Atonement, Dan in Real Life
Two really good movies. Atonement was fantastic, I thought the writing and acting were superb. I almost wonder if it wasn't robbed of Best Picture - I liked it a little bit more than No Country for Old Men. Dan in Real Life was a nice, funny movie. Would recommend both highly.
Web 2.0 meets GTA IV
Looking forward to GTA and Social Club, their online presence for the game, has me more psyched. I love the idea of games extending their presence to the web where you can show off your accomplishments to friends and continue to experience the game even though you aren't actively playing it. Depending on how abstracted the online widgets and merit badges are, I can see lots of hooks into this from Facebook, Myspace, etc...
* LCPD Police Blotter -- A virtual map and tracker of single-player criminal activity logged in Liberty City from the aggregated data of millions of connected players - showing the most dangerous areas of town, most commonly used weapons and more.
* The Story Gang -- This special single-player leaderboard recognizes players who complete Niko Bellic's main story arc of Grand Theft Auto IV - The leaderboard ranks players according to the total amount of playing time it's taken to complete the story, as well as a historical rank by who has completed it first. Members of this club will receive special online widgets and merit badges marking all of their in-game accomplishments.
* The 100% Club -- Watch to see who will be the first to complete 100% of the game. The first ten people to be identified on the Social Club as reaching 100% will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative 'key to the city' to mark their accomplishment. In the future, the 100% Club will then carry a historical leaderboard showing rankings of who has completed 100% of a game in the shortest span of playing hours.
* The Hall of Fame -- This area will dynamically recognize those singularly elite players who have reached the top of the hill on various statistical leaderboards, and will also contain a personal awards display of special in-game landmarks and successes in Social Club competitions.
* The Liberty City Marathon -- A ranking of special physical milestones achieved in the game - from the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam - to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped. There will be additional special marathon-based competitions in the future from this area as well.
All good stuff.
Track your GTA IV stats with Rockstar Games Social Club - Joystiq
Getting my paella on
I don't like tapas. Overpriced, small portions of spanish-styled dim sum. I'd rather just go to dim sum which has food I love and is cheaper. But paella... that's different. And some of the best paella I've ever had is at tapas places.
This weekend, we're going out to dinner and I definitely want paella. We're either going to Jaleo in Bethesda, which we've been to before and I know the paella will be good, or La Tasca in Rockville Town Center - a new place that we'd like to try.
Last weekend, we took the future in laws to dinner at Greystone Grill, also at Rockville Town Center, where Megen's short rib was pretty remarkable.
I will now continue to fantasize about paella for the rest of the day and most of tomorrow until dinner.
Enchanted
We watched Enchanted this past weekend with future in laws. Surprisingly good, lots of spoofing and inside jokes if you're familiar with Disney animated films. Plus I'm a closet dance number/musical fan.
All South Park episodes free
This is pretty awesome - all South Park episodes are now available online to watch for free. I've been thinking about hooking my PC up to the Plasma so we can watch movies on Netflix or TV shows on Hulu. Many networks rebroadcast their shows online now too including ABC. Good stuff.
Come on Down to South Park and Watch the Shows Online � NewTeeVee
Here's a clip from one of my favorite episodes:
Burnout Paradise City
I have to admit - when Burnout Paradise starts up and Guns N Roses' Paradise City kicks up, yeah, it's pretty awesome.
New TV shows - w00t
New episodes of TV shows coming! Here are the shows I'm most looking forward to:
The Wire!!!!! It's over. I don't get HBO so I'm waiting for the DVD set of the final season. This is my favorite show of all time. Yeah, I said it. My all time favorite.
Battlestar Galactica - April 4th. The final season. Last season was uneven and I'm glad they've decided to stop after one more year. The first two seasons is some of best TV you'll ever see.
Eli Stone - I'm really enjoying this new show. It has a nice warmth to it and I really like the characters.
Lost - is back and pretty good. Not quite as awesome as it was the first year, but it is good again.
The Soup - What? You don't watch The Soup? Why watch crappy TV when The Soup will do it for you and show you all the awesome highlights!
The Office - when is the Office coming back? boooo!
House - Love House. Gets formulaic sometimes, but you know what - The A Team was the same thing over and over again and I loved every minute of it.
How I Met Your Mother - this is a funniest show on TV, IMO.
Starbucks Announces New Upgrades
Great news. I can get Soy without paying extra now.
One of the broadest changes is a loyalty-rewards program starting in mid-April for anyone who buys a Starbucks card and registers it online. Participants will get free refills on drip coffee, a free cup of coffee when they buy a bag of whole bean coffee, two free hours of Wi-Fi a day and free upgrades — including syrups, soy milk, and extra whip cream — on all lattes.Starbucks Announces New Upgrades - TIME
Sad.
Has it really been 5 years already? Wow, that is depressing.
Five Years In Iraq - washingtonpost.com
Hardy Boys, Elmer Fudds and Don DeLillo's
I apologize in advance for how immature I am because this video makes me laugh.
Emil's OpEd in Gameinformer
Latest GameInformer (April 2008) magazine has a great op-ed by Emil Pagliarulo, the lead designer on my current project, Fallout 3.
Couple quotes from the piece that I liked:
When I was a kid growing up in South Boston, the trashcans in our backyard were dragged to the curb for pickup, every week, by a homeless man named Vinnie Trashki. Yeah, I know. "Trashki." Bitter irony or cruel nickname?I firmly believe the most important story in a video game is the one the player is telling to himself as he plays the game. Its one of the reasons why open ended sandbox games like the Sims games, Grant Theft Auto, and our own Elder Scrolls series are so awesome. No one experiencies them the same way.
...creating fiction for a video game poses one very distinct challenge - you've got to accept that the whole of your writing - characters, narrative, everything - is simply not as important as the gameplay...
In fact, this is the reason why I can't go back to an old save to play downloadable content for Mass Effect. It breaks the narrative I have of my character - the character that I created - to play the game.
Good read. Check your newstands! (err, well, your local Gamestop...)
Glum cat
Apollo Justice game, try it out!
This is pretty slick. I'm a big fan of the Phoenix Wright games. Still working my way through the series. Tight squeeze but the screen is all you need to see, I think.
New Orleans
Taking a long weekend - flying out to New Orleans tomorrow to visit Erin, Megen's maid of honor. Good food, casinos, beignets, etc...Looking forward to weekend off, as I haven't had a day off in almost a month.
Cash back on gas rebate now!
We use our American Express True Earnings card for everything b/c we get such a great cash rebate back (3% restaurants, 2% travel, 1% everything else), and now we get 3% of all gas purchases. How cool is that? The nice thing is the annual fee for the card counts as our annual membership to Costco. The rebate does come as a check usable only at Costco - however, Costco lets you redeem it for cash.
I won't be getting Mass Effect's downloadable content... yet
Mass Effect's first downloadable content was released today, Bring Down the Sky. I've already finished the game and started over to try out another type of character for my 2nd playthrough and figured this would be a good way to experience any DLC.
However, I won't be purchasing the new DLC yet.
Why not? For Oblivion (and Morrowind, for that matter), our number one rule for downloadable content and expansion packs is that the player should be able to experience the new content at anytime. No restrictions. It helps that Oblivion is an open world game with very few times where the player can't stop what they are currently doing and just head off somewhere else - say to check out a new location or quest that just appeared from a new download they just purchased off Xbox Live.
Mass Effect is not an open world game. At least not for the first few hours. It does open up eventually to allow you to explore the galaxy, but it takes a while to get there, especially if you are a completist like I am - I am loathed to skip side quests, the thought of unearned XP irks me.
So while Mass doesn't put up any requirements to play the new DLC, the actual structure of the original game does present a barrier. In fact, its not just the beginning, but also if you've reached a point towards the end where the game's final missions start, you also won't be able to leave and play the new content.
But, surely, you have saved games from your first playthrough? Yes, yes I do. That just doesn't work for me. Playing a game is a linear experience for me. It is one of the reasons why I love open world games like Oblivion or Grand Theft Auto. My gameplay experience is unique to me, to the way I like to play games. And going back to older saved games to play new content just doesn't feel right to me -- its all one long continuous gameplay story for any character I create.
It is a problem that I have with any game that ends, that I've completed with my own custom character, yet if they offer new content, I can't just go back to an earlier save. I have to experience the content as if it were part of the original. That's what RPGs mean for me, I guess.
So, I will not be purchasing Bring Down the Sky yet. My 2nd character is only about 30 minutes or so into the game so I won't be leaving the Citadel for a few more hours since I'll need to replay through most of the quests - I might skip a few, but not many. And since I don't play my Xbox 360 every night, it will take me a while to get out of the Citadel. Fortunately for Mass Effect, Lost Odyssey is starting to bore me so I'm looking forward to getting back into Mass.
BTW, I like the dramatic name for the download. Our DLC titles are straightforward, with the exception of Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles. Most of our other ones -- Horse Armor Pack, Wizard's Tower, etc... -- kinda boring, but at least, there is no confusion as to what you are buying!
Vista...no thanks.
Great article that goes into details about Vista problems that Microsoft executives are experiencing. The lack of drivers and the wonky network settings in Vista make it a big, fat NO THANKS for me. I had a co-worker who described getting a new laptop and resetting his wireless network - the old laptop running XP found the network and got online without problems. The new laptop, running Vista, came to a grinding halt and would not connect to the wifi network.
My next computer is going to be a Macbook, mostly b/c of all the great apps for video editing and the SDK release for IPhone software, and the ability to run Windows XP natively.
They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know. - New York Times
Stuff White People Like
Nate sent me an IM with this link - Stuff White People Like. This is one of the funniest blogs I've read in a while.
A night with Casey Affleck
Watched two movies last night, both with Casey Affleck. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (downloaded off Xbox Live - I'm really enjoying the simplicity of renting movies on my Xbox) and Gone Baby Gone. Jesse James was long and artsy - I enjoyed it very much. The better movie, though, was Gone Baby Gone - a big screen Law and Order set in Boston. Both flicks get a thumbs up, with a caveat that Jesse James is an art house flick so drink lots of coffee.
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