A few weeks ago I finished playing Shadow of the Colossus.  Since the game is three and a half years old, I’m not going to talk about it too much.  The game consists solely of 16 boss battles, in which you defeat colossi that are often hundreds of feet tall.  But the interesting thing about the game is that you start to sympathize with the colossi.  The only reason you are killing these things is because some god told you he would bring your dead girlfriend back to life if you would do it.  But no justification beyond that is ever given.  The colossi are not terrorizing villagers or anything like that.  In fact, they keep to themselves in a land devoid of human life, and they’ve certainly never done anything to you.  And, with the exception of the final colossus, none of them even appear to be attacking you for any reason other than self defense.  In one case, you must even shoot a colossus with an arrow in order to make it wake up!  As I was playing the game, I had the thought that this must be similar to bullfighting.  I mean, the bull has never done anything to the matador, yet the matador provokes him and stabs him with swords, ultimately delivering a final blow in a weak spot (between the shoulder blades, I think).  This is quite similar to what happens in Shadow of the Colossus.  And the game has a satisfying ending which I won’t spoil.

If you follow games at all, you’ve probably heard the praises of this game over and over.  So I’m not going to continue repeating things that have probably already been said in much better words by much better writers than myself.

Shortly after Christmas I applied some Best Buy gift cards toward Prince of Persia (the new one that for some reason has no subtitle).  The series has been riding on the goodwill created by 2003’s masterpiece The Sands Of Time.  And I have to take a moment to state again just how much I loved that game.  Since then, they released two sequels that didn’t even come close to living up to SoT.

Apparently someone at Ubisoft Montreal has decreed that their games must end with obnoxious cliffhangers.  There was at least kind of an ending to Prince of Persia.  Part of the ending was interactive, and I simply did not want the Prince to do what I had to make him do to complete the game.  So I will give them credit, as this means they did a good job of making me identify with the Prince to some extent.  Of course, after you do this, you get an ending that might as well say “please insert a credit card to buy the next sequel.”

Last week Ubisoft released “Epilogue”, a downloadable episode that takes place immediately after the ending.  Since it was only ten bucks, I bought it (the first time I’ve purchased any DLC, actually).  Well it didn’t really clear up anything, and actually ended more abruptly than Assassin’s Creed’s abortion of an ending.  I didn’t think that was possible.

I don’t understand this decision.  I’m sure someone at Ubisoft thinks “if we make a cliffhanger ending, then more people will come back for a sequel.”  I’m not sure this is a valid line of reasoning.  What they’ve put at the end of their games are essentially a mechanism to make the player very angry, not to generate sales of the sequel.  I don’t think that decent endings prevent anyone from playing the sequel.  Sands Of Time had one of the best endings of any video game that I’ve ever played, and I have come back for three sequels now (four even, if you consider Assassin’s Creed to be a “spiritual sequel”).  If a game is good enough, people will come back for more because they like the game that much.

All that said, I really enjoyed this game.  But can’t I expect the reward of a decent ending after having put twenty hours into playing your game?

So I mentioned in a post over two years ago that I was going to start reading The Chronicles Of Narnia.  Well I just finished them over Thanksgiving break, and I thought I’d share my thoughts.

First of all, it didn’t take me two years to read them, I just read a lot of other stuff in between.  Especially after I finished The Silver Chair, I think it was over a year before I went back to the series.  I can easily say that it was my least favorite book in the series.

As Jonah mentioned in a comment on that post, the books were not written in the order in which the story takes place.  The Horse And His Boy and The Magician’s Nephew were written after The Silver Chair, but before The Last Battle, although the stories take place much earlier in the Narnia timeline.  I think The Magician’s Nephew needs to be read next-to-last to be properly appreciated.  There’s just too much in the story that you wouldn’t understand or appreciate if it was the first Narnia book you read.  Of people I’ve talked to who have read the series, they either didn’t like The Magician’s Nephew at all, or they liked it but only when they read the series for a second time.  I thought it was great, which is probably because I read it next-to-last.  Reading The Horse And His Boy where it is presented chronologically, however, is probably not going to detract from the story.

I will avoid spoilers even for this fifty-year-old book series (although, really, isn’t there a statute of limitations on spoilers?), but I have to say I was disappointed with the treatment of one character in particular.  Seriously, I think this character must have been named for a person who C.S. Lewis really liked when he started writing the books, but while he was writing the last book this person must have run over his dog, repeatedly.  The ultimate treatment of this character was just unnecessary.  In a way it reminded me of the gratuitous demise of Chef on South Park.  If you’ve read the books I’m sure you know who I’m referring to.

(Actually, I’m avoiding spoilers because Stephanie is reading the books now, so don’t leave any spoilers in the comments please!)

Over the weekend I finished playing through Assassin’s Creed, and I felt compelled to say a little something about it here.  The game was very polarizing to reviewers when it came out last year—most either really liked it or really hated it.  Those who hated it said it was incredibly repetitive.  Gabe said on Penny Arcade that if you were playing it like you were trying to complete it as fast as possible (like a reviewer on a deadline), you would hate it.  All that said, I really liked the game.  It took me over two months to complete it, but that is because I didn’t play it continuously.

Two things I want to discuss.  First, I’m surprised the game wasn’t more controversial.  It is set in Crusades-era middle east, and one of the subtasks is to assassinate various Templars who are stationed around the game world.  Which is to say (if you want to exaggerate and misrepresent), you must kill the Christians to gain experience.  Add to that the fact that many of the assassination targets are Muslims (who aren’t known for being open-minded to such things), and it seems like something that would have gotten more attention from the Jack Thompsons of the world.  I guess Ubisoft was afraid of that too, because there is a disclaimer everytime the game is started, saying something to the effect of “this game was developed by a diverse group representing different religious faiths.”  But I guess either it worked or people just didn’t notice the game, because I never heard of any controversy.

Point the second:  the ending to the game was dumb.  Spoiler etiquette prevents me from discussing it, but it was bad.  In fact, to call it an ending would be to imply that there was some type of conclusion.  It would be more accurately called “the thing that happened before the credits abruptly started playing.”  I think they want me to be intrigued and eagerly anticipate a sequel.  I’d like to play a sequel, but not because of the way the game ended stopped.

Nearly two months ago, I joined Facebook.  I had low expectations, despite the fact that a few people whose opinions I value told me the same things I’m about to tell you.  I have to say, as a whole, Facebook doesn’t really suck.  I guess I was expecting something more like MySpace, which just kind of looks like the Internet ate too many gifs and had to throw them up as partially-digested ads.  Or something like that.  I probably stretched that analogy too far there.  Whatever.  The point is Facebook doesn’t suck, and it’s actually kind of fun, even for an antisocial computer geek like myself.

I was at home with the flu for a few days last week (not an experience I would recommend to anyone), and I did something I’ve never done before.  I watched a few episodes of Walker: Texas Ranger.  I had always assumed, based on the title I suppose, that the show was about your typical tougher-than-nails-cowboy-who-lives-by-his-own-rules-but-has-a-heart-of-gold type.  Turns out, it’s mainly about jumping out of helicopters onto people, and then proceeding to kick them.  A lot.  Like, I think there have been kick-boxing matches with less kicking.  Now I get all those Chuck Norris facts which set the internets abuzz a few years ago.

I also caught a few episodes of Ninja Warrior.  It’s kinda like Gladiators, only without the gladiators themselves (an improvement), and with the difficulty turned up about ten difficulty units.  And that’s on a scale of five.  You should totally check it out.

Now if only we could get Chuck Norris to compete on Ninja Warrior...

I mentioned not long ago that I sent in my copy of Guitar Hero 3 to get a replacement with stereo sound.  Yesterday I got my replacement, which was faster than I was expecting (only fifteen days).  Having heard the game in stereo now, I can say that the difference is huge, and immediately apparent.  And now that I know that, I can’t see how this got through QA.  You’d think some of the same people who were testing the Wii version would have tested or at least been exposed to the PS2, PS3, or 360 versions of the game, and would have said “hey, why does the game sound like crap on the Wii?”  I mean, it is a music game after all.  Oh well.

I’ve played a lot of games lately, so I thought I’d post some quick mini-reviews for anyone who cares.  Without further ado...

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
All in all a pretty fun game, although something just doesn’t feel quite right.  Looking back on the Metroid Prime games, I think that the first one was the best.  But I’m not sure why, because I played 1 & 2 back-to-back last summer, and I thought 2 was far superior when played that way.  But when they aren’t fresh on my mind, I think the first one was better!  I can’t figure out why, since those thoughts contradict each other.  Some other thoughts: this is also the easiest of the Prime games, and the presence of voice actors was a little weird to me.  Finally, I have to mention the two super-cool unlockables.  One is ship bumper stickers, which means it looks at games saved in your Wii system memory and puts their logo on your ship.  So there’s a giant Zelda triforce on the top of my ship, and a Paper Mario head on the side of my ship.  And the other cool unlockable is a Samus bobble-head doll with your Mii’s head on it.  Normally I wouldn’t think seeing my head on a woman’s body was very cool, but I’ll make an exception in this case.  You can see both of these unlockables on your tubes.

Super Mario Galaxy
This game was just great.  I’m not sure how else to say it.  As you probably already know, the game takes place on micro planets that you can run around.  Playing around with gravity is incredibly trippy.  There are even a few places where a planet is small enough that a long jump can literally put you into orbit!  I wonder what Isaac Newton would say if he were alive to see this game?  Stephanie also enjoyed the commitment-free 2-player co-op.  She was able to help sometimes by freezing enemies.  In fact this was so helpful it felt like cheating sometimes, especially because she could just hold bullet bills in place, then I could take my time.  The game does have a few bad points.  Namely, Spring Mario.  Fortunately, you only have to use Spring Mario about 4 or 5 times in the entire game (in fact, I don’t think I ever used it until after the first time I beat the game).

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock
I’ve played Guitar Hero games a few times, but this was the first one that I actually owned and spent significant time on.  I think my skill might have plateaued at can-beat-nearly-everything-on-hard-and-a-few-things-on-expert.  Unfortunately the Wii version of this game had some problems, like the fact that it only outputs sound in mono.  This is a music game, how did that get past the QA process??  Another annoyance is the lack of co-op quickplay feature (not that this is a huge deal to me, personally, since I only have the one guitar).  For the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, a patch was released to add that feature, but of course the Wii isn’t quite that capable.  Oh well.  I just put my disc in the mailbox this morning to get a replacement disc that does have stereo sound, but they said it could be 3-4 weeks, and I might be quite busy with other things in 3-4 weeks, so it may be a while before I get time to play GH3 again.

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords
As you may know, this is the third game in the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy.  (Well technically Two Thrones was the third game, and this is a port of the third game.)  The first game in this trilogy was just amazing.  One of the best video games I’ve ever played.  Unfortunately Ubisoft rushed out the sequels without giving them the same love.  The Warrior Within was a train wreck of a game.  In this game they’ve gotten back on course a bit, but it still seems to fall short of the first game.  But I have to admit I’m only partway through the game.  The Wii controls are a little tacked on, but they aren’t really bad.  They are comparable to Twilight Princess (where Wii controls were also tacked on).  Somehow the graphics seem worse to me than they were in the original game, but maybe I’m just not remembering it correctly.  I’ll have to go back and see sometime.

Okay I guess that’s all I’ve been playing in the last several months.  Until next time, take care America.

American Gladiators is back on TV.  (Or would proper grammar be “American Gladiators are back on TV?”)  In any case, Stephanie and I caught the show last night.  It’s kind of like you remember it, except with less stuff happening and more people talking.  In other words, just what you’d expect in today’s post-Survivor reality TV format.  I guess they want you to care about the contestants so they spend time talking about them?  I don’t—I just want to see people get jousted so hard their fingers come off.  And some of the gladiators are clearly trying to make names for themselves (ahem, Wolf, yeah it’s really cute how you howl whenever the camera points at you, but you look like an idiot).

Maybe I’m remembering American Gladiators through the rose-colored lens of memory.  In fact, I know I am.  I was, after all, twelve years old at the height of the show’s popularity.  Still, the new show isn’t entirely without its good points.  For one, the lady gladiators aren’t quite as scary (i.e. manly) as they used to be.  Another improvement is the updated Eliminator, which is now incredibly grueling.  Somehow moving the uphill conveyor belt to the end of the competition makes it a hundred times more difficult.  When the contestants finish, they are barely able to move.  I don’t think it will be long before someone finishing the Eliminator just throws up right on Hulk Hogan’s legs.  That would be hilarious.

I’ll probably keep watching, at least for a little while, although I’m not sure if I would be doing so if there were other shows on TV.

I just got back from my first ever business trip.  My company sent me to Seattle (technically Everett, WA) this week to visit our good friends at Boeing.  You may have heard, they are a little behind schedule.  But I can’t say too much about the business purpose of my trip here.  Fortunately I wasn’t flying solo, there were several others from my company (two others from the Charlotte office).  I was the only developer there; everyone else was support.  In any case, here are a few highlights in convenient bulleted form:

• The area is pretty.  Unless you happen to hate evergreen trees, in which I guess you wouldn’t care for it.  Because there are lots of evergreens.  When you look out the window of the plane, it looks kind of like you are about to land in a Christmas tree farm.

• The Boeing plant is big.  Really big.  The biggest building in the world by volume, as a matter of fact.  If you imagine a garage where you might get your oil changed, with about six garage doors in the building, it’s kind of like that.  Except the garage doors are big enough to hold full-sized airplanes.

• Security is tight there.  Since they couldn’t confirm that I was a US Citizen, I got a temporary badge requiring an escort anywhere other than the conference room.  Including the bathroom.  So I had to act like a five-year-old and ask people to take me to the bathroom.

• I got to visit my friend from the Amazon.  It was nice to catch up with you.

• Due to a layover in Phoenix, I got to see the Grand Canyon from the sky.  I think it was the Grand Canyon anyway.  In any case, it was a large canyon somewhere north-northwest of Phoenix.

• On the flights to Seattle, I got to experience first-class flight for my first time.  I didn’t think it was that great, until I flew coach on the way back.  Then I remembered what coach was like.

• Most of our nation is a barren wasteland.  That’s the impression I get from thirty thousand feet.

• It was my observation that there are no black people in Seattle.  Some quick internet searching seems to support this: only 8.44% of the population in Seattle versus 32.72% of the population in Charlotte.  That’s a pretty big difference.  And in Everett it is only 3.35%.  That was a little weird.

• There is some kind of circular farming that they do in the flat states, where they just don’t use 21.5% of the land in a square plot.  See many examples here.  This isn’t the first time I’ve noticed this but I thought I’d mention it.  I’m not sure how it is cost effective to waste so much of your land, but since there is so much of it done I’m assuming it must be more than 21.5% more efficient for some crops than traditional farming techniques.

• They still like grunge rock in Seattle.  At least the station I was listening to does.  In four half-hour drives (two trips to and from Peter’s house), I think I heard: 4 Nirvana songs, 3 Pearl Jam songs, 4 Foo Fighters songs, 2 Alice In Chains songs.  And then some new stuff like that terrible Finger Eleven song about clubbing.  I really hate that song.

• It didn’t rain all week.  Garrison had the same experience when he visited.  I’m beginning to think that “it always rains in Seattle” is just a myth.

• No signs of Sasquatch.  That also might be a myth.  But if so, then how do beef jerky enthusiasts mess with them?

I guess that’s all I’ve got to share.