Mobile Gaming: Rise of Lost Empires

Rise of Lost Empires

Journalism professors tell you something along these lines: your job is to inform, to educate, to entertain, and… something else that I can’t really remember. Presumably, reviewing products falls loosely within those parameters. I’m informing you of a new game, and hopefully entertaining you a little along the way. I maintain an impartial stance toward the creators of the products I review, so as not to taint my report with inaccuracies or favoritism. Part of that is telling it like it is when you come across something that’s really, really bad. This is one of those times.

Unto Me A Child Is Born, Part Two

I’ve done insane amounts of thinking/brainstorming since first posting about my intentions with Robot Bomb. Here’s where I’m at:

Game Plan:

I think I know what I’m doing. Rather, I know what I’m doing, and I hope it’s correct. Anticipating the various problems and snags in this process won’t be easy, but I’m trying to foresee potential difficulties and ways around them. Thankfully, I’ve got an incredibly valuable resource in Stephen Carradini, editor-in-chief over at Independent Clauses. He’s got loads more experience running websites than I do, so I’ll probably be picking his brain on a regular basis.

Life Lessons With Brian: In Which I Teach China About The Internet

Alright China, we need to talk. No, not that talk. Judging by your population, you already know plenty about the birds and the bees. We need to have the internet talk.

You’ve been restricting my access to the internet since I got here on February 23rd. WordPress was blocked, for starters. Then a few weeks later, YouTube is inexplicably unavailable. It’s been that way for four months, China. How am I supposed to watch videos of ninja kitties or waterskiing squirrels if I can’t use YouTube? Then there was Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail, and briefly, Google. Then the most recent batch was unblocked, only for you to block Twitter again yesterday, and Facebook today. What gives? ***Update: The recent Twitter and Facebook blocks are due to riots in the Xinjiang region; current counts indicate at least 156 killed, 800 injured, and over 1,400 arrested.***

Facebook is currently blocked...

...and so is Twitter

My iPod Is On Life Support

White Screen Coma

My iPod is currently in the gadget version of an intensive care unit. It’s near death, and I’ve got absolutely no idea what caused it. Everything is playing out like an episode of House, where every treatment come up with by the doctor (ahem, yours truly) only makes things worse. This is no fun.

I use my iPod on a daily basis. I need to walk somewhere? Bam, in go the earphones. I’m driving somewhere? Bam, my iPod gets plugged in, the tunes blast, and away we go. I’m studying and using my laptop would be too distracting? Out comes the iPod, in go the earphones, and Ratatat or Architecture in Helsinki or Norma Jean serenade me. Beyond the basic function of listening to music, I use my beloved iPod Touch (which is named Lisa, by the way) to play games, check email, and scratch out notes for writing ideas. It’s absolutely essential to my always-on lifestyle. Only now I can’t do any of that.

Ever so briefly, I considered turning this into some sort of admission to being too dependent on electronics, that everyone voluntarily cuts themselves off from the world with them, that we need to lose the gadgets every now and again and just appreciate life.

Screw that.

Weekly Shenanigans #8

Shenanigans remind me of cliched Irish terminology and the movie Office Space. Surely, neither of those are bad things. If they are, I don’t want to be right. Anyhow, I present to you the eighth iteration of Weekly Shenanigans, that once-every-seven-days feature that you all know and love. Bastion of all things geek and nerd, purveyor of tech-news… how would you ever live without this stuff? And with that, away we go:

• First up is an interesting (if somewhat cerebral) look at gaming terms posted onto Gamasutra entitled, “Mapping Gamer Dialect.” Intriguing, no? Click through and read up.

• 

  This is the POWERHAT.

  If you haven’t been reading these, you should absolutely, definitely, without any shred of doubt head over to Rock Paper Shotgun and read their newest ongoing feature – “A Fool In Morrowind,” in which Alec Meer re-discovers The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and all the wonderful things therein. He recounts his experiences with… things… like the hat pictured at right. Hilarity ensues. GO.

• Anandtech recently reviewed the ASRock X-58 Extreme motherboard, priced at the sweet, sweet amount of $169. It performed around 1% lower than other boards, but such a difference is hardly noticeable to most users. Given that this is a fully-featured ATX motherboard, that price is excellent, and only matched by the micro-ATX MSI X-58M previously mentioned on Weekly Shenanigans.

• Most weeks – not every week, but most weeks – I post something about Apple. This week is no exception. It’s almost like a mini-feature within the feature. What’s going on this week, you ask? I’ll tell you – three times over! Oh, and I’m naming this sub-feature Super-Happy-Apple-Fun-Time. It just seems appropriate. Read below, fool! Also: Don’t ask why this is two separate bullets. I don’t know.

What I’m Listening To

Aaaaaaaaand we’re back. After an almost-week-long break from the cutthroat world of blogging, I’m back with a vengeance, yo. That being said, I am now of the opinion that taking breaks makes you lazy. It’s been a long 48 hours, so forgive the brevity of this post. Here’s a quick look at some of the more interesting music I’ve been listening to recently:

Boy and the Bird EP

Merykid:

I had the pleasure of reviewing this guy’s album for Independent Clauses. It’s singer-songwriter, but with a fresh sound that evokes the likes of Temposhark and Keaton Simons. His Bird and the Bees EP came out recently; it’s only six songs, but it’s all quality stuff.

Weekly Shenanigans #7

Ah, the ritual posting of Weekly Shenanigans. Shamelessly copying the format of RPS’ Sunday Papers since, well, seven Weekly Shenanigans ago. Enough with the reminiscing, it’s making me all weepy. Read this stuff:

• These people should be shot for blasphemy and willful mockery of the star wars we all know and love. I don’t know what else to say on the subject. ***Update*** When I just tried to access the site for a pic, it was down for maintenance. Courage, fair reader.

• There’s craziness afoot in the gaming world. Bethesda’s mother ship Zenimax has purchased id Software, the developer of such priceless treasures as Doom and Castle Wolfenstein. Here’s hoping that Bethesda’s next release makes use of John Carmack’s technical prowess to up the ante a little from the aged Gamebryo graphics engine employed in Fallout 3. Also, EA has made the… interesting decision to merge Mythic and Bioware into, “a giant RPG robot,” as Kotaku so eloquently described the situation. Personally, I’m trying to stay positive and naively assume that these mergers will produce good things instead of misshapen monster-things.

Access Denied.

I officially declare myself on sabbatical until, say, July 9th (or maybe the 10th). There will still be a Weekly Shenanigans going up on Sunday, but that’s only because I just wrote and scheduled the wretched thing.

I’ve got finals to focus on at my Chinese university. Maddeningly, while the professors were perfectly willing to tell us what to study for the midterms, every single one of them has told us that the content of the finals are a secret. It looks like I’m actually going to have to study. Curses.

On a side note, I would like to express a rather strong dislike for receiving text messages from China Mobile on consecutive days, each cheerfully informing me that they’ve removed money from my account when in fact I haven’t even bothered using my phone in three or four days. Taking money from me two days in a row for unknown reasons is not cool, China Mobile. I don’t like you very much.

That Joel And His Hijinks (They Ensue)

The iPhone 3G S was released recently. There was much rejoicing on behalf of the fans. I haven’t seen or touched one of the things, so I’ll leave you with a two-part interpretative dance on the topic:

Maybe it’s just me, but I think his art has improved recently. Anyway, he’s a good guy, so hit up his site.

In other news, I hope to one day be internet-popular enough that links like that actually generate significant click-through. Le sigh.

I Bought Windows 7 Today, or I Am Victorious: Return of the Victorious

Pre-ordering: it's what all the cool kids do.

Before we get into any of this, note the title. Yeah, that’s witty; it even references an earlier post, which is always fun.

Okay, down to business.

I pre-ordered Windows 7 today for $49.99. Fine, $55.97 if you want to get technical and include shipping.

It was good. It was lovely. And for a few hair-raising minutes, it looked like it wasn’t even going to happen.

Newegg didn’t officially show it as in stock, and just had the auto-notify button up. Office Depot was out of stock. Microsoft’s online store crashed every time I tried to access it. Enter my hero: Amazon. Ordered, confirmed, and scheduled to arrive on the day Windows 7 officially releases.

Before any of you go off into some sort of anti-Windows / anti-early adopter / anti-other stuff rage, let me make a few points: