Yesterware

After playing through Infinite Undiscovery I still haven't the faintest clue as to what the title is supposed to mean. It sounds meaningful, but the game is neither infinite nor does it challenge the player to "undiscover" anything. Clocking in at around 20 hours, this game is hardly representative of its impressive pedigree. I can't recall a Star Ocean or a proper Final Fantasy game with so little substance. This is nearly unheard of for a game spanning two DVDs. But what is there is done well. Extremely heavy on story, the narrative and characters are developed well. I happen to be one of those individuals who doesn't cry foul at plentiful cut scenes, but I must admit that this one started pushing the limits of what I thought was acceptable. Perhaps my imagination is running away with me, but I couldn't help but notice some visual similarities with one of my favorite series: Ys. When he's in full armor Capell closely resembles Adol Christin, and Ba...

A couple of months ago, I was reminiscing, as I often do, about the good ol' days of gaming. And, of course, the good ol' days will vary from one gamer to the next, but for me, it was the heyday of the Super NES. One game that held a special nuanced memory for me was Actraiser. It was one of the earliest SNES games and like all good early titles sought to show off the capabilities of the new hardware. To this day I think the phenominal orchestrated soundtrack, tight controls, and gorgeous colorful graphics make it a great demo piece for the SNES. Like many good things, however, there wasn't nearly enough of it to quench my thirst. Just when the game started to hit it's stride, and I started to really get into the "zone", excited about what I'd be doing next, it was over. When the credits rolled, my heart sank. I rushed out and picked up a copy of ActRaiser 2 (I didn't play the first game until well after it came out, so the sequel was readily ava...

The last time I remember getting this excited about all of the great games coming out was the golden age of the SNES heyday. I've had a chance to play through most of the titles that made my list this fall and I haven't been disappointed yet. It seems like everyone's buzzing about Half-Life 2 Orange Box , and with good reason. Half Life 2 is one of the most solid and entertaining games ever made. The game itself is actually 3 years old but somehow still manages to outshine most of its contemporaries. The story is intriguing and complex, but not overreaching. The voice acting and facial animation are so fluid and natural that you don't really notice them until you view them in comparison to newer games like Halo 3 and wonder why the rest of the game industry is still 3 years behind Valve (Half-Life 2's creator). Visually the game is gorgeous with its dynamic lighting, particle-filled explosions, realistic textures and shading. Aurally this game outshines anythi...

The heroic Tarubots, Optimus Porum, Aizenhide, and Bumbletsuki are pitted against the evil Deceptarucons, Megatulik and Taruscream. Windurst is the battleground, The Managon cube is the prize and the stakes are Vana'diel itself! Don't miss Tarusformers - Their War, Our Windurst!

The World of Warcraft expansion - The Burning Crusade along with careful and precise prodding from a friend have convinced me to give the MMORPG another shot. Final Fantasy XI will always be my first love, but my play style there is extremely casual and I have not really advanced very quickly. WoW on the other hand, I have been tearing through, racing my spiffy new Blood Elf Paladin to 70, where my friend insists "Is where the game really gets started". The game has consumed quite a good deal of my time, and repaid me with moderate enjoyment. As of this writing I sit at level 54 with about 10 days played (that's 240 hours - yikes!). The game is largely unchanged from the first time I gave it a casual effort shortly after it's release in the winter of 2004. One of the main differences between this and the first time I played WoW is that I'm now playing on a "PvP" (Player vs. Player) server as opposed to a "PvE" (Player vs. Environment) serv...

As my professional life moves into a more UNIX direction I have found myself more and more often trying to execute UNIX commands in Windows. One such command is "ls" - to list the contents of a directory. I know that cygwin binaries can be compiled for Windows to get ls functionality, but I decided to solve the problem a different way. I've written a batch file that wraps the "dir" command in windows. To work properly, both "ls.bat" and "getstrlen.bat" from an earlier post on this blog, will need to be present in your PATH. I don't have time to explain this code right now, but I will make an effort if anyone asks. ls.bat: @echo off if not "%1"=="" goto gotargs echo Executing: dir /b&dir /b goto done :gotargs set ARGS1=%1 set CHECK=%ARGS1:~0,1% if "%CHECK%"=="-" (set CURROPT=%ARGS1% & goto parsearg1) if not "%9"=="" (echo Executing: dir /b "%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8...

I've had a lot of people ask me about the new HD buzz words floating around on the Internet and in store ads. There seems to be a lot of confusion on the subject of whether or not 1080p is better than 1080i by a large enough margin that the discerning consumer needs to be careful of them. Most recently this question came in the form of an email, and I thought I'd share my answer. Question: What is the loss of quality between 1080p and 1080i? Answer: That actually depends on the source material and the monitor - it's a very complicated question to answer but all things being equal the loss of quality would be half of the horizontal resolution. Another way of putting it: 1080i: 1920x540 pixels displayed at once 1080p: 1920x1080 pixels displayed at once But this isn't an exact comparison. The Long Explanation: Video recorded natively at 1080i will be broken down into two separate fields (540 lines x2). One field (commonly called Field A) will consist of all of the e...

I've often found myself needing a reliable way to determine string length with windows batch files. I know there are probably add-ons or third-party solutions, but I prefer to do things with the base system whenever possible. Since I wasn't able to find any solutions, I figured I'd contribute one now that I've written it. This is my code, I don't care if you use it or what you use it for. I hope it works for you and if not, sorry. It relies on the set /a command, which I believe is exclusive to XP (it might work in 2000 but I no longer have a box to test it on.) getstrlen.bat: @echo off REM Sets the variable "strlen" to the length of the first argument. REM REM Usage: REM getstrlen  if "%1"=="" (echo getstrlen error: no argument &goto lengthset) if not "%2"=="" (echo getstrlen error: too many arguments &goto lengthset) set count=1 set strlen= :checklen echo>%temp%\checker.bat set STRING=%1 echo>...

Over the weekend of November 17th to November 19th, I was able to acquire both of the most sought after consoles, the Wii and the PS3. Personally I consider it unfair to compare the two because the PS3 is such a powerful beast, and the Wii is so much more fun. You can go pretty much anywhere on the 'Net and find opinions about the two systems, and this blog is no exception! I will, however, attempt to provide information that I haven't seen elsewhere. Due to a strange sequence of events, I actually acquired my PS3 later in the day on the same day I acquired my Wii. And since I'm an unapologetic Nintendo fanboy, I'm reviewing the Wii first. Nintendo prefers for some reason that the system simply be called Wii and not "Nintendo Wii". I'm sure it figures into the rantings of some social engineering plot designed to cement the system into the hearts and minds of the world, but it also saves me typing so I'm going along with it. While many people campe...

A couple of years ago when the traditionalists and Christians were really starting to get miffed about the politically correct neutering of Christmas greetings, I decided to try a reverse-psychology approach with a friend of mine. Knowing that he was a Christian and not at all bashful about it, I approached him in mid-December and told him "Season's Holidays!". He fixed me with a flat stare and replied "Happy Jesus' Birthday." to rhyme with "Tonight you sleep with the fishes." That is one of my most cherished Christmas memories.