Beer, death, and poker

I recently revisited my blog posts as I have it linked as my home page on beeradvocate.com. A beer trading friend of mine from Ohio recently passed away after a short bout with bone cancer. He was almost 32. I am happy to have had electronic conversations with him over the past 6 months and to have been able to share the wealth of great west coast beer with him. Though he was dying I never once heard or read a negative remark from him. He was a remarkable man and was fondly remembered by all that knew him. RIP and Godspeed Dev Padamadan (Buckeyesox).

In toast to Dev I feel the need to crack open a beer he sent me from the midwest...

Founders Imperial Stout it is. Dev was the only person I traded with in 2009. Yumm!

I haven't been trading much this year as I overdid it last year and I am trying to catch up on my "hit-list" which is getting harder and harder to do. I started with 100 beers on my list and though I've probably tried double that many in the past year, I have less than 25 remaining from the original list. Several of these will take nothing short of a miracle to locate (Cable Car anyone?).

I have a lite/macro beer drinking friend visiting from WI, the beer drinking/making capitol of the US. I didn't think I could turn him on to craft brew, but I made a little progress with Goose Island Bourbon County Stout. His wife says "why don't you buy more beers like this?" He was impressed that it was 26 proof (13% alcohol). I guess I need to pull out some more premium beers for them. Watch out Woodman's, you might start upselling Barrel Aged beers soon.

So this same friend, since he arrived, has been trying to convince his wife he needs to spend time at the Commerce Casino in L.A. Says it is the poker capital of the west coast. He likes no-limit Hold'Em. So I've been playing him for pennies ($20 buy in) all week. If you ever play him, just offer to buy him some beer and you'll come out ahead. Smart guy, good at math, but the weakness is the malts and hops. No wonder we are best friends for over 20 years now...

I like poker, but I am a complete novice. Been playing free games for a while, but never for any real money. I like strategy games like Risk, M.U.L.E. and CATAN, so I guess it only makes sense that I enjoy poker. My problem is I have an attachment to money and have a hard time gambling it. The wife likes slots, but I don't see the appeal in 100% chance, might as well play the lottery. Anyway after a week of saying "I don't know how" she actually offered to sit down and play poker tonight! Miracles never cease.

So off we go to drink beer, play poker and celebrate the the life of fallen comrade.

Obama Inauguration - self explanatory

better than life?

So I have been playing a lot less games the last couple weeks. The Reason? Well my son was kind enough to have his 3rd birthday which not only got my wife to stay home for a week, but brought in both grandmas and the great uncle. With all that babysitting I spent a LOT of time outdoors.

I spent several days surfing, it had been far to long. Had an okay day at Trestles, a pretty crap day at Strands, and then a stellar day at Salt Creek. So I did one more day at Salt Creek for good measure.

Then I did a track day on my motorcycle with my good buddy Rolf toting me and my bike around in his pickup. He probably won't ever read this, but what a great friend. Thanks man. Anyway, I am trying to upload the video to YouTube because I am too lazy to edit it again to make it small enough to fit in my limted google storage. I swear if you have a motorcycle do whatever it takes to ride it on a closed track. It's worth it.

So anyway with the exception of coming down with a nasty fever that kept leaving me hypothermic and shivering my ass off, all in all it was a good week. If you think video games are the best thing ever (and I think they are pretty close) you should still get out and taste the real world. Believe it or not some things are even better than games. Maybe a little more expensive, but definitely better.

Sweet, YouTube says my video is done:

can beer help your gaming?

So I was competing in a gamerscore competition over at 360voice.com. The objective was to boost your gamerscore the most out of 10 people in 2 weeks time. Well hey I did pretty good at nearly 10,000 points, but was bested by a kid on bed rest due to a torn Achilles ligament. I think he made nearly 15,000. So how does one boost their score that much in a couple days?

Easy, play REALLY CRAPPY games. Normally these are games I wouldn't even look at, let alone place inside my Xbox 360. But in the interest of competitive gaming, I headed on over to this forum and started working my way down the list. I ended up scoring between 600-1000 achievement points in each of the following games in about 4-5 days of play:

Avatar: The Burning Earth (1000 pts in about 5 minutes)
Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2008
Madden 06
Madden 08
MLB 2k6
NBA 2K6
NBA Live 06
NBA Live 07
TMNT
NCAA March Madness 08
Open Season
Peter Jackson's King Kong: (I didn't complete before contest ended)

Was it worth it?
In a word no, I didn't win the 4000 MS Points card (ARV:$50). I had to suffer through dreck like Open Season, which I am sure annihilated close to 50% of my brain cells. On the lighter side I doubled my gamerscore, played one decent game I wouldn't have otherwise (TMNT) and figured out why Cabela's keeps making hunting games, people will actually buy them.

No matter how poorly they are designed from a gaming perspective, people just love to kill things. Hillbillies won't play Halo3, but I bet for sure they all own a copy of "Cabela's Shoot Some Animal or Another." They probably own every Nascar game too. Quite honestly Big Game Hunter wasn't the most painful experience in a week of sheer self-inflicted pain. In fact it wasn't even a close second. What does that say about a game I expected to make me vomit? Fact of the matter is the jerky first person camera in King Kong brought me closer to hurling than any game in recent memory, and it's otherwise not that bad of a game. Okay maybe I hurled once while playing Open Season, it can have that effect on you too.

So even technically bad games apparently can have some redeeming value. Maybe not for me, or you, or the gaming mass-media. But for some small niche of people that either don't know how good games CAN be, don't have the manual dexterity for anything more than an Atari 2600 joystick with its solitary button, or just like to buy anything with a pretty picture on the package. To you I say: "Be sure to take 6 beers and 2 Advil with that." I did!

Xbox 360 and the casual-hardcore gamer

As gamers get older they seem to have less time to play. I recently heard the term "casual-hardcore" in relation to gamers that were once hardcore, but due to lack of time, they have become more like casual gamers playing in shorter stints and completing fewer games.

I believe I fit directly into this mold. Where once I would look forward to a 40+ hour gaming experience, I now cannot find the time to finish them. In fact if a game rates less than 85% on Metacritic, I won't even try it... (note: percentages listed after the game titles are the MetaScores.) For me to finish a game these days it pretty much needs to rate 90%+. Publishers take notice, I am part of a rapidly growing market segment.

Personally I am not a fan of First Person Shooters. Partly because I burned out on FPS in the early 90s, but mostly because I die a lot and I hate waiting minutes between rounds. I find games like Half-Life 2 96%, Bioshock 96% and the Halo 94% trilogy to be HEAVILY overrated and would rate them all in the mid-80s. Puzzling? These games are NOT and never were the "best game ever." I don't care what anyone says about this. The cake is a lie. However I adore Call of Duty 4 (COD4 94%) due to the excellent story and graphics, the frenetic pace, near instant respawning, and short waits between rounds. I even beat this game on Veteran difficulty (very hardcore).

I "rushed" through Mass Effect 91% in under 30 hours because I wanted to experience the main story without the time commitment required to enjoy the game fully. I spent a lot of time on Oblivion 94%, but once I finished the main quest I pretty much stopped playing it. I played through Bioshock 96% once, but was not at all inclined to replay it.

One of my favorite games of last year was Portal (Orange Box 96%). Mainly because the main game was engaging, challenging, easily digested in small chunks, and can be completed in under 10 hours. This game is absolutely perfect for the casual-hardcore.

The single game I probably spent the most time playing on my Xbox 360 last year was Catan 81% on Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA), based on the award winning role playing game Settlers of Catan. The best description is that it has similarities to the old computer game M.U.L.E. and the board game Risk, two of my all-time favorite resource-strategy games. I absolutely love this game and find that when I only have an hour or two to kill I can play 2 or 3 games against challenging human opponents. Oh, and I am pretty good at it too.

Rock Band 93% is taking the casual-hardcore world by storm, it combines the best elements of easy to play and hard to master. I highly recommend it if you enjoy music at all, even if you don't enjoy gaming it's worth a try. There's bound to be a song or twelve in here that you like, if not it's likely you can buy/download one.

Lately I have been playing Burnout Paradise 88%, as I am a big fan of the series. This update to the franchise has been garnering alot of criticism due to the fact that it moved from a linear to an entirely open-world environment. The changes that go along with that kind of move are evident, and sometimes not approved of by fans. Personally I LOVE it. The only things I can really criticize the game for is the lack of an option to restart a lost race which would require loading, and the sterile feeling of the world. By sterile I mean no humans, no animals, no weather, and extremely limited environmental destruction. The world just feels lifeless, fast, but lifeless.

There are so many good casual games on Xbox 360 and XBLA I don't see why MS doesn't promote this better, and instead chooses to use the term "family games". They already locked in the hardcore gamer, there's no reason casual gamers can't find something to play on the 360 too.

Why Xbox 360 will be the console leader in the next generation.

(originally posted 10/10/06 on my previous blog)

Successful game systems usually have two things:
1) A reasonable entry price
2) 'A-list' games, with strong 1st, 2nd and 3rd party support

If you look at some of the biggest system failures you see they were unreasonably priced, had little or no quality games, or simply didn't have the marketing or financial support to agressively attack the competition. Several game companies have failed by oversaturating their own market.

Lets look at some successes. The Atari 2600, which at one point was the hands down leader in console sales regardless of the fact there were technically more advanced machines on the market (Intellivision/Colecovision). Atari at that point looked unstoppable, but then they started saturating the market with subpar titles and people no longer trusted the company and simply stopped buying games.

Enter Nintendo Entertainment System. The NES was highly suspect when introduced to the US, most retailers didn't think there was a market for game consoles. Nintendo persisted and eventually became even bigger than Atari, and was more successful internationally to boot. They locked all their developers into exclusivity contracts and basically stifled all their competition.

Along comes the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive. Sega couldn't get key titles for their previous system due to Nintendo's exclusivity requirements. So when the Genesis came out with much better graphics they focused simply on how much better the system was technically, attacking Nintedo directly with marketing like "Genesis does what Nintendon't." Unfortunately even with a strong head start Nintendo still managed to catch up by releasing the SNES, and the 16-bit wars were virtually a tie, with the loss handed to the NEC TurboGraphx 16. Then Sega got the idea to saturate their market with peripherals and variations on the Genesis technology. The 32X, Sega CD, CDX, Nomad, were just too much for consumers and developers and retailers to support and when their next product, the Saturn, was launched it was met with lukewarm response. It probably didn't help that it cost $400 either.

Then Sony entered the market with the Playstation. It was priced reasonably, was more powerful than anything else on the market, and had solid support from game developers. It won the 32-bit system wars hands down and worldwide. Sony, not resting on it's laurels, released the sequel Playstation 2 with something previously unheard of, built in backward compatibility with the existing library of games. Having a DVD player in the box also helped them gain mass acceptance, and may be partly responsible for DVD format success in many parts of the world.

The Playstation 2 was pretty much unstoppable in the most recent generation of consoles commanding a huge lead over both Nintendo and newcomer Microsoft. But they decided to price their next product much higher than their competition and they haven't secured a good list of launch titles that will sell a system beyond enthusiasts. That doesn't take into account their manufacturing snafus, they simply won't have any real quantity of PS3's on the market this year. No systems means no games, no developer wants to risk making a game that CAN'T sell.

Nintendo's Wii has a lot of hype and good press, but it still doesn't guarantee much more than the latest ports of a bunch of games you already played and downloads of very old games that you definitely already played. Zelda and Mario will sell the system, but without some serious 3rd party support it's just an underpowered system with a gimmicky controller.

So PS3 is overpriced, Wii doesn't offer the latest technology or 3rd party support, that leaves the 360. This box is crammed to the gills with everything you could ever want in a system, 3 CPU cores, high end graphics, a hard drive, networking, USB, wireless controls and most importantly LIVE. It's apparently easy to develop for, everything pretty much works as advertised, and it looks dead sexy sitting in your entertainment center.

The killer app for 360 is LIVE though. Sure they have Halo, they have GTA, they have all the EA, Ubisoft, and most of the Capcom and Sega games, and they may even get Konami and Square on board at some point. Sure they'll never sell any real quantity of these in Japan, but who cares? LIVE is now in it's second generation and it took more of a revolutionary than evolutionary step. Nintendo and Sony are still trying to piece together their online gameplan, and it's being done by gaming companies and engineers based in Japan, which honestly doesn't bode well for them. Microsoft is doing what it does best, networking. PC games went online 13 years ago (DOOM) with a vengence and they really haven't looked back. Consoles have been trying to get themselves online, but the user interface was never very good, and very few games supported online in any meaningful way.

The 360 integrates the online experience directly into the core of the system, you don't have to have an online-enabled game to configure it, or to find an opponent. You can simply add people to your friends list and always see who's playing what. So if you are playing Halo, and your brother is playing Madden, you don't have to call him and say, lets play Madden, you just pop in your disk and send him an invite. Or better yet, offer him a voice/video chat opportunity to discuss what game he would really like to play. The days of inviting your friends over to sit around one TV and play games in split-screen are over. Now everyone gets their own TV, their own couch, and still retain the ability to talk smack.

If you believe the future of console gaming is online, then there really is no choice in systems. XBOX LIVE is light years ahead of the competition and is Microsoft's killer app. If you believe the future is a new controller design and rehashes of titles you played 20 years ago, then buy a Nintendo. If you believe the future is Blu-Ray then buy a PS3. Or if you can afford it, buy all 3.

What might kill the Xbox 360. Fragmenting their market, and lack of Japanese developer support with respect to the THREE titles mentioned below. Selling systems both with and without a hard drive was a bad idea and turns off developers. Adding too many unneeded peripherals is a bad idea, we don't NEED an HD-DVD drive just because Sony has one. Microsoft is doing evereything in their power to woo Japanese developers into making hit titles for the 360. Until they get Metal Gear Solid from Konami, and Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy from Square-Enix they will lose many sales to Sony, and have zero chance in Japan. The good news is MS has managed to lock up GTA and Resident Evil which were two other A-list titles they missed out on previously.

One other wild-card is Peter Moore. I am not convinced that he knows what he is doing, and I pretty much believe any successes he has have been sheerly luck. He was mostly responsible for the failure of Sega and more specifically the Dreamcast in America. I honestly like him as a person and think he puts on a good show and I have even had the pleasure of having a beer with him on the way to the Dreamcast launch back in 1999, but I don't think he gets gaming or gamers so much as marketing and PR. The launch of the XBOX 360 was a fiasco and was poorly directed, but Peter would just say something like "look, we sold every unit we could make." Well of course you did, you didn't make enough, and the overall quality was still poor! Fortunately he has the deep pockets of Microsoft to bury his mistakes in now. I think the HD-DVD was his idea, and is a very bad one. I think there are other crap peripherals waiting in the wings that will be hoisted on an unsuspecting public and maybe saturate their own market.

Speaing of market saturation, don't get me started on Xbox Live Marketplace. It's already backfiring, because developers are using it as a revenue stream and pulling features out of their games so they can charge more for them AFTER the purchase. BAD BAD BAD.

CONSUMERS: DO NOT BUY MARKETPLACE ADDITIONS FOR YOUR GAMES, SEND THE MESSAGE TO THE DEVS THAT $60 IS ENOUGH. Spend your points/money on XBLA (arcade) instead encourage more development on NEW content, not paying more for content that should have come with the game. Need some examples what NOT to buy?

1) Horse Armor - Oblivion
2) Map Packs - COD2, GRAW, etc
3) Cars - PGR3, Forza, NFS, etc
4) Hint videos, uniforms or stadiums - Madden
5) Characters - Lego Star Wars
6) Themes, gamerpics - pretty much every game

Things you might consider buying:
1) Any of the original Live Arcade Games (Geometry Wars, Cloning Clyde, etc)
2) Arcade games that you absolutely loved playing in the past (Doom, SFII)
3) Gamerpics - unfortunately there just aren't enough free ones out there
4) Casual games you might play with friends or family (Spades, Uno, Poker)
5) Game DEMOS/trailers - they are FREE! Great use of Marketplace.

It's officially the Next Generation.

(originally posted on previous blog 10/9/06)
With 2 new game consoles coming out this Christmas (PS3, Wii) and 3 out within the last 2 years (DS, PSP, 360) gamers have a lot to be happy about. Well of course if you are anything like me your pocketbook is suffering. There are a lot of good reasons to buy any one of these systems, but why own more than one? Because they each have areas of strength that might be of interest to different people. Let hit them all one by one.

Nintendo.
DS and DS-Lite:
The DS was an ugly hodge-podge of interesting technology boosted only by several quality titles, mostly published by Nintendo (of course). The sexy redesigned DS-Lite with the growing stable of solid games now gives users a reason to buy this system.

Pros:
-Backward compatible with hundreds of quality GameBoy Advance games
-Solid library of first party games
-Innovative controls including touch-screen and a microphone
-Innovative features including Dual-Screen and WiFi
-Guaranteed to have some sort of connectivity to the Wii by 2007
-DS-Lite is small and sexy, in a girly geek sort of way - PINK!
-Price - this is a good value for dollar system at $130

Cons:
-Original system was downright bulky and ugly, and they are still selling it - at the same price.
-Not compatible with original GameBoy Color games (GBA is).
-Not a lot of quality third party support, though it is growing.

Verdict: a worthy purchase 8/10

Wii:
This system is a conundrum wrapped in an enigma. Nintendo fanboys will buy this in droves, the price is right and it appears they will be able to meet holiday demand on launch. However Nintendo hasn't had a huge success in living room based consoles since the SNES (10 years ago).

Pros:
-First party games - this is what sells Nintendo systems.
-Innovative new controller - Wii remote
-Backward compatible - in theory dating back to NES
-DS compatible, should allow for more innovative designs.
-Priced right - $250 at launch, one SKU.

Cons:
-Third party support?
-Internet support?
-Innovative controller - fatigue?
-Lowest graphic power in next gen
-Backward compatibility heavily skewed toward Nintendo top titles - games you played 10-20 years ago, and you get the priviledge of paying for them again...

Verdict: wait and see, if the games come this is a buy: 7/10

Microsoft:
Xbox 360:
This system has a lot of things going for it, but it won't be successful worldwide. Marketplace and Live Arcade are a mixed blessing. Some of the items are worthy and priced right, some are not. Most of the <$2 items should be free, and when are they going to start dropping the prices, or
making older items available for free? Greatest hits pricing could help keep this stuff fresh.

Pros:
-Good value for the money at $279/$350 (w/20GB HDD)
-XBOX LIVE shows how to do network play correctly
-Player community is strong and growing
-Achievement system for 100% game completion is innovative, and somewhat competitive.
-Backward compatibility with key titles from Xbox1
-MS has deep enough pockets to maintain it even if it fails.
-Very powerful system, truly nextgen with HD, HDD, and Broadband
-XBLA download retro or innovative new games with updated graphics and online play

Cons:
-Limited third party support from key innovators (notably Konami, Square-Enix)
-Spotty 1st party support, some good titles, some stinkers
-As of 2008, have lost control of Bioware (KOTOR/Mass Effect), Bungie (Halo), Bizarre (PGR)
-Doesn't sell in Japan - so likely not to get key Japanese titles
-Marketplace Points - Pay $60 for an incomplete game and another $20 to get all the levels and enhancements that weren't included in the box. :( NO THANKS! Most of the stuff on marketplace has little to no value, but you could easily spend hundreds of real dollars on it.

Verdict: A lot of good, and a few great, titles now as well as some in the pipline. If you like online play and american/european games get it now, if not wait and see 8/10

Sony:
PS3
Well Sony has the deep pocketbooks and enough experience in the industry to be successful, the've proven it in 2 successive generations of hardware. No game company has ever been the industry leader in consoles for more than 2 generations, perhaps Sony is thinking a little too far ahead. They dug themselves a huge hole this upcoming generation, one that will be hard to get out of. Sony will lose a lot of marketshare this year due to inability to deliver systems and pricepoint.

Pros:
-Name brand - successful worldwide, they can sell on branding alone
-Deep pockets, they can afford a few years of losses and maybe make it up down the road
-Strong first, second and third party support - they'll get the games.
-System specs are equvalent to 360 (though may not surpass it).
-Backward compatible - this is HUGE for Sony with a great library behind them.
-Compatible with PSP - may allow for some innovative development.

Cons:
-Their network support is likely to be a minor improvement over PS2... which sucked.
-The specs are likely overstated and it will underperform - most Sony products do.
-OMG it's freaking HUGE - invest in power companies. Unsexy!
-Price - It's too high and multiple SKUs just confuse people
-Heavy advertising for a launch that can't possibly meet demand - BAD IDEA unless you are eBay scum, or a Sony Marketing rep, then you'll love it!
-Sony forced formats - No one wants or needs Betamax, Mini-Disc, Memory Stick, ATRAC, UMD or Blu-Ray, but you get them anyway. Reeks of failure.

Verdict: WAIT and see. Hold off until they drop the price substantially, unless you absolutley must have a Blu-Ray player, then it's a great bargain as stand alone players are $1k. 3/10

PSP:
This system is a mixed blessing of sexy hardware and missed potential. They are now packaging it at a fair price point so it's could be fun if you like to take your console games on the road.

Pros:
-New $250 price includes 1GB MSPD a game and a movie - the return of quality bundling.
-Hands down the most powerful handheld ever, and likely will be for some time
-Easily hacked to play homebrew games including all your favorite classic systems via emulation
-Should be able to play PS1 games after the PS3 debuts but likely will require a PS3
-Solid library of quality console ports, play the games you love on the road.
-Great features including high res screen, WiFi, USB, Memory Stick

Cons:
-Where is the game support? No "killer apps"
-UMD forced format - who needs/wants it? And the games load SLOW.
-Limited use of all the advanced features - why no infrastucture WiFi games?
-Seems to already be dying a slow death.

Verdict: The only system I ever reserved prior to release. I had high expectations, and only the homebrew has panned out. If you like homebrew or PS1/PS2 ports, get it. If not avoid it. 7/10

So What system(s) should you buy?
If you like Online gaming don't hesitate to buy the $400 dollar premium Xbox 360 package and a LIVE subscription. You can purchase both at online discounters for under $400 shipped (I did). Avoid the $300 package, especially if you own an HDTV, it doesn't include the $40 HD component cable or a storage device; $40 memory card or $100 HDD!

If you want to play Mario, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Pokemon, Metroid, Star Fox, and the list goes on and on... You probably already have a DS, and you already pre-ordered your Wii. if not, don't hesitate. If you want to play 20 year old Nintendo games I would recommend PC emulation over a Wii. I know it's a grey area, but I can't condone paying money for games you bought and played a LONG time ago, unless they are HEAVILY updated in graphics and online play.

If you want Sony games, stick to your PS2 or consider a PSP, but I would avoid the PS3 which reeks of early failure. It may pick up some steam after they start discounting it and getting units and games on the store shelves, which won't happen until late 2007 at the earliest.

Gaming on the cheap?
Buy a PS2 or a DS-Lite for $130 and with great libraries of solid titles which include backward compatibility for PS1 and GBA respectively. You really can't go wrong if you don't already own these systems.