Snow Peas Rule!

I finally gave in to the hype and installed Plants vs. Zombies a few days ago. It's a very cute game, well designed, great music, and all elements designed and delivered with a grin.

If you haven't checked it out yet, you should really do so!

Rock Band

As with most trends, I have come late to Rock Band - I played for the first time a few weeks ago at friends Kelly and Brandon's house.

It's a surprisingly (expensive) fun game, considering all it really consists of is pressing a matching colored button when a moving blob of color hits just the right position onscreen - and repeat repeat repeat.


The fact that you're playing with controllers that seem to be the real thing is a big part of the immersion. If I wasn't playing with a very realistic guitar but instead just tapping buttons on a normal XBox controller, the impact would be a lot less and a lot different.


Somehow when I'm playing the guitar controller, it really feels as if I'm performing the song that's playing - it's a weird sensation especially since I have zero musical skills, no coordination or dexterity, and no rhythm. Playing a Jimi Hendrix song to a virtual crowd of screaming fans is not something my psyche was prepared for. Is this what a flying dream would feel like? I don't have flying dreams.

For the moment, I'm stuck on 'easy' mode, since my cold limp yellowed withered claw of a left hand is about as responsive as a coma patient. It's my own fault - my left hand does a little typing, a lot of scratching, and not much else. For some reason, chords that require two widely separated buttons to be pressed simultaneously are as out of my reach as a Nobel Prize (red and blue, my old nemesis, we meet again for the last time!). If I want to graduate to medium without making all my bandmates fail out, I might have to resort to the kid buttons closer to the body of the guitar.

We played for about five hours yesterday, and I'm ready for more!

Knock knock - Who's there? Fishes. Fishes who...

I had an idea for one of those time-management resource-management scurry-of-activity games, like Diner Dash or Cake Mania.

In my game concept, you're on the RMS Titanic moments after it has been struck by the iceberg. Ship's Builder Thomas Andrews (ably portrayed by the great Victor Garber in the 1997 movie) manages to quickly convince the captain that the ship is going down.

As we all know, there weren't enough lifeboats - but there were 840 rooms just counting guest rooms. That's 840 wooden doors - a lot of quickly available wood.

So the plan is to get the hardworking third class passengers out from the bowels of the ship and working on rafts built from doors, tables, rope, and etc. The rafts only need to hold together for a few hours in calm seas.

You would manage your different resource-gathering teams, and coordinate with the little space available on deck for the building teams. Since the rafts would not be designed to be lowered like the lifeboats, they would need to be deployed slowly as the ship sank, which would also mean managing the passengers as a resource. The actual things needing managing would change/progress throughout the game, cutting down on repetition.

When I described by idea to my friend Brandon (I would link to his blog, but he does not), he felt this game might offend a lot of people. Really? It's been 98 years, but still 'too soon'? All those survivors would find it in poor taste? Fine, I'll call the ship the USS Wackadoodle, and no one will be offended.

What do you guys think - would many folks be offended? I know some folks can be offended by a cool breeze and a sunny day, but still.

Never Played. Please don't hate me

Floss Bot!

There should be a teeny flossing remote control toy (I'm picturing something sperm-like in design) that you could use to floss your teeth. It's motors would run on the acidity of your saliva, and need only a very short range for transmitting and receiving.

Think of the nifty iPhone app you could use to control it!

It would fun to tilt the phone around or use the handy on-screen touchpad to navigate your gums and teeth, obliterating the evil plaquoids. The app could overlay animated baddies that you would chase, the end result would be a thorough flossing of the entire mouth.

You could have levels, boss battles, and cleaner teeth! What would make this a killer app would be kick ass theme music - we should call the guy who did the Tetris theme.

Of course, the floss-bot could simply follow a pre-programmed path for a thorough clean, but where's the fun in that?

Giggling Like a Schoolgirl

It's hard to describe just how crazy-fun the Wii Fit Plus mini-game Obstacle Course is.

Check out this video, if you haven't seen it. Seems very basic, right? Seems very tame. Until you play it. The video only shows the beginner level, there's an advanced level as well - with ice!

Anyone who's spent much time gaming has encountered platformers - basically these are games that involve a lot of running and jumping, hopping on platforms, leaping over pits, dodging dangerous elements of the environment.

Some classic examples of platformers are: Pitfall, Donkey Kong, Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros, Moon Patrol, Mega Man, the list is long. Hell, even 'Prince of Persia, Sands of Time' is a platformer.

These games were fun when I was a kid, and while I might play one of them for a few minutes today for nostalgia's sake, they're too simple to hold my attention for long.

Enter the Obstacle Courses in Wii Fit Plus. There's definitely a small element of immersion due to using your own customized character, but beyond that, YOU are the one doing the running a jumping, thanks to the Wii Balance Board, which draws me in big time - it's almost as if I'm inside the game.

You're not getting that great a workout, basically you're walking in place - but it's more of a workout than you would get sitting on the couch. Even the 'run' is just a faster walking in place. But you're burning calories. (It would be a simple thing to use ankle weights to increase the calories burned.)

And I can't explain why, but actually running and 'jumping' through obstacles, from platform to platform, and occasionally falling to my death is a real, child-like giddy fun. (Would this wear off if the mini-game were any longer? Perhaps.)

Sadly, the obstacle course is only a small part of the whole Wii Fit Plus experience - I would gladly pay $50 for a game that was nothing but hour after hour of assorted obstacle courses, if I could use the Wii Balance Board to play through the game.

I'd love an obstacle-course builder tool from Nintendo, especially something I could use to design my own maps, and then share online for/with other players.

I don't even notice the calories I'm burning as I run through the course again and again, tweaking my choices and trying to shave a few seconds off my time.

I'm not a modder, and there have been few things I've encountered in life that made my hands ache to reach for a soldering gun, my fingers itch to write some code - but this is a project I would love to work on.

There are so many great platformer games in the history of gaming that would be kick-ass adapted for the Wii Balance Board, including stuff like the great Futurama game that came out in 2003, or hey, why not Mirror's Edge?

The TV game show Wipeout would make for a great obstacle course game.

Wii Fit Plus is only $20, if you already have a Wii Balance Board.

It would be far simpler to mod for the PC than the Wii, since you can typically set custom control schemes in PC games.

Careful, specific adjustments would need to be made for each game, but playing any platformer with the Wii Balance Board would kick ass. You would still need a number of other controls - the ability to simply walk or run forward and jump would not be enough to control much more than Donkey Kong or Moon Patrol.

So you'd still need the Wii Remote and the Nunchuk to control things like directional control, inventory, weapons, aiming and attacking, etc - but all movement would have to come directly from the Wii Balance Board.

There's a lot of improvement that could be made, of course - a far more heavy duty balance board would be great, something you could actually run and actually jump on would improve the immersion. It could be larger, more square, and have a built-in LCD that would display the surface under your virtual feet. But now I'm just getting carried away.

Blade-FX Wireless (Nunchuk) Controller

A few weeks ago I posted about the Nyko Wireless Nunchuk and its shortcomings, which were largely a problem working with the Wii Motion Plus.

I picked up the Blade-FX Wireless Controller (another nunchuk) this morning in the hopes that it would work where the Nyko accessory failed.

Here's a pic of the item from the Best Buy site:

And here's the version I bought:

The version I have is the exact same model number, with two differences that I can see:

1) 'FX' button remains, 'Classic' button has been removed.

2) The version I bought has a skinny transmitter - which fits neatly into the pass-through port on the bottom of the Wii Motion Plus, even with the rubber jacket in place.

I tested the transmitter with several different games - Lego Batman (works fine) Mario Cart (works fine) Wii Sports (works fine) and Wii Sports Resort (no workie).

Wii Sports Resort did not detect the wireless nunchuk, and prompted me to plug it in. I tried fooling the game by starting out with the real nunchuk plugged in, only to swap for the wireless version once in gameplay - but no luck, it knew.

You can't blame compatibility problems on third party accessory makers when the problem lies with newly released hardware from the console maker.

It depends on which games you spend your time playing - and if you're okay with an accessory working with some/most of your games but not all.

For me, an accessory needs to work with all games - I can't be bothered to swap controllers based on the game.

Nintendo really needs to release a new first party remote with Wii Motion Plus built in, and with a first party wireless nunchuk as well - having to repeatedly add on to the end of the current remote makes it more unwieldy, more likely to catch on your clothes as you wave it around - and waving it around is the whole point, right?

I Dig It (Indeed I Do!)

I downloaded a fun new iPhone game yesterday - only 99 cents - it's called 'I Dig It'.

Basically, you have a big tractor that's been jury-rigged into a tunnel-boring machine, and you're digging deep into the underdark looking for fossils, trinkets and goo-gaws to sell.

You turn the money earned into upgrades for your digging equipment. It's surprisingly addictive, for all its simplicity. I wasted about 3 hours on it yesterday, until my phone ran out of juice and died in the midst of a dig (my progress was saved, fyi).

Oddly enough, instead of digging a series of shafts, carefully ferreting out the nougaty goodness of Roman coins and mineralized fish carcass, I'm digging a gigantic pit mine.

I have this enormous cavern dug out, and when I descend from ground level, I free-fall for hundreds of feet before coming to the current bottom, where I carefully, gleefully clear just one more neat, level row of excavation before rocketing (LOVE the rocket!) back to the surface to hock my subterranean wares. Is this careful virtual digging another symptom of OCD?

Am I, in truth, digging into my psyche? What if there is no game, no app, no phone?? Just me, sitting, glazed, hands held up holding an imaginary device, digging an imaginary hole into my wounded, sobbing ID?? What if the Etruscan Vase power-up represents my feminine side, at war with my reptilian need for a jetpack? No, wait - it's all real. Whew!

I wonder if there are research studies that observe exactly how different people play games, and what it means about them...?

Chat Noir

Chat Noir (French for "Black Cat") is a sublime little Flash game.
..
The game is simplicity itself - no instructions are needed, no keyboard legend, no strategy guide. It's dots and a cat, what could be cleaner (from a game design standpoint)?

Even as I play, a big shiteating grin on my face, crushing on the programmers, wishing I could give them a big sloppy kiss and a friendly pat on the ass, I'm tickled by the simplicity.

At the same moment, I think of 10 variations that would make it more difficult and challenging, new levels, new directions, more layers. But then I remember its beautiful clarity, and I repent.

Play it, and try not to feel too guilty for winning.
.

Credi-Bull #13

Credi-Bull - a news item that might be fact, or might be fiction..

When playing, please avoid definitive answers like "I know this is true, I saw it on the news last night."..Instead, couch your vote as a "guess" - this will help ensure that everyone gets an unbiased chance to play!

The folks from Cyan Worlds and Ubisoft (who brought us the amazing Myst games) have begun work on a music-themed PC game set in the 1970's. Based entirely on 'The Eagles' album Hotel California, the game will feature all members of the band (for that album) - Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Don Felder, and Randy Meisner.

The story centers around the mysterious Hotel California, where the band arrives late one night seeking shelter from a storm. The hotel is a nexus of dark otherworldly forces, and once inside, the occupants can never leave.

The hotel itself is based on the architecture of the historic Hotel California in Todos Santos, Baja California Sur, Mexico - and is a network of secret doors and underground passages. Players will control each of the band members in turn, all with a ghostly puzzle of their own to solve - each song on the album being a puzzle.

The lyrics are the clues - such as these, for the master puzzle -

We are all just prisoners here / Of our own device / And in the master's chambers / They gathered for the feast / They stab it with their steely knives / But they just can't kill the beast / Last thing I remember / I was running for the door / I had to find the passage back to the place I was before / Relax said the nightman / We are programed to recieve / You can check out any time you like / But you can never leave...

Real or Fake?
(Vote in the 'comments' section, answer to be revealed there on Monday).

Not An Ordinary Fellah!

The beginning of another week! Who knows what it holds and will bring? It was a very lazy weekend, I did a lot of sleeping on Saturday, and took some naps to prepare for the strenuousness of still more sleep.

I got off my ass at one point and rode the exercise bike for 30 minutes, thinking that this would get me moving. Not so - I went right back to bed. I guess I had some sleep to catch up on. If sleep could be stored, I'd be set for the week!

Sunday was more fun, Cindy was off and we went to the beach and had funnel cake. It was freshly made an yummy! The wind was blowing and we got peppered in powdered sugar. The wind made lots of pretty waves and sea spray, and we watched surprisingly entertained as a man in his undies salvaged a lost purse from under the pier.

I was getting my Dance Dance Revolution on last night, but was hindered by the fact that the dance pad is acting up. The 'Up' arrow is being triggered while standing calm and still in the center square.

This is really annoying, because when you try to go for an 'up' marker at the correct time, it doesn't register, and you get a 'BOO!' which is really annoying.

I'd folded the pad into thirds to store it, and now it's messed up. Damn. I'm really enjoying the game, and it would suck to not be able to play any more. I've left it unfolded in the hopes that it will magically unkink itself.

By the way: "Not an ordinary fellah" is one of the lines from Dance Dance Revolution. When you're doing well, the line plays.

Fiddling While the Gold Master Burns...

The 'gold candidate' is due soon - our deadline is Friday, and I'm not feeling urgency. I know we're gonna be late with this game, I feel it in my bones, and it seems that I'm the only one. People are wandering in whenever they please, enjoying lengthy lunches, and leaving by 8pm. This is not a development team concerned about meeting their deadline. If this were my game - if I were the producer, I'd be five kinds of pissed.

The producers should be here, at least one of them, making sure that all that can be done is being done. But they are not here, and so that sense of ugency is missing. Hey, maybe the contract for the next game is already signed, and they're not concerned. I don't have enough information about future projects to guess. But this project AINT READY TO SHIP.

All this means lots of OT for me, and likely a healthy dose of DT too. Demon Laptop torments me from the possibility realm of "gee golly wouldn't it be nice..." (Like Demon Alcohol, you know... Demon... Oh never mind).

Doing DDR in the mornings, it's a nice switch from riding the bike. Cindy's been talking about a treadmill lately. Pretty soon here, we're gonna have to turn the spare bedroom into a gym. If we use the stuff, I don't mind spending money and space on exercise gear. Especially when it's fun like DDR.

Still toying with the idea of the bike riding game... Flash game might be pretty easy... Hmn. Maybe someday.

Cindy still hopes for us to move to Florida some day. They keep getting hit with storms... I tell you, Florida isn't a safe place to be in this era of global warming.