Whistle your way through life

It's been eight days since my last blog? Seems like it's been twice as long. Anyway, I'd like to share a video of Crayon Physics for the iPhone/iPod touch that I saw on Kotaku.

How you say? Ah, yes: WANT!

I'd also buy SimCity and Rolando from the App Store if they were reasonably priced. $10 is too much. I think $5 is the maximum I'd pay for an app. That's what I paid for Tetris and that seems about right (although free is still best).

Maybe later I'll do a writeup on some of the apps that I found useful or entertaining. Really, if you browse the Top 25/50 section in the App Store, you'll find most of the ones I've used. I will offer a few thoughts right now though.

Surprisingly, there are a lot of applications that are more than just "make fart sounds." I really enjoy Mint, but it's data is several days out of date. (It seems I have to go to the actual website to have the data actually refresh itself, which kind of goes against the point of the application.) Having the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on tap is both patriotic and informative (the "notes" section houses some fun trivia). Reading books using Stanza is surprisingly pleasant.

There are several applications that do the same thing that I wish would merge however. DrunkDial has the handy option of checking off which ingredients you have while 5,800 Free Drinks has a greater portfolio of drinks as well as an interface that is slightly better in some respects. Then there are two YellowPages apps that are useful in different situations.

One app that I'm hoping works as intended is WiFinder. I thought for sure that McDonald's offered free Wi-Fi, but when a friend and I parked outside of one to look up bars to find drink specials, I was surprised to see a page telling me that I had to buy this service. WiFinder's purpose then is to tell me which available networks have passwords and which are truly free so I don't have to waste time thinking that I'm getting internet access only to find out 30 seconds later that they want you to pay for it.

So instead of going off on a rant about how Wi-Fi should be free and national, I think I'm going to go and play with my lovely gadget some more. It's been a real treat so far. Kudos to you, Apple.

"Ret" him into your heart

This is just too cute.

I think this little boy (?) provokes the loving, peaceful message of the Beatles better than that awfully saccharine film Across the Universe. On the subject of the Beatles (and if you felt a bit cheated somehow), here's a very interesting animated video of an interview with John Lennon.

I told that Kraut a fuckin' thousand times, I don't roll on Shabbos!

I saw this on Gizmodo and I just had to share."This is a kosher vending machine located at the E-Walk Theatre on 42nd Street, in Manhattan, NY. It sells hot tasty nosh, but only 24/6. Why? Because it's Shabbos, that's why."

Acorns and Lightning

I was reading Jeff Green's blog about how he had just watched Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and I thought I might re-watch some Miyazaki movies for myself. I remember Princess Mononoke was the first one I had seen, and it's probably my least favorite. I think Nausicaa delivers the same theme but better/weirder. So I decided to go with Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

I watched Spirited Away yesterday morning with a very mild hangover. It was perfect, actually. The movie provided a workout for my imagination that I desperately needed and it made me feel like I was an observer to events within a dream instead of just watching a movie. It's probably my favorite movie of Miyazaki's.

Then, last night I watched Totoro before I went to bed. It's the kind of movie that I want to show my children someday. It's also a portrait of the kind of father I'd like to be. If I could make it so that nothing scared my kids and make everything seem like an adventure, I think I would be very satisfied with myself. But as for the movie, I think it's only flaw is it's ending. It kinda seems like the team ran out of money and they had to abbreviate things considerably. Still, it's a wonderful movie. Even Roger Ebert loves it.

Now I've got plans to watch Howl's Moving Castle, which I have not seen before. A point of contention that I wanted to bring up, though, was wondering if people watched these movies subbed or dubbed? I believe that Studio Ghibli's dubbing quality is of the highest caliber, so I completely enjoy watching the dubs. I'm not so anal retentive that I have to watch everything in it's "purest" form. I mean, I love Pan's Labyrinth and Amelie, so subtitles do not deter me from watching a movie at all. But I also think that if you're going to be watching these movies with children, it'd be stupid of you to call them "n00bs" because they can't read subtitles.

But as for why I'm writing this (I certainly don't need to evangelize Miyazaki anymore than creepy nerds already have), I'm not really sure. Ever since the semester ended, I've felt like I needed a project to do. First off, I need to get my exercise bike fixed. Then at least I could waste my time with movies and get a bit of a workout in the process.


Last night I also saw the trailer for Guitar Hero: Metallica. Now, I have to come right out of the closet and say that I loved metal from middle school to high school. Megadeth, Opeth, and Dream Theater were my favorites, but Metallica (specifically James Hetfield) was one of the reasons I picked up the guitar and why it continues to be a passion of mine. Now, I don't want any haters on here saying that Metallica sucks ever since they cut their hair. (That'd be a misnomer. It was actually on the Black Album that they starting "sucking.") They do have a lot of songs that are great fun to play. Granted, I could play most of them on a real guitar, but this new Guitar Hero SKU is making me ponder buying some more stupid plastic instruments.

The plan is to get the full bundle for Guitar Hero: Metallica since I hear that World Tour's drum kit is superior in build quality to the Rock Band 2's and I also hear that it's quieter to boot. Then, I'd get rid of every plastic instrument I have except for my Guitar Hero III guitar and I would pay the $5 to transfer Rock Band 1 to my 360's hard drive and buy a stand-alone version of Rock Band 2. So then I would have Rock Band 1 & 2 along with Guitar Hero: Metallica until Rock Band's Beatles game came out. I believe with that setup I'd be completely satisfied with rhythm games for years to come.

Speaking of silly plastic drum kits though, at work we had one of those crazy $300 Ion kits for Rock Band 2. The thing is, it's broken now, because some stupid kids decided to use it as a chair. Just thought I'd throw that out there: teenagers are idiots... Well, most of them anyway.

It's pronounced uh-NAL-ruh-pist

Clips of some of the best moments from one of my favorite TV shows, Arrested Development.

Demetri Martin - If I

Here's Demetri Martin's 2004 stand-up special If I. Demetri is one of my favorite comedians and I had not seen this special previously (I think because it was aired on the BBC?). Enjoy. I think it's probably his best stand-up routine I've seen.

Also, here's a 224-word palindrome Demetri wrote:

Dammit I'm mad.
Evil is a deed as I live.
God, am I reviled? I rise, my bed on a sun, I melt.
To be not one man emanating is sad. I piss.
Alas, it is so late. Who stops to help?
Man, it is hot. I'm in it. I tell.
I am not a devil. I level "Mad Dog".
Ah, say burning is, as a deified gulp,
In my halo of a mired rum tin.
I erase many men. Oh, to be man, a sin.
Is evil in a clam? In a trap?
No. It is open. On it I was stuck.
Rats peed on hope. Elsewhere dips a web.
Be still if I fill its ebb.
Ew, a spider… eh?
We sleep. Oh no!
Deep, stark cuts saw it in one position.
Part animal, can I live? Sin is a name.
Both, one… my names are in it.
Murder? I'm a fool.
A hymn I plug, deified as a sign in ruby ash,
A Goddam level I lived at.
On mail let it in. I'm it.
Oh, sit in ample hot spots. Oh wet!
A loss it is alas (sip). I'd assign it a name.
Name not one bottle minus an ode by me:
"Sir, I deliver. I'm a dog"
Evil is a deed as I live.
Dammit I'm mad.

1UP's Game Night: Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

The "Versus" series seems to back with a vengeance in this video of the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom tournament held within the 1UP offices.

It looks like a lot of fun... Fun that probably won't be coming to our shores (I guess it would be kind of hard to sell Americans on what the hell a "Tatsunoko" is, plus I heard there were legal troubles with that brand). It's a shame.

Someone commented at the tournament that Capcom could make a "Hanna-Barbera vs. Capcom" game. Scooby vs. Rush sounds like a good match-up to me. I don't think Yogi Bear could throw out a Shoryureppa though. Hmm... Hanna-Barbera does mean that you could potentially play as Harvey Birdman, Johnny Bravo, Dexter, Space Ghost, and the Powerpuff Girls though.

If Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was brought over to the States on 360 or PS3, it'd be a purchase I'd consider. Along with Street Fighter IV and Street Fighter II HD Remix, Capcom is doing something wonderful. I appreciate it, really. Now Street Fighter Alpha 3 HD Remix, please?

The Return of Leggy Blonde

Flight of the Choncords Season 2 Online Premiere!

Season 2 Online Premiere - Flight of the Conchords (US Only) - watch more funny videos

You make me sick, I make me sicker

These screenshots of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves on GAF must be seen.

It's a bit funny hearing that Uncharted 2 concerns Marco Polo and Kublai Khan after I had just read Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino for class. At any rate, I'm glad that Uncharted is getting a sequel. I mean that's better than getting a followup to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, isn't it? I just wish I just wouldn't have stopped playing the first Uncharted after it started to get a bit "supernatural."

Sí, Paloma

I encourage everyone to read this excellent article from Popular Mechanics: Finally, Bring Home the Hollywood Classics in HD. Here are a few interesting excerpts:

To understand the mammoth effort it takes to transfer a classic film, Popular Mechanics visited the facilities where the Criterion Collection restores its movies. Criterion is legendary for its painstaking remastering jobs. These days, most of what we refer to as “film restoration” isn’t done on film. “There could be multiple copies of film elements, original negatives or duplicate negatives,” says Lee Kline, Criterion’s technical director. Criterion gathers the best it can find, then transfers those elements to the digital domain. Most are transferred using high-definition DataCine, where film is scanned in near real time (24 frames per second) directly to uncompressed data files. But in the case of fragile negatives, restorers often choose the more painstaking method of digitally scanning individual film frames using a scanner synchronized to sprocket holes at the edges of negatives. After it is scanned, each movie is sent to Criterion’s facility on HD CAM cassettes at full 1080p high-definition resolution and is uploaded in the company’s central machine room.

Then the fun begins. A technician in a small office sits in front of a computer monitor with a virtual pen and touchpad and goes through the movie frame by frame, fixing scratches, removing dirt and schmutz. Take, for instance, Criterion’s painstaking restoration of art-house favorite Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express. The film’s opening sequence is in slow motion, but rather than create that slow motion in camera, Wong Kar Wai did it in postproduction, duplicating each frame three times with an optical printer. Every single frame—the original and the three dupes—and its imperfections must be dealt with individually. There are automated methods of cleaning up digital transfers, after which technicians can assess the results and backtrack in case of error. But Express is getting an exclusively human touch, with hands-on techs making all the decisions on what stays, what goes and what replaces what goes. And that’s just the visuals: In another part of the facility, an audio technician goes through the film’s soundtrack, using Pro Tools and other software to remove extraneous pops and other forms of sonic distortion. The cleanup of the 1-hour 42-minute film will take 480 hours.

...

By any measure, the transfer of Sleeping Beauty was an epic job. Lowry had access to the original negative from the Disney archives. The film was originally shot in the Vista Vision format, in which a single frame is the size of two 35 mm frames. The negative was also in what is called sequential color—first frame red, second green, third blue. Since each frame of film produced three scans, that meant three times the restoration work. As a result, the digital restoration of the film took eight months instead of the typical six. “You scan that kind of material carefully and you get incredible results,” Lowry says. “Beautiful color. Excellent resolution. And what little grain there is can be cleaned up, along with dirt and scratches, to create the ideal version of what the designers, animators and colorists intended.”

...

Compression, though, introduces a whole new set of technical challenges. This process squeezes down the size of a film’s digital file by applying an algorithm that trims redundant picture information, hopefully with minimal distortion. Despite marketing claims to the contrary, there is no such a thing as “lossless” digital compression. Most video compression is “lossy”—that is, it loses information that the eye presumably can’t discern. The algorithms are incredibly flexible, and there is no standard for hi-def compression. Consider, for instance, that the uncompressed digital master of a typical Hollywood movie requires 5 to 15 terabytes of storage space. To fit it onto a Blu-ray disc, it is compressed by 100 times or more to 50 gigabytes. For distribution over an HD rental download service, it is reduced to 6 gigabytes or less. Yet all of these versions of the same movie are considered hi-def.

To save space, mastering engineers get creative. One trick is to apply a lot of compression to dark backgrounds—thereby reducing the bit rate (the amount of video data presented each second). But too much compression can create blacks that look like dark clumps instead of a natural part of the overall picture. Picture information with a lot of motion in it, such as flickering flames, needs to be handled carefully in compression, lest the result be a bleary, unrealistic rendition.

That's how we make it right

This mix is both a further procrastination of writing essays and also a love letter to my local college radio station, KCSU, with DJ Macondo (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 1 - 4 pm) being the target in particular. This mix is going to be longer than usual and contains songs that I've discovered through KCSU, songs that have been popular on KCSU, requests for songs I had made, and then just some songs I like thrown in for good measure.

So here it is immortalized: the Fall semester of 2008 in a 19-song playlist. There were two songs I really wanted to include, but Googling the lyrics yielded no results, which I'm very sad about.

To bring things down even more, it doesn't look like I'll be making any more mixes. Mixwit is shutting down and apparently I can't even embed a tape on my blog anymore. There's really no point in finding a similar service, since it will most likely be shut down just like Muxtape was. It's too bad. They were cool and useful services.

1. Noah and the Whale - 2 Atoms in a Molecule
2. The Boy Least Likely To - Be Gentle with Me
3. Miniature Tigers - Like or Like Like
4. Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945
5. Caribou - Melody Day
6. Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
7. Minus the Bear - Guns & Ammo
   
8. Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook
9. Seabear - I Sing I Swim
10. Sun Kil Moon - Carry Me Ohio
11. The Walkmen - On the Water
12. She & Him - Sentimental Heart
13. Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
14. Ratatat - Shempi
15. Neon Neon - I Lust U
16. MGMT - Kids
17. A Faulty Chromosome - Jackie O
18. Modest Mouse - Out of Gas
19. The Real Tuesday Weld - Last Words

House of Cards

Penny Arcade sums up Sony's Home in one paragraph:

The Beta for PlayStation Home is now available to everyone, and now you know what I know: this is what happens when your marketing department tries to make a game. Here is everything you need to understand about Home, if you should accidentally launch it from your XMB: press and hold the PlayStation button in the center of your Dual-Shock or Sixaxis controller. From the menu that appears, select Quit.

I can't think of a worse use of money from either Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft. Having a Wii peripheral that would make your Wii into a toaster or a toenail clipping jar would be more useful and entertaining.

What Sony should have done with all that precious time and money is make the PS3 as good and easy to use as the 360 in terms of a social experience with friends. Just because it's free doesn't make the PlayStation Network good.

Also, Netflix -- which I'm hoping will be the next console "must have" like analog sticks and force feedback were.

Ah, but at least Sony hasn't fucked up as bad as Nintendo. The only game that came out this holiday season for the Wii was Animal Crossing? I guess I'd take an impotent Second Life clone over that.

The best of the crap

Time is slipping slowly into a safe, and the moment when you most want into your cache of memories, the vault is locked, the combination a mystery. ... Or at least that's what a night of drinking will do to you.

Anyway, I wanted to give a quick blurb of praise to Electronic Gaming Monthly's best writer (or its funniest, at least... Sorry Sharkey). Tucked away in the back pages of every issue lies a true comic genius that I'm hoping you're familiar with. His name is Seanbaby and each month his comedy gets more and more ferocious -- like a Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouse kick to the face that increases in intensity with each repeated blow.

Here's an excerpt from EGM's January 2009 issue:

Everyone loves to delude themselves about how much self-improvement they sneak into their lives. I've got some bad news, though. Swimming through triple-cheeseburger drippings to get your Diet Coke isn't a healthy meal. Watching pornography in ankle weights isn't a workout. Conan with French subtitles is not learning a second language, and sticking a baby in front of Mozart only takes jobs away from puppet musicians. And most of all: High-speed, second-grade math on your DS is not making you smarter. More to the point, I also put my brain through a battery of tests with every brain videogame I could find.

I remember reading that intelligence is traditionally measured in five different ways: Arkansas capitals, shot put, ham glazing, TV/VCR repair, and necromancy. I threw out these outdated, culturally biased categories and came up with two of my own. The first is Reasoning. This is a very measurable standard of intelligence based around arithmetic and logic. The other is Practical Intelligence.

Reasoning is easy to quantify; it goes from one to five. Practical Intelligence is much more difficult to measure, so pay close attention. Smart people in the wild show off their intelligence through the inverse of their knowledge of culturally shared experiences. You'll find that the smarter a person is, the less applicable knowledge they have. To explain anecdotally, people were asked if they enjoy watching VH1's Rock of Love with Bret Michaels. Their answers ranked, with five being the smartest, and one the dumbest:

• 5 - I'm sure I don't know. In fact, I'm so smart that I don't even know what a Bret Michaels is.
• 4 - Blarg of Blarg? I don't watch much TV, and my intelligence makes it hard to even remember what you asked.
• 3 - I've seen it, but only because I taped Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire all those years back, and now my damn TiVo thinks I watch game shows where the prize is people.
• 2 - I never miss it! I even caught hepatitis from sharing a drifter with a chick from that show!
• 1 - Enjoy it?! Man, I'm withholding emotional support from my daughter so she'll grow up and give future generations her own Rock of Love!

Now that you're fully briefed, I'll rate each game on how well it improves my brain in the two categories. Some games that didn't make the cut to clinical trials were Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!, Mega Brain Boost, and Best of Tests DS. Best of Tests DS is by far the best adaption of traditional IQ tests, but I refused to review it because I kept pronouncing it "Best of Testes, Yes." This was not only the exact opposite of the spirit of the article but also impossible to prevent. I apologize to the makers of Best of Testes, Yes -- recipient of the coveted Official Nintendo Seal.

If you'd like to learn more about Seanbaby and his charitable organization, please donate to his website linked here.

Proposition 8 - The Musical

Saw this on Wil Wheaton's blog:

Featuring Jack Black, Neil Patrick Harris, Maya Rudolf, Craig Robinson, Andy Richter, and many more.

According to Wikipedia, final results will be available on December 13th.

I'm deeply touched

My "big" Christmas present for this year came in the mail the other day -- a lovely, new 32 GB iPod touch. I convinced my mom to let me futz with it so that I could put my music on it so that I could actually use it on the day I get it. (You see, I'm having Christmas at my sister's house, so I wouldn't have access to my stuff.) Of course, I couldn't just sync music and put it back... No, I had to have some fun first.

As the device has been out for a while and virtually every other nerd on the internet has already jizzed themselves over the iPhone, I don't think I need to reiterate the device's many amazing uses. That said, I am thoroughly impressed by many of the free applications that are available in the app store (Google Earth, UrbanSpoon, AIM, 5800+ Drink & Cocktail Recipes, Free Translator, Stanza, last.fm, and AroundMe are some of the most useful ones) and using the device is fantastically brisk and easy.

So yes, short of not having phone functionality, the iPod touch is one of the funnest and most useful gadgets I've ever acquired -- it really is a nerd's panacea! Syncing took forever, but hopefully it only hurts the first time...

I'd still like more storage space since my digital copy of Juno weighs in at 1.5 gigs and I'm expecting Wall-E and the Dark Knight to be the same. Add to that the video podcasts that I watch regularly (Tekzilla, the Totally Rad Show, Diggnation) and there's still a far cry from enough space. Plus, there's still a lot of music that I wish I could carry around with me. My library is almost 50 gigs and I'd like to think that at least half of that is worth listening to most of the time.

So, in an alternate reality where the iPhone came in 64 GB or 128 GB flavors and service month-to-month wasn't $60, I'd hit that so hard my pelvis would shatter into dust. But as it is, I'm very happy with just a 32 GB iPod touch. Heck, I even found a video on YouTube that tells you how to text for free using the AIM app, so now the touch really is just the iPhone without the phone.

R-66Y's Got Soul

Just when I thought I might never hear Rick Astley's sexy voice again, someone made a mashup video of "Never Gonna Give You Up" and "Robo's Theme" from Chrono Trigger.

It goes fairly well together, although Yasunori Mitsuda claims that he had never heard of Rick Astley before someone brought this video to his attention.

It's the new hotness...again.

Fallout 3 Character Guide

This is my own personal map for my idea of the "perfect" character in Fallout 3. I used this build for my second character and I was very happy. There are small changes that you can make to suit your style, but I don't think you'll find anything more effective than a combat shotgun to the face.

Starting SPECIAL:
Strength 4
Perception 7
Endurance 4
Charisma 5
Intelligence 8
Agility 7
Luck 5

Perks by level:
02 - Intense Training
03 - Intense Training
04 - Educated (Requirements: Intelligence 4+)
05 - Intense Training
06 - Toughness (Requirements: Endurance 5+)
07 - Intense Training
08 - Commando OR Strong Back (Requirements: Strength 5+, Endurance 5+)
09 - Commando OR Strong Back (Requirements: Strength 5+, Endurance 5+)
10 - Finesse (Requirements: Luck 6+)
11 - Intense Training
12 - Sniper (Requirements: Perception 6+, Agility 6+)
13 - Intense Training
14 - Master Trader (Requirements: Charisma 6+, Barter 60+)
15 - Cyborg (Requirements: Science 60+, Medicine 60+)
16 - Better Criticals (Requirements: Perception 6+, Luck 6+)
17 - Intense Training
18 - Concentrated Fire (Requirements: Small Guns 60+, Energy Weapons 60+)
19 - Intense Training
20 - Grim Reaper's Sprint

SPECIAL total at the end without equipment mods:
Strength 6
Perception 10
Endurance 6
Charisma 6
Intelligence 10
Agility 10
Luck 7

You could also consider taking a few points away from Perception and applying them to Charisma or Luck.


General Tips:
If you didn't know, there are 20 bobbleheads in the game that will increase your SPECIAL statistics by one each and your skills by 10 points. These are crucial. You can get the Strength bobblehead at the start of the game when you come to the town of Megaton, which is why I put Strength at 4. The Medicine bobblehead is also found in Vault 101 and is available from the start. I would recommend making getting as many of these as you can one of your primary objectives.

The quest line "Them!" will give you the choice of increasing your Strength or Perception by 1 as well as giving you a slight resistance to fire damage.

The "Oasis" quest gives you the option to get a permanent +1 to your Endurance and gives you extra damage resistance. Coupled with Cyborg and Toughness, you'll be laughing off a Super Mutant minigun to your face like it was nothing.

Power Armor will increase your Strength by 1 or 2 depending on if you use the Brotherhood or Enclave variant. The Enclave helmet will decrease your Charisma by 1 while it's equipped, but I wouldn't worry about that too much.

I personally find Sneaking to be useless in Fallout 3, but if you like to steal a lot of stuff, Silent Running might prove to be useful at level 13 instead of more Intense Training. Getting a bonus to your damage output by sniping a character that's unaware of your presence can be useful, but I found getting up close to be just as effective at eradicating most everything.

Your primary stats are Agility and Intelligence for the following reasons: First, more Intelligence = more skill points. If you can get Lockpicking, Science, Small Guns, and Energy Weapons to 100 after skill bobbleheads, then you're in great shape. The other three important skills are Barter, Speech, and Medicine. Those you should be able to get to around 70.

You want more Agility because a higher Agility gives you more points to spend in VATS, which lets you slow down the action and aim for specific body parts equaling more damage.

Another Perk you might want to consider is Bloody Mess. Not because of the increased violence factor, but because of the +5 to damage that it gives you. As for Scrounger and Fortune Finder, I would skip those. Fallout 3 is the type of game where ammo and money is scarce in the beginning, but plentiful later on.

Well, what about...

Film and videogames? If the last.fm post was concerned with 2008 and music, what about the other two forms of entertainment I partake in? The quick and dirty is this:

My favorite movies of 2008:
1) Wall-E
2) The Dark Knight
3) Forgetting Sarah Marshall

My favorite games of 2008:
1) Fallout 3
2) Tales of Vesperia
3) Metal Gear Solid 4

Now, what made me put Wall-E above the Dark Knight? I didn't give it much thought, actually. I just thought about how much better Wall-E made me feel and how much wonder it instilled in me as compared to the Dark Knight. While I was impressed with the Dark Knight, coming out of it, the two things I had on my mind where what villains could possibly be in the sequel and that it wasn't as good (to me) as Batman Begins. Wall-E on the other hand, made me want to dance.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall was probably my favorite comedy of this year, although Pineapple Express and Step Brothers deserve attention as well. However, to me, Forgetting Sarah Marshall surpasses those because of its heart.

If I were able to put BioShock as my game of the year again this year I totally would, but seeing as how that's unfair, I went with what I enjoyed the most. Fallout 3 may have missed the mark with the Fallout universe in a few important ways (humor, other solutions besides combat), but its world was so completely engaging that I couldn't help but fall in love.

Tales of Vesperia I was impressed with because it was the first great Japanese RPG of this hardware generation and it made me remember why I loved them so much in the SNES and PS1 days. While there are plenty of "better" games with more polish, Vesperia brought out the obsessive in me and made me spend more than 100 hours in its world, which should say all that needs to be said about it.

The Metal Gear Solids have always proven to be important landmarks in gaming, and Metal Gear Solid 4 was no different. The production value was stellar and it actually succeeded in making sense of the sordid and confusing Metal Gear plotline, which many thought to be impossible. I still like Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence better, but MGS4 has many merits of its own. Really the only complaint I have is that you can't install the entire game to the PS3's hard drive, only the current chapter you're on.

The saddest part of gaming in 2008 for me, however, was the downfall of the music game genre. Sure, sales will probably still be big for this year, but unfortunately, I think I'm completely over it. There's just too many SKUs (Guitar Hero disgustingly so) and too many new plastic instruments. If Rock Band where the only music platform out there, I'd probably be much happier. Rock Band 2 does lots of things right like having a "no fail mode" and being able to install Rock Band 1 to the hard drive, but the fatigue is still there. And let's not even talk about the embarrassing Wii Music or Rock Revolution...

Really, I'm a bit disappointed in 2008 for gaming in general. There were a lot of good games, but to me, there weren't a lot of great games. Or maybe if I stopped comparing everything to BioShock and how it blew my mind, I'd be having more fun. So I guess Ken Levine = slayer of happiness.

Last.fm's Best of 2008

Trolling around my last.fm page like the obsessive that I am, I couldn't help but notice that last.fm has it's own "Best of 2008" list that was generated from actual listening habits of its users instead of editorial opinion.

The song list is utterly boring since the top 10 are all Coldplay and MGMT. The album list is okay, but I found the artist list to be the most intriguing. The top 10 reads so:

1. MGMT
2. The Ting Tings
3. Sara Bareilles
4. Fleet Foxes
5. Katy Perry
   
6. The Last Shadow Puppets
7. Foals
8. Bon Iver
   
9. Does it Offend You, Yeah?
10. Santogold

It seems to be a pretty diverse list and it would have me believe that most of last.fm's users are probably European and more than likely British. I'm quite happy to see some of those names on the list (congrats MGMT, it is truly your year), and I was even happier to learn that Owen Pallett of the Arcade Fire and his own project Final Fantasy had contributed to The Last Shadow Puppets, whom I was previously unaware of.

Being that the top 10 song list was so monotonous, however, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite songs from this year (a few might actually be from 2007).

• Band of Horses - The General Specific
• Bears - Dolphins
• Death Cab for Cutie - Your New Twin Sized Bed
• Does it Offend You, Yeah? - Dawn of the Dead
• Elias and the Wizzkids - The Dance
• Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal
• Friska Viljor - Arpeggio
  
• Hot Chip - Ready for the Floor
• I Was a Cub Scout - Pink Squares
• Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire
• Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance
• M83 - Kim & Jessie
• MGMT - Kids
• Miniature Tigers - Like or Like Like
• Minus the Bear - Guns & Ammo
• Noah and the Whale - 5 Years Time
• of Montreal - An Eluardian Instance
• The Spinto Band - Summer Grof
• Teitur - Catherine the Waitress
• Television Room - Coffee Houses
  
• Wild Beasts - His Grinning Skull
• Yeasayer - 2080

And that's just a few that I could think of. It's years like this that make me hopeful for music -- I couldn't think of something that's currently as heinous as nu-metal or the boy bands of the late nineties. Then again, I'm not around teenage girls and young bucks out to prove their superior testosterone levels that much anymore...

At any rate, happy listening.