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.

The fact that many a relationship has felt strain or even fallen under the weight of the ever-increasing weight of the MMO world. WoW is of course the cheif culprit here, but long before the 400 lb gorilla came to be, MUDs and other MMOs were keeping players up all night, and not in that oh so fun sexual way.

 Well, now Yahoo! may finally have some ideas on how to get your significant other to turn the PC off and turn you on (or just listen when you talk)

 http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/seven-ways-to-win-back-your-gaming-spouse/1194632

So, I've got a new girlfriend. She's a truly amazing woman who I really enjoy spending time with. For any gamer, getting a girlfriend is a life-altering event. For someone who isn't as hardcore as most gamers, it doesn't affect my gaming time as much as it would some others. I don't  really spend the countless hours most other gamers (and gaming writers) do playing. I wouldn't classify myself as a casual gamer by any means, but I'm not extreme either.

What has been interesting for me is that she actually has been an impetus for me to do some gaming (and not in the "my girlfriend is driving me nuts, I need to get my game on" way, either). After a month and a half of not gaming really at all, we trotted out Rock Band the other night. We'd been talking about it for a couple of weeks, and being a pretty serious music fan, she was anxious to give it a try.

It turns out that she has pretty damn good rhythm, as she has settled in as the drummer and driving for behind the "Brule Blues", our drum and vocals combo, currently playing the seediest clubs of Europe. After catching the Rock Band bug, she even wanted to play a late session the night before we had to get up at 4:30 AM to get her on her way out of town for the National Championship game. She's more into the faster rock songs, so we're a ways from hitting our stride as a band. As we unlock more tracks (and download a few), I think we're going to continue enjoying a couple nights a week of rocking out.

As I sit here in the airport waiting to board our plane to CES, I am reminded of the good and bad about these conferences.

 The good:

- Free food and drinks (this goes double in Vegas)

- Meeting new people and establishing new contacts

- Getting an early view of upcoming products, and hopefully getting in line to review them for our loyal readers

- Leaving Columbus mid-winter and getting away to a (kind of) warm locale.

- Gambling.

 The bad:

- Being up at 5 am to catch a plane

- Rooming with Chuck.

- Spending 4 hours on a plane twice in 4 days.

- Rooming with Chuck.

- Waiting in line for lunch, badge & bag pick up, and anything else really worth doing.

- Rooming with Chuck.

- Listening to jaded journalists complain about how X's product doesn't measure up to expectations for the 500th time

- Did I mention rooming with Chuck? ;)

It seems these days that the really great games come along once or so a year, with little to complain about and lots to love. But what about the games that offer lots to love, but also a decent amount to complain about? That's the case with John Deere: Harvest in the Heartland for DS.

What you get in short with this game is a more realistically based Harvest Moon with a nice sponsorship tie in, and some very good game play. You start as a farmer with a small plot of land, a few basic tools, and a single crop. From there you work your way up to being a corporate farmer with tons of shiny John Deere green tractors, combines, etc.

The farming part which is the core of the game, is well done with one exception. Crop values are astronomical. Your reward for individual crop sales are so high, if real farmers made that kind of money, the government would never have to bail any out. The crop cycles are much closer to a realistic timeframe than in Harvest Moon.

The real problem with the game comes from the technical side of things. There are way too many load screens, far too many video glitches ("Wait, where did I put my barn? Oh there it is, where i was JUST STANDING"), and other technical issues. But I have to admit, I'm hooked. It's been way too much fun playing my way up from being a simple one crop farmer to having tons of land and crops at my disposal.

I haven't used the Multiplayer features yet, but being able to visit someone elses farm isnt all that enticing to me anyways, unless I can drive their tractors.

I've spent about 4 hours playing NHL 08 thus far, and the early reports are thus: NHL 08 is HARD. I've been playing the two NHL franchises annually for years, and owning at both of them from almost the get go. This year, the EA NHL title is showing a lot more challenge. Normally I lose my first game while adjusting to contol changes, win my second game, and am crushing the AI at pro level by 4 or 5 goals after only a few games. This year, I lost my first 2, and have only managed one win by more than 2 goals.

For one thing, the goaltending is a lot tougher. Almost all of the tricks that have worked in the past to result in sure goals are gone. You can still one-time your way past a goalie from the slot, but most of the time you cant do it standing still, it has to be on the rush, and the timing of the pass has to be near perfect

Secondly, superstars will score no matter what. The biggest names in the game are going to get on the board. In 5 games against the Ottawa Senators, I've only been able to keep Daniel Alfredsson from scoring once. I haven't had a chance to explore the player ratings much yet, but AI superstars and clutch 3rd liners can be counted on to try and keep your team close when they are down.

Also, while I like a lot of things, the dynasty mode roster editing should be smarter. I shouldnt have to scratch a guy to send him to the minors. It should automatically do that for me. It's good that there's a popup for when youre sending down a guy who has to pass through waivers, but in general this is the one area i can see so far that needs help.

Finally, this game is about defense. You have to be smart in your own end. Postional defense is far more successful than chasing the puck, just like in the NHL. If you get your dmen running around, you're going to wind up giving up quality opportunities. 

Of course, all this difficulty is compounded by the fact that I'm using the Columbus Blue Jackets with their default roster and manual shot aim, while playing only the highest powered teams in the league. But even at that, I've never has as much challenge as I am with this version of the game. Way to go, EA.

In what must have been a land speed record, I got my Xbox 360 back from the Red Ring of Death revival laboratory yesterday. Well, not actually my box, but a box, with a new (at least to me) 360, an extra blank faceplate, and a months worth of Xbox Live Gold. The unit failed the evening of 9/14, and I didn't get the shipping box until 9/19 after work, and it was shipped to Microsoft 9/20. So 2 weeks and 2 days from door to door. I haven't had a chance to put it through it's paces, as I promised I would wait to finish BioShock until the girlfriend was present. I'll be giving it a good work up on one of the NHL games tonight though.

I'm on vacation this weekend but I just had to share something I saw today. I was visting my dad at Cabela's, his post-retirement job. While I was there, i noticed a large group of Amish kids and teens headed excitedly towards the cafeteria. I followed, wondered what they could be so excited about. After all, the Amish do have food, so it wasn't like it's something new to them. I was shocked and surprised to see them heading towards a grouping of Big Buck Hunter arcade games. Below is the photographic evidence that EVERYBODY loves video games where you get to shoot things. 

In my last blog entry, I admitted to being an obsessive personality. Not surprisingly, this reared it's ugly head most prominently when I was heavily into MMO's. Of course, before there were MMO's there were just MO's, which were really MUD's (Multi-User Dungeons for those of us who are to young to have played online text based adventure games). I cut my online gaming teeth on LOST MUD out of Austin, TX. I spent many a late night (actually many all-nighters) in the computer labs of Michigan State University, working my way up to Wizard (Admin/Coder). Incidentally, It's also how I really first learned to code: a bastardized version of the C language specifically for building MUD objects, taught by a high school student who stayed up all night in the lab MUDding as well. So every dollar of tuitition wasted on the semester I skipped class to game has been made back about 100 fold in my later IT career as a programmer and analyst. 

My first MMO was Ultima Online which I played for well over a year with countless hours each day hunched over my first handbuilt PC, before finally casting off the shackles of MMO addiction for a couple of years. Then came Star Wars Galaxies. The amount of time I spent playing that, while still going to work every day, playing hockey every weekend, going to CBJ games, and trying (and failing) to maintain a marriage is almost amazing.

Realizing that the call of online gaming is something I can't easily deny (especially with my Xbox 360 on it's way to get repaired), I've decided to become an MMO Tourist. By playing games that I only have access to for a limited time, I'll be able to get an in depth look and still have a safety net from jumping back in with both feet. To continue playing I'd have to purchase a subscription, and that's the golden rule of this process: no subscriptions. Starting with the demo discs I got from PAX 07 (Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmyr, Guild Wars), I'll be blogging about my adventures as I make my way through as many games as I can get a free or cheap trial of. If a game isn't free to try, the limit I'll spend on any one game is $9.99 (plus tax) for a short trial, and only from packages that can be obtained in stores.

Now some may say I'm playing with fire here, but it's not as bad as all that. I've grown quite a bit since my last time on MMO's and with the understanding I have of my possible gaming obsessions as well as the limits I'm placing on the experience, I don't have any concerns about getting in over my head. Also, my girlfriend would kick my ass because she can't watch me play when the game is only on the PC screen and not the TV (Note to self: get wireless keyboard and cable to use HDTV as PC monitor). Plus, there are just too many good games coming out for the consoles that I won't be able to ignore when I get them back.

I've already finished my 7 days on LOTR and I started my time on the Guild Wars demo last night. I'll be working on a comprehensive list of the games I'll be trying over the next couple of days, and I'm going out of town this weekend, so look for the next major part of this series early next week, starting with my life as an elf in LOTR. I'll still be blogging about whatever other strange things pop into my noggin over the coming days, but the MMO Tourist series will likely be the focus of the blog for a while.

I think it pretty much goes without saying that China is a country with a horrible track record in terms of human rights. Strangely, in country with a history like the Tiananmen Square Protests and subsequent massacre, people are appearantly free to videogame themselves to death.  Evidently, a 30-year-old man went on a gaming binge that rivals anything I've ever heard of. While this type of behavior could be expected in a country like the US where its not unheard of for parents to be criminally negligent in ignoring their kids to play online, It's almost shocking that this could happen in China, where much of the internet has been filtered or blocked by the goverment for years.

What I think escapes most of the media coverage is that gaming is just the outlet that happened to attract these particular obsessive compulsive personalities. I have an obsessive personality, a lot of gamers do. But being a gamer, and even a gamer with an obsessive personality doesn't mean you're likely to game yourself to death. Heck, the longest I've ever managed was about 26 hours during the launch weekend of Star Wars Galaxies, and even during that run I took some breaks to eat and relax. 

While I am surprised that this happened in China, I'm not surprised by the coverage. If the man had done the same thing with alcohol, drugs, gambling, or even sex, we likely would never have seen a story. But because of the hot button topic that online gaming is, it becomes a top story on news sites all over the web. It's sad that this happened to the guy, and to the others before him who let the internet or gaming become the sole focus of their lives. I would think the owner of the internet cafe would have some liability in this, but with Chinese laws, I sort of doubt it. People who suffer from these issues should obviously seek treatment, and those who witness them in these binges should do whatever they can to encourage them take breaks or stop for the day. No matter how much they want to play, the game will be there in the morning.

You never know, you could be saving someones life.