Labor Day Festivities

Last night my Mother-In-Law threw a Labor Day party. There was tons of food and it was a lot of fun. She invited all her neighbors so there wouldn’t be anyone to complain about the ultra loud Karaoke out of the garage. It worked for the most part. A guy named Leo came by about 10:15 that lived across the across the alley and down a couple of houses came by and asked if we could turn it off (or way down) by 11:00 cause that is when he had to get to bed to get up early and go to work. He brought some Crown Royal to share and stayed for a while (he was still there when we left about 10:40) just to show there were no hard feelings and I thought that was a really decent gesture. I will have to remember that move for when I am the person on the other side of the coin next time.

Posted by CapnHun @ 4:08 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments

CapnHun's Day Off

Well, yesterday was a 'snow day' for us and made for a fairly interesting day off. I should start by saying my prayers for all those whose effected by the tornadoes Tuesday. Seeing such devastation on those communities made our snow troubles seem trivial by comparison. I hope all our 2old2play members dodged that bullet.

Tuesday after work Teddy announced that the doctor had scheduled his 'shock treatment' for Wednesday morning and he needed to be at the hospital at 7:30. For those of you who didn't know, teddy was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure back in October; he was hospitalized for about a week and we almost lost him. A pretty tough blow to the family considering he is only 40. Anyway the 'shock treatment' was a follow up procedure to get his heart back in rhythm, apparently he was still having some atrial fibrillation even after medications. We had to wait quite a while though because doc was waiting for some of the medications he had prescribed to level off in his blood stream and we had to play around with dosages etc. some to get the right balance.

I was supposed to work Tuesday, and he had arranged for his mom to be with him at the hospital. I wasn't happy with that because I wanted really wanted to be with him. I knew this wasn't a 'big deal' procedure but still. Anyway, I had to work, so despite waking up seriously early in the morning, I tried to push it out of my mind and get on with the day. The snow had started falling about midnight so we had a few inches on the ground. The weather people were predicting more, but they tend to exaggerate things (especially the morning crews) around here so I never get too excited. 5:20 the announcement comes in that school is cancelled (I was going to let them stay home anyway 'cause I get real nervous about car accidents and such around the kids schools. Plus I didn't need the coordination hassle). 6:00 it starts snowing fast and furious and I get ready for work so I can drop teddy at the hospital early and attempt to make it. 7:20 we are in the out-patient room getting set up when the kids call and say that my boss was not having us come in today, WOOHOO!!! Now we didn't have to get grandma out driving in the snow (a good thing for all the citizens of our fair city).

So I got to watch Teddy go off to sleepy-land and the doctor use the paddles on him. He even explained to me why he put one of the paddles on his back and the other on the right side of his chest  instead of on either side of the chest like you see on TV because all the electrical current goes between the paddles and the other way the only thing that was going to get the benefit from the electrical charge were his chest hairs. I didn't ask him that, he just volunteered the information but the nerd in me loves that stuff! This heart doctor is near legendary around here so I felt very privileged. Anyhow we got the bear back home as soon as he was awake enough to get dressed and climb in the van. The rest of the day was pretty much spent shoveling like everyone else around here. In the evening, I went out to help my youngest with a snow fort and man am I sore today.

Oh I was watching Discovery Channel at the hospital and they were having that show done by stunt man where they try and blow stuff up to dispel urban legends (Myth Busters?). We don't have Discovery at home and they were doing the episode where they are trying to figure out whether the 'crash landing' position is actually more dangerous because it puts the load on your neck making it snap making your death quicker (less suffering for you and less rehabilitation payments for them!). I didn't get to see the end result of those tests, did anyone here? It looked like they were having fun with the experiment although they didn't succeed in convincing  me that a dead drop fall of falling 45 ft from a crane would have anywhere near the same effect as a plane falling out of the air.

Posted by CapnHun @ 11:38 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

To The Media

If you are going to write an article, have a television spot or whatever on video games a good place to get started on some background research for your story here:

http://www.theesa.com/archives/files/Essential%20Facts%202006.pdf

Posted by CapnHun @ 4:04 pm EDT | Permalink | 4 Comments

Feature Bug

The family settings has a way for parents to limit amount of time spent gaming, either weekly or daily. Could have been a nice tool except they made the restriction 360 wide instead of individual gamertag....duh! So now Jr. comes home from school (or in my case waking up at 4:00 AM) and uses up all the game time. I get home from work and find he has STOLEN MY GAME time!!! Oh yeah you can add more time BEFORE IT RUNS OUT if you need extra to finish up a level.

It is just one of those cases where those with lots of money are out of touch with the real world. Listen up developers, I got FOUR kids...no one I know could afford to be getting separate 360's, LIVE accounts, games and accessories so the parental system will work the way it stands.

Also do you think parents who allow kids to have their own 360's are gonna take the time to learn how to implement that system?

Don't get me wrong, it is a GREAT idea, just needs a some tweaking.

Posted by CapnHun @ 10:26 am EDT | Permalink | 2 Comments

Thoughts on Mass Effect

OK. I am on my second play through and so now have a little bit of experience in the game to form some opinions. I think if you didn't mess around with any of the assignments you could actually play through the main story in ten hours or less. I thought I had done quite a bit of side quests on my first play through but I still haven't gotten my 'Played more than half the game' achievement.

WARNING. Once you get through the story line there is no going back and finishing the side objectives. You have to start over again. You can start over with your characters level in tact (and you can play it at on hardened or veteran so the enemies will also have skill comparable to the level you have achieved), but you start from the beginning and must go save the galaxy all over again. So if you want to get through all the extra stuff you can do you can do, just ignore the main two missions and go out in the galaxy and explore.

Also it seems there is ONE PLACE and one place only before you start over to change your career as I found out the hard way and am stuck being a Sentinel which isn't too bad since I have some stuff I want to unlock still.

I have gotten the hang of the wheel and LOVE it. Since all play stops while you are in the wheel, you find you can go back and correct any mistakes before taking your finger off the right bumper and letting it roll. It is pretty intuitive.

However, the AI's also seem pretty darn smart themselves so it isn't a must to be able to coordinate your attacks or anything (at least not yet, I will get back to you when I get around to going after the bosses on hardened).

The game itself seems to have something for everyone. If your an information junkie you can read through every scrap of intel that comes your way...or just skip it. One of my side hobbies is trying to figure out which elemental compositions make the different planets their different colors. I think someone has studied this out well, so you aren't going to find a planet with a lot of sulpher in the atmosphere be purple for example.

Like drama? You can run around and stick your nose in everyone's business or ignore their 'overheard conversations'. The game does can get somewhat 'preachy' at times by putting you in these moral dilemmas....not that it is judgmental on your decisions but there are times when I wished I didn't go there. Or you can get involved romantically (I am not sure whether this can get you into more sex scenes or not).

Like fighting? You can go through the whole game using the might makes right solution or if you prefer peaceful resolutions you can use charm or intimidate to get through it.

Like exploring? Here is one of my few disappointments in the game. All the exploring planets are structured the same. The environments are modified and stuff is placed differently but it starts to get repetitive. The space stations are worse although there are not as many of them. The boarding vessel environments are all alike and the missions are boring (there are only a few of these however). The stronghold environments are the same. The mine environments are the same. The type of mission and number of enemies are different but unless you are playing a main plot all that sameness makes for grind.

The way the storylines diverge and converge is masterful. You aren't going to miss out on anything impotent in the plot by choosing the wrong answers. If you go visit a planet before you get the mission at the citadel, you either get the mission via the comm link from the Admiral when you fly into that system or in one case I met the person who was going to give me the mission later and they said "I was going to ask you to kill so-and-so but since you have already done the deed, I will give you payment." I tried not to take the payment but the 'credits were already on their way' so I still earned my Paragon points and got the cash (wish RL were like that). There was only one time when I felt a little disoriented to the storyline because this mission was probably better taken later in the game. The story itself is usually predictable but not always. And that still doesn't seem to take away from the 'wonder' factor.

The truth is the story telling, the graphics, the characters are all great. How the character plays is also good. But the game design itself is last gen. It is almost as if they had a budget and they had to choose between story board and game design to put their money into. I am REALLY glad they chose story board though, it is a wonderful tale.

So far I haven't found that you can back to a planet you have been to and find anything new on them. They have definitely left the story line open for Mass Effect II though.

A couple of pet peeves:

1. Decryption of the locked containers needs to be a little harder. I don't mind the Simon game button pushing (remember the old Simon game where it lit up colors and you were supposed to follow the sequence, I rocked at that game!) but they needed to make it somewhat more difficult, especially as you level up. And did you notice it doesn't matter if it says easy, moderate or hard decryption, it is random? Even now I think the worst sequence is six and I have lots of omni-gel if I screw up. It isn't really balanced, you can find equipment so much easier than paying for it.

2. Hair. Listen up game developers, ladies like to change their hair. Every RPG I have played I am stuck with the same friggen hair style through the whole game. It can't be that hard of a programming feat, we change uniforms when we upgrade. Just have a screen in Captain's headquarters where I can change my hair style. If you can program hot, alien sex for the guys, you can at least throw me this bone.

3. The Thresher Maws. Save before any Thresher Maw battle because no matter how skillaged you are, there are still going to be random times where the dude pops up from under you for instant death and you die. It is the most frustrating thing in the Universe when you have done all the other exploring you can, forget to save and get killed that way. Or if the game developers feel like it is more realistic that way then have an autosave when player goes into any Thresher Maw territory.


Posted by CapnHun @ 2:50 pm EDT | Permalink | 1 Comments