Month: March 2011

Last Month in Reading

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It’s time for the monthly review of the books I read last month.   Quite the variety in terms of subjects and quality.  Still a good month for in terms of number of books read.

Opening Atlantis, Harry Turtledove

The first of Turtledove’s trilogy of Atlantis alternate history novels, Opening Atlantis is an adequate read.  It is not mind blowing or anything, but it is sufficiently competent and entertaining to be worth reading.  The novel tells the story of an alternate history where a large island, or small continent, (I’ve since realized that it is the East Cost pulled off of America) sits between Europe and America.  Dubbed Atlantis by its discoverers, the novel follows it is colonization up through its equivalent of the French-Indian War through the eyes of the original English settler and his descendants.

One problem with it is that it covers too much time and is too much of a history to really develop the characters.  This is very much a novel of plot and not character, but the viewpoint is too close to the characters to give a wide, history like view. Another problem is that Atlantis’ history too closely mirrors America’s.  What is the point of an alternate history when it sticks so close to actual history?  This is more of a mild disappointment than a big problem, though.  With all of history to use as a canvas, Turtledove transplants what we already know with some cosmetic changes.  I hope the latter books deliver on the promise that Opening Atlantis nearly squanders.

Continue reading →

The Best Games Ever

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Recently, this conversation and this blog post gave me the idea to post my own 50 favorite games list.  The forum thread asks, “When was the last time you played you 50th favorite game?”  (Now it has been revised to better reflect the true nature of the question; how often do you play that games you liked but did not love?)  So, I thought I would list my 50 favorite games.  While some thought did go into this list, it is off the top of my head, so it is very possible there is some oversight and I left off some game the should be on this list.  Of course, if I liked it so much then I probably would not have forgotten it.  Here is the list, in mostly alphabetical order:

  1. Beyond Good and Evil
  2. Chrono Cross
  3. Chrono Trigger
  4. Dragon Quest 4
  5. Dragon Quest 5
  6. Earthbound
  7. Final Fantasy 6
  8. Final Fantasy 9
  9. Final Fantasy Tactics
  10. Final Fantasy XII
  11. Ico
  12. Kirby Super Star
  13. Legend of Zelda:  A Link to the Past
  14. Legend of Zelda:  Ocarina of Time
  15. Legend of Zelda:  Majora’s Mask
  16. Legend of Zelda:  Wind Waker
  17. Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
  18. Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
  19. Mega Man 2
  20. Mega Man 3
  21. Mega Man 9
  22. Metal Gear Solid 3
  23. Metroid Prime
  24. New Super Mario Bros. Wii
  25. No More Heroes
  26. No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle
  27. Ogre Battle 64:  Person of Lordly Caliber
  28. Okami
  29. Persona 3:  FES
  30. Persona 4
  31. Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney
  32. Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney:  Justice for All
  33. Professor Layton and the Curious Village
  34. Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box
  35. Professor Layton and the Unwound Future
  36. Resident Evil 4
  37. Retro Game Challenge
  38. River City Ransom
  39. Shadow of the Colossus
  40. Soul Caliber 2
  41. Star Fox 64
  42. Suikoden 2
  43. Suikoden 5
  44. Super Mario Bros. 3
  45. Super Mario World
  46. Super Mario 64
  47. Super Mario Galaxy
  48. Super Mario Galaxy 2
  49. Super Metroid
  50. Super Smash Brothers Brawl

I’m happy with this list.  It is an accurate representation of what I like and what I play.  Lots of Nintendo classic franchises, Mario and Zelda etc., and lots of RPGs.  (Now that I look at it, I realize I completely ignored computer games, which would have added at least a few games, like The Sims 2, Red Alert 2 and Baldur’s Gate 2.)  These are not the only games I play, but they are the ones that tend to resonate with me.

How often do I replay these games?  Most of them I’ve played through multiple times.  The shorter games, like Star Fox 64 or any NES game on the list, I play often.  If I can sit and beat a game in less than 2 hours, I am more likely to come back to it.  With the exception of the Persona games, I have also played all of the RPGs at least twice, although for some I haven’t played them in years.  The only games I do not see myself replaying are the Professor Layton games.  Don’t get me wrong, I love Professor Layton, but the whole game is based on solving puzzles and I’ve already solved them.  Maybe one day I will forget the solutions, but if I went back now it would be rote and boring.  I haven’t, however, played most of these games in the last couple of years.  I have played tons of new games, but my old favorites have sat on the shelf.  Which is a big change from how I’m used to doing things.  I rarely bought new games in high school; instead obsessively playing the ones I had.  I think I’ll fire up my Wii and play through Star Fox 64 or Mega Man 3 tonight.

NFL Labor Talks

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So that NFL Lockout seems to be a sure thing now, huh?  As football fans we can only hope that it doesn’t last long enough to derail the season, but I wouldn’t bet on that.  Maybe the change to the status quo with the NFLPA decertifying and the CBA expiring will shake things up enough that a deal will be done.  I do not have that much faith in sense of the NFL owners.  The owners’ greed doesn’t seem to have limits and the players seem to be rightfully refusing to budge.  What the owners want is not good for the game, it is good for their pocketbooks.

A friend of mine recently told me he sided with the owners.  I was confused.  How could any outside party side with the people who are screwing things up?  While the Owners do have some points, this conflict is motivated purely by greed.  This isn’t the hockey lockout of 2004-05.  Those owners had legitimate complaint, because the NHL was losing money paying the players much more than they could afford.  Changes had to be made and while I’m not sure how long it will take them to recover from losing a season, the league is better off now.  But the NFL is making money, its making money hand over fist.  The contracts of NFL players are not outrageous; they are fair based on the income of the league.  The exception to this is rookies.  A rookie wage scale is a good idea.  There is no reason Sam Bradford should be making as much money as Peyton Manning and Tom Brady.  I know Bradford has already shown he is the real deal, but I do not think it is good for the game to tie so much money into unproven players.  Ideally, the lost rookie pay would then go to veterans, proven contributors.  NFL salaries look like, and are, a lot of money, but most players last less than 5 years.  They do not have many years of raking in that dough.  The owners make money every year, and not a single NFL owner is hurting for cash.

From what I understand, the NFL makes about 9 billion dollars a year.  The owners get 1 billion off the top.  The remaining 8 billion dollars is split 60/40 between the players and owners.  Which means that the players get 4.8 billion dollars and the owners get 3.2, plus the 1 for 4.2.  It works out to roughly 53% to the players and 47% to the owners.  What the owners want it to take 2 billion off the top, and then split the rest 60/40.  That would flip the money each side is making, giving the player 4.2 billion and the owners 4.8.  The players counter proposal I heard, and this may not actually be true, was a straight 50/50 split, which the owners, of course, rejected.  The players have shown willingness to compromise, to give up some of what they have, just not the amount the greedy owners want.  The owners seem to be banking on the league losing popularity.  If revenue goes up, eventually the players will be making more again with that 60/40 split.  But if revenue falls, then the owners automatic 2 billion swings the split in their favor.

To go along with reducing the players pay, the owners also want to add 2 more games to the regular season.  So the players get to destroy their bodies more and make less money.  The thought of more football sounds good, but think of the injuries the players would face.  Teams already end the years with upwards of 15 players on injured reserve, how many more would be added by two more games.  I know the owners want to do away with extraneous pre-season games, but a longer regular season should mean the players get more money, not less.

It’s hard to care about the financial troubles of people making as much as both the players and owners in the NFL do.  To me it comes down to who is driving this lockout.  It is the owners.  They want more.  Always more, and the players are right to do their best to deny them.  Fans who are with the owners, please answer these questions for me: What the hell?  Really?  Why?    I just hope everyone involved comes to their senses before games are lost.

Clinging Together

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Tactics Ogre is a remake of a SNES game, but it still has plenty of progressive features.  Tactics Ogre has always been an ambitious game, but the limits of both the previous systems it has been released on, the SNES and an apparently borked PS1 port, and of it adherence to some frustrating design choices has held the game back from it greatness.  It is the predecessor to Final Fantasy Tactics, and the similarities are apparent.  They play almost identically.  While Final Fantasy Tactics largely improved and refined what the game did, Tactics Ogre is actually more ambitious in one category: the story.  One of the draws, or flaws, of Final Fantasy Tactics is its plot, a political drama that plays out like a Shakespearian tragedy (This is not meant to mean that there is a similarity in quality, only in tone).  Tactics Ogre’s story is largely the same, but it gives the player to ability to choose his path through the game, resulting in 8 different endings.  Unfortunately, to sees these ending you would have to play through the game 8 times.  There is also a progressive leveling system, unlike any I’ve encountered before but so simple a change that I’m surprised I’ve never seen it before.

With the new PSP remake, this is no longer the case.  In the Warren Report, the games ludicrously detailed repository of world history and character profiles and information that is entirely unnecessary but largely interesting, there is a feature called the Workd.  In battle there is the Chariot, this allows the player to rewind the battle in case things go badly.  The World works along similar lines,  it allows the player to go back and choose another path, changing the response the player made when it first occurred.  Therefore, instead of multiple playthroughs, now you can play to the end, then go back and see each branching point to see how it played out the other way.  While some progress may be lost–I haven’t reached the end and unlocked it yet so I don’t know–it allows players to see much more of the game easier.

The leveling system is brilliant and removes much of the hassle of grinding from the game.  Instead of each character leveling independently, the classes gain levels and every character in that class is that level.  Characters must still learn skills, with skill points that are accumulated separately from experience.  So new characters may be the same level as the old hands, allowing them to function in battle, but the will lack the accumulated skills of the others.  This allows the player to get characters quickly up to speed, but rewards them for smart use of skill points.  The new system is not perfect, though.  When each new level opens up it starts at level one.  Just like when raising to a character to match other established ones, the new classes will be mostly useless for several battles.  This is exacerbated by most random battles allowing only six units on the battlefield instead of the 10 allowed in story battles.  But this is a minor speed bump in an otherwise terrific system.

These two features make Tactics Ogre:  Let Us Cling Together more than a musty old SNES game with a facelift, but a new and original experience.  And an early favorite for game of the year.