FALLOUT 3

Sometimes it seems impossible to find a a couple of hours that can be spent away from the real world. People over 25 might find time for a good book but computer gaming belongs to the young - almost any good computer game requires at least a few hours to learn the controls and become familiar with the setup, and the best of them can easily hold your interest for anywhere from 20-60 hours. (Not to mention that most of the shooting games are so fast and require such twitchy reflexes that I couldn't have played them even when I was young. The sheer speed required to play Team Fortress 2 or Left 4 Dead is mind boggling.)

If you're young at heart and have some time free, take a look at Fallout 3, a new game from the team that developed The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It's visually rich without requiring a rocket for a computer - if your Vista computer meets the specs that I suggest (including a 256Mb or better video card), it will run it beautifully. Theoretically it is the third game in a series that started more than ten years ago but it stands completely alone and no prior knowledge of the other games is needed.

More importantly from my old fogie perspective, it can be played slowly. Fallout 3 is a single-player role-playing game where your character explores an enormous environment, the ruins of Washington DC after a devastating nuclear war, with complete freedom to walk or run, fight or flee, explore randomly or follow the plot from start to finish. If you're new to this style of game, the first half-hour is a brilliant tutorial to help you learn the controls and build your character. The opening scene is literally your birth, where you choose your gender and the name of your character. You learn to walk as a toddler and learn how to interact with characters and use weapons while your character is still a child. When you finally step outside, you're ready to take on the world, and you're rewarded with a stunning view of a landscape that stretches for miles in all directions, all of it ready to be explored.

I grew up playing computer games and I love watching the kids play some of the exciting online games that are on the market now, but I can't make time for a game very often any more. I'm making a bit of time for Fallout 3 and loving it. Go read some reviews, click here to check it out on Amazon, and see if you might enjoy it!

Labels: games

posted by bruceb at 12/31/2008 12:05:00 AM | permalink

WALLACE & GROMIT NEWS

There will be time next year for news about technology that affects your business. Let's focus on something more important.

On Xmas day, a new Wallace and Gromit short film, "A Matter Of Loaf And Death," was broadcast on British television! This is exciting news for anyone who enjoyed A Grand Day Out, A Close Shave, The Wrong Trousers, and The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit. Everyone likes Wallace and Gromit! The new film is just as wonderful as the rest. It will eventually be released in the US, although anyone familiar with Bittorrent can find a copy pretty quickly.

That's not all! In 2009 Telltale Games will release "Wallace and Gromit Grand Adventures," computer games from the same company that did such a wonderful job for two years on Sam & Max games. (Here's a bit more information about Sam & Max, in case you've forgotten.) Save up some free time!

Labels: games, humor

posted by bruceb at 12/30/2008 12:59:00 AM | permalink

OLYMPIC TECHNOLOGY

By the close of the 2008 Olympic Games, NBC will have broadcast 2,900 hours of live coverage - more than the total number of US television hours for all previous summer Olympic Games combined.

In addition to the broadcasts on the primary NBC channel, video coverage will be virtually nonstop on NBC's Spanish-language outlet, Telemundo, and on five of seven major NBC Universal-owned cable channels. Huge amounts of video covering every sport will be served up by streamed video on NBC's Olympics Web site, NBCOlympics.com. Here's a good article about the monolithic coverage and the accompanying promotional effort.

This article examines the technical challenge of handling that much video - 11 terabytes of high definition content alone. NBC has spent billions on storage (180TB of available space in Beijing), servers, and creative technology to make it possible for editors around the world to stitch together the coverage from the available shots and create a finished piece without choking up all the bandwidth moving the HD video around.

The NBC Olympics web site will be streaming video using Microsoft's Silverlight technology - you'll have to install "Silverlight v.2 (beta)" to see the video. Microsoft paid large amounts of money to get the opportunity to install Silverlight on computers around the world, and it's putting on a very impressive show - the high quality 720x480 video is quite remarkable after the last couple of years spent enduring miserable low-quality streaming Flash video on YouTube. Check it out - watch the incredible men's swimming 4x100 relay. (When the video starts, click the button to "Enlarge" in the lower right corner.)

You'll get a quick screen to indicate who your television provider is - if you don't claim to have service from one of NBC's "partners" (like, say, Comcast Cable in zip code 95404), you don't get to watch the online video. There's no check on the information you put in. I've seen one unconfirmed report that if you put in Time Warner in zip code 10001, you can see some coverage three hours earlier than it's turned on for the west coast.

There is a link to the NBC Olympics web site on the bruceb.com Favorites page - near the top, under the Amazon search box.

Enjoy the Games!

Labels: business, games, Internet, video

posted by bruceb at 8/12/2008 12:15:00 AM | permalink

GRAND THEFT AUTO IV (AND A RABBITY THING)

If you are young or young at heart, and have the luxury of free time, it's worth noting the release tomorrow for the PC, XBox 360, and PS3 of Grand Theft Auto IV, latest installment in an increasingly important franchise. Early reviews are flowing in and GTA IV seems on its way to becoming the best-reviewed game in history - currently standing at 99% at metacritic.com.

If you're too old to be playing a violent game in a seedy underworld, don't overlook Sam & Max, a big floppy dog with a fedora and a hyperkinetic smart-aleck rabbity thing, who triumphantly returned a couple of years ago in consistently hilarious adventure games released at regular intervals on the Gametap service. The New York Times just wrote a rave review of the concluding episode of season two - it makes me wish there were extra hours in the day.

"As episode 5 begins, the freelance police Sam and Max - an anthropomorphic dog and rabbit - find themselves at the entryway to hell. Since the entryway turns out to be located just under their office, the pair could just go home, but that wouldn't be much of a game.

"Hell turns out to be a bland corporation where every day is Monday and the clock always shows 4:59. Rabbit Max is disappointed, having expected more acid baths and karaoke bars.

"Sam and Max soon discover that they have their own wing in hell, filled with dead enemies, friends and casual acquaintances undone in past episodes. Each lives in a small personal hell. A chef becomes the sidekick on a cooking show for rats while a child-hating Santa Claus who likes his job because he has to see children only one day out of the year is hounded by kids. One tormented soul, forced to stand on stage naked in front of his mother and his therapist, says, 'It's like being in the bad place people go where it's really hot.' To which Max replies, 'Tampa?'"

Labels: games

posted by bruceb at 4/29/2008 12:42:00 PM | permalink

HALO 3 LAUNCHES
Halo 3 will be released for the XBox 360 on Tuesday. I know, you don't play games, but this is one of those cultural events that are worth knowing about to keep from feeling old and out of touch.

It's likely that the sales during the first 24 hours will be $155 million or more - allowing Microsoft to brag that it is the largest entertainment launch in history. That's more money than any movie or book has ever brought in - bigger than Spiderman 3, bigger than Harry Potter. Here's the kind of news item you're likely to see about the record-setting sales.

The Los Angeles Times has a more detailed look at the movie industry and game industry financial statements. Movies are more expensive to make than games, and revenue from movies is far higher. But profit margins are absurdly high for successful games; the bottom line is that Halo 3 will create as much profit as the most successful movies.

There's far more at stake for Microsoft. Sony stumbled badly with the PlayStation 3, which was intended to wipe out every competing game console and leave the XBox 360 in the dust. Instead the Playstation 3 was delayed, giving Microsoft a year to build an audience, and when the Playstation 3 finally appeared, it was too expensive and lacked a killer game to focus game-players' attention. Currently the XBox 360 is far ahead of Playstation 3 in sales, and Microsoft hopes Halo 3 will be the catalyst for the XBox 360 to be perceived for years as the console favored by serious gamers. The real money in game consoles is the continuing flow of income from console owners buying more games and online services over the life of the console. Here's an article about Microsoft's hope to dominate the next generation of console gaming.

(Interestingly, the game console that has sold far and away the largest number of units in the last year is the low-priced Nintendo Wii, with a novelty controller and kids' games. Sony and Microsoft try to ignore that. It's embarrassing.)

Oh, and since we're on the topic - how's the game? Glad you asked. If early reviews pan out, it's one of the best games ever released for any platform, ever. Here's a typical review. Try watching some of the trailers on this site - the video Review will give you a good idea of what gamers have in store. It makes me wish I still had reflexes.

Labels: business, games, Microsoft

posted by bruceb at 9/24/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

MORE GOOGLE EARTH TRICKS
I mentioned a few days ago that the latest version of Google Earth includes "Google Sky," adding the ability to zoom through the universe viewing high-resolution photos of stars and galaxies.

Many features have been added in the last couple of years for displaying photos, Wikipedia entries, 3D skylines, and more. Here's two that are new to me.

This site has a long discussion of how to download high-resolution 3D images of structures around the world, created by real people and uploaded to Google's servers. The article focuses on buildings in Disneyland contributed by adoring fans, but there's more being constantly added around the world.

And recently someone discovered that a basic flight simulator has been built into Google Earth. You'll need to know the keyboard controls to start it and operate it, but the reward for simulator fans is a flight on an F-16 over Google Earth's highly-detailed photos.

Labels: games, Google

posted by bruceb at 9/02/2007 03:12:00 PM | permalink

SECOND THOUGHTS ON SECOND LIFE
Second Life looked like it was poised to be the Next Big Thing when the media gave it blanket coverage a few months ago. (I got caught up in the hype and wrote a description of it that was way too enthusiastic. I'm sorry.) It's still growing and making its presence felt, but its growth numbers turned out to be exaggerated and many people have been discouraged by the difficulty of getting started and unimpressed by the experience of wandering the virtual world.

Here's a wonderful description of one person's first excursion into the world of Second Life. It's enough to satisfy my curiosity for a while.

"Second Life is free to play, and I keep seeing people referring to it in the news, so I had to take one for the team and just dive on in. . . .

"My character came pre-loaded as a "cybergoth". Most people I saw in the game, jerkily wandering around, also had fantasy-ass names. They also had fantasy asses. Perfect, round fantasy asses. Which left me with only one choice: I had to become what they were not. Slowly, because everything in Second Life is painfully slow, I removed all components of my clothing, including Cybergoth.Armwarmers and Cybergoth.Boots. I even removed Cybergoth.Facetattoo.

"After a half-hour of pulling on sliders, I had transformed from Wenis Cybergoth to Wenis Pale Corpulent Bulldog-Man. I shortened my torso and gave myself man-handles. I made my hands puffy. I enlarged my jowls to the maximum, and beaded my eyes down to... well, little beads.

"Wenis Swindlehurst: How do I fly
"Foxbrand Leprechaun: Press Page Up

"The sight of a fat, naked white man flying over Introduction Island (because the game makes you complete a boring tutorial, to make sure you don't play the game if you want to have fun) aroused absolutely no suspicion, probably because most Second Life players see the same thing when they go in for their weekly sponge-baths."

Labels: games, Internet, web_services

posted by bruceb at 2/22/2007 12:05:00 AM | permalink

SAM & MAX RETURN
Productivity is overrated. Close the e-mail program, shove those piles of paper aside, there's more important things to do: Sam & Max are back in a new game, their first appearance on computer screens since the late, lamented Sam & Max Hit The Road in 1993. Here's the web site for Sam & Max Episode 1: Culture Shock.

Young gamers have no knowledge of the adventure game genre - pointing and clicking and solving puzzles, frequently while laughing out loud. Computer gaming began with adventure games, starting with Colossal Cave, progressing through Activision's Zork and other text adventures, through Sierra's long line of games in the 80s, and culminating in the Monkey Island titles and many others from LucasArts. The market moved to action and strategy games, leaving nostalgic adventure gamers pining for the good old days. The final nail in the coffin came in 2004 when LucasArts briefly announced it was planning its own Sam & Max sequel - and then cancelled the game in progress after it concluded there wouldn't be a sufficient market for it.

Sam & Max, Freelance Police, a big floppy dog with a fedora and a hyperkinetic smart-aleck rabbity thing, have a special place in the hearts of anyone who played the first game. After LucasArts gave up on the Sam & Max project, their creator, Steve Purcell, bought the rights back and worked directly on this new sequel. The result is brilliant. Here's a sample review, one of many celebrating the high quality of the graphics, gameplay and jokes in the game.

The downloadable game released next week is the first episode of a six-episode series, with a new episode scheduled to be released each month before a CD is sold separately next year. Even more interesting, though, is the arrangement with Gametap, where the game can be played now. Gametap is a subscription service with hundreds of games that can be accessed for a monthly fee. Since its inception last year it has lowered its price, improved its software, and expanded its game portfolio; I'm pretty impressed by what I've seen so far. Sam & Max is its first original game (there's a new Myst/Uru game in the pipeline), but Gametap has a huge assortment of older games, using emulators for many old platforms (Commodore, Atari, and the like), plus DOS and Windows games. It's not all old stuff - titles as recent as Far Cry and Civilization III are included. Many of them might only hold you for an hour or two but the sheer volume of games available make that just fine.

A year's subscription costs just under sixty dollars (although that promotional price is scheduled to go up after October 31). Monthly subscriptions top out at ten bucks a month or so. Once an account is set up, it can be shared with all the computers in the house and individual logins can be set up for each family member. It's a subscription deal, just like subscribing to music streams from Rhapsody - if the account is cancelled, the games turn off. It seems like a fair deal to me.

The Gametap interface is highly polished and so far the technical aspects have been good - each game has run successfully and Gametap has managed all the files needed to support the games, with nothing installed outside the Gametap program folders to support oddball titles. It's hard to get old games to play correctly on new computers so that's a credit to the Gametap programmers.

If your heart goes pitter-pat at the thought of Zork I (or better yet, Zork Grand Inquisitor), or Space Quest, or Lego Racers - they're available again. Better yet, forget nostalgia - Sam & Max are the most enjoyable thing to do with a computer since Internet porn. Go play!

Labels: games, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/24/2006 12:29:00 PM | permalink

SECOND LIFE
Make no mistake: MySpace is old news, YouTube is beginning its slide out of the headlines, Yahoo is over the hill, Flickr never stood a chance. Second Life is the hot online destination, the next cultural obsession, soon to be a household name.

Second Life is an online world; the visuals will remind you of online games, but there's no gameplay, just an enormous open-ended space designed for endless exploration and creativity. I can't describe it in a few words; visit the Second Life web site, read this article about its background and features, and look through this online tour from Wired Magazine.

It's possible to begin exploring Second Life with a free account but if it's interesting at all you will quickly find yourself wanting to have a monthly subscription, possibly even putting more real money in to buy the currency used online. If you have an addictive personality, you do not want to go anywhere near Second Life, because the defining characteristic of this world is that it's big, already filled with things to see and do in quantities that defy description, and growing by leaps and bounds.

What are the signs that it will turn into a cultural obsession? Its growth is off the charts. The media is starting to focus on it relentlessly. It is designed to facilitate creative additions by members and the world has many creative people in it, meaning an explosion of cool things is appearing online right now.

Big companies are funding serious efforts to participate in the online world. Sun Microsystems held an in-world press conference to announce its space in Second Life and its plans for an ongoing presence. The followup interview with Sun executives was held by CNET News in its own Second Life space; CNET plans to hold interviews with execs from other companies with Second Life sites (Wells Fargo Bank, Toyota, Coca-Cola, Sony, and many more to follow). Reuters has opened a news bureau in Second Life. Adidas is selling clothes. Starwood Hotels has built a virtual version of the hotel chain it plans to open in the real world soon. BBC1 has already held concerts displayed in the virtual world but featuring the music of bands playing live in the real world. Duran Duran was the first band to announce its own space where it would perform routinely and you can expect more to follow. Congress has begun investigating how to tax transactions involving virtual objects in Second Life. UC Berkeley just had a seminar on using Second Life for education and collaborative research. The list goes on and on.

Neal Stephenson's wildly entertaining book Snow Crash is being brought to life - perhaps an early version, but a fascinating one that promises to absorb a lot of our copious free time in the next few years.

Labels: games, Internet, web_services

posted by bruceb at 10/17/2006 10:12:00 PM | permalink