Not to take too much away from today’s iPod Touch post, but who else thinks that the Papal service in Nationals Park is, to some degree, an effort to bless the team out of it’s losing streak (outside of their opening season 3-game win streak and another Braves win)?
So my iPod Video decided that my right ear was incidental, so it stopped transmitting sound to my right headphone, unless I applied pressure is some sort of arcane, randomly determined direction at all times. Lucky for me, since I got it pre-owned off of eBay, I put a SquareTrade warranty on it, so they will cut me a check to replace my old iPod.
With said money being more than half the cost of an iPod Touch, I forked over the cash to pick up a brand-spanking new iPod touch. Let me just say that it is awesome. Here’s the Pro/Con breakdown
Pros
-Sleek, small, sexy -Flash memory instead of a hard drive -Connects to the internet through 802.11 -Touch screen interface is totally intuitive and works well -If you do Jailbreak your iPod Touch, you can update in Amarok via 802.11 and scrobble while listening and a connection is present. Otherwise, scrobble data is stored and uploaded when network resources do become available -Tons of neat little things you can do with it, especially if you Jailbreak it
Cons
-POOR LINUX COMPATIBILITY (when not Jailbreak-ed) -Hard to impossible to adjust volume and skip tracks without seeing screen -Unless you have magically oil-less fingers, you will smudge the glass screen to all hell -Apple SDK is not out yet, so you have to Jailbreak the iPod for now to download third party software and interface with Linux
I don’t know if it’s too subtle, but my main gripe is said lack of Linux support at the moment. God knows Apple’s never going to waste its time adding Linux support to their product just to appease a computing minority, but why do they have to radically change their systems so that they no longer function or interface with old software? Until I either Jailbreak my iPod, Amarok comes out with better Touch support, or the SDK fixes things, I can neither easily scrobble tracks or even use Amarok to interface with my iPod. Instead, I have to use the one piece of software that I loathe, yet deal with as a necessary evil as rarely as humanly possible: iTunes.
Everything else is great though. Great sound output, internet capability, easy e-mail checking of Gmail, Google Maps integration, and the usual video, music, and picture capabilities. My recommendation: worth a purchase, especially now that there’s a 32 GB model available.
You’ve probably heard the saying that hindsight is 20/20 on Monday morning, so just imagine how well I can call ‘em two days later on Wednesday. That’s right, it’s time for Wednesday Morning Quarterback, your weekly sports round-up.
Intramural Softball
I thought it was spring. This past Sunday in Ithaca we had some snow (apparently) or some other kind of precipitation and the temperature sat in the 30s for most of the day. As a result, softball was canceled. Oh well…at least weekend forecasts don’t show 58 and rain after a stretch of 70 degree days on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday…Oh wait, it does. Stupid Ithaca.
Everyone’s Doing the Fish
Just a quickie for this week’s sports (ie: Florida Marlins): the Marlins continue to have really crummy pitching being saved by aggressive hitting. Andrew MIller still isn’t quite there (IMHO) and Burke Badenhop had an apparently promising start that still resulted in a loss. At least the Marlins shut out the Braves thanks to some great Scott Olsen pitching (one of the more veteran pitchers). This brings a great smile to my face since I truly loathe the Atlanta Braves. Also, Mike Jacobs is consistently bringing the heat to the plate and is in the top five for home runs so far this year. Keep it up Mike.
Where do you stand?
MLB standings are in a crazy state right now. I’ll start with the best news: As of right now, the Marlins (8-5) are sitting pretty at numero uno for the NL East with the Phillies 1.5 games back. Everyone writes off the Marlins every year. We’ll see if the youth on the team has the maturity to consistently compete against the Braves (1-0 this year), Mets (1-2), and Phillies (0-0). So far they’ve proven they can more than handle the rest of NL East (they are 3-0 against the Nats), but the rest of the NL East is no walk in the park, they’ve all got tremendous talent and they’ve all got way more experience.
Now for other strange happenings: St. Louis (10-4) is atop the NL Central, despite being flagged for a losing season due to a cheap payroll. The Nats (4-10) plummeted to the bottom of the NL East after a tremendous win streak that many hoped would mean the end of crappy Washington baseball. I can feel the collective sobbing of D.C., but I can’t help but smile after the Marlins swept them last week. Until last night the Baltimore Orioles (8-6) were sitting atop the AL East standings, perplexing many. Last night’s loss still has them only 0.5 games back from the Bo Sox, so they’re still doing way better than expected this season. My last, favorite story of the year are the seriously troubled Detroit Tigers (4-10). They’ve managed a few wins since we last saw them (most recently against the Twins last night), but they’re a huge (at this point of the season) 4.5 games behind and it’s gonna take some great playing to even begin to approach Chicago (8-5) and the strangely high ranked Kansas City Royals (8-6).
Now what you’d expect: The Arizona Diamondbacks (10-4) are kicking just as much ass as everyone thought they would as they hold a 1.5 game lead over the closest NL West competition. Despite some early sparks of brilliance, the Tampa Bay Rays (6-8, and man do I hate the name change from Devil Rays) have fallen to precisely where everyone in baseball expects them to sit: in last place in the AL East, 2.5 games back. Pull it together Tampa. I may hate the AL, but I do like it when Florida teams do well. Let’s get a Marlins-Rays World Series this year, seriously guys!
The other day when I was talking about Persona 3, I got a comment about the SMT series being a Western-based RPG instead of a JRPG. To start off with, the original game for the Famicom was based on a Japanese book about using the digital world to summon demons. From this point forward, no matter how much the first-person dungeon crawling might be reminiscent of Ultima or other Western RPGs, we cannot call the game Western, but we can do better than just this.
Demons: Gotta catch ‘em all!
From the start of the series on the Famicom, Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei, there was a focus on using digital methods to capture or recruit demons to fight on your team. A variety of demons should be collected so that the player will have access to multiple attacks to exploit the weaknesses of other demons and characters. So you can capture, coerce, or convince demons to join your party and fight alongside your team. They have specific characteristics and properties that they can exploit/be exploited. Does this sound like some other game that’s huge in Japan? That’s right, it’s like an early Pokemon, but much more violent and demonic. It’s rare to see a game of this type come out from the West, at least not before the Pokemon clones started to come out. Collecting monsters and elemental properties may not have been exclusively developed in Japan, but it was definitely refined in the East before the West even saw a prominent game of that type (please correct me if I’m wrong).
Tokyo Destroyed
If you’ve ever watched anime, no doubt you’ve seen at least one instance of a Neo Tokyo or New Tokyo or post-apocalyptic Tokyo. Fear of destruction through nuclear attack, earthquake, or military assualt is very deeply ingrained in the collective Japanese unconscious. Just consider the number of calamities the country has experienced: serious bombing in WWII, two nuclear assaults, also in WWII, and the earthquakes the island weathers. So when most of the SMT games feature the destruction of Tokyo through missile attack, both nuclear or non-nuclear, it becomes clear that this series is distinctly Japanese.
(Anti?) Western Religious Themes
It takes a non-Christian country to have the final boss of a game be YAHWEH. The Almighty God is indeed the final enemy of SMT2. Lucifer and other angels, like Michael all make appearances, along with gods and demons from other religions. Especially back in the SNES day, but even nowadays, there would almost never be a Western game that prominently featured a character called the Messiah (there are Messianic characters, but that’s way more general and not considered offensive in the West), an anti-Messiah, or any vilification of the Judeo-Christian religion.
All of these small things combine to give what I feel to be a very distinct Japanese feeling, even with the first person viewpoint used in the earlier games.
Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.
If you’ve been reading this site since its inception, it’s no surprise that I’m on a bit of a Metal Gear kick at the moment. Back before Super Smash Bros. Brawl hit the shelves, IGN posted a video feature showing strategies for effective use of Solid Snake as a brawler. The music they used for the feature immediately caught my ear and I fervently hoped that it would appear in the game.
Cut to this weekend when I was playing through MGS2 and I remembered the tune and something I’d heard about the opening theme for MGS3 being Bond-esque. Well I found said tune on Youtube, along with the opening animation (see below) and then Min and I immediately started the unlocking process for the instrumental version of the song included in SSBB.
I also found a steal on eBay, all three MGS soundtracks (a total of five CDs) for $28.99, so I’ll have a .mp3 version of my latest musical obsession, “Snake Eater,” very soon.
So, without further ado, enjoy the opening of MGS3 and “Snake Eater.”
After three and a half years of refusing to succumb to the pressure, I finally caved and started watching Lost last month thanks to my Blockbuster.com membership. I’ve burned through the first two seasons and 1/4 of the third season. Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Lost is about a group of castaways who crash landed on a tropical island in the Pacific. Anyway, it’s Sunday and I’m feeling pretty lazy, so just know that Lost is worth a watch if you don’t mind a mystery that won’t be solved until 2010, I think I last heard. Also, if you’ve got a blu-ray player and a TV that can display in HD, you MUST get Lost Season 3 on blu-ray, there’s no other way to watch it.
The Story
Last night I finally got around to completing the Japanese stealth tactical action game: Metal Gear Solid. You play as Solid Snake, a veteran of (at least) two prior missions completed for the U.S. Government as a part of the secret, black-ops organization FOXHOUND. You’re sent to Shadow Moses Island to save some hostages and investigate terrorist ability to launch the nuke they are threatening to launch. If they can launch, you must stop it.
Newcomers to the game will be slightly confused by the story, unless they either play Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake or read plot synopses on wikipedia.org. Without some background, some of the concepts and people, like Outer Heaven and Big Boss, will not really make much sense.
Story is told either through in-engine cutscene or through codec conversations, which are radio transmissions between Solid Snake and his operations team. His team is populated by a team of operatives with hilariously stereotypical accents and names. Your game saving operative, Mei Ling, is, as you might guess, Chinese. So, like all Chinese people, she speaks with a light Chinese accent and often quotes Chinese proverbs and even some Western proverbs. Other highlights are the character with the British accent, Naomi Campbell, and the Russian nuclear proliferation specialist, Nastasha Romanenko.
Gameplay
Metal Gear Solid is a game explicitly focused on stealth (the full title is Tactical Espionage Action Metal Gear Solid) so gameplay revolves completely around not being spotted. On the lower difficulty levels, your HUD includes a radar that displays vision cones of security cameras and roaming guards. This comprises Normal mode. This is where you want to be, as guards will not be alerted to your presence and you can do wander as you please. Get spotted and the game will enter Alert mode. Guards will begin to converge upon your position, which is bad news. Solid Snake is bad ass, but he’s just a man and he’s not great at taking out multiple enemies at once. If you can manage to hide from the guards, you enter Evasion mode. A timer begins to countdown and if you manage to avoid being spotted again during that time, the guards will return to their posts.
The game encourages you to sneak and not kill. Gun reports will attract guards and bullets are surprisingly not great at killing soldiers in this game. There’s also the problem that, since this game is so old, you cannot shoot most of your weapons in first person mode, which makes it really hard to hit off-screen enemies. Snake also has tons of tactical gear like IR Goggles, Mine Detectors, Rations, and the ever-present (in MG games) cigarettes and cardboard box. What’s the cardboard box for? Snake can hide underneath the cardboard box to trick guards. Guards walk up, spot the box, go “What’s that?”, notice it’s a box and say “Just a box,” and turn around and resume their patrol. That’s unless you’re in their patrol path or the game is in Evasion or Alert mode. They will shoot the box or lift up the box if you get yourself in that type of trouble and the game will enter alert mode.
It all meshes really well, but the game is seriously hurt by how dated it feels in modern gameplay context. As I mentioned before, you cannot fire most weapons in first-person mode. Every guard on base instantly knows where you are once you are spotted. Guards are actually pretty stupid. If you’re standing right outside their vision cone, they literally cannot spot you. All of these issues were fixed once MGS2 came out for the PS2, but the point is that you have to forgive this game for being so old at times.
Everything does fit well together and it does play really well. Even on the Normal difficulty level, you will have a challenge as a new player as you get used to sneaking around and learn the boss fights and gaming conventions that have become regular staples to the Metal Gear universe.
Graphics
Not much to say here, the game is old. Cut scenes have no lip syncing, character models are very blocky and polygonal, textures are blurry and terrible, and the particle effects, like explosions and snow, don’t look integrated with the game. I do have it on good authority from my roommate Min that this game did look superb for its time, but do understand that if you play today, you will not find this game pretty.
Sound
I’m not a huge audiophile when it comes to games, so all I have to say about the sound in MGS is that I have no complaints with it. The voice acting sounds natural, the accents are kind of funny, the dialogue (which I should have mentioned in story) is funny, the guns sound good enough, and the famous codec and alert sounds are there.
Overall
This is my first review, so allow me to explain my super complex review process. Tons of reviewers I’ve listened to or read find themselves feeling tethered by the review number process or even the letter grade method that 1UP has adopted. They all want to just say “play this game” or “don’t play this game.” Since I’m not employed by a website and I can have rogue blogger status, that’s all I’m gonna do with my reviews of any type. So…Metal Gear Solid is a great game with a compelling story, great character interaction and humor, and challenging, original gameplay. To top it all off, Metal Gear Solid is one of the defining franchises of the modern video game era. From that perspective, it’s just a game that you have to play. I heartily recommend it.
Enjoy some trademark Kojima humor from his teaser announcing MGS4:
Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.
About two weeks ago baseball season began and I dusted off my copy of MLB Power Pros to enjoy what was probably my favorite Nintendo release of last year. For those of you who don’t know, MLB Power Pros is the first US localization of the Japanese Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū series that has been releasing since 1994 on the Super Famicom. Why hasn’t this game showed up stateside until September of last year? Take a look at this video:
This super deformed style of person (called a Powapuro-kun in Japan) and the create-a-player mode (essentially a Japanese dating sim style game) combined to make this game “too Japanese,” even once the series began getting MLB licensing and stopped featuring only Nipponese Professional Baseball League players and teams.
So this game finally showed up on this side of the Pacific and it was amazing, but the fan-community, myself included, worried incessantly about whether or not the sales would be enough to carry the game to a sequel. Then a miracle happened. Amazon dropped the price by some indeterminate amount, baseball season started, MLB 2k8 for Wii and PS2 was mediocre, and MLB PP managed to land near the top of the sales charts at the end of March or early April. I decided to check out the official 2k Games forums and saw the usual “Will there be a sequel thread,” but this thread had an forum administrator telling us that more info would be forthcoming. Not too long ago, news on that thread hit that 2k Games was looking at a July release date. All I can say is: I can’t wait. They can count 100% on a purchase from me.
Unless you’re a hardcore Japanophile JRPG consumer, chances are you’ve never heard of the Shin Megami Tensei series. It’s no Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy, but the game does have prominence in the Japanese market as a super complex and morally intense RPG series with incredibly deep storytelling.
One of the many spin-off series, Persona, has been appearing in America since its inception, but in heavily edited forms. Persona 1 had character ethnicities changed, stupid translation, etc. Persona 2 came out in two games, but only one made it stateside. Speculation as to why ranges from a homosexual character to the fact that one of the enemies is a resurrected Hitler with his unholy battalion.
Then Persona 3 hit Japan with the force of a bullet to the brain. No, seriously. The way to execute summons in this game, the source of the main characters powers, can only be achieved only by shooting yourself in the head with what appears to be a handgun (they’re called evokers). This comprises the dungeon crawling part of the game, but the rest is essentially a Japanese high school/dating sim (wow, two in one post!). Naturally, US Shin Megami Tensei fans were immediately skeptical about a US localization. Somehow, we did get a version in the states with decently high review scores, but the sales were low because a special edition came out in Japan and US buyers didn’t want to get nickeled and dimed buying the same game twice.
Meet Persona 3: FES. It’s the full special edition of Persona 3, complete with an extra 30 hour long epilogue (that’s almost a completely new game) for only $29.99 on the PS2. It’s got sweet anime cutscenes (see above), a quick, innovative, but hard battle system, and a killer story worth experiencing. I’m absolutely picking this up 22 April.
Last, and I know I’m way late to the game, but given the proximity of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots and my buddy Lee’s recommendations, I picked up Metal Gear Solid: The Essential Collection. I’m still on the first game, Metal Gear Solid, and I have to say I’m really enjoying it. Hideo Kojima weaves a great tale complete with tons of great 4th wall breaking humor and a crass, smoking, womanizing protagonist who is just plain great to play as. This doesn’t even begin to account for the supporting characters, which consist of a Chinese woman who spouts proverbs, an otaku scientist, villains who do awesome things like read your memory card mid-battle to prove they’re psychic, and many more great characters. If you’ve lived under a rock as I have for all these years and you have either a backwards compatible PS3, PS2, or at least both a PS2 (non-backwards compatible) and PSX, go back and play this game. It’s way dated, but it’s awesome.
This Thursday marks the return of all four of NBC’s sitcoms to the Thursday night lineup (My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, The Office, and Scrubs), with all but Scrubs showing a new episode.
I’m most excited for the return of The Office, one of the earliest victims of the Writer’s Strike. They started off Season 4 with an experiment, of sorts, with three or four (I can’t remember the exact number and I can’t be bothered to, so bugger off) hour-long (read: 45 minutes) episodes that only served to highlight the fact that The Office belongs in the half-hour (read: 21 minutes) range for it to be effectively funny. The more zany Michael Scott/Dwight Shrute behaviors and situations have been compared to the ridiculous Homer Simpson-centered years of The Simpsons, which actually does have me concerned. My least favorite laugh is when they actually had Michael Scott drive his car into a lake because of GPS. It takes a lot for a sitcom to throw me out of the moment, but this really took me out of suspension of disbelief mode and into “What is this show becoming?” mode. Honestly, I worry that they’re dumbing down or awkward-ing down The Office to satisfy the more conventional sitcom fan. we’ll see how or if this changes tonight and maybe we’ll see a shift back toward the stellar second season.
The first few episodes of 30 Rock’s freshman season failed to impress me. Lured back in by claims of brilliance, I’m now a regular 30 Rock viewer despite its marginally above average quality, IMHO. This isn’t to say the show isn’t funny, it’s hilarious. It’s just that the situations are boring and predictable. Tina Fey’s dialogue is where the quality shines through. The great lines will have you clutching your sides and Alec Baldwin is, without a doubt, one of the best comedic actors on air.
I’ll admit straight up that I’m not totally up to date on news about Scrubs, but last I heard they will be forced to finish off the show on ABC next season as rising costs and falling ratings and viewers are combining to force it off of NBC. I’m pretty sure it will be coming back at some point this season to finish off half of its final season, but this is also a show whose antics are beginning to wear thin. I just want them to be able to finish off the story and put what’s been a great series to rest. The show isn’t dead by any means, it’s just not eliciting the same laughs out of me that it used to. We’ll see what the return and rest of the season have in store for me.
So the Marlins are off to a decent start this season, leading the NL East at the moment with 4 wins, 3 losses. They suffered two brutal losses to the Mets, but came back and slapped the Pirates around for two games. The Pirates fought back the third game with a large victory, but the Marlins have hit the road strong with a 10-7 victory over the Washington Nationals. Check the videos on the game recap to watch Dan Uggla, Hanley Ramirez, and Robert Andino’s 2nd home runs of the season, bringing the Marlins to 5 players with 2 home runs each.
This probably won’t be the Marlins’ season though for one great big reason: pitching. The Marlins just don’t have the men on the mound to keep the opposing offenses in check. With VandenHurk sent back down to the minors and Anibal Sanchez getting oh so close to healthy again, we should hopefully see decent arms on the mound very soon. The majority of the starters are very green though, so I expect needing a season or two to really hit their stride. If Jack McKeon is actually right and Andrew Miller is the next Beckett, he’d better start shaping up. He has yet to go more than 5 innings in a ball game. He hasn’t been dropped to the AAs like Vandenhurk though, so the Marlins must see something budding in Miller.
The Boston Red Sox were looking a bit bad after losing three straight to the Toronto Blue Jays, of all teams. What could they possibly do to bolster their confidence? Play their home season opener against the still winless Detroit Tigers. We’re all actually quite surprised that a team with as tremendous an offense as Detroit does have can still be 0-7. Most cite poor pitching and I’m inclined to agree. Even when the Tigers aren’t getting shut out 5-0 (!) by the reigning World Series Champs in Boston, they still can’t hold back any offense. When the Kansas City Royals are kicking your butt rather soundly, I think that you need to go back to the drawing board and come up with something. Anyway, as much as I love watching Detroit sit at the bottom of the standings, I do rather love Dontrelle Willis and Miguel Cabrera, two former Marlins who ended up on this squad, and my hatred for the Bo Sox wants them to snap out of it and bring the hurt to Boston.
In more local news, our coed intramural softball team, Walt’s Winners, managed to dominate the law school grad student team 11-4. This was completed even with two of female players (that’s half of them) HUNGOVER. Still, Lee was a monster out in CF, catching everything that came his way, Kristen was ruthless on the bags, advancing bases every chance she got and picking up something like four or five RBIs, and the other team just couldn’t mount an appropriate defense. Even I did pretty well, batting in at least one that I remember, but probably more. The standings (select Softball->Leagues->Co Rec->Sun 03:00PM) have yet to be updated, but with our team as strong as it is this year (especially compared to last year’s disaster) we’re looking to be very competitive this season.
This has been Wednesday Morning Quarterback. And now, back to Bob with the weather.
