I was setting up a Twitter account for a blog client today and got this Turing test:
I’m just saying.
TalkTalkChina Is Back!
TalkTalkChina is back! I don’t know if the dearly-missed D’s are behind it, but the content is up on a new Blogspot home.
Posted in Raleigh
Tagged bad China day, China, China Blogs, other bloggers, other blogs, Raleigh, talk talk china
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Pretty, Pretty FusionFall
FusionFall is gorgeous.
Wait, that’s not how to start a review. Let me try again.
FusionFall, the new MMO from Cartoon Network, takes place a few years in the future. Players must help the Cartoon Network crowd, including older versions of Dexter and Deedee and the Powerpuff girls (as well as some other faces I’m too out-of-touch to recognize) must try to save Earth from the evil overlord Fuse of the evil green Planet Fusion. Combat was blood-free, zapping clearly-defined bad guys, as is appropriate for a kid’s game.
And this game is gorgeous. Did I mention how pretty?
I loved the anime, teenage versions of the PowerPuff girls. Player characters are also anime-influenced. Character creation offers a lot of options, not quite City Of Heroes level, but much more customizable than the average MUD. By doing this, FusionFall avoids the common MMORPG problem of having dozens of identical avatars running around, an annoyance I remember in EverQuest2 and sometimes in low-level WoW characters.
Later on, characters can collect nanos, superdeformed minis of Cartoon Network characters, that act as power-ups or have special attacks, and are also really cute and addictively collectible in a Pokemon sort of way.
I’ve been playing in the “closed” beta for a while (quotation marks because everyone I know who signed up, got in), and I just wasn’t crazy about the actual gameplay. It was the usual MMO mechanics of completing a mission for a reward, simplified further by adding a little red dot on the map for your destination.The controls were a bit clunky, the problem with clicking on everything to activate is that sometimes you might not want to do the default action.
I really didn’t like the amount of time spent in arcade-style jumping. I don’t really enjoy arcade-style games, and while I like the evil-green-goo from a story perspective, this just isn’t the type of challenge I like.
But back to the pretty. SO PRETTY. I played a while after I lost interest in the gameplay because the futuristic world, with tech toys, evil green slime and teenager Powerpuff Girls, was just so gorgeous.
Overall, I felt about FusionFall like I did about City of Heroes. It was amazingly attractive — I really loved seeing the CN kids as teens — but after I’m done looking at all the gorgeousness, and making a dozen pretty avatars, I think I’m going to play WarCraft.
Posted in Game Reviews, Gaming Culture
Tagged beta, cartoon network, e3, FusionFall, Game Reviews, games, Grace, LOST, tech, WarCraft, World of WarCraft, WoW
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Ciao Bella Review
I got to review the resource-management life sim Ciao Bella on Casual Gamer Chick:
Ciao Bella opens with the protagonist, Elena, getting a call from her would-be mother-in-law, asking her to hurry up and get started on the grandchildren. So, it’s clearly not going to be one of those escapist fantasy games for me.
Posted in Game Reviews, Gaming Culture, Raleigh
Tagged Casual Gamer Chick, casual games, Ciao Bella, Game Reviews, games, Raleigh
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The Wonders Of Technology
“Can you get on Facebook and give me Josh and Terri’s address?” I asked Stick a week before Christmas. We were sitting in the living room right before Christmas, with a gorgeous fire going, as I prepared our very first joint Christmas cards. I got lovely seasonal ones, festive without excessive Santa greed, non-denominational without being cheerlessly politically correct.
“Sure,” Stick said, loading Facebook. Thank goodness for Facebook, because otherwise people like me who move a lot and are totally irresponsible would have trouble keeping up with everyone. “Look, there’s a Burger King perfume! Can you believe that?”
“Can I have Hugo and Diana‘s address too?” I wished some of our classics friends a good Saturnalia, and some pagan friends a good Solstice.
“Sorry, I got sidetracked. What did you need? Hey, look, movie scenes done in stick figures!”
I wrote a card to Isabelle.
“Whoa! Listen! Which 80’s movie are you?”
“Now I need Josh and Terri, Hugo and Diana, and I need the King-Learys’ address too.” (Note: I am often accused of exaggerating on this blog, so I’m letting you know that I did not make that up. I’ve been trying to convince them to hyphenate for years, since the King-Leary wedding.) “The Egglestons, and Steph and Jeff, my cousins, and both your brothers.”
“Ok, just as soon as I take this quiz to find out which Lord Of The Rings character I am.”
Maybe I ought to get an address book.
Search Terms
Watching Twilight for the second time, I noticed all sorts of things I missed the first time. Edward was even hotter, and the dialogue was even more stilted. And the second time through the Google montage, I started to wonder what keywords Bella would use to get all the sites about the Cold Ones. Yeah, I go to watch teen vampire drama and start thinking about search engines.
The Independence of Miss Mary Bennett
Now, I love Pride and Prejudice.The story is an understated comedy of formal manners and romantic expectations, plus nerdy girls everywhere agree that Mr Darcy is a catch. I love it because it also shows that the clever use of sarcasm can make any difficult situation better.
I was excited for some more brilliant Elizabeth / Darcy banter, and I was interested in seeing how the relationship matured. Would seventeen years of marriage to Elizabeth get Darcy laughing and lighthearted, or would she find that the dark, sarcastic, brooding type can be hard to live with? Are Jane and Bingley cheated by every servant, as Mr. Bennett predicted at the end of Pride and Prejudice?
I was hoping that bookish Mary would have some bluestocking friends and perhaps meet a nice professor or author for her love interest. Instead, she is kidnapped first by highwaymen, then by Darcy’s brutish secret half-brother, and finally spends most of the book held hostage by, um, a human-sacrifice cult living in the huge underground caves near Pemberley! (The Darcys just have endless skeletons in their closets, don’t they?). I had to check a couple times to make sure I was reading an actual novel and not internet fanfic.
The understated comedy was gone. Instead, characters with the same names as my beloved Bennett sisters had emotional blowup after emotional blowup. A blunt and uncontrolled Elizabeth Bennett Darcy shouting mediocre insults? Huh? Antisocial Darcy — who goes by the cutesy nickname Fitz — is networking with the house of lords as part of his campaign for prime minister, and trying to keep both his thuggish half-brother and mad, alcoholic Lydia Bennett Wickham a secret. One clever moment, when Caroline Bingley is dispatched to deal with pushover Jane and Bigley’s unruly children, is canceled out by bizarre actions by characters we know and love.
Writing a sequel to such a well-loved story would be difficult no matter what, and subject to readers insisting that that’s not what Jane / Elizabeth / Darcy / Mary would really have done. But, come on, a human sacrifice cult? In Derbyshire?
Posted in Books, Raleigh
Tagged Book review, Books, caesar, Darcy, huh?, nerd, pride and prejudice, Raleigh, reading, Rome, The Independence Of Miss Mary Bennett
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Repeating Decimals
For some reason, we’ve been having a problem in the apartment where we can’t both use wireless internet at the same time. Maybe there’s not enough room in the tubes for both of us? This is a crisis in a nerd household, so Stick got on his laptop to fix it.
“Meg, pick a number between 1 and 100 for the last digit of your dedicated IP,” he said, almost finished.
I told him.
He looked up from his laptop and rolled his eyes at me.
“What?” I asked. “You didn’t say integer.”
Princess Bride Game
Although I was super excited to get my review copy of the Princess Bride game, I wasn’t sure whether I would automatically like this game because it’s based on the Princess Bride, or hate it because it’s based on the Princess Bride but different. (see also: why I dislike movies based on books I liked)
The Princess Bride Game is divided into 5 games, separated by the grandfather’s narration and animated cutscenes from the movie. The first one, As You Wish, is absolutely brilliant. You play as Wesley, doing farm chores. Your time management objectives are interrupted when Buttercup shows up and wants you to do something for her. I’ve always though Buttercup was kind of a pain with her imperious requests, so the game was true to the spirit of the movie and fun to play.
In the second part, players match wits with Vizzini. The difficulty level reminded me that I’m playing a kids’ game. While you play, Vizzini shout funny insults at you. Wallace Shawn — the actor who made “Inconceivable!” famous — is actually the voice actor here, which makes it really better. I was really impressed with the voice talent that Worldwide Biggies got, including Mandy Patinkin and Robin Wright (Penn).
The third part was the Fireswamp, which was my least favorite part of the movie and, coincidentally, my least favorite minigame. I’m not really into the whole genre of jumping and hitting gems for points. Arcade-style Wesley and Buttercup were cute, but not cute enough to make this part fun. I also don’t like that Wesley gets the sword and Buttercup can, um, jump high. I tried to use it as a combat jump but an ROUS bit me.
The fourth part is a visit to Miracle Max, a hidden objects game (of the good secret-clues variety) and a potion-mixing minigame. On the first level, this was so unchallenging that it was almost boring, but later on I started to feel like I was brewing in Snape’s class. Miracle Max and As You Wish are both worth playing long after you’ve completed the objectives, even if Miracle Max did sound like someone attempting a Billy Crystal impression.
The final game, Storming the Castle was a letdown. The challenge is to re-watch the intro and outro movies and look for specific items to build a Rube Goldberg seige engine. You’re given the outline of the item, and you need to add it to your inventory. Maybe if I hadn’t played the game in one sitting (and if I hadn’t seen the movie a billion times), I’d have liked the story recap, but instead I felt like I was being forced to watch cutscenes in a mode that’s least conductive to enjoying their art.
Overall, As You Wish is the strongest section in this casual adventure game. Without the Princess Bride connection, some parts of the game would be average casual games (the Fireswamp being a particularly weak spot), but the playing as dear Princess Bride characters kept me entertained. The Princess Bride Game keeps all the charm and appeal of the fantasy romance we loved in the book and the movie.
Posted in Books, Game Reviews, Raleigh
Tagged Books, casual games, ESL, Game Reviews, games, movies, Princess Bride Game, RACL, Raleigh, time management, worldwide biggies
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A Nice Family Christmas
Stick and I went to my parents’ for the traditional ham and latkes Christmas dinner, which I’d missed last year in favor of our Jenny Lou’s Christmas feast. My cousins gave us an electric kettle, with the part about “automatic shutoff” circled and underlined. Stick also got a teakettle from my aunt, with the instructions that he may let me use it, if he wants to. Because in my family? Almost burning down the house is funny.
Posted in New Jersey
Tagged family, Jenny Lou, my family is crazy, New Jersey, Stick
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