So what’s been going on? Three things mostly: work, xbox gaming, and Ruby on Rails programming. I’m happy to say I’ve finally got RoR pretty well figured out, and have created some pretty neat stuff with it so far (mostly around xbox social networking). My long-term goal is to use it the next time I re-design the Lab Rescue web site.

I’m off work this week, and it’s nice to relax at home, see family, visit friends, and generally relax.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year!

It’s a typical two-team strategy game, with variants of capture-the-flag, territories, etc., but is done in a kind of “Road Runner” cartoon motif that works surprisingly well. There are also many different classes of characters to choose from (soldier, spy, scout, engineer, etc.) each with very different abilities, and somehow they’re all fairly well balanced.

Our Xbox 360 gang played this game nearly continuously for 6 months, until we finally got tired of the somewhat limited map selection, and switched off to Rainbow Six Vegas recently.

This is a first-person shooter game, but with a much more developed story than most, and enough differing elements of gameplay (sneaking, shooting, driving, boating, etc.) and different environments that it never gets boring or repetitive. The length of the game was quite satisfying also — it was a much longer game than I expected. The game is completely linear, but I don’t mind that at all.

There isn’t much that’s groundbreaking to talk about, except for the “gravity gun” which is one of the many weapons (or items) available in the game. This gun manipulates gravity to let you pull items in from far away, carry them, and launch them away from you (presumably at targets… barrels of fuel are particularly useful). It’s a nice twist and adds a new style of gameplay I haven’t encountered before.

The graphics and gameplay are very well done (though the airboat controls took some getting used to), as is the story and dialog. One of the best games I’ve played this year… it makes The Orange Box an even better value!

This game is the most creative and new game I’ve played in ages, and, like most other reviewers, I’m saddened that it was such a short game (a few days of play). It’s a puzzle game, and one reviewer called it the most original puzzle game since Tetris. The premise is simple: you’re a lab rat “volunteer” who has to make it through 19 challenges using your portal gun. The gun lets you fire a blue or orange portal into certain wall/ceiling/floor surfaces. The two portals connect through some unexplained inter-dimentional rift. Need to get across a big pit of acid? Shoot a blue portal on the wall across the room, and an orange one on the wall next to you, and walk through. But what if the wall across the room can’t support a portal (since this is a lab, only white-tiled surfaces can have portals on them)? Put one portal on the floor, one high up on the wall behind you, and walk into the floor portal. You’ll appear high in the air above you, and fall — once again — into the portal on the floor, but this time at a high speed. When you materialize out of the portal high on the wall this time, you maintain your momentum (all rules of physics are obeyed) and go flying across the room, and across the pit! Here’s a photo showing two portals and how they connect:

There’s a turret protecting the hallway. However, shoot an orange portal behind / next to it, and a blue one near you, and you can get behind the turret and disable it. Now, the puzzles in this game were pretty good, especially when you add in the 6 advanced maps. But what really makes this game shine is its humor. I don’t want to spoil it, but the game has a fantastically dark humor element, mostly in the form of the computer voice that is conducting the lab experiments, and also in the aforementioned gun turrets that speak dozens of funny snippets at you the whole time (“I see you!” they sometimes exclaim as they open fire, and “I don’t hate you.” when you destroy them).

All I can say is I’m very sad this game is over, and I really hope there’s a (longer) sequel some day.

One of the first games I played was Viva Piñata, a pretty old game. The overly cutesy box cover make me skeptical, but I tried it anyway. The beginning tutorial was even more cutesy, and seemed geared towards third graders. Sticking with it for a little while though, I got completely sucked into the game! The artistic creativity is just fantastic, and the game was executed very well. The premise is unique — build a garden, attract wild piñata to it, and breed them — er, sorry, “romance” them — to create more piñata, which are desperately needed by Piñata Central for the ever increasing number of parties going on. Don’t worry, when you send your piñata to a party, it gets fixed back up, and sent back happier than ever!

I stuck with the game most of the way to the end, missing out on attracting just a few of the higher-level piñata. I think what appealed to me was the sense of logic and order to the game. Want to attract a Mousemallow? Look it up in the encyclopedia to learn that they are attracted to turnips, and plant a turnip seed in the garden. Want a Horstachio to reside? Then you’ll need 500 pinometers of grass in the garden, and 8 apples for it to eat (from an apple tree of course!). The requirements can get rather tricky as the game progresses, and of course there are the bad guys (sour piñata that poison your residents), and a band of evil-doers that break your piñata open, killing them (but revealing lots of candy which your other — apparently cannibal — residents come rushing over to eat. The game has a good pace, adding new complexities as you become a more accomplished gardener.

If you need to have lots of action and shoot-outs, this isn’t the game for you. If you are OK with a slow-paced, semi-puzzle game controlling a mini-universe full of bizarre creatures, give it a try! There’s even a huge fan web site called Piñata Island, with all the information about each piñata, plant, item, seed, etc. Good for all ages.

Oh yeah, apparently it’s also a kids TV show, though I’ve never seen it…

Two years later, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes was released. It was an excellent sequel, and in some ways was even better than the first. It was a longer game, with more puzzles and a clever “alternate universe” to switch back and forth from to finish the game.

Then there was a long, three-year wait for the final game in the series, Metroid Prime: Corruption, to be released, this time for the Wii. I finished the game last week, and have to say I’m a bit disappointed. The game was much simpler than either of its predecessors, with no puzzles worth mentioning, almost no hidden items to seek out, and much easier battles. In fact, one of my only complaints about the previous games — the occasional few-second delay before a door opens, as the game loads more of the story from disc — was magnified many-fold in Corruption, with many doors taking upwards of 10 seconds to open. I also found the game’s adaptation to the Wii’s unique remote controllers to be awkward at best. The standard controller on the Gamecube worked far better for this type of game, and the few motion-sensitive additions in Corruption were unnecessary and didn’t add to the experience.

Summary: If you are a fan of the first two, you may be disappointed. If you haven’t played the first two, you may enjoy it… but you’d be better off buying MP:1 and MP:2 for a few dollars at a used store, since the Wii will play all Gamecube games.

If you’ve been reading Kathie’s Blog you’ll know most of what’s been going on recently. To sum up, we went to a Nationals baseball game last weekend, we’ve got a new foster dog named Harper, and we’ve been playing a lot of video games. Our XBox 360 blogs for us automatically every day about what we’ve played… here’s my 360 blog and here’s Kathie’s. The 360′s online / Internet functionality is light-years ahead of the Playstation 3 and Wii — even though those consoles came out a full year after the 360. Since the long (long, long) awaited Metroid Prime: Corruption came out last week for the Wii, that’s pretty much all I’ve played. We’ve also been working on the garden outside again now that the weather isn’t as oppressive, and working on our resumés since we’re thinking it’s time for our vacation to wrap up soon.

If you’re looking for HDMI cables, the place I ordered from was www.abacus24-7.com. They shipped the order the next day, and it arrived three days after that. The cables are much higher quality than I expected.