Archives: January 2010

January 27, 2010

Champions Online: A Review

by Tholan — Categories: Game, Review — Comments Off

Are you looking for a delightful waste time?  Then look at Champions Online, it is a fantastically fabulous time waster.  What makes this game so great the inquiring mind may ask?  It knows it is a waste of time.  And let me be clear: self actualization is king.  Even in the video game world there is no substitute for knowing oneself.

For those of you out there who remember the first generation of Cryptic Studio’s Super Hero gaming experience, City of Heroes, know that while Millennium City is still there, it was once again destroyed and rebuilt in the story line.  Result: Atari gets a brand new city and server configuration, and we don’t have to worry about that whole City of Heroes/City of Villain thing.  Champions gets to wipe the board of the rigid architecture of the “City” but gets to keep the back story.

Death penalties, XP debt, rigid character structure, permanent team rolls, and fixed avatar all get blown away.  The designers of Champions have given the paying customer maximum value for their buck: a video game with no down time.  Fluid character specialization and appearance modification allow the user full dominion over their digital representation in the cyber world.  What is the catch?  All the player has to invest is time (or pay farmer cash under the table for digital cred).  In Champions your Champion has millions of possibilities to fit your needs or style.  Do you have a regular gaming crew that would benefit from a division of labor?  Are you a loaner that needs to be able to handle it all?  Are you a guild member who out logs your mates?  No problem.  Champions gives you the ability to make 3 tunes for the price of one by having balance options and gear sets that cater to the players needs.  Find yourself under or over specialized?  No problem.  Get over to the trainer and change you powers, traits, or stats.  Cryptic has found the winning formula: give the customer freedom to play the game however they like, and then get out of the way.

Champions Online is a big shot of adrenaline into the heart of any comic book junky.  What is the purpose of a video game?  Is the video game supposed to educate?   Is the video game supposed to inform?  To instruct?  No.  The video game is to entertain.  It is to flood the brain with high levels of Dopamine; to make the user drunk with the satisfaction of the easy money of quick reward and intense action.  For all the blathering the RPG crowd has about “suspension of reality” and “getting in character” the MMO geeks forget the abject reason they log on for in the first place: stimulation.

January 17, 2010

House has Returned Holmes…

by Ganelon — Categories: Geekery — 1 Comment

I got a chance to watch Sherlock Holmes this weekend and it was much better than I had thought it was going to be. Robert Downey Jr. is a brilliant character actor, and he hasn’t shined this brightly since his Oscar worthy work in Chaplin. Jude Law give his best and makes the amiable Dr. Watson a compellingly entertaining wing man for the eccentric Holmes.

This is not the Great Detective of the Sir Arther Conan Doyle works, nor is it similar to the older film adaptions of his works.  How to describe it…

Consider  the FOX show House. It is completely inspired by Sherlock Holmes. Even the name “House” is a play on Holmes…or Homes. Gregory House’s best friend and ruthless banter-foil is Dr. Wilson… for Dr. Watson. The idea of the show House is to put the brilliant deductive mind of Sherlock Holmes toward the mysteries of medicine, as opposed to criminality. But that is as much a pretense for exploring and celebrating the eccentricity of such a brilliant mind… a mind that struggles to fight off the boredom of the tedious world. The back and forth pranks and banter between House and Wilson are what keeps House grounded and interested in his own humanity.

Now consider this new Sherlock Holmes film. It is House and Wilson… returned to the Detective business… and fighting grand villains instead of diseases. They are brilliant in the tools of that trade… both in deduction and pugilist arts. In fact, the scenes where Holmes mentally plays out the martial combat strike by strike, with thought given to each injury he will inflict on his opponents… as well as deductions for how long they will be incapacitated or hospitalized… are pure Frank Miller’s Batman.

Guy Richie has had a mixed career as a director… but I have to hand it to him on this one. Each scene was well crafted and he knew how to get the best work out of his cast. It would be perfect if the end exposition didn’t remind me so much of the end of a Scooby-doo cartoon. Even so… Sir Arther really is the architect of that device, so it can be forgiven.

January 16, 2010

Out with the Old. In with the New.

by Tholan — Categories: Geekery — Comments Off

It has been a busy month this past month.  I have missed posting since… well since the Indians saved our collective butts in Copenhagen.  It has been a busy month between then and now.  Just to run down some of the highs and lows:

  • My wife and baby crossed the 37 week Rubicon.
  • Someone tried to force entry into my home.
  • We were given a nice TV from my parents for Christmas.
  • I was confirmed as a member of the LPF Executive Committee.
  • We rang in the new year.
  • I am a writer for the Alex Snitker campaign for US Senate.
  • Still doing my Monday night show.
  • The projections for my Job are looking good for the 1st quarter.
  • I saw Ben Prestage in Daytona and met his wife.

As you can imagine with all of this going on, my time for geekery has diminished.  But there is one bright side:  I brought my old PC back to life, updated the drivers, bought a new big fancy monitor, and now I am playing Champions Online…  when I can find a spare moment or two between my increasing familiar and political responsibilities!

All in all 2009 was a year of tremendous growth for me.  I bought a house.  I got my PE.  I started a +1 to my family.  I stepped up my political action.  All in all a very good year.

The thing I take away from 2009 and the decade we leave behind is this: there is no substitute for action.  We must be the change we want to see in the world.

Oh.  And one more thing.  Nah.  Nevermind.

God Bless.

- John R. Thompson

January 1, 2010

The Air is Thin in The Ivory Tower.

by Ganelon — Categories: Geekery, Pax Ganelonia, Pontification — Comments Off

Charles Krauthammer’s take on the Obama administrations handling of our national security is spot on.

IMO, it is not even defensible by the left that Barry’s entire Ivory Tower view is anything other than a fraud and suicidal. The academia mind-set of world affairs is WRONG. It ignores first principles…which is not harmony and social “progress”. It is national defense which allows all the virtues of an enlightened society. That “enlightenment” doesn’t create the foreign policies. It is teh security of a strong foreign policy that allows the luxury of academic fancies.

This is all quite mad even in Obama’s terms. He sends 30,000 troops to fight terror overseas, yet if any terrorists come to attack us here, they are magically transformed from enemy into defendant.

The logic is perverse. If we find Abdulmutallab in an al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen, where he is merely preparing for a terror attack, we snuff him out with a Predator — no judge, no jury, no qualms. But if we catch him in the United States in the very act of mass murder, he instantly acquires protection not just from execution by drone but even from interrogation.

The president said that this incident highlights “the nature of those who threaten our homeland.” But the president is constantly denying the nature of those who threaten our homeland. On Tuesday, he referred five times to Abdulmutallab (and his terrorist ilk) as “extremist(s).”

A man who shoots abortion doctors is an extremist. An eco-fanatic who torches logging sites is an extremist. Abdulmutallab is not one of these. He is a jihadist. And unlike the guys who shoot abortion doctors, jihadists have cells all over the world; they blow up trains in London, nightclubs in Bali and airplanes over Detroit (if they can); and are openly pledged to war on America.

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