Halo 3 ARG is up and at 'em

Fresh from Penny Arcade today, the Halo 3 alternate reality game is beginning its nefarious crawl through the web-o-sphere.

I have to say that I remain a devout fan of Perplex City, even though there is literally no chance in heck that I'm going to be able to complete it. If only there was one that you could get into on the ground floor - and I mean literally, like as in "build it yourself and make a mint." I have great respect for whoever puts together the Halo games - good stuff.

Cartomancy

Back to the unabated ramblings about Etrian Odyssey. It really is a joy to use the mapping feature, but at level 14 (and not to give too much of a spoiler) I ran out of memo tags. My guess is maximum 20 per level, though it may be a bit more.

The reason I needed so many darn tags was that it was not immediately apparent how to map the level. However, you'll discover when you get there that the big picture makes all things clear as a lily. So to speak. Just get to the level, all right?

Huge boss on 15, therefore level 13 must (hopefully) contain the closure of the mission from the Radha. Otherwise it's another two nights of slog 'n' blog. :)

Morons in the news!

We're gonna build a gigantic missile shield in Europe! Wheedly do! Despite persistent reports to the contrary, our esteemed leaders are pushing forward with the porkiest project ever.

This is a demand-side nonproliferation advocate's worst nightmare. "Heh, what do we care? We can shoot the missiles out of the sky!! Except you can't. The most recent test involved no countermeasures, and resulted in General Obering thinking there was a "good chance" that we could hit a missile launched from North Korea or some other hotspot. This would be laughable if it wasn't so insanely expensive, both in monetary terms and in diplomatic ones (alas, ABM Treaty, we hardly knew ye).

Anyway, this is old news at this point. It's depressing that the same rhetoric not only carries force but is gaining momentum now that they can, y'know, kinda intercept something. I'd also like to see our fancy missile shield stop, say, an airplane. Or a suitcase bomb. Or all of the things resentful and creative people dream up in lieu of purchasing a missile at the local weapons mart.

Les Poissons

So I've been fiddling with a UW aggro deck in standard that has led to a great deal of trading and re-assorting of my collection to get the requisite lands, etc. It is relatively quick, taking advantage of Infiltrator il-Kor and Glorious Anthems. It's a "fish" deck only in the sense that it has inexpensive disruption tricks and wants to beat down as quickly as possible. In this context it does its job pretty well. Don't know if it does it well enough to deal with Dragonstorm though.

The card that inspired the deck - Delay - seems a natural and useful answer to D-Storm (hit them in the middle of the mana ramping and give them RRRRR in their mana pool in some random upkeep). It's become apparent, however, that Grand Arbiter Augustin IV might actually do more in the storm matchups than counterspells in the traditional sense. The only problem is the speed with which I can get him down - I'm running a slim 22 lands and no Karoos. So, Trickbind stops the worst part of the Storm spells. I'm running two and two, maindeck sideboard.

Two more spots main/side deal with the other very problematic deck, dredge. There are currently two Jotun Grunts main with two buddies in the sideboard. I'm of the opinion that this is not enough, but with Trickbind countering activations (and Azorius Guildmage potentially doing so as well), I think the initial matchup is not so horrible. Alas, this is completely untested, as I don't have any clannies who are interested in playing dredge.

Anyhoo, I think it's a pretty fun deck and it can certainly race control. The combo matchups are not abysmal thanks to the available tools, and generally I think there's hope. I'm going to do a bit more tuning and then march it into some queues to see if I'm even close to right...

Off Topic: Dude, where's my President?

I'm required to note that this post has zero to do with the land of Etria, or my travels therein. Sorry, I know that has been awesome for all of us.

It has come time to address the looming presidential hootenanny in some way that is more engaged than "meh." I mention this because, believe it or not, the primaries are (in electoral terms) mere minutes away. I don't know where the time went, but I have gone from smirking at the earliness of it all to thinking that I ought to make a valid choice, and quick like.

So, my top five. Have answers to these and you get my vote:

1) Weapons Proliferation. I mean small arms, chemical, nukes, domestic (i.e. Brady Bill) and foreign (e.g. NPT, CTBT, the continued absurd discussion about missile defense). I mean tools of violence getting into the hands of millions. It's gotta stop, and we must lead by example if we have any hope of it stopping.

2) Retirement Boom. This is purely an "our backyard" issue, but man there are a lot of old/aging people out there. They all need health care, most will need long-term care, and many of them plan to tap the gummit for retirement money. Sort it out.

3) Kyoto/sustainability. This has become so much the buzz word that it almost makes me throw up a little. Nevertheless, it remains true that the deadline is now for articulate, inclusive, policy on the environment.

4) France. Seriously, they're going to create a giant sucking sound where once there was a European Union. Sort that nonsense out.

5) China. Okay, perhaps France was a joke. China is not. Taiwan is an issue, globalization is a bigger issue, and human rights/impoverishment of body and spirit are colossal issues. Engage.

I'll report back. Y'know, between trips into the Labyrinth.

Stratum 2 Boss Handled

So the good news - I took out the demon. The bad news, only my back line survived - so the Alchemist and the Medic got a juicy 4000 XP. Counter is a gnarly, gnarly ability, and might be a reason to have a Protector (assuming it can gain that ability via mad Shield skillz).

Anyway. I'm a big dork.

Etrian Actuarial Services

Odds of getting trampled by a big red elephant: high. The only way you survive these encounters is willpower - I will not, after all I have done, die at the feet of a big dumb cartoony elephant. That and Disable will get you a long way (ditto Moas, although they're obviously far less scary).

It's obvious (or at least heavily foreshadowed) that there will come a time that the Labyrinth will be populated by sentient creatures, instead of merely big dumb beasts. There are, for example, curses to be avoided, and I can't even create two of the character classes, indicating at least more NPCs and likely whole concertos involving human or sub-human foes. I alternate between thinking that I'm ready for these showdowns (especially after the "Explorer's Guild" quest - five days on level 8. Pff. Was that supposed to be difficult? I got so bored running into random monsters that I spent the last two days just pacing by the fountain. Clearly I was too high powered, at that point?) and remembering with deadly clarity the first run-in with aforementioned elephants. This is not a game where small britches are helpful. It will get you killed.

Anyhoo, I have some cleanup to do on the white crystal walk of death in Stratum 1. Now that I know that it's only extremely likely that I'll die to a big dumb elephant (as opposed to, you know, inevitable), I will probably go mop up there before taking on Stratum 2's boss. He's named after a god! Ooooh...

Etrian Odyssey - are you sick of this yet?

So I have to share the essential truth:

CARRY A WARP WIRE.

Yes, it's a little bit cheaty. But imagine you're unlocking crystal key areas and you accidentally get stuck in the Land of Endless Bosses. Wouldn't you feel silly if 6+ levels and a ton of loot was wiped out in one stroke? And all because you've been eschewing the Warp Wire? And wouldn't you feel even worse if you leveled your Alchemist, gave him Warp, and then needed to mise one lousy TP from anywhere to use it? Whilst being pursued by a big red elephant?

I'm just saying. Warp wire. Your little 100 en. friend.

I was beginning to think that all the "OMG, so hard" talk was just people failing to pay their dues at the outset. It's now apparent that every time there's a significant power creep in favor of characters, the game is just about ready to open a serious can of whup-ass.

Still More Etrian Odyssey

So I battled down to level 3 only to discover that the FOEs that inhabit the first rooms are far and away too tough for anything below, I'm guessing, level 17. I think it's possible that I could take them out earlier, so long as I had a preemptive turn and could also double-hit with both of my landsknechts. But I'm just saying, at the moment there is no freaking way I'm doing anything but running the edges of the rooms (the good news is that they've got short-term memory issues, so you can maneuver them out of your way and then carry on). That leads me to suspect that I should work to complete the Wolf King (Fenrir, nice touch on the name) quest first, see where I'm at, then consider beating down on the slayers. Of course, it will be extremely gratifying to add their stats to the Pokedex...er...I mean, Monstrous Codex.

These (and other) comparisons are obvious but one relevant point is that there is absolutely no freaking comparison in depth of play, or maturity of title. Having slogged through my share of precious gems, I find myself totally uninterested in Diamond/Pearl, despite having picked the game up like all the other good little DS'ers in the world. But Atlus has it beat by a looong way with Etrian Odyssey.

I should say, "for gamer dorks like me who remember interactive fiction and whatnot, Atlus has Pokemon kold." I'm pleasantly surprised to discover the reviews being kind to the game even though it's clear that this title will actually excite an extremely narrow segment of the DS audience. But those mesozoic denizens will be so happy over the next month that they wouldn't care if the reviews were uniformly horrible. Heck, I played "Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder" on GBA, if you want to discuss bad titles...

Just remember to run from the Slayers. Seriously. Like 95 points per hit.

Roguelike

So, in Etrian Odyssey, there's like a home base on top of the Labyrinth, right? And you can manage characters in your party, buy stuff, sell loot, whatever. Sometimes when you sell loot it enables the shopkeeper to make new items that were previously unavailable. There's odd jobs to be had at the tavern and plot-line quests at the castle. So you get your marching orders, head in, mapping your merry way through the maze, and grab loot from random encounters and side quests. Then you dash back to the surface and regroup. The myth is that no one's ever been to the bottom of the Labyrinth...

In other words, it's a roguelike, but pretty, and with a more robust skill tree than ever before attempted in, say, Nethack (but maybe ADOM, which everyone says is awesome but which I cannot for the life of me bring myself to play, has more depth in that area?). And like all roguelikes, it's crack - at least to that very odd subset of people who like getting all the way down to the bottom of a massively multi-level dungeon.

This game will afford you hours of entertainment in the same way that Random, the Evil Human Tourist, afforded me months of entertainment in Nethack. Then he got sandwiched between a passel of orcs and a tea party of jellies, alas. At least in Etrian Odyssey there's no guilt associated with returning to a save point...

I have not yet investigated what happens if you try to solo. If the game adjusts to the number of PCs then you can probably go old-school. If not, you'll likely just die a lot with the more interesting classes. One of the hack-n-slashers could probably do it, though...

New Media Matters

Just a heads up that a pretty smart blog on narrative in all forms can be found here. Authored by Chris Kubasik, it explores narrative across media and begins the difficult work of investigating hybrid narratives, told cross-platform and/or poached and/or ported into different platforms. Haven't read enough, but like what I see to date.

DM of the Rings

Too funny. This guy nails a lot of the perils of pencil paper pillage, as well - I believe one might refer to that as value-added.

If only I could be clever and wield a pen! Alas...

Generating Buzz

All right, I couldn't help it. After all, it's not every day a comedy legend jumps off a roof at Cannes. I will say that "Bee Movie" is the first Dreamworks animated film that I will not immediately sneer at. I find the prospect of any animated film authored by Jerry Seinfeld to be enormously promising.

So I have eschewed my Puzzle Questing for the sake of a run at Touch Detective. Never mind that I'm horribly behind the times on this one - it was in the interest of finding a Scooby-Doo-esque title for the pumpkin. Turns out it is a bit to text-heavy to properly share with the little bug but it's amusing for her to manipulate the objects once they've been found. Also, dude, it's a tiny little Polyanna detective with saucer-eyes and a butler. What's not to love? I thus far have found the puzzles (especially post-intro/tutorial/whatever) to be legitimately challenging, if somewhat burdened by Holmes' maxim that, after all other avenues have been tried, what remains, however improbable, is the solution. It seems to defy credulity, for example, that you use your sentient mushroom pet's spores to jam the planetarium's central apparatus. (Man, that sentence should win an award.) Similar examples abound. That said, I think it's pretty adorable.

It's been a pleasant intro into Atlus, as well, considering that I'm growing increasingly needful of Etrian Odyssey despite having absolutely no time for another diversion...ah, the perils of gaming.

Then I can get that +5 Skull...

Being something of a slave to the RPG, and having managed to catch the second wave of copies flooding into stores, I am now happily enmeshed in Puzzle Quest. The idea that Bejeweled + Progress Bar is enough to make me engage in high level spatial reasoning in the name of mana development is, I think, some comment on my desperate wish to be considered clever by machines that do not consider me one way or the other. My humble DS can, of course, parse the ramifications of a specific rearranging of the game grid far faster than I can, and seems to smirk at me as I miss the obvious Four of a Kind that I could have done in advance of the cool thing that distracted me.

Until I got the Ultimate Troll Ring or whatever it is, that regenerates three points per turn so long as my blue mana pool is at some level (15?), I was getting schooled. I firmly believe that I was spending waaay too much money on my citadel in the early game, and not enough on bling. This is perhaps a function of not reading the manual, yet. I mean, how hard can it be, right?! On the other hand, much of the Shop is level-locked, so I don’t quite characterize it as misuse of funds, really. Suffice it to say that with the ring my little wizard is rocking the kazbah. Need a new burn spell, though. Fire Bolt is weak sauce.

Anyway, the point is that having acquired an “RPG” which promises dual-dialogue cut scenes aplenty, I was aghast and agog to discover that a bona fide contender in the RPG genre was released today for the DS. Looking a little like the prettiest Hunt the Wumpus you ever did see, Etrian Odyssey has a lot going for it on paper – a mapping subtheme that allows you to remember your own damn way out of the Labyrinth, rich graphics, and spritely anime heroes to level up to your heart’s content. I was a little bummed to see that the dialogue and menu options appear to still require the use of the direction pad and A spamming (as opposed to the immensely more gratifying tap-spamming) but all in all it looks like a pretty darn good game, and a no-brainer for people like me who just can’t wait to spend skill points like a mad fiend…

In other news, I also picked up Touch Detective today, in the hopes that it would be appropriate for the boo boo to play along. She is a fiend for the mysteries. I’m beginning to think that I’m just going to have to design a scenario-based tabletop detective game for her - a la 221B Baker Street, but in this case more like 221B Sesame Street.

Has anyone come up with a workable solution to the “tiny chip, gigantic box” problem with DS games? I’ve seen some tacky little folios that solve the “where’s my game” problem, but I have no idea where to stick the cases…might be time for a purge.

For those special times when you're waaaaay on edge...

Just be happy that you're not as crazy as this guy.

Hershey Plant to close in California

I'm torn between feeling some remorse for a hallowed American institution (and in particular, its workers) and thinking that Hershey was due. The product line is not exactly winning the hearts and minds of the newly health conscious America.

One wonders how big that demographic actually is, though. After all, we're fatter than ever.

I suppose the other hit to Hershey is the discovery of real chocolate - and on these very shores, no less. Now that all the snobby gourmands can get actual chocolate, why ever go back? I certainly don't know, although I do enjoy the occasional caramel Kiss. Yummy.

More McCain - the IED

So there continues to be some blowback related to McCain's gift of ordinance to John Stewart.

The whole thing is a little like W telling Gary Trudeau to "tread lightly" during Daddy's term in office. People who can't take a joke should acknowledge that before engaging in criticism of people who make jokes. It's grim humor, but humor just the same, and I would point out (briefly - late for lunch) that the message is not a light one - he's not making fun of death, he's making it a reality for people at home. This just doesn't seem like poor taste to me at all.

And before I start to sound like a McCainophile, I disagree with nearly everything he says about Iraq (and Iran, and probably health care). But the dude's got spirit.

McCain says Gonzales should resign...

The Chronicle has an AP blurb about Senator McCain's opinion of Alberto Gonzales' current difficulty with those pesky Democratic attorneys that the DOJ sacked last year. It's the first move regarding the current Administration debacle and a smart one on McCain's part, methinks. He again is positioning himself in the "partisanship is stupid" camp without sacrificing principles. One need only look at his most recent showdown with John Stewart on The Daily Show to realize that this guy does not relent, will not soft-pedal, and generally speaking comports himself with more dignity than many of the buffoons in the capital.

One wonders whether that is enough. After all, straight shooting didn't exactly get him anywhere in 2000, when he had substantially more chance of appearing to relate to younger generations. Still, it is a rare day when one gets to use the word statesman without cynicism.

Meanwhile, Barak Obama and Hil are getting ready for their first debate. Hmm? SIX others? Who are these people? Oh, right, VP contenders. ;)

Millions Spent, A-Rod aflame, and yet...

This is not a frequent occurence, but a quick (like, in the next day or so) peek at that link will reveal the Yankees in dead last in the AL East. Yes, that's behind the Devil Rays. Bad beats.

Mr. Rodriguez appears to have settled into a New York state of mind, slapping homers this way and that with the sort of grace that one attributes to Tiger's swing or the subtle bend of a reed in the wind. And YET. They struggle. Their closer inexplicably becomes useless. They get swept by the Sox.

All of this, of course, fills me with a quiet glee. It is not a sovereign specific for the abysmal start of the Giants, but it is some consolation.

Meanwhile, across the pond, another clash of the Titans is coming down to the final blows. England's version of Yankees v. Red Sox has been incredible to watch, and culminates with a match between the two sides on May 9. Man Utd has the much easier way out, though, and barring some calamity should hold on. More's the pity.

Okay, enough sports.

Coda - "One Window Web Development"

A new Mac OS X app called Coda may or may not be a godsend for people who aren't particularly super-skilled when it comes to web design. It seems to me to be a pretty robust web development tool that has a lot of bells and whistles, but not enough to baffle (power users, of course, will suggest that it doesn't have enough bells and whistles, but to have everything in one place seems pretty cool).

I'm going to download it and report back, but this seems good for folks like me who know enough code to get in trouble but not enough to fix it without reference to a manual. Being able to monitor the effects of your code at the same time is handy.