Pretty Sassy

On Wednesday I called my local Gamestop asking if the WiiFit had come in.  They had!  I did feel out of sorts when I noticed at my lunch hour that everyone who carried the WiiFit briefcase box was female.  I’ve been succesfully stereotyped.

Out of the box there are two things that are apparent. 

1.  The board is very sturdy but the top covered in a white, pebbly textured plastic. 

2. The white pebbly plastic attracts dirt like crazy.  Ours is already looking a little grimey.  I’m planning on picking up some Mr. Clean Magic Erasers today to help with the fight.  Why couldn’t they make it a darker grey so it wasn’t so obvious?

The games are a good workout.  While they aren’t the same intensity as Gym visit you sweat and you breath hard and you get endorphins. 

The Jogging was the game that sold me on buying the pad.  What I didn’t know is you actually don’t use the pad for Jogging.  You either hold on to, or put the controller in your pocket and jog in place.  You have a coach slightly ahead of you that acts as your pacer.  Just take my advice, don’t try to out run him, he punishes you for it.

The tightrope and hula hoop game are my favorites.  In the tightrope game you balance from foot to foot to keep you on the rope while avoiding mario-style traps.  In hula hoop you twist your hips like you are hula hooping and lean from side to side to pick up hoops being tossed at you.

There is also a fitness test you can take every day.  It weighs you, gives you your BMI, checks your balance and gives you an age.  On the first day it marked me 17 years older than I am now.  The next day I improved 9 years and am only 8 years older than I am.  Thank goodness for progress.

With taxes I was out about $90.00 for the pad.  It’s a good thing for anyone that needs more motion in their life. 

So excited.  Put my down payment on the WII Board at ebgames. 

The Wii Board is for use with the WII and utilizes a bunch of sensors to figure out your center of gravity.  The result is you can do crazy things like jogging, hitting virtual soccar balls with your head and tight rope walking.

At $89.00 for the unit and WiiFit I am buying it as a way to get my games in and get a little fitness on the way.  I loved Wii Sports and I hope this is just as cool.  Some girls dream of diamonds, I dream of Wii.

So excited. 

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_fit
Official Website: http://www.nintendo.com/wiifit/en/#/home/
EB Games: http://www.ebgames.com/Catalog/ProductDetails.aspx?product_id=69536

*Sniff Sniff* the last episode of season two Sam&Max, What’s Up Beezlebub, came out today for Gametap.  I played the review copy all week on my lovely cruise between fruity rum drinks(which probably explains why it took so long to win).

The trailer is awesome on top of awesome and should be shown to anyone who might be on the fence about playing.

 The episode starts at the gates of Hell right near the “Soul Train”.  Everything is a mess.  Good ole’ conspiracist Bosco is dead and his body is layed out by the tracks, you can’t get on the “Soul Train” because you don’t have a token because you haven’t died yet.  You’re just in a rotton spot.

When you do finally get to Hell, former Dark Lord Dungeon Master Jergen(above) has been placed as receptionist.  Oh no!  Hell has been corporatized complete with shambling corporate presence who plays Minesweeper all day.   The air is hot, the work is never ending and you face a wall of shadow boxes that portray all of the people you have sent to hell this season.  Can you save them?  Do you?

The episode had some really smart writers and people who are gifted at tying a lot of scattered plot points together.  As you would solve the mysteries, you would solve bigger pieces of the plot.  This episode is the TV equivilent of a best of show.  You know the type: all the characters of the show are stuck in a walk in fridge and they remember the good times.  It’s a like that, but with a lot less re-dishing the exact same footage.

This very well could be the best game in the season, but you really need to start at episode 1 or else it loses a lot of it’s power.

 The episodic game concept is great for adults who don’t have the time to devote a clump of 40 hours to a game.

This game has that same charm the Simpsons had circa 1994.  If you’ve been reading my posts and haven’t played yet…  Please, please, please download the free episode from Telltale games and join the Sam&Max cult. 

 I imagined that the TellTale games folks would be passed out on an island somewhere sucking down Pina coladas via an IV bag(a tough software cycle turns a normally wonderfull person into ubserd applesauce).  But with all this batty, wacky and wonderfull wii events going on, that sleep will have to be scheduled for another year.  The wii event is that TellTale has announced that it will put season 1 of Sam&Max on wii.  I am so there.

Then just to make me feel even more happy about life and wii, TellTale announced Strongbad of HomestarRunner fame will finally have an episodic adventure.  You don’t even know how much of a crush I have on StrongBad.  It’s not something I can really get into. 

“Shoot me once, shame on you.  Shoot me twice, shame on me.” -Abraham Lincoln(in the video game Sam & Max)

From Wikipedia: Sam & Max are a pair of characters who occupy a parody of American popular culture. Sam is a 6-foot tall anthropomorphic dog in detective’s clothing and Maxis a “hyperkinetic rabbity thing”.

Telltale Games, the creator of the Sam & Max have done something sort of revolutionary to the way we play.  They are making the episodic video game.  That’s right.  Instead of having to plunk down 40 or more hours on a single game, they are breaking it down into 4-5 hour episodes.  The first season had 6 episodes and this season(season 2 has 5 episodes).  The episodes are $8.95 a piece or you can buy the whole season for 34.95.

The game is funny, really seriously laugh out loud, look like an idiot funny.  My husband was playing the now free episode  “Abe Lincoln Must Die“(scroll to the bottom of the page, it’s episode 104), and I just kept hearing funny phrases and I had to see what is this is about.

The game is about two freelance police officers who solve strange crimes.  The humor is Roger Rabbit meets The Simpsons.  They polk fun of politics, technology(in the episode Night of the Raving Dead Sam picks up a phone and says “Hello World”) and pop culture.   As Sam & Max you have an asylum of crazy friends.  The core cast of characters is Sybil the tatoo artist turned psychologist turned dating agency, Stinky the waspy-for-no-reason owner of Stinky’s Cafe and there is Bosco the paranoid conspiracy theorist owner of the local convience store(below). 

The game is story driven so you are completing whatever task that needs to be done to make the plot go forward.  Some examples of this story driven genre are: CSI: Hard Evidence(PC), Hotel Dusk(Nintendo DS) and Trace Memory(Nintendo DS).

The only downside is these games require you to develop an acute sort of possibility muscle.  Like you have to think like this.  “Hey, the evil robot is allergic to grape juice.  I could take those grapes I saw on the side of the road smash them in that printing press and carry them in that flower pot”.  It’s not an easy muscle to build, but you do build it and if you don’t there is http://www.gamefaqs.com.  Of course, I don’t know much about that site, as I would never read a faq(liar).

The game is brilliant the plots are funny, the story is good and you don’t need fast fingers to win the game.  You need to think. 

I loved the games but only had one big critique..   The hint button.  You can choose your hint level from 1-5.  Sometimes I need some serious hints of the next thing to do.  But when I would ratchet the hint level to 5, it didn’t seem to give me the next logical step, just illustrate a bigger plot point I already knew (”we should get to the fountain of youth”).  For me on hint level 5 you should tell me I need to bribe x,y or z..   I mean at 5 you should be spoon feeding me.

For CSI:Hard Evidence you could ask one of the other CSI-ers for a hint(though it would count against you).  I like that, it seemed to help when you got super-stuck. 

 I loved this game, I am coming over the Sam & Max way and I will be buying the rest of episodes.

I got the link to this casual game via NotMartha.org

It’s called Chain Factor.  It’s what would happen if connect 4, Tetris and Sudoku had some sort of baby together.  It’s free and web-based.

It’s a really good game to play to wind yourself down before bed.

Read Red Ring of Death background here

Mister here (AKA Kelly’s husband). Kelly wants me to do an occasional post to her blog– so here’s the first

Since Kelly has not told me what to write about I thought I’d start of with my recent Xbox 360 experiences. I got the Xbox 360 the day it was released (actually a day late -UPS screwed up the delivery, but that’s a whole ‘nother story) I’ve read about the “Red Ring of Death” many people were experiencing since its release. I figured I was one of the lucky ones since I’ve gone more than 2 years without any issues with the system. With 20-20 hindsight I realize now that it’s because I didn’t play it that often– no more than 1-2 hours at time and usually less than that.

So what caused the revelation? Simple, I got Mass Effect I started playing it over the New Year’s holiday — and couldn’t stop playing it — much to Kelly’s chagrin.  Chores got skipped, wife and dogs got ignored– I had gone into Video Game Mode. I think I clocked about 20 hours of play time over 72 hours. And that was all it took. Last week I tried to startup my game– got to the title screen– and it locked up. Reboot. 3 red lights. My worst nightmare….

So I began the work to get my 360 repaired– Fortunately Microsoft extended the warranty for this issue to 3 years, so I was covered. I realized later that I could have done all of this online, but the phone route was relatively painless.  They took my name address, etc., told me I’d get a prepaid box to ship the console out in about 3 days and that the repair would take 3-4 weeks. Wait, a month without an Xbox 360? I haven’t finished Mass Effect yet! But where one sees problems I see opportunity. You see, I have a fairly up-to-date A/V setup: A nice Sony AV receiver with HDMI inputs, a 1080p DLP HDTV with HDMI inputs…. What to do?

A: Wait 4 weeks to get my 360 repaired and maintain the status quo

or

B: Convince Kelly that we need to upgrade the XBOX 360 to the HDMI model…

Can you guess I chose B?  

So I got myself a new Xbox 360 with HDMI out. But we agreed to send out the bust 360 and eBay it when it got back.

So I go the shipping box late last week.. a small white box without any distinguishing markings, inside it was packing material and instructions to send it out. So I dutifully packed it up and went down to UPS store near our apartment to drop it off. And this is where I get my mind blown– I take the plain white box, shipping label towards me into the UPS store and the clerk looks at me and says — “Oh we can take your Xbox, but we don’t give shipping receipts for it.” She knew it was and Xbox return just by the box! I’m not sure if she was exaggerating but she later told me that they get up to 10 of those A DAY!

So all is good now. I have a an Xbox that works (plus the upgrade ) and am waiting for the repaired Xbox so I can sell it on EBay

So a few weeks ago I downloaded another Shockwave Game “Burger Island”

And I really hate the game.  It’s very picky, a finger masher, buggy controls, stupidly complex, repetitive to the point of no fun and scores like a nightmare.

The thing is I’ve decided that I have to be better than the game.  That I am a better person than the game.

The game has no plot but making burgers with gazillion toppings.  Or maybe fries or shakes.  It’s stupid and annoying.  But I play anyway.

I hate it.  But I play it.  I think this is how mental illness starts.

Last month the Mister and I were on an aniversary getaway in Frisco on a misty day after being stuck on a stuck trolly for an hour soaked to our socks.  The net effect should have been cold and miserable but it wasn’t.  It was sort of sweet in the way only San Francisco can be sweet.  It was pleasantly melancholy.  We ended up stopping at a drugstore to by geek food (whoppers, chex mix, soda and hot cocoa) to keep us alive through the night and stopped at a gamestop to by the CSI Game Hard Evidence.

After drying off and warming back up we plunked it into our laptop(you don’t actually think we could survive without them, do you?)  And we played.  And oh man was it fun.

You play a gumshoe detective trying to solve crimes.  There are two women who like to light things on fire, snubbed cabbies, dying rich men trying to get a slew of women pregnant with the hope of a male heir(because according to Mr. Rich, girls don’t count).  There are also cool cut scenes that show actual CSI footage, decent but not fantastic visual characters.  HP Computers clearly made a deal with the game as all of the computers you use in the game to analyze evidence are HP. 

And Grissom, you get private time with Grissom.  And in my book time with Grissom is never a bad thing.  Even if it’s just to go over case notes and it’s not even the actual Grissom but a computer generated one and you ran into a bug where Grissoms “skin” disapeared an he was a robot head with human eyes and teeth and your mister goes “ewwwe, that guy was ugly when he had skin, now without….”.  It’s still Grissom.   OK?

From reading amazon.com game reviews for the other games in the CSI family, there have been a lot of show stopping, sev-1, priority 1 bugs in the CSI Series.  Unlike the previous games, Hard Evidence’s whodunnit cases appears to be less buggy as long as you have a solid machine for playing.  A lot of reviewers complain that with only 5 whodunnit cases it’s a bit short.  I agree.  Sometime somewhere a rule of thumb was created that the number of dollars you pay for a game should be the number of hours you spend playing the game.  I played it through in about 10 hours.  And I’m sure there are techie girls and boys that could polish this bad boy off in 3 or 4 hours.  So when you buy the box you’re paying more per hour than say the game Oblivion.

I HEART Shockwave games.  Shockwave.com is an online publisher of casual for games.  For around $60.00 a year I get unlimited access to download any of there hundreds of casual games.

See for me and others like me, casual games are sort of like crack.  They are all very easy to pickup and understand, horribly repetitive, provide a lot of positive feedback.   Mastering something simple, that seems slightly complex is always soul-drenching satisfying after a long day.  So basically you get hooked when you play and when you lose.  It’s like really cheap slot machines.

I love Burger Rush because it is like the childhood game Build a Better Burger that my parents never purchased me.  I am still sad by that.  The game was designed to train young, fertile minds how to handle the rigors of a burger assembly line.  I imagine the game was designed by the burger industry as early training.  

But I wanted this game, badly.   I fantasized how fun it would be to follow the process of making a better burger(and fries, soda and shakes!!).  I also badly wanted to show the neighbor girls my mad cooking skillz.  Look at the box(above), do you see how much fun those kids are having?  And is it just me or does the boy on the left look like the kid from the 80’s TV Show “Small Wonder”?   Remember “Small Wonder”?  It was a show about a robotics engineer who builds a girl named V.I.K.I who talks like a robot(”do you want me to dismantle the dog?) and learns the softer side of life while teaching the world that robots are people too?  If you don’t remember that maybe you remember the red-haired neighbor who said “No, no, no, no, no, no”.  There was a dark haired boy in my sixth grade class that loved to say that all the time.  That kid was cool.

Where was I?  Oh yeah Burger Rush

See the game is part tetris-ish where you shuffle burger ingredients together(every trio you gather earns points and fills orders) in order to serve mad customers(French Mimes, Geeks, Grandmas, Space Cadets and Movie Stars).  You can add fries and sodas for bonus points. 

Shockwave offers a free trial of the game, but I will tell you this..  Because of it’s Tetris nature the game is like CRACK.  During gameplay the Mister would try to rip the laptop out of my hands for a quick fix.   I would tell him “No, no, no, no, no, no”.

I love casual games and this one mixes several categories(puzzles and simulation).

Happy Holidays Everyone!

My fun Christmas present this year from the Mister was a game for the PS2 called Singstar.  Singstar is basically a Karaoke game.  Singstar Rocks! contains a lot of classic-ish songs like the Stone’s “Paint it Black” and Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys are Back in Town”.  The big difference between Singstar and regular Karaoke is that with Singstar you get constant visual feedback of how you are doing and you get a score.  The constant feedback helps you to turn a sour note sweet.  Singster also does not remove the original artists voice from the track, so it’s less scary than just singing badly where everyone can hear.  It’s more like singing along with the radio.

I brought the game to my brothers’ house for Christmas and we had a very long night of singing and battling to see who is king.  Everyone from my parents to my young nephews got into the action and we were raspy by the end of the night.  The scoring on easy was very generous which prevented everyone from getting the “Tone Deaf” rating.  Sure we all sort of sucked, but the game lied to us just a little to keep our Rock Star Mystique.

The only downside?

The only song I can sing particularly well is ”Friday I’m in Love” by The Cure.  I could beat any family member as long as it was “Friday I’m in Love”.  I mean seriously, couldn’t I just have a slightly cooler song?  But no, I can only belt “Friday I’m in Love”.    Sure I can beat everyone, but what’s the cost to my soul and my coolness?

Nobody in the family is headed for American Idol, but we sure did have a lot of fun trying. 

As an aside Singstar currently has 4 games: Rocks!, AMPED, Pop and 80’s.  The starter pack (any of the above games and the special MANDATORY microphone) is $50.00 dollars.  It’s $30.00 to buy just a booster game(no microphones).

The game originated in the UK and consequently there are many more songs/gamesavailable in Europe.  Since the PS2 is region blocked(meaning good luck getting those Japanese imports to work without a hack) you won’t be able to play the European games(even if you do manage score one on Ebay).

 However the option of moving to Europe always has a certain charm. 

<UPDATE!!!> I have a second song!!  If I sing like Edith of All In The Family Fame I can manage “We’re not gonna take it” at IDOL status.  Of course, this begs the question of who exactly  would willingly listen to me sing like this.  I mean, unless you were going for blackmail or something.