The Christmas week...

The Tree

It's been a lovely week here at the Villa. I haven't been blogging as often as possible because LiveJournal chose to shut down my bposting facility, probably in response to their DDoS attack (it's an understandable vector), and I've been unable to use the LJ API through Emacs ever since. It's been very frustrating, and I'm thinking about moving to Dreamwidth in the coming year.

Still, Christmas came and went. I got some lovely gear, including a very nice zafu, a wonderful tea set, and some exercise gear I've been looking for, mostly hand-strengthening stuff. I did go buy myself a copy of Rage, ID's new game, and have been trying not to play it too obsessively.

A new bed

Kouryou-chan got a ton of swag, including a new Wii, a new bed, more arts and crafts stuff than she knows what to do with. And clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. Stormy, too, got a new bed, and great looking boots, more clothes and pyjamas. Omaha got chocolate, a copy of OmniFocus for the iPad, and new headphones, really good ones.

Omaha made a Christmas ham, which was absolutely delicious. I've been completely ignoring my diet for the past week, deciding that if I'm going to be a schlub this week I should go all out. It's been working. I feel like a schlub. Sleeping nine, ten hours a day. Doing very little real work. It's been nice. Life resumes next Tuesday.

RAGE (video game, review)

I've been playing Rage, the new video game from ID. According to the mission-o-meter, I'm about halfway through it now. It's a beautiful game, taking full advantage of modern graphics cards to deliver an experience more rich and advanced than any other yet delivered to the big screen. But as for the game itself, all I can say is that we've been here before, wearing our clown shoes.

Rage starts off as a post-apocalyptic thriller: the Earth was smashed by a giant meteor. You were part of a crew being frozen in cryogenic suspension in an "ark", one of thousands buried around the Earth. You awaken to find your ark damaged, the rest of your crew dead (convenient that), and your vehicle bay with weapons, ammo, and the rest destroyed (doubly convenient). Stumbling out into the wasteland, you meet Dan, who saves your ass and hauls you to his town.

As an Ark survivor, you have a unique ability to heal wounds insanely fast, as well as recovering from death once in a while. So Dan gives you quick lessons on surviving the wasteland and uses your unique talent for surviving being shot a lot to good use. He's one of the good guys. There are many categories of bad guys, of course.

Rage has two modes: walking and driving. This is straight out of Grand Theft Auto. You accept missions to get ahead, some of which are side-missions. Again, Grand Theft Auto. The walking/first person shooter is very railed-- often there's only one way to go, you walk through various firefights, reach an endpoint and, that's it. Next mission. This, as well as the game engine in its entirety, feels very much like Half Life 2.2, especially with the full-on "Lost Coast" graphics options enabled. You scrounge for things you need, and they glow, just like Bioshock. There are standalone sniper episodes, straight out of every FPS ever written. This is that "you've been here before" feeling.

And then there's the driving game, which is the game's clown shoes: At times, instead of driving to a mission, driving is the mission, mostly races for the entertainment of the townies. The problem with these driving-as-mission episodes is that they're cost free: if you die, it doesn't count against you. The only way to win upgrades to your car for the regular mission games is to enter races and win the respect of other drivers; there is no black market for it.  This is so awkwardly not part of the FPS game that it feels tacked on, and completely destroys any consistent suspension of disbelief.

Rage wasn't worth the $49.95 full price, but it was definitely worth the $20 I paid during the Christmas sale. It's definitely beautiful, there's great voice acting, the music is appropriately moody. If you like FPS, Rage is great. But it's quality shines like that of money and effort thrown at something we've all seen before.

Bronying out...

I had a blast last night at a Brony party. It was held at a local MakerSpace in Seattle's International District, thrown by a couple of friends of mine who are using the space for all sorts of organizational things.

Brony are adults who like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I'm sort-of an honorary Brony. Lauren Faust, the producer and lead artist for the current series, was also the lead for Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, and her sense of color and scene is unmatched by any other artist currently working in animation. MLP:FiM's backgrounds and gradients are jaw-droppingly good, and yeah, I'll admit that when it comes to the megatons of crap on TV, an MLP:FiM episode is an 18-minute burst of relaxation.  I don't addict to it like some people, but I'll admit to preferring it to another episode of Dexter. I hope someday to be able to draw with Inkscape backgrounds as good as Lauren's, and use them for a long-simmering website idea I've never felt confident enough to try and do.  The vector style has hit a dead end, and I think some of Lauren's art styles would fit in well to push it in a good direction.

Omaha, Storm, Kouryuou-chan and I ate pizza, watched "Dragonshy," "Sonic Rainboom," and "Party of One." The last of which was obviously a Ren & Stimpy homage, and it was hard not to laugh as Pinkie Pie lost all touch with reality. When she started interacting with rocks and bags of flour, the backgrounds changed to those surreal washes Krikfalusi used whenever Ren started losing his mind. Poor Pinkie Pie, I never realized how hard she struggled with her schizophrenia. And Rarity should just forget the lipstick: she does not tart up well.

I ran into FallenPegasus, who lives with Bronies and a little girl who's a serious MLP:FiM fan herself so he got dragged along.  He showed me his new phone, and I experienced a moment of technolust.  Now I have to look into getting my hands on a new Nexus.