Indigo Prophecy: Enjoyable Experiment

Well, according to an in-game progress indicator, I'm 23% of the way through the narrative, and while that's probably not as far as I'd like to be before sounding off on it, I can't really think of anything else to talk about at the moment. So, for anyone living under a rock for the last couple of weeks, Indigo Prophecy is a innovative new game in which you play a man who's committed a grisly murder in a New York diner and who has no idea why he did so, feeling as if he was not in control of his actions. According to its creator, it is an experiment in interactive storytelling, serving as evidence that a game can have both a good story and enjoyable gameplay without sacrificing one over the other. So, you take control of all of the major players (including both the killer and the detectives trying to stop him) and move the plot forward by your own actions. In fact, the plot can change according not only to your choices, but also your failures, when most games would simply stop. I just recently got control of one of the detectives, who was using a composite sketching program to draw the killer from a witnesses' testimony. I finished to the best of my ability and had the witness commit to the drawing, and was then told by the game that it looked nothing like the main character (about which I was a little angry, actually), so I'm guessing that the police will have a harder time identifying him when I'm playing as him again later. But, since this is a game that encourages multiple playthroughs to see different branches of the story, I just shrugged it off and moved on.

The game gives you control over these characters using a fun and intuitive interface that tasks the left analog stick with moving and the right analog stick with interacting with your environment via context-sensitive movements. Want to have a cup of coffee? Drag your right stick out and around in a counter-clockwise motion to pour the cup, then pull it up to your lips to drink. Change you mind 1/2-way through? Stop pulling it up and he'll sit the coffee back down without having any. This interface is extended to NPC interactions by giving you a choice of conversation topics (represented by a sometimes vague one or two words) which you pick from by pushing the right stick in the indicated direction.

This interface would kind of bog down during intense action, though, so the game presents a different interface for action sequences. These sequences proceed through a choreographed set of movements, and give you onscreen prompts for how to perform those movements using both sticks in conjunction, represented by a pair of indicators (one for each stick), each consisting of 4 coloured directional possibilities. About to get run over by a car? The indicators on the screen light up and tell you to press both sticks to the right in order to dive out of the way. Failure to perform such movements correctly might result in everything from stumbling or missing a punch to, well, getting hit by a car, which would probably be a game over. The required movements are generally pretty intuitive, and ramp up in complexity as the task itself gets more complex. For instance, playing the guitar well is a bit more complicated than diving out of the way of a car.

So, you might be thinking that all of this fighting and car-diving sounds pretty stressful. Well, you'd be right. In fact, each of your characters has a stress meter that goes up or down according to their actions. Feeling tense? Have a cup o' joe, go to the washroom, or put on some tunes to shed a bit of tension. I have yet to see anything clearly result from my stress level, as I've been doing a good job of keeping my characters calm, but the instruction booklet claims that if your character gets depressed enough, they may kill themselves, which would likely be game over. The fun part is that you, as the player, can get pretty stressed too, and the game seems to try and stress you out as best it can. Waking up in the middle of the night with all of the doors and windows open after you closed them is pretty stressful both to you and your character. During the first sequence, after you do your dirty deed, you have to dispose of the evidence and escape, but after a while the screen splits and you see the cop at the bar start to get up and head to the bathroom, which results in panic and usually mistakes. Similarly, if, during an action sequence, you screw up, you start to panic, and more screw-ups result.

One thing that might not be immediately evident when you start the game is that there is a significant supernatural component to the story. Your main character manifests strange powers, and, during an interesting day on the job (he's an IT guy at a bank), everything goes crazy and the supernatural stuff makes itself front and centre. Since that point, I feel that the game's taken on a bit of a Silent Hill feeling, where I open every door with the fear of what kind of terrifying hellscape I'll find waiting for me on the other side (although these fears have been largely unfounded thus far). I'm not quite sold on all of this stuff yet, but I'm curious to see where it all goes.

The only real criticism I have of the game thus far is the hidden bonuses. Throughout the game, there are hidden cards that give you bonus points which you can use to unlock bonus feature outside the main game, like "making of" videos and character artwork. While a cute idea, it's yet another annoying thing for me to collect (which I was hoping to find respite from with this game), and I find it serves to kind of remove me from the narrative and remind me that I'm playing a game, which is unwelcome. When I show up to meet my brother at the park, I shouldn't have to go traipsing along side trails to look for cards before approaching him.

Also, it might be worth mentioning that I had a bad glitch early on, when the camera got stuck outside the diner in which you start and my game then froze, but I've had no problems since, so I'm hoping it was a one-time problem. Other than that, it's been a fun ride thus far, and I'm going to go play some more right now.

2FAQ || !2FAQ

To kick off the latest in a series of "I feel old" posts: time was, FAQs of any kind that pertained to video games were always pretty scarce (note: as it applies to video games, the definition of FAQ has expanded to include pretty much any cheat/hint/walkthrough document, as opposed to strictly lists of Frequently Asked Questions). If you wanted help with a video game, you either called a friend (I received a lot of such calls growing up), or scanned the newsstand for a video game magazine containing strategies for the title you were playing and brought it home for $5-$10. That meant that if you were stuck (either in regards to gameplay or the narrative) you generally had to get unstuck on your own. This bred a much more determined kind of gamer than we have today. If you couldn't beat those damn birds in Ninja Gaiden, guess what? You either gave up, or you just kept trying. Back in the day, you didn't beat Shadowgate unless you had an excess of both persistence and free time, because if there was a puzzle you couldn't surpass, you just beat your head against the wall until an idea fell out. So, although most games required a lot of time and effort to beat, the sense of accomplishment when you finally did so was far greater than I get from anything today.

That was before the internet came along and changed everything (although there was a brief period of two or three years where printed strategy guides sold very well). These days, if you're having a problem, the collective input of everyone who's played the game is at your fingertips. So, essentially, noone has to think about anything anymore. Forget about how to beat a tough boss or how to progress the story-- soon after a game comes out, you can generally find dozens of forum posts along the lines of "how do I jump?" from people who are too lazy to even read the goddamn instruction booklet. And the instruction booklets these days don't even require immersion in water (not as many people are going to get that reference as I want to, I'll wager)! So, as a crochety old-school gamer, my choice seems clear: stay away from FAQs, so as both to maintain my cred and to heighten my own enjoyment. If only things were that simple.

For, you see, as mentioned in my previous post, I'm driven to obtain every bell and whistle in every game that I play, and I also don't have enough time to do it. And FAQs provide the perfect solution to both problems, whispering sweet nothings in my ear and tempting me to take the easy way out. But I just can't bring myself to do it. I make exceptions when I'm playing with other people, since all of my friends get incredibly bored when exposed to the least of my usual thoroughness (in what generally passes for recreation when I'm alone), so I check FAQs when in the company of others rather than tap on every wall and revisit every area ad nauseum. The rest of the time, though, there's a resource just sitting there that would serve to lessen my gaming problems, and I refuse to let myself use it.

In FAQt (sorry), I'd rather waste even more time writing a FAQ myself, since that serves to further inflate my own ego, and the large majority of FAQs out there are really quite awful. Generally one of the first things I do when I finish a game is to go read the largest/most complete FAQs that are available and e-mail the writer about any inconsistencies or errors, as well as any new things I've discovered. The reactions range from gratitude to childish name-calling, but I can usually guess what reaction I'll get in advance based upon the FAQ itself. Then my next stop is the GameFAQs forums, where I read through all of the posts currently there and try and answer any outstanding questions to the best of my ability. Again, this has resulted in everything from verbal sparring with a 10-year-old to exchanging e-mails with a housewife from Vermont.

I really wish that I was willing to make use of the same resource that I'm willing to provide, but it just makes me feel dirty. If I read a FAQ, I'm making a concession to the "you can't beat games without a FAQ these days" crowd, who I fervently disagree with. It's really tempting sometimes, though. Many games like to include time-sensitive easter eggs, which are the bane of my existence. Like the original Lunar, where I had to revisit every area and talk to every NPC in the ENTIRE GAMEWORLD after every plot advancement, for fear of missing something. Stuff like that is the reason I play games the way I do. Ideally, every game would be like the Metroid games or the modern Castlevanias, with tons of cleverly hidden secrets that can still be found right up until the end boss is defeated, so that players needn't worry about missing anything. But, alas, that isn't the case, and until it is, I'll be the guy obsessively tapping on every wall three times, while the kid down the street just glances at his computer screen and moves on.

From Recreation to Chore-- A Rare Window into Jordan

Note: Although this post is definitely about video games, it's much more about me, and I've written it so that in-depth video game knowledge isn't really necessary.

I've always loved RPGs. I still remember my first love-- Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System. As I child, whenever we visited our family in Chipman, I used to run over and wake my cousin Shane earlier than he probably would have liked and make him play it in front of me. I don't even think that I had the skills/skillz to play it at the time, but I could have watched him play for hours, absorbed in the sci-fi/fantasy world that the game presented, so different from the contentless platformers like Mario that I had been exposed to before then.

From there, I spent some quality time with various Ultima games for Commodore 64, which were very punishing, and not nearly as pretty (black and white first-person wireframe dungeons), and it always degenerated into trying to steal all the best equipment from a store and getting slaughtered by the town guards in the attempt.

But my first real affair of substance was with Dragon Warrior for the Nintendo Entertainment System. I bought it second-hand from a friend in Oromocto (getting video games was much harder back then, and usually required ordering from a Consumers Distributing catalogue and waiting for weeks for the game to arrive-- in addition to that, many games came out in Canada years after the US, and sometimes not at all, requiring trips across the border to buy them-- my mother got both Final Fantasy III and Secret of Mana for me in this way), and I (not to mention my cousin John and even his sister, in what was probably her first and last RPG) played the hell out of it. Like most RPGs at the time, it was long, difficult, and required mind-numbing level/money raising through repeated random encounters (I still fondly remember killing slimes with a bamboo pole in hopes of raising funds for a copper sword, or killing gold golems later in the games to collect their bounty), and this was compounded by my own unreasonable thoroughness and caution (two traits that I still bring to my RPGs today, although I become less cautious with each passing year). This was only the first of countless RPGs that John watched me play for hours from our childhood all of the way through until high school-- I'd have gone crazy long ago in his place. I'd feel worse if I hadn't lost hours of my own life watching him destroy his controller during repeated attempts to put Ninja Gaidens 1-3 in their place.

While Dragon Warrior was fun, it was but a tryst when compared to my love affair with the masterpiece that was Final Fantasy II (Final Fantasy IV in Japan) for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. That game grabbed ahold and never let go. It looked beautiful, and had a large and unique cast of playable characters that rotated in and out of the party as dictated by the twists and turns of the story (something that I wish more modern RPGs did). The plot seems both cliche and convoluted now, but at the time I was spellbound at every turn: from the game's start, when you, the dark knight, steal a magical crystal from a village of mystics and then are duped into (or tasked with in the original Japanese) burning down a village of innocent people; through amnesia, betrayal (just who's side is Kain on, anyway?), and death (god bless that crazy Tellah and his spoony curses); through your own redemption, as the village from which you stole the crystal at the game's beginning helps you to leave your history as a dark knight behind and you become a paladin; and up until your final confrontation in the bowels of the moon with the man who turns out to be your brother, and the 1/2 hour long ending that follows. God dammit, I want to play that game again now. You know what, I think I will. Even though I've already beaten the thing a dozen times, which is unprecedented for me, since I rarely have time to play the same game twice, and especially one with as little replay value as that one. When people ask me what my favorite video game ever is, I've got to remember to stop saying Symphony of the Night and start saying Final Fantasy II.

To get back on topic: from these humble beginnings, my RPG obsession grew. It's pretty much dictated my entire life since. It taught me to read, developed my imagination, and developed my problem-solving and organizational skills. Hell, I remember that when I needed to tell left from right as I child, I used to close my eyes, mentally turn myself around and picture myself in front of my upstairs television, and remember the fact that Erdrick's token from Dragon Warrior was in the right half of the swamp. It was the genesis of my love of science fiction (Phantasy Star) and fantasy (pretty much everything else), which dominates my bookshelves. It was the genesis of my love of video games themselves, since I was never as enamoured before finding out the kind of storytelling that they were capable of. It was the genesis of my career path, since a love of video games grew into a love of PCs (and countless hours wasted on text-based Multi-User Dungeons, or "MUDs"), and a half abandoned dream of making video games led to UNB Computer Science. The art style, which I could not recognize for what it was at the time, was the genesis of my love of Japanese animation, and ultimately all aspects of Japanese culture. So, yeah, I'm not exaggerating when I say this-- pretty much everything that I am and that I do owes itself to RPGs.

But good lord do I want to stop playing them. What used to be magical and wonderful has become boring, punishing, time-consuming, and ultimately unrewarding. RPGs just keep getting longer, prettier, shallower, and, most importantly, more numerous with each passing year. I just don't have time for it anymore, especially given that I don't enjoy it anymore. My primary time-sink and supposed recreational activity has become a chore, as I slog through game after mind-numbing game, intent on finding every goddamn last bell and whistle along the way. Every month or so, when I finish one, I do genuinely enjoy starting the next one, since it's fresh and exciting. That excitement is short-lived, though, and long gone when I'm still playing the same fucking game a month later because they're all too goddamn long.

Also, every now and then, I actually let myself play something short and fun that's not an RPG. I can't describe how good that feels, to actually play a video game and enjoy it-- I feel like a kid again. The last such game was Katamri Damashii-- simple, crazy, distinctly Japanese, and pure unadulterated amusement. It was such a breath of fresh air. I'm trying to allow myself diversions like this more often-- I'm planning on picking up both Indigo Prophecy and Shadow of the Colossus over the next month, both of which are by all accounts very innovative and artful. And I'm hoping I might get Ico from Stefan for my upcoming birthday or for Christmas *wink*, the previous game from the Shadow of the Colossus team that I got to play but never got the chance to spend quality time with.

But I just keep buying RPGs. If I were to stop buying video games altogether right now and just play the ones I have, it would take me two or more years to finish them all, and that's if I spent the entirety of those two years without a job. This is not an exaggeration. It is physically impossible for me to ever catch up with my video game buying. My queue just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and I keep getting more and more frustrated with the industry and with myself. But I can't stop. I'm a stubborn man, a man who hates change, and I just can't bring myself to abandon my first love, a love that has been so instrumental in making me the man I am today, for better or for worse. At least I can take solace in the fact that the single-player RPG will probably cease to exist altogether in a few years as multiplayer RPGs (which I don't play) replace them entirely.

I Am An Interview Machine

That is all.

[As an aside, and in the interests of keeping today's post count at 3, this article linked by Tycho that discusses what ideas might be driving Nintendo's development efforts is quite interesting for anyone with the fortitude to read it all. Personally, I ate it up.]

One Step Forward, Three Steps Backward-- The Price of a Revolution

This didn't occur to me when I first saw the Revolution controller (nor, evidently, to anyone else, since I've seen no discussion on this matter), since the revelation kind of threw me for a loop and sent all other thoughts spiraling right out of my head, but I just recently reconciled that controller with what we already know about the system. Specifically, I'm talking about the impact of the controller's design on the backwards compatibility (NES, SNES, and N64) that Nintendo has already announced that the system will support, which is a big selling point for me. Since it's designed to essentially become an NES controller when you turn it sideways, there are no problems there, but it's two buttons short of the classic SNES controller (A, B, X, Y, L, R, start, and select), even with the extra two buttons on the fore of the analog attachment, and it's a far cry from the oft-maligned (unfairly, IMO) N64 controller. Since it wouldn't be cost-effective to redesign all of those old games to take advantage of the new controller (although we might see a bit of this, if for no more reason than to show 3rd-party publishers what can be done), they'll probably just be ported or emulated, and it seems obvious to me that we'll be seeing at least two more attachments in addition to the analog stick for certain: an SNES controller and an N64 controller (although, they might just release these as independantly operating devices, since it would be kind of obnoxious to leave the functionless Revolution controller hanging from them). I hope that they'll be fairly priced, but given Nintendo's track record with such things (just ask anyone who ever tried to play Crystal Chronicles, or anyone who bought any of Nintendo's many crazy NES accessories, for that matter), I wouldn't hold my breath.

P.S. I really wish I could get into the habit of posting on a more consistant basis instead of these bursts of activity. Perhaps having a 9-5 job again would help in that regard.

Too Many Parentheses (Seriously), Not Enough Sleep

So, I tried going to bed earlier for a few days, in anticipation of the Backbone information session, and failed miserably, dragging myself out of bed after only 2-3 hours of sleep (on a side note, I shouldn't have gone, because it was very interesting and made me want to make video games for a living, a dream I thought I had abandoned years ago when I decided to go to UNB instead of Digipen). With that in mind, I knew I wouldn't be able to get turned around in time for today's interview with DoT (which is distressing, since I'm used to being able to sleep whatever hours I choose from day to day), and I didn't want to look tired, so I took Aiden's advice and spent the last couple of days staying up later and later, which comes to me easily. So, I got up today (well, yesterday, now) at 9PM, and should have no problem staying up until late this afternoon, well after my morning interview. In fact, I may keep staying up later and later for the next few days until I can get back on a normal (well, maybe a little later than normal) sleep schedule. I've been having trouble scheduling my meals lately (I cooked myself frozen fish, fries, and nuggets yesterday morning at 8AM for my supper), but today I'm keeping almost the exact hours I did when I worked nights at Walmart (it occurs to me that these long awkward bracketed tangents are kind of the precursors to embedded hyperlinks, albeit more distracting and less optional), so I'm using that as a frame of reference.

Wow, that first paragraph is one giant parenthetical trainwreck. I've changed the title of this post accordingly. Let's see how paragraph number two goes (well, ignoring this one). Crap. That doesn't bode well...

Anyway, I'm generally not nervous about interviews, since I'm an interview machine, but DoT's sure trying their damndest. I have a one hour test which I don't know the content of (I'm presuming it consists of IT questions, but it could easily be some kind of HR profiling stuff), and it's on the 4th floor of King's Place, a complex that I've set foot in only once and that I thought was only 2 floors, and a place so inconveniently located that I'll likely have to park in the nearby parking garage, which I've never done before. Then I have a BBI, or behaviour-based interview, which is a fancy was of saying questions along the lines of: "Describe an instance in your past where you had a coworker named Corry who talks too much and tell us how you dealt with it." While these kinds of questions are certainly common, I've never had an interview focused on them specifically, and I've also been told that I'll need to identify someone who can corroborate each of my answers, so that I can't make up lies about how Craig stole my stapler I guess. I'd be surprised if they actually bothered to confirm any answers, instead hoping that the possibility will be enough to keep candidates honest. Finally, I really don't have much else on my plate at the moment, since the job openings seemed to have dried up over the last few weeks, and I'm officially living off my credit card, so I need a job fast, which means I need this to go well. In any case, I'm sure the nervousness will pass once I get my interview clothes on and get into interview mode. Well, time to browse the DoT website. Wish me luck.

P.S. Everyone should watch "My Name Is Earl", the new NBC comedy about a hick starring Jason Lee of Mallrats fame. Also, it's followed by The Office, starring Steve Carell, which, while not as good as the British original, is still very funny and isn't being given a fair shake. And while I'm at it, everyone should watch Arrested Development too, which began its 3rd season this week without missing a beat.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Spoiler Free)

I'm going to make this one short since I have to get up in the morning tomorrow and I should have gone to bed hours ago instead of watching Advent Children.

[Fanboy fawning]
Wow. Tycho's right: that's an hour and a half of total fanservice. It takes a while to get going, but once it does, it doesn't slow down until it's over. Just scene after scene of badass fights, badass CG, and total disregard for the laws of physics. I played that game over a decade ago, and even though it's the game that single-handedly brought RPGs to the mainstream (well, the mainstream then anyway-- the stream's gotten a lot wider since) and helped sell a lot of Playstations, I barely remember anything about it. All I know is that I suddenly really want to play it again. However, I'm probably better off just pining for it, since whenever I look at screenshots now, it looks old and ugly. They have cubes for hands for christ's sake. I feel old.

In any case, as it say, it's quite good. I barely remember any of the characters, and I still quite enjoyed it, so I heartily recommend it to everyone who likes CG and/or Matrix-style fighting, regardless of whether or not you played FFVII. And anyone who's played Kingdom Hearts will recognize at least a few of the characters.
[/Fanboy fawning]

Nintendo, Please Stop Terrifying Me

Well, Nintendo has finally revealed their new controller for Revolution. Without further preamble (click on either image for a closer look):

So, um, yeah. There you have it. The top picture shows the standard interface, while the bottom picture shows it with one of what will supposedly be many possible attachments, with this specific attachment being meant to offer a more traditional console experience. What the standard controller essentially is is a TV remote/light gun. Nintendo wants non-gamers to be comfortable with the controller, so they shaped it like a TV controller and added the sensor on the front so that some games can be controlled with only one hand and by moving the controller around. Uses suggested by their promo video include playing fishing games by making realistic rod motions with the controller, or making Mario jump by waving the tip of the controller up.

Nintendo also claims that they want it to set the new standard for console FPS, using the analog attachment for head rotation, and the TV remote part for moving (the D-pad) and shooting (point and click). It certainly sounds better than what we have now, but only time will tell. It seems odd that they'd make a point of that at a Japanese press conference, since FPSs are very unpopular in Japan, but *shrug*.

It's wireless, clearly, and the system will support multiplayer with 4 of them, with that small bank of 4 blue lights at the bottom to indicate the communication channel that each is on. They will support force feedback, and, of course, they come in several different colours. The two buttons near the bottom of the controller would clearly be difficult to get your thumb on normally, but that's not what they're for. If you turn the controller sideways and abandon the sensor on the front, you essentially have a classic (albeit elongated) NES controller.

Nintendo did a very good job of keeping this thing under wraps. I've heard all kinds of rumours about the Revolution, with the most prevalent being interactive holography (asinine) and gyroscopic technology, and I've seeing lots of doctored photos. But nothing came close to this. Microsoft could learn a thing or two from Nintendo yet, it would seem, since they historically have trouble keeping the public in the dark.

I'd be lying if I said I was sold. Part of me is terrified that this will be the final nail in the Nintendo coffin (as a console manufacturer at least). But I had similar fears about the DS, and it's doing very well as of late, and it scared me more than this does. And either way, I'll be buying one. There's no use pretending otherwise-- it'll have Mario, it'll have Zelda, and so I'll have to buy it.

Anyone looking for more info/media can go here: http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/09/15/news_6133335.html

I Hate PC FPSs

I'm aware that prevailing opinion among most gamers is that First-Person Shooters are at their best on PC, and that trying to play them on consoles with a controller is difficult and not nearly as intuitive. Well, I disagree. The reason that people feel this way is because FPS used to be a PC-only genre, showing up on consoles only in the post-16 bit generations, and everyone got used to playing them on their PCs. Well, I didn't (aside from a bit of time with demos of Wolfenstein and Doom), because I've always hated FPSs. Until I played Goldeneye for N64.

I played the hell out of that game. I suspect that I've spent more time playing that game than any other, although Super Smash Bros. (also for N64) might be a close second. For about a year, I and a group of 3 friends would meet literally every weeknight to play Goldeneye from 6-10PM or so, rotating houses every night. I played it so much that, even now, years later, I can hook up my N64 and beat the hardest missions without any ramp-up time. That's because, in much the same way that PC players got used to using a mouse and keyboard to play FPSs, because of games that they played obsessively (like Tribes or Counterstrike), I got used to a controller (in this case, the N64 controller specifically, which I think is the best console controller ever made, but I'm again in the minority here and I'll save it for another rant).

A keyboard is not a gaming peripheral. It's a device used for typing that PC game-makers force to perform as a gaming peripheral since it and a mouse are the most common devices with which users interface with their PCs. Whenever I play any PC FPSs (the most recent being Battlefield 2), I find the interface awkward, complex, and not at all intuitive. PC developers have a whole keyboard to work with, so they can just go nuts and map everything to as many keys as the want, and mouse interactions are pretty standardized. Console developers, meanwhile, don't have that luxury, and they have to design with careful attention to the controls, using a peripheral that is made solely to play games. Admittedly, they don't always succeed (Turok was a nightmare to play, which is doubly amusing since it was probably closer to the PC control scheme than any other console FPS I've played, with the arrow keys mapped to the C-pad and the mouse movement mapped to the analog stick), but when they do, I find it far more intuitive than a mouse & keyboard.

So, to all of you people who claim that you can't play FPSs on a console because of the awful controls, this is my concise response: bite me.

That Thing I Sleep Through

I hate getting up in the morning. I hate getting up period. I have this odd relationship with sleep-- I hate going to sleep, but once I finally do, I hate having to stop. Anyway, I have to get up Saturday morning for an information session at 10:30AM with a video game company visiting Fredericton, and I somehow have to get my schedule turned around by then. Knowing this, I stayed up last night until 7AM playing Jagged Alliance 2 (genetically engineered killing machines had taken over one my mines-- I couldn't go to sleep without securing one of my biggest sources of income, could I?) and slept until now. So, yeah, I'm screwed.

Then, the following week, I have to get up ever earlier for an aptitude test at 8:30AM followed by an interview at 9:30AM, for a development position with NB DoT. I have no idea what the aptitude test will entail, but I'm not overly worried, since if I don't know my stuff I shouldn't be applying anyway. And since I don't know what will be on it, I can't really prepare, so worrying would serve no purpose. That being said, I am expecting/hoping for questions along the lines of "What's a DBMS?" or "What's an index?".

I've been meaning to get my schedule turned around for about a month now, but in the same way that I mean to finally organize and put away all of my UNB stuff and mean to write that novel sitting in the back of my head. So, in other words, it hasn't happened, and probably won't until it has to. I just enjoy staying up all night too much. I'm awake for all the best parts of the day and I sleep through all of the worst (which is to say, daylight). Besides, once I do finally find a job, I may be there for a while, so this could be my last chance to live by my preferred schedule, and I intend to stick to it for as long as I can.

Once I do get turned around though, I may actually start updating this thing before everyone's done their web-browsing for the day, instead of just before supper-time.

A Fool and his Money (or lack thereof)

I don't think I like money. At the very least, I don't like keeping it. I have this insatiable urge to buy shiny new things, that:

A) Will (sometimes) cost less if I wait.
B) I don't have any time to actually enjoy.
C) I recently cannot afford.

Whether it be video games, anime, or manga, I carefully review online catalogues at the beginning of every month and make detailed and categorized lists of what will be coming out when (and update older entries if release dates have been moved), and then preorder anything that is due out in the next month, either from EB or Amazon. I then eagerly go and pick them up (or have them delivered) when they become available, and proceed to immediately shove them on one of my overflowing shelves and lament how long it will be before I likely will get to enjoy them, adding them to my mental queue of things I have to do (well, priority queue, actually, since certain games and/or shows get watched after far less of a wait than others). And the queue never gets shorter-- only longer.

It doesn't help that my tastes tend to favour anything that is incredibly time-consuming. Whether it be 200 hour RPGs, 70 volume manga, or 52 episode anime, I like to specifically buy the things that I know will take far too much of my time. I can't even enjoy my leisure time anymore-- no matter what I'm doing, I feel pressured to do it quicker so that I can get onto the next thing. But no matter how much I hurry, I can't make any headway-- I have essentially had no responsibilities or time-drains for the last 4 months, and yet my queue has still gotten longer. What this means is that it is impossible that I will ever catch up if I continue to buy things at my current rate, which I seem unable to stop doing. I will (hopefully) start working, the new TV season will start, and the time I have to devote to such things will drop to a quarter of what I have now. God help me if I enter into a relationship, or possibly start a family further down the road.

And the killer is that I wish I had more time to expand my tastes. There are plenty more video games, anime, and manga that I'd like to buy if time permitted. Whenever I hear about something new and quite good that doesn't fit my purchasing profile, I find myself wishing I had time for it. I let myself buy Katamari Damashii this year, and it was like a breath of fresh air when compared to the stagnation of my usual purchases. But I'll leave that for a future rant on my depressingly masochistic video game habits.

I'm Useless

Prepare to guffaw as I regale you with a tale of my own embarrassing, child-like ineptitude.

I was getting ready to go to town last week, when I got out of the shower to discover that I didn't have a clean black T-shirt (despite the fact that I have 5). I found 3 on the clothes-line, but they were wet and wrinkled. So, in a panic, I called my mother at work and had her walk me through the clothes-drying procedure. I then started up the infernal machine and proceeded to wait. A few minutes later, I called her again and asked how much longer I'd have to stand there. She then informed me that it would be an order of magnitude longer of a wait than I had anticipated, and that I should probably go do something else for a while.

I was telling Aiden this story last night and I told him that everything went horribly wrong. He then listed the only things he could think of that could have gone wrong:

1) The clothes hadn't been left in long enough.
2) I forgot to put in a dryer sheet.
3) The house burned down.

Fortunately, only number 1 & 2 happened. I was out of time, so I just put on the 1/2-dried and wrinkled T-shirt and left. So, yeah, when I finally get around to moving out, I'll probably die. So look forward to that. :-)

[I managed to find a keystroke that inexplicably cut out an entire paragraph, which I then could not undo. I thought I could at least get away with making a small post here without using Notepad. I hate this PoS editor.]

24 Reasons to Watch A&E

Starting at 3PM yesterday, A&E began airing a 24 marathon, showing all of season 4 from start to finish. For anyone who hasn't seen it, take it from me-- 24 is a very exciting show. I tried my damndest not to like it initially, since I always resist jamming more TV programs into my bloated TV hole, but, during its first season, it aired after another show I watched at the time, and before I knew it, I was hooked. Back then, it was a fresh new experiment-- 24 episodes, each representing an hour of real-time within the show. The show tried very hard to give you a sense of speed and excitement-- a digital clock constantly counting forward, and occasional split screens to give you a sense of many things of significance happening at once.

Beyond that, the formula was actually pretty simple-- have some kind of action every episode, make sure all of the characters have personal and interpersonal problems to work past while trying to address the more pressing national security issues, and keep the audience guessing. It worked in large part due to the strength of its two main characters-- Jack Bauer and President David Palmer. Both of them are actually pretty one-dimensional (in stark contrast to the complicated personalities they surround themselves with), but they're still probably two of my favorite TV characters ever.

It's as simple as this-- Jack Bauer is king badass, he is always right, and he will do whatever it takes to protect his country, not matter who or what he has to go through, and what rules he has to break. If he has to murder a handful of orphans to protect his country, he'll do his damndest to protect those orphans, but, if there's no option left, those orphans are as good as dead. He's actually an awful government agent, and has no business working for them-- no matter how much of a badass he is, he's entirely uncontrollable, and always does what he thinks is right, so the chain of command may as well be non-existent. He should be either in charge (which he is come season 3) or out on the streets-- he has no business being anywhere in between. But even still, he holds a strange appeal-- his absolute certainty about everything he does is strangely compelling.

As the nation's moral compass, David Palmer has to seem as convinced that he is right as Jack always is, and he always exudes confidence and authority. As I've been known to say of Captain Picard: if President Palmer handed me a gun and told me to kill a man, he'd simply have to point me in the right direction and I'd do it in a heart-beat. However, he has to make some very tough decisions, and unlike Jack, he agonizes over these choices. Once he makes up his mind, though, he's every bit as certain as Jack. And again like Jack, he'll do whatever it takes to safeguard the nation-- however, he actually has the authority to do it. He and Jack make a very good team whenever they're given the chance to work together, since they're usually on the same wavelength.

That first season was very exciting, and it was probably the best to date. In fact, the show didn't really lend itself to future seasons, but after its success, there was no way FOX was going to leave it at that. Unfortunately, this has resulted in things seeming a little forced at times. The writers keep needing to find ways to write back in characters from previous seasons, there's always a damn mole somehow, and they've gotten a little sloppy with their timelines in recent seasons, requiring a bit of suspension of disbelief in how fast or slow some things happen.

Also, many of the new characters that have been written in since have been, although very interesting, very unlikeable people. This season especially, I had to spend far more time than I'd like watching bickering self-serving IT professionals-- I get enough of that in real life. By this point, most of the first-season characters have disappeared save Jack and Palmer, and it'll be a challenge to write the two of them in for next season given how season 4 ended. In fact, as much as I'd like it to be otherwise, I fear that Palmer might be gone for good. Not Jack, though. 24 might be a weaker show without David Palmer, but without Jack Bauer, it's not 24.

An Aptly Named Waste of Money

This post isn't about video games!

Well, it's been three months, $200, and far too much nuisance, but I've finally got my new vanity plates (I ask that anyone who already knows what's on them keep it to themselves so as not to ruin the surprise). I'm sure they'll look really nice once I'm allowed to put them on my car. Why aren't they on now, you ask? Well, you see, Service New Brunswick hates me.

Rewind 3 months. I've just graduated, I've just bought my first new car, and my head is full of phantom employers knocking down the door in their efforts to obtains my services. What's this? I can get customized license plates for my sweet new ride for the low low price of $200? Sign me up!

The form that I then submitted claimed that there would be a 4-6 week wait for delivery. It was a little longer than I'd like, but if everything went as planned then many of my friends would see my new car for the first time with the new plates already on it. Eight weeks later, I called SNB to see why I didn't have them yet. Well, it turns out that, not only were they not ready, but there was absolutely no record of my ever having requested them. If I hadn't kept my receipt, I'd have been out $200.

*grumble*

*sigh*

Oh, well, after this much time and effort, I'm sure as hell not backing out now. It's not as if administrative adversity is something new to me. So, a quick trip to my local SNB office in Burton later (receipt in hand), and my order was made (again). I was promised this time that my order would be fast-tracked and that I might have them within a week. I think we all know where this is going.

Three more weeks after that, I call SNB again to see if my plates are ready. Apparently, noone's answering the phones, and they try to have my call forwarded to a call centre in the middle of nowhere (Dieppe, I think?). Well, I doubt they'd know at the call centre where my plates are, so I'll wait and try again. I made 14 calls that day. My call got forwarded every god damn time. The next day passed in a similar fashion. Frustrated, I recruited my mother to the cause, and had her make some calls in the morning (when I am usually asleep). She too got forwarded all day. Apparently they'd just stopped answering the phones at all. However, she did find the number for the place that actually printed the plates, and was told that they should be here already.

Now, my mother, she has a temper, and much less patience then I do. So, when she got home at 4:30, she immediate sped over to Burton intent on giving someone an earful. Unfortunately, the desk she was looking for was closed. She was told by a random passerby that she accosted that they had been quite busy for the last couple of days. I'm sorry, but if you're so busy that you can't spare one person to answer the damn phone at any given point during the day, then something is fundamentally flawed.

In any case, she called at precisely 8:30 the next morning and finally got an answer. Yes, the plates were ready. However, for some reason, instead of being delivered to Burton as they were supposed to, they were delivered the SNB office in downtown Fredericton. Perhaps sensing some frustration, the lady at SNB said that we would not have to stand in line, and that the plates would be ready and waiting at a side desk. For once, we were not lied to, and that night (this past Wednesday) I finally had my plates in hand.

However, as mentioned at the start of this post, it is now Thursday, and the plates still aren't on the car. Why, you ask? Well, you see, when she was told that we could pick up the plates, my mother asked specifically if we needed to bring anything, like, for instance, my old plates, and was told "no." True enough, I suppose. However, while we did not need anything to pick up the plates, we did need several things before we could legally put the curs-ed things on the car.

So, someone needs to go back to SNB with my license, registration, and old plates. However, it can't be me, unless I feel like stripping the old plates off downtown and then putting the new ones on when I get back to my car. Unfortunately, I need my car tomorrow, so it looks like I'll need to wait at least another weekend before I can finally enjoy them.

So, in the end, I suspect that this is all a cleverly devised scheme to punish people for their vanity.

[Note: In an effort to not post too often, I saved a draft of this message yesterday. I have since jumped through the last hoop (well, my father did, at any rate, since the plates were on the car when I woke up) and finally gotten the plates on my car. I am now statistically more likely to have my car vandalized and to be stopped by police. Yay!]

A Classic Dilemma

Aiden e-mailed me a question today, and closed with "I feel like I should have sent this to Red Mage or something." So, that gave me the idea to answer it here and see what everyone else thinks. Here's his e-mail (edited slightly because I've gone mad with power):

I have a question about my WoW priest. I know you have never played the game but you have lots of experience with building characters so I figured you would be the better person to ask. Ok as I said I am playing a priest. Important attributes: Stamina gives more hit points, Intelligence gives more mana, higher crit rate for spells, Spirit improves regeneration rate.

Now I know that most people swear by Stamina. Each point extra in stamina gives 10 more hp. My build, however, looks for equipment that gives Intelligence (which is more important IMPO) and spirit. The way I look at it, instead of surviving 1 extra hit I'd rather have a short down time. Priests come with a shield ability which absorbs X amount of damage before it disappears. With my talent build I can recast this spell on myself every 15 seconds (instead of 30). If I am not in combat (which is to say not getting hit or being hit) I want my spirit to regenerate me. I can cast a spell on myself that heals X amount of health every 3 seconds for 15 seconds. So I can shield myself and keep casting that on me while I run as needed. The nice thing about regeneration is if you haven't cast a spell in 3-5 seconds your mana starts to regenerate. So I can shield, heal, and run if I'm being chased. With high spirit I can run and get to my max hp/mana quicker.

Now some would argue that I should take half and half, half spirit, half stamina, or any other percentage of it. Is the extra 70 hp worth the extra 4-5 hp and 20-40 mana a second?

Now What you have here is a very old and very common dilemma, around since the days of the first pen-and-paper game. Do I play to my character's strengths, compensate for their weaknesses, or pursue the middle ground and try to improve everything a little? In my opinion, there is no one right answer, and a person should just play to their preference. That being said, there are some other considerations that might influence such a decision. In a game like World of Warcraft, you often play in teams (well, in the later stages of the game, at any rate), so, presuming that your team is somewhat balanced, there should be someone else present to compensate for your weaknesses, while you do the same for theirs. On the other hand, in a single-character dungeon-hack, you're all on your own, and I've found that it pays to build well-rounded characters in game like that.

Generally, however, I prefer to play to my strengths. Presumably you chose to play your class for a reason, so why cheapen that by trying to eliminate the characteristics that make that class special? In any event, I'd be curious to know what everyone else thinks.

What Kind of Editor Doesn't Have a Damn Undo Option?

I just lost an entire post for the second time because there's no undo option. I'll have to start writing these posts in another editor and pasting them in. *grumble* There's nothing I hate more than writing the same thing twice.