You cannot believe the hype sometimes

Recently, I've played a few games that were hyped to be "super amazing fantastic best ever" quality, but proved to be mediocre. When this happens, I often wonder if I'm missing the point, like perhaps there's a button on my xbox controller that I haven't found yet that would allow me to unleash breathtaking combos or spontaneously generate wads of cash. I'm going to explain why I don't like these games that you probably love, and I'd appreciate it if you could tell me what I'm missing. What is fun about these games?

Rez HD
This game first came out on the Dreamcast years ago, and has just now been updated and kicked back out through the Xbox Arcade. I read several online reviews, some that went as far as proclaiming this to be the best game ever made (seriously). Every one of them proclaimed the first Rez to be ahead of it's time, beautiful, fun, musical, and generally better than wads of cash.

I played this game for ten minutes and finished half of it. The game consists of pointing a box at vector graphic spaceships while holding down a button. Then you let go of the button, and those spaceships blow up. Or, you can choose to shake it up with a limited supply of bombs that make it as if you're pointing at the entire screen. That's it. That's the game? That's the best game ever made?

Apparently, the fun is supposed to come from the music, and the fact that when you kill enemies you add a layer to the music temporarily. Alas, this is not actually cool - it's just the kind of cool that you claim to think is cool in front of your friends so that you seem better than them. Saying that Rez is actually awesome because of the phat beats is like saying that weird song Chris put in his top 100 (you know the one; 30 seconds long, confusing, not a song) actually belongs there.

Half Life 2
This one actually has an excuse that works well - it's two years old. I just played it when it came out for the 360, but it came out for the PC years ago. I'm going to allow Half Life 2 to use that excuse if it'd like, but the fact is that game reviewers still talk about how this one of the best fps games (even at the time it came out for the 360).

I must stop now and clarify something. Portal, which shipped with Half Life 2 in a package called The Orange Box, is hands down one of the best games I have ever played. Portal enters ranks reserved for games like Shadow of the Colossus, Final Fantasy VII, Mario 64, and few other games that have defined the universe.

Moving on, Half Life 2 - that actual game - is boring. Snore boring. So boring I had to force myself to play a few hours of it. I voiced this concern to a few friends, who all shared some variation of "oh, keep playing, it stops sucking at some point". Wait, what? The best fps ever sucks for the first few levels? Alright, fine, I'll press on. I'll press on past the endless and BORING AS HELL hovercraft levels where I drive down sewer pipes and sewer pipes and sewer pipes until I finally get to shoot at a helicopter for twenty minutes. The level design is also very sparse, the colors are really weird (play through the first toxic waste area and tell me that looks good), the guns are uninspired, and the enemies are stupid.

Lots of good games have come from this game, and if I'd played it two years ago I might sing a different tune, but Half Life 2 is a mediocre shooter at best.

Mass Effect
I'm actually still playing this one, but it's just alright. Not great - alright. Ignoring the bugs for a second, the level design is boring. They sell the game as a open environment where you can explore entire planets and the locations inside. Well, in fact when you land on a "planet", you just end up in a single linear path that you have to drive down in a terrible vehicle segment, then you end up in an empty building where you have one or two hallways to walk down. That's what constitutes exploration in this game. The dialogue* system is sort of interesting, but it gets old fast.
*Do you spell this dialogue or dialog? Or something else? I went to college.

Now on to the bugs. I mentioned the terrible driving sections before, and they're made even worse by some bad hit detection that also results in your six-wheeled space exploration vehicle getting stuck on things when you're within a few feet of them (anything from a building to a barrel to a hillside). While on foot, I've gotten stuck in walls on several occasions (especially when fighting enemies who can throw you around), which results in ALL buttons not working (even pause), so you have to sit there and wait until the terrible enemy AI manages to kill you. That same AI that can't figure out to kill me when I'm stuck in the floor for ten minutes often times wipes out my entire squad before I even know they're there.

This feels like a game that could have been good, but they decided to focus on quantity instead of quality. It's simply inexcusable at this point to release a game where I walk through entire space stations where there is nothing in any room except a rare person, crates/lockers to open, and a table here and there. This game depicts what it would be like if you could go anywhere in the galaxy, but only things and people vital to your current boring-ass mission existed. When my mission consists of talking to three people a couple of times, why do you feel it necessary to spread them out in far corners of this empty facility? It takes several minutes and at least one long boring elevator ride (why are there such long load times for these empty rooms???) to get between the people, making ever mission an exercise in "oh crap, now I need to go back upstairs to give this box to guy B so he'll give me the password so I can go back to guy A who is down in the basement so I can get into the garage which is back outside and up another elevator". Sounds fun, huh??

Listening pleasure is integral

If you know Chris and don't have his top 100 songs, you should work that out. If you don't know Chris, he's probably my biggest music nerd friend (and that's saying a lot), and he has put together his top 100 songs of 2007, which he has released in 25-song chunks.

The brilliance of Chris' top 100 songs is that some are extremely accessable, and some take a couple of listens to catch on to, so every time you listen to the list you find another new song to love, and fall deeper in love with others as they become engrained in your head. Also, the fact that the songs are available in chunks means you can stagger the groups, and always be falling in love with super-accessable pop songs, more complicated indie-rock songs, and weird ass crap all at the same time!!

I've prepared the graph below to try to demonstrate this idea. The higher on the graph a line is, the more accessable that song is.


As you can see, with songs 3 and 4 you like them on your first listen. Song 1 you can't quite get a handle on, and song 2 sounds like garbage. As you listen over and over, you take deeper slices, and get more listneing pleaseure (the integral of the line) every time! And by the fourth listen, song 2 is starting to almost sound decent, and suddenly on listen 5 it clicks, and by listen 6 & 7 you're blessed with yet another new favorite to rock out to.

An interesting annomoly came into play on the LCD Sound System song called All My Friends. This would have taken two or three listens normally, but Joe pointed out how great the lyrics are a few weeks ago ("You spend the first five years trying to get with the plan / and the next five years trying to be with your friends again"), which pulled the peak accessability of that song all the way up to listen 1. But then it still took two or three more listens before I hit the bulk of the listening pleaseure. Fascinating.

It'd be really interesting to have someone who has never heard any of these songs before rate every song after several listens over the course of a couple weeks. It would yield good data to let us properly graph the entire collection.

Blammos

Money
ING is now paying out 3.65% interest. Countrywide also dropped with the recent interest rate cut, but only to 5%. I'm glad I got out when I did.

I just bought my first stock in about a year, as I'm trying to get back into investing in my Roth IRA. I put that on hold as I built up a little house found, but recently I'm not plannign on buying a home in Chicago. I just can't get excited about a condo (unless there's a hot 50 year-old woman in it, right Pfeiffer??).

Cars
I need to have the Saab serviced and emission checked in the next few weeks. Here's hoping I make it through that minefield without any giant bills...

I'm trying to figure out if I can get serious about buying a convertible for the summer (and selling it next fall). At some point I want to get a 1994 Saab 900 Turbo Convertible, but I'd want that at a point where I can work on it to learn about cars. For now I'd want something I can buy in April, park on the street, drive on nice days, and sell in October without spending a dime on it (except maybe an oil change). This would probably be a newer 9-3; hopefully 2000 or later, as that's when the better engines went in, but the price jumps from around $4k for the 900 to around $10k. Hopefully I'd get most of it back, less the value a convertible loses from spring to fall. My goal would be to buy something very close to "fair" kbb value, as I could then sell it to CarMax if nothing else. I think all in all I'd be talking about:

$1,000 lost in sale
$200 spent to register/title
$80 city parking sticker
$400 to insure for six months
=$1,680 for a summer in a saab convertible

Is that worth it? I doubt it, but I'm still not sure.

Food
In the last three days I've had seven "meals": Qdoba, shrimp stir-fry, Poptarts, McDonalds, a burger & fries, Popeyes, and then last night a mish-mash of chicken and rice. This is perfectly typical for me. I'm not entirely sure have absolutely no idea how I'm still alive and in reasonably good shape.

A salute to 2007

I was just looking around on people's Flickr and Facebook accounts, and thought I'd pull together some good pictures from 2007. There were a million other great times last year - I'm missing a lot of pictures (I just happened to come across these this evening).

Good to start things off with a massive crowd. I think this may have been during the Aquatennial (which is the only fireworks display I've ever seen that actually amazed me).

Joe "playing" the fake electric chair game at the Ostoff the night before the Packers game. The idea was basically to hold onto the things that hurt to hold on to for as long as you could (and to scream a lot).

One of four million Red Robin trips. Looking back, I think we went to Red Robin in only two states last year. NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.

Chris on what must be the day Pat threw up on the art museum (AKA a wedding or something). This was a thing I took while drunk, and it totally spiffied up Joe's place, but he threw it away :(

Ted and I hanging out on my porch (you can be sure Paul and Ben were near by).

This was the PBR that I ordered from the desert menu in a steak house in NYC. It was literally served to me on a silver platter.

Arun. In Brooklyn.

Maria and I being totally envied at my office party.

One of many pictures of Pat, Joe and I jumping in Boston. My hands-down favorite weekend trip of the year, Boston was just amazing. Pat's leap here is the best one we took all weekend.

Another great picture from Boston - Joe and I walking through Boston Common (bonus points because it was taken with an iPhone).

At Jennifer's wedding in Brookfield. One of my favorite moments from this weekend was the five minutes Maria and I spent sitting on a tailgate, just staring at the stars for a moment.

Joe finally finally FINALLY eating his French cruueller (trying to spell it like we said it). I'm amazed, looking back, that we generated at least two inside jokes involving Joe and Dunkin Donuts inside of a two week period.

Tailgating before the Packers game using only unused pieces of the grill (which we assembled on-site) as utensils.

Third place

Second place

First place (I proclaimed these rankings on Facebook, though I no longer think they should go in that order. Ah, well. Too late.)


This last one isn't from 2007, but I forgot about it, it's pretty sweet, and it was pretty much the night Ben, Paul, Ted, Ellery, Pat and I became friends, so it gets an honorable mention.

It's a good thing I don't have any money...

Because the investments in my Roth IRA are down about 17.5% in the last month. I really love my savings acccount sometimes.

A lovely monday mindfuck

First of all, go read this great story: The Last Question, by Isaac Asimov. Then, realize it's true.

Just kill me now

You have got to be kidding me.

This is a real bug - a Japanese Hornet. The very fact that this thing exists on Earth makes me so uncomfortable that I just want to shoot myself so there's no chance I ever run into it.

Seriously, I have no idea how to handle the knowledge that this thing out there, waiting.

Mint.com

Mint.com is sort of interesting; you give them your account info for credit cards & bank accounts and they break down where you're spending money. (Security was a concern of mine, but they seem to be on the ball there.) You can break out what you spend in a variety of reports, and if you need a way to visualize where your money goes I could see this helping.

What I'd really like to see is the other side; how much am I saving, how much do I need to save to hit goals, what's my balance history, etc. As it stands now it's an interesting budgeting tool, but not really all that useful for me. The biggest potential bennefit in my eyes would be to automate my savings based on my goals and income. I want to have $x,xxx,xxx by the time I'm 45 - how much do I need to save every month, given the rate of return I've seen on my various accounts? Okay, well I'll invest $yyy per month. Figure out the best way to split that over my various investments/savings/mortgage/etc, and automatically make that happen. Provide a constantly updated report of how much I've saved, how much I'll end up with by various dates, and how likely I am to hit my goal.

One of the cool toys is the ability to compare how much you spend on various bills compared to the average person in the USA. For exmaple, I spent $178 on cable last month (temprorary inflated due to an extra sports package and movie channel), where the average american spends around $130. My car payment, on the other hand, is half of the national average. My mortgage is just about normal, and much to my suprise I spend under half of the average on food and dining.

It's an interesting tool that's supposed to get much more robust (they report to be building out the savings & investment side of things). I don't really see this as a viable replacement for Quicken or anything like that just yet, but it's pretty neat.

Chicago generates bad mornings

Please excuse my morning rant. In the last week or so I've had three days that have started off really badly, and all of them have done a awesome job of shoving everything I don't like about Chicago right into my face.

I wake up to face my worst fear: still in Chicago, and walk out the door to be greeted by at least a smattering of garbage and the sound of traffic. After thirty glorious feet of driving unimpeded, I hit choking traffic - which extends in all directions for fifty miles. During my 5 mile / 35 minute commute (that's just over 8.5 mph), I get to share the road with the massive idiots who live here.

Bonus Side Rant! Chicago is full of Rude Idiots!
The other places I've lived have always had their share of jerks, but you'd go days at a time without having to deal with some giant prick; and the streets were never clogged with them. There are basically three reasons I see as to why I so often cross paths with assholes in Chicago.

1) This city makes you a dick. I know this is true from personal experience. I have a shorter temper, and am generally less happy for living here. There is simply too much ambient stress in this place. Want to go do anything outside of your crappy apartment? Get ready to wait in line for an hour (after you spend an hour going three miles to get there, that is). This place is like cramming everyone who is having a bad day into a closet together.

2) The raw volume of people I see every day has shot up by 1000%. If you assume the percentage of asses in any group of people is approximately the same, then interacting with more people increases your chances of dealing with a jerk every day. Also, jerks amplify jerks greatly, and their odds of running into one another also goes up with population density. It only takes one or two to ruin a morning for an entire train car, or everyone behind them in traffic, or everyone they pass on the street.

3) Everyone here has actually chosen to live here. They actually enjoy (or have always lived in) an environment where you are constantly competing with a million other people. Maybe this habitat actually draws these people in? I definitely see all the moron frat boys from all the Big Ten schools flocking here, so others may feel the same pull.

It's important to note that not everyone who lives here is a jerk; just too many of them. There are benefits that living in a city bring: schools, theater, museums, shops, restaurants, etc. Alas, all of these things are completely lost on me (and I would argue you can find those things in more reasonable communities), but others enjoy them enough to put up with the rest of it. To those people I say thank you, because when I can surround myself with enough of you I relax for a bit.

Anyways, back to the original rant. Once I actually get downtown, the fun doesn't stop. Everything here is crowded all the time. I walk two blocks to work, I'm fighting crowds. I decide to stop for some breakfast, I'm fighting crowds. I take the elevator up to my office, I'm fighting crowds. You learn to treasure the one in a million spots where you can actually expect to find a reasonably small number of people. These cafes, shops, and other rare jewels can be real life savers (alas, I can think of two off the top of my head, and one is my apartment). Don't even get me started on the pain in the ass it is to go see a f'n movie in this town.

Now that I'm at work I can relax a bit, but I know I get to do it all over again with worse traffic tonight. (And god help us all if the road gets wet - people in this town go even more nuts if the road gets wet.) Then I'll repeat this process over and over until it's the weekend, and then I'll do everything I can to try and pretend there aren't three million surrounding me, crowding into every nook and cranny of this vermin infested dump. End rant.

Representitives of the following companies are pissing me off today

Spot Runner
MSN
Two I shouldn't name
Ask.com

Especially the first one.

It is time for music

Discovering the mass of Wu-Tang on the office's mp3 drive got me through most of December, and the Killers got me through the last week or so, but the 'ol iPod is feeling pretty tapped right now, so it's time for music. Good thing I have several friends who are giant music nerds.

Here's what I want to listen to. Please tell me if:
1) I should get it.
2) I should not get it.
3) You already have it and can give it to me for free.
4) There is something else that is good and you'd like to give me.
5) You are Pfeiffer and would like to pirate it and then give it to me.

Album: The new Avril Lavigne
Why: Tri-colored hair, great singles, and Chris threw some pretty serious weight behind it on his blog. It will be an appropriate thing to blast in the car in the morning to get me totally pumped to skip out on work and just drive, baby.

Album: The Con
Why: I've actually watched Pat achieve Nirvana while listening to this cd (typically while driving me to Red Robin, so it can be a little dangerous). It was also pimped by Polley, and I've heard a few songs which sound good.

Album: The Okkervil River cd that Maria has
Why: Maria really likes it, and she's got an MFA. Despite it not being on a list of some kind, Chris did recomend it, so I guess it's okay.

Album: Kanye West - Graduation
Why: I like about half of the songs on his other two cds, so this one probably has a couple of good ones too (Stronger is a fat beat). I also like sugary hip-hop, and there isn't always a lot of that around for me to play loud and make a fool of myself.

I will turn this day around.

I woke up in a bad mood today. I think I'm suffereing through the vacation equivalent of the energy drink crash. After 11 days off, my first full week back seems to be compacting me into a dense cube that doesn't let in enough light (also, today is cold after our random 60-degree weekend, furthering my collapse). I've been much more stressed out by work lately, for a couple of reasons: first, I am now responsible for three employees (which adds far more crap to a day that I'd expected). Second, we're putting together our first television ads, which I have been put in charge of. We just finished up approvals on an ad for our local bankruptcy attorney, and it has turned into one of those schlocky asshole lawyer ads you see on cable all day long ("Sure, you ran up massive debts, but you shouldn't have to pay them! Those mean creditors are the devil!"). I'm pretty unhappy about that, and all of the little comments people make (especially my Grandfather) about how I work for "those damn lawyers" are sort of floating through my head.

Also, Chicago is really getting to me. I've been able to erect a sort of bubble shell about it for the last few months, but I'm really getting to the end of the line with this place. Pretty soon I'm just going to flip out and start living in the sewers. It really hit me in the face on Monday, when it was 60 degrees, and the city was still depressing. How can a place be depressing on a 60 degree Januaray day?

So, in an effort to regain my footing, I present the list of good things about today:
1. I've been stretching in the mornings, as it seems to help my back pain. (Particularly the lower back pain I get after standing for more than a half hour.) As of this morning, I think I would be able to touch the ruler in a sit-and-reach with my legs straight. (Those of you who were in my gym classes in highschool know I once recorded a 1-inch sit and reach, and could not even touch the ruler the next year.) Now I can sit with my legs straight in front of me and put my hands on my shins.
2. Tonight, Ben and Paul are coming over to watch the Duke basketball game (Ben's a Duke fan).
2. Paul's going to come over to play some Mario tonight.

Hopefully I can add more later. In comments. Add your own, because high tide floats all boats and whatnot.

A Rare Baseball-centric Post

Ted just taught me something: in baseball, if you get thrown out at second (on the play that you bat, that is), it counts as a hit. This rule applies to third or home as well. My mind has been blown.

Ted's new blog is pretty great - he's constructing theoretical teams of baseball players who fit arbitrary criteria, and doing a post for each guy. Ted's got this writing style where you feel like you're sitting in Wrigley field, sandwiched between him and Ben and Paul as they jaw over the relevance of the 1984 Cardinals in today's world, what with the new cleat patters and all. I suppose you may not get this feeling if you don't know who Ben, Paul and Ted are, but maybe you will. Then some day you'll be at a Cubs game and you'll get the feeling like you're reading Ted's new blog, and look behind you to find three guys eating sunflower seeds and comparing the batting stances of Ryan Sandburg and what they think and ostrich would bat like.

Anyways, you should all check it out: Rosterized - a Baseball Blog

In the Year 2008

A quick glance at the Madison Craigslist confirms that I could still rent a 5 bedroom house on the lake in Madison for the same price I pay for my two bedroom apartment on Ashland in Chicago.

The random video of an elevator trying to eat me is nearing 1,000 views on You Tube while the critically acclaimed Guitar Solo sits at 151. Go figure.

There are still no exclusive games for the PS3 that I want to play.

I have now had a beard for a full calendar year (minus one day in June).

Jose el Penguino

Thank Pat and Joe for these memories from one of the top days of 2007 - Packers v Lions at Lambeau! Pat, Joe, Dan and I went up there, stopping over in Elkhart Lake the night before. It was the best nine hours I've ever spent in the snow!

Whilst in Elkhart Lake, we hooked Joe up to this "game" where he had to hold onto handles that vibrated really fast and hurt to touch. The goal was to do this as long as you could, and Joe almost certainly set a world record (and lost almost all feeling in his hands in the process).

 

Ironically, Jose el Penguino doesn't seem to like the snow?

 

We built our grill there, and since we forgot to bring any sort of utensils we used bits of the grill to cook.

 

Cooking up some delicious burgers.

 

Mootzger entering his kingdom.

 

Our seats were amazing, and were a great spot from which to heckle the Lions kicker, Hanson. (SIT DOWN, HANSON! WE DON'T NEED YOU ANYMORE!)