Big Fat Ostrich

That’s right! Dan is on vacation! Dan is drunk. Dan has been playing a bunch of games. Dan wants to talk about them.

Let’s start with Final Fantasy 13 on PS3 (and Xbox 360): Yes it’s linear for the first 20-25 hours. Very much so. It’s a huge tutorial. But if you’re ready to accept that, it’s a FANTASTIC GAME. The graphics are out of this world. The combat rocks. The characters are rich, as is the background story. Every other review out there is angry at Vanille, and yes she’s fucking annoying, but I was so ready to hate her that I found myself kinda accepting her after the initial shock. If like me you wanted to love Final Fantasy in the past but often found yourself lost, wondering “is this the right way to play the game?”, well this installment was created for you. I give it 9 internetz out of 10.

Heavy Rain on PS3: Loved it loved it loved it. They really nailed the interactive movie thing. I finished it in 2 sittings (5-6 hours each). 3 bad things about it:

- The engine was supposed to deliver highly emotional 3D expressions, I don’t know what happened but they fucked up. The character faces look googly eyed and weird. We can see the potential though.

- Some ideas they included in the game feel half finished. Like the virtual reality glasses, they rock and we would love the game to expand on the concept. But they only make a very brief appearance. Makes them feel gimmicky. Also, the sex and the kisses. Nice try.

- The game is too short! But that’s a good bad thing. I understand how they needed to make it short in order to be able to deliver a quality product. I could’ve gone forever though.

Otherwise, I loved the mood, loved the rain, the graphics have that hard to describe quality where you know you’re dealing with a top notch product. They paid attention to details, the characters are compelling and the story has a lot of “HOLY FUCK!” moments. My ending was very depressing though. I gotta re-play it just to try and get something less emo. If video games are important to you, buy this one. If you just want a good time, rent it twice, it’ll be more than enough.

Final Fantasy on iPhone: That port rocks so hard, my mind is blown away. Ok there are some problems with the controls. Sometimes you have to tap twice, or let your finger rest longer on the screen for the buttons to work, and I still don’t know why or what or when or where. But the graphics, the audio, the sheer FF experience, it’s all there, and it works better than I ever thought an iPhone port could. UPDATE: Crashed on me 3 times since I wrote this. Still my favorite FF1 version. So there.

Space Miner on iPhone: Another jewel. For when you would love to re-activate your EVE Online account but just don’t have the time. This little game provides a lot of mining and ship upgrading action. Controls are top notch, graphics are a bit too cartoony for my tastes but they’re efficient and colorful.

Canabalt on the iPhone: You’re a guy who runs to the right and jumps. Things aren’t going well in the world. Top notch music. Game mechanics deserve an award.

So that’s what I have been playing. Once again, a little late on most of them, I don’t care.

Meet me next week for some steamy Nethack fanfic.

-Dan

This blog needs more tech posts. Here’s one. This time though, for your convenience, I’m offering a short version that cuts through all the bullshit:

For iPhone tethering to work on a Windows machine, you need to install iTunes first.

If you’re still with me, here’s the long version:

Like you all know, I recently moved into a new apartment. New place=new internet, which takes time because they always fuck up the order and send the cable modem to the wrong address and then charge you too much money for the first month and when you call them to complain about it they only answer after a 2 hour wait and then you get some guy from India trying to sell you the “Extreme sports TV channels package” in that awful awful fake New-York accent.

ANYWAY! I want to be able to check my email from my new place and I find the iPhone awkward for “real” internet use. Never really got used to the onscreen keyboard, the small screen feels claustrophobic, and you can’t run more than one app at the same time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome alternative to the real thing, but I can’t picture myself living with only an iPhone for a whole month. Which brings me to the main topic of this post: iPhone innertsnets tethering.

“But Daniel” you ask, “what is this tethering you speak of?!?!?!?” Well, in Wikipedia‘s own words, “Tethering is the use of a mobile device such as a mobile phone to supply Internet access for another device which is otherwise unconnected, using the connected device as a modem. This can be done through Bluetooth wireless technology or cables (such as USB).” When this feature was first introduced (in iPhone OS 3.0 I think…) I was like “man, that word is really hard to pronounce”. Then I forgot all about it. A few weeks later I found myself thinking “I wish there was a way for me to use my iPhone as a mobile internet USB key…” Well well well! Whaddaya know! All I had to do was to call my provider and ask them to activate the tethering feature. I tested it on my main machine and it worked perfectly. Everything was awesome, until…

My work laptop broke down. It was 4 years old, so they replaced it with a shiny new Dell E6400. “Yay!” I thought, “Finally a computer I can bring to my new place to check my emails and chat on MSN while I’m scrubbing the floors!” So I tested the tethering thing on it and it didn’t work. Usually, you plug the iPhone in through the USB port and windows detects a new network device called “Apple Mobile Device Ethernet”. But on my brand new laptop, nothing happened! Oh it detected the “camera” part alright, but nothing else. After googleing and testing everything I could think of, I finally found the solution; That’s right folks, for iPhone tethering to work on a Windows machine, you need to install iTunes first! As simple as that.

Hope this one was actually helpful to someone

-Dan

Mike just posted 2 rather good posts. I simply cannot have that. I swore to keep the quality of this site way below average, and that bastard is sabotaging me big time.

First, I would like to talk about the awful awful ads that are sprinkled all over our main page. Sometimes I wake up at night, turn on the computer and fire up my favorite web browser (Google chrome of course). Then I interwebsurf to here, and look at the ads for a while. Then I hit F5, hoping that I’ll get a fresh batch. They are so fucking awful they make me forget about my own misery.

Lately I noticed one that I find particularly disturbing. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Notaurz, the diaper wearing happy minotaur:

I… I don’t know man… The “normal” reaction to Notaurz would be to hate his guts I guess. But just look at him! With his huge soulless eyes, and his mouth full of grass, and that big dumb smile. It makes me want to adopt him, but just so I could drown him in the toilet. I’m sure he’d still be smiling that creepy smile through the whole process. Fucking Notaurz…

Ok, time for another brand new feature! The nano game reviews. Just enough info to interest you in a game or make sure you’ll never make the mistake of buying it. Here’s what I’ve been playing lately:

Rhythm Heaven 2 on DS: Already talked about it in the past, still totally hooked on it. LOTS of rhythm game fun, zero stupid peripherals.

Mario and Luigi Partners in Time on DS: First Mario RPG I’ve ever played, and I really like the twitch reflex dimension they added to the classic RPG mechanics.

Geo-defense Swarm on iPhone: Fun variation on the tower defense genre. The medium difficulty levels are much more difficult than the easy ones though. Still a must-own iPhone game.

Batman Arkham Asylum on PC: Every bit as good as everyone says it is.

Torchlight on PC: Great Diablo-like, made by the guys who brought you Diablo! Very short development cycle, and it shows on the amount of content. Quality is top notch though.

Dragon Age Origins on PC: Bioware brought us Baldur’s Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect among other awesome games. Dragon Age Origins is a return to the Baldur’s Gate recipe, and it TOTALLY ROCKS.

Need for Speed Shift on PC: I love racing games. I tend to prefer arcade ones (Midnight Club, Burnout). I’ll say this about NFS Shift: OMFG IT ROCKS SO MUCH. It’s the simulation racer made for the arcade racer fans. The expert mode is frustrating though.

Champions Online MMORPG on PC: Fuck this game. I used to have a lot of respect for Cryptic, was a big fan of City of Heroes/Villains, but this is not a good product. Decent graphics and combat but awful frame rate and weak design.

Soul Calibur Broken Destiny on PSP: It’s 100% Soul Calibur. The guest characters are much better than the Star Wars ones in SC4, the character creation is a blast. It pushes the PSP graphics to its limits, meaning it looks gorgeous.

The End

So my Sony Ericsson W380 has been acting up lately. It’s really a great phone with few problems, but recently the battery started discharging when I shut the phone off!

What happens: After you turn off the phone, it starts to heat up. When you turn the phone back on, the battery is drained.

Well, that pretty much sucks monster moose cocks. It really is too bad that our technological crap is built to last for as long as it took me to make that avocado/cheese/tomato/zucchini sandwich that I just ate (which was awesome, thank you very much).

So, I grudgingly called my cell phone people. Grudgingly because, you know what it’s like: Call, wait, be on hold, talk to someone who may or may not know what they’re talking about. I got lucky this time though. I got through quickly and the customer service agent person forwarded my call to Sony Ericsson since they don’t deal with the W380 anymore. Nice.

Anyway, long story short, the guy at Sony Ericsson actually helped me out (although he had the personality of someone who just had a chloroformed rag shoved in his face). I followed his instructions carefully:

• Hold the power off button while simultaneously taking out the battery.
• Keep holding the power button for 20 seconds
• Finally, put the battery back in and power on your phone.
• Stir
• Serves one

And that’s it. My W380 hasn’t turned into a worthless brick yet, but we’ll see how it goes in the next few weeks.

And no, I am not getting an iPhone, so stop asking me already! I mean it. Seriously, now go away.

“Where the fuck is Dan?!” is what every one of you has been asking for the past weeks. Well, Dan’s been playing video games! And totally slacking on that Solaris 10 howto. It won’t be ready this week, I can tell you that! What is ready this week though is a quick overview of my latest video gaming discoveries.

Let’s start with the iPhone stuff.

iPhone OS 3.0: It’s not gaming. It’s not very exciting either. Without reading the release notes, the 3 things I noticed were the addition of “Voice Memos”, an application that lets you record… voice memos. There’s also copying and pasting now, but I never seem to need it. Finally, there’s a cool “Search iPhone” thingy based on Spotlight. That one’s very handy. On the performance front, I noticed some games running more smoothly while others crash more, probably because they didn’t get their 3.0 compatibility update. In conclusion, the iPhone is still freaking awesome, but not MORE awesome.

Fart Piano: I just had to write about that one. It’s a piano. It makes fart noises.

The Moron Test: I really enjoy a good game of Moron Test while commuting to and from work. It’s a bunch of little tests to see if you’re paying attention.

Zenonia: Little RPG with kinda real time combat. Let’s start with the bad: Very cheesy and the graphics are blurry like when you don’t set your display settings to the native resolution of your LCD panel. Other than that, I play the “dude with light armor and 2 daggers” class (“assassin” or something) and the fighting is lots of fun so far. I’m level 18 or so and the story still feels like I’m just at the beginning. Good stuff.

Magnificent Gizmos and Gadgets: Remember “The Incredible Machine”? It’s kinda like that, but light. The game is split between Easy, Medium and Hard puzzles to solve with a bunch of machine parts with which you build gizmos to carry a ball from point A to point B. The physics play an important role and the game let’s you get quite creative. I can spend hours building testing crazy machines that don’t work.

And now, my favorite iPhone game of the summer…

I Dig It: You’re a dude. You drive a caterpillar with a huge fucking drill in the front (and it’s equipped with a jetpack to get back to the surface!). You dig holes in the ground to collect ores and bottle caps and all kinds of crazy shit which you then sell in order to upgrade, refuel and repair your vehicle. The upgrades allow you go dig deeper in the ground and last longer, resist more damage, etc. The graphics and sound are great, the gameplay is very simple yet totally addictive, you collect stuff and you can unlock achievements. I dig love it.

Okay now, Nintendo DS…

Final Fantasy IV: I got nothing more to say. Been playing it for weeks, will probably still be playing it come Christmas. The move to Nintendo 64-quality 3D graphics is a success, the game itself is every bit as awesome as it was before.

Xbox 360. YEAH! I GOT AN XBOX 360!!1 WOOHOO!!! As much as I love my PS3, let me just say, the Xbox people totally nailed the integration with Live, the achievements and the friends list, with the possibility to invite someone to play a game from the root menu, etc. In comparison, the PS3 equivalents still feel awkward and lackluster.

That said, here’s some of the games I been playing…

Fable 2: I can see why some people would find that game a bit too easy and oversimplistic, but what can I say, it totally worked for me. It delivered what I would’ve wanted from Oblivion. An open world in which you can fuck around as much as you want, an exciting fighting system with very spectacular magic effects and satisfying shooting. The auto aiming and no dying just cuts to the fun part in my opinion. I also liked the writing. Very entertaining and the (many) jokes really made me laugh, which doesn’t happen often. I completed the main story in 2 sittings (but the second one, I spent like 13 hours in front of the damn thing), it’s a bit weak near the end but what the hell, I still had TONS of fun. And I’m not done, all the little side quests are a joy to do. I also bought both downloadable “expansions”, Knothole Pack and See the Future, for about 6 bucks each. Konthole adds a new map (Knothole island) which contains a bunch of new quests, new items and offers 3 new achievements worth 100 points. See the Future is a story around cursed items that you can buy from a merchant. It provides new quests, items a new area and the ability to change the breed of your dog! Oh and you also get 13 new achievements worth 250 points. I believe Knothole is usually 8 dollars but I got it on sale. Anyway, if you like open world games but Oblivion and Fallout 3 make you nauseous, this one is really worth looking at.

REZ HD: If you ever played the pen&paper RPG Shadowrun, this is Shadowrun’s matrix. With 3D graphics like we thought the future would look like back in 1991. It’s a shooter with kinda a rhythm game in it. If you play for too long you get transported to a different plane of reality, or maybe you just travel back in time to 1991. I dunno but I’m enjoying it immensely.

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved 2: Do I even need to say anything about this one?

Now, on the Wii… let’s see…

Excite Bots – Trick Racing: Little animal themed transformer type robots that have wheels. It’s like a racing car game, but with mini games in it (bowling pins, a soccer ball that you gotta kick in the net, a clown you gotta throw a pie at, much much more). The goal is to collect stars to get the highest possible rating which unlocks new levels and robots which you can then buy with said stars. The controls are entirely motion based but this time they were done right. It’s what I thought Mario Kart Wii would feel like. Every time I sit down and start playing it, I can’t stop. It’s one of the few must have games on the Wii, period.

PS3…

ZEN Pinball: Go figure, the only game I been playing on my PS3 lately is a fucking pinball. It’s got a bunch of different pinball machines, it’s beautiful and fast paced. It’s pinball.

PC…

I tried Prototype and, even though the fighting and the moving around are exhilarating, I just couldn’t. Those graphics are just so shitty. It’s like City of Heroes but without the excuse of being a 5 year old MMORPG. I’ll give it another shot later when I’m in a better mood.

Okay now the PSP. Oh wait, I don’t have a PSP. THANK GOD I DON’T HAVE A PSP. I’m completely exhausted.

Well folks, I hope there was at least one game in there that caught your attention. Notice I didn’t mention any game prices this time around. It’s a new concept, I call it “fuck everything-ness”.

L4t0rz

Hey everyone. I just bought a car! A brand new Honda Civic coupe. I love it to death. I would review it but it’d be a boring read. Absolutely everything rocks about it. EVERYTHING! So I’ll post a great tuna melt recipe instead.

But before I start talking about the recipe, I need to fill the white space to the right of the pic with random stuff, else it looks bad. I been playing Stick Wars on the iPhone lately. A very interesting take on the tower defense genre. I don’t even know if it fits in the tower defense category, but still, it’s fast paced and addictive and funny. I suggest you give it a try.

Ingredients:

1 branch of Celery

1/2 Green Pepper

1 can of Tuna

3 tablespoon Mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Curry

1/2 French Baguette (or equivalent)

3 slices Havarti Cheese

1 teaspoon Butter

1 lime

Preparation:

Cut the celery and the half pepper in tiny dice. Mix the tuna, the mayo, the curry and the freshly chopped veggies together. Cut the lime in 2 and press the juice of both halves in the mix. Stir until the texture is uniform. Cut the half baguette open, spread some butter on it. Put in the tuna stuff. Add the slices of havarti cheese. Pre-heat the oven to 375 celcius. Keep the sandwich open and slide it into the oven for 20 minutes or until the cheese is completely melted. Once it’s out of the oven, let it rest for a minute or so and then enjoy. Mmmmm, it’s succulent!

Variations:

This recipe works well with a bunch of different breads and cheeses. Keiser rolls are great, as well as panini breads. As for the cheese, good old cheddar is also good, as well as Jarlsberg. Hell, even Kraft Singles would probably do the trick…

That’s it for now folks!

Coming up soon: How to add a service to Solaris 10′s SMF, and what to do when it (surprisingly) doesn’t work. Stay tuned.

If you’re looking for Mafia Wars strategy tips, check out my other post here.

I hate Facebook and I swore I’d never join. But once I did join about 18 months ago, the reasons why I didn’t want to join in the first place were confirmed: status updates (which basically all say “pay attention to me!”) and being hounded by people I wasn’t friends with the first time around. I know, I know. I’m not the first one to bitch about it.

So why the hell am I still on Facebook?

Obviously, if you found this post, then you know why. Mafia Wars.

Mafia Wars is another highly addictive online RPG by Zynga, creators of tons of Facebook games like Street Racing, Scramble and too many to mention here. And, thanks to Facebook (sigh) there’s a huge player base with over 10 million people playing. The principle is simple: create a mafia dude and make him better by fighting other mafia dudes, mafias, and doing various jobs to earn cash so you can buy weapons and property.  Like any RPG, each subsequent level gets tougher and you need more experience to advance which means you need more weapons, more property, more money, more everything. It’s an endless cycle really, and in the end, highly predictable in the sense that once you’ve done 1 level, you’ve done them all.

THEN WHY AM I STILL PLAYING??

Because Mafia Wars is really well put together. There’s no real storyline, just you doing the same jobs that everyone else is doing. As you get better, you reach higher tiers and get rewarded with special weapons and loot. You begin as a lowly Street Thug and make your way up the ranks, towards the Boss levels. The game is ever evolving, so you just have to keep playing to see where it goes.

There’s just something pleasing about the game that keeps me coming back for more. It might be the stats. I like stats. Stats make me giddy. You can watch your stats grow as you rise up the ranks in your own mafia. There’s also a global leaderboard, so you can get an idea just how long you’ll be playing this thing (level 1057 anyone?), if the addiction holds. So far I’m a Level 56 Hitman and I still can’t get enough.

A few things that I really appreciate about Mafia Wars:

1. Players are not searchable. This removes a certain level of harassment from the game, so most people can play for fun.

2. Mostly fair fighting and robbing: You can only fight other players who are reasonably close to your level of experience (under normal circumstances). That way a Level 217 can’t attack a Level 3. Unless you’re on the Hitlist.

3. Limited animation. With text and static images, the game play is faster (fine, the revolver lags at times). The images of weaponry and loot are slick and pleasing to the eye. Personally, I think overt animation would detract from the game itself, so kudos to Zynga for keeping it simple.

4. No chat feature. Need i say more?  After all, you’re whacking other players, who will no doubt get pissed when you fight them and win. Better to let the gun do the talking.

With these great features, and others, there are less ways for people to cheat, so most players can just play and enjoy. Plus, you can now play Mafia wars on the iPhone as well. The iPhone version of Mafia wars will import your mafia from the Facebook version, but your gangster will have to start from the beginning since your Facebook mafia stats are not imported.

That’s it. Time to fight some more, punk!

P.S. I still hate you, Facebook!

Hi! I haven’t had much time or motivation for a big professional post on the level of quality with which Dr. Dobson writes. But I’ve been thinking about you my dear reader, oh yes I have. In the past month I made the acquisition of an iPhone and man, it is everything they say it is, AND MORE. It’s embarrassing how many apps I bought so far. There are so many great ideas on the app store, it makes it almost impossible not to find something to download every time you go. Long story short, I got a lot of very cool games to talk about. On the Nintendo DS front things have been a little more quiet lately but I still have a few games I wanna mention.

I’ll start with Aurora Feint II – Arena Daemons. If you enjoyed PuzzleQuest, this one will not disappoint you. It’s yet another Bejeweled based fighting RPG, but the gameplay is much deeper. It’s got PvP a la Mafia Wars, mining, crafting and a sleek chat interface. The artwork is gorgeous and the music is also very rich. Available for $4.99, the pricetag is a little steep for an iPhone game, but the product is worth every cent.

Another expensive iPhone app that’s worth the money is Galaga REMIX ($5.99). If you’re a fan of arcade shooters, there are no other alternatives that I know of. Surprisingly, the touchscreen controls are very smooth and responsive. The game also offers a classic mode that reproduces the original arcade Galaga experience flawlessly.

OK… this next one is even more expensive and maybe not worth the price. I Love Katamari is the iPhone iteration of the Katamari Damacy games. I always was a huge fan of the basic concept. This version is a bit laggy and the controls aren’t top notch but it still delivers (fun physics, item collection, etc). You can get it for $7.99. Ouch, I know.

geoDefense is a tower defense game with minimalist graphics, very Tron-ish. It’s sleek and fast paced. Perfect for a short commute. $3.99.

Another tower defense game that I enjoy a lot is Square Enix’s own Crystal Defenders. Based in the Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles universe, it’s a beautiful and fun take on the genre. I like how the mechanics are a bit deeper than what you usually find in such games. It’s another $7.99 game though, I know I know! I’m starting to realize how much cash I spent on those damn games…

Here’s a free one for a change. Trace is as fun as it is ugly. The MS Paint art style doesn’t stop this little platforming puzzle game from being a pure gem. I was surprised how smooth the controls are. And yes, it really is 100% free

SuperMarket Mania is a time management game that reminds me how I felt the first time I played The Sims (super excited and a bit guilty cuz it’s totally a chick game). The synopsis is simple: you gotta re-stock food displays and clean up after the customers as fast as possible or else you lose money. If you have $2.99, spend it on this.

Last game I wanna recommend for the iPhone is Tap Tap Revenge 2. The game is a mini Rock Band/Guitar Hero clone that uses the motion control features of the iPhone and provides new songs to download every week. When you see the price tag on the games I mentioned earlier, it’s hard to believe this one is totally free. The quality is top notch and it’s one of the games I find myself returning to the most. Download it now.

Now for the DS I wanted to mention a few games I’ve been playing, starting with Rhythm Heaven. This collection of rhythm based mini games is fucking awesome. The only complaints I’ve heard about it so far is “The gameboy version was so much better”. Not a valid point in my book.

I’ve also been playing Space Invaders Extreme. Best damn arcade shooter on the DS, period. It’s got many exciting modes, the action is fluid, the boss fights rock, the graphics are like a collage of classic Space Invaders sprites with weird psychedelic artwork in the background. It is a very tight package and I recommend it.

Although it’s been mentioned again and again as the overlooked wonder of 2008, I can’t stress this enough: The World Ends With You is an incredible non-fantasy RPG by Square Enix that everyone should know about. The game mechanics are bold and the artwork is fresh. The story takes place in modern day Japan, in the Shibuya area. Our friend Wikipedia says: “Shibuya is known as one of the fashion centers of Japan, particularly for young people, and as a major nightlife area.” The developers took those characteristics and turned them into gameplay. And they totally pull it off. As well, the combat system is so unlike anything I’ve seen before, and it works so well, the game is worth a look just for that.

Well that’s it my friends. I’ve been working on a full Mint Linux review and it’s going nowhere, but I’ll try to post it anyway. Also, I’m almost done with GTA4 since I’ve got like one mission left. I wanna blog about that as well. And since I might be getting a car soon (my very first car!), I’m gonna be test driving a couple of models in the upcoming weeks. Who knows, maybe I’ll have something fun to write about that experience.

Until then, you take care of yourselves.

- Dan