Shinny!

Doing my part to prepare for Gears of War 2 stimulate the economy I’ve finally broken down and upgraded from my old generic 19” 1440x900 LCD panel to a shinny, new Dell S2409W. Unfortunately Dell is currently reporting a ship date well beyond Gears 2, but I can wait a little bit. After 3 years I’ll finally have a panel that’s a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Who needs a TV?

Too Human

 I wanted to wait till I finished the campaign once before blogging about the game. I’ve done that, and gotten busy with life so here I am, two months later and only now sharing my thoughts.

I've missed a lot of games in the years I was addicted to MMO's. I did play a LOT of Diablo before that happened though. That game made you feel challenged yet heroic, constantly kept you going with a drip of cool looking loot, and was a blast to play with friends (except when your friends were drunk and you were sober). It was also the last game that felt quite like Too Human feels now.

I find that the combat is fairly simple and strait forward, but completely satisfying. The game does a good job of making you feel like you’re a bad –a- without feeling too easy. The combat system feels simple at the surface but I found that there are techniques to learn and master to really clean the room. I could (and will) easily replay the game one or more times. The loot probably comes too easy at times, but does give you the option to care about appearance instead of just raw power. 

The story wasn’t that satisfying in all honesty. The world seems very deep but the game doesn’t do enough to explore that depth. Baldur’s motivations seem cliché and his approach a bit melodramatic. I won’t spoil the story but the end of the game really did leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

All told though, the game play is a blast and the game world has a lot of room for a really compelling narrative. I’m really excited to see what Silicon Knights can do for a second act.

Turtle Beach Ear Force x4

I've never been one to stretch for a piece of good audio gear. Between my first computer, where I cheeped out and bought the lowest end sound blaster on the market to when I got my Xbox 360 and promptly connected it to the entry level desktop computer speakers I had I've always gone cheep on sound. Lately though I've found myself wanting to play games later at night at volume levels that would risk waking my children. Also having played Bioshock, I really want to hear what that games sounds like in 5.1. Never mind the litany of good games this fall such as left 4 dead and gears of war 2 that will include audio I do NOT want my 3 year old daughter repeating.

So I've gone and done it, bought my first piece of good audio gear, a Turtle Beach Ear Force x4 headset.

The x4's are $200, which is a butt load to pay for headphones to me. Still they're cheaper than the Astro A40's and are wireless for the surround source unlike the Trition ax360's.

From a fit standpoint they are very light on the head and soft around the ears. My only complaint is that my ear lobe does touch the inner cushion. I'm still playing with the adjustments to get them just right, but I can definitely see wearing them for extended periods. Now if only I could get an extended period to play a game...

The sound itself is great. I've not had the pleasure of hearing the Xbox 360 on a good surround sound system as yet, so hearing Halo through the x4's for the first time was a real eye opening experience. The sounds feel richer and more complete playing with the headset on instead of the crappy little desktop speakers.

All told, they are a bit expensive for my tastes but I can definitely see the x4's being worth the cash, especially if you don't have surround now and need to keep things quiet at night when the family is asleep. 

Braid epilogue

Braid

If you've not finished Braid, stop reading here, drop your $15 / 1200 points and go play the game already. What follows will ruin the game for you so stop reading. The discovery of the levels and story is half of the fun.

*** SPOILERS *** Some things can be not undone or unseen.

Both the story and game play seemed strait forward after playing the "first level". Level 2. Upon playing the last level I'm not as sure. I'm not really that sure that the bits of the story between 2 and 1 matter all that much, other than to hint at Tim playing his life in reverse, starting with a happy moment with his princess, or perhaps a happy moment with another.

Playing through the game you're confronted with a melancholy vibe yet some how in Tim's perseverance there's a hint that all might not be for naught and that there's a happy ending waiting in another castle. I did cheat a little before finishing the game tonight, I read the names of the achievements. The last one, "closure" kind of prepped me for what was in fast the last level, level 1.

Taken without the epilog it would seem that in the end, or at least parts of it, Tim's quest was not to reunite with his princess but rather to remember and understand why they are no longer together. It would seem that Tim had made a decision to leave at the same time she did. Through their journey apart they attempted to thwart each other's progress and block each other's path until his princess found her night in shinning armor. In the end, the monster that had captured the princess was Tim. Closure is the right word to describe the feeling in the end.

The text at the start of each chapter seems to confirm Tim's walk through his life's memories, remembering all the unhappy times, and stumbling blocks along the way. It does seem to lead him to the realization that in the end closure is the real thing he seeks.

The bulk of the epilog leaves me confused however. It seems to reference the story playing on two levels. One as the seeking, loss and coping of a couple who's relationship has disintegrated and on another it seems to serve as an allegory for man's quest for peace and how in the end it has ultimately lost hope for the peace he sought because of what he had found. It implies. some what directly that man had made a mistake that could not be undone, when we learned how to create the atomic bomb. The one set of quotes in the epilog directly relates to the famous quote by J. Robert Oppenheimer, although the phrasing and word choice is some what different.

I really hope Jonathan Blow eventually puts into writing, either on his own blog or by way of an interview, what he really meant to tell in the story. Discussing what it might mean is great fun and all, but now that I've finished the game I want the sense of closure that knowing what the artist intended would bring.

In either case, the story leaves me feeling sad in a way. There was no happy ending for Tim, only a melancholy acceptance of what has been and a determined hope for a new beginning. In the end though, the fact that the game leaves me feeling is probably the greatest testament to it's quality.