Let’s end the week on an adorable note, loyal reader. Last night my lovely lady and I treated our three cats to a little canned food and our feline friends dug in with gusto. Here are our girls: Chatouille, the black one; Meeka, with the Mickey Mouse on her rump and Buttercup, with the long hair.
My beautiful bride and I have a guilty pleasure, loyal reader: we enjoy reality shows, particularly the food-themed ones. Just today we were watching the latest episode of Master Chef when we came across this most cliché of contestants, the one who says she didn’t come to make friends, but to win.
I can’t really understand people like that. I mean, the two are not mutually exclusive, are they? Especially in a competition that’s based solely on how good the food you make it, where whether or not you get along with people isn’t really a factor.
It’s even more baffling when it’s a social game such as Survivor. Friends are pretty good to have, strategically. And at the end of the day, even if you’re competing you can still be cordial.
It’d be like being rude to your coworkers because you’re not there to make friends but to do your job. You kind of need to get along in life, you know?
On a recent visit to Andrew’s place, loyal reader, my best man introduced me to a new Xbox Live Arcade game called Poker Night 2. Knowing my love of poker, you can imagine that my curiosity was piqued. While it turns out its replay value is limited, it’s still a fun little title that I’d recommend if you like your poker laid back.
A single-player affair, Poker Night 2 has you squaring off in an elimination game of Texas Hold’em (or Omaha Hold’em if you prefer) against four multimedia characters that perfectly fit the dive bar setting. You’ll play against Brock Samson from TV’s Venture Bros, the wisecracking robot Claptrap from Borderlands 2, the legendary Ash from the Evil Dead series (but more precisely the Army of Darkness version) and Max the dog from the classic Sam & Max video games. The game is run by Portal‘s GladOs, a sarcastic and deranged robot who deadpans very funny lines throughout. My favourite of those being, “Congratulations. You turned a nearly unbeatable hand into a victory. Well done.”
The poker action itself is extremely basic. You can bet, check, raise or fold until you bust out or are the last man standing. Unlike fast-paced poker titles such as Full House Poker, Poker Night 2 keeps the game’s pace and atmosphere very casual. It feels more like a game between buddies on a Saturday night. You can’t preset your actions and no one seems to be in a hurry. In fact, that’s the best thing about it.
You see, your four opponents are pretty much constantly bantering, talking about themselves, ribbing each other and shooting the breeze. Most of the dialogue is quite funny, especially GladOs’s intermittent observations. For the first few hours of playing the game, I was more than happy to just sit back and enjoy the virtual company.
And that’s unfortunately where the game’s limited replay value is apparent. Eventually the dialogue just repeats itself and by the fourth of fifth time you hear Max’s Jason Alexander impression, it starts to get annoying and you wish you could speed up the game.
On the plus side of replayability, however, Poker Night 2 does offer some cool unlockables. Playing well earns you tokens you can spend to but chips, cards and decks themed to each character’s series. In addition, completing three randomly-picked challenges (such as going all in, winning three hands in a row or buying people drinks) will give you a chance a “bounty item”, a personal object that each character in turn offers up for grabs. Sam puts up his banjo and Claptrap risks his 2010 Spike Video Game Character of the Year award, for example. Winning these items gives you exclusive props for you Xbox Live avatar, always a nice bonus. If you own Borderlands 2, those items also unlock some DLC for that game.
All in all, if you’re looking for a few hours of laid-back poker with some fun conversation and fun unlockables, you should give Poker Night 2 a try. Just don’t expect to invest any long-term gaming time into it.
I was reading a very interesting article on my lunch break, loyal reader, that I’d like to share with you. It’s an insider’s explanation of why child stars tend to end up, well, pretty messed up. It’s written by Mara Wilson, who starred in such big films as Mrs Doubtfire, Matilda and the Miracle on 34th Street remake. She has been out of show business for a long time and now lives a pretty normal life in New York. But her article is well-written and very informative.
Click on over to 7 Reasons Child Stars Go Crazy and enjoy!
Good news, loyal reader. After a couple of weeks of intense pain, my leg is finally on the mend. The clot must have dissolved quite a bit since what was excruciating pain has receded to the point where it’s mostly just sore, as if I had run a lot without stretching. Uncomfortable but manageable.
That means I don’t have to take codeine anymore and I can walk around without a cane! That certainly helps my mobility and my life is now slowly getting back to normal. I can now also relieve my wife of the extra chores she had to do, which makes me feel a lot less guilty.
I gotta admit part of me will miss having a prop though. When I was doing some programming at work, handling that stick kind of helped my train of thought flow better. Still, I’ll take my ability to walk any day! I can always use my yo-yo for a prop.
I was visiting my good friend and best man Andrew today, loyal reader, and we tried a new card game he had recently acquired called Smash-Up. If you’ll pardon the lame pun, it was a smashing good time!
The game’s name comes from the fact that each players picks decks of cards from 12 (including the expansion pack) factions of characters: ghosts, pirates, ninjas, zombies, dinosaurs and more geeky staples. Mixing those two decks together gives each player his deck. A deck has two types of cards: Minions and Actions.
A number of location cards (called bases) are placed on the tables. The object of the game is to take over those bases by placing enough Minions on them. Each player can play one Minion and one Action cards per turn. At least, that’s the basic rule.
You see, as in Magic: The Gathering, most of the cards let you do things on top of the main rules (such as playing more Minions in your turn) or even circumvent them entirely (by, say, letting you keep a card after another player has destroyed it). And just as with Magic, the key to victory is to play your cards strategically with each other to both ensure you capture bases or screw your opponents’ plans to capture them.
When a base has enough Minions on it, it gets destroyed and points are awarded to the players who had Minions on it. Generally the player with the most powerful Minions earns more points than the runner-up and so on. The game is over once a player has at least 15 points, with the winner of course being the highest score.
What’s most enjoyable with Smash-Up is the sheer variety of ways to play. Not only does each faction have a different emphasis (wizards are all about making you draw more cards, dinosaurs have a lot of raw power, zombies lets you return destroyed cards to the playing field, etc), but your whole gameplay will be affected by which other faction you pair it with. And, of course, who you play against.
One piece of advice, though: don’t play the game with overly-competitive types. Since a lot of moves depend on sometimes-contradicting rules working together, you will find yourself consulting the rulebook (and the game’s official online forums) to settle disputes over interpretations. But once you’ve gone over a few of those and come to an agreement, it should be smooth sailing.
For its sheet variety and its endless opportunities for screwing over your buddies, Smash-Up is a ton of fun. I can’t wait to play it with 3 or 4 more players and watch some great strategy happen on the fly!
You know, loyal reader, looking back on the years I spent living in poverty I find myself thankful for the survival and home economics skills they taught me. I’m also thankful for my wife who was with me for a couple of those years.
With the car repairs once more eating an unexpected hole in out budget (before we had a chance to replenish the emergency fund money we spent on the last repairs less than two months ago), we find ourselves again having to tighten our belt until the next payday. But our experience is a great ally because we’re now used to managing a small amount of money to get the maximum out of meagre resources.
My wife’s culinary skills and extensive spice collection, along with her hundreds of recipes, lets us make very tasty and nutritious meals out of the reserves in our cupboards and some cheap staples from the grocery store. Despite the tightness of the situation, we still manage to pay the bills and the rent and we’re damn proud of that. This low-fund period will be short-lived, thank goodness, but our past lets us handle it without much stress.
I meant to show this off earlier this month, loyal reader. To keep our drinks cold for our May the 4th Star Wars viewing party, I went to HMV and bought a nifty silicon tray that creates effigies of Darth Vader in ice. No mere Vader-shaped flat jobbies, the little sculptures are actually quit detailed down to the mask’s chin tusks. Take a look:
What a great geeky favour, and just in time for summer, too! Now if I can get get my hands on those lightsaber popsicles…
The main reason I dislike bringing my car to a garage, loyal reader, is my own shameful ignorance of the automobile’s inner workings. I feel this puts me at the mercy of the mechanic whose word I have no choice but to take since I don’t know better.
Earlier today, I brought my filly in to have her summer tires put back on and get her oil changed. Nothing complicated. Once I got to work, I received a phone call from the Royal Dodge Garage that I had a ball joint that needed urgent replacing as well as loose sockets, missing studs and missing lugnuts. Without those costly repairs, I was told they wouldn’t be able to even let me leave the place, as it would be too dangerous. The estimate was $414 to replace the ball joint, $220 or so for the carious studs, sockets and lugnuts. That’s on top of paying for the tire change and oil change.
Since I don’t have that kind of money immediately available, I talked him down to the minimum amount of repairs that would make me roadworthy enough until my next paycheque. That ended up being $327 worth of repairs.
Of course if it prevents a major accident and it is indeed as urgent as they said, it’s money well spent. I just hate not being knowledgeable enough to even know what parts to look at, or how urgent the problem really is. I like to think the best of people, but mechanics are notorious for charging for extra repairs and services.
I take it as a learning experience, however, and this time I’ll shop around a bit and get estimates for the parts and labour at a couple of places. Though again I hit another dilemma: if a different place offers me a lower price, will I get the same quality?
There’s so much to consider, and I’m so out of my element that I feel no sense of control. And that’s the frustrating part: I stand ready to be fleeced but don’t really know what to do about it.
Like the rest of the gaming community, loyal reader, it was with great interest that I followed yesterday’s reveal of Microsoft’s next-generation console. As a big fan of my Xbox 360, I was really looking forward to see what was next. And I was… underwhelmed.
Over the last few months, my buddies and I have had many discussions over the merits of the Xbox vs Playstation consoles. While the Playstation 3 has definite advantages, the 360 still answered my needs for good gaming that includes a fun social aspect. By the end of the year, however, both Microsoft and Sony will have their new consoles on the market. Since the costs are likely to be high, most of us will have to pick one or the other.
People who do business know that I’m pretty brand loyal. With no dissatisfaction on the 360 front, I was planning on staying onboard with Microsoft this fall. But after yesterday’s announcement, I am starting to favour the upcoming Playstation 4.
For starters, the Xbox One reveal showcased the new features of the device and none really appealed to me and the way I use my console. Microsoft’s executives were all about the integration of the Web, television and games into one machine, with all your home entertainment options running simultaneously with seamless switching. They just couldn’t say enough about how quick and easy it was to switch from the game you were playing to the TV show you’re watching.
That’s all well and good and don’t get me wrong: the response time was impressive (under ideal presentation conditions of course) but it’s just not how I use my time when playing games or watching movies. I’ll spend time watching something and then later on I’ll throw on a game and, say, have a round or two of golf. I have never had the need or even the inclination to stop what I was doing, switch over to an entirely different amusement and then switch back.
One particularly ludicrous example was when a Microsoft executive was watching the recent Star Trek movie. To showcase the multitasking Xbox One can do, he vocally brought up Internet Explorer and proceeded to look up information about the sequel and even purchase tickets for it while the original movie was still playing on split-screen. I ask you, loyal reader, do people actually do that in the middle of a movie?
It seems that what Microsoft really wants to do is put control of your entertainment in one easy to use device. I do get that. But it’s really addressing needs and wants I don’t particularly have. I fear by wanting to be jacks of all trades, they’ll become masters of none.
On the other hand, all I heard about the Playstation 4 makes it sound like it will be a machine geared towards gamers, with entertainment options there as a nice feature to have. I do hope they’ll make the PSN (Playstation Network) as appealing as the excellent Xbox Live,
While I’m not ready to commit to one or the other without more details just yet, for now I’ll say the ball is in Sony’s court. I’m ready to be convinced and if the PS4 fits my entertainment style better, it’ll get my gaming business.
Chez Seb 