EverydayShooter

Where: Steam
Cost: $10
Demo: None
Play Time: 10+ hours depending on the person.
Platform: PC

The Indie game of the week this week is EverydayShooter

EverydayShooter (ES) is a really neat little smup that I found on steam the other day. ES is a fairly simple game at first glance, until you reach the second level and realize that the combo system completely changes with every level, and while they clue you into the secret on the first, the rest of the levels are yours to decipher. But, it’s more than a simple change in combo mechanics… in fact it almost feels like each different level is a completely different game. The mechanics change, the art and music change, the rules change, the only thing that’s constant is your dot and your ability to shoot.

The game’s levels are mostly survival challenges, as you proceed to the next level once the alloted time is up. I think it would have been nice to have some bosses thrown in the mix, but I’ve not beaten the game yet, so maybe I’ve just yet to see any.

I’m having a lot of fun with this game, and I’m not even very good at these games (smups) if you have access to Steam I would highly recommend picking this gem up.

I had gotten pretty heavy into Warcraft again, but this last week due to a combination of falling behind in my school work, and a sense of futility based on my participation in the current content I’ve had to reexamine a few things.

So to review:

• I’m taking summer classes, and as a result I don’t have ample time to raid anymore. (My guild’s raiding times are 4 hours M-Th).
• The next expansion will make the majority of the work I’m doing now meaningless, and that expansion is due in a few months.
• The guild I’m in doesn’t seem to have the chops to show me anything that I’ve not seen already in the game, and even though they are nice guys, I can’t see wasting my time in that way as a good thing.

So, since there’s no real use to my playing right now, I’m going to call it quits. I’ve taken up TF2 and various indie games in the meantime… oh and yea… doing my homework! :)

I may still play a bit on the weekends, but I’m done raiding for several hours a night for sure.

Hey look it’s the game of the week! I know, I know… it’s more like game of the month at this point, but I have a busy life, get off my back!

Noitu Love 2: Devolution

Where: http://www.konjak.org/
Cost: $20
Demo: Demo Download Here
Play Time: 4-8 hours depending on the person.
Platform: PC

The Indie game of the week this week is Noitu Love 2: Devolution.

Noitu Love 2 (NL2) is a cool little project created almost entirely by Joakim Sandberg, who also worked on Aquaria, a game I’ve been meaning to pick up for some time. Joakim did all the art, game design and music for the game, and his attention to detail and gaming chops are very evident in this installment.

The primary game mode uses the wasd keys to control your character, and the mouse to attack. As you’re moving around you use the mouse to click on enemies which instantly sends your character to them to attack. this keeps the action quick and the attacks precise.

The game features seven vastly different maps ranging from ancient japan to a robotics factory. Each level is detailed and unique and exceptionally replayable. The game also features a grading system, further encouraging the desire to replay levels to get all A’s.

The game is fun, fast passed, and littered with great boss characters. The original music for every level is great and catchy. One of the best 2d pixel art games I’ve played in a long time.

I don’t really have any real critisms other than that the third character you can unlock is fairly lame, and unfun to play. I hear some people have trouble getting it to play, but I’ve not had any problems.

I highly recommend giving the demo a spin, and purchasing the full version. It’s a great little $20 game.

I know I missed last week’s Indie game of the week, I’m working on a two game article for this week! I was far too busy last week playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl (SSBB) to do much in the way of writing.

Speaking of which, my Nintendo Friend Code for SSBB is 0044-2462-1847. If you add me, let me know in the comments or in an email.

Meanwhile, in the life of Brian, things have been fairly sedate. Last week my wife left me alone for a few days, while she traveled down to her mother’s place in Texas. I spent most of the time playing games, most notably SSBB. The week was a wonderful, momentary reprieve from school as it was spring break.

<rant>

This break sort of helped crystallize my contempt for the state of my education. I’m 40 credits (34 after this semester) away from a degree in Informatics. At this point I’ve pretty much given up on that ever being considered even remotely close to a “real” computing degree. At one point it was sold to me as such. However, more and more as I take the classes and get A’s without study or having to read material, I have come to decide that, for someone like me, that it’s become a form of academic masturbation. I go to class, get taught something over the course of a semester that would have taken me a week to learn on my own. Get a decent grade. Learn nothing of consequence. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I ‘should’ be done in Christmas of 2009, assuming that they decide to teach the classes that I need to take (another sore spot) to graduate. Then I’ll finally have a degree that feels like it will be about as useful for getting a job as a philosophy degree.

So, right now I have about two years of classwork at the tune of about $10k-$14k. For a degree that I’m not convinced will be that useful (I know that any degree has a level of intrinsic usefulness), and during the interim the majority of my motivation (to work on learning things that are useful, like Ruby or Python) and free time get sucked into worrying about classes, and completing inane projects or tests.

I think the catalyst for this rant was yet another ping from friends about interest in a really cool job, but I’m stuck here so it’s not even remotely an option. Don’t misread, I’m happy at Socialtext and have no plans on going anywhere anytime soon, it’s just an example of doors being closed before I even have a chance to really consider them because of my commitment to getting this inane degree.

I’m going to keep plugging away at this for now, but man it’s really starting to wear on my nerves…. and, the 19 year old undergrads are not helping.

</rant>

I’ve started playing Warcraft a bit again. I’m not enjoying the parts that I used to. I transfered to the Blackrock server to raid with a guild that raids late night, and was at the same progression level (Read: they had killed all the same bosses) that I was at with my old guild that broke up. However, about 3 days after I transfered the guild died, and became a different guild. I’m fairly pissed off about the whole situation. I was sold a guild raiding at a certain level, and got a guild learning content I’m used to sleeping through. It’s very frustrating, and I find the only reason I play is to kill time, which is a bad sign. I’m going to try and figure something out, for the current time I’m happy with working on collecting gold so I can get my druid’s Epic Flight Form.

I have been working at ways to keep me plugged in at work, without getting distracted by the mundane distractions of working at home. I’ve found music to be a great hook into staying focused, however for it to properly mask the distractions, it has to be at a level where Jenn can no longer study. So either I sit in silence constantly distracted and getting nothing done, or Jenn hates me and gets nothing done. I have some portable Sony MDR-066s that I use when I’m out and about but they fail for serious listening as their small size make them convenient, but their sound reproduction is fairly lame. So, I decided to look into some really nice isolating headphones. I decided on some Sennheiser HD 280 Pros and I look forward to having a pair of really nice headphones that I can crank up without driving Jenn insane.

I think that I am going to start blogging once a week spotlighting some random, cool Indie Game that I’ve found. There are a lot of bad ass little games being developed by brilliant people, and the whole Indie movement has become pretty amazing with the advent of Steam, 360Live, WiiWare and PSN.

If you happen to see some cool Indie game, drop me a line and I’ll look at it, and probably write about here. Yay for small innovative games. They make me happy.

Synaesthete

Where: Download Full game Here
Cost: Free.
Play Time: Few hours.
Platform: PC

The Indie game of the week this week is Synaesthete.

At it’s core Synaesthete is a combination of rhythm button mashing and dungeon crawling with a dash of zen. The basic game play model is that you maneuver your avatar through a surreal, almost tron-esque landscape with your left hand, while pattern matching with your right hand. You need to keep the beat and pattern match along to the trance/electronica beat in order to shoot lasers at the stampede of hostile abstract creatures.

Visually, the game is awe-inspiring. Playing through this game on a big screen with the sound up was a quick way to lose myself in a sensory experience that lasted for an hour or longer. The music is great, I left a few of the songs from the levels looping for a while because they were just that catchy.

The story of the game doesn’t change much, the environment and songs become far less forgiving, and there are some very fun boss battles.

Where does the game fall a little short?

• I would say first off in the difficulty of the first two difficulty levels could use a little tweaking. The unlockable 72bpm mode is much harder and the shift in difficulty was a little annoying. It’s not impossible by any means, but I’m a fan of linear difficulty progression.
• I also think that the more complex rhythm matching at times seems overly complex and annoying. Granted, you do not need to hit every note, and in fact are encouraged not to hit every note. However, at times it feels a little unresponsive and frustrating.
• The landscapes and environment, while initially amazing and beautiful can become redundant and simple and will lose some of their visual punch, but I felt that only distracted from the experience slightly.

Do any of the minor faults in this student project detract from it’s overall class, quality or demand to be played? Not in the least. Give it a run if you can, it’s well worth your time.

Rupture is a company that runs a gaming aggregation site. I’ve been beta testing the service since it debuted, mostly because the mash-up of social software and video games makes me giddy.

The company was started by Shawn Fanning of Napster and SnoCap fame. Their first incarnation was simply a Worldof Warcraft social networking site. However, with the advent of the Armory their web 2.0 societal niche was co-opted! Never one to give up on an idea, they revamped the service, made it game agnostic and relaunched the site as less of a social network, and more of a front end for displaying all the gaming data event points in your online life.

Currently, the site is still in heavy beta, but they currently support:

• Steam Accounts
• World of Warcraft Characters
• XBL Accounts
• Halo3 Accounts

If anyone is interested in getting in on the beta, let me know. I have the hookup. I’m people who know people!

So, I’ve been avoiding games like Guitar Hero for a while, mostly because the concept looked annoying and unfun. ( See: Guitar Queer-O and Zero Puntuation: Guitar Hero III ) However, I love me some rhythm games… so I was up for trying them out.

I was out in San Fransisco last week doing the Socialtext Face-to-Face thing, and I got invited by a friend of Jenn’s to head to Sunnyvale and play some Rockband. Unfortunately, I already had plans and couldn’t go, so that was sad times.

However, I had plans to hang out with some folks in the city, and they were talking like us playing Rockband would be a requirement. So, I took some downtime to head up to the city from Palo Alto and hang out with the Rupture folks and play some Rockband, which is a bad-ass, social version of Guitar Hero.

I grabbed the bass, because if I ever had to learn an instrument it would be electric bass, and Pat got us going. I picked it up fairly quick (according to the people in the office, who are not really ones to kiss my ass) and had a lot of fun. In short order Pat conned me out of the guitar/bass and put me on drums. I picked those up pretty quick as well, and managed not to wipe us out even once, which is above par I guess? I don’t really know.

We went out to dinner and came back and played some more. All in all, I had a great time,which arguably probably had far more to do with the Rupture guys being awesome, and less about the awesomeness of Rockband.

I got home and decided that since Rockband for the Wii was only just announced, it will be a while before they release the game for a console that I don’t have to go buy. So, I picked up Guitar Hero III for the Wii, despite sound bugs. I’m having a lot of fun with it, and look forward spreading the fun around. Not that any people in town care. But still!

I’m not very good yet, but I beat it on easy 5 starring most of the songs. I’ve not been able to beat Blood Rain yet, because it’s insane. The Dragonforce song is insane in a fun way, but Blood Rain is hard in a makes-me-want-to-smash-the-controller kind of a way, which is far less ideal.

The UI of Rockband is FAR superior to that of GH3. I can’t count how many times I’ve fumbled a note glancing at the UI off to the side in GH3. Meh.

I totally forgot to mention that I rule and scored one of the 500 prints of the Machall Finale Strip that the guys signed. I’m going to get a real frame for it eventually, but I want to flatten it first.

Sweet.

I should finish framing and hanging my webcomic signed art. So far I have:

• Penny Arcade Poster signed by Gabe and Tycho, with artwork done by Gabe.
• Penny Arcade Poster signed by Gabe and Tycho.
• Sketch of Piro done by Fred (MegaTokyo).
• Real Life Comic Print signed by Greg.
• PvP Print (91/100) Signed by Scott K.
• Penny Arcade Laser Cell Art Dr. Raven Dark Tlon (96/750)
• Mac Hall “Leather Working” Print
• Mac Hall “Childish Things” Signed Print (491/500)

I’ve noticed that there are a few things that I stopped doing in my life that made me very happy. I like to blame other people for the stopping, but I have no one to blame but myself for the not starting, if that makes sense.

The Stuff:

• Photography
• Video Games other than Warcaft
• Biking
• Climbing

Photography

I used to do a lot of amature photography. However, I stopped when I started to hate my piece of shit camera. I have a 5 year old Kodak 2.1 megapixel camera that eats batteries and is just bad all around. I contemplated getting a new camera but decided that the idea was not feasible due to monetary constraints.

Now a days I steal Jenn’s camera when I want to take pictures, but her camera is not really what I’m looking for… I’m looking for a camera that is a little less “turn the dial to the scene you want” and more hands on, I don’t want the camera to think for me… well a little help wouldn’t be bad, obviously, but include me on the decisions.

I would like an SLR camera, I was thinking that Jenn’s camera is a great little camera for general use, but it doesn’t seem to fare well in low level situations without a flash, and I hate having to flash all the time, it makes people edgy and I like candid shots.

Since Jenn has a nice general camera, I’m looking for a more high end deal that’s not as portable, but will produce higher quality pics. Looking at flickr, the two nice options are the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XTi and the Nikon D80 I’ve not spent any real time looking in to this at all… I imagine this will be a lengthy search.

I also upgraded my flickr account to Pro, I hate gallery now. Stupid slow PHP piece of crap.

Video games other than Warcraft.

Money stopped me from playing video games other than Warcraft sometime around the time I met Jenn. I don’t really blame Jenn for the whole thing, but I blame Warcraft for being such a wonderful entertainment source for the buck.

I’ve been picking up a few games to get me more up to date.

First off was Bioshock which is an art-deco steam-punk anti-Utopian FPS-RPG set in Rapture, a city at the bottom of the pacific ocean, in the 1960’s. The game is great, and I normally shun these kinds of omg-whats-lurking-around-the-corner games, but I made an exception for this wonderful narrative. I’ve not finished it yet, so a real review isn’t really something I can do yet.

Then I snagged The Orange Box a compilation of all the HL2 games, Team Fortress 2, and Portal. I’ve never played Hl2, so this was a cool opportunity to catch up on the series (yes, there is one wanker who never picked the game up, so shoot me, I was poor and uninterested as I never finished Halflife (cue further shocked gasps)) I just finished Halflife 2 and I was impressed, the gameplay while very linear shakes things up a bit and wanders between pseudo zombie horror and sci-fi gun battles. The story is compelling and the acting well done. Highly recommended if, like me, you’re stupid and never picked it up.

On to Team fortress 2, I can’t think of a time I’ve played a game like TF2 (Class based, online, territory control, FPS) that was so well balanced. Every class has a niche, and a fight between any two classes could honestly go either way, it’s quite refreshing. No more, “Oh, I’m a medic so I’m a bitch when it comes to virtually every other class” or ”oh look I’m an engineer, which means I’m a free kill to everyone who looks at me funny!”. Now I play an engineer, and I’ll fuck you up if you’re not paying attention, ph34r my level three turret! I’ve been playing an inordinate amount of TF2 over the past few weeks, and encourage people to pick it up, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

Last but certainly not least, is Portal. Portal is quite simply one of the best games I’ve played in quite some time. You should feel bad if you’re a gamer and have not traveled down this veritable physics acid trip coupled with some of the best macabre humor I’ve seen in a game. While it’s quite short (3 hours or so) and not too hard, until you start beating the ancillary challenges, it’s well worth the $20 to buy it off steam. Besides, you totally get cake at the end. Trust me.

So I’m well on my way to getting back in to video games, and it’s really nice. I hope to keep the pace up. I got a lot of games to beat.

Biking

So Biking mainly stopped because I moved in with Jenn, and we live on the top of a hill. Biking around the neighborhood is fucking obnoxious, I coast downhill for like 15 minutes, and then wear myself pumping uphill for 10 minutes trying to get home, and end up walking my bike… lame. I quickly decided I hated biking in this area. However, Jenn bought me a bike rack, and so I will take my bike to campus and I will ride it around, and it will be good. The bike is in the shop right now getting tuned, should be able to ride it once things dry up around town.

Climbing

Climbing was something I used to do fairly religiously with Joe and Anami. I stopped when Melissa started acting like I shot her puppy every time I went out to hang out with anyone for any reason. I tried a few times to get back in to the swing of things, but trying to get a regiment going without a committed partner is kind of like running around in a circle, it’s exercise, sure, but it gets old and boring after a while. I’m going to start up again with Jenn, and we’ll see how that goes. She won’t be able to go very often so I might get in touch with a friend whose in my AI class and see if we can’t start going… might be able to make a go of things.

Here’s hoping I can get these things going, I think if I can start back up these four things and keep them going I’ll be much more happy in general, and that’s always good.

For now though, I’m sick, and this entry was a monumental effort … and I’m sure it’s nonsensical. But, who cares, I’m going to bed.

Seriosity is a pretty cool little company. They are working on taking some of the organizational and reward based systems out of MMORPGs like Warcraft.

They have a product right now in beta that essentially gives people an allowance of email points, and you can use your points to attach value to emails. They have a little flash demo here. The systems reward you for your usage and you can "Level Up" your badges. I find it somewhat compelling. (Though I would be more interested if it didn't seem so Exchange focused.)

They have a short podcast posted that allows you to hear one of the companies spokespeople taking about how cooperative gaming systems management and reward structures can be applied to a cooperate world in a way that's fun for the employees.

Kind of random, but I thought it was pretty awesome.

Music videos for most of the songs in the Ouendan Series. You probably don't care.
This is what happens when things are dead at work on a friday and my DS runs out of juice.

Ouendan 2
Hirai Ken - Pop Star
Going Underground - Vista
AI - Believe
Hitomi Yaida - Go My Way
Home Made Kazoku - Shounen Heart
Hotei Tomoyasu - Bambina
HYDE - COUNTDOWN
Kimura Kaela - Rirura Riruha
Kishidan - Zoku
Mihimaru GT - Kibun Jojo
Nana - GLAMOROUS SKY
Flow - Okuru Kotoba
Porno Graffitti - Music Hour
Sambomaster - Sekai wa Sore wo Ai to Yobundaze
ZZ - Samurai Blue
SMAP - BANG! BANG! Bakansu!
Sukima Switch - Zenryoku Shonen
The Checkers - Julia ni Shoshin (Live, no PV available)
Orange Range - Monkey Magic (Live, no PV available)

Ouendan
175R - Melody
Asian Kung-Fu Generation - Loop and Loop
B'z - Atsuki Kodo no Hate
Kishidan - One Night Carnival
L'arc en Ciel - Ready Steady Go
Linda Yamamoto - Neraiuchi (No Music Video Exists)
Morning Musume - Koi no Dance Site
Nobodyknows+ - Kokoro Odoru
Orange Range - Shanghai Honey
The Yellow Monkey - Taiyo Ga Moeteiru
Road of Major - Taisetsu na Mono
The Blue Hearts - Linda Linda (Live, no PV available)
Tomoyasu Hotei - Thrill (Live, no PV available)
Ulfuls - Guts da ze
Yaidi Hitomi - Over the Distance

Elite Beat Agents
Steriogram - Walkie Talkie Man
Jackson Five - ABC
Avril Lavigne - Sk8er Boi
Queen - I Was Born to Love You
Stray Cats - Rock This Town
Deep Purple - Highway Star (Live, No Video)
Village People - Y.M.C.A.
Earth, Wind and Fire - September (Live, No Video)
Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
Madonna - Material Girl
Ashlee Simpson - La La (Wow, I like the EBA cover version better, that's sad.)
Chicago - You’re the Inspiration
Destiny’s Child - Survivor
Hoobastank - Without a Fight (No Video exists)
Cher - Believe
David Bowie - Let’s Dance
Rolling Stones - Jumpin Jack Flash
Sum 41 - Makes No Difference
Good Charlotte - The Anthem

This past few days at work have been a bit surreal. I show up at the same time, but there's this weird feeling when I realize I don't technically have the job I'm pretending I still have... it's a bit weird. Things are still up in the air in regards to whether I'm losing my computer, my cube, or other miscellaneous items to which I've grown accustomed.

I applied for the first job I've applied for outside the university in like five years. That was a bit of a trip. That, and realizing that I've been working in one way or another for IU for the past seven years, five years if you only want to count my full time working. It's kind of a shift for me to think about not working at UITS anymore after this long.

But enough about all that, we'll figure that out as thing develop. No sense freaking out about things that may not even happen.

I've been keeping busy these days.I started listening to the Penny Arcade ( Downloadable Content ) and the Kevin Smith / Scott Mosier ( SModCast ) podcasts. I'm still going through the backlogs, but they are both extremely amusing. Granted the Penny-Arcade one tends to err on the side of video gaming minutia, but it also strays into topics like parenting and they generally seem to keep things on a somewhat approachable level. And, much like his films, the Kevin Smith casts are very NSFW.

Turning to gaming, I picked up Elite Beat Agents and Yoshi's Island for the DS. I've been playing a lot of of Elite Beat Agents, and I've almost beaten the second to last difficulty, but the last song is a pain in the ass, and I've not taken the time to sit down and beat it yet. For those of you who have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, you should really check it out. Short explanation is that it's a music rhythm game that you use your stylus to tap along with the beat of the song on the touch screen of the DS. It sounds painfully tedious but it is one of the most fun experiences I've had with my DS so far. People seem to be complaining that it's too hard, so I would caution people to head down to target (or any other download and play station) with your DS and try it out at their download and play station, but it's really a quite enjoyable game. Here's a video of someone playing the Japanese version (Ouendan) of the game I can't find a good movie of someone playing the English version. (Bear in mind that that is a video of the most difficult board in the game on the hardest difficulty).

Yoshi's Island ended up being a perfectly wonderful sequel to a great game, but so far nothing to scream and shout about.

I'm also playing a lot of Warcraft still, and enjoying my choice to swap servers to play with friends. It's been a lot more fun to log on and have people to talk to... grated I'm still like 6 levels away from playing with them actively, but I'll get there.

I got bored last week and started getting episodes of the office, because I hadn't seen any of it, and people keep freaking out about it. The first few episodes didn't hook me but it's gotten a lot better in the late second season. I started the third season today and it's been good so far. I recently ran out of Disk space so I've not had much room for new media.

I was talking to Jenn earlier about some various issues of parenting and about how horribly we are going to end up embarrassing our kidssingle child. I was remarking about how I plan to make video games a big part of my kids life, and the (evidently) running joke "No dessert until you beat my high score!" . . .

Coincidentally Wil posted about the similar topic, and since he does it a lot more, he's a much better writing guy type thingy than I be. He goes on about lack of social interaction as a result of parents not understanding what parenting actually means when they have children. (You mean we have to pay attention to it?! ALL DAY?!)

Excerpt that made me snicker:
"When this generation of kids, who have never learned how to sit still or entertain themselves for more than a few minutes at a time, grow up and meet the creepy home schooled kids whose parents have substituted mythology for science and history, the shit is really going to hit the fan."

I predict home schooled kids are going to provide large amounts of entertainment to the general populace at some point. At least the ones I saw in Jesus Camp.



Anyway, back on topic. I think that video games and television are inevitably going to be a part of any modern child's life. Trying to avoid those influences is just going to alienate them from their peers. But, fooling yourself into thinking that you can raise a well adjusted child by just not doing what your parents did that fucked you up is just going to lead to a child who thinks the exact same thing when they go to have a child. In fact even if you do everything right you'll still probably do something to fuck up your kid.

Video games will be a part of my child's life, but so will I. That's the part that new parents forget. You need to be a part of your kids life. Having a kid is not like getting a house plant; "Water three times a day with mountain dew, place in direct cathode ray light for 6 hours" You actually need to pay attention and interact with them. Without input you're just going to raise your kids to be useless media drones. I plan on playing games and watching movies with my child, not parking the child in front of a TV so I don't get interrupted while I'm playing Warcraft 7. This is also one of the reasons why Jenn and I are not having kids until we are ready to give them a stable sane environment that we can raise them in.

So I'm going to California in about a week, and I am in need of some DS game recommendations.

I've not bought a game since I snagged New Super Mario Brothers / FF III, so I'm a bit bored with what I have.

Off the top of my mind I recall that I haven't played:

• Yoshi's Island DS
• Elite Beat Agents
• Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
• Hotel Dusk

Ideally I would like a platformer and a puzzle/skill game, so the first two on the list seem like the obvious choices.

Any votes from the peanut gallery?