Even deBlob lets you decide so save or not save people. I’m beyond frustration as the last hour or more has been spent trying to break the ice without dying in Batman. I’m in some sort of ballroom, which has been sealed, filled with water, and contains a shark. Even for a world of superheros and villains, this is on the edge of practical.

I think that this game can be painfully linear at times, making you feel like someone is holding your hand, dragging you from one activity to the next. But then, to make it seem like they tried to make a good game, they randomly and abruptly let go of your hand, but with no proper context. This was my issue with Uncharted as well. Sometimes, the puzzle solving is good and sometimes, they merely give you no hints and leave you in a room till you make the correct assumption. I think that this is lazy and uninspired puzzle creation. Instead of crafting a puzzle that is complex, they make a simple one with no context.

Now, having died 20 (literally 20) times, I’m sick of this mediocre game event, and I can’t leave the room either. The rest of this game isn’t difficult, so surely I’m missing something here.

…I can batclaw the raft? Maybe it’s because I’ve been playing Portal (where good puzzles come from), maybe it’s because I just assumed that such a juvenile level of problem solving would be unheard of, but yeah. I can batclaw the raft. 400 riddler trophies, but I can batclaw the raft.

Edit: This was a draft from when I was playing Batman a while back. So, the date it a bit misleading but here it is. 

My time is basically my own these days, but lately I’ve dedicated most of it to final home improvements. Our house is now on the market. I’m working on another blog detailing the improvements we’ve made in the last three years. Many of them have taken place in the last three months.

Before that, I was learning a handful of programming languages (mostly Ruby), assuming that I would attempt freelance work in that field. My intent has not changed, but for now I am working on HTML5, CSS3, PHP, MySQL, and maybe a touch of JavaScript. I have a friend who programs apps in Objective C, and I can see why he is such an asset at his company. I researched Objective C to see if I’d want to learn it, and the answer was an emphatic and definite “NO.” It was suggested that one should know Java or C++ and be familiar with C and maybe know some corresponding frameworks before taking on Objective C, and then after that, you would be ready for iOS programming. I’ve certainly learned languages without the suggested prerequisites, but I don’t have a Mac, so I decided to stick to what I can do with the computers I have for free.

In terms of gaming, there hasn’t been much to write here because I haven’t played much. I would like to get the Vita, but that will have to wait until we sell our house. The Blockbuster pass has been excellent, except for the two months I had to wait for SSX. I think I will buy it on PS3 simply because of how much SSX I played on PS2. Playing on 360 feels unnatural in comparison. But on either system, it feels like SSX 4, which has been a long time coming. On Tour and Blur were bad spin-offs.

Our PS3 was upstairs until recently, when moving around furniture caused it to end up in our bedroom. Mod Nation Racers was still inside, from months (or years?) ago when I bought it. I started playing it and realized  had never beaten it. This was after a long break from gaming, which must have invigorated my gaming prowess. I quickly conquered the rest of the game. The only other game I’m working on is Ghost Recon on 3DS. I beat it on easy, now I’m trying again on hard.

I don’t think these count, but I’m playing Draw Something, Words with Friends, and Angry Birds Space on my phone. We also took up DnD 4e, which is like playing Skyrim with a pencil and paper. And on that note, Skyrim is still amazing and will have Kinect integration soon… so we’ll be getting a Kinect soon.

Skyrim is AMAZING.

A M A Z I N G.

That’s basically what’s happened since November.

The advantages of game rentals are obvious: games often cost $60 a piece for consoles, but they don’t always back that up with $60 of playability. Some titles will demand much more than a standard rental period, but it’s a great way to experience a lot of games for a lesser amount of money. There are more options than before, which just complicates the matter of finding the right way to go about it. There are four main choices, each offering their own advantages.

The first and most important thing to say about Redbox is in regard to their selection. It is minuscule. In my area, there are maybe a dozen games offered at any given Redbox, with a fraction of those being available. The second most important thing to say it that you only get one day. With a movie, this is more than enough time. With a game, it laughable. But, a day is usually enough time to decide if you’re interested, which brings me to the best part of Redbox. The rental is only $2. You don’t have to sign up for anything, you just have to swipe a card and it pops out the game of your choice. There are codes available that give you discounted or free rentals, and you may get an offer right on screen for a discount as you check-out.

I used a Redbox for the first time last evening, after idly eying them many times on my way out of the grocery store. Yesterday was no different, but this time I parked my cart alongside the machine to see what was available. I chose Lego Pirates as something that would be fun for a day, and quickly checked out. I didn’t open the case until later, and what I found on the disc could be easily predicted. In fact, I think I remembered only wanted to rent PS3 games for this specific reason: the disc was ringed. There was a perfectly round circle that looked like a blurry scratch on the back of the disc. This happens when a 360 is shaken while the disc is spinning. It’s an excessively common defect, but being 6 months removed from Gamestop, I had not though to consider this likely scenario.

The process for correcting this was easy, but not quite as convenient as renting the game. You can call or go online, and I decided to go online. I spoke to a rep via instant message, who asked if I tried to clean the disc, then requested the last four digits of my credit card and my zip code to issue a refund. I return it to the box as usual, and a technician will remove it. Though the service was fine, I can’t help feeling that I am working as their quality assurance tech for free, and sometimes paying them. And if that’s the case, there’s a better way do to that. It involves more of a deposit, but the inventory is much greater and you can keep the game for longer. That place is Gamestop.

I know what you’re thinking, or at least what you should be thinking: Gamestop does not rent games. If you ask them about rentals they will say they don’t do it. But if you ask them about buying used games, you will learn that you have seven days to return it. Now, if you start using them as only a rental place, and never actually buying anything, you will raise suspicion, and they will say that you are taking advantage of their policy, and they won’t let you return games. As long as you do purchase games from Gamestop, there’s no reason not to use this policy to find games that you like. You are refunded instantly when you return games, or you can just pick something else. So, invest $50 and try games until you find something worth your $50. Chances are you will come across something you want to keep.  You will also come across some defective games, which upon return Gamestop will ship to a refurbishing warehouse. You can inspect the game before leaving the store, something that a subscription service like Redbox and Gamefly cannot offer.

The greatest benefit of Gamefly is the rental period: indefinite.You have to go online to pick out your game, and you have to subscribe as well, so you would need to rent enough to make your subscription worthwhile. However, the inventory is as good as Gamestop’s and there are no daily fees like redbox. Also unlike redbox, you can rent handheld games too. There is no GameFly store or kiosk anywhere, so you will be renting and returning your games by mail. This is still a timely option, but does involves some waiting. They offer a loyalty program and you can buy used games though their site (some games are more appropriately priced than others). The subscription rate is $15.95 for one disc, $22.95 for two, and their free trial of ten days defaults to the two disc rate on the 11th day. They offer discounted introductory rates, much like cable providers, that are roughly half priced for the first month. I have never used the service myself, but it is something I am considering along with Blockbuster.

Yes, Blockbuster. Their gaming sections, I have heard, are less desperate than in recent years. Their main competition is still a crimson force of Netflix and Redbox, but recent price hikes have caused many Netflix customers to evaluate their loyalties. (I think that Netflix should have raised their prices a long time ago. Their content has increased at a rater greater than that of the price hike, but whatever. No one wants to pay for anything anymore.) Blockbuster is desperately trying to take advantage of this, with their website featuring a banner announcing Netflix’s rate increase. This same banner is seen on the game rental page, saying “Netflix raised prices, and they don’t include games”.*

This would make Blockbuster the best overall value: their rates are 1 disc for 9.95, 2 discs for 14.95, and three discs for 19.99. You can rent online or swap out your discs in person. Each plan is free for the first month, and if you’ll be renting movies, new releases are often released sooner to blockbuster than Netflix or Redbox.

As a review, they have the brick and mortal element of Gamestop, they have a rate that is cheaper than Gamefly and offer more than Netflix, with the same unlimited rental period. You can buy the games like Gamestop and Gamefly too. You still have to take movies/games back to the same brick and mortar store if  you happen to rent them in person. The only possible weakness I detected was that the website did not show handheld rentals. And, it’s Blockbuster. They are a bit hypocritical to talk about anyone’s rates considering their past practice of late fee gouging. And I would think if you just wanted to rent one game they would charge you 300% more than Redbox.

I’m taking the Pirates disc back to Redbox, and I can’t decide if I want to try another one, or if I want to go across the street to Blockbuster, or if I should sign up for Gamefly. I am, at my core, impatient. That may be the reason I try Redbox again. After seeing the rates, the only way I could justify Gamefly would be the selection of their games or the speed of their service. Based on what I’ve found, Blockbuster seems to be the best deal.
 
*Netflix is at least considering adding games as part of their recent price changes, but because of subscribers rising into a widely unjustified uproar, they are re-evaluating their options.

I’ve written before about what I think of the use of pink in women’s advertising. Though it is also the official color of breast cancer awareness, that is not always the reason it is used. It has seemed to be true, especially in the gaming world, that the use of pink is meant to be a beacon to notify the women: “This product was made for you. It is unlikely to differ from existing products in any other way besides the fact that we made it pink, and perhaps added some flowers or cursive type.”

Recently I went to buy a water bottle. I had some specific requirements, but as I shopped there was one factor more important than anything else. I was shopping for a water bottle because my husband was constantly using mine and I would not see them for long stretches of time.

As I looked over my wall of options, I had a revelation about pink. I never picked it before because for the most part, I don’t care for pink. But I thought about one of my few pink-colored purchases: a dual-shock controller. When we bought The Show, my husband was offended that his only option was a pink, sparkly controller. He didn’t want to touch it, even in the privacy of our own home.

This made me think: maybe all this pink isn’t as much pro-girl as it is anti-boy. This is the ad that they should have. “Look girls! A pink controller! The men in your life will hate it, and therefore leave it alone and not break it! You no longer have to hide things you don’t want them to mess up! Hide them in plain sight with pink!” I bought a nice translucent pink water bottle that my husband has not so much as touched, and it’s making me rethink pink.

I reached a disappointing conclusion while trying to objectively evaluate various popular gaming blogs. Well, blog is a vague term for what they are, which is really news based multi-featured sites. The evaluation was based on my own reservations about whether such sites were responsible or in the least, uninfluenced by other larger forces. The more I tried to dig at this to find the best site, the more I found the comparative worth of the sites incalculable.

I wish I had come up with more of an answer than that, but the answer is still the same. I think in trying to analyze them I saw the strings that made them dance, and became disenfranchised with all of it. Not necessarily the sites themselves, but the greater overall market and they way people interacted with it. I feel it’s no different than the mass commercialism and capitalism that is seen everywhere else. There weren’t many games of interest for me at the time either. The industry in general is in a strange place where the next step isn’t so obvious, the next console more vague than ever. As Nintendo showed, it’s not just about who can make the best graphics, as the summit of that mountain is ever nearing. It’s about who will continue to innovate, and how they will manage to improve the experience to keep gaming engaging, relevant, and worthwhile.

Of course, none of this is the fault of the gaming websites that are dependent on the industry. A lot of these sites are involved in creating commentary and criticism, which puts them in the tough spot of trying to validate the efforts of the industry, which can prove themselves fruitless. Trying to collectively commentate on the collective commentary was also proven fruitless.

They are looking to take down Gamestop, and honestly, I’m glad. This isn’t about some lingering hatred for Gamestop. I think Gamestop does what it does very well, and has enough going for it that it rolls mostly like a snowball down hill. But Best Buy is starting some bonfires on that hill.

Is Gamestop the best value for your money? Aside from selling a game online or on the street, yes. They are your best bet on a guaranteed immediate buy of an item. Will you get a lot for it? Of course not. They have no limiters on what they buy. If they did, they could offer more. But since they don’t, and since they will still take Madden 08 for a quarter, that is factored into how much they can offer across the board. Will they buy your broken stuff for the same price? If it’s not obviously broken, then yes. They will. And that costs a lot of money too. Will they give you a lot of cash? No, but you can finagle a good chunk of store credit from them, which you can use to buy….

More games. Good for them, mediocre for you. Maybe you want something else. Maybe you just want a soda and some chips. Maybe you want a refrigerator. Or a CD. Or a car stereo and a book bag. Too bad. There are no affiliates of Gamestop that will honor your store credit, so your options are games or game accessories. This doesn’t much matter when you have 4,500 stores though. Gamestop stores print money. It’s just been a little hard for anyone else to compete.

That’s not a coincidence, by the way. Gamestop actively seeks and destroys competition. They will let a given store offer aggressive discounts if another competing used game store is around. That used game store will have cheaper prices, but Gamestop will lower their prices and raise trade in values until the consumer, finally getting what they feel they deserve for a game, chooses Gamestop and the other company is forced to close. Once they close, prices return to normal. Crisis averted!

In the case of larger companies, (such as Blockbuster) the inclusion of a used game service seemed like a successful idea, but their main business was already failing for many other reasons. Even though Gamestop can stay open with just games, they rely on a lot of in store advertisements (paid for by game companies) agreements with companies, and a huge inventory. I shutter to think how many games are owned by Gamestop at any given moment. So, when Game Crazy and Game Rush failed, it might have been a little bit because of Gamestop, but mostly of their own downward trend.

Best Buy is different. Best Buy is a very successful, well advertised electronics giant. Best Buy is diverse in their product offerings and is poised to take a risk. They have seen the numbers on the size and potential growth of the gaming industry. They have increased the presence of cell phones in their stores (which play games) have always sold ipods and computers (which play games) and also sell video game systems (which… you know). If they could merely impact Gamestop, they could gain quite a bit. They could possibly do to Gamestop what Gamestop has done to most everyone else: beat them and then either adopt them or watch them die.They have roughly xeroxed the back of the gamestop nametag already, copying their circle concept directly. Do they intend to be a mini electronics complex broken down into individual stores within a store, with one of them being a Gamestop?

And do you think Gamestop knows this? They have been acquiring quite a few other things lately of the digital variety. Do they perceive their brick and mortar store to be a cash cow that is aging quickly? Even though they make money, it costs money to run that business. There are excessive amounts of shipping that happens from stores to other stores. All those ringed, scratched games are shipped to the warehouse as defective where, if they are fixed, are shipped back out again. Ask your local Gamestop what they have had stolen from their store. Few (to none) of them can honestly say “nothing.” Many of the items they buy in can be defective, or become defective after purchase, which they also foot the bill for. Or rather, you foot the bill for in some degree. It’s expensive to them, so it’s expensive to you.

Maybe Gamestop will cheerfully pass the torch to Best Buy, ushering in a new brick and mortar games king. Maybe the acquisition of digital properties and beefing up of their website are the first notes of “closing time.” Previously it has been said that they make all their money on used games, but if the format starts to die, what choice do they have for survival besides going digital?

Today my husband was at work, demonstrating how to use Log Me In (a remote login application). He logged into the computer I was using at home and started remotely controlling the mouse. Luckily, I wasn’t doing anything embarrassing like becoming a brony. I opened notepad to talk to him, and it made me think of this:

In case the concept is a little confusing, “He’s a ghost that writes to us! Ghostwriter.”

I felt as though there was not as much game philosophy on this site as a I would like. In the effort to jump-start the topic in my mind, I’ve been watching Extra Credits and became a member of Escapist (the Escapist? Escapist magazine? Not sure how to reference that). I’m watching from the most current backwards, and about 14 weeks ago they did one on Tangential Learning in games.

I thought they might have mentioned Assassin’s Creed 2 and/or Brotherhood since the story is set in a rather accurate renaissance Italy. However, I may know why they didn’t.
Tangential learning can be understood as factual references. If a game references something without completely explaining it, players may be led to find out more about it themselves. As the video explains, that’s great! They note that not being clear or systematic in the way a game incorporates these elements can make it impossible for anyone to take the bait on tangential learning. The tricky part about this, which you see in Assassin’s Creed and things like the DaVinci Code are that you mix some very solid facts with wild conjecture and fiction. Though the buildings and some of the individuals you are interacting with are historically accurate, the overall story is not, and many of the characters are not. Players and readers can be left a bit confused on what actually happened.

The danger in tangential learning is assumption. If a few true things exist in a work of fiction, finding exactly what those are becomes important. Otherwise, a new story is created and accepted as fact. I’m going to veer into the far lanes of this topic for a minute to mention Sarah Palin, who fueled a little unintentional tangential learning. Here’s a Colbert Recap. It did fuel tangential learning, because people looked it up and realized she was wrong. However, Palin and some of her followers insisted that it was true (going as far as to change Wikipedia to defend her).

Even worse, some could use the idea of tangential learning to color their opinion as fact, which seems somewhat like propaganda. If you remember some of the strange things that were in Assassins Creed Brotherhood, you may get where I’m going with all this. Stephen Totillo wrote a fantastic article for Kotaku about the writer of AC:B. His name is Jeffrey Yohalem. He added historical-like things to create the story he wanted to tell, thus creating an alternate telling of history. Intentionally, he sort of Palin-ed the story, if you will. Most of the bolder assertions were tucked deep in the games puzzles, but they still guided the overall plot (which he also wrote). Even if we ignore the overarching story, the biographies of fictional Ezio still appear alongside historic Leonardo.

Maybe Extra Credit did not mention Assassins Creed because of this related dilemma. Maybe it is better to just take tangential learning for its merits, and celebrate the people who are subsequently educated. Maybe we should not judge or caution tangential learning just because some people will not be responsible with it, either in application or interpretation.