Scribblenauts release date snuck up on me like some kind of ninja covered in WD-40

I beat Tron 2.0 finally. It was a pretty enjoyable game. Had a few problems here and there, but nothing to major. The ending was a bit abrupt. It reminded me a bit of an old NES game. "Bam, you killed the end boss!"..."The end, go do something else now" kind of thing. The only other complaint I had was with the upgrade system. There are little guys wandering around, code optimizers I think they were called. Say you have a sniper rifle, it starts at red and takes up 3 slots of memory. If you find one of the little code optimizers you can upgrade it, it will take 2 slots of memory and up the dmg/acc etc. Upgrading to gold will make it take 1 slot and better stats. Point is, the code optimizers are pretty few and far between. That would be fine with me, I get that I don't get to upgrade everything, but some of the weapons and items you get really late in the game. I might have just missed some of the optimizers or found one of the weapons late but I had no chance to upgrade it all the way. I might pull up one of my old saves and hunt around a bit more. After I beat the game I checked out the light cycle section. It was a neat little addition where you battle in different arenas for unlockables. I was a bit surprised at the thought put into the different arenas. Some had tight areas with a speed curse (all players are forced to turbo boost) and others had different themes. All the arenas had a different feel without really using that many different items or upgrades. It was a great use of resources. They got quite a bit of mileage out of it and unless they were just making it look simple, it didn't eat up much dev time.

I need to pick up a copy of Scribblenauts. It seems like it was made for me. It really looks like it fits with one of my favorite game philosophies. Give players a toolbox and let their creativity solve the problems. I think some of the most entertaining games let the player be creative in the solutions. Take Eve online for example, there is never a set way to do things. If there is a preferred way to do something there is always enough wiggle room left by the designers for the players to use. For example, Titans can take a year just to be able to pilot. They take unimaginable time and resources to build. When I was playing I think about 7 had been built. The titans main weapon was a doomsday device. If it fired it off pretty much everything was gone, wiped out. It could only use the device like once every 2hrs if I remember right. So the strategy was to pop the doomsday device and warp out of there before they could send a wave of ships to destroy you. The general strategy for fighting a titan was to send in a first wave of attackers in junk ships, then once it used its doomsday device send in another wave. It didn't work often though, by the time the second wave warped in the titan had warped away. None of the ships that could knock out a warp drive (and hold the titan in place) would survive the doomsday detonation. So the strategy remained the same for quite awhile. It was costly and pretty ineffective. That is until one player decided to find another way. He outfitted a ship to knock out the titans warp drive with all the armor and shields he could possibly add. It had been thought impossible to create a ship capable of locking down a titans warp and surviving the blast but when he maxed out his skills and got the best equipment he could he found that he had just barely enough armor to survive. Like I said, the general knowledge of the time thought it was impossible. So when the titan pilot popped his doomsday and started to warp away to safety I'm sure he was in disbelief to find he was unable to escape. The second wave of attackers warped in and blew him away. It completely changed the tactics for titan combat. That's why I liked Eve, there was always some new tactic that defied the conventional wisdom of the day that was changing combat. In one of the tournaments BoB had created a setup that was thought of as unbeatable. They had one every tournament with pretty much the same set up and were thought to win this tournament as well. Some group took a look at it and came up with a strategy of outfitting super fast junk ships with a type of jamming drone. The drones would interrupt the healers BoB were using and disrupt some of their attacks. The jammers were thought of as completely useless, almost nobody ever used them. They used the fast ships to close the distance and get in close, launched the bots and shut BoB down. It wasn't even close. Now if they would have tried the same thing next year it probably wouldn't have worked. Point is, Eve gave players enough tools to create their own strategy, not just follow what was thought of as "best". A lot of other games there is a "best" equip or a set way to do the most damage. I'm for giving the players a sort of toolbox, or set of flexible mechanics and let the players intelligence and creativity craft some of the gameplay. Scribblenauts seems to really encourage players creativity. It doesn't lock them into the idea that there is one way to solve a puzzle. I'm sure I'll have a extensive write up on it as soon as I get a chance to play it. For now I'll just say that I'm eager to get playing. It looks like the type of game that I'm excited for the series. Even if the first game has a few bugs or issues it looks like the type of game that can just keep improving and expanding. Armored core was like that for me. The first game was pretty good, but you could tell that if the series was allowed to keep going that it would add more and more detail. If it had time it could just refine and add depth and keep getting better and better. Anyway, here's hoping Scribblenauts has a long life and has time to keep getting more refined and even more expansive.

Humorbot 1.0 has deemed this post long and not up to whatever units a fictitious bot designed to be humorous, measures funny in. Humorbot has just informed me that he measures humor in contractions, like when your muscles contract to laugh. It is the most scientific and also slightly humorous way to measure funny. It also explains why he thinks childbirth is hilarious. He has also informed me that the first sentence of this paragraph is pretty much unintelligible. Sentence readability aside, Humorbot will now report his humorous observation.

Humorbot 1.0 loading
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loading observational humor
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logic error detected....failed check
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Dispensing witty observation 89.0

Have you ever noticed how the fewer wheels a mode of transportation has the cooler it is? Example to follow...

Example, a bus is not very cool, due to its excessive wheels. A car is noticeably cooler in comparison to the aforementioned bus. To continue the comparison in its logical and laugh educing manner, a 3 wheeler is cooler than a car...

warning...logic error detected
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as is clearly evident in this undoctored image.

a motorcycle is cooler than a 3 wheeler. Therefore logic deems the unicycle the coolest mode of transportation available to humans.

warning...critical logic error
system error

well the joke almost worked humor bot, better luck next time. While he recompiles I'm going to try and get some work done.

Insights from "Mallrats" and some game news

I love how cops on t.v. only have enough manpower to catch one criminal at a time. The cops always have the hero surrounded and are prepared to arrest him, when some convenient jumbotron behind them lights up with footage of the bad guy. They immediately forget about whatever laws the hero broke and hall away the villain. So when your mom was telling you that you should stop hanging around with your friends because they were no good and the wrong crowd, it turns out she was wrong. Police can only arrest people one at a time, so they nab the most evil. So as long as you hang around with friends worse than you are you are practically unarrestable. Of course this is subject to the "Diabolical group" or "Evil super team" rules. They will arrest a group of evildoers, for example the "Legion of doom" etc. If you are in a evil super group, then it's best to be the most evil, only underlings get caught. Other than this slight rule modification your plan should be to find a friend that enjoys doing something evil. Something with kittens, that seems to be a big one. Then you can get away with whatever you want. When the cops have you surrounded you just point at your friend who is constructing a kittencatcher (similar to a dream catcher, but made entirely out of kittens tied together. Also instead of catching dreams it catches angry letters from P.E.T.A. and it also catches dreams. but refuses to return them in a timely manner.). The cops will promptly forget all about you and arrest him. As a side note, always behave yourself in the twighlight zone. Don't even do anything jerkish. That zone doesn't take any crap.

Recently I've been looking forward to the Dante's Inferno game. The marketing for it has been kind of hit and miss for me though. At least they are trying something new. They got a bit of the old interbus outrage over some of their earlier promo's, I thought this newest attempt was really pretty cool. I wonder how many people cashed the check. I'm sure not many did, and they certianly got their moneys worth on marketing. The box itself looks really well done and I love the fact that the memo on the check says "Abandon hope". The whole thing is a great concept and well executed. It's the kind of thing I'd love to have in my arg, if I had a budget. Though we are working on doing some really cool stuff. I wish I could talk about it more, but can't spoil anything. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the release, each developers blog on it gets my hopes up a little more. I hope it turns out well and they do an artbook. Also put me on the swag list for future stuff! Sure I'm of no importance to the media, but I love free swag ...and since I'm one of the only people on the internets that likes free stuff I'm sure it can be easily arranged. Thanks in advance for my buckets of stuff (I assume it will be sent in buckets but crates work as well).

SUNDAY! SUNDAY, SUNDAY! See Mishes, the monster truck mistress of mayham!

Well, as some of you already know, my wife recently had a flashback to her monster truck days while driving. She tried to crush the car in front of her in a display of carnage and unrestrained brutality. She apparently forgot that she was not in a monster truck with 40 foot tires and a novelty plastic frame that looks like a ninja turtle, but instead was in a 2000 eclipse. The clearance of which is not enough to get over speed bumps without leaving half of the undercarriage behind in a shower of sparks. So needless to say, she did not fly over the car in front of her in a majestic show of steel and rubber, crushing it while sailing to victory and impressing every 12 year old boy in a mile radius. Nope, not even a pyrotechnic fireball. It did pop the airbag and in its over exuberance it blew out my windshield. Good effort airbag. At least someone was trying to impress the prepubescents. Anyway, she is fine. The car is apparently totaled because it is old and airbags are expensive to replace. Needless to say this has set back progress a bit. Might be able to make up some lost time on Monday but I've got to get a new car around midweek. All of that is going to eat up a bit of time but I'm really going to try and stay on track. My conversion to Linux has been going well. I just need to remember that "ls -a" is not the same as "ls -A". I finished "Pebble in the Sky" by Isaac Asimov. It is part of the Foundation series. I'm reading them in chronological order, or at least trying to. I already read the next book in the series first ("Prelude to Foundation") on accident. I figured a book called "Prelude to Foundation" in the foundation series would come first...it's 9th. For the most part it doesn't make a huge difference but if you're planning on reading them I'd stick with chronological order. I might read something else next, switch it up from sci-fi for at least a book. I'm eager to read the next book in the foundation series but I like to try and keep myself well rounded. I've become pretty engrosed in sci-fi lately. I think it's always good to mix it up. It's good to be able to draw from many sources and to be exposed to as much as possible. Often times I will draw from uncommon areas and get ideas from unexpected sources. So I think I will switch to some classic that I've always ment to get around to reading. For now though, back to work on the arg.