Mirror's Edge

I finally finished Mirror's Edge.  It took me a very long while.  It is by turns one of the most exhilirating and frustrating games I've ever played.  At first I thought the level designers just made decisions that I didn't agree with,  I was constantly getting lost having trouble figuring out what to do next, and on some levels I was lost with tons of blues trying to kill me.  So at first I thought that Dice intentionally created one of the most frustrating game experiences I've met.  By the end of the game though, I started to wonder if maybe this wasn't just a time issue.  It almost seems like they didn't have a lot of time to go through the levels and polish up the clamber paths and put all the red hints that most players would need.  That doesn't really excuse the weak combat, or levels with just plain too many enemies, but maybe the game didn't get a chance to get really focus tested and balanced.  That's what it feels like anyway.  I really hope they fix this one up for the sequels, my EA stock could really use a boost.

Obligatory "of '08" post.

So this is my all too unfotunate "things of 08" post.  Nothing is in any particular order.

Films:

Didn't see a ton of films this year.  What I saw and liked included:

The Dark Knight:  Fantastic story, Heath Ledger shows his genius, great film.

Tropic Thunder:  Throw actors into "the shit", hilarity ensues.

Zack and Miri make a Porno:  Kevin Smith's best film since Chasing Amy

Pineapple Express:  I just seem to love everything Seth Rogen does.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall:  Came out of left field and really impressed.

Iron Man: Most fun super hero movie ever.

I'm probably missing some stuff but this is what sticks out.

Games:

Great games of the year include:

Grand Theft Auto IV:  It's pretty much what I was hoping for, no 10, but best GTA story yet, and amazing attention to detail in the city.  Mechanics are sort of weak and the plot does meander towards the end.  I still had a blast.

Fallout 3:  I really got into this game.  Way more than I expected.

Metal Gear Solid IV:  Totally loved this game despite never having played any MGS more than a couple of hours before.  Amazing technical achievement, incredible cinematics, and a story I could somehow just barely follow.

Sim City iPhone:  Whiled away MANY an hour with this version of Sim City.

Warhammer Online:  First MMORPG I legitemately got into.

There are a few others that I enjoyed but wouldn't say were great games of the year, including Fable 2, Mirror's Edge, and Little Big Planet.

Books:

I read a LOT of books this year, but not a lot of them are coming to mind.  These are the standouts:

Toll The Hounds:  Erikson continues his amazing series, perhaps not the best in the series but still good.

Return of the Crimosn Guard:  Best I've seen from Esselmont and a welcome edition to the Malazan Lore.

The Name of the Wind: Patrick Rothfuss weaves a deft and imaginative tale.  Highly recommended.

I read a couple of books on wine, including a book about the french resistance hiding wine from the Nazis, and the famous wine tasting of '76 where the French were beaten by American wines, but neither book was particularly good. 

Wine:

This is probably my biggest wine year EVER with so many amazing wines tasted this year.  Here are the standouts:

The Prisoner ('05 and '06): The '07 seems to need more time, but the '05 and '06 are absolutely fantastic, with the '05 barely edging out the '06.  Sweet, with tons of berry, this is probably my favorite wine.  Fantastic Zinfandel blend.

Head Honcho ('06):  This is a Syrah that is bursting with fruit, and a touch rough around the edges with a bit of alcohol.  Spicy and big and sexy, just a wonderful expression of Syrah.

Papillon ('05): This a sophisticated Bordeaux style blend from the guys that brought us prisoner.  Less bold than prisoner, but more complex, all in all a wonderful blend.

Porque No: This is my 'go to' wine at Napa Valley Grille.  Fruity and sweet, yet able to maintain some of the complexity of the cabernet, another great Napa blend.

Breggo Pinot Noir:  Needs a long decant, but you'll be rewarded with a sweet and fruity pinot noir that has an extremely long finish.

Cycle Gladiator and Ravenswood deserve nods for providing cheap yet delicious wines.  Bishop's Peak also fits into this category.  Talley Pinot Noir remains great, but I didn't drink a ton of it this year.

In other news, the game's still not done, but it's looking strong for this year.  I never want to be on one project so long again, it has turns of being very disheartening.  Overall not the greatest year in many ways.  I've seen my EA stock options go from being a smallish down payment on a condo to being completely worthless.  I've seen my golden handcuffs turn to lead, and I've had many friends and family lose their jobs.  Meanwhile the L.A. Real estate market refuses to fall enough for me to have a real chance at getting anything, a frustrating and disappointing year, to be sure.  Hopefully '09 will either bring an economy turnaround, or the Los Angeles home prices will drop for real.  We'll see.

Band and Albums that should be in Rock band...

... but probably won't be.

To be updated as I think of more.

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead -- Source Tags and Codes
Arcade Fire -- Funeral
Neutral Milk Hotel -- In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Led Zeppelin -- Zoso, II
Pink Floyd -- Dark Side of the Moon
Radiohead -- The Bends, OK Computer
Blur -- Selections from Parklife, 13, and Blur
The Stone Roses -- The Stone Roses
Calexico -- Garden Ruin
Greenday -- American Idiot
Galaxie 500 -- On Fire
The Flaming Lips -- The Soft Bulletin

Random Stuff

Recently, I read The Black Company by Glen Cook, which is the first in a series of books about the aforementioned Black Company. I suppose at the time it was published it was something of a groundbreaking book, but after reading Erikson, and to some degree George R.R. Martin, it feels a little quaint. I think the writing style is downright adolescent, and the flow of the words is very poor. The plotline and characters are what give the book it's place in the hearts of fantasy fans, and it does have interesting characters and a decent plot, but Erikson does the same thing better.

The book follows a squad of soldiers in what seems to be the best mercenary army in the world. They end up working for "the bad guys", in a poorly explained war. What starts out as interesting and cliche avoiding ends up banal and unsurprising, but there are still good parts to it. I'll probably keep reading the series, maybe after I pick up the next Mistborn book (come on Brandon Sanderson, don't fuck up Wheel of Time any worse).

I've been playing warhammer online a lot with my wife, Danielle, and it's really grown on me. It's the first MMO that's sucked me in at all, so that's really saying something. I wish it were a bit easier to get into a scenario (not UI wise, but queue length wise), but otherwise fantastic. I don't have to get Saints Row 2 or Dead Space thanks to WAR. Next week, however, is a definite dual buy of Fable 2 and Little Big Planet.

As far as wine goes, I've found an absolutely fantastic Zinfandel blend called The Prisoner at Wally's. Wally's is a local LA wine shop. The Prisoner is just an AMAZING Zin. Hugely fruit forward (which is my preference), but still fairly complex, alcoholic, interesting, a fantastic wine. You might notice that I'm terrible at describing wine. I just don't have the heart to try to name a bunch of flavors that the wine really reminds me of more than tastes like. The other wine we've been drinking lately is called Porque No? it's another Zin blend, not quite as good, but a fantastic QPR at $18 a bottle. Really a nice wine. I might order more of it.

Red Alert 3 and stuff

So I've been playing a lot of C&C Red Alert 3 lately. Since it's an online beta I've only been able to play online. I have to say it's quite a good game. Definitely the best C&C game I've ever played. It sports a much improved Warcraft style resource model and I love the amphibiousness of the buildings. The three races seem quite varied, and if they're not quite balanced yet, I still have a ton of fun playing the game. My chosen race is the Empire of the Rising sun due to their unlimited expand ability and the transformation of the mechs.

One of the great things about the game is the back and forth nature I've had with some of the battles, and the ability to recover from missteps. In the last game I played I was doing really well, but I had neglected to fully build up my navy and lo and behold, the enemy comes with some naval vessels. Luckily I could just pack up my construction yard, move it on to land where it would be well protected by my infantry and continue the game, which I handily won through ground and air forces. This follows another game I played back and forth with an opponent for over an hour wherein we were constantly battling for control of the map until finally I was able to destroy his army, though we were both basically out of resources.

I'm glad I work at Pandemic at times like this so I can get in on some of these early betas (though now it's available to all C&C 3 owners). Anyway if you can get your hands on the beta, highly recommended, otherwise, hopefully there will be a demo.

We also saw two movies this weekend, Pineapple Express and Bottle Shock. Pineapple express was really good. Funny and action-packed, it wasn't a movie just for stoners. Tons of laughs. Bottle shock was elevated due to the performances of Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman, but I don't think it was quite a good movie. It's about the Judgement of Paris in 1976, where California wines first beat French wines in a blind taste test. The movie focused on the family that owned Chateau Montelena at the time and embelished quite a bit. It was still a good film, but I find the subject matter interesting enough to not have it Hollywoodized all to hell. Interestingly the screening we selected included a Q&A with the director and producer of the film. Both were affable and you wanted to like them. The movie was good, but apparently another movie is coming out about the same subject matter, so I hope that one is better.

Amanda Palmer at Troubadour 8/4/08

The wife and I hit up the Troubadour to see Amanda Palmer tonight. There was a really good opening band called Vermillion Lies, not sure if I'd like thier music on an album but an extremely entertaining live show. Apparently this was Amanda's first show on her new tour, so she was pretty nervous.

Still a great show. I have to say I really appreciate shows where the artist or band appreciates the audience. I first noticed this when I saw Devotchka and the band just seemed happy to be able to play music for an audience that really wanted to hear them. For some reason that really made me fall in love with the band. This show was much the same. When the Dresden Dolls perform, it tends to be a bit more "professional", the show seems more rehearsed or something. This show was more cozy, almost friendly. I really like that kind of thing. The performance was really good also, Amanda brings all the passion she normally brings to Dresden Dolls shows to her solo performance as well. I'm also liking how her new album sounds so far so the fact that most of the show was her solo stuff was a plus for me, thought the crowd seemed happy to be pandered to with older Dresden Dolls material. It was a really good show, and I highly recommend the Troubadour as a venue. The wife and I were thinking of seeing more shows there for bands we don't know so well just to try to find new bands since it's such a great venue. We've seen Devotchka and Amanda Palmer there now and both shows were lots of fun.

10/10

So, Grand Theft Auto IV received a plethora of 10/10 scores from various outlets around the internet and print. And my friends and co workers are up in arms. Pulling flaws from a seemingly endless bag, they deride the impossibility of a game with so many problems to be "10/10", with the subtext that 10/10 is perfect.

I submit that 10/10 should not be considered as perfect but should be considered to be one of the best games currently available. 5 star movies are not necessarily perfect, nor are five star hotels. The entire game rating system is so broken, basically decided by the American education system of 90-100 being an A, 80-90 being a B and so on. Where as a two and a half star movie would still be enjoyable to the people most likely to see that type of movie anyway, a 50 game is pretty much considered to be garbage. Game reviews are in this weird sort of range of 50-95, anything less than 50 is crap, anything 95 or above is fantastic. Less than 50, the ratings start to fall apart. I would like to see reviewers adopt the five star system or else use the alphabet grade system, where a C is mediocre a B is good, and an A is fantastic, and not use numbers with it at all, there's nothing less than an F, nothing higher than an A+.

So what's a five star game? An A+ game? For me, GTA IV certainly is. No one offers the GTA experience better than Rockstar. Call of Duty 4 is a five star game certainly. Mass Effect as well. Halo was probably four and a half stars for me. Saints Row was probably three stars.

There has also been a lot of talk about hype and brand, and I would really like to see a study done on whether a hyped game gets better reviews than an unhyped game. I think it's clear that brands make a huge difference, I think Mario gets an extra 5-10 review points just for being mario, and it's clear that GTA got an extra few points for being a GTA game. I'm sure had Saints Row 2 somehow eeked out the GTA IV experience, it would have gotten good reviews but I doubt it would have gotten many 10/10s.

So that leaves me in a weird spot. I don't really think GTA IV should be called a 10/10, but I disagree with the rating system as much as the score. I'm thinking GTA IV should be a five star game, and it should have some fellow games in that exalted list, just like films.