So, there’s been a reasonable amount of controversy over this game. I picked it up this weekend for a couple trades, and am really happy with it, despite the fact that I completely suck at it. In Q&A form:

1.) How’s it use the license? Honestly, I can’t say. I know this is going to be blasphemy, but I never played the pen & paper RPG. In terms of how does it take a setting with various metahumans and squish them into a world infused with magic and technology in a Brazilian slum, I’d say “surprisingly well.”

Thing is, it’s not a game where the story’s the key – what they’ve done, as far as I can tell, is they’ve taken all the trappings of the Shadowrun environment, and used those to provide a setting and a series of widgets that are consistent(ish) with the Shadowrun universe. What that’s allowed is surprisingly deep, flexible gameplay in a novel setting.

2.) But the character designs are terrible! That’s not a question, but yes, I agree. The trolls are hideous, the dwarfs look incredibly goofy, and the elves look sorta dumb. That’s fine. They’re very easy to distinguish at a distance, and though I wish there was some form of customization to differentiate me from someone else, knowing exactly what kind of character you’re fighting in this game is incredibly important, and the visuals remain in service to that goal, which is good.

3.) $60? Yeah, it’s a bit much. This is the current crux of the developer’s argument in a recent podcast on OXM, and while I agree that hour-wise, I’ll get a lot out of this game (more, perhaps, that in comparable single-player only games), the problem with Shadowrun is that its existance as a game depends almost entirely on the community. While I can play Halo’s campaign any time, I have to essentially work to find a community of like-minded gamers to actually have a good time with the game.

Still, the game itself is excellent, and it’s a shame that it’s priced higher than most people are willing to tolerate. It’s also a shame that the review scores are getting lowered because of the perception of value.

4.) Should I pick it up? If you’re looking for something you’d traditionally get for $60, provides a compelling and interesting single player experience, contains some measure of narrative, and blah blah blah, then no, you shouldn’t. If you’re willing to realize that $60 will get you a very interesting well-balanced shooter that’s different than most games out there, you’re not too concerned with the Shadowrun license being used to its fullest, and you have a community of like-minded gamers to play with, then yeah, it’s absolutely worth the dough.

So, picked up Al Gore’s new book The Assault on Reason from Amazon, and it’s quite good. I’m only a couple chapters in, and it’s sort of strange – it talks about the media, how television changes our perception of the news, drifts off a bit into neuroscience (which I think is where a lot of people will go “zzzzzz…”), and back to the media.

So far, it’s *excellent*, but it’s also sort of tragic. Reading this book makes me wonder what it would be like to have a President that’s this articulate, passionate, and intelligent. Bush would never write a book like this – he simply couldn’t. He uttterly, totally lacks the mental faculty to *create* something interesting, and it boggles my mind *every god damned day* that this fucking moron’s the “leader of the ‘free’ world.” It makes me want to vomit just thinking about it, and thinking about what could have been.

So, in an effort to clean up the garage, I’ve decided to hang the bikes from the ceiling. Drilled a couple holes in one of the ceiling joists in the garage, and hung up Joe’s road bike and my Cannondale. While I was down there, I cleaned and fixed up an older Specialized Sirrus that I’d cobbled together from a bunch of old parts, and Ei-Nyung’s Trek, which she hasn’t really had the opportunity to ride very much.

The Sirrus is a fine bike – a mix of older Dura-Ace and 105 parts on a reasonable, if older frame. There’s nothing particularly *wrong* with it (aside from the blown front tube). The problem is, it’s really difficult to ride, because it’s *old*. Yeah, that sounds ridiculous, except that in the time since the parts on that bike were made, *all* road bikes changed from downtube shifters to brakelever shifters. Using downtube shifters while knowing that brakelever shifters are available is terrible.

It’s less safe, it’s much less comfortable, it’s more difficult, and a huge pain in the ass. The problem is, to upgrade to brakelever shifters basically means replacing the *entire* drivetrain of the bike – shifters, derailleurs, the rear wheel (hub + sprockets), and pedals/front chainrings. Which essentially costs as much as a new bike. So, I’ll just stick with the old-school components, I guess. I don’t do much road riding anyway.

It’s pretty impressive how much space four bikes can take up. It’s even *more* impressive how much space SIX bikes can take up (Joe’s old Softride frame and various components, and the Bridgestone RB-2 frame I scavenged for components (a better frame than the Sirrus, but the wrong size for me).

Unfortunately, to hang up the other two complete bikes, I’ve gotta move a giant stack of boxes. Probably what I’ll do Sunday morning, as I moved a whole crapload giant boxes the other day to make the space I used for these two bikes.

I’m pretty psyched, though – I’ll have to take some pictures, but the garage can almost house the Mini and the scooter. It’ll be close, sure, but I think before the end of summer, I’ll be at a point where I can start working on the Mini’s paint. Awesome!

…at least that’s what they say. But I signed this anyway, because I can’t believe that having a mastectomy as an outpatient procedure is reasonable. I’m sure I need to know more to make a genuinely informed decision, but as for what I would want if I were in the subject of the operation… yeah.

I bought this from Amazon. I know it’s silly, but since the Transformers movie’s coming out soon, it got me thinking about Transformers. A while back, I’d seen a really cool-looking “new” Transformer – an Impreza that looked like it was actually really neat – a nice looking car, and a cool looking robot, to boot.

Ei-Nyung had offered to get it for me, but for some completely idiotic reason, I passed. I ended up looking up the toy, and yeah, it looked pretty awesome. In fact, the whole *line* of toys – Transformers Alternators – looked awesome. All the cars looked like great models, the robots looked really well articulated, and well-designed.

So, I picked up “Ricochet” on Amazon – it was the only one I could find that was both available, and not too expensive to gamble on. It arrived today, and damn. It’s incredible.

The car’s incredibly cool – the front wheels link so that they steer in sync by a bar that connects when it transforms via MAGNETS. How cool is that? The tires are rubber, the hood, doors, and trunk open, and when the car’s in robot mode, a whole mess of stuff is articulated – elbows, shoulders, fingers (a single “claw-hand,” but still), hips, knees and feet. The head even tilts on a ball, so it can look in any direction. Great stuff.

I’ll be looking for more of these things. If I can find ’em, I know they’re high-quality.

For $22, you should definitely get this. MI-5’s first season is some of the best TV I’ve ever seen. Haven’t watched all of the second season, but the first season pretty much stands on its own.

List 10 things you like, but don’t have enough time for – or certainly not as much as you’d like. Simple.

1.) Cooking elaborate things
2.) Painting
3.) Mountain biking
4.) Day long gaming sessions (not videogames)
5.) Lying in the hammock
6.) Recreational driving
7.) Playing with Mobius
8.) Traveling
9.) Having people over for no reason
10.) Working on making the house/garden better

Bonus!
11.) Painting the Mini
12.) Photography
13.) Designing and building furniture (not something I’ve ever done, but something I want to do)
14.) Playing music (clarinet, piano, saxophone)
15.) Re-learning Japanese
16.) Learning Finnish
17.) Training, in earnest, for Ninja Warrior

Now, the question is, how much do I enjoy those things, and how much time do I have *really*?

Quite a day for “stuff” yesterday. Got some foam interlocking tile mats for what used to be our bedroom, and will soon be a home gym. Put about 2/3rds of it together last night, then finished the rest this morning, after waking up at 5-freakin’-am.

Also got a Dyson DC14 off of woot.com, which arrived yesterday. Man, it’s awesome. It totally sucks (har har), but more than that, it’s just really well designed. Ei-Nyung pointed out that all the parts you’re supposed to switch or grab to use the vac are yellow – the carpet/hard floor switch, the on/off switch, the carrying handle, while all the disassembly switches are white. Small detail, but really quite clever.

The thing’s really clever in other ways as well – the “wand” stores inside the flexi-hose, and the whole thing snaps together in a way that feels very unified – it doesn’t feel like an arbitrary weird bit, like our old Panasonic vacuum, whose flexi-hose just sort of sat there, slung over the top of the vacuum. The various bits and bobs click nicely into place, to empty the vacuum you just disconnect the cannister, walk over to your trash, and hit a button. I hated the fact that on vacs with bags, after you’ve taken out the bag you’ve got to wash the vacuum, ’cause all the fine dust “poofed” out of the bag and got everywhere, then once you put the new bag in, you’ve gotta vacuum *again* because again, there’s dust everywhere.

I think the reason people become Dyson evangelists in the same way that people become Apple evangelists is that this thing works the way I *want* a vacuum to work. Consumer Reports didn’t think it was worth the price, and that you could get your house equally clean for ~1/2 the price, but I’ve never seen a vacuum that was as well designed as the Dyson, and where the user experience was as refined.

That, and it got so much more fine dirt out of the places we regularly vacuum than our old vacuum that it was *shocking*. The dog hair, I expected. The fine dust not so much.

Also picked up Prince of Persia Classic on Live Arcade. As many gaming sites have already said, this is what a classic remake should be. It looks great, the new animations make it feel really contemporary, and the gameplay is still relevant and fun. If I had to choose between this an Pac Man CE, though, personally, I’d go with Pac Man.

So, had a pretty laid-back but productive weekend. Friday night after work, Ei-Nyung & I moved into the room that Joe moved out of. We ended up hanging up a curtain, and moving the large furnitures around to try to find some sort of optimal layout.

We ended up going with a sort of oddball arrangement, but I think it works pretty well – the room’s sort of divided into two parts – an “office-lite” arrangement and the bed. I’ll post a picture at some point or another. Saturday, we got some stuff to “round out” the room – Ei-Nyung got an end-table for her side of the bed – something she’s been wanting in forever, and we got another curtain for the small window on the side. Ended up merging all the curtains in a bit J-shaped arrangement, which is sort of weird because one window’s only bordered on one side by a curtain, but it actually works out for the best. If that window was symmetric, the curtain would hang behind the bed and be a giant pain in the butt.

Okay, I’ll just take a picture now. Sheesh.

Anyway, also got some shadow-boxes to put the various games I’ve worked on in, as a little weird thematic thing for the walls, but I’ve been thinking about getting some really tall, narrow canvases and doing a sort of Mark Rothko rip-off thing for the area above the ottoman.

That was the better part of Friday night and Saturday, and Sunday was spent just hanging out with friends, playing games, and going food shopping. It’s been a while since I’ve done any cooking, ’cause I get home from work a little on the late-ish side. So, I ended up getting some salmon, and making salmon with a lemon-cranberry relish for dinner.

Gotta go back to IKEA to get some longer curtain rods, Ei-Nyung’s cut and is hemming some curtains for the narrow downstairs window, and that should take care of things.

Oh – I’m cleaning out the garage slowly – probably cleared out about eight square feet (Lame, I know. Shut up.) in an effort to be able to get the Mini into the garage. Why? ’cause of this. I figure I have to repair one small rust spot on the roof, then roller-ing the paint on the roof seems like a relatively straightforward thing to do. I mean, you couldn’t really ask for a more featureless, flat expanse of sheetmetal than the roof of a Mini. Why not give it a go?

We also bought some interlocking foam tiles online to temporarily re-floor the room that was our bedroom, and use it as an exercise area. Basically we can bring up the rowing machine, the treadmill and the weights, and use it as a workout room – it’s already got a great mirror, and the room gets a lot of sun.

It’s actually sort of weird, now that our one housemate’s moved out – we’ve got more space than we reasonably know what to do with. I’ve spent most of the evening in one room, but we have essentially five that I could have just casually hung out in. It’s weird. I suppose I can’t complain – we got a good place at a good time for a good price. Though the remodeling process has been incredibly stressful at times, there’s no way we’d have been able to get a place this nice in a neighborhood this nice (and friendly) any other way. Thanks in large part to my parents. Don’t think I’ve forgotten. 😉

Anyway. It was a really good weekend.

One more thing: (and no, that’s not a nod to the impending WWDC, though I suppose now it is) Anyone out there in the tubes play Arkham Horror? I’ve heard good things from various ex-coworkers, and was talking with a friend a couple nights ago about how we miss the days of long-assed games where you’d get a bunch of people together in the *real world* and spend a day gaming. I keep teetering on the edge of getting it, but not pulling the trigger. For those who have played it – worth it? If not, can you recommend something else? For the locals – any interest?