Kevin's Musings

We had a nice, quiet weekend. On Friday we watched (again) Bad Santa, the “Badder Santa” edition. On Saturday, we spent the day in. Mostly watching TV, getting caught up with some TV, the missus did some knitting, and I played some Mass Effect and a few games of Carcassonne (on the 360 with some friends, online). On Sunday, we went bowling with some friends, I played some more Mass Effect, etc. We are finally caught up with Prison Break and I am almost caught up with Battlestar Galactica.

Mass Effect is turning out to be a lot of fun. They have done an incredible job with it. One of the odd thing over other RPG games is you never have to buy health, etc. (potions) and there is no way to sell anything – you can destroy it and get a small amount of “omni-gel” for them, but never any cash (unless I am missing something). Also, you never have to buy ammo, you just have to be careful with weapons “overheating”. Mass Effect is definitely deserving of the 9 and 10 scores it is getting. If you loved or “kind of liked” Star Wars: KOTOR, or didn’t like it because of the battle system (but liked everything else about it) you should really check out Mass Effect. The graphics, story, voice acting, dialog, dialog system, etc. are done perfectly in Mass Effect. My only real complains are (4) occasional control oddities in combat (3) the game is really chatty at the beginning explaining all of the back story, and thus it is slow to get started, and (2) when you have a new character it can be difficult to get past the first few combat sequences. And finally, my number one complaint about Mass Effect is…  the game hardly ever auto-saves, so if you want to avoid replaying huge amounts of the game you need to manually save (and do it pretty often). But, at about 20 hours into the game I am having a ton of fun.

We are still absolutely loving our TiVo HD – I prefer it to sliced bread, I think. I always knew the TiVo would make suggestions (and record tons of programs to keep your Suggestions folder full, but I didn’t know we would spend a lot of our time just watching stuff in the suggestions folder). Kudos to TiVo for making such a wonderful box. If you have an HD TV, this is a must own bit of kit.  If you don’t have an HD TV, go get one (and then get a TiVo HD).  I also really love being able to push shows from my TiVo HD over to my PSP for watching on the train during my commutes.

A few weeks ago we tried Amazon Unbox, which will deliver movies and such to the TiVo. It worked nicely and the DVD is pretty much DVD quality, but the problem is that at the price you won’t be renting very many movies before you could just get a NetFlix plan (even a 3 disc plan). On top of that, it really is just DVD quality, so I am not really leveraging the wonderful HD TV (or TiVo HD). So, I resubscribed (after years of being away) to NetFlix.

I used NetFlix really early one and they had a nice website then… now they have an amazing website, I am incredibly impressed with how polished their site is. Also, the NetFlix turn is really fast – if I put a movie in the mail on Monday, we tend to have the next disc on Wednesday. One other great feature is that they have an amazing catalog of not just DVDs but also HD DVDs, so we have finally be putting my 360s HD DVD drive (that I’ve had for almost 6 months) to some use, which makes me happy.

Well, I got a rash of spam a few weeks ago so I disabled comments. I have installed a form of CAPTCHA for comments called reCAPTCHA that, I hope, will help me be able to leave comments enabled for anyone who would legitimately wants to post a comment, but block some or all (at least more) of the spam. We’ll see how it works.

I finished up Assassin’s Creed (well, not all the flags or Templars, but…) and it was really a great game, I enjoyed it a lot. It definitely does not deserve some of the (low) “7” scores it was getting, something in the 8 range seems appropriate or possibly 9-ish. I am really pleased I played it. It really lived up to the idea of “Spiritual Sucessor of Prince of Persia” in my opinion, although I hope they do more “actual successor of Prince of Persia” games – I’ve loved them all (except possibly mostly unknown Prince of Persia 3D, which I did own but (thankfully) never played).

I picked up the drums for Rock Band (well, the whole kit, but I am going to sell the other pieces). The drums are fun but they are a lot more work to learn than “guitar,” I think. I can do a number of the songs on medium, but the bass drum is far from natural for me — if it was just the four drums it wouldn’t be terribly difficult, but when you throw in the bass drum pedal it becomes kind of like watching and chewing gum and patting your head… well, not quite that bad. It will be fun to learn, though.

I started playing Mass Effect. I’m about 6 hours in. Really nice game so far – great graphics, fantastic dialog, top notch voice acting, and a deep discussion system. It was a touch chatty for the first few hours, but it seems to be picking up now. I really look forward to seeing where it is going. A lot of people knocked KOTOR (which I really liked) for the battle system (which I didn’t mind), but they might enjoy Mass Effect more. Mass Effect’s battle system is far more like a standard FPS with a touch of Tactical Shooter thrown in. That said, if you just want a shooter, go get Halo 3 (or better yet, get Bioshock for something much cooler) – this game is absolutely chock full or reading and talking and listening and all that.

Happily, we woke up this morning to our first snow of the season (and more predicted in the coming days). Yay! It is looking like it will rain and be cold all night, so it might be kind of nasty in the morning, hopefully the trains will run at least close to on time.

We watched (almost all of) the first part of Tin Man on Sci-Fi. We’re enjoying it so far. At first I thought it was just going to be another “cheesy Sci-fi  channel movie” ™, but it’s not too bad so far. I’ll let you know our opinion after we finish it.

Finally, we recently had Food TV HD added to our lineup. WOOT! I am a big fan of Food TV and was always sad to see it in SD. We saw Good Eats in HD this morning and Alton has never looked better. Nice to see some of the “cable networks” finally converting to HD.

TTFN.

As of today, we have 418 days left of Bush running the country (unless he can figure out how to truly make himself a dictator in the next year or so). I meant to mention this two days ago, but didn’t get around to it. If you watch my home page, Dorffweb.com, you will found a counter so we can all count together, sort of a 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall thing, I guess. It is a simple Flash program, feel free to steal it and pass it around.

I was looking today for something on ebay.com and noticed I have been a member, buying and selling at various levels for ten years and six months — I started using the site before it was “ebay.com” – at that time it was called Auctionweb, and the url was “http://www.ebay.com/aw”. Just astonishing.

Not quite as impressive, but my Amazon.com history goes back to May, 1998. I suppose it is possible I started using it before then and they just don’t display the records, but I doubt it. I have vague memories of my first Amazon.com purchases and it was interesting to browse through the history of purchases. Time flies when you’re having fun.

We had a nice holiday. Our son came with his girlfriend – her sister lives in the city. We saw them a bit, had Thanksgiving with them and a bunch of their friends (had a great time).

I played some Guitar Hero 2 and 3, some Rock Band, a quite a bit of Assassin’s Creed. I continue to feel that Rock Band is what Guitar Hero 3 should have been. I’ve finished the Medium solo tour (with all but a couple songs as 5 stars) and am about to start the Hard tour. If you only want to buy one of the guitar games, get Rock Band, in my opinion.

We went to see Beowulf, which was incredibly impressive. It has been years since I read Beowulf (high school, if ever) so I don’t know how closely they kept to the original text, but the story was solid. The visuals were just amazing. We saw it in 3D and while the 3D was a neat gimmick, I don’t think it really added much to the movie. If you can only see it in 2D, I don’t think you’ll be missing that much. You should see it in the theater – definitely a big screen movie.

I was thinking about waiting to get Rock Band, but decided to get the “disc only” version (without the drums, guitar, and microphone). I might get the drums at a later date or buy a complete set and sell the pieces I don’t want, but the game itself is more than enough for now. The missus and I logged an hour or so with Rock Band last night, played about 8 or so of the songs. Our impression is that, in general, Rock Band is somewhat easier than Guitar Hero 3 (and 2). While later tracks are likely to become more difficult, I would say if you can competently play Hard on GH2/3 you should be able to competently play Expert on Rock Band. For some, this is a bad thing, but in my opinion Hard in GH2/3 is where I have the most fun (again, this is for me — I know a lot of people really get off on nailing Jordan on Expert – more power to them). Yes, it is an awesome feeling to pass a GH3 song on Expert, I just generally have more “fun” in GH2/3 on hard. Many, many people don’t get past easy or medium on GH2/3, so it is probably somewhat of a moot point. I think that orange button is just incredibly intimidating to some people (it was to me, for a while).

Aside from difficulty and the slightly fewer bundled songs in Rock Band, my initial impression is that I like Rock Band better. The graphics are incredibly clean and super slick. While is harder to differentiate the hammer-on, pull-off notes, I like every other aspect of the graphics and gameplay better than Guitar Hero 3. I like that in co-op you don’t have to deploy “energy” together (Star Power for the GH2/3 crowd). I like that one player failing doesn’t make the entire “band “fail, and you can actual recover the failed player (up to three times). I like that you can SEE what progress you are making in the overall score (number of stars for your performance). And the major one… I like that in co-op play, every band member gets Xbox Achievements. The fact that GH3 effectively broke co-op achievements is just terrible.

So, while I am glad I have GH2, GH3 and Rock Band, I think newcomers should probably get Rock Band with the entire kit, and possibly a second guitar to round out the set.

I’m also continuing to play Assassin’s Creed. This is a really solid game, the graphics are incredible. The major complaint of critics is that the gameplay is repetitititititve, and while that is largely true, it is still a lot of fun. The “average” review score seems to be an 8/10, which is probably pretty accurate. After I finish Assassin’s Creed, I’ll probably get Mass Effect, as I really enjoyed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

I’ve been doing a little “old school” and playing some Lumines. This continues to be a great game. If you have a 360 or a PSP and like block dropping games, go get Lumines. Go now. I’m waiting.

Still playing some Guitar Hero 3. I am on the last set of hard and some percentage through expert, but I would say, without a doubt, Guitar Hero 3 is more challenging than Guitar Hero 2. Medium wasn’t too big a deal, but on hard and expert it is more difficult. Still fun, but more challenging.  I got to play (one track) of Rock Band at Best Buy last night — lots of fun. I am torn between buying the bundle with everything and just the game. Still undecided. Is it worth it to get yet another guitar (although somewhat fancier) and the drum kit? Do I want to play the drums? I haven’t decided, yet.

Finally, I picked up Assassin’s Creed. Good game so far, great story telling. Drop dead gorgeous graphics. I haven’t made up my mind if it is great or just good yet. Will keep you updated. It isn’t the >amazing< game that BioShock was. It isn’t Prince of Persia, it isn’t Splinter Cell, but it is good. We’ll see.

This weekend we’re going to a Danish Christmas Fair in Brooklyn with some friends. Here is somebody ‘s write up of it from last year but no other big plans for the weekend. Going to spend Thanksgiving with family and friends, should be nice. Maybe play some games, see some movies. No specific plans that I’m aware of.

We saw two movies this weekend. The first one was produced by Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me and 30 Days fame called What Would Jesus Buy focusing on American consumerism. Although it didn’t “break new ground,” it is a humorous and well made movie. It opens in NYC this coming weekend and should be in art-house theaters in the very near future. Its a good “make you think” movie that comes just at the right time, just before Christmas where consumerism runs rampant. I would highly recommend it to, umm, just about everyone. Watch the trailer at the web site, find the movie and go see it.

The second movie was No Country for Old Men by the Coen brothers. If you know me, you know I am a big fan of the Coen brothers movies. This is a very solid, well crafted film. We enjoyed it a lot, definitely worth seeing and I would say you should see it in the theater. Just so you know, it is more like Blood Simple than like Fargo – more gritty, less humorous. I thought they could have been just a touch more illuminating toward the end of the movie, but the missus didn’t have the same opinion, so I probably just looked away at the wrong time or something. I was expecting “one more scene” before the ending bit, but it just wasn’t there – they alluded to what happened but they didn’t show it, which seemed odd for a movie that left nothing else to the imagination. It has a fair amount of violence and some blood, but if you like the Coen brothers you shouldn’t let a little blood keep you from seeing it. One side note, if you are from Albuquerque you should take a close look at the El Paso scenes (toward the end of the movie) 🙂

If you have been following along, you know I have owned every PVR (personal video recorder) ever made (only a very slight exaggeration)… well, every PVR but a TiVo. It isn’t that I had anything against a TiVo, it just didn’t have 480p / component output and I wanted the best possible picture on my HD TV. I have convinced more people to buy TiVos than you can shake a stick at (not that I recommend shaking sticks at people), so it is kind of funny that I have never actually owned a “TiVo”. This all changed last week when I decided to buy a TiVo HD.

The TiVo Series 3 is a great box, but a bit pricey for what you get. The TiVo HD is much more reasonably priced ($253 at Amazon) and had all the features I wanted, including an eSATA port so you can add more hard drive space to it, but the eSATA port was disabled… until software version 9.2. When TiVo announced the  eSATA port would be enabled in 9.2, I knew it was time to finally go TiVo. I ordered the unit and made an appointment with my cable company to have cablecards installed. The unit arrived as expected, worked nicely, and the cablecard installation was relatively painless — it took about two hours, which was probably able double what it should have taken, but one of the cablecards was faulty.

So, I have now had HD programming on my TiVo HD for two days and I couldn’t be happier. I really dreaded every time I had to use the Scientific Atlanta 8300HD, in contrast the TiVo HD is an absolute treat. I am still exploring all the things it will do and how nicely they have polished the interface. If you have an HDTV, you should really consider the TiVo HD.  I can honestly say it is the most pleasant PVR experience going and isn’t lacking any features that I can think of (short of automatic transcoding, but you can do it manually so thats good enough for now, I guess).