Spring Break!

Spring break was this week, and I got to see a ton of friends and family back home in Las Vegas, so that was great. Although its nice to be back. I feel like I need a bit of break from the family now, haha! Vinyl took a bit of a backseat, but that's okay. Everyone needs a little unwind time. My little brother turned 21, so that was weird. I'm finally able to hang out a bar with him and grab a drink. I remember when he was five and we rented a Nintendo 64 while I was visiting my mom's house (remember when you could rent game consoles? So weird). That was the first time I played Mario 64. Such an awesome game, and its tied to an awesome moment in my life. And now that kid is 21 and I'm pushing 30 next year (and there are still awesome Mario games). Crazy times.

Play with Mario's face kids!

I didn't play a whole lot of video games while I was there. I brought my laptop, but it failed pretty hard trying to play the in-game cinematics of Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm. I look forward to having some time to finish that campaign. I did play a decent amount of Heroclix, which for the unfamiliar (which is probably most of you), it's a tabletop miniatures game where you build a force and fight your opponent, using mostly figures based off of Marvel and DC characters. The really ingenious idea in that game is the dial mechanic. Every figure has a dial, and the amount of clicks the dial has is the character's health. As the dial is turned, the character's powers and abilities change. It's a pretty brilliant idea that takes away a lot of the boring note-taking and stat-tracking of other miniatures games. It was actually created by the fairly famous game designer Jordan Weisman, who helped to create things like the pen-and-paper games BattleTech and Shadowrun , as well as the MechWarrior PC games. Needless to say he's a pretty smart guy.

The card is for reference. All the colors on the numbers of the dial correspond to standard powers.

I got to check out the WiiU game ZombiU, which seemed really interesting, and a couple deck-building games: Legendary and DC Deck-building Game (also, could they not come up with a better name than that?). Deck-building games are really interesting I'm just starting to get into them, but they have some very unique strategy elements. Creating and using your deck simultaneously is very weird at first, but can turn out all kinds of strategic decisions. I need to play them a little more I think.

Also, in celebration of my brother's 21st birthday, we played in a poker tournament. Poker has been a staple in my family for quite some time, and I love that game. Such a great use of hidden knowledge and random elements, where over time a player can play well and consistently win. Even if a player loses a hand, if she made the correct decision she's going to win that hand in the long run. Frank Lantz did a great talk about the probability spaces of poker for a TEDx thing, and it's really worth a listen if it interests you at all:

That's all for now. Time to get that presentation ready for tomorrow and prepare for the week ahead. See you next time.

Watcha Been Playin'

That title's like every podcast's intro to what they've been playing, so I'm going to steal it for cultural and ironic significance. Also, be forewarned that these types of posts will not be quite as serious as my development posts, but I think it's good to have some fun now and then.

As a busy grad student I don't have a ton of time to play games, but I do try as much as possible to play at least a few hours a week. And if I wasn't trying to catch up on six-year-old Sci-Fi television in the form of Battlestar Galactica (which is so awesome, until like the fourth season) I might have more time for games. But like in my previous post, there needs to be a time to experience all media, and not just video games. Such a heavy cross to bear, I know.

When I don't watch the Admiral is disappointed.

But when I have been playing, I've been playing all the hits from 2009, namely Assassin's Creed II. That's right, I have my fingers directly on the pulse of today's youth. I played through the first one last year, so at this rate I'll never catch up if they keep releasing one every year. At least they changed to a different protagonist with AC3, or they were going to have to start aging Ezio in real-time.

Assassin's Creed 3? Nah man, that's too new. I'm into that retro stuff.

There's a lot of buzz around this franchise, and while the first one most-definitely had its faults, it showed a ton of potential. ACII has so far taken that potential and ran with it, for a little bit at least. The locomotion is still great. I did feel like most of the game I was just pressing forward and holding two buttons to make Ezio climb stuff or jump on stuff, but it still felt good. However, something changed once I learned how to jump up and grab on to ledges (from the thieves guild in Venice). All of the sudden I had to recognize when I could make a jump and grab a ledge, and there was a certain satisfaction with the timing of the button presses. It felt like I was really climbing, and not just directing Ezio to go climb a building. There's a certain tactile connection. I wish there was more of that throughout the entire game.

The side missions still kind of blow, yet my incessant need to complete all of the content in a game is driving me to find every treasure and carry every letter.

"Hello. I'm an assassin out for revenge against the people who murdered my family.

Oh, I have some mail for you!"

There is tons of promise still, but I feel like they blew it here a bit. I don't want to carry letters, or race the locals. I'm an assassin. I should be assassinating people. Because that's what I do. However, I do love the "build your own villa" system, where I make the town better and reap some profits. The system is a little underdeveloped though. I'm already super rich, and I can't really spend money on anything else. So now I just keep collecting money and buying all the courtesans I want...or something.

One of my favorite parts of the first AC was the actual assassinations. It was so cool to collect evidence, actually read it, and determine a way into a compound or around a gathering of guards to take down my target. It wasn't perfect, but it was by far the best part of that game. That made me feel like an assassin. I'm actually quite disappointed that the assassinations in ACII or mostly walking up to a guy, pressing a button, and then running away or fighting (neither of which really matters). On their way to making the game more streamlined and interesting, I think they lost something that made the first game special. I also have a feeling that it's never coming back, and there's no way I'm playing the first AC again. So, maybe there's future project idea hanging around that mechanic.

Well that's all for now. Next week I should be done with ACII, and I might move on to ACII: BroHood. Or I might get in some Borderlands 2. See you next time.