After the Jump: Long-Term Marriage Potentials

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Rob is gone drinkin’ (or something) this week, which left Craig and I to our own devices – we thought his absence would help us focus a bit, but without him there to be the focus of our disdain our attention wanders a bit.

That’s why, in the course of nearly fifty wonderfully rambling minutes, we manage to talk about Apple's iPad, the Cookie Monster virus, the evil of iTunes, the goodness of Amazon, Michael Pachter’s weird video game show, spam email, and so much more.

A note! For those of you who have deigned not to listen to the podcast in the past because “listening to nerds talk about video games for an hour is lame.” The format we seem to be settling in does include video games, but they take up much less time, freeing us to elaborate more on general pop-culture news and discuss posts that have gone up on the site.

What I am saying is that the podcast perhaps 400% cooler now, please come back.

Music this week, nerdy as ever, is the boss music from Final Fantasy IV, which really fits our podcast in that it is tense and dramatic. Our podcast is at least this tense and dramatic every week you guys.

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Writer’s Jukebox – Lion Kings, Orwell, and Record Stores

When was the last time you purchased music from a record store?  When was the last time that record store wasn’t a chain store like Tower Virgin Megastore FYE?  When was the last time it wasn’t from Wal-Mart or Target? 

I’m not sure, honestly.  I think it may have been Edgar Meyer’s Uncommon Ritual, which I only bought because I was on a huge bass/cello kick at the time (still am, in fact) and couldn’t wait for the thing to come from Amazon. 

This week, Chris bemoans his options for real-life album purchases, specifically on his quest to obtain new surf rock.  Pankin’s dreaming up Disney-inspired rock operas.  And Boivin delves deep into David Bowie’s concept-album period.

I don’t have a clever message to get you past the jump.  Just read on, will you?

Pankin – King of Pride Rock N’ Roll

Who doesn't like a good trip down nostalgia lane? That's why I've recently gotten into the music from Disney's The Lion King. "Circle of Life" (the one from the actual film, not the pop-synth version) came up on my shuffle recently, and since then I've been obsessed with wanting to make a rock arrangement of the song. (How sweet would it sound to play that funny little flute solo with Slash-style lead guitar? And what if lead vocals were by Eddie Vedder rather than Carmen Twillie?) I must admit that because of my sorely lacking music theory, I still haven't been able to figure out some of the chords at the end.

I've also been checking out the live local music scene, and by "checking out" I mean returning to hear my old favorites. Paul Chesne's sound can best be described as countrified rock/soul taken straight-up with a beer on the side. He and his band have a tremendous live chemistry, which I can't translate for you over the internet, but he does have two albums and an EP out that you can download for name-your-price on his website, www.paulchesne.com.

Other than that, it's just been the usual, such as working my way through some of Rush's newer and more under-appreciated stuff, and grooving out to John Bonham's 20-minute live drum solos.

 

Boivin – Bowie on the Beach

I've been down in sunny Naples, Florida for the past five days visiting my grandmother. This is what happens when you let your elderly relations know that you have a more than passing interest in musical theater and art history, they fly you to the other end of the country to see shows and go to lectures on the nude figure in art. Ugh, FML.

Needless to say, I've been putting a lot of time in on the beach, working on my tan (and since I got the skin from my Irish side, doing my damndest to avoid sunburns), reading books, and listening to my iPod. Of course, these can all be combined into a simultaneous activity by sunning myself on the beach, reading Nineteen Eighty-Four, and listening to David Bowie's Diamond Dogs.

Dogs is of course Bowie's concept album based on George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece (which I'm reading for the first time- I know, right?). More accurately, it's half a Nineteen Eighty-Four concept album and half a concept album about the glam rock apocalypse. The album's first half (or "side" as our ancestors termed it in the turbulent period of man's ascendancy) fits the latter description, opening with Bowie's alter ego Halloween Jack's battlecry "This ain't rock 'n' roll, this is genocide!" and shaping up to something more akin to George Miller than George Orwell. This is all of course because Side One is something of a coda to Bowie's glam rock era, a swan song to the days of Ziggy Stardust. Side Two is straight up Nineteen Eighty-Four with titles like "We Are The Dead", "1984", "Big Brother", and "Chant Of The Ever Circling Skeletal Family", all references to Orwell. I've really been enjoying the hell out of the book, and any album that has "Rebel Rebel" on it is fine by me as well.

Side Two's opener, "Rock 'N' Roll With Me" is one of my, if not my favorite Bowie song of all time. When Bowie eventually kicks the bucket (which will probably never happen), this is the track they should play at his funeral.

Chris – Trying to be Hip, Thwarted at Every Turn

Vampire Weekend aside, I didn't listen to anything last week. And I'm whiny and bitter about it. 

I was going to pick up a new surf-inspired album I had heard about - Astro Coast by Surfer Blood. From what I understand, it seems right up my alley. I have a soft spot for surf rock, and since the band is from Florida it would give me the added satisfaction of supporting the local team. Additionally, this would be the first group I've talked about for Writers' Jukebox that is less than ten years old. For once, I would be hip.

But when I drove to Tallahassee's sole record store on Monday, I was greeted with a sad sight. Clearance banners were draped across the windows, the walls were stripped bare, and most of the merchandise was boxed up. The store was closing. While most of the remaining records were 50% off, I can't say I want to pay even half-price for A Very Vince Gill Christmas or other leftovers of similar quality.

So there's not really a good option to buy music in Tallahassee anymore. Wal-Mart and Best Buy both have marginal music sections, but their CDs are targeted toward 13 year olds (Ke$ha) or 65 year olds (Barry Manilow) with nothing for anybody in between. I spent the rest of my week thoroughly annoying my friends by bitching about the decline of independent businesses in America at every opportunity.

On Saturday, I finally caved and went for the online purchase. Astro Coast is for sale for five bucks on Amazon.com. And even though this is half the price I would have paid for it in a store, it seems less fulfilling to procure it this way. But I suppose I'm at the point where I'll take what I can get.

The album is dead. Long live the album.

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A Decade of Dreck #22: Deal

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

There are a lot of problems with this movie. The first one is that it’s a poker movie.

There are plenty of moderately successful sports movies, but one can only manage so much respect for a simplistic and cliché sports message even if they’re a dedicate of the game. But this is a card-gambling movie – Texas Holdem no less – and it also sucks. I have a casual interest in Texas Holdem which is what made me willing to select this movie, and that helped it from being a complete waste of my time. It also helped that I watched it in two pieces, once during a slow hour at work and once while I was eating dinner.

First I’ll start with some positives to get them out of the way. The movie had a plot, and I count myself lucky in that regard. It also had an old Burt Reynolds, which was sort of neat. I didn’t feel like the movie was actively trying to be more than it was, so at least I wasn’t fooled. It wasn’t too long, so I didn’t feel like too many precious minutes were lost. I didn’t hate it either, and that was important.

That’s about all I’ve got.

Here’s the plot: A hot-headed college youth named Alex Stillman opens up the movie by humiliating his friends in a friendly game of poker. He follows up by wining an online cash tournament for something like $20,000 because of his superior understanding of the odds. His parents disapprove of his lack of enthusiasm about law school and his underperformance at the job daddy pulled some strings to get for him, and so naturally they aren’t thrilled to hear of his success at poker.

Alex’s online win grants him a bid to a casino tournament where he’s spotted by retired poker great, Burt Reynolds, better known as Tommy Vinson. Unlike the other big names dropped during this movie, Tommy Vinson is not a real poker player, nor is Karen “Razor” Jones – the woman who humiliates Alex with brutal, early defeat. Jones is played by Jennifer Tilly whom some of you may know as the voice of Bonnie Swanson from Family Guy, while others might recognize her as the real-life lady poker star and girlfriend of another poker elite Phil Laak, aka “The Unibomber” (No, poker-innocents, that’s a real nickname). Laak also makes a cameo – as himself unlike Tilly -- along with a few other famous poker players such as Antonio Esfandiari and Mike Sexton.

Something about Alex’s massive failure attracts Tommy’s attention, and he approaches him outside the Casino with an offer to train him. Alex accepts, and we learn that Tommy’s retirement came after his wife threatened to leave him if he didn’t give up poker, so all this must be kept secret from Tommy’s wife as well Alex’s family.

I’ll give away a major plot secret: both Alex’s family and Tommy’s wife drop their reservations and forgive everyone with open arms and unwavering support, because that’s totally the way real life works. I suppose when you’re on the verge of winning millions of dollars, you can be forgiven for almost anything, even if it’s losing hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout your entire life through reckless gambling.

During the montage of poker-training scenes in which Alex seems to do little else besides suck at poker and spend tens of thousands of dollars that the movie never explains why he has, he meets a young and attractive but otherwise boring girl named Michelle … twice, for about a five minutes each time. I’m not entirely sure why she appears on the cover. Not only does Michelle suck at being interesting, but she sucks at being an even remotely well-written character, and her lines are even worse than the already low quality of most others. Later we discover that Michelle is actually a hooker that Tommy hired to boost Alex’s confidence, and after a brief confrontation with Alex, she never appears again.

This climactic revelation forces a rift between Tommy and Alex, and after Alex storms off with the promise to quit the entire venture, Tommy signs himself up for the big Holdem Main Event that Alex has been training for, defying his wife’s will. By quit, apparently Alex meant play, and the two of them head down a long road of exciting, action-filled poker scenes towards their inevitable face-off at the final table. Alex gets his revenge against Jones, and eventually concedes his victory towards his mentor by folding the winning hand on his all-in.

The film was amateur, predictable, and often goofy. Plot turns were dull and unexplained. The poker itself even had a number of flaws that I recognized, which struck me as odd from a movie that took so much care to drop such big names.

Picking this movie off of an abominable list like this wasn’t a bad decision, and for that I’m grateful enough to withhold most of my bitterness about the glorification of poker. It’s gambling, and for every single twenty one year old hot-shot winner, there are thousands of poor schmucks who lose their lives to poker. Until the first epic Holdem movie emerges that wrestles with even one single complex and heart-wrenching theme, they’re all just going to be movies about less-than convincing chumps in less-than believable and idealistic scenarios. At the very least, because of that fact, I can’t fault this one for being much less than I expected.

Deal is ranked #35 on the Rotten Tomatoes Worst 100 list with 4% freshness. Its RT page can be found here.

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The Top 5 Games That Ruin Friendships

I have written recently about the concept of collaborative gaming, and like any good train-0f-thought, it led me to start pondering the opposite end of the spectrum: competitive gaming. In a world where the masses fear the isolating effects of video games -- the loss of family values among them -- fingers are pointed at all sides, and some noble developers strive to produce the perfect “family” game.

There are plenty of fun, feel-good, home-style board games that deserve lots of praise for their creativity, and some video games have been popping up that deliver a surprisingly comparable effect. However, there are some games that, despite their developers intentions (or perhaps as a direct result of them), fan the flames of ire between the players, be they on a physical board or a back-lit screen. I reflected on the worst of such games, and I have composed this [angry] list for your reading pleasure.

#5: The New Super Mario Bros Wii, multiplayer

It was after an extensive debate that I finally placed this game on my list, and it appears at the lowest rank because of my personal bias. I love this game, but it can understandably cause some tension if you have any shreds of pride in your platformer skills. Not only can it be extremely frustrating when players bash into each other in mid-air while trying to escape the shooting death-lava or a sinking foothold, it’s also reasonable to hypothesize that the developers must have had some malicious intentions when they programmed in the ability to pick up other players and throw them around without their consent. I have, on multiple occasions, been hurled off the edge of the screen by my partners, a martyr for the Big Coin cause, without having any say in the matter. While I thought it was hilarious at the time, I can see how others might see it differently.

#4: Halo 1-3

One of the more ubiquitous titles in gamer households, Halo’s multiplayer can be fun and an amusing opportunity to exorcise your inner immaturity, releasing it before it can escape in front of your boss or your girlfriend. Regardless of which version of Halo you prefer, the diversity of game-rules, the detailed maps, and the grounds laden with weapons can add spice to any individual or team battle between your and your buddies.

But while stat-lines such as “Boobz was killed by Mexicans” or “Big cocks was killed by AIDS” can provide hours of entertainment, it’s only so freaking funny when Boobz just can’t catch a break and keeps getting annihilated only seconds after each respawn.  The taunting laugher and the vicious smack-talk begin to haunt Boobz until he or she tosses down the controller and storms out of the room. And there is always that one jerk who is way way better than everyone else. After a few friendly battles, the dominant player or team combination begins leech the fun out of the game, and so the rules have to be altered or exaggerated to add some chaos in the attempt to even the odds.

But this is a risky business too, and it usually precedes the conclusion of play by about fifteen minutes. The unpredictability of chaos combined with the frustration of repeatedly losing (or as in the case of our theoretical Jerk, who we will call Elite Skillz, the frustration of having your game style altered by whiny losers) can lead to boredom, which can lead to a reckless desire to give up winning and focus on ruining the game for others.

# 3: Mario Party 1-358

It’s hard to accept that anything with the word “party” in it can be evil – especially when it’s populated by something as benign and adorable  as the Mario cast. But don’t be fooled, my friends. This four-player video/board game in any of its evil incarnations can destroy the bonds of friendship as strongly as any demon.

The mini-games are a ridiculous combination of goofy luck and button-mashing, and if you’re new to them you have absolutely no hope of ever winning one except by blind luck. The game layout is designed to increase the random distribution of negative events and items, allowing everyone to get their fair share of the frustration. Yet somehow the most negative event always seems to happen to you. You’ll think to yourself, “I’ll get that star as long as I don’t role a one!” And lo, by some miracle, you will always get a one.

It doesn’t matter which version you choose, they’re all the same.  I’ve seen smack talk that would make your mom blush, and tantrums that would embarrass a five year old.

# 2: Diplomacy

I know that the writers and many of the readers at Charge Shot!!! are intimately familiar with the board game Diplomacy, but I haven’t met many other people who are, and that’s probably for the best. The whole point of this terrible game is to make allies out of other players and then subsequently screw them over, ideally in the most diplomatic way possible.

The game shares some similarities with Risk, primarily in that the overriding goal is to conquer territory. Another unfortunate commonality is that eliminated players are rewarded by being allowed to abstain from the twelve hours of play that follow their humiliating defeat. The mechanics of the game are pretty simple: up to seven players fill spots in Eurasia, and then they all attempt to invade one another. There are no dice, there are no cards, there is only purposeful and collaborative movement.

Each round consists of fifteen minutes spent talking and planning, each player writing their exact moves before the turn begins, with the theory that players acts simultaneously, eliminating the advantage of a turn-based game. Since all moves are very simple and involve a single-space movement per turn, successful invasions depend on the strength of numbers, and in most cases, this requires the support of your “allies.” If your allies lie to you, promising support and then failing to give it (attacking, say, you instead) you’re screwed, and a chump to boot.

It’s not hard to see why this game can ruin relationships. Surviving Diplomacy requires thick skin, and the ability to realize that in this game, it is completely reasonable to assume that even your closest friend is lying to your face.

# 1: Monopoly

Screw Monopoly! What a horrible, horrible game. And no, Hasboro, producing a million versions of themed Monopoly does nothing to improve the actual playability of your dark and sinister attempt to teach children that capitalism kills. I hate Catopoly even more than I hate the original, and don’t even get me started on Nintendopoly.

The point of this game is to bankrupt your opponents and become supreme chancellor of of your cyclical square-shaped economy by buying and mortgaging properties, utilities, and transportation systems with reckless abandon – often for hours and hours at a time. When you finally go bankrupt, forced by the die rolls of fate onto the hotel-lined stretch of doom set up by your salivating opponent, you’re simply eliminated from the game entirely because now, as a homeless top hat figurine, your existence is meaningless. You sit and watch as the person who took you out absorbs your hard-earned properties and dominates the rest of the game ruthlessly.

Isn’t it somewhat telling that all the would-be monopolists go to jail so often? When the player in the lead accidentally does to go to jail, he or she can happily remain there, safe from the feeble rent fees of puny small-business opponents, and unflinching at the eventual forced $50 dollar bail. And why does passing Go allow you to collect miscellaneous money from the sky? That doesn’t make sense!

This game is an evil attempt to teach our children that success comes in the form of owning property, amassing money, and exploiting your peers, which is totally unlike real life.

Oh hell. That is totally like real life.

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The State of the State of the Union Address

Last week a friend brought up the fact that he prefers the AFC and NFC Conference Championships to Super Bowl Sunday. The Super Bowl has evolved into a media spectacle, a circus that Americans feel compelled to watch, and something that almost never lives up to the hype. The Conference Championships, on the other hand, provide a day of great football, free from all the overexposure.

Sometimes I feel the same way about the State of the Union address. If you're looking for in-depth policy analysis, lengthy debate or nuanced political theory, you're not going to get it here. But still, one feels compelled to tune in; it is, after all, mandated in the Constitution that the President needs to do this, and there's something immensely satisfying about the speech. It's a summary of the previous year, an agenda for the next, a rallying cry for the President's party and an admonishment addressed to the opposition, all rolled into one. One feels like a patriot just for taking an hour to watch, and by the time that the President concludes that "The State of the Union is strong!", I'm always ready to stand up and sing our national anthem.

Only this year was different. Obama used requisite "strong" moniker right at the get-go; the conclusion, however, was reserved for speaking about how to strengthen the union, rather than reiterating that everything was fine. The tone was subdued and darker, and Obama had a hard line to straddle - admitting that times are tough while still trying to instill the speech with his trademark optimism and "Yes We Can!" mentality.

At times, he almost felt like a game show host (especially toward the middle of his speech when he started giving away tax incentives to all sorts of people), but other times he was the stern parent, using the classic "I'm not angry...I'm just disappointed" rhetoric. He took some well-deserved shots at Congress (one friend texted me: "This whole speech is just Obama telling the Senate to do its job"), and a somewhat low blow at the Supreme Court. Obama was simultaneously a raging populist harping on the banks, a somewhat defensive apologist for the stimulus, an ambitious idealist, a resigned pragmatist, a jokester, and a stick-in-the-mud who takes himself too seriously. He both was a Washington insider, and an everyman who took pains to separate himself from the politics of Congress. He donned many hats over the course of those seventy minutes, and the result was more than a little dizzying.

The content of the actual speech contained few surprises (even the biggest shocker - Obama's pledge to allow gays to serve in the military by the end of the year - was leaked a few days previously). His agenda remains the same, though perhaps expressed in more eloquent terminology. Create jobs. Pass health care reform. Convert to alternative energy sources. By this point, most Americans have made up their minds on these issues one way or another, and though Obama tried to make the argument that even dissenters should at least be willing to listen, I don't think he (or anyone) harbors the illusion that this speech will sway any minds.

But content is never the crowning achievement of the State of the Union address. Rather, it is the very form that the event takes that is the most important, even if that form seems almost anachronistic. The Founding Fathers conceived of the speech as a way to keep track of what the hell the President was up to, making sure that wily Executive Branch wasn't getting too out of control. The summaries were dry, formal, and often delivered in writing. It wasn't until the Wilson administration that Washington's practice of reciting the speech in person was brought back; the advent of radio a few years later led to Calvin Coolidge delivering the address over the airwaves as well, changing the audience of the speech forever.

Now, of course, the President uses this time to indirectly address the American people - talking to Congress is only a formality. This was perhaps a necessity before the ubiquity of television; now, however, we're in an age where the White House has a Twitter feed and the President's Weekly Radio Address has turned into a weekly Youtube address. The Internet is chock full of both news organizations and independent political blogs, and there's quite a few cable news networks that track every move and every comment made by pretty much every politician, twenty-four hours a day. America knows what's going on, right? Why sit down and listen to this stuffy old-fashioned speech, a speech filled with arguments and statistics we've heard a million times before?

In the past, Obama has been good about peppering his speeches with catchy sound bites, pithy quotes, phrases like "Yes we can!" that are good fodder for campaign buttons but don't actually mean anything. Last night, however, I noticed a distinct lack of those kind of rallying calls. But this is not a bad thing. Obama was not focused on the cheap feel good moment; rather, the speech was looking very firmly into the future. Most State of the Unions do this, albeit in a hazy, nebulous fashion. But on Wednesday, quite emphatically, Obama was calling for a long-term vision.

You can love Obama or hate him, but you've got to respect the sort of lengthy perspective of these kind of speeches. We're more connected to the political world than we've ever been before. Politicians are on Facebook, Congressional bills are available to read on the Internet, there are three different C-SPANS in my basic cable package alone. We have a lot of this information at our fingertips, but as a consequence, I worry that we're growing too focused on the short term. As pundits track daily poll movements, and audiences focus on irrelevant sound bites and Freudian slips, the news media (and yes, us bloggers) have lost their sense of perspective. Every day I can turn on the radio and hear the progress on the health care bill (or lack thereof), but far less often is there any sort of context, any sort of long-term look at where America is coming from on this issue and the possibilities for its future beyond the next election.

But the State of the Union forces us to think about this sort of stuff. For one night out of the year, our brains instead can look at the big picture, the way this sort of thing might eventually be addressed in history books. Now, we shouldn't think like this all the time, or we'd end up wallowing in abstraction and what-if scenarios. But once in a while, a larger perspective is a good thing. A cohesive speech, devoid of rallying calls or overused slogans, filled with references to our country's past history, is even better.

I think the state of the State of the Union address is strong. A 70 minute speech might seem a bit lengthy for our modern, 180-character attention spans (Obama is already receiving some flack for his loquacity), but I believe it's important to pay attention to these lengthy endeavors. There are never easy answers in the State of the Union, nor should there be. But a good form of this speech might force Americans to ponder questions they might otherwise not want to think about. This is a good thing.

So, if you missed the speech, find it on YouTube. Or dig up a transcript and read it, if you haven't got the time to wade through the ponderous punctuations of applause. Depending on your political affiliation, you're going to walk away thinking the speech is inspirational or thinking that Obama is the biggest con man this side of Bernie Madoff. Either option is fine. Just as long as Americans set aside their truncated CNN news summaries and spend time thinking about the speech at all, our country will be on the right track.

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Microsoft: An Indie Enabler?

While it's tempting to imagine Microsoft as some sort of bad influence on developers with a chronic indie problem, I believe Arkedo founder Camille Guermonprez meant it politely when he called the company an "enabler." He was referring, in an interview, to the Indie Games channel on Xbox Live, the perenially, and perhaps inevitably, confounding channel for XNA releases. Microsoft has had trouble communicating the identity of their Indie Games project since it launched, and its status as the red-headed stepchild of the Xbox Live family hasn't gone unnoticed by the press or potential developers. However, where Indie Games is succeeding, disappointing and changing appear to be part of a larger flux in the Live environment.
Whether or not it is intentional, describing Microsoft as "enablers" of the format's muted success carries with it a backhanded critique of the company's enthusiasm. Certainly, Guermonprez is a dutiful and much welcome contributor in the Indie Games roster, the Arkedo series being some of the best received and executed games available with the service. In fact, Guermonprez applauds the freedom that Microsoft has given XNA developers, and for not wearing "a publisher hat" in regards to game content and description. Concerns have been voiced that Microsoft is too hands off in their approach to the XNA community. Hobbyists and dedicated developers are given equal emphasis, pricing options, and promotion on the Indie Games channel, so it's difficult for users to find the most fully-formed entries. A look at the top grossing Indie Games of 2009 tells the tale. While the number one spot belongs to I MAED A GAM3 WITH Z0MB1ES!!!1 (ironically at that) with $160,000 in sales (!), two separate controller massage "games" made it onto the list, one edging out Who Did I Date Last Night for the number six spot. The system in place seems to benefit smaller development budgets and very simple execution.
Of course, this is not unlike the Apple's App Store, which Guermonprez suggests, may change the way Microsoft approaches Indie Games. The inflexible pricing regiment of the Indie Games channel will hopefully be the first thing to go. Microsoft has repeatedly had to defend the Microsoft Points currency on Xbox Live, and the one, three, and five dollar price points imposed on Indie Games seem to be arbitrary restrictions dictated by the dollars to points conversion rate. More pricing increments may give XNA developers more control over how to project their games to users.
The Indie Games market is still too small to attract many developers. Meanwhile, XBLA is becoming a haven for big projects from relatively big studios. There exists a considerable gap between the awareness of and attention to XBLA and that of Indie Games, despite the latter resembling the early years of the former. Perhaps Microsoft needs to throw its weight behind another The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai phenom in the XNA community. It would be encouraging to see an non-Avatar focused indie game that demonstrates the possibilities of XNA to be promoted on the Xbox welcome tab, next to the McDonald's ad and supplication to tweet from your 360. And while I respect Microsoft's democratic handling of how each indie is displayed on the channel, there must be a decent way to highlight wholehearted efforts by dedicated studios. It's not too late to realize the potential of the format. And how could it hurt to have a legion of budding developers owe you one? Continue...

The Allure of the Modern MMO

I’ve never played an MMO.  I’ve never paid monthly for an account.  Never joined a guild or gone on a raid.  Never made a corpse run or spec’d my character for DPS.  I consider myself a fairly serious gamer, but I’ve never taken part in what has overtaken D&D as the true sign of nerddom. 

But I’m fascinated by them.  I can remember weekends in my middle school years, trolling the local mall, killing time at EB Games reading the back of the Everquest box.  The idea of going online and teaming up with other people to do things I’d only done solo in Squaresoft RPGs over stimulated my adolescent brain to an extreme from which a sugar high would be a relief.  Thankfully (for my mom’s credit card), I never made the leap.  But I had friends who did, and I always secretly envied them.

While the “Buy my virtual couches with your virtual-but-real money” world of Second Life gives me the heebie-jeebies, the sociological implications of these virtual spaces excite me much as the allure of cooperative adventuring excited a younger, slightly more pimpled me.  Are the online bonds established between guildmates any less valid than those formed by varsity teammates in high school?  How might the dog-eat-dog universe of EVE Online reveal potential pitfalls in a real rampantly capitalist society?  These worlds have their own customs, their own lingo.  “Slash Dance” means nothing in the club scene.  But “/dance” is usually a lighthearted invitation to MMO good times.

High-brow questions aside, I’m incredibly scared of any MMO’s potential to disrupt my life and devour my bank account monthly chunk by monthly chunk.  But that doesn’t stop me from getting excited by them.  Three major MMO releases glimmer on the horizon, each one more tantalizing then the next.  So much promise, so many reasons to give my wallet to a friend and say, “Don’t give this to me unless I am starving.” 

Boldly Going Where No MMO Has Gone Before (Sort Of)

After two developers and countless years of work, Star Trek Online launches next week.  Cryptic Studios, the folks behind City of Heroes and the critically-underwhelming Champions Online, acquired the license and finally brought the potential cash cow to market.  Lucky for STO, most of us are still reeling from J.J. Abrams’ excellent franchise reboot.  Hell, Zachary Quinto recorded some narration for the MMO. That’s a lot of good will on which to capitalize.

I’ve been watching GiantBomb’s hilarious coverage of the open beta, and I must say I’m intrigued by STO.  On a very basic level, the game mixes up the common MMO formula by offering both ground (“Away Team” missions) and ship combat.  Sometimes you’ll roll around with a party of officers, others you’ll be engaging in space combat with a distinctly naval feel.  On the surface, this doesn’t sound special.  Of course a Star Trek MMO would let you do both.  But I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of two largely different gameplay types occurring in a successful, large-scale MMO (the three Star Wars: Galaxies fans out there should feel free to correct me). 

Cryptic’s M.O. for MMOs is heavy amounts of instancing.  This means most missions are sectioned off from the world around them, allowing only a slice of participating players at time.  500 people might be saving Vulcan from invading Klingons, but the game will partition them into groups of 15 or 20.  Rare are times when you’ll see scores of other people running through the world.  Some might argue this undercuts the “massively” part of Massively Multiplayer Online games.  And they’d be right, to an extent. But the flipside, as Philadelphia writer Daniel Nations puts it, is that instances “provide an area that dynamically reacts to the player's actions.”  This allows for more story-driven, episodic content.  Something fans of Star Trek will probably enjoy.

Gaming’s Best Storytellers Tackle an Online Republic

The promise of a focused, story-driven experience certainly makes Star Trek Online promising.  But few have advanced far enough in the game to encounter the more complicated material, so there’s still scant word on how that content actually functions.  Meanwhile, BioWare isn’t being shy about its lofty goals for their upcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic. In 1998, if you’d asked me which would be better, three new Star Wars movies courtesy of George Lucas or a completely made up Star Wars fiction from the folks behind Baldur’s Gate, I’d have laughed and bought your movie tickets.  Little did I know that BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic would stand the test of time far better than any of Lucas’ godawful prequel trilogy.  So when BioWare said they’d figured out a way to bring their robust storytelling abilities to bear on an MMO set in the Old Republic universe (and delivered a slick trailer, to boot), my ears naturally perked up. 

Preview coverage implies that players in parties will get to make tough moral decisions together, advancing story in a way poor old The Matrix Online could’ve only dreamed of.  It’s not like MMOs have never had stories, but plot’s always played fourth fiddle to loot, level caps, and PvP.  For five years now, the MMO landscape’s been dominated by World of Warcraft, a game so relentless and well-crafted that the only way anyone’s going to capture more than a small slice of the market will be by reinventing the wheel.  Making a story that matters wouldn’t be a bad place to start.

One Game to Rule Them All

What started as an online spinoff of a popular real-time strategy series has now become as public a face of gaming as Mario or Grand Theft Auto.  I’ve mentioned before that WoW’s grown large enough to warrant a South Park parody.  And Sam Raimi’s decided not to make Spider-Man 4 because he’s too busy earning billions of Blizzard bucks.

WoW built upon the success EverQuest had after it pounded Ultima Online into submission.  So what if it’s largely ripped from Lord of the Rings and other fantasy lore?  You can play a wide variety of races and classes, equip your character with a myriad of useful (or useless) decorative crap, and piss off your friends who spent a week coordinating everyone’s schedules so you could spend three hours raiding in the hopes of getting even more decorative crap.  Plus, it’s all been streamlined to the nth degree, making it accessible to even the most casual of gamers – and why every pretender to the throne (Lord of the Rings Online, Age of Conan, Warhammer, Aion, etc.) eventually rescinds from the public eye, tail between its legs.

But it’s not WoW’s preposterous pedigree that has me chomping at the bit.  I’m blown away by Blizzard’s plans for the next expansion, Cataclysm.  When Cataclysm goes live, even low-level areas of the game will be ravaged when a giant dragon bursts out from underground or some such crazy shit.  People who buy the expansion pack will be able to access new areas and races, but even those with the base product will see significant changes to the world.  If that’s not an incentive to roll a new character in a five-year-old RPG, I don’t know what is.  By creating a living, breathing online world and then completely reinventing it, Blizzard raises the bar yet again for post-release MMO support.  They may have just raised it entirely out of reach.

The Trickle Down, Down, Down Effect

As many gamers as there are who play MMOs, there are just as many (if not more) that don’t.  But that doesn’t mean they aren’t subject to the trends of this immensely popular genre.  The console wars now take place online, and persistence is the hot ticket.  Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is just one popular online shooter with levels and unlocks not unlike an MMO.  In Demon’s Souls, players inhabit a world filled with the ghosts of other fallen players and can team up with them to tackle particularly hard enemies.  Even the simple act of playing games on Xbox Live earns you what are essentially experience points.

MMOs are becoming increasingly harder to ignore.  And with such high profile releases on the way, I just hope I can continue to ignore the burning desire to spend money on them.  If not, Andrew, will you hold my wallet?

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The iPad

All eyes were on Apple yesterday (you know, before they were on that other guy) as Steve Jobs donned his blue jeans and told the world what it wanted. What it wanted was Apple’s near-mythical tablet, the iPad.

I was eager to see it unveiled just to stop the rumors, each insignificant morsel of which has been reported with near-psychotic fervor by the way-too-enthusiastic Apple enthusiast press (“Apple Tablet May Use Phillips Head Screws, Suggests Post-It Found Near Steve Jobs’ Car”). The same press lapped it up when Jobs sat onstage with the thing for twenty minutes, casually browsing the Web and checking his email. I guess when your company rakes in $15.6 billion in three months you can make people watch whatever the hell you want.

Apple’s newest gadget will be in an enviable position when it releases in two months - the latest must-have thing from a company that lately seems unable to fail. What does it bring to the table? Where does it fall short? Is its success inevitable? Put up your feet. Let’s chat a bit.

Just The Facts

The iPad is surrounded by important numbers, which I will get out of the way as quickly as possible because this is the boring part: the screen is 9.7 inches, about the same size as most netbooks, and has a 1024x768 pixel resolution. Unencumbered by a keyboard and some other components it manages to come in at about half an inch thick, and it weighs a pound and a half. It will come in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities.

All models come with the requisite Wi-Fi (802.11n, the fastest incarnation of the standard) and Bluetooth connections, and some models also sport 3G antennas for connection to (for better or worse) AT&T’s cell phone network. Battery life while being used is expected to be about ten hours, and if you never did anything with it ever (an unlikely scenario, one would like to hope) it would hold a charge for an entire month.

Pricing starts at $499 and breaks down as follows:

	16GB	32GB	64GB
No 3G	$499	$599	$699
With 3G	$629	$729	$829

The 3G data plan costs $15 a month for 250 megabytes of data, and $30 for unlimited data – this is, I believe, pay as you go, with none of the expensive contracts that currently encumber the iPhone.

Home stretch, guys: The iPad also comes with dock – this dock includes a full-size keyboard, further blurring the line between this tablet and a laptop, and the dock also includes a USB port for connection to computers and digital cameras. It will run all current iPod/iPhone apps, either in a small window that matches the display size of those devices, or in a stretched-out fullscreen mode. Finally, it also includes an integrated speaker and microphone, meaning that the Skype app would effectively allow this thing to function as a giant phone.

Whew.

The iPad As a Computer

The iPad is positioned as Apple’s answer to the netbook, an intermediary between their iPod Touch and iPhone on the low end, and their MacBook laptops on the high end.

Apple doesn’t think much of the netbook experience – you run software intended for standard PCs, but you’re doing it on slow, often low-quality hardware with untenably tiny screens. The devices aren’t without their benefits (portability, battery life, cuteness) and uses, but such is not Apple’s way. Apple would rather design a device specifically for the intended use, and then design software specifically for the device. This means something tailored to easy reading without eyestrain and typing without constantly poking the wrong buttons with my giant fingers, all packed into a device that’s comfortable to have at work and on a plane and in bed.

Unfortunately, there are some computer-y things that the iPad just can’t do. you’re still limited to running only one app at a time – even with the larger screen and the beefier processor, multitasking is a no-go. Adobe Flash, long a fixture of the Web, is a no-show, just as on the iPhone and iPod Touch. One of the more glaring flaws is the continued absence of a Microsoft Office app.

The iWork app Apple announced for the iPad is all well and good, but the business world (and, to a large extent, the academic world, in which Apple carries a good deal more weight) turns on the Word, Excel and PowerPoint trifecta. Google Apps or the upcoming Microsoft Office Web Apps may be enough to get on with, but it’ll be hard to say before people actually have the tablets in hand.

The iPad as a Multimedia Hub

All work and no play etc. etc. – can it also handle your music and video libraries as well as a computer? Sure, depending on how much space your music and video libraries take up. The iPad is descended from the iPod, and as such it’s going to give you the same music listening and video watching experience you’ve become familiar with over the years. The integrated speaker, which is reportedly above-average for a device of this size, will even make it a better communal experience than the shrill, tinny speaker crammed into current iPods and iPhones.

The downside in this case is probably the device’s larger size – if I’m on the road I’ll probably have my headphones plugged into my iPhone, and if I’m home I’ll probably have them plugged into my laptop – the iPad might be a good music player, but I’ve already got a couple of those.

Where the iPad does better is its iTunes app, which is more like its Mac and PC counterpart than it is the version that runs on the iPod Touch. Purchasing and renting movies and music looks to be pretty seamless, and footage of Star Trek and Up running on the device make the case for the iPad as a gorgeous portable movie player.

The iPad As an E-Reader

This is the single most compelling case for the iPad.

I was talking with Rob during Apple’s conference, and I showed him shots of the iPad running the New York Times’ iPad-specific reader application. He declared it a death blow for print media. I have to say, if this thing catches on, I’m inclined to agree.

I can actually see reading stuff on the iPad, which is not something I’ve ever been able to say of uncomfortable-to-lie-with laptops or the underwhelming black-and-white LCD of Amazon’s Kindle. The iPad can be held as comfortably as most books, but you get the embedded videos and picture galleries and links you’d get if you were reading it on a computer. Let’s just hope the Times and other outlets are going to be smart enough to charge for their iPad apps, or they won’t be around for long enough for people to read anything.

The other potential win for the iPad where the printed word is concerned is iBooks (not to be confused with the other iBook), an online bookstore with content fed to it by publishers (five at present: HarperCollins, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and Hachette Book Group). The model is the iTunes store, so the assumption is that as (if?) the service gains steam, more publishers will ink deals with Apple to make their publications available.

As with the Times app, I can actually see reading on the iPad. No, the tablet is not going to replace the book overnight. However, the digital music revolution has shown us that a new way of doing things doesn’t have to replicate the old way exactly, it just has to be good enough in the right areas. More than the Kindle, perhaps even more than Barnes & Noble’s Nook, the iPad (backed by the established infrastructure of the iTunes store) looks poised to blaze a trail toward digital books.

The iPad As a Gaming System

People apparently play video games on their iPhones. Given the sub-par selection of fart-themed games and the fact that the iPhone gets about half an hour of battery life while gaming, I’ve never really experienced this phenomenon myself.

The success of gaming on Apple’s portable devices has been entirely accidental, and Apple still doesn’t really know what to do with this unexpected windfall. As a result, games on the iPad look like giant versions of games on the iPod Touch.

Unless someone can use the multi-touch capabilities and larger screen to greater effect, gaming on the iPad is going to be little more than the mildly entertaining distraction that it is currently. This was the most underwhelming part of Apple’s presentation, and they didn’t dwell on it long.

The iPad As an Imperfect Device, Developed By Mortal Men Doomed to Die

Yes, this is an interesting device, but there are pitfalls. Apple’s App Store processes have drawn much industry ire, and they’ll keep just as tight a rein on iPad software. Its Safari browser lacks support for Flash, which is such an integral part of the Internet’s DNA that I’m surprised it doesn’t render the thing useless. iTunes, as the near-exclusive provider of digital media to the iPad, will sink its hooks further into you, DRM and all. And that’s just what we know is wrong with it.

Moving into the land of speculation: based on Apple’s past, this first revision of the product will probably have Problems. Remember the super-hot, super-noisy first generation Intel MacBooks? How about the first generation iPod, which only connected to Macs and was sort of primitive to boot? Or the near-unusable initial release of OS X? Apple likes to get revolutionary products out the door before its competitors can almost as much as it likes to revise those products six months down the road to fix all the first version’s problems.

As with any Apple product, I’m going to recommend that smart people wait for the second version, and that smart and patient people wait for the third. It’s just the way these things work.

Conclusions

What do I think about the iPad? In a nutshell, slightly underwhelmed, but cautiously optimistic. It’s a product with tremendous potential, but it’s also just a larger version of something that has existed for awhile. Apple’s legion of dedicated adherents guarantees the product a niche, but it remains to be seen whether it will turn the world on its head as prophesied.

Its biggest obstacle is convincing people that they need another device. People were hoping the iPad could replace both their computer and possibly their iPods while on the road, but it’s too large to do the latter and it’s not flexible enough to do the former. With so much overlap, the product as-is seems targeted toward gadget fiends and few others.

Even given that, good developers with good apps may yet be able to make something exciting out of the iPad. Ask me again in six months, and I can tell you with more certainty whether you want this thing or not.

What do you think? As always, the comments section is just one or two scrolls down from here.

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Mopping Up Culture Vomit: "Indie" Has Officially Become a Completely Useless Term

Vampire Weekend's new album, Contra, debuted at number one on the Billboard charts last week. That makes it only the twelfth independent album ever to do so. Incidentally, though, that list also includes albums by Pearl Jam and the Eagles, and two Disney soundtracks. So not exactly "indie bands," if you get my drift.

But I'm not even sure that I get my drift anymore. That statement could be applied to my life in general, but we'll just focus on the indie part for now.

Indie's been a thorn in my side since I threw off the shackles of automatically-assigned iTunes genres sometime back in high school. "Rock/pop? This is not a useful generic convention! I'll assign my own genre names! Then they can be as quirky and unnecessarily specific as I want them to be!"

I'll give you an example: I could split up all the metal bands on my hard drive into their respective subgenres, if I really felt like it: death, black, drone, doom, sludge, stoner, thrash, metalcore, etc. Or, if I wanted to be truly nitpicky, I could include the various hybrid genres: drone doom, stoner sludge, deathened black , blackened death (as different as Sound Mixing and Sound Editing, I might add).

Or I could just make up genres. I could introduce "sasscore" into the mix, if I felt like it. Although the term "sasscore" was invented by a dude I went to high school with and only applies to one band (The Blood Brothers).

But the term "indie" gives rise to the opposite problem: it's too damn general.

Even "indie rock," the most well-known subset of indie music, isn't particularly exclusive. Indie rock, like many genres, has referred to different things at different times. In the '80s, the term "indie rock" referred to punk-influenced distorted pop of Husker Du, the Pixies, and the Dinosaur Jr. The sound of those bands led neatly into the alternative rock of the 1990's, which could be considered the more popular spinoff of alternative rock (at least for a time).

But at some point, indie rock came to refer to lo-fi (Neutral Milk Hotel, Elliot Smith) and jangle pop (the Smiths, early R.E.M.), as well.

Already, then, there's a split in what constitutes the "sound" of indie rock. Is it the abrasive proto-Nirvana of Husker Du and the Pixies? Or the under-produced pop music of Elliot Smith, most clearly influenced by the Byrds, the Beatles, and the Beach Boys? Or maybe just music that doesn't sound like mainstream pop music (whatever that may be)?

At least during that period, though, indie served as a catchall for bands signed to independent labels...until it didn't. There are only so many bands that can whip up enough buzz to warrant a major-label signing without releasing a record or two, so it makes complete sense that many bands have made the journey from independent to major labels.

But, as we've seen, indie rock bands signed to major labels don't cease to be indie once they make the switch. Bands like Death Cab for Cutie and Modest Mouse are still referred to as indie even though they're signed to major labels. And although they represent two wildly divergent styles of indie rock, they still evince the aesthetics of some aspect of the genre. So, from a sound standpoint, it makes sense that they would still be referred to as indie rock bands.

What about bands that leapfrog the independent label entirely, yet are still called indie rock? Synthpop solo act Owl City has never put out a record on an independent label, yet is referred to as an indie artist. His designation as such most likely has more to do with the fact that his project is basically a more irritating version of the Postal Service (who, again, sound very little like any indie rock I can think of). I speak ill of them only because I'm so ashamed of how many times that song's been stuck in my head.

And are you really "indie" if you have a Billboard Hot 100 number one and are loathed by pretty much anyone who considers themselves a fan of indie rock?

So what to do with Vampire Weekend, a band on an independent label (XL) who has a Billboard number one and sounds more like Paul Simon than anything else? Should we refer to them as indie, simply because they're still on an indie label? Again, that would make the Eagles and Pearl Jam indie rock bands (based on the aforementioned list of bands on independent labels with number one albums).

Pearl Jam, incidentally, belongs to another genre with a now-misleading name: alternative. Almost twenty years after Nevermind, it's clear that, for most listeners, alternative refers to the sound of modern mainstream rock music.

More than anything else, this terribly confusing history of "alternative" genres (first alternative, now indie) bespeaks the futility of reactionary generic terms. Both alternative and indie (which, for a time in the '80s, were practically synonymous) are genres that, at least in theory, stand more for what something isn't. Indie music isn't on a major label...unless it is. Alternative music isn't mainstream rock...unless it is.

And those contradictions arise from the fact that trends in art and culture have always been the product of movements and counter-movements. Someone gets fed up with the status quo of some medium, they create something that sounds nothing like it, and then the populace at large realizes they like the reaction more than the original, thereby making the alternative into the mainstream.

It'd be nice if music critics could stop referring to genres of music in terms of what they aren't, but I can't see that happening anytime soon. Everybody loves a good fight, even if they can't quite tell who wins. Continue...

The Trouble With Games As Art

Proposition: Games are art.

If you laughed, don’t worry: you aren’t alone. You can’t apply the word ‘art’ to games like Halo: ODST –not that it’s bad, you say. It just isn’t art.

When we started Charge Shot!!! a year ago, we began with the assumption that games were art. Games are capable of possessing the highest forms of aesthetic beauty, narrative prowess, philosophical complexity – and hurling them headlong into the messy cause/effect matrix of human input. The artful game would be a masterpiece of ingenuity, the pinnacle creation of a roomful of talents.

It’s not like I’m waiting for the messiah. These games exist. Hell, Jason Roher did it with Passage, and he didn’t need a roomful of anything but a laptop.

But the problem with positing games as art is that Passage happens so seldom. It ends up being a small bell sounded at the end of a very long, very noisy hallway.

If my argument veers off into some luddite, techno-anarchist rant, bear with me. I’m not condemning money, the freedom to make money or the benefits afforded to a design studio by big, huge piles of money. I’m just saying it should have less to do with the way we make games.

If the games-as-art doubter looks at Halo: ODST and wonders how a series can survive nearly a decade and remain essentially unchanged, the answer is simple: don’t mess with success. When Halo launched in 2001, it singlehandedly established the Xbox as a must-have gaming system, riveting Microsoft into the pantheon of console developers – without Halo, their cumbersome, overheating and underperforming systems might have fallen off the radar.

Halo has since become Microsoft’s prize pony. They’ve said so: much money depends upon the success of the next Halo game. The developers at Bungie haven’t complained about any creative shackles, and why should they? Their games are well-reviewed, well-received and played for years. They’re good games, and they make their proud papas tons of cash. But they’re allergic to change. They fear risk. ODST veered slightly off the beaten path with a few (ultimately minor) gameplay changes, and Bungie couldn’t move fast enough to reassure gamers that it was a fluke, a one-time experiment.

I’d like to put the Halo franchise in the hands of developers like Gearbox, a left-of-center studio whose latest title, Borderlands, skirted a line between fun and sociopathy. They could give Halo the revision it needs to become relevant once more – relevant, that is, to anything besides Microsoft’s profit margins.

Not every designer needs to be like Jason Roher, who literally lives in a meadow and is as much Henry David Thoreau as Shigeru Miyamoto. In fact, studios like Valve and Bioware are ludicrously successful, garnering critical acclaim, industry cred and Olympic-sized swimming pools of money (After Half Life, Valve hocho Gabe Newell bought a yacht. That was 2000). But their games don’t feel commercial in the same way Halo does. Valve’s Half Life 2 bears only slight resemblance in tone, form and character to Half Life. Bioware decided to blend a third-person shooter with dice-roll RPG, and while Mass Effect was successful, it was a gamble – gamers could have just as easily rejected it.

Ultimately, competence is a poor metric for noble intentions. After all, the people at Valve and Bioware are some of the best in the industry, and I can’t pass off their talents as the product of some manic, zealous drive to create a great game for the sake of creating it. They, like anyone else, probably wanted to make a big, sweaty wad of money. But if a drive for profit exists, it isn’t evident in their games.

When I play Half Life 2, I see an urgent, passionate desire to create a work of art. I think they pulled it off – some don’t, and that’s fine. These days, can really distinguish one space marine from another? But if Half Life 2’s torturous development has anything to say, Valve wanted to make something transcendent. They tore down what didn’t work, even if it meant rebuilding from scratch. They delayed. They undoubtedly frustrated stockholders. Then they delayed again. Their publisher started asking hard questions. And they remained delayed. When Half Life 2 dropped in November 2004, it had been six years since the release of Half Life. Valve took their time. The work came first.

How starkly the stands in contrast to the Call of Duty franchise, which faithfully pumps out a title every year. In order to keep the schedule rolling, publisher Activision gives prize-pony developer Infinity Ward a break every other year; Treyarch, the fluff girl, gets the odd-numbered games.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a fantastic game, no argument. But for all its craft, Modern Warfare 2 feels cold beneath the skin. It was a creature created by commercial, not artistic, need. In this case, success indeed illustrates my point – Modern Warfare 2 made activation $1 billion. The game was released a little more than three months ago. If Infinity Ward asked for another year to take the franchise in a new direction, do you think Activision would have said “Absolutely, guys, go make a work of art”?

Maybe I’m cynical. And when it comes to what goes on inside Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s mind, I’m definitely uninformed. But so long as the dollar has sole authority over the creation of a game, art might just be out of the question. At the very least, the games-as-art naysayers will continue to hold the high ground.

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LEGOLAND!!1

For as long as I can remember, I've been a fan of the LEGO franchise. Whether it was my very first set (1990's Beacon Tracer) or my most recent purchase (Wreck Raider from the new Atlantis line) or any one of the thousands of creations I've made in between, the simple act of snapping little plastic bricks together has never failed to put a smile on my face. I've also squeezed hours of enjoyment out of LEGO video games of the Star Wars and Batman varieties (less so for Indiana Jones). So when my girlfriend expressed an interest in visiting Legoland California for her birthday, I quite literally jumped at the opportunity.

I've always believed in the untarnishable reputation of Disneyland as the world's most magical place, so despite my relative proximity to Legoland - it's situated in Carlsbad, CA, a mere hour and a half's drive from downtown LA - I've never made the journey, opting instead to repeatedly patronize the Mouse House's theme park. Needless to say, I was both excited and a little nervous for my journey into uncharted amusement park territory.

Follow me through the jump to read a Volvo-driving, LEGO enthusiast's take on Legoland California.



Why mention that I drive a Volvo? Because Legoland offers preferred parking for Volvos, for the same exorbitant price (twelve American dollars), but which situates you several feet closer to the entrance. Unfortunately, the birthday party wasn't traveling in my car, so we had to settle for the regular parking, from which we had to climb up a hill of mulch to get to the turnstiles.

But Volvo's contribution to the park didn't stop with the parking lot. The Swedish car giants also sponsored attractions such as the "Volvo Driving School" (basically go-karts for children 6-13 years) and the "Volvo Junior Driving School" (for children 3-5 years), as well as a life-size model of a blue Volvo XC60, built with 280,000 LEGO bricks. Those Scandinavian countries sure do stick together - LEGOs were invented by Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Christiansen.

The park is structured much like Disneyland with various themed "lands." The Volvo display can be found in Fun Town. Pirate Shores features a Splash Mountain-esque flume ride and one of those swinging fairground pirate ships that also rotates on its axis. Castle Hill has various medieval-themed attractions, including an extensive jungle gym and a roller coaster (closed the day we were there). Land of Adventure's main draw is a dark ride that takes you on an Egyptian adventure. "Lost Kingdom Adventure" copies Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blaster in that each rider gets a pistol-shaped laser pointer, and targets are placed strategically throughout the ride.

But the centerpiece of the park (literally and figuratively) is Miniland USA, a series of scale models of various scenic landmarks in the country. They come from cities such as New York, Washington, D.C., Las Vegas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and New Orleans. Here are some highlights (all photos courtesy of my girlfriend):

LEGO National Mall (that marching band actually moved around on a magnetic path)

LEGO White House

LEGO Mardi Gras (complete with LEGO flashers (not pictured))

LEGO Luxor

LEGO Statue of Liberty (that's the not-yet-constructed Freedom Tower to the right)

LEGO Hollywood Bowl

LEGO Golden Gate Bridge

LEGO Mt. Rushmore (you can't see it here, but George Washington's eyes move back and forth like one of those creepy old portraits in Scooby Doo)

LEGO Sydney Opera House (not technically part of Miniland USA, but an impressive model nonetheless)

The whole of Miniland USA purportedly includes 40 million LEGO bricks - 6.5 million alone making up the NYC model. Maybe this is a childish observation, but "LEGO master builder" seems like a dream job to someone with my interests/qualifications.

The highlights of the park for me included the absolutely bone-chilling "LEGO TECHNIC Coaster." It had a pretty decent short yet stomach-turning drop, but the fear was derived from a particular quality of the construction, which made it seem as if the car would go hurtling off the track with each sharp turn. There was also the super-chill "Fairy Tale Brook," a water ride resembling Disney's Jungle Cruise, but featuring LEGO reenactments of favorite childhood fairy tales in place of animatronic wild animals.

But the most impressive ride had to be the "Knights' Tournament," which was basically two roller-coaster seats attached to a pylon that twisted and turned at breakneck speed and ball-splitting angles. You could choose from five levels of intensity, and we obviously had to try it on the fifth and highest level. On that ride, I lost so much loose change from my pockets that I didn't even have enough left to buy myself a souvenir penny.

Of course, any discussion of LEGOs begins and ends with their toy products, and the myriad gift shops placed strategically around the park (almost as numerous as the face-painting and caricature portrait stations) gave visitors ample opportunity to browse the newest LEGO sets. I'm always confused by the process that governs which LEGO sets remain available in stores. Old favorites from the Indiana Jones collection still line the shelves, but there were precious few new-and-improved Castle/Pirate sets to be had. And of course the LEGO Batman line is still sadly out of production, despite the success of "The Dark Knight" and the LEGO Batman video game. Another console-bound LEGO franchise, Harry Potter, was sadly underrepresented, the available products limited to a Hagrid keychain. The newer sets are pretty cool: a return to the undersea (Atlantis), underground (Power Miners), and outer space (Space Police) themes.

When the LEGO company was founded in 1932, the bricks were still made out of wood. Since then, incredible technological advances and damn crafty developers and designers have ensured an amazing product for decades (and hopefully for decades to come). And in these days of corporate corruption and greed, it's refreshing to see a company that treads cautiously and intelligently into new ventures and that has wholesome and intriguing ideas about better business practices. But what else should one expect from a company with the motto "kun det bedste er godt nok*"?

* Only the best is good enough.
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Firefox 3.6 and Chrome 4: Browser Update Bonanza!

Everyone likes browsers! Well, at least, everyone uses browsers, and not one but two major browsers have received major updates in the last week.

Last Thursday saw Mozilla release version 3.6 of Firefox, a modest release with little in the way of exciting user-facing features. Built-in support for personas make it so you can skin your browser with some truly abhorrent themes and there are some reported speed increases, but nothing that Firefox 3.5 users are likely to notice.

The most significant change to Firefox in the 3.6 release is not in the browser itself, but in its development process – starting now, point updates to Firefox (3.6.1, 3.6.2, etc.) will include new features as well as the normal security updates and fixes.

Also of note was today’s release of Google Chrome 4, which introduces the customary speed bump as well as support for third-party plugins and extensions. Such extensions have long been a key advantage to using Firefox, so it’ll be interesting to see if Chrome can gain some more usage share at Firefox’s expense. This update only applies to Windows - Mac and Linux versions of the browser are still in beta. Chrome recently overtook Apple’s Safari as the third most-used browser on the Internet.

Apple has yet to announce information on upcoming Safari versions. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is typically updated less frequently than its competition – as such, IE version 9 is little more than a cloud of rumors, hearsay and tech demos at this point. You should argue about the browser you use (and why!) in our comments section.

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24 in 24 Words: Day 8, Hour 5

Episode 5 - “8:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m”

Spoilers after the jump!

Lady Jack battles her demons, while Hick Accent Starbuck chases red herrings. Tender moments between terrorists. Undercover op goes south – or does it?!

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This Week on Audiosurf Radio – When Ride Trumps Song Edition

It’s not unusual for a song to pale in comparison to the Audiosurf ride it generates.  I regularly encounter techno tracks that challenge my puzzle abilities while leaving my ears crying out for cotton balls.  Meanwhile, jazz masterpieces languish because only Coltrane plays enough notes to rough up the ride.

France’s Marina Tihvinskaya falls on the former of those two extremes.  Her musical style, an amalgamation of fin de millennium dance-pop (she cites Madonna and Michael Bolton as influences), does little to excite me.  I can’t deny that the rhythm section coerced all ten of my toes into tapping, but I felt no more moved than that.  And yet, I had no problem riding these tracks multiple times for the incredible challenges their rides presented.

Three songs on the docket this week, which makes my job super easy.  For better or worse, I get to write about each track equally.

The Songs

“When You See Me Again” is a classic self-affirming dance number.  “When you see me again/You won’t pass me by,” Marina sings.  I picture a group of girlfriends on the club floor, ignoring even the idea of men, drinking fruity cocktails and dancing their cares away.  Not exactly my scene, but different strokes for different folks and all that.  The music feels distinctly not of this millennium.  It’s not hard to hear the influence of late-90s dance music, particular where it was taken by folks like Cher.  The “dance mix” aspect means a lot of extra synth and an upbeat tempo, but this is not a “club mix” of the 50 Cent/Kanye era.  There simply isn’t enough bass to justify your car bouncing off the ground.  The mix does, however, generate a lot of traffic.  Given the rather tame vocals, you’d expect the ride to be smoother.  But where would the fun be in that?  I had columns overflowing as I dove in and out of the shoulders trying to claim paints and lightning drops.  And a disorienting corkscrew toward the end drives home that this ride means business.

What exactly is Celtic about “Celtic Song?”  Very little, in fact.  The opening features what sounds like a pan flute, but – thanks to anime and Zamfir – I also associate that with Eastern music.  There’s also a man ululating in the background.  Again, that makes me think Eastern, perhaps specifically Indian.  Where are the bagpipes?  The war drums?  Further widening the gap between this track and anything remotely Celtic is the intense auto-tuning going on.  Marina’s voice, though perfectly serviceable on its own, has been mangled beyond recognition by appropriated oil excavation technology.  Combine 1998 Cher with a lycanthropic Shakira and you’ve got the vocal Frankenstein on display here.  I feel a little bad being so down on this track, as the ride is one of the more stressful (in a good way) in recent memory.  Commenters were quick to point out the challenge awaiting Pointman users, who’ll require some Neo skills to maximize their score.  Come for the surf, don’t stay for the tune.

If you haven’t unlocked some of your score-based Steam achievements for Audiosurf, play this song.  Clocking in just under the four minute mark, “My Favourite Dependence” contains more than enough traffic to earn some of points-per-minute achievements, if not satisfy a few matching ones as well.  I was so mesmerized by the unending traffic stream I could barely pay attention to the music.  As in the other two songs, Marina’s singing about a man.  This time she dubs him her “favourite dependence.”  I’m fairly certain that by “dependence” she means “addiction.”  Maybe not.  Maybe it’s not unbridled transliteration creeping into song lyrics and she actually means dependence.  There’s something poetic about that, isn’t there?  No?  Never mind.  It’s still her most hummable track (a quality I’m using more and more to discuss genres for which I’ve no particular affection).  I found the hook still looping through my ears even as I went back to the ride the other songs a second time.  The ride doesn’t offer much in the way of hills or curves except the constant downhill slalom.  It’s not unlike an extremely difficult arcade surfing game or something.  You needn’t worry about sharp turns or steep uphill climbs.  Just deal with the immense obstacles directly in front of you. 

Author’s Note

All songs were played at least twice on the Pro difficulty using the Eraser and Vegas characters.  I attempted “Celtic Song” on Pointman, but I’m so bad at that particular play style that I had to quit halfway through.  Hopefully I haven’t disappointed all you Pointman fans.

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