J'ecris en francais...

... parce-que je peux.

A Sirious Look at iGames and Voice Commands

So, when Siri came out on the iPhone 4 I thought it was a sign of the Robot Apocalypse. Hey, it's 2012. I gots Doomsday on the brain. It's more realistic than my fear of Escarmageddon, when we're all going to be destroyed by snails.

You laugh now...

Anyconspiracy, I have taken the time to test out this "Siri" and I have come to the conclusion that it is not yet intelligent enough to be able to conquer the world. Heck, it doesn't even know that the first Mega Man game came out in 1887.

The nerve of some things.

Anyways, a bit less hypercritical, I assume some of you are wondering what my opinion of Siri is, while the others are simply expecting since it seems that's where this segue is leading.

I guess I need to start out by saying that I'm not really much of an Apple Fanboy. I don't have any particular qualms with the company, I do have an iPod and iTunes and all that iJazz. But in terms of gaming I just can't really get behind it. The elements like the touchscreen and tilt controls aren't unheard of in popular console games, but like everything with video games I prefer it to act as a supplement to the basic "push buttons to win" feel of a game rather than a replacement. It's cool I can select an item from the bottom screen with a touch in the various DS Mario games, but when all I'm doing is tapping the screen as if I were using a button or dragging my finger around as if I were using a mouse without the physical feelings of the true actions, it feels like I'm getting a hampered experience.

It doesn't help that most games, at least most popular ones, seem to be those with no definitive goal. Get the little cannon guy to get as far up the screen as possible, slash the fruit repeatedly and simply hope you get about 50 watermelons at once or something, just doesn't give me the satisfying feeling that comes from reaching the end credits of a game you've been working on for days, weeks, months, or even years. All I feel like I'm doing with these App games is wasting time for the sake of wasting time, with only a rather arbitrary number to show for my efforts.

So yeah, that's my opinion on game apps. But as for Siri? I git it a heartening "Eeh." It certainly isn't bad, there are good uses for it. But it really isn't the whole "amazing do everything for you" it led us to believe, even if that's a fairly unrealistic expectation. But it can set dates! That comes up... sometimes. But honestly, whenever I tell it things it usually just asks he to do a web search for it. I guess all that really does is save typing on those teeny-tine spaces that are supposed to be "keys." Also, any time I mention video games at all it just tells me about places that sell video games that are fairly close to me.

So helpful? Yes. Life changing? No. My two cents, it doesn't buy me an iPhone.

Skill Level: Unknown

If any of you read my "yes I totally know it's a social network craze" Twitter account, then you are most likely aware of my current forays into Mega Man 5, my all time favorite Mega Man game.

While my analysis of Mega Man 5 will surely come at some later date (or dates, I've got quite a lot to say when that time rolls around), today I'd like to share with you a small secret: I think I'm getting good at this game.

You may ask why I only think that I'm good at the game and that's a completely legitmate question. Now allow me to give you the answer even if you don't care. Cause you came to my blog, and you must pay the penalty.

You see, when I made my first attempt to display my talent to the interwebz in my now unfinished Let's Play of Mega Man 5, I thought I was good at MM5. But the reason I'm not giving you a hyper-link to these videos is because I have come under the realization that I was not, in fact, good at MM5 yet. (P.S. MM5= Mega Man 5). I had made very few ventures into the castle stages due to my nasty habit of playing the intial 8 over and over and over and come tumbling over...

Needless to say, once I hit the castle stages in my MM5 Let's Play things took a turn for the bitter as the failure became so immense that I gave up on Let's Plays for quite some time.

So what makes me even consider I am actually good now? Have I played through the castle stages more? (Yes) Am I more familiar with the weapons? (Yes and yes) Have I played the Robot Master stages more? (Yerp-a-derp). But the main reason, I got two words for you: Perfect Buster Runs.

Wait, that statement had two words when I thought it. Dang fickle brain, why do you torment me so?

Now, before you go singing my praises let me be clear: I can not perfect run MM5. I can only do individual runs of individual stages without getting hit, usually after some trial and error. I find this impressive, but MM5 is slightly notorious for being easy. Right now, I can beat Gravity, Gyro, and Star Man's stages without getting hit and using only the Mega Buster.

So what do you think? Am I skilled, or just full of myself?

Status Report Captin

Sorry about my lack of posts recently, I've been trying to work around with getting some other people to write somewhat regularly to make up for my lack of work. Anyways, I'll give you what is essentially two posts to hopefully make up for this.

The first is a link to what is the highlight of my week. The guest post I wrote for Exfanding Your Horizons, the blog that inspired me to actually try to get my crazy ramblings on the internet, is finally up! It's probably some of the best stuff I've ever written, so it should hold you over until I get my act together and stop posting every 3 or 4 days instead of every other day like I should.

Here's the link to the post

Another is a progress report on my Let's Plays and a bit of foreshadowing on their futures, as if I could foreshadow something else.

It seems that Mega Man 6 probably will last into late February early March. Mega Man 5 (my favorite Mega Man game), should follow directly after. This Mega Man Project of mine will probably be over in a year or so, but it's going to be fun while doing it.

Pokemon Blue is going to take a loooooooooooong time to finish, Pokemon Let's Plays can go upwards of 50 parts. Perhaps during the summer I'll post more the one a week, but things are about to get a little busy here, so I'd have to get a bit more of an idea of my time situation before commiting to 3+ videos a week. This project will probably be sad to leave, but I sure will feel like I accomplished something.

So that's what's what for now. I'll keep you posted.

Ha. Posted. Blog Pun.

Not Giving Up, Just Resting

Ack, out of the loop again with my posts. Lemme think something up.

Ahh, yes. Time away from a game.

It's a simple principal. When playing a game though the first time, one often comes up against obstacle that will puzzle the gamer on how to complete. The solution I often find useful is that if such a situation happens, to leave the game alone for a while, usually at least overnight, before returning to it.

Now at first this seems silly. Wouldn't removing yourself from the game cause you to lose the skill and precision that you had been developing over the course of this challenge?  Well, if you remove yourself from it for a very long time, like I did with Ratchet and Clank recently, then yes, it can. However, removing yourself from it a day, or even a week, probably won't really cause you to lose the general feel of the game.

This strategy works best on games that heavily use puzzle elements, as it's main result is a fresh take on a situation. One of the problems you may be facing is a poor strategy, one that maybe works in theory or maybe even in game-play, but is to slow or ineffective to solve the problem before, well, it solves you. By taking a fresh look, you may be able to notice a pattern that you hadn't before, a much easier one or faster one. This worked wonders on a Metroid:Fusion boss battle recently, and hopefully it helps with this next one...

Another thing to augment this is you may actually lose a tad bit of skill during your 24 hour prohibition of your challenge, which seems like a bad thing. But it can make you feel more like you're encountering the challenge for the first time, and allow you to see things that you didn't focus on the first time. In Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap, I would often focus on recently acquired items to try and solve puzzles, but the game does a great job of incorporating all of the acquired items into its puzzles. A break or two later, I discovered my issue and proceeded to have a blast finishing the game.

So, if a game is frustrating you to no end, take a break. Play something else. Come back to it later. You may find it was for the best.

Weddin' Knees

Question of the Day: Why do people get down on one knee to propose?





Answer: Cause if they got down of both knees it'd be even easier to push them over.

SUPER AWESOME SHAMELESS PLUG FILLER POST GO!

The first two episodes of my new Let's Plays. There'll probably be a post about the making/my experience with these series, but for now they are for your entertainment.

Mega Man 6

Pokemon Blue

Lemurs, Hedghogs, Barrel Rolls, and Insurance Salesmen

Something weird happening lately. I've seen more video game allusions in non-game related television than any other day: 2. First one here:

Yeah, imagine my surprise seeing this on television. More surprising and more hilarious was a clip from the Penguins of Madagascar TV show, which is actually a pretty good show. It invloves King Julian (the king of the lemurs from the Madagascar movies if you're unfamiliar with the show.) Grabbing the steering wheel of a submarine, shouting DO A BARREL ROLL!, and proceeding to, in fact, do some barrel rolls.

In reference to the Sonic/Progressive, some might worry that video game companies are selling out. But I don't necessarily see it that way. I wouldn't think it would take this long for companies to try this approach, and I am in fact more happy due to the realization that companies are allowing these kinds of advertising. It shows that large corporations, even insurance ones, value the cultural impact video games. It makes me cofindient in the emergence of games as less of a negatively viewed phenomenon in today's culture.

Phenomenon doot-doo-do-do-do
Phenmomenon doot-do-do-doo

Fortune Cookie #2: Ice Climbers (3DS Virtual Console)

Ah, this should be quick. A nice and simple Fortune Cookie, I like it.

I guess I should start by saying that before I played this game, the only real background on the Ice Climbers I had for a long time was that they were in the later two Super Smash Bros. Series. I later saw a small blip here and there of the actual game, but I finally got to try it out when it was released for free by way of the 3DS Ambassador Program.

Ice Climbers is a game where you attempt to climb to the top of maybe infinite stages by way of icy platforms in a straight-fowardly vertical platforming. You have to break the ice blocks above you in order to reach the next floor of the stage while having to deal with enimies that will fill in your holes as well as send you tumbling to the bottom if the get the chance to give you a good shove. Armed with your hammer, smashing ice and polar bears is your only way to proceed.

Sounds pretty good right? And it would be except for one thing.

The controls. They are pretty bad.

You see, you make these really awkward jumps and which send you forward next to nothing. Now the platforming is vertical, so that shouldn't be a problem, right? Well the problem is that you do have to move sideways once you get up there, and it's much harder to do that without a running start. Another problem is the moving clouds, which you can't jump through, that go pretty fast and are necessary for your progression.

Another problem is the bounding boxes vs. the sprites. Either the Ice Climber or the platform's sprites do not accurately portray where you can actually land. You will find yourself endlessly going through platforms that look as if half of your body is on top of. This is especially tricky on small platforms and small moving clouds.

Even with those major faults, that doesn't keep this game for being an adequate time waster. I'm not sure of its current price point, but if it's around 1 or 2 dollars, it'd probably be worth that.

Resolution to a Problem

Okay, so yeah I've been gone for a while. Turns out that school started again. And yes that is an incredibly generic excuse and I should be thoroughly punished as a result.

Mainly cause there's a lot of other reasons too.

You see, my New Year's Resolution, aside from the standard "Be a Nice Person," was to do my hobby more than learn about it. What I mean is, for a while all I did was learn about video games and their culture, history, tid bits, and all that. But I was forgetting a key point. Playing games.

If you look at my track record, you'll see some very startling things. I feel like the equivalent of the guy who's never seen a Star Wars or a Star Trek move (for the record I have). Some of the major titles missing from my list seem to be Super Metriod, Chrono Trigger, either of the Super Mario Bros. 2's, Star Fox 64, the first half of Kirby's library, the list goes on.


Yet how do I go on and on about things like this? I've played 4 Zelda games and have beaten one (Hint: not the ones that are impressive to beat), yet I can go on and on about Zelda lore, themes, heck, I can even simply explain the basic design of a Zelda dungeon and how it's evolved.

In fact, I own next to none of the orginal copies of my favorite games. Not piracy or anything, but ports. Mario 3 on Game-Boy Advance SP (Oh yeah, I was hip at 7) was the first game I ever owned, aside from Tetris and Chess on a regular Game-Boy. Next game? Yoshi's Island on the Game-Boy, which is my all time favorite game ever.

And that's basically how it works for me. I get tons of classic games, but they're all ports, be it strict console ports, compilations, Virtual Console downloads, or even an app, those classic games aren't what they were, and sometimes it feels like I'm missing something.

The oldest system I ever played... heck the oldest system I've ever seen in person is a Nintendo 64.

But that's not a problem that will be fixed unless I find hundreds of dollars and get a good look around ebay. I do, however, plan to do more with my hobby. I'm going out, buying games, beating games. I've started really trying to play games to completion. I'm trying not to spoil story based games so I don't skip out on them. (Which basically seems to solely keep me from watching hundreds of Paper Mario Let's Plays). Needless to say, it'll be an adventure. Perhaps as grand as Pikachu's.

Oh yeah... working copy of Red/Blue. Gotta write that on the list.

An Important Question

Okay, so a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, we know that.

But if you kill two birds with one stone and catch them in your hand, are they worth a bushel's amount of Peter Piper's pecks of pickled peppers?

Things to think about, as this week draws to a close.

Graphs= Time x Space - Good Reason

Graphs are the most inefficient means of displaying one's mathematical knowledge.

By this I do not mean that graphs are an inefficient way of conveying information, but the work that it takes to create a graph far exceeds the knowledge one needs to make it. Let me give an example.

Two plus two requires little effort to solve. Heck, you just did it in your head right now. But when you started out learning math you probably had to think about it for a second or two or at least had to see it. Now that your older you can do it easily and quickly, as you should.

If you look at a slightly more difficult problem, say 3x+1=4x, then things can get more tricky. However, any of you who passed algebra could simply subtract 3x from both sides, and some may even be able to do it without writing this equation first. Some may notice right of the bat that x hast o be one because the addition to 4x is x, which is given as one. So the better you are at math, or more experienced rather, the easier and quicker you can do math. Well, most math.

You see, graphs take a lot of time, regardless of how simple the problem is. Even one of the easiest graphs, y=x, takes quite a bit of time for something you can envision almost as fast as 2+2 if exposed to it regularly. You have to draw the x and y axises, then draw the line throught the origin, and put the little arrows on each side. That may not seem like much, but add in slightly more complicated problems and increase the number and you've got a lot of time, as well as space, taken up by something that isn't really difficult enough to warrant said time.


Perhaps I'm just a whiner, but hey, if these are the worst of my problems I'm doing pretty good here, ain't I?