Admittedly, we've all known it was going to happen since Lucas first tinkered with "improving" the originals back in the late 90's (Oh god... was it that long ago already?!?).
This reminds me of a scene from Father Ted.
Stop tapping it. It was done the day it hit the cinema screen for the first time. Leave it alone.
Last weekend my wonderful wife and I took a bus south across the border to the city of Seattle for the best gaming convention in he world, Penny Arcade eXpo, or PAX. We headed down on Thursday and met up with some friends, one of whom lives in Seattle now and the other two traveled up from New Mexico for the convention as well! Our charming company was a welcome bonus!
This was our second time at PAX, the first being in 2008 at the end of our Epic Holiday[TM]. I never did get around to a write-up of that stop, but you can safely assume that it was incredible, and we couldn't wait to get back. This year I decided to step things up a bit by going in costume. Thanks to my amazing mum, I was able to get my Rocketeer helmet brought over from Ireland, and I already had the jacket with me. And so, for most of Friday and Saturday at PAX 2011, I could be seen wandering the many areas, slowly sweating to death in a heavy leather jacket, carrying a heavy, metal helmet[1].
A lot of the guests and exhibitors fist bump rather than shaking hands in order to avoid picking up nasty infections. This year I even saw the more extreme version, elbow bump, used by many. It certainly worked for me. I have not come down with any PAX crud as of yet, apart
from being utterly exhausted for a few days after!
The whole event was awesome. We met so many incredibly nice people, and I got to talk to people I never expected, about interests I never expected to share with them. I got to meet AJ LoCascio, the voice of Marty McFly in the TellTale Games episodic Back to the Future video game! Not only was he probably the most down-to-earth, nice, honest-to-goodness coolest guy I met at PAX, but he's also a huge Rocketeer fan[2]! He was able to recognize that I was holding a Disney Master Replicas version of the helmet from across the booth, and he recognized the Wested jacket as well! If you can imagine how blown away I was by that much, I almost collapsed when he told me that he made his own Rocketeer helmet from fiberglass. We spent about ten minutes geeking out about the movie, the props and the awesomeness of the Replica Prop Forum.
The weekend was just chock full of amazing stories, though rather like Empire Strikes Back, I feel I opened on the best of them. My costume was a huge success, and I got stopped everywhere I went by other attendees, exhibitors and even a VIP or two as they gushed over the character and took photos. It was heart warming to see so many fans of Dave Stevens creation in attendance. For me, one of the things I enjoyed most was watching peoples eyes widen as I let them hold the helmet and even try it on. Unlike the more accurate fiberglass versions available, the metal Master Replica I have is far from fragile. It was nice to be a part of fullfilling a small number of peoples dreams to hold or wear such an iconic piece from a much loved classic.
Even queuing was a fun experience. Apart from playing games on iPads, Enforcers (the PAX volunteer force that help make everything run smoothly) were handing out bits and pieces to help us pass the time. While queuing for the Saturday night concert, we all got given brightly coloured pipe cleaners and instructions to "Be creative". This resulted in hats, flowers, Portal-themed wrist bracelets, stick figures fighting, a sniper with gun, and even a helicopter with rotating blades! From pipe cleaners, people!
But of course, PAX is ultimately all about the games. And we got to try loads of them!
Welcome to Serra.
Gears of War 3 is due for release on September 20th, and it had a large presence in the Xbox area. I expected longer lines, but compared to others games on display, the Gears line was tiny. I got to try out the updated Horde 2.0 on Friday and the brand new to the franchise Beast Mode on Saturday.
Horde:
My biggest worry about Horde 2.0 was that they had gone and messed with a
good thing. Horde is still the best of the endless-wave styles of game
modes because it is so clean and simple. It threw out customization in
favour of accessibility. Horde 2.0 adds to the basics by bringing in a cash-for-kills system for that can be used to buy
stuff during a small window between waves, from ammo to laser defenses and beyond. And it works
fantastically! It's fast, fun and doesn't stop the games flow. We got to
play waves 8 to 10 allowing us a peek at what surprises the tenth waves hold. I'm not going
to spoil it, but after the terrifying horror of seeing your first bloodmount
in Gears 2, they've really outdone themselves for Gears 3. It's
awesome!
Beast: This is a whole
other kettle of fish. Trying Horde, I knew the basics. Waves of alien monsters that I
need to kill before they kill me. Beast is a set number of COGs per
level and you have a very tight time limit. You start with one minute on
the clock and get more for every kill. You can play as a variety of
Locust, starting as low as tickers or wretches, and going up from there.
I'm not going to tell you what I saw or played as, but you can assume it was
fun! The gameplay is very different, and I sucked during my quick trial.
This is not Reverse Horde, it requires a totally new set of skills.
The Boardgame: Not on display at the Xbox booth, this was instead being demoed on a different floor, but I've included it here for completions sake. This looked
very nice. Fantasy Flight Games were running demos all weekend long and
the whole thing looked impressive. I didn't play myself, but I heard
lots of good things from people that were trying it out. As expected from an FFG game, the production quality was through the roof. Cards, tokens and figure pieces were beautiful. The figure pieces were especially impressive, and looked like they should be a lot of fun to paint up.
But Gears was only a tiny area in a huge, multilevel convention. I got to see and play games that are coming out as soon as this month and as late as next year.
The Gunstringer is the first retail game from Twisted Pixel, the company behind
Comic Jumper and 'Splosion Man. It's a Kinect game that makes clevel use of the technology and, more importantly, it's a load of fun to play. I don't own a Kinect. Yet. There was no reason to before I went to PAX. Now I'm tempted. I might even get one for this
alone.
I got up on stage with three others and had a four-player
dance-off in front of a large crowd playing Dance Central 2, also for Kinect. I found that it had very good motion tracking, more impressive for being able to track four uncoordinated male players gyrating wildly. I came
first, despite never playing any of the dance games before, though that probably
says more about how bad the others were than how good I was.
From the ridiculous length of the line all weekend long, it was clear that there was a lot of interest in the latest
game in the Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim,
but I could not have cared less. Not that I have anything against it,
I'm just not interested in fantasy games. One of our friends
stood in line for 3.5 hours to play the 15 minute demo and got a fuzzy
hat for her troubles[3]. At one point while I was talking to her in the line, I
looked up at a clip of a dragon in the trailer and jokingly said "Oh.
Nice graphics. What's this game?" and 40 angry nerd heads swiveled in my
direction.
Last, but by no means least, one of the booths that immediately caught my attention was the TellTale Games Jurassic Park area. Not only did they have a nice small-scale replica of the entrance gates into the park, and fencing with little flashing lights on top, but they had a fan-made reproduction of one of the park jeeps! I was a child all over again standing beside it. Instead of just reading my thoughts on this however, take a break from the text and look at a video blog TellTale Games staff did during the convention. Check out the eejit at the 1:25 mark, and again at the 2:30 mark. Yeesh. Fanboys. They were everywhere at PAX.
PAX wouldn't be PAX without free stuff. We came home with tonnes and tonnes of swag. I
think I got 8 t-shirts, of which I only paid for one. Baseball hats,
avatar items, lanyards, pins, even a very high quality hoodie! The whole
weekend paid for itself in free stuff. Claire and our friends even got
themselves free OnLive consoles! FREE. CONSOLES!!![4] Insane.
If we're still here next year we'll be going again, so I'll let people know in case
anyone is interested in joining us for a crazy weekend of video games,
boardgames, demos, t-shirts, freebies, music, costumes, celebrities and
more in 2012! I honestly cannot recommend it enough. It's the best, friendliest, most community orientated convention I've ever been to.
Hopefully you can join us and share in the love that is PAX 2012.
[1]- On Saturday morning I woke up complains of an unusual pain in my right arm. I put it down to sleeping badly in the hotel bed, as I had no recollection of having injured it the day before. It wasn't until later that same day that I realised that the weight of the helmet was causing strain on my arm muscles! I didn't feel it while I was enjoying the convention. It was only once I relaxed that it all hit me!
[2]- The earlier part of this sentence should probably be noted as biased based on the latter part. But even then, AJ was very, very cool.
[3]- She did also get to meet and have her photo taken with Todd Howard while in the queue, which she excitedly told me later in the day. She was much distraught when I shrugged and told her I had no idea who that was. Still, that first 3.5 hours at PAX in a queue was pretty much the high point of her convention, I'm led to believe.
[4]- The catch of course is that OnLive is a subscription based service, so they're happy to give you the console for free to let you try out the service and hopefully sign up.
I wrote this in response to an email I received from a good friend. His mail was written in a funny noir detective style, opening with the awesome line "I was sitting counting the doors in the office, there was only one but I couldn't be sure of that, I would have to recount". I responded in a similar style, but dropped the professional comedian level of humour that my friend had reached, knowing I could never best his effort.
Once finished, I actually quite liked what I'd written and thought I'd share. Remember, I wrote in just a few minutes, with no editing or rewrites. It's not perfect, but it is fun. Enjoy.
The sun dripped through the blinds like syrup, pooling on the office floor. My first thought was that I should mop that up before someone slips on it and sues. My second thought was that those drugs were really good...
She had slipped them into my drink when she leaned over to read the casefile. Other things had slipped too, probably why I didn't notice her dropping the white power in my bourbon. The last undissolved grains sat on the bottom of the tumbler, laughing at me. Literally. They had formed a tiny face and were mocking me with their tiny laughter. I tried to throw the tumbler across the room but my arm was jelly. Strawberry, I think.
Legs stood in the shadows near the huge plastic plant I like to have the intern water every morning. Her ruby red dress was swimming across her chest and thighs, running down her leg to mix with the golden pool on the floor. Somewhere far away a voice was confirming something. Probably hers. I didn't hear an answer, but that made sense. She was on the phone. My phone. I'll have to check my wire tap I installed on my own line last fall once my head clears. If I survive that long.
Vancouver's a helluva place. The streets are clean, the broads are hot and the cars are sexy. I thought there wasn't a dark patch within city limits. I was wrong. Everywhere Legs walks, shadows follow her.
A million miles away a door opens and closes. Footsteps ring though my body, each one it's own tiny explosion of ominous foreshadowing. The creek on the fifth footfall confirms my dreamy suspicions. Someone is coming up the stairs. Legs brushes past me, her golden hair melts down into the red dress and then into the pool on the ground. I'll really have to clean that up soon. It might stain and affect my damage deposit.
A movement of air on my face tells me that Legs opened the door to my office. For a moment, I curse myself that I didn't lock it before I left. Then I remember I'm sitting in my chair, inside the office.
My vision tries to clear and for a second I focus on the face in the door. It's not a face I was hoping to see. Instinctively my body shifts in the chair to get more comfortable. I'm going to be here a while.
Guess I'll just have to get the intern to clean that pool after the weekend. I should leave her a note...
During this last week Claire and I hit the end of our sixth month here in Vancouver. I would have blogged on the day, but work has been keeping me busy and tired!
The longest time I've spend outside of Ireland apart from this was six weeks in America back in 2008. That was an incredible time, jam packed to bursting point with adventure after adventure, none greater than the start of our adventures into married life together.
Six months is also the longest time between visits home to see my family. When I first moved to Cork I went home every weekend, then every other weekend, then once a month. Soon everything I considered important to me apart from family was in Cork, and I went home only on occasion. But I was never away for a whole six months. I loved getting home to mums cooking, the beautiful views, the smiling faces of old friends. I loved relaxing and doing nothing, chatting to my family and playing with the dogs.
But now I'm on the other side of the planet. I can't grab a train home, or just go for the weekend. And where Cork was filled with all my friends, making trips home less important by virtue of how much it too was my home, Vancouver hasn't hit that point yet. It still feels like Cork did during my first year there. Sure, I have made some friends here and I'm busy from Monday to Friday, this time doing work I love rather than studying. But I still miss what I had.
All that aside, I still don't plan on running home to Ireland any time soon. Vancouver is an incredible place. Over the last few months I've had the chance to sample just a little of what this city and it's neighboring areas have to offer.
I can't get enough of the hiking, walking, and other outdoor activities that I can do from either own front door or after a short hop on the bus. I've worn t-shirts on top of snowy mountains in the middle of June, walked across shaky suspension bridges and around suspended cliffside walkways, I've walked to Downtown from my doorstep, traveled the edge of the local park, and sat out on the grass with 2,000 other people to watch one of my favourite movies played on a huge screen for all to enjoy.
These first six months have come and gone with surprising speed. I'm looking forward to more time spent exploring Vancouver over the next few months and, with luck, years.
Got to see a funny thing happen today on the way home from work.
I took my usual bus back towards home along Granville, but got off for a pitstop early at West Broadway. I dropped into a few stores I like to browse and then hit Chapters bookstore for the newest paperback release in the Dresden Files series, Changes (no linky as even the blurb on the back of the book is pretty darn spoilery if you haven't read that far yet. Trust me. I know...). I'm flying through Turn Coat at a much faster pace than I have been reading some of the middle run of the series so far. I think starting work and having time to read on the bus has gotten me back into the flow. That, and I loved Small Favor, though possibly only because of Ivy and Kincaid.
The Number 10 bus picks up right outside Chapters, so I wandered out and waited, and had front row view in the hilarity that resulted just moments after I arrived.
Some Flashy Car pulled up right in the bus lane, directly in front of the No. 10. The bus beeped twice, but the car remained until the passenger got out and walked away. Flashy Car drove off, pulling close enough past me for me to clearly see Smug Driver inside.
The No. 10 then pulled up to the stop and all us waiting passengers politely stepped to one side as the passengers who needed to disembark via the front door due to the number of people on board did so. One of their number was dressed in a bright yellow and black rainproof jacket and matching pants, a radio mic clipped to her breast pocket, and holding an electronic pad of some sort. I didn't recognize what she was, but clearly some of the other would-be passengers had. One commented, jokingly, "Did you get his license plate number?"
The Vancouver Metropolitan Traffic Police Officer didn't even smile, but tapped something into her pad, glanced up and responded "Sure did".
One of my friends in Vancouver emailed me this. Apparently it's been doing the rounds for some time now, so you might already have seen it. It's a script to work out what DnD character you are, and it's well done. There are 130 questions, and not a single "In a fight would you use a) a sword, b) an ax, c) magic" style obvious one among them! Nice.
What Kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character Would You Be?
Ability Scores:
Strength-12
Dexterity-11
Constitution-12
Intelligence-12
Wisdom-13
Charisma-14
Alignment:
Neutral Good A neutral good character does the best that a good person can do. He is devoted to helping others. He works with kings and magistrates but does not feel beholden to them. Neutral good is the best alignment you can be because it means doing what is good without bias for or against order. However, neutral good can be a dangerous alignment because it advances mediocrity by limiting the actions of the truly capable.
Race:
Humans are the most adaptable of the common races. Short generations and a penchant for migration and conquest have made them physically diverse as well. Humans are often unorthodox in their dress, sporting unusual hairstyles, fanciful clothes, tattoos, and the like.
Primary Class:
Druids gain power not by ruling nature but by being at one with it. They hate the unnatural, including aberrations or undead, and destroy them where possible. Druids receive divine spells from nature, not the gods, and can gain an array of powers as they gain experience, including the ability to take the shapes of animals. The weapons and armor of a druid are restricted by their traditional oaths, not simply training. A druid's Wisdom score should be high, as this determines the maximum spell level that they can cast.
Secondary Class:
Sorcerers are arcane spellcasters who manipulate magic energy with imagination and talent rather than studious discipline. They have no books, no mentors, no theories just raw power that they direct at will. Sorcerers know fewer spells than wizards do and acquire them more slowly, but they can cast individual spells more often and have no need to prepare their incantations ahead of time. Also unlike wizards, sorcerers cannot specialize in a school of magic. Since sorcerers gain their powers without undergoing the years of rigorous study that wizards go through, they have more time to learn fighting skills and are proficient with simple weapons. Charisma is very important for sorcerers; the higher their value in this ability, the higher the spell level they can cast.
Find out what kind of Dungeons and Dragons Character you are and feel free to share it in the comments. Just the title will be fine. Don't clog up my comments with the entire thing, please!!
The last few days here in Vancouver have been glorious outside. The sun radiates warmly from bright, clear blue skies. Everyone is outside enjoying themselves and making the most of the early summer. From our apartment I can hear children playing in a nearby park, laughing and having fun.
So I went for a walk. A long walk.
I walked from where we live to Granville Street, putting me near the end of it, by 70th Avenue. I then walked straight up Granville as far as Granville Island. The last street number I passed before hitting the island was 4th Avenue. It took me about an hour. It was glorious. I wore my Rocketeer jacket because, despite it's weight, I was able to protect my neck from the sun beating down on my back the whole way up.
People have been telling me to visit Granville Island since I arrived, and I finally got to. The place was amazing. Markets of every kind sold everything I could need. There was delicious, ready to eat foods, fresh fruit and vegetables to take home, trinkets and kitschy junk to litter the house or send to friends.
There was an entire market called the Kids Market, filled with toy shops that sold all kinds of wondrous items. One sold the latest two Lego Mini-Figure series, from which I managed to get the pulp-era pilot and the awesome and much sought-after Hazmat guy thanks to the help of the staff. Another was filled floor to ceiling with puppets of every kind, from the simple finger puppet to the huge character puppets that made me long to have my Ernie to play with. They even had Fraggle Rock puppets! They had Mokey, Red, Wembley and Boober, but no Gobo. It took every ounce of will power not to buy any, especially Red or Wembley.
I dragged myself away from the Kids Market to explore the rest of the island, finding food and entertainment at every turn. By the time I decided to move on, I was completely lost and wandered in what I thought was the generally right direction until I found familiar territory again.
Getting back off Granville Island, I headed right looking for a popular gaming store, Drexoll Games. I wandered until I got to the end of the line of shops and decided I was on the wrong street (checking when I got home, I was). But it was the best mistake I ever made. Walking along what I later learned was 7th Avenue, I glanced down a side street at a crossing to check for traffic and my eyes popped. My brain misfired and a I stood motionless for a moment. This was parked just a few feet down the street.
Now, for those who may not be aware, "this" is a Ferrari F430. It is one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering and design in the world. As I fell in love with Vancouver thanks to MacGyver, I fell in love with the Ferrari brand around the same age thanks to Magnum P.I. I walked over to it, looking around to see if the owner was nearby and discovered it was parked outside a very nice car dealership. A very nice car dealership. I spent a good ten minutes walking around and admiring this dream machine, taking a handful of photographs and even a short video.
But I never touched it. Not a finger. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Not that there were burly security men surrounding it, or staff from the dealership throwing me dirty looks. There weren't. I could have just reached out at any point and run my hand across the surface. But I didn't. Seeing it was special. Touching it was something beyond my comprehension. For me, that would be like touching the scales of a living dragon. This vehicle is a dream that I've had since I was a child. It held a magical place in my heart back then, and still does today.
So I just photographed it and walked away. Back out of the shade of the side street into the sun, now a little brighter, a little warmer, a little more awesome.
I headed south as far as Broadway and then walked that back as far as Granville. Once there, my legs finally gave up and screamed at me to take the bus home. I was honestly thinking of walking back still, but it was 6pm by now. I had been walking non-stop for five hours. The sun was still out, but low enough that cool shadows flooded the sidewalks. And so, a little reluctantly, I paid for the bus and headed home.
I got home and collapsed. I did laundry and started to organize my thought on my day and realized something.
Despite the sun, the markets, the toys and the car my day was missing something vital. Claire had stayed at home. I had no-one to share it with. I had no friends. No family. No-one that, in years to come, can say "Remember the day when we..." I miss my friends. I miss the times we shared. I miss barbeques on sunny days, walks in the park, coffee in town. I miss Sunday breakfast and hanging out.
Some days, I feel very alone.
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