Gaming Overload
Over the last week, 3 games that I’ve been looking forward to were finally released. I’ve managed to play all 3, but that also means that I haven’t been able to dedicate a whole lot of time to 1 specific game. This is the reason why I’m going to give 3 quick reviews of what I think of the games so far.
Spore. The mention of this game has had gamers salivating for years since the game was first announced. DRM notwithstanding, Spore has been worth the wait.
The game itself is separated into 4 stages, and each stage is a completely different game from the last. In the first stage, you start off as a single cell organism swimming in a proverbial primordial ooze. Depending on whether you selected herbivore or carnivore, you go around eating the appropriate food and search for tokens that will give you various abilities, such as tendrils to swim faster and offensive and defensive mechanisms. As you eat and grow, you finally make it to a multi cell organism that turns into a mammal.
The second phase of the game starts off by your creature moving from a water based creature to a land based one. There you hunt, eat and mate. When attacking other species or befriending them, you can gain parts of their DNA which allows you to evolve different aspects; how you look, more offensive and defensive capabilities, etc… Playing this stage is more fun than I’m making it sound. You do this until you evolve into the next stage of the game.
After evolving in the 2nd phase, you finally get to the tribal stage. Your species has developed language and culture and has formed a tribe. This stage of the game plays more like an RTS (Real Time Strategy game), where you have to gather food and supplies. You also attack other tribes or befriend them. Once you’ve conquered and/or befriended the continent you move to being a more advanced civilization, where you create cities, vehicles and weapons. Your goal is similar, as you have to befriend or invade other cities on the planet, until you control it all.
The space stage of the game is completely different from the previous 3 stages. As an intergalactic traveller, you are given quests to follow. You have to befriend other intergalactic species, mine for spice, set up colonies and of course defend yourself against enemies. This part of the game plays like a combination of an RTS and RPG.
Spore is very fun to play and slightly addictive. You can spend hours in the creator portion of the game, creating the look of your creatures, different vehicles and housing. Time also flies by as you set out to first grow your creature, then grow your civilisation. Its been worth the long wait for this game to come out.
I give Spore an 8 out of 10.
Last week also saw the release of 2 of the yearly NHL games, EA’s NHL09 and TakeTwo’s NHL2K9. After trying both demos that had been released a few weeks earlier, I decided on EA’s NHL 09 as my game of choice.
This year’s version of EA’s NHL game includes some new features that intrigued me and the reasons I chose this game over NHL2K9. As a player, you can now lift your opponent’s stick, and as a defensive move you can also sweep your stick in an arc on the ice to try and poke the puck away.
Though those new features are interesting, the one that intrigued me the most was Be A Pro. You start off creating your player and join an AHL team. Game after game, you evolve as a player in the American Hockey League. Once you’ve become good enough, you get the call from the associated NHL team.
I will admit that for me, learning the new controls has been a steep learning curve. I’ve been playing NHL2K7 for the last couple of years, and previous to that I played NHL04 and NHL05 on the original X-Box. All these games use the A/B/X/Y buttons to shoot and pass, whereas NHL09 uses the right thumbstick and the triggers/bumpers to do the same. This feature was first introduced in NHL07, so for those who have been playing the Electronic Arts version for the last couple of years will be familiar with the controls. Regardless, I’m having a great time playing this game.
I give NHL09 a 7 out of 10
This passed Sunday saw the release of the much anticipated sequel to Rock Band. This is not just a disc of new songs (84 of ’em), Rock Band 2 includes features that fans have been asking for. The Band World Tour now allows players to use downloaded songs instead of being limited to songs on the game disc. It also allows users to form a band over X-Box Live instead of being limited to local players. A drum trainer now allows fans of the peripheral to hone in their drumming skills. A new Battle of the Bands feature allows you to compete against other bands. Gamers with families will enjoy the new “no fail” mode, where a player and song will not fail. This is great for gamers with small children and/or significant others who aren’t gamers. It allows families to have fun together without having to worry about failing a song in the middle of it.
I give Rock Band 2 an 8 out of 10
Luc "Sandman" G. 
Earlier this week, the leaders of the Conservative Party, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois shut out the Green Party of Canada from any televised leader debates for the upcoming elections. They stated that if the current leader of the Green Party, Elizabeth May, participated in the debate that they would withdraw from it. Only the Liberals endorsed May’s quest to participate in the televised debate.
I’ve recently had to deal with a clogged central vacuum hose. I didn’t peak under the bed before passing the vacuum and sucked up a facecloth. As soon as I had heard something big being sucked up I turned off the vacuum but it was too late. The cloth had jammed itself in real tight inside the hose and there was next to no suction making it all the way through. At least I had managed to vacuum most of the house before guests came over, with only our bedroom still showing the odd signs of cat hair.
I made a quick trip to the local Home Depot and bought myself a 40 foot long fish tape. Fish tape is a metal wire that is normally used to fish wire through walls, ceilings and in between floors. I had to bend the end a little, fashioning it to something resembling a hook. I inserted the metal fish tape into the opening closest to the clog and stopped when I felt the cloth. It took a few jabs to move the wire past the blockage .
Last night my wife and I joined some friends for a showing of Star Wars: 
Throughout the entire movie I felt like I was watching a 90 minute long videogame cutscene. The animation itself, especially the humanoid animation, was very bad. Characters looked like they were floating/gliding when walking, the speech movements were way off and the walking movement was awkward. However, the rendering was well done, the backgrounds were for the most part beautiful, and the chalk like textures were very well done for a computer animated flick.
My friend had a theory regarding the prequels and Clone Wars. He theorizes that George Lucas is purposely out to destroy Star Wars so that no one will even want to touch that universe once he retires from filmmaking. After seeing Clone Wars that theory seems more and more probable. What was also frustrating is that parts of the movie showed tiny twinkles of potential, but every time that happened some very cheesy dialogue or plot point would rear its ugly head and totally annihilate it.
Whatever happened to workmanship? Doing your job well and being proud of the work you do? For the most part, it seems like quality work by quality people is a rare find these days. Customer relations from trades people seem to fair no better.
At the beginning of the summer we purchased a central air conditioner for the house. The installers had a heck of a time running the inside piping due to the basement family room being finished. What should have been a 4 hours job turned into a 10 hour job. However, even though this was a challenging job for them to do, there’s no excuse for what they did to my siding (pictured left). I would have been happy if they let me know of the damage and that they’d take care of sending out someone to fix it. But yet again, I had to discover the damage for myself, call their customer service and inform them of the damage that was caused. After a couple of months of playing phonetag with their customer service, we finally had someone come over to inspect the damage. The siding should be replaced in the next couple of weeks.