Linkstew

I'll spare the web yet another dissertation on "what Mario Kart means to me," but suffice to say I've spent a lot of time playing past versions of this game, and most notably my dad and brother and I clocked an absurd amount of time with the original Mario Kart back in the day. So needless to say, I had high hopes for this game. And to be honest, I'm pretty disappointed with the result. It seems like in Nintendo's attempt to "simplify the game to appeal to broader audiences," they not only took out a lot of the subtlety, but also managed to completely change the focus of the game.

It wasn't the double driver change that messed things up. In fact, just adding double drivers to any of the previous games (with just a few other tweaks) probably would have introduced a whole new level to the game, and in general, the double drivers are a pretty good idea. No, the problem with Double Dash!! lies entirely in the revamped item system.

In the original Mario Kart on the Super Nintendo, there was usually only one or two sections of item blocks per lap, which meant that using your items strategically was very important. In Double Dash!!, in contrast, you get more items per lap than you really know what to do with. There are so many items in Double Dash, in fact, that it seems to work just as well to immediately use any item you get as it does to hold on to that item until just the right time. In fact, holding onto an item is practically discouraged, because you now lose items when you get hit by weapons, or fall off the track, or even when another player hits you while using a star or mushroom. In other words, if you try to hold onto an item until just the right time, it's pretty likely that you'll lose that item before you get a chance to use it, because there is so much chaos going on at any given time.

One interesting aspect of losing items when you get hit by a weapon is that the items fly out of you and land on the track, so players behind you can then hit them and use them (or take damage, in the case of shells and the like). Of course, this just adds to the proliferation of items in the game.

Now, if you're a Mario Kart veteran and you've been reading so far, you might say "well, I can just hop over things or brake when I hit a banana or shell behind me in defense or X or Y or Z and avoid losing." And if you're a Mario Kart veteran, you'd think that the double kart / double item aspect of the game would offer a lot of intriguing possibilities: You'd be able to hang on to one item with your driver, and have your gunner do defense duty with whatever items he picks up. If the gunner picks up a better item, switch and have the former driver do defense.

But if you're a Mario Kart veteran, you'd be pretty much dead wrong, because they removed pretty much every defensive aspect of the game I can think of. You can no longer brake immediately after hitting a banana peel to avoid peeling out. You can no longer hop in any way (which both makes dodging items harder, but also makes hopping over little cracks impossible, and makes hopping out of / over rough track impossible). And perhaps worst of all, you can no longer drag a shell or banana peel behind you in defense. The only methods of defense you have are: 1. Using Peach or Daisy, and their special item is a defensive fireball which will not only block items, but which will also grab the item and give it to you. 2. Fire/drop an item behind you immediately before something is about to hit you. This is actually possible thanks to a little bubble that tells you when a weapon is approaching, but it's less desirable than the old methods of defense, in my opinion.

Here's an unordered list of some other problems I've found with Double Dash!!:

• The battle arenas are too small and lack sufficient complexity to be as fun as any of the previous battle arenas.
• Though you have an option to select a random character/kart combo in single player GP mode, no such option exists for any of the multiplayer modes. This is a big bummer, because random is a pretty good method of handicapping in multiplayer. Also, randomness is fun. And seriously, why would you ever want to play with random characters on single player?
• In the multi player kart selection screen, there's no way to view the stats of the karts. This is a big problem, because when you have someone play the game for the first time, experienced players are going to have to explain "no, not all those karts actually work the same," and also remember the different stats of the different karts, and then pretty much just tell the newbie which kart to use, instead of letting them make their own choice. Bad interface move.
• I was really excited about the LAN features of the game and the prospect of an 8 player race, but apparently you can't pick your characters/kart in this mode, which is pretty much totally lame, and now I don't think I'm going to get a LAN adapter to try this mode. It's like Nintendo's trying to make their "people don't want to play games online" claim ffulfill itself by neutering their network features out of the box.
• There's no longer a ghost item to steal items. This was probably removed because there are other ways to steal items now, but the ghost also turned you invisible, which was another important strategic and defensive move -- and the hitting to steal play mechanic would have only made the ghost that much more useful. Bummer.
• Honestly, the tracks aren't that interesting. They're pretty much just rehashes of things we've had before, and we don't even get a Haunted Mansion in this game. Probably half of the levels are interchangeable, and there are only a handful of levels that I really like (My favorite so far is the Wario Coliseum).
• Did we honestly need two traffic levels? (No, we did not, especially when neither of them is as good as Toad's Turnpike on the N64)
• Also sadly, there's no sign of a Ghost Valley in this game -- Ghost Valleys were always my favorite.
• In the past games, if you hit someone who was jumping across a track, they would fall onto the other portion of the track, knocking them back in the pack. This was an another important strategy in the old games that is just completely missing in this game.
• The GBA game had the original SNES tracks as extras, so why didn't this game have the N64 tracks as extras? Oh, right, because most of the N64 tracks are already "available" in this game in one form or another. =\

• And I could go on and on. But I'll stop, because I'm sure you get my point by now.

To be fair, there are some good things about Double Dash!! Giving each character a special item was long overdue, and I think overall the special items are pretty well balanced. As mentioned above, the double driver aspect could have added a lot to the game, and I still think it's a sound idea that shouldn't get the axe in the next Mario Kart. The co-operative mode is a lot of fun, requiring fun communication between the driver and gunner -- I haven't had a chance to play co-operative vs. yet with 4 players, but it should be a lot of fun. The new Bob-omb Blast battle mode is a lot of chaotic fun, even if the new Shine Thief mode is a little flat. Meanwhile, the Balloon Battle mode just doesn't seem to have the same spark it once did.

I think the real evidence of how well the game succeeds at living up the Mario Kart name lies in this test: My dad used to play the original Mario Kart with my brother and I back in the day, and he was pretty good at it, all things considered. He was perhaps a little less devious with his item usage than my brother and I, but he was still competitive. However, when he tried to play Double Dash, he was just overwhelmed by the chaos of the weaponry and just didn't stand a chance. In other words, not only did their attempt at "simplification" ruin the game, but it also didn't actually work.

In short, Double Dash(!!) is pretty much all offense and no defense, with the general chaos that entails. I admit it's still fun, but I just don't think it's really the same game I knew and loved anymore. If you want some old fashioned Mario Karting, I highly recommend you pick up Mario Kart: Super Circuit for the Game Boy Advance instead. Not only is it a much tighter Mario Kart game, but it also features all of the original SNES Mario Kart tracks as unlockables. Hopefully we'll see a real Mario Kart as a launch title for the next Nintendo console, with as much spit and polish on it as Super Smash Brothers Melee had.

3/5

Uh, US 'plans new nuclear weapons'? Why the hell is there no mention of that on the front page of any major US news site I can think to look at? Seriously, this is just as important as all the Iraq stuff to US citizens, but the media chooses to focus on Iraq. I suppose this is just a reminder that the media is not on the people's side.

The latest TMBG announce email had some new tour dates for their summer tour to promote No!. Notably, there are some west coast dates:

• 7/19 Portland, OR - Crystal Ballroom
• 7/20 Seattle, WA - Paramount Theater
• 7/26 Los Angeles CA - John Anson Ford Theater
• 7/27 Anaheim CA - House of Blues
• 7/28 SPECIAL KIDS SHOW Los Angeles CA Storyopolis

They better announce an SF show or two in that gap between Seattle and LA, because I already planned two other trips in July, and as much as I want to, I don't really have time to take a third trip to socal to go to a couple of TMBG concerts.

Hm. Though if I didn't go to AX, I'd have the time and the money to go to those socal concerts... And I'd be going to AX more to hang out with my Bakersfield friends than for the anime content... But if I went to the TMBG concerts, I don't know if I'd have anyone to go with me. Blah, I suppose I should figure this out soon.

Blahhh...

Basically, my final didn't go very well at all, and I'm looking for things besides the final to worry about. Let's put it this way: 16/100 points on the final were for being able to recite the details of 2 phase commit, the details of which I did not to commit to memory. It was purely memorization, and didn't test our understanding of it at all! In contrast, last year's final said "Here is how 2 phase commit works. What happens if it fails at this point? This point? This point?" Last year's question actually tested that the students understood the concept, while this year they just tested to see if we could recite the stupid thing from memory. 16 points! And another 4 points were for knowing what caused a particular bug in a particular processor that he only talked about in lecture. And so I'm not a very happy camper. I could have gotten an A in the class if I'd done well on the final, but now I'll be happy if I get a B.

Today I took a trip to Target, and there in the electronics section was a three-headed kiosk, featuring a Gamecube screen, a Playstation 2 screen, and an Xbox screen. But the Xbox screen was the only one that was on, and also the only one that had a controller (Why there wasn't a playable PS2 demo, I do not know). So I wandered on over to check out the Xbox, but there was some shit on the floor in front of it.

Now, when I say shit, I mean shit. The smelly kind. It was kind of smeared there. Um. Yeah. (God I wish I had a car so I could go to the (comparatively) good Target in Pinole instead of that ass Target in El Cerrito)

But! Being the game enthusiast I am, I positioned myself around the shit, took to breathing slowly through my mouth, and set to checking out the 'box.

Now then, my first impression of the controller was "hey, this is actually more comfortable than I expected!" But that impression was based only on the impressions of my palms and index fingers, without any input from my thumbs. So, the grips are a nice size and have a nice texture, and the trigger buttons are well placed and actually have analog qualities (unlike the damn dual shock 2). It feels a little on the heavy side, but that might be excusable.

But then I let my thumbs do some exploring, and the results weren't nearly as good. (Reference this xbox.ign article for pictures of the american controller). So, first of all, the joypad is ridiculous. Because of the angle that your thumb is at because of the huge grips, I had the damndest time telling whether I was hitting up or right. Bad bad badness. But that's okay, because most games are full analog these days, right? Well, bad news there, too, because the sticks are really loose, offering very little resistance to my manipulations. And if that looseness is because this is a demo unit, then I'm very concerned about the durability of these controllers, because it can't have been on the floor for more than a couple of weeks. Finally, there are the buttons... The joint of my thumb kind of settled into the center of the "diamond", so I was hitting Y with the pad of my thumb, X with the left side of my thumb, B with the right, and A with the back of the joint of my thumb. And these buttons are small, and hard, and very round, and hitting A and Y a lot left painful indentations in my thumb by the time I was done. Also, the black and white buttons, whatever they're named, are very hard to use efficiently.

In short, I really don't like the uneven spacing and feel of the controls one little bit, though I do think the japanese controller (also shown in the xbox.ign link above) shows more promise, and if I ever get an Xbox, I'll have to pick up some import controllers.

Okay, so, games. Graphically, I saw nothing better than any of the other consoles, but this is what I expected. The one thing I'll mention about graphics is that the environments in Dead or Alive 3 continue that series' tradition of beautiful environments, though I think they could have been done on any of the three equally well.

So, there were a ton of other non-interactive demos, none of which showed me anything interesting, though the Halo movie briefly made me impatient for Halo's eventual PC/Mac release. And then there was the one Interactive demo: Oddworld: Munch's Odyssey. Now, given that this was the only interactive demo, I had to try it, even though the game doesn't at all interest me. And to be honest, the engine was mundane, the graphics were boring, and the action extremely boring. I play RPGs and I thought this was boring. Oh, and there was really horrible clipping and a massive lag and slowdown when you accidentally had Munch or whatever his name is step on a bomb. The whole thing was just running around and picking up green balls. Boy, I hope they get those issues resolved before launch... Boy I hope there's more to this game. Yawn.

In other words, I was more than happy to get away from that shit.

So I did all that bitching about the 10.1 upgrade options, and bad Benjy, I failed to provide a better alternative! So here it is, quite simply: Apple should have offered the free upgrade CDs at The Apple Store for the price of shipping, or even $5 or $10 plus shipping. Further, they should have started allowing orders of that CD before Tuesday (or they should have posted and started accepting orders via the Mac OS Up-To-Date program before Tuesday) so they could get the CD into our grubby little hands on the "release date."

So the current status of operation: OS X 10.1 on my PowerBook on Saturday, September 29th? M.A.C. told me "we're only getting about 50 copies, so they're going to customers who have recently bought systems from us that had OS X on it." And as irritated I am with M.A.C., that's logic I can appreciate, and I'm sure their customers will appreciate. And the San Francisco CompUSA told me "We've received our full retail versions, but we have not gotten the upgrade CDs yet." So, if I wanted to buy OS X again, I could get it tomorrow. But uh, I kind of don't want to do that. So I'll call the San Francisco CompUSA again early tomorrow morning and find out if they've gotten any CDs in, and other than that, I guess I'll wait for my friend to get his retail copy in the mail next week, or maybe a co-worker will catch hold of a random CD from somewhere I overlooked.

Of course, what I failed to do was ask M.A.C. what they would do if I brought my PowerBook in and asked if I could do the upgrade there. I doubt they'd go for it, but I might call again tomorrow and ask, just for funsies.

There was this project at work that I was working on for a very long time (something like a year), and on Thursday night, I declared it done enough and put it into production. That night, we were making jokes in the office that as the project got closer and closer to completion, my productivity went down and down.

And it was true. I was very burnt out on the project, and despite the three months I was working on another project from February to April I still hated the project. There are so many things I could say about that project, but I don't want to get into all the details (good and bad) right now. I will some day, though. Ah the advantages of working for a public institution with no such thing as an NDA.

What's interesting is that, in the three days I've worked since I "finished" the project (there's still a lot to do, but they're peripheral to the core system (Ah the beauty of in house systems)), I've been more productive than I've been since about mid-April when I was working myself to the bone to distract myself from everything else. Seriously.

Goes to show what difference the freshness of a project can make for my motivation to work on it. But that's why I actually like fixing bugs. There's the whole discovery that goes into figuring out what's wrong, and then the puzzle of fixing it, and then the relatively easy pay off. The work reward cycle is much faster.

On the other hand, massive projects that should have had two or three programmers working on it (for a lot of reasons besides man power (Can we say "Questionable design decisions for 300, alex?")) that I've been working on by myself for the last year have sucked my soul, and actually putting the damn thing into production was really anticlimactic.

It wasn't "Hey, I did it!" It was "sigh. Thank god that's over."

Last week I was returning to Berkeley on the train, and on the way we got a little delayed. It didn't concern me too much -- Sure, I had a meeting I was supposed to be at, but what was I going to do about it? I understand that Amtrak doesn't own the tracks, and that delays might happen as scheduling gets goof-balled, and that taking the train is more efficient than driving, and more. Heck, I actually like riding the train a lot. Even if I could fly directly home (There are no direct flights to Bakersfield from the Bay Area) in an hour, and it cost as cheap as the train, I'd prefer taking the train to flying, and I certainly prefer the train to the bus or driving myself.

But, on the train last week, there was a young couple (Sophomores in High School) who were heading up to Oakland to see the Mariner's play the A's. It was their first time on the train, and they were having fits about the delay. "I checked the schedule and I told him we'd be there at 4:05! It's already 4:20!" I wanted to ask him why he expected we'd be precisely on time, and I was also vaguely curious why he didn't ask one of the eight people around him who had cell phones if he could borrow one and call ahead and warn the guy who was supposed to pick them up. I don't even know why they were stressing -- the game didn't start until 7, I believe I heard him say. What did they think they were going to do in Oakland for three hours anyway?

I would much prefer to spend the time on the train than at the stadium, for example. The train is air conditioned, the seats are comfortable, we happened to have a nice view of the bay, and I was actually pretty content sitting there waiting for the train to get moving again.

I was content, but this guy was stressing (and his girlfriend agreeing with him). When we "finally" started moving again, he told her "Next time we're driving!" Fine, you go right ahead and drive from Fresno to Oakland (or Anaheim, maybe -- it's the same either way) for a baseball game, and it's going to cost you the same, and you're going to be less comfortable, and most of the time you'll get there in the same amount of time, and you'll be much more likely to crash, and in general, I would far prefer to deal with a delay now and then than drive if I could at all avoid it.

But it wasn't the conclusion that "we should drive" that really irritated me, though it is a wasteful decision. No, what irritated me is that those kids rejected Amtrak based on one bad experience -- They were not at all willing to give it a second chance, despite the fact that the delay had been caused by a grass fire, which could have just as easily blocked the 5 as it did some tracks. What irritates me is that they didn't realize how illogical they were being, and instead decided that "This sucks, we can do it better ourselves."

No, sorry, wrong answer. C'mon people, think!

When I first heard about Crazy Taxi 2 back in about December, the most notable new features mentioned included split screen multiplayer action and internet multiplayer action. The internet play didn't strike me as overly important, but it sounded nice -- it was the multiplayer action that really piqued my interest.

So when I heard that the Internet play wasn't going to make it into the final product a couple months ago, I didn't care too much, because the report explicitly stated that the split screen multiplayer would remain in the final product. That multiplayer action was all I really cared about. When I first played Crazy Taxi so long ago, one of my first thoughts was "This is a great game! But where's the multiplayer?"

I would have bought Crazy Taxi 2 if all that were added was two player split screen.

So I've been eagerly anticipating today's release of Crazy Taxi 2, which, so far as I knew, not only included multi player goodness, but also included new maps, mini games, drivers, and moves. It sounded like the perfect sequel to an already great game.

But today I read this review of Crazy Taxi 2, and, um, apparently, it's single player. And now, despite all the new additions, I'm not sure that it's a sequel I actually want to play.

I picked up Zone of Enders for two reasons: 1. It came with the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo. And 2. It looked like an amazing, anime inspired, mecha combat game. And having played and beaten the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo, I can say for a fact that it came with ZOE. And having beaten ZOE, I can say for certain that it's an anime inspired mecha combat game. As to whether or not it's amazing... Well, it depends on which scale you're judging.

Let's go with three scales, for simplicity. First, there's gameplay. How much fun is the game to play, how does it control, and how is the experience of beating the game? Well, it's a hell of a lot of fun to play. The game makes controlling the Jehuty feel like second nature, and it reacts like you want it to without getting in your way. In fact, at times it didn't even feel like I was consciously doing something, and it just happened. In fact, it's so easy to play that I spent a couple of hours just playing old missions over and over. Alas, there were only three different kinds of enemies in the whole game (not counting bosses), so I eventually tired of just beating up drones and had to actually play some of the game. The bosses, on the other hand, were moderately interesting, and each had a little trick that had to be figured out to beat them. Unfortunately, there were only three real bosses. Fun factor: 5/5.

Next, there's the story scale. And when it came to playing the game, I discovered the worst voice active I've ever heard, combined with the corniest plot I've ever seen and the most cliche Neon Genesis Evangelion rip off story ever. Little boy accidentally gets in big robot. Little boy kills someone. Little boy doesn't want to kill. Little boy has to kill. I want to kill little boy and whoever his voice actor was and whoever was the voice actor of the big robot's computer. Oh, what's this? Hitting start skips a cut scene? Ohhh... I didn't watch any of the story after the first 15 minutes (Which turns out to have been a pretty large portion of the game, but more on that later). Of course, it didn't help that the missions were all totally cliche, and consisted of any one of Protect everyone, Destroy everything, or fetch item allowing you to destroy everything. And to top it all off, the game was really short. Like three hours short. Story factor: 0/5.

And finally, Graphics and Sound scale. Unfortunately, because "voice acting" falls under "Sound", this scale break down does a huge disservice to both the Graphics and Sound Effects, so I'm going to pretend that the voice acting falls under the previous category. The graphics in this game are amazing, and the attention to detail superb. This game really shows what the PS2 is capable of doing that the PSX wasn't. From the trails that the Jehuty will scrape into the ground if you fly too low, to the countless buildings you can destroy and the cars parked in driveways, it's amazing. And the sound effects are nice, too. Explosions, explosions, everywhere! Graphics and Sound factor: 5/5.

My, what a dilemma we're faced with here. Amazing game play and amazing graphics, but amazingly horrible story and voice acting. So I guess ZOE qualifies as an "amazing anime inspired mecha combat game", as long as your definition of amazing doesn't mean amazingly good in every possible way. Now, normally I'm the story-whore and my roommate Keith is the graphics-whore, and I would have smelled a game with a story this bad a mile away... But the gameplay and graphics are so good that, despite the stinking story, I can say that this is a game you should play. I give it a 3/5, but with all kinds of asterisks and footnotes. However, it's also a game that you should rent and not buy, because it's so short. In the five days Blockbuster allocates you, you'll be able to play this game two or three times and spend plenty of time with the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo while you're at it.

But while I recommend you play this game, I urge you to remember that you can skip every cut scene by hitting start. And if you don't believe me, you can taste the waters yourself, but... I don't recommend that course of action, and don't say I didn't warn you.