ZuneHD

image sourge: Engadget.com 

By now I’m sure everyone has see the pictures and the press release. I’m also sure that I’m not the only person excited about this device. It almost makes me regret purchasing an HTC Fuze this spring (though there’s enough in the smart phone pipeline to make me second guess that purchase).

Rumors up to this point indicated that there would be games, including XBLA games run on a device referred to as xYz. While this may or may not be that rumored mobile convergence device the Microsoft press release did mention: “At the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) next week, attendees will see firsthand how Zune integrates into Xbox LIVE to create a game-changing entertainment experience.” While I don’t really expect this will mean Microsoft is jumping into the mobile games space, I do hope that is the case.

The Zune HD as a media device is a compelling purchase. The Zune HD as xYz the XBLA player or portable gaming device is a pre-order and buy on it’s street date device for me.

Mirror's Edge - First Impressions

Back in November I had both Mirror’s Edge and Dead Space on my list of games I wanted to buy and play. Money isn’t unlimited and only now did I finally get around to adding Mirror’s Edge to my collection.

I’ve finished the first three levels so far and I really like the game. Without going into the story, the game play itself switches between simple platform puzzles and speeding through the environment.

The game feels borderline too fast, much like Half Life 2. Though while Half Life 2 is just a little bit too fast and gives me slight motion sickness, Mirror’s Edge falls on the other side of my tolerance for first person games and does not cause me any issue.

I’ll discuss the game more when I complete it. I’m definitely digging playing a first person game that minimizes combat and emphasizes speeding through the environment.

Fable 2 - Sacrifice

I have a habit of staying up way too late when I get close to the end of a game. Last night was no exception, so at 2am I found myself finally getting a chance to put a round into Lucian and completing the main story arc of Fable 2.

I’m not going to even attempt to mask or hide spoilers. The game has been out around 6 months so I’m actually quite late to finishing it. I do recommend the game. Although it’s not perfect it’s a good fun play though and worth your money to purchase.

Honestly, at the end, as soon as I noticed I could FINALLY attach Lucian I didn’t wait a second before trying. I have no idea how long he would have monologued at the end had I allowed it. The only reason he got a word in edgewise is because I defaulted to trying to hit him with the sword but found I needed to shoot him instead. That was an appropriate and satisfying way to enact revenge since he did shoot me. Twice.

Actually being as familiar with the language of games, I’m not that put off by the fact he tried to kill me, twice. I’m kind of used to it. But killing off the main character’s sister, wife, kids and dog is just cold.

Which brings me to the interesting point. Being that there is an achievement tied to the action you take after enacting your revenge, I wonder what the first play through break down would be. If I was truly myself, in that situation I have to admit I would have no hesitation but to take “the good of the few” and would not be able to sleep at night if I accepted “the good of the one”. Yet in the role of “Sparrow” and playing through the entire game as a paragon of virtue I went with “the good of the many”.

I was actually rather attached to my characters virtual family, at least in part because it mirrored my own real family in form and make up. It took a fair bit of consideration before I chose to ‘stay in character’. I even considered possible differences in gamer score to be honest. I’m definitely going to have to play through again and make some difference choices, some day. There’s still plenty I want to do in the game world that remains from the first play through though.

Still, it feels good to “save the world”, especially when the developers have gone to such lengths to give the world a feeling of age and history. The games I keep coming back to are the ones where the game world feels old, and feels like there are millennia of history to discovery. Halo, Mass Effect, Asheron’s Call, Bioshock, all have that feeling to them. Fable is really no different in that regard.

One last thing. I appreciate the subtle set up for a sequel. After fighting long and hard to seek revenge and stop Lucian from using the spire, in the end I feel like I was used to help Theresa take possession of the spire for herself. She definitely did not appear as though she was entirely benevolent at the end… “The spire is mine, be gone!” indeed.

A failure to compete

Some would say that competition is that which makes America great. When competition is missing, prices rise, innovation and improvement cease, companies get rich and consumers are left holding the bag. At these times, the government generally steps in and uses it’s anti-trust powers to plant the seeds of competition if collusion or market position has left a monopoly.

But what happens when there is the guise of competition? What if you have a duopoly?

Where I live I have two “choices” for internet service, Time-Warner (nee Adelphia) cable and Windstream (nee Alltel) DSL. One might think that two companies providing the same service would be in direct competition with one another, and thus would drive lower prices, better products and service. Right?

I’ve used cable internet since I bought my house almost 5 years ago. The performance has been ok, with occasional speed upgrades and price increases. Service has never been what I paid for speed wise but it was worlds faster than the 1.5Mbps DSL I could have gotten instead.

Recently the latencies have  gone through the roof, especially in the evening peak hours. They make watching streaming videos on the 360 difficult, viewing my friends list painful and playing games impossible without frequent periods of lag or disconnections. This combined with Time-Warner’s recent promise to screw their customers gave me both the technical and commercial justification to revisit DSL.

Much to my surprise and pleasure, Windstream said they could provide 6Mbps service unbundled for a reasonable price. Thus I went ahead and placed an order for new service. The tech that came to do the install was nice and competent but informed me that the signal from the central office to my house was only strong enough to provide 3Mbps service. I was willing to accept this as 3Mbps down was still comparable to the 4-6Mbps I’ve come to expect from Time-Warner during peak hours.

So I spent the better part of the day trying to get the modem activated, only to find that the signal to noise ratio was too low, so I had a second tech come out and trouble shoot the line and was informed that the signal was right on the cusp of handling 3Mbps so the best they could really deliver was 1.5Mbit.

Needless to say I’m back to Time-Warner, stuck until Windstream upgrades their equipment. I feel trapped, Windstream isn’t even token competition for Time-Warner. Thus I feel like I have no recourse against Time-Warner raising my prices, providing lousy product or bad customer service. It’s like it’s 1980 again and AT&T is the phone god.

Man I miss playing Left 4 Dead in the evening…

That new console smell...

I spend a lot of time playing Xbox 360 games. Not as much as some people, but enough that I really detest the downtime of sending my console in for repair. Since the 65nm (jasper) boards started showing up in stores in November I’ve been waiting for the right combination of trade in value and available cash to replace my first generation xenon based unit.

Friday everything lined up just right, and between the standard ($80) trade-in value, the promotional ($25) bonus in this week’s GameStop ad and a gift card from filling out opinion surveys ($25). Out the door with tax it was $85 for a quieter piece of mind and a new controller. Definitely worth it to me, especially since it also opens the door to switching from VGA to HDMI at a later time. Once that happens I can think about hooking up my old Xbox, a Wii or any other SDTV device to a VGA converter and feed it into my rig.