Sony says next PlayStation to be on display at E3
So next year at E3 we’ll see new machines from all 3 console makers, or so it would seem. That’ll be some show!
When Life Is a Roll of the Dice
The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > When Life Is a Roll of the Dice
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I had to chuckle at this piece, which is about a woman’s ‘addiction’ to online backgammon. It all reads so good naturedly, and she makes it sound so nice.
Now if instead the times ran a piece on someone who playing Everquest compulsively, it’d be all about how harmful the game is, and how geeky and dysfunctional the players are.
*sigh*
Well, I’ll look at it from a glass-half-full perspective. It is nice to read a generally positive article on online gaming in the mainstream press.
Champions: Return to Arms
Gamespy has a preview of the new CoN sequel: PlayStation 2: Champions: Return to Arms
One of the biggest and buggiest problems to interfere with CoN was the online play. This was in part to the poorly designed lobby and game creation interface that SOE chose to deploy with the final product. Having learned a lesson the hard way, RtA promises to fix all those annoying issues and potential gameplay exploits by taking the step of storing all data on its own servers.
Sounds good to me. Champions of Norrath was a great game hampered by a terrible lobby and game creation UI. Hopefully getting into an online game will be much easier this time around.
Getting the swing with ‘Spider-Man 2’
Getting the swing with ‘Spider-Man 2’
I’ve only scratched the surface of Spiderman 2 (I’m sorta holding off until I’ve seen the movie) but what I’ve seen has been really fun so far.
Amadeus
Carm and I watched Amadeus the other night. I’ve seen it before, way back when it came out. But it was like seeing it for the first time watching it with Carmina. Her knowledge of Mozart’s music, and specifically his operas, made a lot of things more clear to me. For instance near the end of the movie there’s a wild opera going on and she pointed out to me that it was a parody of all of his operas…a kind of tribute to him. He appreciated it, but his wife didn’t. I never picked up that it was a parody so that was all lost on me.
One of the things I really appreciated was how they used modern speech in the movie. It made it very accessible, without really being too jarring. It was almost like a translation. You know the characters wouldn’t have used that particular phrase, but they would’ve said something with a similar meaning.
The costumes and of course the soundtrack were amazing. It took me a long while to place Elizabeth Berridge, who played Constanze Mozart; she played the ugly, awkward lady cop on The John Larroquette Show! She was gorgeous in Amadeus!
One other important fact I took away from watching the movie with Carm is that it isn’t true. Certain facts were true; Mozart was terrible with money, he was married to Constanze and they were very much in love, and Salieri was the Court Composer at the time. But there’s no historical evidence of any of the scheming or the malice that Salieri had for Mozart in the film.
It was a great movie in 1984, and its a great movie today. If you haven’t seen it, you should. It really benefits from a home theater system, though. The soundtrack is so….massive.
Playing mind games with ‘Psi-Ops’
CNN.com – Playing mind games with ‘Psi-Ops’ – Jul 2, 2004
I’d passed over this one. After reading this review I might stick it in my Gamefly queue.
CodeRuler
This looks like a fun little game. Its kind of a strategy game, but you play it by writing java code to control your units.
Ben’s Game
I first saw coverage of this on G4TechTV’s Pulse. Ben, a young boy with leukemia was approached by the Make-A-Wish Foundation and asked what his one wish would be. He decided he wanted to make a videogame.
So they set out to look for a game developer that would help him. All the really big shops turned him down. Fuck you, Electronic Arts, you heartless bastards. (I believe Microsoft and Activision were two other major gamedev shops that turned the project down.)
Enter the good folks at LucasArts! (/cheer LucasArts!) and specifically Eric Johnston, the game developer who met with Ben once a week to work on his game (except for one Tuesday when Ben couldn’t make it because he was grounded. 🙂 ).
Well, here’s the CNN article but its dry going compared to the Pulse piece.
CNN.com – Former cancer patient debuts cancer-fighting video game
And you can find the game itself available for download here:
Ben’s Game
Stories like this one, and the Children’s Charity Fund that the folks at Penny Arcade put together last year at Christmas…they don’t get as much media coverage as all the ‘violence in videogames is creating a generation of monsters’ garbage. But these are the stories that tell a truer tale of the gamer lifestyle, if you ask me.
Think of how many gaming fan-sites are put up every year. Gamers work hard to help their fellow gamers enjoy the hobby. And that’s the foundation of hobby’s community. It just builds up from there. Sure they squabble on message boards and don’t always behave as well as they should, but at the end of the day, if you go to a gaming board and ask for help, you’ll get it. Gamers are naturally a supportive bunch.
BTW, in case you don’t click through the article, this story has a happy ending. Ben is in remission and doing well. 🙂
Walkie Talkie Man
Carmina (who is a bona fide fiber nut) sent me this link. She thought the animation was interesting but didn’t listen to the sound. I thought the whole package was pretty whacky and cool:
Steriogram | Walkie Talkie Man
Lilo & Stitch
So I watched Lilo & Stitch today, and I actually found it somewhat refreshing, for a Disney animated movie. Lilo was a screwed up little kid, and today there are so many screwed up little kids in the world that it was nice, for once, to not see the perfect child as a star. And even her sister…her tummy had a bit of extra weight on it and she really shouldn’t have been wearing navel-baring shirts. So in a way the movie rang very true to me.
Stitch had some neat animations, but as is so often the case, the CGI animation and the hand drawn animation really didn’t blend well. The basic story has been done to death but there were enough fun twists and angles to it that it made it quite enjoyable. Some of the voices seemed wrong…Lilo’s sister sounded more Hispanic than Hawaiian to my ears, but then I’ve never been to Hawaii.
All in all though, a fun film. Nothing amazing…just a decent rental for a rainy day.