The Ballad of Jackson Colorado (Have Laptop Will Travel)

The silence is torn with a piercing wail

That connects our hero to his friends

On A hand me down PC, we start our tale

The world opens no telling where this ends

2400 bits at a time

The power of connection is shown 

The unfurling future sets a blaze in his mind

The flashing cursor starts to feel like home

He learns code a friend finds him a job

And now he masters the computer’s ways

The pay ain’t great but he can’t be a snob

The work is fun this ain’t just a phase

After school he lands real work texting 

Messages  to people in need 

When the texts start selling sex he 

Decides that it’s long past time that he should leave.

Have laptop, will travel

Who knew this world was so fragile

We’ll just have to move on

You got to be puttin’ me on

Got a plan to let you pay at the pump

Code is written at an insane rate

Patent vultures shut it down with a thunk

Office is locked the very next day

Two hour commutes, rooms full of smoke

Bosses who won’t even use your name

Sneaker net version control what a joke

How can the future be so lame

Have laptop, will travel

Finding work can be such a hassle

We’ll just have to move on

It can’t all just be a con 

He finds himself in the Pacific Northwest

Building websites for the folks who make games

Finally a place where he can rest

He stays long enough to learn everyone’s names

But the country goes to to hell it’s time to go 

His family ain’t feeling safe there now

Spain is calling, life’s looking nice and slow

With family and kids he can takes a final bow

Have laptop, will travel

He finally had to leave Seattle

Our hero has finally moved on

And just maybe he finally won. 

Well now it’s time for me to go

But that’s the tale of Jackson Colorado

My Guitar Journey (so far)

I'm on threads a fair bit these days and I see a lot of people talk about guitar or learning to play guitar and I figured I'd drop my own guitar path down in case it helped anyone.  I didn't learn particularly fast or easily but maybe that can help also.

Once upon a time in the late 90s, my best friend and roommate took off in the middle of the night to move to New York.  We'd been trying to make a game together unsuccessfully for something like a year and I think he just got fed up.  We hadn't been making much progress.  Anyway I was stuck with the lease and in exchange for leaving me in that rough situation he left a bunch of stuff for me, including an old Peavy Amp.  

Some months go by and I decided to learn how to play guitar.  I thought it would be fun and cool, so I bought a book and video that professed to teach how to play guitar, and I bought a cheap electric guitar to plug into the amp.

Right away the first thing I need to do is a C Chord.  The video guy shows me how to do it, and I go to try it and it's a weird stretch but I kind of have it and I can kind of make it sound out.  Then they tell me they want me to play another chord.  I can't remember what it was but it definitely wasn't A Minor or E.  And this transition is impossible.  Like I physically just can't do it.  I put the guitar down and never pick it up again.

Years go by, Guitar Hero comes out, I learn to separate my hands by "strumming" with my right and "fretting" with my left.  It's not a real guitar but some of these skills are new and it's pretty fun.  Rock band comes out and I try my hand at drums.  I don't know how many people remember this but Rock Band ended up going pretty far.  They released a keyboard peripheral and two "pro guitar" controllers.  One was a toy guitar with fifty-some buttons, which I still have.  The other was a Fender Squier Stratocaster with a MIDI controller where one of the pickups should be.

This guitar can be plugged into Rock band and you can play "pro guitar" along with the songs.  This... was terrible.  Extremely hard, and I couldn't hear what I was doing wrong.  Just a generic "twang" sound.  Eventually I gave up on this, too.

I am still interested in guitar and at some point, I tell my wife that I really want a guitar for a gift.  She asks around her office and buys me a Takamine G series guitar.  I take it into a guitar shop to set up, and my stepmother buys me some guitar lessons.  I meet with an older fellow who always drinks a coke and smokes cigarettes.  His hands shake a little when he smokes but they're steady on his guitar.  he shows me how to hold it, how to strum it, and how to play my first few chords.  He also has songs that only use two chords that are easy to go between, and.. what do you know, I'm really playing!

Then something new came out.  Rocksmith.  You plugged an actual guitar cable into your guitar and the other end could plug into an X box 360. With my newfound knowledge, I take my Rock Band Fender Squier and plug it into my Xbox 360.  It tunes it up for me, and I start trying to play songs, and.. what do you know?  I can correct my mistakes, and even better, I'm actually playing the thing!

It turns out, this is a pretty good tool for practice.  The stuff my guitar teacher gives me, I play slowly, picking it out, the stuff I'm playing in rocksmith, I'm making a bunch of mistakes but I'm doing it full speed.  So I'm getting better at bluffing my way through mistakes.

Due to several factors I end up quitting my guitar lessons, but I still play Rocksmith pretty regularly for a while.  But eventually my interest in it fades a bit. 

And.. stays faded, for... years.  Until at some point I decide to find some new music.  I decide all the music I listen to is too sad. I had a spotify playlist called "Laying in bed and feeling feelings" which is pretty great, but super sad. I decide to try Power Metal because I somewhat liked Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce.  This leads me to a Japanes Power Metal band called Aldious, which reminds me of a band I'd seen once called Band Maid.  I decide to check them out (thinking they were metal, like Aldious or Babymetal).  Surprisingly.. their music was good.  Like.  Really good.  Like the best rock and roll I'd heard in a while good.

Eventually the best rock and roll I'd heard ever good.

And listening to them rock a bunch of power chords and play cool solos made me think about making those sounds myself.

I dug out my guitars, I plugged in my rocksmith cable and I started playing again.  I bought the PC version of Rocksmith so I could download community created versions of BAND-MAID songs.  And I absolutely hit a wall.

I just couldn't get any better.  Plus at some point I realized I was just getting better at Rocksmith, not actually at playing guitar.  Like it had turned into an ultra-hard version of Guitar Hero, it wasn't really playing the instrument.  But BAND-MAID had inspired me to get a new amp and a new PRS Custom 24.  I wanted to get better.  I looked up a few things online, I got a book on learning guitar.

The book talked about the pentatonic scale, and wanted me to memorize all the pentatonic scale shapes like.. before I did anything.

I tried for a while, and I got the kind of "standard" CAGED E shape down pretty well, but I started to get discouraged and felt a little lost.

On Threads someone was asking if anyone wanted guitar lessons and I, on a total whim, answered.  He offered my my first lesson for free, so I took him up on it.  Right away he asked what my goal for guitar was.  Unwilling to explain that I was trying to get better at Rocksmith, I told him I wanted to be able to make my own sounds, express myself with the instrument.  

Over the next four months or so there was a series of breakthroughs.  I could already play chords decently well from Rocksmith.  So I could do chord transitions with no problem so we focused on lead playing.  I mastered the pentatonic shapes.  I had excersizes to improve my finger dexterity and to help me know where the strings were, and eventually we unlocked the uiltimate ability.  Playing to backing tracks.  

Finding which key a backing track was in and playing the pentatonic scale against it was like crack cocaine.  I didn't want to do anything else.  I wasn't good at it.  My timing was off (honestly still is), I didn't know which notes to play when.  I'm sure it sounded like mindless noodling, but I was CLEARLY GETTING THERE.  I could make sounds that made sense with what I was hearing, and sometimes, a small melody or riff would come out.  And my teacher helped with this process too, listening to me, giving me constructive criticism and pointers, teaching me his own solo so I had a better idea of how a solo should be structured.

Eventually my teacher quit teaching guitar (or I'd have mentioned his name, he was fantastic).  But he gave me the tools I needed to carry on myself and now with that plus youtube tutorials I'm unlocking the rest of the things I need.  

Anyway, that was my journey, If you got this far I hope it was interesting!  If you had a similar or totally different journey I'd love to read about it in the comments or on Threads!  I'm @pinotorious there.  

Checking back in on Japanese Music, 2 years later

So it's been a couple years since I've updated and in that time I dived deep into the rabbit hole of Japanese Music. BAND-MAID was my gateway drug and I've only become more impressed by these women as I've listened to them more and learned more about them. There is abundant information out there about the members and how they've arrived where they are, so I won't go into that too much. Suffice it to say that I have a guitar teacher and an extra two guitars due entirely to Kanami Tono and her incredible ability to create riffs. The most inspiring guitarist I've ever heard. I'm not going to say anything about her technical skill aside from it's something more than I honestly ever aspire to reach, but she also makes songs that I could one day play and I honestly think she's a genius. Maybe the greatest rock songwriter since the 90s. Everything BAND-MAID has released I honestly like. I don't love every song but there's nothing I really dislike. BAND-MAID is the only band I can say that about. They've raised the bar so high that when I hear another band and they have a song I don't like I'm way more disappointed than I probably should be. So BAND-MAID still reigns supreme as my favorite band. A band that rose from the ashes this year to become a powerhouse is HAGANE. I'd heard Hagane before, but three out of five members left, and it seemed the band was over. I liked their music but I wouldn't have rated it that hightly. This year's Top of the Tower absolutely blew me away. It's probably my favorite metal album of all time, and if it weren't for Epic Narratives it'd be my album of the year, and honestly it gives Epic Narratives (BAND-MAID) a run for its money. Sakura is Hagane's guitarist and main songwriter and she is also quite skilled at creating catchy riffs, and with the new Hagane lineup, she's paired with Junna, a youtube sensation and incredible powerhouse of drumming energy and together they're unstoppable. Add in a dependable bassist and a fantastic singer they found seemingly out of nowhere and you have the biggest surprise for me since I discovered BAND-MAID. They've risen to the top and become my favorite metal band. NEMOPHIA, my former favorites, released an album this year also. While I liked it, I didn't like all of it, and I'm slightly afraid they've lost a step without their guitar virtuoso SAKI. Their current guitarist Hazuki is honestly great, and extremely skilled, but I'm just not sure if the band is the same. They did an amazing 4 hour concert this year where they played all of the music they've ever released, and while it was an impressive feat, it definitely didn't sound good the entire time. All of that said, NEMOPHILA is still an absolutely fantastic band. Their new album has some really great songs. G.O.D. and Beautiful Days are absoltutely incredible, and Mayu has shown herself to be quite a solid songwriter as well as a rhythm guitarist, and she still has some of the most unique and wonderful vocals I've ever heard, both her clean and harsh vocals are appealing to me. The last band I'll talk about at length (this time) is MUTANT MONSTER. Unfortunately they stopped releasing new music a while ago, though they did go on tour this year so maybe there's hope? They're just an absolutely incredible punk band with a long discography of absolutely great songs. They sound like they should be in the indie rock scene from the late 80s/early 90s, though maybe they're a bit more skilled at playing their instruments than those bands were. It's an incredible trio with a guitarist and bassist who both sing and have great voices that work well together. At times they're both playing and singing harmonies and it's honestly very impressive, even if the guitar and bass parts are pretty simple. MUTANT MONSTER is my saddest entry here because they're honestly one of my favorite bands and they have fewer than 5000 youtube subscribers. So that's four great bands that I've fallen in love with. Crazy thing? Here's a list of bands I could talk about but won't because I'm running out of time. Maybe future updates if I think about it: TRIDENT LOVEBITES LAURELS SAWAGI BRATS BRIDEAR MARY'S BLOOD ALDIOUS STEROPONY NEK! EAST OF EDEN GACHARIC SPIN DOLL$BOX TELECIDE And these are just ones with multiple songs that I really like, there are actually quite a few more! So lucky to have fallen into this Japanese music rabbit hole!

Holy shit. Japanese Metal Bands (featuring mostly women)

I haven't really listened to much "new" music in years.  And by "new" I don't mean the "latest greatest", I just mean "new to me".  I discovered The National a few years ago thanks to my friend Bert, and prior to that I think it was The Decemberists or maybe Bon Iver.  So I am pretty set in my ways when it comes to music.  I'm also extremely picky.  For whatever reason, most music just doesn't connect to me that well.

So a few weeks ago I was looking for some music that was like powerful, inspirational, and like... violent?  I dunno... I was thinking something.... metal?  I'd never really been into metal before despite an old internet friend trying his damndest to get me into it. I mean Stratovarius was OK and Bal-Sagoth was.. at least interesting, but I never really got into it.  The one metal song that really grabbed me was Through the Fire and Flames by Dragonforce, which I heard for the first time as the "bonus" track on Guitar Hero 3.  And that was SORT OF like what was looking for.  

I searched up Dragon Force to see what genre of music it was (there are innumerable metal genres).  Turns out it was Power Metal.  Wikpiedia had a handy list of Power Metal bands and on the list was the name Aldious, which was an all-woman power metal band.  I didn't listen to Aldious right then, but it reminded me of a band I'd seen an article on years ago called BAND-MAID.

The article was in Kotaku or something and it was about a Japanese metal band where all the members were women and wore maid outfits.  I remember watching the video at the time and being impressed that all the members seemed to be good at their instruments, but for whatever reason it didn't quite grab me at that time. But I remembered the article when I saw Aldious and I decided to give them another try, and I found this song:

https://youtu.be/Uds7g3M-4lQ?feature=shared (sorry, apparently they don't allow embedding)

For whatever reason, this time, it really clicked with me. Like it went beyond "oh cool, they can play their instruments" to "holy shit... this is... really... good?".  I ended up listening to a ton of their stuff and there were... many.. good songs.  Domination, Dice, Don't let me Down, Daydreaming, From Now On...

I was totally hooked, but I saw a blurb about a late 2000's/early 2010's Japanese Female Metal scene.  So I looked up "Japanese Female Metal Bands", and holy shit.

There were.... many.  I listened to Aldious and I liked it but it didn't totally connect at first.  Then I heard LOVEBITES.  Holy shit.   What a band.  Like an all-woman Japanese Dragon Force, and incredible live:

This led me to BRIDEAR, Mary's Blood, TRiDENT, Telecide, NEMOPHILA, and even bands like BRATS.

Overall this is probably the most bands I've discovered I liked since I was in my early 20s.  It's really amazing, and a bunch of it is the exact type of thing I was looking for when I started, inspirational metal.  BAND-MAID is really more hard rock than metal, but it still has face-melting solos and incredible drumming.  I don't really know the point of this blog post, except to share this amazing discovery with whoever might see it.

I'll leave you with one more video from NEMOPHILA, a song which cemented my love of the band and Japanese Women-led heavy metal.

Games of the 7th Generation: Bioshock

I don't expect this to be much of a controversial choice, but I will say this might be the game on my list wherein I had the least fun.  The combat was functional but nothing special, the entire key to this game was its story, and more particularly, it's plot. 

My friend and former co-worker Tom Abernathy gave a talk wherein he claimed plot wasn't as important as characters in video games and that gamers could rarely remember plots but could frequently remember characters.  I assume this is accurate as he has great amounts of research data to back it up.  Bioshock is one of maybe 3 or 4 games to buck this trend.

The plot of Bioshock was completely unexpected and the twist in the middle was amazing and questioned the very nature of video games. It was a brilliant moment and the build up to that moment was possibly one of the best examples of plot in a game I have ever seen.  There are characters, to be sure, but the characters are all extremes, larger than life.  The character for whom the plot has such a huge impact is nothing but a cipher; it's you. 

The plot is able to pull you in through a combination of atmosphere and fantasy fulfillment.  The very idea of rapture is so engaging.  The way the game is set up it feels like the whole world is a 1940's nightclub after some horrible event and you're picking through the remains.  It's impossible to play the game and not imagine Rapture at its best though, people drinking and dancing, and everyone somehow special. 

The world looks like an underwater city and the opening moments suck you in like few other games (Half Life 2 comes to mind).  The bathysphere dive, and the first time you see the great underwater structures are forever burned into my gamer memory, incredible moments.  The world itself has a fantastic sense of place.  It doesn't feel like you're progressing through video game levels, it feels as though you're going through a real place.  Areas you go through seem to have utility, and yes, there is backtracking, but that helped me appreciate the "realness" of the place.

The game also manages to set up some intensely creepy moments, the time you meet a "doctor" splicer in the hospital, and there was a particular "treasure chest" in Sander Cohen's level that was in a room with a bunch of mannequin splicers that only moved when you didn't look at them.  Really brilliant stuff.

The storytelling could be a little clumsy, and the dialogue wasn't as natural and easy as Naughty Dog has managed to pull off in their last few efforts, but it was quite impactful and occasionally brilliant.

The game completely fell apart after the twist, unfortunately, and the less said about the remainder is better.  Despite its failings, I still find this to be one of the best games of the seventh generation.

Games of the 7th Generation: Mass Effect

I no longer possess the memory nor the industriousness to sort this list by correct date, so from now on, the games will be in basically random order.  The next game on the list?  Mass Effect. 

Mass Effect was, for me, the first great RPG of this generation.  By this point in my gaming career I was getting tired of Japanese role playing games, mainly because I tend to feel like the story loses something in translation.  I also didn't happen to be a very big Oblivion fan. I played the game for like 60 hours and wondered why the hell I'd wasted all that time (sorry, I realize I'm probably in the minority here)

Mass Effect was something else though.  The hype for the game was unbelievable, I have to admit I was something of a Microsoft fan prior to the release of the X box 360, partly because I had so much fun with the original X box, partly because of Microsoft coming out of the gate first, and Mass Effect was one of those Next Gen titles that made me go "holy shit" with its first few trailers. To be fair at the time I was working for Pandemic, and Bioware had actually merged with Pandemic not too long after announcing Mass Effect, so we got to see some stuff early before the audience.  That only served to whet my appetite. 

Mass Effect was a sprawling space opera, the likes of which hadn't really been seen since Star Wars.  Halo scratched some of the space opera itch, but as a series it tended to focus on one location at a time.  In Mass Effect, I had a ship and a crew and a galaxy to explore.  Star Wars isn't a great comparison for Mass Effect because in practice, it's much more like Star Trek.  Shepard is a hero, to be sure, and is able to perform many heroic deeds, but he still seems limited to normal human standards, much like Captain Kirk from Star Trek.  There can be an element of the Han Solo to him if you choose the renegade path, but Shepard and his crew reminds me much more of an updated Star Trek.

Most of the action takes place on foot or in your rover.  The ship mainly serves as a place to get to know your crew, no amazing space battles, but I never felt like it was missing.  As my friend pointed out, Mass Effect isn't really hard Science Fiction due to The Mass Effect, but given the Mass Effect, Bioware does a great job of explaining the rest of the science in the game. 

The first Mass Effect had somewhat janky combat.  Bioware hadn't mastered how to make RPG combat make sense with a progression curve while still feeling like a fun shooter.  Despite this, once you got the knack of the combat, it rarely got in the way of fun, and I still managed to have some epic moments running with my pistol and mowing down enemies.

The key to Mass Effect was the story.  The game started with a simple premise, Shepard is the first human S.P.E.C.T.R.E and Humanity's chance to enter the galactic conversation in a big way.  He is paired with people who don't necessarily trust him or humanity.  Along the way he learns of the Galaxy's dark secret, the Reapers.  The cast of characters is fantastic, and the side stories are equally amazing.  The Genophage, the Quarian mistake with the Geth.  All of these side stories make the universe feel far larger than most game worlds.  Shepard may not have really had much character growth, but the surrounding characters go through pretty great arcs.  I feel like the original Mass Effect is Bioware at the height of their narrative powers.  I don't feel like the next two games hit this same mark.

Graphically, Mass Effect was, to my eyes, the first really great looking Bioware game.  Baldur's gate looked decent, but not really impressive.  Knights of the Old Republic actually looked somewhat rough, but Mass Effect really sparkles.  They create a fantastic 70's SF Novel style, and everything is clean lines, and idealized future.  Really great art direction, paired with Unreal, arguably the most powerful engine available at the time.  This combination ended up being a visual Tour-de-force, with some of the best video game faces up to that point. 

All in all, a fantastic story wed to fantastic graphics made for a truly amazing experience, and one of my games of the generation.

Games of the 7th Generation: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

So this is the "big one".  This is the game that re-refined the first person shooter genre.  To my mind, the history of first person shooters goes something like this:

Id basically invents the genre with Catacomb Abyss and Wolfenstein 3d.  They make the definitive FPS with Doom, and then they pull it into the 3rd dimension with Quake.  Meanwhile, in Chicago, a company called Bungie is following closely building shooters with their own Bungie twist, the Marathon series, it's not quite as recognized as Id's stuff, partly due to being on Macintosh instead of DOS.

Enter Halo.  Halo basically re-defines the genre by introducing huge refinements.  The player can only carry two weapons at a time, mostly due to the fact that she's playing on a controller.  This means you can't easily scroll a mouse wheel or hit a number to change weapons.  They also introduced the idea of a regenerating shield which means you no longer needed to run around finding health packs, if you made a mistake you weren't screwed, you just had to take cover until your shield regenerated.  Halo was an interesting and innovative game in many other ways, but these are the key refinements to FPS games. 

Then Call of Duty 4 came out.  It was highly anticipated.  Call of Duty on PC released in 2003, was a new standard of polish. Call of Duty 2 was, in most people's opinion, the best X Box 360 launch title.  The studio behind these games, Infinity Ward, hadn't worked on Call of Duty 3, and this was the much anticipated follow up to Call of Duty 2.  Previous Call of Duties had covered World War II, but mainly, they'd covered World War II movies.  Nearly every memorable scene from Call of Duty or Call of Duty 2 could be directly traced back to some World War II move.

With Call of Duty 4, Infinity Ward was stepping away from World War 2 and entering the realm of modern combat.  At the time, this was considered a highly risky move.  It was well known that players loved World War II games, and most modern combat games had been comparative flops (Rainbow Six, Ghost Recon).  The general wisdom was that Modern warfare just wasn't that interesting.  Turns out the general wisdom was completely wrong.

Call of Duty 4 possibly pulled one of the best tricks ever in gaming.  They made an action-movie game that everyone thought was a war-movie game.  Call of Duty 4 was the first time in gaming where I felt like I was controlling the protagonist of an interactive action movie.  Incredible moments from my favorite movies were re-created and I was the hero.  The stealth mission, the sniper shot, the one final shot with a pistol.  A bunch of action movie clichés in playable form.  It also brought Iron Sights to the masses.  A feature that drastically changed the way gunplay in a first person shooter felt. The game was about creating huge moments and letting the player experience them, almost the antithesis of previous games that were more about giving the player tools to create his own moments.

I still remember finishing the game, thinking to myself that there was a new top-tier first person shooter studio now, and then hearing the credits song and just having my mind blown.  It was a really professional sounding rap song and it was playing over the credits like a movie, and it was made for the game (by the development team), just like many 80s movies credits songs.  Then when the credits were done rolling, I noticed that in the "message of the day" area there was a snarky comment from Infinity Ward about hiring (EA had just had lay offs), and I could tell they knew they'd built something really special. 

For the impact this game had on first person shooters for the rest of the generation, this is probably the most likely choice for THE game of the generation if I had to choose one.  All this, and it was only about six hours long, which, at the time was considered way too short for a $60 game.  The developers understood something, though.  For 6 hours, nonstop action is an incredibly fun experience, for much more than six hours, it starts to actually get kind of tedious.  A very interesting insight I didn't have until much later.  Overall an incredible experience.

Year of the 7th generation

I decided to take a break from the "Games of the Generation" because I realized as I was compiling the list, that there was a year the 7th generation really came into its own, and that year was 2007.  That was the year that:

Halo 3

Mass Effect

Assassin's Creed

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Crackdown

Bioshock

The Orange Box

Uncharted: Drake's Fortune,

and Rock Band came out.

Not all of these games are in my "games of the generation", but they were all major releases that really served to kick the generation off and give some hint as to what was to come in the generation.  Call of Duty heralded in a generation of realistic military shooters, The Orange Box was valve's move to console gaming, Uncharted wasn't quite there, but was the beginning of cementing Naughty Dog as a force in gaming.  Rock band was the bright flare in an ultimately doomed game genre, Mass Effect was the beginning of a generation defining RPG Trilogy, Assassin's Creed is probably the biggest IP created this generation, sales wise, and Bioshock was a commercial and critical smash that introduced the world to Irrational.  

Some of these games will be on my list, some won't, but there's no doubt that 2007 is when the 7th generation really began to shine.

Games of the Generation: Halo 3

This one might seem like a bit of an obvious choice for someone who worked on Halo 4 and now works at Bungie, but it is a bit of a different, interesting milestone for me in this generation.  I highly respect and like Halo 3, I think it's a great achievement, but what sticks out for me, is that Halo 3 is the first game this generation with truly out of control hype.  The hype machine was turned to 50.  Halo 3 brought a ton of stuff with it, four player co-op over live in a game with complicated physics, an incredible matchmaking system and some of the best multiplayer ever in video games.

But man, it also brought an incredible hype train.  The Believe ad campaign, the Starry Night ad, just and incredible tour de force of advertising, making sure the world was ready for another Halo game.  I remember standing in line for my midnight copy outside of Gamestop in Westwood Village in Los Angeles, and not only were there tons of "norms" lined up, there were frat boy types driving by in trucks cheering us on yelling "HALO", not making fun of the people lined up for a video game.  It was really an incredible event, and a turning point in AAA gaming.

A bunch of us at Pandemic (including what turned out to be 3 future Bungie employees) picked it up at midnight and went home and played until we finished the game the next day.  We actually took the day off to play through Halo 3, that's what an event it was for us.  It was a great campaign, but it was buoyed by the incredible hype machine that came before it. It also sort of marks the "end" of an era of shooters.  More run and gun shooters came after Halo 3 (Notably Halo: Reach and Halo 4), but the next game in my Games of the Generation was about to change everything.

Games of the Generation: Gears of War

So let me get it out of the way.  I didn't love Gears of War, I didn't even particularly like it.  I thought it was a fun cooperative experience, but overall I found it to be one of the more overrated games I've played.  So why game of the generation?

Gears of War heralded in the Seventh Console Generation.  As soon as the first ads came out with in-engine cut scenes that looked like CG films, the generation truly started.  The visual fidelity in the game was quite simply unmatched.  Nothing ever looked like that before.  From the material system to the particle and hit effects, it completely redefined video game visuals.

There have been a few games that just set a visual bar.  Where after the game comes out, the rules are fundamentally changed forever.  Doom, Quake, Unreal, Half Life 2, and Gears of War was one such game.  There was simply video game visual before Gears and after Gears.  And this isn't just some love letter to the Unreal Engine team, the art in the game is just fantastic, and the design fits with the engine and art to really make a showcase for the greatest strength that Epic has, the ability to push incredible visuals.

And for all that it had novel mechanics.  Take Killswitch, mix in a little Full Spectrum Warrior, change the camera so you can see your avatar in mind-melting detail, and boom: Next Gen is here.  I didn't love waiting for dudes to pop their heads out in order to get the rare headshot, but I was a fan of the few times I was able to pull off a really nice flank.  I liked the names of the difficulty selection items:  casual and hardcore, as if a "casual" gamer would play it.  Of course some must have, since it went on to sell over five million copies.  There were clever mechanics tricks like action reloading.  Sure the A Button was ridiculously overloaded, but it must be said that Gears of war laid the blueprint for third person shooters for the rest of the generation.  You like Uncharted? Thank Gears.  Similar to the visuals, there were third person shooters before Gears and After Gears.

I didn't really care much for the story or characters, but there is something to the overall notion of how the game was built that feels lost in modern games.  The weapons, though they may be adolescent male power fantasy weapons, feel unique, and weird.  A chainsaw Bayonet is a quirky idea, the Torque Bow, just.... different.  I feel like Gears was one of the last games to come out before the Great Homogenization of games that happened this generation.  It's a throwback to a more creative age of shooter design. Realism wasn't the be-all end-all. 

I didn't find the game's scripting to be all that polished, I ran into several bugs, and found some of the encounters lackluster, but the visuals were polished to a high sheen.  The level where it's raining, was just one of those mind-blowing moments visually.  From the splashes of raindrops to the water dripping down that stops at your body, creating a particle effect.  The overall attention to detail in the environment was ground breaking.  And all this with a relatively small development team.

So even if I didn't love Gears, I have to give it credit as an absolute milestone game of the seventh generation.

Games of the Generation: Fight Night Round 3

So I plan to bore the internet and myself with a bunch of posts about the games that defined the seventh console generation for me (starting with the Xbox 360, including the Wii and the PS3). These are going to be either the best games of the generation, or milestones in the generation, or just games that meant a lot to me personally.  The first of these is the game that really helped define the beginning of the seventh generation:

Fight Night Round 3

This may not be the best boxing game of all time.  It may not even be the best one in the Fight Night series.  Actually I'm pretty sure it's not.   It is, however, the moment that I knew the next generation had arrived.  Specifically when I first played the demo.  There were only two boxers in the demo: Roy Jones Jr., and Bernard Hopkins. Extremely canny choices by the development team, it showed these guys really knew boxing.

At the time, I didn't really know boxing.  I had only vaguely heard of Roy Jones Jr., and I had never heard of Bernard Hopkins at all.  I certainly didn't know that Jones had beaten Hopkins in a boring unanimous decision with only one usable hand, and I didn't know that fans had been clamoring for a rematch during the intervening years.  I did, however know that the overall visual fidelity of what I was seeing on my screen surpassed anything I'd ever experienced in a video game before.  It really no longer looked like a game.  It looked like a CG movie, and at times, it could almost be mistaken for a real boxing match. 

When the game finally came out, I poured hours into it, I created a boxer and finished the career mode (thousand pointing it as I did so).  I re-played famous fights over and over again.  Ali-Frazer, Robinson-LaMotta, Jones-Hopkins, Leonard-Hagler.  The game turned me into a boxing fan.  I had to know all about the men these avatars represented, I studied up on boxing, learned about Floyd Mayweather, and both Sugar Rays, I learned about Shane Mosley and Oscar De La Hoya (you'll notice not all of these guys were even in this game).  I would watch boxing on TV and between rounds play Fight Night.  I would watch TV and play Fight Night during commercials.  If I ever had any down time, Fight Night went in. 

The mechanics were brilliant, the Sweet Science boiled down to a few button presses.  Set up the heavier blows with the jab, duck, move, counter.  Is your guy fast?  Keep away.  Is your guy strong?  Get inside and fight in a phone booth.  You can never really capture the style of a guy like Roy Jones, but you can feel what it is to be the faster man, and what it is to pack a huge wallop.  Fight Night executed on this beautifully.  Eventually the game felt a little shallow, with the haymakers and the counters possibly being slightly overpowered, but it didn't stop me from playing. 

Visually, it set the bar for what fighting games should look like, a bar few have met.  The fight night and UFC games from EA are in a league by themselves when it comes to fighting game visuals.  At least in my opinion.  Blood and sweat coming off the body, great cloth simulation, and that slow motion punch to the face.  Just amazing visual moments that truly set this game apart.

I bought the next two Fight Night games and thoroughly enjoyed them, but Round 3 will always have a special place in my heart.

Definition of Terms

I work in the game industry and it seems like there are a few terms that go poorly defined or understood by gamers, the games media, and even developers.  Mainly it has to do with categorizing games and trying to talk about types of games with broad generalizations.  I figure I'd throw a few definitions I'd been thinking about into the ring and see what people thought.  I'd like to point out that this is just my take on this stuff and isn't meant to be any kind of authority. It's just a talking point in a larger discussion.

AAA or Triple A: This term is meant to define a game that's in the "big leagues" of gaming.  Generally it is an indication of a game's budget.  In the sixth console generation this budget was somewhere between one and ten million dollars.  It was a rare game that cost ten million dollars to develop.  In the seventh console generation, AAA probably starts somewhere around twenty million and can go up to two hundred million dollars.

So what does all this money buy you?  Generally it ends up creating a higher fidelity experience with some degree of higher production values.  More money can be spent on art for larger and possibly more intricate locales, more iterations can be paid for in level design, more money can be spent on voice talent and sound recording.  Frequently more money is spent on marketing and the game gets more exposure.  This all means the game is expected to sell way more copies in order to turn a profit. This also means that these games tend to be somewhat risk-averse and frequently are meant to be built into multi game franchises to ensure multiple years of high revenue.

Towards the end of the seventh generation, and beyond, Triple A games almost always contain some form of long tail, usually in the form of a multiplayer component.  And nearly always in the form of downloadable content used to generate more revenue to try to eke even more profit out of these expensive behemoths.

Indie:  This refers to a small scale developer or a small production team's game.  Similar to film, it can be somewhat tough to define.  Few would consider Bungie to be an indie developer, though the company isn't owned by a larger company.  Generally this term is used to describe games that live more on their ideas than their production quality.  Some particular part of the game is meant to be taken to a superlative level, or there is some innovation that isn't generally seen in AAA games.  Mainly indie games can tend to take more risks because they have much smaller budgets.  Usually the teams are smaller and self funded.  That's not to say that there aren't a ton of experienced developers in indie games, it's just that there is generally lower or no salary so they don't attract the same kind of talent.   Not to say they have less talented developers, but they definitely have a different style of developer overall, I've found that independent games tent to be more quirky and rely more heavily on mechanics than production value.  I have also found that more is forgiven from indie games due to their lack of a huge budget.

Core Games: This is where I'm going to get really controversial.  For me, a core game is a high fidelity immersive narrative experience.  This immediately discounts games such as Madden and FIFA, and to some degree Call of Duty.  I wouldn't necessarily rule those games out as not being core games, I just think they're sort of exceptions to the rule, and generally fit into some (possibly very large) niche.  Generally core games are trying to present some large narrative experience, some big story.  Usually they try to use immersion to tell said story. 

Core games aren't necessarily AAA, I've found most indie games are honestly trying to target core gamers.  These are the games for people that over the past 20 years or so would identify as "gamers" or more specifically "video game players".  Generally video games are one of the main interests of people who fit into this group, either as a hobby or an overall form of entertainment.  I won't go into made-up demographic information, but developers expect this group to spend significant amounts of time with games in their lives.

Casual Games: These games tend to focus on small repeatable puzzles or mechanics that can be played for short periods of time.  Frequently they have some sort of progression hook to create a sense of investment.  The cost of entry for casual games is generally very low or free.  They rely on progression hooks or low barrier to entry for revenue.  Rarely is there a notion of an immersive story, and a minimum satisfying play session is generally only a few minutes.  Contrast that with a core game where it is difficult to get a satisfying game session that lasts less than an hour.  Casual games generally reside in places with the absolute lowest barrier to entry, so either in an app store on a mobile device, or on a web page or linked through Facebook.  Generally they want to avoid an installer for PC, and rarely do they really take off on consoles because the barrier to even starting to use a console has traditionally been so high (having to go into the living room, turn on the TV, switch it to console mode, etc etc...).  These games rely on absolutely huge numbers of players, but they tend to make very little money from each player.

These definitions are broad guidelines with which to try to sort games, they're not any sort of hard and fast rule.  Don't think of the categories as buckets but more like a spectrum, some games are between AAA and indie, and some games are between core and casual, a good example of that is something like Plants vs. Zombies, which requires a fair time investment to play, but has still managed to reach a huge audience through easy accessibility.  Anyway, I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about this stuff, I think it's a really interesting discussion.

Console launches

So I feel like most gamers have noticed the overall lackluster nature of console launches of late.  The WiiU, Vita, 3ds, and even the Xbox One and PS4 seem to have fairly anemic launch lineups.  I was considering why this has to be this way, and ultimately I think it comes down to install base.  Launching your world-beating genre defining AAAAAAAA title that costs a hundred million dollars when the hardware it runs on is supply constrained just doesn't make financial sense.  From Sony and Nintendo's perspective, they really can't afford a loss like that, and for Microsoft, it's a matter of keeping the division profitable, Microsoft isn't trying to break into the console market anymore so they're less inclined to put a huge expensive game out at launch when they could just wait for more console to be sold. 

In previous generations it wasn't as risky because games were less expensive to produce.  Something like Halo probably broke even or made money at 500 thousand units sold.  Something like Grand Theft Auto V probably had to sell 4 million to break even.  maybe more.  If the console sells like gangbusters, there might be 5 million out at launch. If yields are good.  Also remember companies are disinclined to produce game consoles in large numbers at launch to try to maximize profit as processes are evolved to build the consoles more cheaply.  This is how Sony makes money of ps2 and ps3 despite losing money at launch.  So if you need to sell 4 million to break even and only 5 million consoles are out there, you're screwed, because I can't think of a single non pack-in game that had an 80% attach rate. 

Obviously you could have a situation like the original Halo: Combat Evolved, where the game continues to sell well for 3 years, but that phenomenon is incredibly rare, and large companies aren't willing to bet on that.  The industry has gotten considerably more risk-averse as the budgets for these games have gone up to their current astronomical heights.   Of course launch can be a great time for a more niche title to come out that is unlikely to sell crazy high numbers anyway because the lack of overall content provides more attention to the few titles that do come out.  This has worked in favor of games like Power Stone and SSX. 

Anyway this may all seem obvious, but for my friends who aren't quite as connected to the video game industry as I am, it might not be.  Hopefully this explains the more lackluster launches of the past few years. 

Rocksmith 2014

So I've been super excited for Rocksmith 2014 since it was first announced, and more so once they started holding DLC in favor of the new game.  The promises made at E3 were many: improved UI, removing loading times, a solid track list. So how did it fare?

Overall it's a fantastic product, and a huge improvement from Rocksmith, it's more polished, better looking, the UI is considerably better (but not perfect), the track list is solid, possibly the original Rocksmith track list was slightly stronger, but since you can import it for $10, it's not a big deal.  There are new features, such as tone changes mid-song, and many, many more tunings which is a blessing and a curse.

The note highway now has much better marking for which note to play when, and much improved finger positioning notation.  Overall it's a big improvement.  I have a slight bit of trouble distinguishing yellow from orange on it, but overall it's great.  Very nice to get tips on when to position your fingers as a chord instead of an individual note (for songs like House of the Rising Sun), This existed in Rocksmith, but it seems enhanced now.  Outside of the slight problem I have distinguishing color, I think one could say the interface is completely improved. 

The only possible flaw with Rocksmith 2014 that I've found is that it's not really much of a game anymore.  Songs no longer are about score and score multipliers, and while there is a score attack mode, it isn't the core mode of the game.

There also isn't a larger career, which is something I found satisfying as a player.  Overall I feel like they removed one of the big features of the game, which was an excellent progression system.  I no longer feel like I'm progressing in a fictional "rock star" career, this was a major hook which kept bringing me back to the original Rocksmith, and hopefully the frictionless UI in 2014 can accomplish the same result.  I do find it to be a bit of a loss though.

Otherwise the game is fantastic, and I still highly recommend it for anyone interested in learning guitar or bass, so far the DLC has been fantastic, also.

Surface Pro review

So earlier this year, I did a Surface RT review, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of Microsoft's tablet offering, in my biased opinion.  I do work for Microsoft and am thus predisposed to liking Microsoft products so take my reviews with whatever amount of salt you deem appropriate.

The Surface Pro is the best device I've ever owned.  The form factor and usability surpasses basically anything I've ever bought, in my opinion, it's that good.  I wanted a note-taking/sketching tablet that had an active digitizer.  I got that, plus a decent, if not fantastic laptop.  The tech blogs I read criticized the device for not fitting into any category.  It's noticeably heavier than an iPad, to the point of being slightly uncomfortable to use in certain situations where the iPad isn't uncomfortable, though I would argue those situations are few and far between.  Generally I find the iPad is too heavy for most long-term tablet holding tasks anyway.  The Surface Pro also has a smaller screen than any laptop I've ever used, and unlike the iPad criticism, it's hard to argue that the Surface Pro's screen isn't too small to be effective as a laptop.  But it has an active digitizer and runs metro apps!  

This means I don't really need to use it as a laptop.  I turn it sideways and use the dreaded portrait mode to take notes during meetings and doodle off to the side in One Note. I can use it to paint or draw as needed with several fantastic apps available for Windows 8, including Art Rage, Sketchbook Pro, and the free Fresh Paint which is actually an app that runs in Windows RT.

The other really nice thing about the Surface Pro is that you're not limited to Windows RT apps and all your legacy windows 7 apps not only run, but run pretty well.  And if the Surface Pro is a heavy iPad, it's an amazingly thin and light laptop, even with the type cover.  

I've found the battery life to be basically perfect for my needs.  I'll be out of juice by the end of the day, but I don't need to charge during the day with my workload.  Bear in mind that most of the work I do is done on a full Desktop PC, so generally the Surface Pro is relegated to taking notes. I probably get about 5 hours out of it before a charge.  I recently took it on a flight to Los Angeles, and used it to stream music over Wi Fi via X Box music, and paint some pictures, and I still had half a charge when I landed. That's about 90 minutes of heavy use, which I think is highly acceptable.

The device does get extremely hot for a tablet, but not uncomfortably so.  I have yet to hear the fan, though I've felt it blowing air out, so it is very quiet.   I'd rather not need a fan or have the device get hot, but it suits my needs pretty well.  

Overall if the battery life were closer to 10 hours, I think this device would be even better, though I find it incredibly good right now.  Highly recommended for anyone that sees the utility of the active digitizer.  

It's kind of late so apologies for the quick/dirtiness of this, but I wanted to get it out there because I am super happy to have a Surface Pro and if a new one comes out with a Haswell chip, I think you'd have to be a fool not to consider it.

Next Gen Digital Rights

So anything I say here is utterly and completely personal opinion and has nothing whatsoever to do with the company I work for.  I am obviously biased because I do work for one of the console manufacturers and I will admit that that bias plays into my overall thinking, but nothing I say here is in any way official or reflects any kind of official Microsoft statement.

So what I have to say is that I'm really surprised that gamers are so willing to embrace the notion of disc-switching in a digital era.  This is something that gamers bitterly fought on PC for nearly a decade until Steam, with the least objectionable DRM in the industry, ended up ending disc switching on PC once and for all.  Do people not remember how annoying it was to dig through discs and put each disc in the PC when they wanted to play another game?

I'm not going to try to argue that Microsoft has the best DRM situation possible, I haven't really analyzed it, but I will say it's not that objectionable to me, personally.  I understand that I'm not every consumer and others have various problems with it, but overall, it meshes well with how I tend to play and buy games.  I hope Microsoft can get its lending story sorted out soon, but otherwise I don't have a huge problem with any of it.  I'm not saying that someone who does is in the wrong, everyone's situation is different. 

What I will say is that people acting like Sony doesn't have any DRM are fooling themselves.  Sony absolutely does a DRM check on your game, it just happens to check local media instead of the internet.  And for me, that's considerably worse than a manufacturer asking to have my console online.  I am many times more likely to play different games if I don't have to go hunting around for discs.  This is a major reason I switched to PC.  And being able to fast swap in and out of games looks absolutely amazing to me.  On the PS4 there will either be some kind of check to ensure you have the rights to the game you're playing via the Internet, or via local media, or else, in the least likely case, there will be incredibly rampant piracy that will destroy the platform (this is basically impossible). 

I know I have friends who work at Sony and I am not going to say the PS4 is terrible or even in any way bad, I'm actually pretty excited for it.  That said, I plan on never buying a single retail disc for PS4.  Since all games will be digitally available day and date and since games can play while they're downloading, I'll happily buy all my PS4 games digitally rather than have to constantly change discs.  If I'm being honest I'll have to say the same for X Box One.  I probably won't buy any retail discs for X Box One either (though I might get a few free from work here and there). 

In a few years I doubt people will even be buying video game media in stores at all, but for now, if I'm buying media, I love the idea of installing it on my console and forgetting about it, just like PC games have done for the past 5 years.

Suggestions for Christopher Nolan's next film

Mori Memento.
Basically just play Memento forwards.  Maybe recast the whole thing. or else continue the story back in time!

Ception, alternatively Outception.
What happens next in Inception?  The world wants to know.  Plus you get a chance to explain that confusing ending!

Dark Knights and Baney Days
Bring back Bane and have him team up with Batman to take on Gotham City's underworld.  Also have Bane narrate the entire film.

Microsoft Surface RT

Every Microsoft employee got a Surface RT right before the holidays this year.  And my wife and I were no exceptions.  We've been using them for a few weeks now, and I figured I'd post a few of my thoughts.  Obviously I got the Surface RT for free and I am a Microsoft employee so my opinion is biased in some ways, though possibly not as much as one might think.

My wife and I were going to take our 2 year old son on a trip to Hawaii in October, but we greatly feared what would happen when we did.  Our son's attention span rarely lasts very long with anything, and we were talking about a 5 hour flight.  In order to alleviate the boredom, my wife got me an iPad 3 for Father's day, with an eye towards using it to occupy our son on the flight. 

It was and is a beautiful device with a fantastic screen and a very responsive, usable, OS.  There are of course a lot of apps and games for the iPad, but most of them weren't that useful, with the exception of a bunch of kids apps and some videos on iTunes.  Virtually the only game I played on the iPad was Magic: The Gathering Duels of the Planeswalkers which felt really good with touch controls.  It ended up working fairly well at distracting my son during the flight. 

Unexpectedly I ended up continuing on to New York by myself for work and rather than drag a laptop all over the country, I decided to just bring my iPad.  It was a reasonable device for my needs but I found it frustrating to use the keyboard for restaurant searches and the like. I also missed having a real IM with a keyboard.  Overall it was workable, and I really enjoyed the iPad for a while.

All of this is to present the context of my Surface experience.  I had used what was basically the best device in the tablet space and enjoyed it.  The Surface had something to live up to for sure.  I also happened to own an older Tablet PC that I installed windows 8 on, so it did have a touchscreen, but didn't support all the windows 8 multitasking functionality because the screen resolution was too low.

The week before I got my surface I was taking some time off from work and I was bumming around Seattle coffee shops with my tablet PC.  The tablet PC was a full core 2 duo machine and it weighs about 3 or 4 lbs.  Possibly more. It's not exactly huge but it lacks the svelte profile of a modern tablet. I had already found myself wishing for a surface.  I brought my iPad along on these jaunts, but the kind of thing I was doing.  Chatting on IM, posting on Facebook, replying to emails, and writing my Windows Phone 8 thoughts, were all better on my PC than the Surface. 

Enter the Surface.  I finally got my Surface RT and I was able to take it around an do all the stuff I'd wanted to do with my iPad but ended up needing a laptop for. 

At first, I was a little disappointed.  There were a bunch of obvious bugs and very odd behavior.  Then I was able to update the OS and apps and the experience improved considerably.  I felt I had a real sense for what the developers of Surface and Windows RT were gong for.

Let me say that, unfortunately, everything feels very version 1.0.  There are niggling little bugs, and missing features all over the place.  Some of the touch controls are startlingly worse than similar controls on Windows Phone which is pretty disappointing.  Let me say this, though, I think it feels a lot more like an Apple version 1.0 than a Microsoft version 1.0.  Microsoft is generally quite a bit worse at version 1.0s than anyone else and the Surface still feels like a good product.

In fact, it has virtually replaced the iPad in our house, with a few exceptions.  The only thing it really lacks at this point is apps. And there are a plethora of apps for kids for iPad, which is why my son is now the main user of the iPad in our house.

How has it replaced the iPad otherwise?

The web browser is fast, fluid, and fantastic.  It loads pages with ease and even displays flash on some pages. I don't think Safari is is a bad browser by any means, but IE 10 on surface blows it away in my estimation.  The browser is so good I can even use it for Facebook and some of the other "missing" apps.

But that's also because of the Touch cover.  The Touch Cover is a huge upgrade in my eyes.  I know there are Bluetooth keyboards for iPad, but The touch cover also has a track pad and this makes all the difference in the world to me.  I can use it for desktop apps and having the cursor is vey helpful for some websites.  Plus it takes up basically the same amount of space as my "smart cover" on my iPad and is considerably more functional.   The typing is a bit weird, but you get used to it.  I still type faster on a normal keyboard, but I'm typing up these thoughts on my surface with my Touch Cover and it's actually not going too badly, though using shift keys can make things sketchy.  The spacebar has also taken a bit of getting used to.  This basically completes the device and turns it into a functioning PC (for me) with a form factor basically the same as the iPad.  I used it for Christmas shopping and reading and watching videos and it's great for all of that.  One reason for that is the kickstand.

The kickstand is also, to me, a huge upgrade to the iPad design.  I've used it when using the surface like a laptop, I've used it just while reading or watching videos.   It even helps when using the camera for some things.  The Smart Cover just doesn't work well enough at standing up the iPad, the kickstand is a huge improvement.  Just having it in the kitchen with my One Note with my pancake recipe up was very nice when making Christmas breakfast.

For me the Surface RT is not quite a full PC replacement, but it's damn close.   I need a compiler and a stylus for any device I'd want, and coding on a Touch Cover seems like an exercise in frustration.  But if I just wanted to use Office, email, surf the web, and do social networking, the Surface would be a pretty complete solution in my opinion.

It is a touch slow at some things, and sometimes in surprising ways.  I'd still like more apps, and more particularly games, but since this stuff runs on windows 8 also, I have a feeling that stuff is coming, particularly with 35,000 apps in only  3 months.  It's also improved considerably in the short time I've owned it, which I find to be pretty hopeful. I realize it's a little pricey, but it feels like a high end device. Highly recommended to anyone who needs a device for light pc work.

The Nokia Lumia 920 and Windows Phone 8

I've been working at Microsoft for about two and a half years now, and for about two of those years, I've been using Windows Phone as my mobile OS of choice.  Originally I switched partly out of company loyalty and partly out of an intense hatred for what iOS 4 did to my iPhone 3G, basically causing it to be nearly unusable.  Eventually the problems were ironed out, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for iPhone products.  At the time, Android wasn't a very polished or consumer friendly OS and I didn't want to worry about multitasking or crashes, so Windows Phone seemed like the best alternative.

I ended up with a Samsung Focus and used it for two years, basically until my contract was up.  Initially I liked the phone, and really enjoyed the overall design of the OS.  I liked the speed and fluidness, and I also enjoyed how the applications all worked together to form a cohesive whole.  Well, the applications that were there anyway.  I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that many applications available on competing platforms haven't really shown up on Windows Phone yet.  Honestly though I'm not missing much.  I don't use Twitter, which seems to be a particular sore spot for Windows Phone, and otherwise my needs are pretty much covered.  It would be nice if my bank (Wells Fargo) had a decent Windows Phone app, but then, it'd be nice if they had an iPad app also (rather than just a blown up iPhone app).  Until the device started basically falling apart at the end of the contract with strange battery and speaker issues, I didn't really have a problem with it.  I didn't love it the way I loved my first iPhone, but I found it incredibly usable.

Earlier this year, Windows Phone 8 became available on a range of hardware devices.  After looking them all over, for me, the clear choice was the Lumia 920.  With it's incredible high resolution screen, striking design, and PureView camera, I knew I had finally found a premium phone in my ecosystem of choice.  However much I liked my Samsung Focus, I knew it wasn't really a premium device.  It was light on specs for when it came out, and it had a low resolution screen.  It also felt extremely cheap and plasticky, and fell apart when dropped.  That said, until the very end, it generally worked properly. 

The Lumia 920 is a completely different story.  Even though, ironically, it's made of plastic, the method they use to mold the phone makes it feel like an extremely premium product.  The phone is rather large and hefty in hand, but while many people have knocked the phone for this, it's one of my favorite things about the phone.  It feels solid in ways other phones I've used just don't.  And it's certainly not like it's unusably heavy.  Design aside when I turned it on, the screen was a feast for the eyes with bright colors and deep blacks as well as extreme viewing angles.  I think it's the best screen on a smartphone today.  To be fair I haven't seen an HTC One X or Droid DNA in person, so those might be better, but I can't imagine how.  With 60 fps refresh and the deepest blacks I've seen on an LCD, I really love the screen on the 920. 

The other striking thing when using the phone at first is just how FAST it feels. Windows Phone 7 didn't exactly feel slow to me, but Windows Phone 8 on a higher end CPU just screams.  Opening applications is much faster; as is resuming tombstoned applications, and just swiping around the OS.  The web browser clearly blows away any mobile browser I've seen yet (let me caveat this by saying I've never used Browser or Chrome on Android), and even running Windows Phone 7 apps is noticeably faster.  The app story is still pretty thin, though there is a decent new facebook app, though it's not totally solid yet, hopefully some updates are forthcoming.  There are a few cool new features that I haven't used a ton yet like the wallet functionality or the Kid's Corner.  Allowing applications to take over the lock screen is a welcome change as is the ability to have notifications on the lock screen. 

The other huge differentiator with Nokia devices in particular is the Nokia suite of apps that are available only for Nokia windows phones, including Nokia Music, Nokia Maps, and Nokia Drive.  I haven't used Nokia Music since I have an X Box Music pass, but Nokia drive is fantastic... when it works.  I did have some trouble with the phone seemingly losing a GPS connection lately but otherwise it's been incredibly solid.  Overall the Nokia apps are a huge value-add helping to justify my purchase. 

The other "big name" feature of the phone is wireless charging, which I initially pooh poohed, but I have found it to be very nice when going to bed to just kind of lay the phone down on it's charging tile without having to plug anything in.  Early reviews mentioned having to carefully align the phone, but I haven't found this to be the case, I can lay it down fairly haphazardly and it will still be fully charged by the next day.

The battery life of the phone is probably the only sore point so far.  The first day of use found it actually sorely lacking, but after turning off NFC (since I never use it anyway), I've found it to be much better, if not fantastic.  Probably the only drawback compared to my previous phone.

The main reason I bought the phone was the PureView Camera, which is called PureView due to it's Optical Image Stabilization feature, rather than some kind of digital stabilization, this camera actually floats in the middle of the phone on a flud, and is attached with springs, so when your hand shakes, the camera still manages to take still images.  This has two key advantages, one, normal picture taking is no longer a "careful tap" affair, to avoid motion blur, and secondly, the optical image stabilization allows the camera to keep the shutter open quite a bit longer for low-light images.  This makes for amazing dark and night photos.  There have been complaints of poor daytime performance, but it's such an upgrade from my previous camera, I haven't noticed.  Potentially this could be due to the software not automatically "touching up" photos for end users, and will apparently be addressed in a patch.  So far I'm very very happy with the camera.

In conclusion, I'm am extremely happy with this phone. It's the first phone I've owned since the original iPhone that feels like a truly premium and top of the line device.  Even the iPhone 3G felt like kind of a step backwards in design from the original iPhone (to me).  This phone feels like the logical end of the polycarbonate body that Nokia has been using since the N9 and it just feels and looks fantastic.  The OS also runs extremely well and is fun to use.