Month: February 2008

Categories
Happened

Escalation

I have a small subset of my home music collection on my work computer. A number of these tracks are things I purchased off the iTunes store, which includes a fair number of tracks that I can only justify owning as “for nostalgic value”.

Because I value nostalgia so deeply, many of these songs end up in rotation, and I’ve taken a small amount of shit from a coworker about the number of times he’s heard House Of Pain’s *Jump Around* in the last month.

After publicly threatening to purchase a copy of Wreckx-n-Effect’s *Rump Shaker*, Adam Kuban (a fellow crap music lover) gifted me the song on iTunes.

But this, I fear, is not enough. Two obnoxious 90’s songs are not enough to terrorize an office, and even the Richard Cheese albums have too much artistic merit to enjoy ironically. I promised my friends that I would out-crazy them in 2008, and if there was ever a resolution I intended to keep, this is it.

So to my coworkers, I apologize. My hand has been forced.

This is, as it turns out, the second CD I ever owned as a child (the first being the original C+C Music Factory album). For the years of 1991 through 1996, I lived on a musical diet of the sorts of things one would hear at a middle school dance (not strange, considering I was *in middle school* at the time). Regardless, my mom was throwing out some of my things and came across a pile of CDs. This one deserved rescuing.

Now if only I could find my MTV Party To Go CDs…

Categories
Debated Explained

Leveling The New Apple Portables

I had three subsequent requests from friends to weigh in on the best value for Apple’s newly released laptops. Twitter ate my short thoughts, so I might as well lengthen it a bit.

Before I continue, I should note that a great place to always go is the Compare Models page on the Apple Store. It’s the best way to get a side by side comparison.

# Generally Speaking

Ever since the iBook and Powerbook were retired in favor of the MacBook and the MacBookPro, I’ve held the belief that unless you’re in the specialty niches that require a specific feature on the MBP (the ExpressCard/34 slot for mobile broadband, for instance), 90% of consumers will be fine with the MacBook.

Nothing released today has changed that base level assertion. Not even the multi-touch track pads on the MBPs.

# MacBook

First things first: the BlackBook remains a $200 uptick for a different colored case and a 90GB increase on the hard drive. (You can get the hard drive upgrade separately on a white MB for $100.) The BlackBook’s market remains people who explicitly *want* a black notebook. If you’re looking to extend your dollars, there’s no reason to buy it.

Thus, we’re left looking at the other two models. I will call these “Low-End White” and “High-End White”.

If you take Low-End White and add the hard drive bump and the RAM bump found in High-End White, you come in $50 less than the list for the High-End White. So in that $50 you’re getting a decent clock bump (300 MHz) and a Superdrive – which makes High-End White the smarter choice here.

# MacBook Pro

I am frequently baffled by Apple’s pricing, and here’s one of those instances.

Like the BlackBook, the 17″ MBP is for a certain breed of people who just *have* to have a 17″ display. People who merely want *a laptop* and not a *17″ bohemoth* – there’s no need. And frankly, I question their commitment to Sparklemotion.

So again, we’re looking at the two options, thus dubbed “2K” and “2.5K” solely based on price.

What does the $500 jump get you in this case? Er, well…

* A rather meager 100MHz bump on the CPU
* 3MB more of L3 cache
* 50GB more disk space
* Double the VRAM in the video card

The hard drive bump can be duplicated for $50, so you’re looking at $450 for a tenth of a GHz, a bit of cache, and a significant bump on the VRAM. But keep in mind that the VRAM bump doesn’t provide higher resolutions on the display – it will likely only be useful if you’re playing Crysis under Boot Camp or doing some high end media work.

Thus, I must strongly recommend that if you need a MBP, the 2K model is more than good enough.

Categories
Recommended

Some Thoughts On Games I’ve Recently Played

Arranged alphabetically by game.

Assassin’s Creed, despite being janky and repetitive, and reminescent of the grand tradition of Rare-style collect-a-thons (“Help, Altair! Collect 18 flags in three minutes and I’ll give you the item you need!”), remains strangely enjoyable. I can’t put my finger on why, but I did notice my enjoyment went up considerably when I stopped worrying about the flashing “SOMEONE IS WATCHING YOU” meter and just ran around like a noisy dickhead assassin.

Audiosurf came onto my radar as the HOT INDIE MUSIC GAME to play this year; it’s available on Steam for $10. It is quite a lot of fun, and I enjoy throwing random songs at it. That said, I’m not experiencing the lose-hours-at-a-time thing many others in the community are.

For some inexplicable reason, I played all the way through the story mode of Bomberman Land 2. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t.

Burnout Paradise shows how to re-invent a game series properly, even if that involves pissing off a large portion of your fanbase while you hold out your hands and swear it’ll be all right.

It only took Namco Bandai a year and a half to get Culdcept Saga released in the US after putting it out to die in Japan. I fit the target demographic perfectly: the card game nerd who also likes board games. Consequently, Katie hates the game with every fiber of her soul.

Devil May Cry 4 seems to have held my interest for the same length of time as every other DMC game: five levels. Actually, this may be longer than the previous games. No idea when I will return to it.

When Rockstar put their games on Steam, I took the opportunity to buy the GTA Complete Pack. It is such a thrill to actually be able to accurately shoot thugs with a regular mouse and keyboard interface rather than struggling with shoulder buttons.

During a week off from work in January, I played Mass Effect start to finish. It’s rare to find a game where the plot keeps me playing through horrible gameplay, but here we are. After one run through as a virtuous Infiltrator, I started a second play-through so I could be a jerk to everyone in the galaxy. Even that wasn’t enough to keep me playing, sadly.

I am not one to buy a lot of sports games, but the demo for MLB 08: The Show reminds me of why I loved last year’s edition so much: it’s not so much the sport as the technical accomplishments of what can be done taking a real life game and putting it into a video game.

Along the same lines, I picked up a pre-owned copy of NHL 08 today solely based on good buzz for it. The gameplay itself is surprisingly fun; I just wish EA would figure out how to make a sports game with a halfway decent menu system for people that are new to their series.

My immediate thought upon playing No More Heroes is “Suda must be fucking insane”. I’d like to expand upon that: he must be insane to have come up with such a high art game concept, and he must have been equally insane to load it down with the worst overworld engine I’ve seen in any game in the last five years.

Patapon is easily the must have PSP game of the first half of this year.

Poker Smash for XBLA is an enjoyable twist on the Tetris Attack formula. Unfortunately, I am largely terrible at it.

Professor Layton found an odd place with me. On one hand, as a child who read things like What Is The Name Of This Book? and Puzzlegrams, it’s basically a living breathing puzzle book. On the hand, it’s a goddamn electronic puzzle book. Were I still 12, this would be my dream game – but seeing as I’m 27, it makes me wonder why I was ever entertained by matchstick puzzles.

I picked up Rez HD when it hit XBLA, but I didn’t get a chance to finish it until this past weekend. I always liked Rez, but it never clicked – and apparently, the reason was because I never got very far into the game. Area 5 made it click.

Rock Band remains the most compelling gaming reason to buy an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3.

The greatest gaming travesty I can point my finger at right now is that Singstar PS3 is not yet out in the US. I say this not because the game is perhaps the best pure karaoke game ever made (it is), and not because the online functionality is incredibly easy to use (it is), but because the US SingStore isn’t up, and I can’t buy any extra tracks. And that, my friends, is a travesty.

If you don’t own Team Fortress 2, you are part of the problem.