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Playstation Network Trophies on Facebook

Now all can know of your gaming
greatness.

“Should I activate the PS3 trophy posts on FB?” a friend asked.  I answered quite strongly in the affirmative.  All of my social-network-capable friends and family get a little ping each time I knock out an achievement, download a demo, or buy a new song for Rock Band.  This can’t be any more annoying than updates on people’s mafias, right?

The response, in the main, has been positive.  There has been some teasing to be sure, but far more conversations have been prompted:

  • so what do you think? is it all it’s cracked up to be?
  • what are you playen (sic) bro
  • hey they dont have this demo in the UK 🙁
  • How far have you gotten? I’m actually having dreams now about assasinating (sic) fat Italian dudes via a blade to the face.
 See?  People talking about your favorite hobby.  Now Blizzard needs to add this function to Warcraft…
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myNotebook: Blue for the DSi

So close to being truly useful.

Come on, Nintendo. There should really be no need for me to carry around a notebook anymore. That valuable pocket space should be reserved for the DSi only.

The latest in a string of weekly updates carefully designed to bleed my wallet a few bucks (sorry, I mean “DSi Points”) at a time tells of a new lifestyle app — myNotebook: Blue. (Apparently Green and Red are to follow at later dates. Why? no clue)

Now, this is exactly the direction in which the DSiware apps should be headed. You’ve got a great touch screen, wireless, and an SD slot; there’s no reason the DSi can’t be used for increasingly useful purposes. myNotebook, unfortunately, falls a bit short of the mark.

It’s a scratchpad. A nice scratchpad, to be sure, and useful as such. Multiple pens styles and colors, auto-storing pages, and a simple interface see to that. And for two dollars, might as well go for it.

Notetaking nuts will be a little disappointed. Is there a memory limit? Why can’t I use the DSi’s keypad? I want to archive my notes — how? Can I organize them? Again, as a temporary scratchpad, myNotebook is fine, but I want a little more.

I’ve complained about this before. Just take MS Notepad and put in on the DS. Let me type away, then either send my file wirelessly or store it to my SD card. Do this for me, Uncle N, and I will never be seen without your product in my hands. Perhaps a future myLifeCollected app will fulfill this seemingly simple need.

And another thing — why do I have to unlock different ruling styles? What do you want from me?

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At long last


Long-time B A Starters will remember the Great Debate over whether or not videogames are art. After much discussion and refining of definitions, my statement was “not yet”. Maybe they can be, but no one’s come up with anything so far that makes me say “yes”.

I’m pissed at myself for not knowing anything about Jason Rohrer until Alanna lent me December’s Esquire. I read the article and played Passage, and now can quite firmly state that there’s at least one person out there making art in this format. (The person who made The Majesty of Colors counts too — a post for a later date)

Before you go any further, I recommend giving Passage a play. I read the summary in the Esquire article before I played it and wish I hadn’t. Still, despite knowing the point before going into it, I still had an emotional reaction to the game.

Passage provides you with choices. Do I hunt for treasure chests, or do I explore the world? Should I marry? If I do, it becomes harder to get the treasure but more rewarding to explore. But no matter what you choose, you will subtly age and die. Unceremoniously, suddenly, irrevocably.

For the first time in a lifetime of videogaming, I found myself reflecting. I have had a lot of reason to consider my choices recently — career, personal, spiritual — and this 5-minute game resonated with my meditations. It’s an interactive Beethoven’s fifth; go ahead and make your silly little choices — fate will win and they will have done nothing to change that. All you can influence is your own experience, and try to do as much with your 5 as possible.

I’ll be keeping an eye on what this gent produces. If you find anyone else out there working to communicate emotion through the interactivity of videogames, do please throw a comment my way.

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Juicy


When I heard Penny Arcade was going to step out of the critic’s bubble and release an actual game, I expected a goofy title containing a surfeit of dick jokes, oblique Lovecraft references, and general oddity. Upon downloading On the Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness: Episode One, I was pleased to find that not only were the aforementioned qualities to be found in abundance, but that the game happens to be one of the most enjoyable I have ever played. Buy it right away.

The real key is the battle system. Rainslick uses a combo turn-based and real-time approach (like FFX-2 or FFXII) and features limit breaks, summons, and a quick-twitch block ability which cuts down on the unavoidable finger-drumming time. Much, much better than I expected from a $20 game.

Naturally, the art is going to be a major part of a title based on a webcomic. I would almost compare the experience to Okami, in that the sense of playing the comic comes through very well.

In addition, Rainslick seems tailor-made to avoid my pet peeves and tickle my pet fancies. For example, you can save anywhere. Screw that ‘save-point’ bullshit. There’s stuff to unlock, stuff to find, stuff to upgrade. All kinds of stuff.

One note: many reviews describe the game as steampunk. This is not true. Zero steampunk. #1 – It’s set in the 20’s. #2 – None of the playable characters are scientists. #3 – No brass. #4 – Too many mimes.

And how does one not love a game that features the Fruit Fucker 2000?

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On the Fly

Damn it, Nintendo. You came frighteningly close to changing the world.
Why? “Why?” I ask you. Why could you not go the extra step? You make the DS. You give it a touch screen and some decent processing power. You wave that special wand of yours, the one that has “The Breaker of Ground” etched down the side, and bless the thing with wireless connectivity.

Visions of people on subways having pick-up games of Mario Basketball during their commutes, of people at coffee-shops wi-fiing it up to race against their friends in Budapest, Lima, and Des Moines, of heply-dressed urban teens walking down clean sidewalks with your machines in their long hands flickered in your eyes. A gaming revolution.

As what I assume must have been a throw-away feature, you toss in Pictochat, the software that sets up local chatroom so kids can IM each other during recess. And here’s where you flub it up. You can now compose messages on your handheld device, but the wi-fi doesn’t work for it. Users can’t IM each other over the internet. I can type up an email, but can’t send it to anyone.

I’ve done a decent amount of composition on PDAs. It’s great — you can get a few lines down wherever you are. My PDA went all fritzy recently and had to be sent to the Heaven of Broken Electronics That An Unmarried Geek Would Keep In a Box Somewhere But A Married Geek Throws Away. And here I am with a handheld electronic device with a primitive word processor on it, and damned if I want to keep what I write. One half as expensive as a PDA, and which runs games with great awesomeness. I’m not even asking that you put a calendar etc. in there (which of course you should). Just unlock the stuff you’ve already got.

Fie on you, Nintendo.