I've been taking the past month to work my way through MLB 08 The Show in preperation for a review on the PS3 and I have to say I've developed quite a player. The organization is in need of a third baseman so I decided to make that my position of choice. Currently I'm leading the AA in the triple crown with a .412 batting average, 20 homers, and 79 RBIs with a 63 game hitting streak. I'm also first in doubles and have a .980+ fielding average.

I keep constantly getting emails saying they want me to spend more time in AA ball and that they'll eventually move me up to AAA. For months I've been tearing it up in the league and hitting almost every goal they set for me. I've improved ever facit of my game except for bunting and have a good number of game winning hits as well as game tying hits.

Yesterday I finished another 2-5 game with an RBI and I get a message as soon as I go back to the main screen of the Road to the Show... I've been traded to Boston for a starting pitcher....

WHAT??!?!?! You mean I bust my butt for 2/3 of the season in trying to be the Cleveland Indians 3B of the future and they send me to freaking Beantown for a starting pitcher????  I hope the pitcher's the next Cy Young, Satchel Paige, Roger Clemens, or Greg Maddux because the Cleveland organization just gave up a sure thing prospect in an area where the game says they are weak. It even hurts to be a Cleveland fan in a game.

When playing Rock Band, I had the wired headset out ready in case someone wanted to talk with me online. My wireless one has been acting up lately so I keep the wired one around. My kid likes to watch me play but I turned around one time and saw this: 

 

The boy's going to be alright. 

Arriving in the land of purple mountain majesties, Niko Bellic doesn't come equipped with any Rock Band instruments, but that doesn't mean Liberty City isn't a musically-driven town, an earful experience.  There are over 200 tracks to flip through across a rather mind-boggling spectrum of genres, and it's natural to gravitate towards our own real-life tastes when it comes to selecting what Niko essentially listens to in the game.

So it makes a lot of sense when my particular version of Niko listens to a lot of rap music.  A quintessentially American concoction, rap conveys truth, delusion, anger, and promise, frequently appropriating pre-existing and emerging elements, sounds, and textures, then remixing them, remodeling them, and finally revealing them once again in the artist's own image.  That’s the essence of rap music.

And this process, this creation of rap music speaks to the trials and tribulations Niko faces as well.  While his cousin Roman's optimism keeps alive the ideals of what the United States purportedly stands for from an immigrant’s perspective, Niko himself is waking up from this oversold American dream, seemingly within minutes of his arrival.  Early on, Niko begins the arduous and unexpected process of stripping down his hyperbolized, smoke-and-mirrors concepts about what America is, chewing it and digesting it during a downward-spiral series of firsthand observances, and then reconstructing that selfsame American dream into what it truly is for him, recognizable only by him, reformed and revealed by his own hand, not the fanciful letters from his cousin. 

And sometimes (not all the time; I don't want to oversell this idea) the rap tracks playing on 102.7 The Beat and old-school hip hop channel The Classics 104.1 manifest the spirit and intent of that GTA IV journey.  To me at least.

So when Niko is blindsided by a betrayal from a respected, well-liked, and trustworthy individual, in a backstabbing worthy of a blood feud … and Nas is on the radio reassuring Niko that “War Is Necessary” … those are the moments that begin to transcend any average videogaming experience.  It just nailed it for me.  Personalized it for me.  Carved out that particular episode for me.

Perhaps, when you play through the above scenario, you’ll be tuned into The Journey radio station, and Philip Glass’ heart-palpitating string and brass ensemble, “Pruit Igoe,” will narrate your scene (that’s the anthemic song heard on the debut GTA IV trailer).  Or maybe Lonnie Liston Smith on the IF99 channel will bathe your day with funk-laden irony as he explores what might happen were there “A Chance For Peace,” when you already know there’s no longer any chance for that.

Those are the sandbox possibilities that leave me absolutely floored.  Not that, yeah, I can pick up a hooker, beat up a hooker, and take my money back from a hooker.  That’s all well and good (if that’s your thing), but it certainly lacks the nuance I’m describing here.  I’m looking at the myriad aural variables that accompany the myriad tactile variables in Liberty City, even on otherwise common occurrences like the loose-leaf description above.

In one other scenario, after I’d been on a first date with the obsessive-compulsive but nonetheless sweet Michelle, my car silently idled outside of her apartment to the tune of Special Ed’s “I Got It Made.”  And at that moment, there was no better song I could’ve turned to on the radio.

"Yeah, so after only three dates, I totally hit that."

 My wife gave me a strange look.  I'd been building up a strong case as to why GTA IV was worthy of an actual purchase (she accepts that I'm a frequent renter, but casually seeks justification whenever I earmark $60 for a video game).  But, despite my arguments that it brilliantly unfolds the fresh-off-the-boat, immigrant-out-of-water, post-millenial terrorist-striken bloody-nosed American Dream experience, it was still possible I'd just said something wrong.  And when she'd retreated to the reading room for the rest of the night to finish Ender's Game ahead of me (she knows I hate it when she does that with books I've been promising to finish), then it only confirmed my suspicions.  Saying "I totally hit that" in reference to a videogame fictional girlfriend I'd only fictionally dated three times, on a game I'd owned less than 24 hours, was apparently crossing some line of marital fidelity I'd previously attributed only an infintesimal amount of importance upon.

 But my wife made it passive-agressively clear that this seemingly minor indiscretion on my part would not go unpunished.  Just a few minutes ago, she came into my Man Cave, set the book down on the corner of my desk, and said "I'm done" before walking right back out.  She shut the door.

I don't necessarily see a connection, but tonight I'll probably go and drop $150 - $200 on lapdances at the Triangle Club before I crawl into my very, very cold side of the bed.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure why I was so afraid of going back.

It would be hasty of me to say that Sins of a Solar Empire was collecting dust on my shelf -- being less than a month old in my own collection, despite its early February launch from Stardock.  While dust wasn't the culprit, some unknown fear was settling a thick, grimy layer over my ability to return to the 4X masterpiece.  And it wasn't fear of any one particular thing that kept me at bay for the past few weeks.  In fact, it was that intangible fear of the ol' unknown.

I didn't fear the start of a new game.  Possibilities ripe for the picking, you start every time with a developed home planet teeming with a populous that’s hungry for expansion into the stars.  I didn't fear developing resources on orbiting asteroids, striated with enriched mineral veins, my metal and ore extractors grinding and puffing away below the surface.  I didn't fear developing my home planet's gravity well with orbital research facilities, Gauss defense platforms and hangar defenses.  I didn't fear sending out my first Arcova scout frigate, the smoky-voiced captain culling, "If it’s out there, I’ll find it."  I no longer fear the surprisingly accessible research tree, a necessary evil and staple fixture of any self-respecting 4X strategy game, but this one so clean-lined and solidly-placed.  With a growing confidence, I no longer fear dealing a firm hand to pirates and the black market alike.  With money as their driving factor, they both become as easy to control and predict as any ship in your own fleet, any resource you trade within your own space lanes.  And, come to think of it, I wasn't afraid of confronting the enemy -- be it the computer-controlled AI, or those selfsame pirate raiders on the loose.  Sins knows how to hold its own in a firefight, and as guns-blazing frantic as they can grow to be (picture Battlestar Galactica-sized, with perhaps less shaky-cam) it's breezy and beautiful to seamlessly swoop in and out of the action like some omniscient, interstellar hawkeye.

No, I wasn't afraid of any one of those things in particular.  What I was afraid of was keeping all those plates spinning in the air at once.  And doing it successfully.  There's absolutely no way this much should be happening within the urgent pacing of a real-time strategy game, and yet?  Even as a band of incoming pirates ping'd on my PSIDAR, I plunked another 250 credits of bounty on my arch-rival's head, selected my home fleet and focused their fire on each member of the pirates' group, dropping them one at a time from the night sky, popping my head into the research tab to continue development of Titano-Ferric plating (rather relevant in my current predicament), while acknowledging that a third Gauss canon was brought online just in time for planet Liguria's current defense needs, pushing my Arcova scout to another unknown fringe nearly three jumps away from my home planet, and sending in my Protev frigate to colonize a recently-discovered backwater planetoid.

...Only then returning to the heated battle swimming around Liguria, pleased to note that my frigate-laden Kol battleship fleet was mopping up the last few pirate stragglers still putting up the remnants of a forceful, not unorganized attack.  Less than 12 minutes left until the next pirate invasion, only a few seconds to go until the Titano-Ferric plating would be automatically installed on all my ships and orbital structures, the backwater planetoid named and prepped for logistical structures to be erected on yet more delicious mineral finds, and my scout just discovered an empty, nebulous system that was wreaking slow-but-sure amounts of hull damage to the ship’s skin -- time to place it on auto-explore to keep it moving around the star, unveiling more pieces of this solar system and, eventually, settled systems from my computer-run nemesis.

Nope, it’s apparent that I wasn't afraid of any one of those things.  I was simply afraid of the fact that I could actually keep that many balls juggling in the air.  It honestly shouldn't be possible.  It should be too much to manage.  A minefield of tasks lost within their own intricacies.  An overbearing need to babysit each and every one of the game’s multitudinous functions.  That's essentially what I was afraid of.  Being able to, with Sins of a Solar Empire, accomplish what should by all rights be an undecipherable grocery list of impossible-to-manage administrative tasks.

But it’s not impossible.  Not with Sins.  And it’s nothing to be afraid of.

Conan didn't fail me.  I failed Conan.

 I'd drawn up a battle plan -- a sturdy one.  One that involved the upcoming MMO stunner, Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures, and a marathon reading of Robert E. Howard's original and unedited Conan tellings, starting with The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.  Then, come the game's official release date, I'd bring (hopefully) literary-minded observations about the game world, thining the lines just that much more between the established entertainment arts -- movies, music, literature -- and the current pinnacle of interactive entertainment:  video games.  This would serve as an intensive compare-and-contrast from the page to the monitor.  From 10-point Times New Roman to 1920 x 1200 resolution.  From intellectual property to internet real estate.

 My dad didn't introduce me to the Conan stories as a youngster (he was more of a Tom Clancy/Clive Cussler fan, which loses a little in translation during story time) -- nor have I entertained the Conan movies and/or comic books that have endlessly spun off over the second half of the 20th century. Many times, if I'm that late to the party, I'd rather just not show up. 

 But Conan, I realized, would be different.  Conan would be a resurgence, a rise from the ashes of obscurity and irrelevancy.  Not like that other Fellowship that's never actually left the forefront of the world's consciousness.  Conan, I'd heard, and certainly found certain truths in, was a gratuitously violent, mysoginistic world populated with beheaded warriors and naked, fawning women.  Don't worry:  Funcom, developers of Age of Conan, know when it comes to blatant chauvanism and racial stereotypes (oh yes, plenty of those in Howard's stories, too) that we're nearly a decade into the new millenium now -- it ain't the 1930s anymore.  And there are plenty of old school domineering and damaging social structures that just don't fly nowadays.  In Age of Conan, female player characters won't be running around in a chiffon tabard, clinging desperately to sweaty alpha males for sex and security.  A woman swinging a battleaxe can cleave your head from your shoulders just as efficiently as a man-wielded one.

But this plan was to conduct a purist's study of the source texts (themes, motifs, symbols!),  bounced off the most realized and interactive construction of Hyborea ever beheld (instances, grinding, pixel shaders!).  But my plan was far from foolproof.  What I didn't anticipate was a hyper-dedicated, overzealous group of game developers that would create one of the most beautifully-rendered MMO worlds that I will never be able to run at a decent framerate on my current gaming rig.  In fact, I pass more hardware benchmarks for Crysis than I do with Age of Conan.  So, as the Search For America's Next Top MMO continues, expect Age of Conan to always be struggling to keep a decent subscriber population around.  At least for the first year or two, which is a timeframe that, with incredibly few exceptions, makes or breaks an online world.  And not because it won't do anything better or worse than MMO's Current Top Dog.  But because so few people in the gaming world will actually be able to access it.  And of the people that can access it at a playable framerate (remember, Age of Conan is unapologetically PvP/RvR-centric; a bad time to see stutter-stop frames-per-second) even fewer of those people will be interested in such a niche universe as well.  And if the Mature rating is such a gigantic draw, remember:  videogame nipples and blood splatters across the user interface will operate by the same Law of Diminishing Returns as everything else.  There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

So, with the sad news that my duo-core Dell Inspiron E1705 isn't up to the task of rendering a competent online version of Hyborea, I'll have to curb my enthusiasm until it's released on Xbox 360 this holiday season.  But I'm a tad flaky when it comes to MMOs ... and there's always, always, always The Next Thing.  Am I right?  This holiday season I might be entirely too enamored with Spore, Fable 2, and Warhammer Online by then.  And Age of Conan might become an already fading memory, before it's even had a chance for people to catch up to its future-proofed graphics-hog dimensions.

OK, this is pretty cool. Here's a guy playing the Mario theme using an RC car and wine bottles.

 

Doing web program, I spend a lot of time writing javascript as well as other things. Well here's a cool little javascript proof of concept. It's Super Mario and it actually plays well. While it's far from the full blown game, it shows what a little programming talent, time and motivation can do with a language designed for web browser interaction.

With the evolution of the gaming market these days, it's hardly a surprise to hear of another shop closing down. But this time, it's a bit sadder than normal, as it is Saitek that is rumored to be closing it's doors at the end of the month.

Purchased a few months ago by Mad Catz, purveyors of middling quality console hardware , it was speculated (and hoped) that Saitek would operate as an independant arm of the conglomerate, infusing some quality into a brand that frankly puts out a lot of crap. Sadly, it looks like Mad Catz will be absorbing a few chosen folks from the makers of such products as the X-52 Pro Flight System and the soon to be released Cyborg Keyboard, and letting everyone else move on.

I just find it confusing when a company like Saitek does so much right that a larger company wants to buy it, but then immediately begins jetisoning many of the people who helped make the company so successful. It's particularly misguided in this instance, where Mad Catz could clearly learn a lot about putting out, selling, and representing quality products from some of the people that aren't being brought over.

While the Saitek brand name will likely live on as part of the Mad Catz product line, it's unclear if the products will follow Saiteks quality processes, or simply wind up being the name brand Mad Catz uses to lure high end gamers into buying their run of the mill products. While I hope for the former, I won't be the least bit surprised by the later.