The New York Times > Technology> Review> Chess Players Give ‘Check’ a New Meaning
An interesting read from a little while back.
Berserk
We finished watching Berserk last night. I’d played a game based on this anime on, iirc, the Dreamcast a long while ago.
It was pretty intense anime. The major flaw was the main character being named “Guts” which is mighty hard to take seriously.
The whole series is one long flashback. It starts off with Guts as a grizzled warrior and flashes back to show how he got (partway) to where he is today.
The end of it really left me wanting more, but I guess they never made a Season 2, so I’ve ordered the first of the Berserk manga.
This was a swordplay series, more or less pseudo-medieval setting. None of the wacky comedy that a lot of anime sprinkles into a serious series.
Definitely for mature audiences, as the violence is very graphic, and the themes are quite mature.
It takes a while to grab you…if you decide to try it, promise to sit through a least the first 2 DVD’s before making a judgement.
Killer Poker Online
John Vorhaus brings us an unusual poker book. It contains absolutely nothing in it about the game itself. Instead, Vorhaus assumes you already know the game and play regularly in “b&m” poker rooms (and he probably hopes you learned by reading his Killer Poker: Strategy and Tactics for Winning Poker Play).
So instead of what hands to play and what hands to fold, we get a solid course on internet poker. Everything from picking the right poker site and online handle, to managing your bankroll, online tells, and how to get the other players riled up via the chat function.
On top of all that, its a pleasant read. Vorhaus’ tone is conversational and sometimes witty. If you’re going to play internet poker, then its well worth your time to read this book.
EA teams up with ESPN, Madden on the way out?
EA teams up with ESPN, Madden on the way out? – Jan. 17, 2005
Crazy stuff. First EA grabs the 5 year NFL & NFLPA license, now they snag a 15 year agreement with ESPN!
Say goodbye to competition in the sports game genre (pun sortof intended).
Winner’s Guide To Texas Hold’em Poker
Ken Warren’s book was my introduction to Texas Hold’em and I have to say it did the job. I learned the basics from it and was amused for much of it.
Of course, Warren didn’t intend to be amusing, no more than Archie Bunker did (had he been a real person). I’m way too much a neophyte to tell Mr. Warren his advice is wrong, but I can say it lacks tact. We get advice like “Sit at a table with beautiful women because they usually don’t know what they’re doing, and besides, they’re a distraction to the other players.” and “A player using a walker or a wheelchair generally intends to stay at the table for a long time, so they’ll play a very conservative game.”
I’ll have to revisit the book some time to see how good the rest of his advice was. I have to admit I enjoyed the book from the point of view of it being a “PC Trainwreck” of sorts, and as I said, I did learn the game, so it wasn’t a waste of my time anyway…
Sony PSP approaches
Today I went into the local EB and put $20 down on a Sony PSP. What I found odd was that I had to kind of convince them to let me do it. They weren’t promoting the system, and the clerk had to really dig around in the system to find a SKU to use.
If this gizmo is really launching in March, it seems odd that Sony doesn’t have the hype machine cranked up.
The countdown is on for Xbox 2
The countdown is on for Xbox 2
More XBox 2 speculation. Biggest change from what we already new is that backwards compatibility is looking more likely than it was, thanks to Halo 2. We’ll see, though.
Sony eyes March launch of PSP in U.S. and Europe
Sony eyes March launch of PSP in U.S. and Europe
Odd, though, that online sites like EBGames.com and Gamestop.com aren’t taking pre-orders yet. You can pre-order the games, but not the hardware…
XBox Live! Arcade
So my copy of MechAssault 2 Lone Wolf came with a free XBox Arcade disk. I was curious as to what it was so I popped it in the ‘Box.
Basically its a framework to give you an MSN Zone or Shockwave.com kind of experience on the XBox. It comes with Ms. Pacman, but there’re a decent selection of other games to demo or buy.
I actually ended up buying a Breakout clone for $9.99. It runs in high def and is just gorgeous to look at, and it comes with a lot of typical uber-breakout gizmos like power-ups, moving blocks, exploding blocks and the like.
The problem with the rest of the games is that they’re too expensive. Most of them are $19.99. To me, that’s a bit too much. Mind you, a game like Zuma or Bejeweled (both of which are available) will cost the same on the PC, but I think that’s too much there, too.
$10.00 is like the cost of a movie ticket and a soda, so I can see d/ling a little ‘lite’ game for that much. I’ll play it for a few hours right away and then once in a blue moon thereafter, but for $10 that’s ok. $20…well, I may demo some of them and if they’re really really great, who knows? But they’d have to be top notch for me to buy them.
And sadly, no strategy games yet. Maybe they’ll convert Settlers of Catan to XBox Live!
Oh, and the single player games have online scoreboards so you can see how you rank against the XBox Live community, or just the people on your Friends list.
Its a cool idea. They just need more games and lower prices. Heck, let me buy a 1 week license for $5.00 or something… I can see doing that, too.
Bare-breasted teen in video game sues to stop sales
Bare-breasted teen in video game sues to stop sales
Here’s an article on the girl who is now claiming she was 17 when she posed for footage to be shown in “The Guy Game.’
Call me a cynic, but I still think this is Night Trap all over again. The game is tanking, badly. So what better way to get horny kids to buy it than to get a juicy lawsuit going, saying Her breasts are exposed in a manner that is “sexually suggestive, lewd and lascivious,” Hell, suddenly *I* want to play this game! 🙂
So a temporary order takes the game off store shelves for a while, demand builds, and when the order expires, a bunch of people buy it all at once. That bit is important, because once they have bought it they’ll be online talking about what crap it is. Alternatively, they’ll buy it and not even open it, keeping it as a collector’s item just in case.
Back when the Sega CD game Night Trap came out, it too died. It was a terrible game. Then congress started using it as an example of how horrible video games were for kids, and suddenly it became a hot seller. There’s no such thing as bad publicity, folks.