Three Tips on Tackling RSS
Three months ago, I put together a blog post that discussed the benefits and drawbacks of living without RSS, based on my own personal experience. After writing that post, I actually returned to my old ways and fired up Reeder once again. However, I embarked on a mission to extract the benefits of RSS while avoiding the pitfalls. Would I be able to get that smooth, consistent news-reading experience that RSS offers while still avoiding the stress that comes from having hundreds of unread stories to sift through? Ultimately, I found that while there is no perfect solution, and while the process of manually curating stories will always have a few advantages over RSS, there are three simple rules that you can follow in order to make RSS reading a less stressful experience.
1. Purge articles regularly: This one might be a little hard to accept at first. One of the big advantages of RSS is in its ability to give us an exhaustive list of every article on a given website. Some websites have layouts that are so counter-intuitive that the overlooking of important articles is almost an inevitability, and from that perspective, RSS seems like a great way to prevent that from happening. However, I have ultimately come to the realization that you simply cannot have it all unless you are willing to sacrifice your time and your sanity in order sift through hundreds of irrelevant stories in order to find the gems. If you want to avoid the stress that comes with curating an RSS feed, the best thing you can do is to set up a schedule for purging stories. For myself, I perform the purge once a week. Every week on Sunday evening (because I have nothing more exciting to do on Sunday evening), I take one final dive into my list of unread stores, and then I hit that “mark all as read” button in Reeder. In that one instant, hundreds of unread articles are obliterated, never receiving a chance to see the light of day (unless somebody tweets one of them). Essentially, this allows me to start the next week completely fresh, and it also allows me to deal with a list of feeds that never contains an overwhelming amount of articles (this past week was something of an exception, since all of the CES-related news pushed a ridiculous amount of detritus onto my plate).
2. Use a “read later” service: This is probably the most obvious suggestion of the three, but it’s important enough to warrant mentioning. When looking through your list of feeds, you have to move at a steady pace if you want to avoid having stories pile up on you (stories which will ultimately get purged if you don’t read them in time). Of course, some of the most interesting stories are also some of the most lengthy ones (Glenn Greenwald’s consistently excellent articles come to mind). Whenever I encounter a long article that looks like something I would want to read, I just hit that little Readability button at the top of Reeder, and just like that, I can move on with the knowledge that I have not turned my back on that potentially interesting article. There are plenty of “read later” service out there nowadays (Instapaper, Read It Later, and Evernote Clearly are three examples of alternate services that perform the same function), but Readability happens to be my personal favourite. Apart from having full Reeder support, I love how Readability can be configured to send a daily digest to my Kindle. This allows me to establish a solid workflow where the “curating” and “reading” aspects of the RSS experience are kept separate. While I am at work, I spend my breaks going through my RSS feeds without reading anything in a great amount of detail. I take potentially interesting stories and send them to Readability, which in turn sends those stories to my Kindle in the form of a daily digest. Once I leave work, run my errands, walk my dog, and get back from the gym, I can sit down on my couch with my Kindle and read through all of those interesting stories that I was tagging throughout the day. It’s like having a newspaper that is comprised entirely of content that you selected. The separation of curation and in-depth reading has helped my own personal sanity level, and I would recommend that system to anybody who has ever felt that they are not receiving an enriching reading experience.
3. Limit the amount of feeds that you subscribe to: Again, this suggestion seems to run counter to the very idea behind RSS, but I have personally found it to be quite important. The specific number of feeds in your list is going to depend on your own personal situation (specifically, how much time you have and how much time you are willing to spend), but subscribing to one-hundred different feeds is counter-productive regardless of how much free time you have available. As of right now, I have about twenty feeds in my list, because I know that I can’t conceivably handle more than that in a given week. When looking at a website and contemplating whether or not to add it to your subscription list, you should ultimately ask yourself “does this website produce enough good material on a consistent basis to justify adding them to my list?”. Your should treat your list of RSS feeds like an exclusive club that only the best of the best can belong to. For the websites that don’t make the cut, you can always hope that their strong material makes it onto your Twitter feed. Actually, I almost think of Twitter and RSS as two equally important news sources that compliment each other. RSS gives me the news from my tried and true sources while Twitter gives me interesting articles from places that I typically don’t visit on a daily basis. As of right now, I have about twenty unread articles in my Readability list, and I am willing to bet that about half of them have come from Twitter. Your RSS reader should be a collection of the best websites, not an exhaustive list of all websites.
Hopefully the advice given here will prove useful to some people. I don’t profess to be a master of productivity by any stretch of the imagination, and I am always learning new ways to be more productive and more enriched (those two things are not mutually inclusive by any means). With that in mind, perhaps I will have to write a follow-up post in a few months time if my workflow changes.
HIS Radeon HD 6950 Impressions
On Boxing Day of last year (which I suppose was only a few weeks ago), I managed to pick up a HIS Radeon HD 6950 from Memory Express on sale. I had been looking for a video card to rejuvenate my aging gaming PC for a while, and I figured that Boxing Day gave me a good excuse to take a chance on a distributor that I knew almost nothing about. I have chosen three games in order to measure the card’s performance: Battlefield 3 was chosen because it’s one of the most demanding games on the market right now in terms of resource consumption, Crysis was chosen because it’s considered by many to be the quintessential game for hardware benchmarking, and Hard Reset was chosen because I wanted to have at least one Unreal Engine 3 game on the list.
Here are the specs of my admittedly aging gaming PC:
- 2.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Quad
- 8 GB of RAM (DDR3)
- 1 TB Hard Drive
- HIS Radeon HD 6950 w/ 2 GB
- Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
Battlefield 3:
Here is a screenshot showing the video settings that I used while playing. It’s just the default settings that the game assigned to me - I didn’t bother messing around with any of it: http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/8758/bf3settings.jpg
Anyways, with those settings, I was averaging about 40-60 frames per second in a 32-player Conquest server (mostly Caspian Border and Grand Bazaar, though we had some Metro and Wake thrown in as well). The game only rarely dipped below 40, but for the most part, it held steady within that range. On a purely qualitative level, I was quite happy with the performance. Not once during my 2.5 hour session did I ever feel like the gaming was chugging. It looked great and ran great for the duration of my session. I had nobody to blame for my horrible kill-death ratio but myself ;).
Crysis:
Just for the hell of it, I decided to turn the settings up to Very High. The game had defaulted to High for most of the properties, but I was feeling slightly ambitious. Here is a screenshot showing the specific settings that I used: http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/8955/crysissettings.jpg
With those settings, I was getting around 30-50 frames per second, depending on how much action was happening on screen. Keep in mind that those frame rates were measured while I was walking around in a pretty large environment that overlooked the water and quite a bit of foliage. I took a couple of screenshots that show the environment I was walking through while these measurements were taken: here and here (looking at those screenshots in retrospect, I didn’t have my AA setting high enough, so that should probably be kept in mind when looking at those performance numbers). I understand that different people have different ideas of what is considered to be a tolerable frame rate, but personally I found the game to be perfectly playable with these graphics settings. Keep in mind that I only played through the first hour of the game, and so there’s a good chance that I could encounter an area later on that makes my frame rate take a nosedive (I remember Crysis Warhead taking a very large performance dip whenever the aliens were on screen, as opposed to the regular North Korean troops).
Hard Reset:
I didn’t mess around with any of the default graphical settings that the game gave me. The only thing I changed was AA, which I changed from “Off” to “FXAA”. Hard Reset’s options menu is really cramped (odd design decision), so I had to take two screenshots to capture it: here and here.
With those settings, I was getting around 80-120 frames per second during normal sections with a few small enemies on screen at a time. When bigger enemies started showing up and when I had 10+ enemies on screen at a time, the frame rate would briefly dip down to about 55 frames per second, but it typically didn’t remain there for long before jumping back up to the 80-85 range. The game felt very fluid, as you could imagine with those frame rate levels. Similar to my Crysis measurements, you should keep in mind that I only played the game for about an hour, so perhaps there’s a section later on in the game that’s going to kick my video card’s ass. I’m actually going to play this game through to completion over the next week (I’m in the mood for something nice and simple after Skyrim), so I guess we shall find out soon.
Hopefully that write-up was mildly helpful. As you can imagine, I don’t have a lot of experience with performance evaluation techniques, and so my impressions ultimately boil down to the rather unscientific question of: “is it playable?”. Still, feel free to contact me if you have anything that you want me to explore in further detail.
My Letter to the Entertainment Software Association
The Entertainment Software Assocation - the biggest mouthpiece for the video game industry in all issues of public relations - recently came out in support of the Stop Online Piracy Act. Here is their official statement: http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/03/esa-stands-behind-proposed-sopa-legislation-issues-statement/
I really don’t like to be preachy, but if you’re a gamer, you should really consider writing to the ESA and letting them know how reprehensible their position is. Destructoid’s Jim Sterling wrote up an excellent open letter that anybody can use, but I decided to write my own. Here is the letter that I wrote to the ESA:
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If you want to write to the ESA (and I strongly urge you to do so, regardless of how much or how little it may accomplish), you can reach them at: esa@theesa.com .
Most Anticipated Games of 2012
Like I said last week, 2011 is going to be a really tough act to follow in terms of great game releases. However, there are quite a few excellent titles to look forward to in 2012, and that’s before you consider the the release of the Playstation Vita, the Wii U, or the possibility of next-generation consoles from Sony and Microsoft (personally, I doubt that either will release a new console in 2012, but you never know). Continuing with my gaming-related theme of the past couple of weeks, I decided to put together a list of my most anticipated games of 2012. The list is limited to five titles (because I like nice numbers), and therefore there are quite a few honourable mentions. Those honourable mentions include…
- WipEout 2048
- Lumines: Electronic Symphony
- SSX
- Street Fighter x Tekken
- Devil May Cry (DmC)
- Bioshock Infinite
- Lollipop Chainsaw
- Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm
I’m sure that there are a few titles that I forgot about. With those out of the way, here are my five most anticipated titles of 2012:
Mass Effect 3: Definitely the most anticipated game on this list, despite how little I know about the storyline (I’ve been intentionally starving myself, for fear of massive spoilers). To be honest, I’m a little scared of how the game is going to turn out, considering how heavy the EA influence seems to be at Bioware. I have a strong suspicion that Dragon Age 2’s… disappointing performance was thanks in large part to EA’s pressure in rushing the product to market (note: I have not played the game, and I can only comment based on the popular reception), and many of EA’s questionable practices of the past year have made me instantly skeptical of anything that the company places its grubby paws over. I suspect that EA is also responsible for the decision to include co-op into Mass Effect 3, and as it turns out, that is the one aspect of the game that I am the least excited for. I’m glad that the co-op isn’t essential for getting the best ending, because there’s pretty much no chance that I will be touching that mode. Mass Effect has always been a game defined by its storyline in my eyes, and if I’m ever in the mood to partake in a pure-gameplay co-op experience, I would much rather go for something like Gears of War 3. Still, even with all of the lingering fears floating around in my mind, I - like many of you - am heavily invested in the Mass Effect storyline, and I’m dying to find out how it ends. Hell, I’m so excited about this game that I’m going to be playing through the first two games over again, just to refresh the story in my mind, and to make sure that my Shepard is ready to go.
Counter-Strike Global Offensive: I actually just purchased a new video card for my computer a few hours ago (as part of Memory Express’s Boxing Day sale), but as it turns out, the most anticipated PC game on list is a game that is running on the positively ancient Source engine. Counter-Strike: Source was a massive part of my gaming life during my early University years (especially the second year, where I was playing for an hour a day regardless of how much work I had to do). Like millions of PC gamers worldwide, I have extremely fond memories of de_dust2, cs_office, and even the original de_dust, despite its horrible imbalances (thankfully, it has been tweaked in Global Offensive). Thankfully, a quick gander at Giant Bomb reveals that the PC version of GO will have dedicated servers and the potential to host games with up to thirty-two players, which means that I will be able to relive my fondest Source memories in all of their glory. You won’t be able to play any ranked matches that have more than ten people, but who cares about that stuff anyways? Counter-Strike isn’t Call of Duty, and if I want ranked matches, matchmaking, and all of those fancy bells and whistles, I’ll walk over to my Xbox 360 and throw Modern Warfare 3 in. To be honest, I’m not sure how strong my Counter-Strike lust is going to be after years of absence and years of playing games like Bad Company 2 and Modern Warfare 3, but I’m definitely looking forward to finding out.
Grand Theft Auto V: I never played much of Grand Theft Auto IV. For some reason, I just couldn’t get very interested in it, despite the fact that my brother had bought it and it was in the house ready to go. Still, the GTA V trailer is looking really good, and I’m definitely excited about the possibility of running around in a much larger San Andreas-style city. From what I have heard from my friends, one of the big problems of GTA IV was how small the city was in comparison to the sprawling game area that was available in San Andreas, and so if we can somehow get the level of breadth in San Andreas combined with the amount of depth in GTA IV, it will be a success in my books. A lot of people are upset about the more mature approach that Rockstar has taken with their games in recent years, but personally I find that it reflects my personal change as a gamer. In my high school years, I was perfectly content with the silliness of Grand Theft Auto III, where I would sit on top of the casino and snip bystanders and police officers for hours on end. I don’t really feel the same way about reckless, gratuitous violence anymore. I’m not going to get on my high horse and pretend that it has something to do with a so-called maturation process. Rather, it probably just has more to do with my personal mindset. With that said, I’m definitely looking forward to whatever Rockstar has in store for GTA V, especially after experiencing the thoroughly excellent storytelling in Red Dead Redemption.
Starhawk: I wanted to have at least one new IP in the list. Admittedly, Starhawk isn’t really a completely new IP. Rather, it’s a futuristic twist on the Warhawk formula. Even still, it’s looking pretty sharp based on what little we’ve seen of it. I’ll admit that when it comes to multiplayer games on consoles, I tend to be a little difficult to impress. There are definitely quite a few console multiplayer experiences that I enjoy (the Halo series, the Call of Duty series, Gears of War 3, Killzone 3), but overall I tend to gravitate more towards the PC side, which I have always considered to be vastly superior in terms of online multiplayer. I haven’t been truly hooked on a console multiplayer game since Halo 3 back in the day (sadly, Reach has failed to achieve the same impact with me, though I do enjoy it), and I’m hoping that Starhawk can pull me in. I’ve never been a huge fan of flying (I hated any sort of aerial combat in the Battlefield games), so hopefully being a ground-based player is a viable approach in Starhawk. I suppose time will tell.
Final Fantasy XIII-2: I swear, I must be one of the few people who actually enjoyed Final Fantasy XIII. It definitely had its share of flaws, and I’m definitely upset at some of the concessions that the developers made (no world map, no towns, no shops, very few NPCs), but overall I still enjoyed my time with it, and I think that the battle system in that game is a lot more in-depth than people give it credit for. The auto-battle option definitely had the potential to be abused, but you still had to perform your Paradigm Shifts at the right times, and it still required a fair amount of strategic depth. It doesn’t look like the follow-up is going to fix all of my problems with the original game (i.e. it still doesn’t look like you have the ability to control all three characters, and it looks like the game will still end if your party leader dies), but as long as they can take out some of the linearity and put in some of the elements that I feel are essential for any instalment of the Final Fantasy franchise, it’ll be an enjoyable game. The people who hated FFXIII have probably made up their minds already, but for the rest of us, I have a feeling that this will be an RPG worth playing.
Between all of the games coming out this year and all of the games of last year that I haven’t gotten around to playing yet (see my list at the start of last week’s post), I definitely won’t be bored, though I may be broke by the end of it. Oh, and then there’s those Steam sale games that I haven’t even gotten around to installing. Oh Steam…
My Favourite Games of 2011
I had to be very careful when I made the title of this post. I need to make it abundantly clear that this is not a list of what I perceive to be the best games of 2011. I have not played every game that was released this year, and there are several high-profile games that I missed out on. Such games on that list include…
- The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
- Uncharted 3
- Star Wars: The Old Republic
- Batman: Arkham City
- Rayman Origins
- Saint’s Row: The Third
- Assassin’s Creed: Revelations
- Battlefield 3
- Serious Sam 3: BFE
- Resistance 3
And I’m sure that there are a few other titles that I forgot to mention. There are also some titles that I started but haven’t given a sufficient amount of hours to, such as Forza 4 and Dark Souls. My point is that I cannot profess to be an authority on the best games of 2011, and so I must settle for a far less controversial (and consequently, far less interesting) premise: my favourite games of 2011. Here we go:
5. inFamous 2: I bought the first inFamous game on a sale at Future Shop, and then it sat on my shelf collecting dust for over a year after that. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to play it, but rather there were always other games and other life obligations standing between Empire City and myself. However, when I finally sat down to give the same a shot, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the storyline, the game world, and even the combat that so many people like to speak negatively about. The follow-up certainly isn’t the most revolutionary sequel in gaming history, but it does a solid job of improving upon many of the weaker aspects of the original game while still keeping the fun aspects intact. Much has been said about the new Cole, but the truth of the matter is that I like the charming and cheerful personality of inFamous 2’s Cole much more than the overly serious and brooding Cole from the first game. Perhaps that’s more a reflection of my own personality than anything else, but in a gaming world that seems to be heavily populated by serious, brooding characters, I would much rather have another Nathan Drake than another Marcus Fenix. The only major place where inFamous 2 stumbles as compared to its predecessor is in the music department, since they no longer had the services of Amon Tobin at their disposal (from what I understand, he was hard at work on ISAM while Sucker Punch was developing this game). Apart from that one wrinkle, this is one example of a game that isn’t revolutionary or overly thought provoking, but still manages to be a whole lot of fun.
4. Portal 2: There isn’t a whole lot that I can say about this game that hasn’t already been said by people much smarter than myself, so forgive me if this next paragraph sounds like a broken record. It’s amazing how a game can capture the attention of the mainstream gaming audience without forcing the player to kill a single person. In Portal 2, you do not engage in combat (apart from some specific instances that I won’t give away). Rather, your adversary is the environment, and you must use what scant resources are available to you (i.e. a portal gun and your brain) in order to survive and proceed. If Portal 2 was just a series of puzzles, it would still be one of the best games of 2011, just by virtue of its excellent level design. The fact that Valve was able to put together such a fun storyline for this game is a testament to just how consistently impressive that company manages to be in all of its endeavours. This is another example of a game that won’t make you step back and think about the human condition, but much like the aforementioned inFamous 2, the storyline in Portal 2 is a tool that facilitates and augments the sheer amount of fun that you will have while playing. And I haven’t even mentioned the co-op.
3. Catherine: Even after reading some of the gushing reviews that Catherine received from various gaming websites, I was still very much on the fence with this game. While the storyline certainly looked delightfully weird, I wasn’t sure if the actual gameplay itself (typically an important part of any game) would be able to hold my interest during the 8-10 hour journey. As it turns out… I was slightly correct. My biggest problem with Catherine is just how repetitive the block puzzles start to feel after a while. The developers tried to mix things up in as many ways as they could (there are different types of blocks, different types of enemies inhabiting the field, and various boss fights throughout the game), but at the end of the day, I cannot deny that during the last few levels of this game, I was slightly relieved that the end was near. This may not sound like a great endorsement for my third favourite game of the year, but my point is this: Catherine is so delightfully weird, so full of personality, and so full of heart that the repetitive nature of the gameplay is easily forgivable. Much like The World Ends With You (one of my favourite games of this console generation), Catherine does such an awesome job of combining a fairly grounded premise (faithfulness in a relationship and the concept of a soulmate) with an out-of-this-world twist (a strange nightmare that is killing those unlucky enough to become afflicted by it). I was willing to push through some of the repetitive gameplay because I was so eager to find out what would become of these characters that I had become so attached to. In this current generation of gaming, there haven’t been as many high-profile Japanese games that put endearing stories and loveable characters at the forefront, but thankfully games like The World Ends With You and Catherine are carrying the torch with their heads held high.
2. Deus Ex: Human Revolution: If Catherine was enjoyable because of its endearing story and its loveable characters, Deus Ex: Human Revolution is enjoyable for precisely the opposite reasons. The world of Human Revolution is a very dark place (both literally and figuratively) in which the twin horrors of human inequality and corporate power have reached an all-time high. That being said, going through this world in the shoes of Adam Jensen has been one of my favourite gaming experiences of 2011, and it’s not just because I was such a huge fan of the original game (I rank it amongst my favourite games of all time). Much like the first game, Human Revolution does a great job of putting you in control of a character who initially feels somewhat weak, but then becomes progressively more badass as game moves forward. While Human Revolution doesn’t really offer the freedom of gameplay style that the original game did (trying to deviate from the stealth approach tends to create a lot of problems), the multiple paths and multiple choices of augmentations certainly do a good job of creating the illusion of freedom, and I suppose that’s an impressive accomplishment in itself. Adam Jensen has become one of my favourite characters of this console generation, and he manages to do it without wearing his personality on his sleeve. The aspects of Jensen’s personality are not shoved in your face. Rather, you have to seek them out and slowly piece together the story of this tragic yet valiant character. Jensen’s story is truly a memorable one, and I definitely plan on reliving it at some point during the new year.
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: It’s a testament to Skyrim’s greatness that I’m willing to offer it my game of the year pick despite the fact that I have yet to finish it. I’m not sure how many hours I have put into Skyrim thus far (perhaps about twenty?), but I’m sure that I still have many, many more in my future. I fully expect Skyrim to keep me occupied for the remainder of December, as well as the full span of January. I’ve been a huge fan of the Elder Scrolls games since Morrowind, and Skyrim does a great job of improving upon many of the weaker aspects of the last two instalments while still retaining the magic that made both of those games so great. Getting rid of the governing attributes in favour of a raw skill system was a pretty gutsy move on the part of Bethesda, but it paid off. One aspect of the previous Elder Scrolls games that always annoyed me was how those games locked you into a specific play style at the very beginning (though to be fair, that particular drawback in not exclusive to the Elder Scrolls franchise). Dispensing with the governing attributes and the class system allows you to create a character that truly represents your play style while still preventing you from becoming a one-man killing machine (you have to commit to your skills sooner or later, since a jack of all trades will inevitably become a master of none). I’m willing to bet that my Khajiit dragonborn is quite different from your dragonborn. While I focused my attention on light armour, one-handed combat, archery, sneaking, lock picking, restoration, and alchemy, you probably focused on some different areas, and your friends probably differed from both of us. I cannot recall the last time that an RPG truly allowed you to create a character that is a reflection of your own personality. There have been many games that have attempted this feat (and they all succeeded to some degree), but Skyrim manages to pull this off while making very, very few compromises. There are so many amazing aspects of this game (the believable game world, the consistently interesting main quests, the engrossing side quests, the subtle humour sprinkled throughout, the absolutely gorgeous visuals, the improved combat system, the ocean deep collection of literature, the challenging dragon priest battles) that I simply don’t have the room to discuss them all. What it ultimately comes down to is this: Skyrim is my favourite game of 2011 because of its undeniable and unmatched ability to make me stop whatever I’m doing and play it some more.
Every year is always met by the inevitable collection of cynics who claim that the game industry is “dying” or “running out of good ideas”, so let me throw my voice into the discussion by saying that 2011 has truly been a fucking incredible year for gaming. As people who play video games, we truly are fortunate to be living in a time like this, and I cannot wait to see what 2012 has in store for us. It certainly has a tough act to follow.
Miscellaneous Gaming Awards of 2011
Once again, I have been neglecting this blog for far too long. Sometimes it’s hard to come up with decent ideas to talk about every week, and so I started to fill up the spaces in between by talking about various news articles of the week. It turned out to be a pretty shitty idea. It wasn’t interesting to read through my various synopses of seemingly unrelated news articles, and the posts themselves had a very limited shelf life. One thing that I like about the various lists that I have put together is that they tend to have fairly decent shelf lives. I can go back to my post about the iPhone 4 almost a year after writing it, and it still reads like something that is somewhat relevant. Moving forward, I would definitely like to put together more posts of that nature instead of trying to be a reporter (and failing at it). So with that being said, I have a three-week plan in mind where I talk about various games that came out in 2011, along with games that will be coming out in 2012. None of the lists that I have in mind are of the original nature, but hopefully they’re at least mildly interesting. Here’s part one: the miscellaneous gaming awards of 2011!
My favourite under-appreciated game: Motorstorm Apocalypse: I’ve already discussed this game at great lengths in my original post earlier this year, but I was slightly surprised to see this game come and go without much fanfare. The delay that it went through (Sony made a decision to delay the game in response to the disaster in Japan) may have hurt the hype machine, but it’s a bit of a shame to see such a fun game go by seemingly unnoticed. The challenge in Motorstorm Apocalypse has been discussed at length (I even had a few words to say about it), but one of the things that I really loved about Apocalypse is how it demanded your undivided attention. Hazards can creep up out of nowhere (walls caving in, trucks tipping over, roads collapsing on themselves), and the only way to avoid disaster at the higher skill levels is to ensure that you’re completely focused on the track and what’s coming up ahead of you. I have tremendous love for the Forza series, but unless you’re playing on a really complicated track, you can usually play that game somewhat passively. If you take that passive mindset to Motorstorm Apocalypse, you’re going to find yourself frustrated early and often.
My most surprisingly good game: Mortal Kombat: I have a confession to make: I didn’t care for any of the Mortal Kombat games of the previous generation (Deadly Alliance, Deception, …whatever the other ones were called). I got quite a bit of enjoyment out of Deception, but that was more due to the various game modes that they crammed in (my buddy and I had a blast with Chess Kombat) as opposed to the core fighting system itself. I didn’t find the attacks in those games to be visceral at all, I wasn’t impressed by the movement, and don’t even get me started on those shitty weapons. My disappointment with the PS2 generation of Mortal Kombat games is probably why I came into the new instalment with such low expectations. I wouldn’t even have given the game a chance if my buddy hadn’t bought the game, and in retrospect, I’m so glad that he did. It’s still not the deepest fighting game in the world, but there is no denying just how fun the Mortal Kombat is in a group of people. To be honest, I’m not sure if the new instalment is a big improvement over the old games, or if my personal disposition has changed, but that game has been fun every week since the day my gaming group started playing it. If you’re looking for a competitive fighting game, you’re better served elsewhere, but if you’re looking for fun, laughs, and a hell of a lot of hollering over supposed instances of “cheapness”, Mortal Kombat is fantastic.
My favourite non-brown, non-grey game: Bulletstorm: This game could easily stand alongside Motorstorm Apocalypse as one of the most under-appreciated titles of 2011, despite the massive amount of hype that it received (thanks primarily to Epic’s identity and EA’s treasure troves of money). I’ve heard quite a few different criticisms for Bulletstorm, from people talking about how it “tries too hard”, to people talking about how “stupid” it is. I could write an entire article about how unjustified those arguments are, but I want to focus instead on how great the game looks. In a console generation that has been largely defined by its grey and brown shooters, it’s nice to see a healthy splash of colour throughout the world of Stygia. I’m not going to sit on my high horse and pretend that grey/brown games are a bad thing - the colour palette should match the overall theme of the game, and Resistance 3’s bleak atmosphere would not be well suited by bright greens and yellows. That being said, I’m always happy when games like Serious Sam 3 and Bulletstorm come along to remind us that the FPS genre has a life beyond quasi-realism and depression.
Best game that I want to play more of: Dark Souls: I didn’t get very far in Dark Souls, which is a damn shame because it’s a really, really well done game. Dark Souls is a strange creature, because when you look at the game at the pure base level, it doesn’t look very appealing. The graphics are quite ugly by today’s standards, a lot of the enemy designs are typical examples of what you would expect from the genre, and the voice acting is pretty awful. That being said, the beauty of Dark Souls is not of the superficial variety. When you’re covered in sweat and nervous about what might be lurking behind that corner, when you’re running away from that overwhelmingly powerful enemy in an attempt to salvage the 20,000 souls that you’ve collected, and when you finally defeat that boss after the forty-fifth try, you will realize that Dark Souls is a beautiful game and a member of an extremely rare breed. I have a lot of games that I want to play in the next little while (Skyrim, Uncharted 3, and the complete Mass Effect trilogy once the third one comes out), but I have made a promise to myself that I will return to the world of Dark Souls at some point next year.
Biggest “I told you so”: Duke Nukem Forever: People got mad at me when I said that Duke Nukem Forever looked like shit prior to its release. It wasn’t enough for them to merely disagree with me and leave it at that - they were angry that I would dishonour their lord and saviour. By suggesting that DNF might be a subpar game made me a blasphemer, but at the end of the day, it also made me correct. I only put about four hours into DNF, but that was enough for me. From the subpar graphics to the outdated jokes and the complete lack of badass elements (Duke needs to hide and regenerate his health? Seriously?), it’s a little shocking that something this awful actually made it out of Gearbox’s hands and into the world. In fact, this game is so bad that it has forced me to go back in time and reassess whether or not Duke Nukem was ever a cool character at all. Was Duke actually cool, or was it just my juvenile past self that clung to his jokes and personality because of how subversive it was in the gaming climate of its time? Perhaps it’s best not to think about it. Perhaps I should remember Duke at his finest: back when Duke Nukem 3D was the king of FPS.
See you next week. And this time I mean it :).
My Random Thoughts on the Amazon Kindle
I have had my Kindle for a little over a month now, and it has been serving me quite well in that span of time. Keep in mind that this is not one of the new devices that Amazon announced back in September. Rather, this is the older, black model with the physical keyboard. Still, I figured I would post some thoughts on the device, for those of you who are on the fence about possibly buying one. Besides, the older model has been rebranded as the Kindle Keyboard, and it’s still available for purchase (though for how long is anybody’s guess).
Positives
Amazing battery life: I had heard about the Kindle’s notoriously great battery life in the past, but it still managed to impress me nonetheless. I’ve had the device for a little over a month now, and with an average of 30 minutes of usage a day, my battery meter is still roughly at the halfway mark. In my view, that one advantage alone pretty much makes the Kindle worth buying alongside a tablet that you already own. I’ve been contemplating buying an iPad 2 for a while now (I should be able to scratch enough cash together by the end of the semester), but I can definitely see myself using the two devices side-by-side. I can read my books on the Kindle without having to worry about draining the battery. You can’t really say the same about the iPad, since the vast majority of the battery power on a tablet goes towards powering the actual screen (though I suppose that depends on what you’re actually doing). Obviously if you’re not the type of person who reads a lot, it might not make sense to buy both, but for the particularly voracious readers among us, I don’t see the whole “tablet vs e-reader” competition as a competition at all. With the battery life factor in play, I see the two devices co-existing.
Comfortable to hold: I ended up buying one of those leather cases for my device, and even with the case on the Kindle, it’s still really light and comfortable to hold for long stretches of time (keeping in mind that a “long stretch of time” for me is about two hours). I definitely can’t see myself reading for that long on an iPad, and in many instances it’s even more comfortable than reading a physical book. I’m pretty fanatical about making sure that my physical books don’t get damaged, and so I always hold them with the utmost care. You really don’t have to worry about that with the Kindle. No worries about bending pages, deforming the edges of the jacket, or damaging the spine. Nice.
Easy to load non-Kindle store books: One of the things I was worried about when purchasing the Kindle is how “locked down” it would be. As it turns out, loading books that weren’t purchased from the Kindle Store is really easy. If the book is in the mobi format, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping the file into your Kindle (which thankfully just mounts as an external drive when plugged in to your computer). If the book is in ePub format, you have to convert it first, but I found that Calibre got the job done really nicely. And the books that I loaded in this manner still had all of the Kindle’s functionality intact - I could easily move between chapters, I could get dictionary definitions for words, and so forth. Now obviously I’m not encouraging people to illegally download books. Reading is sadly not a very popular activity in today’s world, and so authors need all the help that they can get. That being said, there are often instances when a book is not in print anymore and not available for purchase on the Kindle store. Cases like this leave you with few options.
Looks great in outdoor conditions: This is something that has been discussed at lengths by people far more intelligent than myself, so I’ll keep it brief. Living in Edmonton, we don’t have very many opportunities to get some outdoor reading in (perhaps a five month window, five and a half in a good year), but I was able to put the Kindle through the paces while my dog was running around in the backyard, and it got the job done nicely.
Negatives
Kindle Store availability depends on region: Imagine my unpleasant surprise when the very first book that I searched for in the Kindle Store was not available. I was honestly dumbfounded for about twenty minutes (“did I put the wrong search parameters in? Am I searching in the right place? Is my Kindle broken?”) before eventually realizing that just because a book is available for purchase in Canada, that doesn’t necessarily mean that its Kindle equivalent is available in Canada. Furthermore, just because the Kindle version of a book is available in the United States, that doesn’t mean that it will be available in Canada. It still makes very little sense to me how the physical version of a book can be available in Canada, but the Kindle equivalent is not (despite the fact that it is available in the US, so the digital version obviously exists). I didn’t think such a unnecessarily confusing system could exist, but such is the case for two books that I searched for (The Wise Man’s Fear and A People’s History of the United States, though the former is now available thankfully), and I’m sure that many other books fall into this category.
Viewing angles aren’t always great: Not a huge deal, but one of the problems with having a screen and no backlight is that you will sometimes find yourself shifting around in your chair to find the right angle to read in. Physical books don’t have this problem because there is no screen that light can reflect off of, and the iPad doesn’t have this problem because the backlight overpowers all but the most severe sources of reflection. The screen on the Kindle is a matte screen, and so thankfully you don’t get any severe reflections, but when you don’t have a backlight, it doesn’t take a severe reflection to make the device difficult to read. The key is to position the device so that the light source is directly shining on the screen, as opposed to a wide angle, where the light reflects off. It’s not as bad as I’m making it sound, but it’s still something to keep in mind.
Slightly worried about the durability: I suppose this is one point that will be hard to comment on at this time (again, I’ve only had the device for about a month), but the fact that my sleep switch is already sticking does concern me a little bit. It’s the same sort of sliding switch that you have on the PSP, and I’ve heard quite a few horror stories about those things wearing down and breaking, which obviously leaves you in a difficult situation. Still, I guess if you wanted to look on the bright side, the new version only costs $99, so if disaster were to strike, you have an easy path to replacing your Kindle (or you can always repair it if you’re savvy).
So like I said off the top, the Kindle has been serving me quite well in the albeit limited time that I have owned it. It’s probably important to reiterate that I’m basing my observations off of the old Kindle (the third generation), but I can’t imagine that the new versions are drastically different. The biggest differences are the form factor, the loss of the keyboard, and some improved refresh rates (and even the old refresh rates don’t bother me, so I think you’re okay regardless). Hopefully this little write up is helpful for people who are on the fence about possibly purchasing a Kindle.
My Random Thoughts on Life Without RSS
A little bit of background about myself: I have a horrible problem when it comes to maintaining my attention on the computer. So often I will sit down with the intention of getting some work done, only to get sidetracked by one little curiosity after another. Maybe I’ll read some news about an interesting computer game, which will lead me to research new video cards to play said game. That will lead to me research new power supplies to power that video card. And that will lead me to research new cases to house the power supply, video card, and the dozen other components that I bookmarked over the past hour, while I should have been doing my work. In order to alleviate the problem, I made a rule about eight months ago: I would only browse RSS feeds during my work day, and I would never read anything that wasn’t curated through RSS during my 7:30 AM - 4:00 PM work day. All of my… extracurricular browsing could be done afterwards, when I was in the comfort of my home with time to kill.
And RSS worked pretty well for me. By restricting myself, I was able to get the best of both worlds: I was keeping up with the daily happenings of the world, all the while getting my work done without being sidetracked for hours at a time. However, I recently read this article at Ars Technica that discusses the pitfalls of RSS with regards to personal productivity and personal sanity. It’s a great article, and I highly recommend checking it out. After that, I was inspired to take a week off of RSS, and get my news “the old-fashioned way”, to quote a term from the Ars article. Here are some of the positives and negatives that I discovered throughout my little adventure.
Positives:
Less stressful: Like the article that I linked eludes to, there’s a certain stress involved with constantly trying to zero out your RSS feed. My RSS feed has about fifteen subscriptions on it, and if I leave it for a couple of hours, it’s not unusual to have about sixty stories or more to sift through. Leaving it for a day (perhaps you decided to spend a day in the great outdoors) creates a gigantic mess that no sane person would ever attempt to read through in one sitting. Getting news in the traditional fashion means that there is no number staring you down. You don’t have to grind through hundreds of stories that may not even be interesting to you, and that means that you can…
Read stories in more detail: One of the consequences of the “unread stories” number is the inescapable temptation to skim through articles. No matter how enthralling that blog post may be, you can’t spend too much time on it, because you have about 144 more articles to go through after you’re done. During this past week, I found that I have been actually reading the stories that I saved into my Readability list. And not just skimming them either - I was actually reading them in detail. Sometimes I was even re-reading them to make sure I didn’t miss any important points. While my news excursions over the past week haven’t been as exhaustive as they were in the past, they were certainly a lot more enriching.
Save time by avoiding filtering process: This ties in to the first two points, but the filtering process of going through every crappy story to find the gems takes a considerable amount of time. I only had fifteen subscriptions, and it was still and ordeal for me. I can’t imagine what it’s like for people who have thirty or more subscriptions in their feed (and apparently such people exist). Sometimes browsing for stories at the actual website can be beneficial, because the formatting of the sites tends to bring the most “important” and breaking stories at the top, while those miscellaneous stories about the royal couple’s new tennis rackets tend to go to the bottom where you (thankfully) will never see it. Obviously allowing somebody else to determine what is important isn’t always a good thing, but there are benefits involved with outsourcing the filtering process to somebody else.
Negatives:
Will inevitably miss stories: When moving away from RSS and back into the traditional realm, one of the things that you have to accept is that you will miss stories. It is quite simply unavoidable. While a lot of those stories are trash as we have discussed, there are definitely some gems that will be lost in the shuffle. Video game websites are a prime example of this. Stories about big budget games often go to the top of the website, while stories about smaller games from indie studios get much less attention, and as a gamer, you run the risk of missing out on some great indie games, just because you will have missed every story that was ever written about them.
Must manually create a list of sites: This may not sound like a big deal, and for the most part it isn’t. I ended up creating a list of all my important websites in various categories (Technology, Politics, Gaming, and Canada) and then I bookmarked them into separate folders. I repeated the process on my iPhone, and for the most part, things went smoothly. However, you will run into the odd site every now and then that has a… less than optimal interface on a mobile device. The CBC’s website is one example of this, where browsing their five or six top stories is easy, but drilling down becomes an exercise in frustration. A lot of popular news websites have iPhone apps that are meant to provide a more intuitive means of finding stories, but a lot of them just run as slow as death. Again, the CBC is a prime example. If the situation is this shaky on the iPhone - the most developer-supported smartphone on the planet - I can’t imagine how inconsistent and frustrating it can be on an Android or Windows Phone 7 device (you BlackBerry folks still read newspapers, right?). One really nice thing about RSS (and the Reeder app in particular) is that it’s a consistent experience. No matter which subscription you’re looking at, it’s nice and tidy, if not particularly exciting.
Not as easy to share stories: Again, this is hardly a big deal, but one thing that I absolutely love about Reeder is its sharing tools. I can post an article on Pinboard, Twitter, Facebook, Readability, and Delicious all without ever leaving the app. While I don’t share stories very often (except maybe on Twitter, where I tend to be a little preachy), it’s nice to have the option without having to resort to little bookmarklets and Firefox extensions all over the place.
Overall, I think the experiment went fairly well. While I certainly missed a lot of stories, I still ended the week with the feeling that I learned a lot. Over the next week, I’m going to try RSS one more time, this time with a far more aggressive approach to filtering (i.e. I’ll be using the “mark all as read” button a lot more often). If the stress returns, then perhaps it will be my final foray into RSS, and my permanent return to the traditional world of manually curating news stories.
The State of Net Neutrality in Canada
Well, to be fair, this time it’s not really my random thoughts. I’ve been keeping up with the issue for quite some time (because it’s an important issue), so I figured I would take this opportunity to share a few articles that I think are important for people who want a rundown on things like net neutrality, usage-based billing, and the sad state of broadband in Canada (especially when you compare our broadband services to those found in other countries).
Data caps are motivated by competition: So by now, anybody who has been keeping up with the whole Bell/CRTC issue knows what Bell’s defence is: they are supposedly being forced to impose data caps upon indie ISPs like Teksavvy because they are facing serious congestion issues. In other words, their network cannot handle the supposed troves of people who are downloading movies off of Torrent sites every night. However, this excellent article by Michael Geist points out that Bell actually offers different data caps in Ontario and Quebec, despite the fact that both provinces are part of the same network. The hypothesis here is that Bell is offering different data caps in different regions in order to respond to different levels of competition. The entire argument of “congestion” takes another dent when you consider how independent ISPs are already proposing a pricing scheme in which they are charged based on the peak network traffic. Dr. Geist points out how this scheme would actually be a superior method of handling congestion, since a network can only become congested when the simultaneous demand becomes sufficiently high. The raw amount of gigabytes consumed over a monthly period doesn’t give you a realistic indication of how much congestion the network actually experienced during that month. However, this approach apparently isn’t good enough for Bell, and they want independent ISPs to purchase a flat amount of bandwidth every month, and then pay extra whenever this amount is exceeded by its users (in a fine that would ultimately get passed down to the users themselves). In other words, Bell wants to handle congestion with a strategy that would stifle competition. Convenient, no?
The CRTC is not protecting us: This ties into the previous point about Bell and their usage-based billing policy. Back when Bell first announced that they would be imposing usage-based billing on their wholesale customers (and back when all hell broke loose), the CRTC initially approved the decision, despite the fact that they’re the ones who are supposedly protecting us from ISPs and their unfair business practices. In fact, it was the Conservative government (of all people!) who had to threaten to forcibly overturn the CRTC’s decision. You know that you’re failing pretty damn badly when even the Harper government looks at your blatant disregard for honest customers with distain. In a lot of ways, the United States has it a lot worse than Canada, at least in terms of government ineptitude. However, you have to give the FCC credit: at least they’re trying to protect the Internet for its users. That seems to be a damn sight more than what the CRTC is doing.
Lawful access billing and its effect on competition: The Harper government - in all their malfeasant glory - has proposed the Lawful Access bills. This legislation would require ISPs to have infrastructure in place that would allow the government to monitor the Internet browsing of all Canadians without the need for a warrant. This legislation is pretty awful for reasons that are hopefully apparent, but privacy is not the only thing that suffers from this legislation. The Lawful Access bills would be detrimental for ISP competition as well, since it would force smaller, less financially prosperous ISPs to purchase additional equipment. This potentially expensive equipment would be used to store and monitor the Internet traffic of every customer who uses the network. This is a cost that would ultimately get passed down to the customers themselves (paying to be monitored… ironic, no?). Higher prices would inevitably end up driving some customers away, and back to the bigger ISPs who can easily afford upgraded equipment without having to lean on their users.
Canada vs the world in broadband service: As I eluded to earlier, it isn’t looking good. If you look at the average download speeds for a collection of different countries, Canada comes in at a rather embarrassing 36th place. In all fairness though, we aren’t doing a whole lot worse than the United States (31st) or the United Kingdom (29th). Oh, and if you think that’s bad, just wait until you look at the rankings for upload speeds! We rank 64th in the world, behind Mozambique and Kenya. And as one final slap in the face, when you look at the value proposition for broadband access, Canada ranked 25th out of the 30 countries that were examined. Pop quiz: would usage-based billing increase our standing or decrease our standing?
I didn’t compile those articles because I want people to get depressed about the current state of affairs. Rather, it’s important to be vigilant and not place your faith in the institutions that have been supposedly put in place to protect us (the CRTC). Furthermore, you shouldn’t place your faith in the government that is supposedly put in place to provide for us (Harper and company). I’ve been following the net neutrality battle (and the usage-based billing battle, as they are one and the same) for over two years now, and I have a feeling that I will be reading articles about it for years to come. It’s an ongoing battle, and whether you agree with me or if you think I’m full of shit, it’s important to make your voice heard in this debate that will eventually shape the Internet for future generations.
My Random Thoughts on Bastion
So after last week’s foray into somewhat serious territory, I’m in the mood to do another gaming post this week. Last month I played through Bastion on Xbox Live Arcade, and I enjoyed my time with the game quite a bit. It’s always nice to have a new IP that leaves you feeling good about this industry that has become increasingly obsessed with sequels, prequels, and reboots. Here’s a more detailed rundown of what I liked and didn’t like about the game:
Positives
Interesting weapons: Bastion is an action RPG, and as it turns out, the game does a pretty good job of paying attention to both the action and RPG elements of its weapon system. I can’t quite remember how many weapons are available in Bastion (I want to say twelve, but that could be off), but there were very few of them that left me with a bitter taste. The team at Supergiant did a pretty good job of making each weapon feel unique, despite having a relatively high number of them. You have your typical ranged weapons (pistol, shotgun, rifle, flamethrower) and your typical melee weapons (sword, hammer, spear), but they have all been adapted to the top-down perspective quite well. The upgrade system for the weapons was also implemented nicely, and the game did a pretty good job of making you feel increasingly powerful as you upgraded your favourite weapons to their maximum capability (granting you such abilities as being able to ignore armour, which came in pretty handy).
Looks beautiful: Don’t take my word for it - just go look at some screenshots. The hand-drawn visuals look fantastic by all but the most jaded standards. The Kid in particular is really well designed, and the little touches (such as the red handkerchief hanging around his neck) give him a very distinct appearance within the game world. I played the game on the Xbox 360, but from what I’ve heard, it looks even better on the PC once you get your resolution nice and high. Oh, and did I mention how colourful the game is? We really need more of that in this console generation. A lot more.
Excellent score: Between this game and ilomilo, I’m really impressed by how these smaller, more indie games have managed to get a hold of some really fantastic musicians for their scores. Not only is the soundtrack great (in fact, just talking about the soundtrack is tempting me to buy it), but the developers did a good job of putting music in at the right places, and the game does a good job building the intensity of the music as the intensity of the action builds. The music and the narrator also end up complimenting themselves nicely, and speaking of which…
The Narrator: When I first heard that the game was going to have a narrator, I immediately began anticipating the worst case scenario. I imagined becoming frustrated as an increasingly annoying in-game voice commentated on every little misstep I took. Perhaps that has something to do with the large amount of time I spent with NHL 11 over the past year. In any event, my predictions could not have been more wrong. The narrator is fantastic, and he really does a good job of adding some life to a world that is very much devoid of human life. Looking back on the time I spent with Bastion, I can honestly say that the game’s fun factor was enhanced greatly by the narrator, and I’m glad that Supergiant decided to take a leap of faith with the narration, because it paid off.
New Game Plus: We really need this feature in more games! I played through Bastion again as soon as I finished it the first time, and it was a blast both times. The game world has a series of idols that you can worship to in order to increase the difficulty in various ways (one idol makes enemies faster, another prevents them from ever dropping recovery items, and so forth), and so your experience with New Game Plus can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be. Being able to continue with your already upgraded weapons was awesome, and the second play through encourages you to experiment with some different weapons once you get little bored with your fully-upgraded gear. New Game Plus is fantastic in almost all of its manifestations, and I want to see it done more often (I’m looking at you, Deus Ex: Human Revolution!).
Negatives
Aiming system: For some reason, Supergiant decided to abandon conventional wisdom, and they mapped the “fire” action to one of the controller’s face buttons. The problem with this is that aiming while shooting and moving becomes a frustrating exercise in finger contortion. The game has an auto aim system that works well most of the time, but every once in a while you’re going to want to manually aim at something, and doing so pretty much requires you to stop moving, take your left hand, and use that hand to manipulate the right analog stick while firing with your right hand. Just map that button to a trigger next time, yeah? They’re called “triggers” for a reason.
Some annoying challenges: The game has some pretty cool levels that basically test your skill with various weapons. Scoring high in these challenges grants you additional items that you can use to upgrade your gear. For the most part, these challenges are implemented well, but some of them are annoying beyond belief. One of them in particular has you trying to kill a bunch of really small flying creatures (and by “a bunch”, I mean about one-hundred) while they fly off the ledge where you can’t reach them. Oh, and you only have a melee weapon. You can throw that melee weapon, but you’ll hit about two or three of the creatures at best. And did I mention that you’re being timed?
Can’t move the camera: This one isn’t the end of the world, but it’s a pretty odd omission for a top-down action RPG. Considering that the environments are all hand-drawn, there’s a chance that they just couldn’t rotate the camera because the set-pieces were only drawn from one perspective, in which case I forgive them completely. It just seemed a little weird to me at first glance.
Automatically equipping new weapons: Some of the levels have you discovering new weapons. This would normally be fun and exciting, except for the fact that the weapons are always equipped automatically, taking up one of the slots that you had previously allocated for something else. It gets frustrating when you take your time carefully deciding which weapons you want to bring along (certain combinations compliment themselves more nicely than others), only to have your decision making thrown in the trash because the developers decided that you just had to experience that cool new weapon first hand.
It’s pretty rare for me to play through a game again as soon as I finish it the first time. In fact, the last time I did that was with Mass Effect 2, so Bastion is in some good company indeed. Oh, and this is also the first time that I’ve ever collected every single achievement for an Xbox 360 game, which I was pretty proud of myself for ;). The game is available for the Xbox 360 and the PC, so if you’re in the mood for a beautiful action RPG with a whole lot of personality, I suggest giving it a look.
