Jasper

Yesterday I picked up Renee's Xmas present, a new XBox 360 to replace the dead one, at Fry's. This one is a Jasper motherboard, so it should run cooler overall (the power supply is perhaps 70% the size of the original). Since this model has the smaller GPU too, I hope we won't experience another video failure.

I grabbed it now on the slim chance that the Microsoft rebate program which ends October 5th will actually be honored. Generally, I assume that the rebate is a scam, since that's been my experience in the past.

Anyway, we are giving the box a burn-in period during the return grace period from Fry's. Then it goes into a closet until Xmas!

Death of a Console

According to my notes, I bought my Xbox360 on August 31, 2006.

In the intervening 3+ years, I've used it quite a bit, but tapered off gradually until my weekly usage was easily under an hour. In the meantime, conversely, Renee's usage has grown, especially over summers, such that some weeks she logs high double-digit game time.

I warned her about the red ring of death, and how extended play could shorten the lifespan of the console. Of course, it's all free to her, so she was oblivious, and would frequently leave the box on for hours while gabbing on her cellphone, or chatting away on the Internet.

So anyway, the last week she's been playing Fable 2 and complaining that the screen would begin to take on a staticky green hue after playing for an hour. Then after playing for half an hour. Then upon startup. Tonight, no video signal at all. Yes, she killed my Xbox. I've browsed the forums, this is a well known problem, and unlike the red ring, is not covered by any extended warranty. And since I'm just outside of three years with this box, I don't think it matters.

Renee wants an Xbox360 for Christmas. I'm told that I'll be allowed to play it when she is not using it, which hardly seems fair since she broke mine, but then, I realize that it's not any different than how it's been for the last couple of years.

So, Tom, anyone else from my gang... Feel like beating on a warped motherboard?

Oh, and P.S. - I just checked my notes, and I bought my PS2 over eight years ago! Of course, Renee is now hammering on it since she doesn't have an Xbox360 to kick around any more, so it'll probably go in the next month, but still!

Bosstopus

Several weeks ago Renee and I were imagining a boss monster for an RPG, and came up with Bosstopus! I won't go into the details just yet. I was waiting for Renee to render a larger image, but she's not ready, so I'll just hook this one in to remind me to describe it's attacks later.

Portal: Still Alive

I almost forgot. The pressure cooker has eased up a bit, momentarily, and I have had part of my weekends back. As a result, I grabbed the arcade version of Portal: Still Alive. It's generally pretty flexible on pick-up/put-down, so I managed to traverse it in little spurts. I took most of the Thanksgiving holiday off from work, so I finished it then. The game clocks in at around six hours, but I'm sure I did eight or more, due to my clumsiness and wooden reflexes (there are a few segments requiring quick reaction times).

Like most people reviewing it, I have to say that it was great fun, and felt really original, regardless of predecessors. It's not like I play a huge variety of games, so this felt new to me. What really made it was not just the mechanics of play, but the integration of the humorous 'story', such as it was. I laughed out loud several times. When I completed it, I felt such a sense of accomplishment, that I got a little knot in my throat during the closing song.

No, I didn't try for any of the achievements. That would have ruined my enjoyment. I did try to play through the first few test chambers again with the developer commentary turned on, but after awhile, it got frustrating that the developers would be drowned out by the in-game narration. Seems they thought very carefully about game design, but not about the developer commentary.

All told, I wish there were more clever, fun, short games like this.

Settlers of Catan

I am really torn about the new Xbox Live Arcade version of Settlers of Catan. On the one hand, I like the idea of having a version of the game with AIs for the other players, so I don't have to tie my schedule to anybody else's.

On the other, if I do want to engage in multiplayer games, I can only do it online. It's one player per box!!! WTF??!?!?

I know of at least one young woman in my household, and one friend of hers, who would enjoy playing this game with me, and I have three controllers. If I can play online, if I can play against three AIs on my box, why can't I play against two other humans on my box?

Since I'm still not interested in buying a Gold account to go online, that means the game is only a single-player emulation of a multi-player game. That sucks.

Gaming

Real life or videogames? Hmmm....

Since I've been tending to play at most an hour, more likely a half hour, on weekday evenings, and sometimes not at all, I've discovered that I'm reliably lazy. Dead Rising requires some degree of work to make progress, and for my clumsy reflexes it's relatively easy to get killed. Then I get to start over from the beginning, albeit with a slightly stronger character (nice feature). Since that gets tedious when playing in half-hour batches, I've defaulted to playing Enchanted Arms almost exclusively. Unlimited saves at any point in the game (excluding narrative cut scenes and battles) make it very easy to move forward in the storyline in tiny bites.

Tomorrow night I am the elected proxy to attend Renee's back to school event, so I doubt I'll fire up the 360 at all. Maybe over the weekend I'll take a stab at some Dead Rising. It really is a fun game! I'm just lazy, is all...

Brute Force Wins

I mentioned earlier that I accidentally mangled the super-seekrit code for my first purchase of Microsoft Monopoly Money. After much scrutinizing with a magnifying glass and a bright light source, I concluded that there were four characters which were most in doubt. One could have been a 'C' or an 'O'. Another could have been a 'P' or an 'F'. And so on... Holding all the other characters constant and generating all the permutations meant that there were 24 possible matches.

I wrote up a quick program in Python to generate all the possible strings, then sat down and started trying them, one after another. On try number 11, I succeeded! Glad I only had to try less than half the combos, since 'typing' with a game controller sucks.

Just for chuckles, here's the Python 'brute force' program, with the fake 'constant' characters to protect the innocent:

def gen_stuff():

ONE = "PX"
TWO = "MN "
THR = "EF"
FOU = "G 12345 67890 HIJ"
FIV = "Z"

for ONE_ in ["C", "O"]:
for TWO_ in ["P", "F"]:
for THR_ in ["E", "F", "P"]:
for FOU_ in ["E", "F"]:
print ''.join([ONE, ONE_, TWO, TWO_, THR, THR_, FOU, FOU_, FIV])

gen_stuff()

The bonus of this geeky little exercise is that I -- all unawares -- turned a problem into a 'problem', and got a giggly little boost instead of a headache!

Update

I decided I liked the example program better with 'real' letters, so I amended my sample above with substitutes. That allows me to inflict the result on you:

PXCMN PEFEG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXCMN PEFEG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXCMN PEFFG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXCMN PEFFG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXCMN PEFPG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXCMN PEFPG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXCMN FEFEG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXCMN FEFEG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXCMN FEFFG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXCMN FEFFG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXCMN FEFPG 12345 67890 HIJEZ <== TeH Winx0rz!!
PXCMN FEFPG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN PEFEG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN PEFEG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN PEFFG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN PEFFG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN PEFPG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN PEFPG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN FEFEG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN FEFEG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN FEFFG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN FEFFG 12345 67890 HIJFZ
PXOMN FEFPG 12345 67890 HIJEZ
PXOMN FEFPG 12345 67890 HIJFZ

Yeah, something like that.

Games and Goofs

So Monday I took back the new router and the Xbox 360 wireless adapter for credit, using it to buy a copy of Enchanted Arms, a longish cat5e ethernet cable and 1600 Microsoft points. Now that the rig is all set up, complete with neatly tucked-away ethernet connection, I've been alternating between Dead Rising and Enchanted Arms. I'm barely started on either, but having fun with both.

I expect that I'll never catch up with Alan on Dead Rising, for two reasons: one, I spend maybe a half-hour or an hour at a time playing, preferring to take time with Jean in the evening before geeking out. Two, Alan has the magic god-hand, and I have nerve-less fists. Dead Rising requires some dexterity, which as we have established over time, I have none of.

Enchanted Arms appears to be a standard Japanese RPG, and so far lacks any of the action-oriented 'enhancements' of Shadow Hearts or Magna Carta. I.e. there are no 'judgement rings' or timed button sequences, which the earlier games require in order to let you even try to launch an attack. I've managed to enjoy both those games, but in spite of the action gimmicks, rather than because of them.

Renee's RPG-Radar is functioning beautifully. I've been sneaking sessions of Enchanted Arms in during her evening shower and bedtime prep rituals, hoping to get a bit into the game before she starts to insert herself into my sessions. However, tonight she popped out of the bathroom wearing a towel and dripping, and creeped into the den, asking "what's that?" Before I knew it, she was smashing barrels wherever they appeared.

As for Microsoft points, or MS Funny Money (tm), I bought a card with some of my exchange credit at Fry's, thinking that I'd save the bother of trying to use my credit card online with Xbox Live. The card has a scratch'n'sniff window where the security code for your credit resides. I didn't have a coin handy, so I used a nail file. Unfortunately, the plastic was so fragile, that I scratched off part of the underlying code. I'm hoping either Xbox Live or Fry's will show me some mercy. Otherwise, I'm kinda sour on the whole MS Monopoly Money experience...

360 Converging

I'd like to thank all the little people... Jean for watching Renee after getting home from work while I went over to Tom's place, Tom for letting me haul my Xbox 360 over to his place and plugging it into his network in not one, but two places...

Anyway, with Tom's help, I was able to confirm that the ethernet port on my Xbox 360 was dead, dead, DEAD! Out of the box! Okay, after all my other diagnostic work, I was pretty sure that was the case, but Tom allowed me to get concrete evidence of same.

Afterwards, we went out to dinner at the Beaverton Wu's Open Kitchen, where I had the Kung Pao Shrimp, which was tasty, but strangely subdued. I spent a couple hours at Tom's chatting, then back home for an early evening.

This morning I went down to Fry's and returned the Xbox 360 for an exchange. I hooked up the new unit to my router -- via the ethernet port -- and yes! It connected to Xbox Live immediately! Thank you Jean and Renee for your patience. Thank you Tom for your help. Thank you Alan for your moral support in encouraging me to do the final diagnostic. So nice to have working hardware.

Geek Cred

The Nintendo DS Lite came out on Sunday, I went to work on Sunday, work is a two minute drive from Fry's Electronics... Can you see where I'm heading here?

I thought about waiting until there were more color choices than frost white, but I don't really care, it goes with my ratty old iPod. I already had Resident Evil: Deadly Silence. I bought The Age of Empires: Age of Kings and Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time to round things out.

In time I plan to buy a few more offbeat choices, like Electroplankton, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (already a collector's item, it seems).

But first I have to get out from under the huge wodge of tasks piled on me at work. Then I can play...

Resident Evil: Deadly Silence

After my first round of fillings, I decided to buy myself a treat. Eric Ho assures me that the new Nintendo DS Lite will be available in North America very shortly after it's March 2nd Japan release date, so I decided to hold off on buying my own DS. Instead, I talked Renee into letting me use her DS to try out games on. I ran over to Fry's after work and picked up Resident Evil: Deadly Silence (not so coincidentally abbreviated RE: DS).

So far I've only played some in Classic Mode, which aims to replicate the original gameplay and story line. The entire game, including a new play mode called Rebirth, fits onto a card the size of a postage stamp. It's got the opening 'live actor' video from the original PS One game, and the same damnably bad voice acting. I'm kinda amazed that all this stuff fits on such a little card, but I shouldn't be.

In any case, I'll be wrestling with Renee for occasional access to her DS until the Lite hits U.S. shores.

Deadly Silence

No, not my recent posting record...

Crap, this almost makes me want to buy my own Nintendo DS. (if you're into this sort of thing, be sure to check out the gameplay movie for a dose of bad voice-acting nostalgia)

Guitar Hero

After NOVA, a crowd of us headed over to Tom's house. He hooked up his PS2, and Alan broke out his new copy of Guitar Hero. This is a rhythm game like Bust a Groove, but instead of using the regular controller, you use a 3/4 scale guitar-shaped controller.

Just about everybody there took a turn, including me (even though I sucked so bad at Bust a Groove that I bought myself a shirt that says "More Rhythm!", one of the taunts that game shoots at you when you miss too many beats). I was one of only two people who 'failed', trying to play along with Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water". Alan, Valeska, Tom, all played at the Easy level, and then Chris stepped up and immediately chose Medium. Of course. He's a DDR fanatic.

Years ago, as I hinted, I bought a copy of Bust a Groove, and played it even though I sucked. Then my wife started playing it, and man was she good! So I'm thinking that we need to buy a copy of Guitar Hero for Christmas. Just so I can watch her work her magic. We'll just have to see...

Magna Maxima Carta

Turns out I'm not the only one interested in Magna Carta. I sat down at NOVA Saturday, when Alan walked in. I mentioned that I was getting Magna Carta for a stocking stuffer, and he acted excited. "Where did you get it? Do they have more?" Turns out Gamestop is sold out. So I told him Fry's had them, and in fact that they were carrying the collector's edition, and had plenty on Friday.

Then in walked Tom. Alan mentioned that he wanted to go to Fry's to buy Magna Carta. Tom said "I bought it this morning." Bing! So the three of us piled into Tom's car and drove down to Fry's so that Alan could buy his own copy. Did they have any? They had plenty. It's so pleasant to have young, single engineers as friends. While we were there, Alan saw a box for Guitar Hero, and after only a moment's internal debate, he grabbed that too. More on that in a later post.

So anyway, I'm not the only RPG fan around.

Sudoku

Jean got me hooked on sudoku, the constraint solving puzzle that's enjoying a surge of popularity right now. This is exactly the sort of puzzle I love, which runs on pure logic, solving a puzzle based solely on reasoning out the constraints present in the starting conditions (a previous obsession of this nature: pixel puzzles). To be frank, I've been skipping posts on the weblog because I've spent me spare evening time solving sudoku. Initially I was running through paper puzzles available from PrintSudoku.com, but I just bought the Astraware Sudoku program for my new Palm Pilot, and I use that now. Wait for the novelty to wear off, and you'll probably hear from me again...

In Honor of My Suckitude

Not that I'd ever give anyone else a chance to play against me:

Player vs. Player

Dawn Is Responsible, Somehow!

Okay, Dawn, 'fess up! You used some sort of psychic emanation to trick my daughter into getting hooked on Neopets! She's waiting anxiously for her parental permission form to be registered so she can do even more fun stuff, but she's been spending hours online playing games, writing messages and reading Neopets web comics.

I can only hope this doesn't last as long as the whole Pokemon thing has...

Katamari E3

E3 promotional gimmick. It's cute.

Pop Cult

I took the trouble to add MTV to my ReplayTV lineup long enough to record the Xbox360 launch show, and promptly removed it afterwards. The launch 'party' was a thirty minute show that I managed to watch in about ten minutes. Maybe that was an over-investment of time. In any case, I found it sufficiently vapid that I wasn't going to bother writing an entry. Until I read Gabe's entry, which I shamelessly quote almost in it's entirety:

"The important thing to understand here is [...] that show was not for us. When I say us I am referring to the hardcore. The sorts of people who perhaps downloaded a torrent of last night's MTV show. The sorts of people who had to call their cable company to find out what channel MTV was on. The sorts of people who had their Tivo or media PC grab the show for them so that they could watch it at their leisure. Last night's unveiling of the Xbox 360 was not for us it was for the people who were already watching MTV. It's true, there are human beings out there who watch MTV in the same way your mom might watch ABC. Sitting through show after show and watching as rides are pimped and celebrities are punked. Last night's show was for them and when you look at it that way I have to say I think the show was a success. I cannot imagine those sorts of people not being entertained for the entire 30 minutes by the flashing lights and famous people. Gaming is cool now. Isn't that awesome."

I don't consider myself "the hardcore". Maybe a bit of a geek, but he captures my feelings about the MTV 'special' pretty well.

Oh, and if I do eventually buy an Xbox360 (when the prices are below a gajillion dollars), it will not be because of the label, "As Seen on MTV!"

Katamari Kelly

As if my own awkwardness wasn't enough, there are other impediments to my progress in Katamari Damacy. Kelly has decided that even when I replay a stage ('build a star 4', for instance) and double the size of my katamari, I should abandon my progress if there is a danger of replacing a 'cute' star name with a less cute one. After a few minutes of frustration I finally copied over the game save to a second memory card, and I'm now allowed to save my new gains without damaging her aesthetic.

I wonder if there's a name for forces outside of a game limiting your progress in that game? Oh yeah, 'life'!