts, the best I can manage is 93% completion at which point Bettencourt's genius skills with the guitar prove to be too much for me. I thought Hanger 18 was giving me trouble. Good God, this song is going to kill me if I can actually get up to on Expert level...

Labels: Games, Guitar Hero, Writing

Sunday In The Burbs

Today, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever, we hopped over to the somewhat more northern part of Toronto and into the edge of suburbia to pay a visit to Yorkdale Mall. Initially it was a hypothetical visit for the Wife to check out some stylists and in the end we ended up going on a minor shopping spree instead. Here are the latest acquisitions:

A few years, back in Singapore, I was hanging out with a friend at his then girlfriend's-eventually-wife's home when he introduced us to a fake documentary I'd heard quite a bit about called Walking With Dinosaurs. Figuring that this would be good for a laugh, since we were convinced that the only way dinosaurs could be interesting were as killing machines a la Jurassic Park we popped in the DVD, fully prepared to laugh our way through one episode, then get on with our lives. A few hours and one sunrise later, the sixth and final episode played out, and we all sat there dumbstruck with the same thought, "Damn. That was awesome."

Since then, I've been a fan of the series in all its incarnations, even indoctrinating the Wife to the series when she admitted to being a closet dino-freak. So it was with great pleasure while strolling through the HMV (and resisting the urge to buy Blu-Ray discs) that I stumbled across Prehistoric Park, the latest in the series, which takes the stunningly original concept, "What if we could make Jurassic Park work and the dinos don't run around killing everybody?" The end result ends up being an incredibly fascinating and entertaining "dramatic-documentary" although the actual educational value of the series could probably be called into question. Still, I think that for today's kids, this is a mind blowing series, because the one thing I really loved about the previous series, Chased By Dinosaurs was the fact that by sticking this Steve Irwin style naturalist (in this case, Nigel Marven who appears in this series as well) into an environment with dinosaurs and modern devices such as jeeps, one gets a much, MUCH clearer idea of the scale of these animals, and they really take it a new level in this series. Once you completely ignore the fact that they've ignored the difficulty of traveling back in time to retrieve dinosaurs back to the 21st century, there are a lot of interesting moments and insights in the program, which, of course, are all educated guesses on the part of paleontologists.

One of the more interesting things about watching the Walking With series evolve is how the parameters of familiar dinosaurs can change as new theories emerge. In the very first series, the T-Rex was portrayed as a solitary, aggressive animal, but now, several years later, popular theory suggests that T-Rexes were actually pack animals and Prehistoric Park reflects this. All in all, I imagine this series totally enrages anyone that actually knows anything about dinosaurs, but for the rest of us, it's enormously fun, even if its educational value is questionable.

The other purchase was inevitable, though in this case the massive delay in acquiring it came as a result of trusting Amazon to deliver it in time, when instead, they chose to delay the shipping by several days. However, thanks to a visit to EB Games, I am now in possession of my Guitar Hero 80's fix.

It is, admittedly a guilty pleasure. This is an expansion pack, pure and simple. Fewer songs than GHII, fewer venues, fewer characters and some surprising technical issues exist. I was mighty surprised to see some actualy choppy framerates appear in the game when the stroboscopic lightshows got too trippy. It's obvious that this product was rushed.

And yet, despite that, I am enjoying it immensely. This game will be far more fun to anyone that actually grew up in the 80's than the 90's generation. Despite the fact that I have more skill with Guitar Hero and tore through the songs--at least on Hard level--at a surprisingly fast clip, I still enjoy the ride. The actual songs may not be as technically complex as some of the 60's and 70's and 90's tunes that have graced previous versions of the game, but the melodies have a simplicity and appeal to them that outshines their "technical failings." And I AM the demographic this game was squarely aimed at. I grew up with many of these songs, they were burned into my brain, and guitars making these particular sounds seem to have fallen out of favor, so it's nice to hear them and, in that video-game-y way, play them again. Turning Japanese was as fun as I thought it would be, and .38 Special's Hold On Loosely has some classic 80's guitar riffing in it that makes me very happy.

Labels: Games, Guitar Hero, Mean Streets Of Toronto

Cool Down

The weather, thankfully, broke today and it was a much more reasonable 26 degrees outside for the majority of the day. I actually managed to finish the articles for GameAxis for the month today, and in celebration, here's the list of new songs that are currently confirmed for release on Guitar Hero III:

• "3's and 7's"-Queens of the Stone Age
• "Barracuda"-Heart
• "Cherub Rock"-Smashing Pumpkins
• "Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll"-Blue Oyster Cult
• "Cult of Personality"-Living Colour
• "Even Flow"-Pearl Jam"
• "Knights of Cydonia"-Muse
• "La Grange"-ZZ Top
• "Lay Down"-Priestess
• "The Metal"-Tenacious D
• "Miss Murder"-AFI
• "Mississippi Quen"-Mountain
• "My Name is Jonas"-Weezer
• "The Number of the Beast"-Iron Maiden
• "One"-Metallica
• "Paint it Black"-The Rolling Stones
• "Paranoid"-Black Sabbath
• "Raining Blood"-Slayer
• "Reptilia"-The Strokes
• "Rock and Roll All Nite"-Kiss
• "Rock You Like a Hurricane"-Scorpions
• "Sabotage"-Beastie Boys
• "School's Out"-Alice Cooper
• "She Builds Quick Machines"-Velvet Revolver
• "Slow Ride"-Foghat
• "Suck My Kiss"-Red Hot Chili Peppers
• "Through the Fire and Flames"-DragonForce
• "Welcome to the Jungle"-Guns N' Roses

The ones in bold are master tracks. And two of the songs, Paranoia and Mississippi Queen are also on Rock Band, which is VERY confusing to me. But I gotta' admit, that is one good looking setlist so far...

Labels: Guitar Hero, My Life, Rock Band, Writing

Another Dull Friday

Still trying to escape the heat. Wrote more GameAxis stuff, retreated to People's Diner for dinner, wrote more stuff.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, My Life

Slumming In The Mall

Today we actually retreated to the Eaton Centre mall just to hang out in air conditioning and buy a few more fans for the apartment. I was stunned and amazed when the Wife offered that maybe we should buy an actual PS3 game to see the new console in action and when I looked at offerings at the store, actually declined; there just isn't anything really worth playing to me on the shelves at the moment. That's a bad sign when the games you're looking forward to playing on your PS3 are PS2 games like Persona 3. Or Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80's, if they ever get around to figuring out how to make the guitar work on the damn thing...

Labels: Games, Guitar Hero, Mean Streets Of Toronto, My Life

Another Hot Day

In which not much was done except writing... an essay. Can't talk about it much yet, but when it's done hopefully I'll be able to mention it again.

Labels: Boring And Insipid Posts, My Life, Writing