Horizon Zero

The Saga of Springfield

Or, Why Best Buy Wasn't.

Yesterday was Release Day for Dragon Age: Origins, a game I have long been awaiting. I ordered my copy last month. 360 Collector's Edition because I love achievements almost as much as I love cloth maps. Was supposed to be able to walk in to Best Buy and pick it up on day one.

 

Well, walked in to Best Buy. They had a copy held back for me.

 

Regular edition.

 

"What's up with that?" I asked.

 

Turns out that the person responsible for putting aside pick up copies didn't understand the difference between the regular edition and the big, metallic version with cloth map goodness. Because my copy? It got sold.

 

Well, crap.

 

"No problem," Customer Service Girl said, "we can just call one of the other stores and have them send us a copy."

 

Yay!

 

Except not. All the Collector Editions in the Best Buys of Missouri are pre-orders. And they can't give away someone's pre-order.

 

I manage to not choke on the irony of that statement.

 

"Well," Customer Service Girl says, "we can still put in an order for a copy and have it delivered to you."

 

Okay.

 

Except not. According to the inventory system, the Collector's Edition is Out of Stock.

 

Nerd Rage. Rising.

 

What to do.. What to do... "Oh," says Customer Service Girl, "we can get you a copy of the PC Collector's Edition. And it's $10 cheaper too."

 

Yay! Cloth Map! Only, no 360 achieving. Of course, after standing at the Best Buy Customer Service counter for an hour, achievement points are starting to lose a bit of their luster.

 

"Sure, let's do that." I say.

 

So order is made, refund is given, gift card is issued. PC Collector's Edition should arrive tomorrow or Friday.

 

As she's handing me the slip to fill in my shipping address she looks at me. She probably already knows the answer to the question she's about to ask, but she has to ask it anyway.

 

"Would you like to sign up for a Best Buy Rewards Card?"

 

I tell her no, thank you, the experience to date has been reward enough.

 

On my way back home - the nearest Best Buy is an hour away, you see - I stop at WalMart and buy a copy of Dragon Age: Origins for the 360. Regular Version.

 

Damn Achievements.

 

NaNoWriMo Count: 3,972. Yeah, I'm behind. Yet another Best Buy reward.

MSD&D

I have seen the future, and it is glorious.

Tetris is Good For You

A scientific study has produced evidence that playing Tetris regularly is good for your brain.

So when I'm playing at lunch time, I'm not goofing off. I'm just addressing my long term mental health needs.

Alpha Protocol Delayed?

So says the rumor mill.

This makes me both happy and sad.

Sad, because I'll have to wait until some time next summer before I'll get my hands on it. But oddly happy because it will give Obsidian more time to polish the game (and let's face it, Obsidian is in danger of cementing a reputation for releasing well written games that fall just short of amazingbecause of polish) and because it means one fewer Must Play title during the busy 4th Quarter.

The Deluge

That dread season is upon us at last: 4th Quarter.

And, as always, the drought of games is replaced by a veritable flood of titles rushing to release before Chirstmas. Between now and the end of December the majority of the year's most hyped AAA games will be made available for purchase - at least those that haven't been pushed back to 2010.

My own personal buy list is pretty long:

Halo 3: ODST (360)
Brutal Legend (360)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3)
Alpha Protocol (360)
Borderlands (360)
Rogue Warrior (360)
Dragon Age: Origins (360 or PC - Haven't decided that one yet)

There's also the impending launch of Windows 7 to consider, although I'm not entirely prepared to tackle that just yet. (But more on that later.)

Just why publishers insist on doing this too us is beyond me. Presumably, their dark magic marketing folks have determined it's a way of maximizing sales, but the end result leaves me with selection overload. Even if I buy everything that looks shiny and fun, will I get through the backlog before the next deluge? My unopened copies of Star Ocean 4 and Valkyrie Profile would appear to provide the answer...

But I'm playing the hell out of Alpha Protocol, come hell or high water.

My WoW Pre-Cataclysm List

Wow Insider has a good conversation starter up today: With Cataclysm coming in the next year, what is there in the existing game that you want to get done before the opportunity vanishes?

I've done quite a lot of what their commenters are suggesting, such as the Loremaster, Explorer, Diplomat and Seeker achievements. But I've still got a fairly long list of things I'd like to accomplish.

• Obtain 'the Exalted' with 40 Exalted Reputations - I'm currently stuck at 35
• Obtain Exalted rep with the Hydraxian Waterlords, Brood of Nozdormu, Scale of the Sand and Ashtounge Deathsworn. All of which require running Classic and Burning Crusade raids over and over again. Something that's harder to do when nobody seems interested in older content.
• Finish Glory of the Hero and get my Red Proto-Drake.
• Obtain all the fragments of the legendary mace in Ulduar
• Finish Ulduar
• Obtain 100 mounts (70 and counting...)

One of the Wow Insider commenters made a good point about stocking up on Classic era trade goods in order to sell to the scores of new Worgen and Goblin characters that will be coming into Cataclysm. Maybe it's time to start harvesting mass amounts of Thorium Ore.

Sinking Atlantis and Unleashing the Force

The SciFi channel has decided not to renew Stargate Atlantis after the show ends its fifth season. A variety of reasons have been proffered at the various places on the interweb where opinions are usually proferred. The favorites are declining ratings, continuing cast shakeups and SciFi Execs' bizarre desire to 'move away from science fiction in order to appeal to a broader demographic"...

Which, as one astute associate of mine put it, means daytime soaps. Along with Eureka, Wrestling and 79 plus hours of Lost reruns, I guess.

Atlantis is apparently not completely gone, however. As with the also cancelled Stargate SG-1, Atlantis will be transitioning to the realm of Direct to DVD features, with the first planned movie to wrap up the cliffhanger that ends season five. Beyond that, who can say?

Truth be told, Atlantis was starting to get a little stale - no disrespect intended towards the cast. But many of the stand alone episodes had begun to feel like SG-1 episodes from nine years ago with the serial numbers filed off and the long term plot was hampered by a character that wore out his welcome two seasons ago. And it was something of a retread itself.

While I think the 'series reboot' concept has been overused the last few years (Reimagined Knight Riders and Bionic Women? Really?) I'd be willing to make an exception for the Stargate universe. It occupies a unique niche in modern science fiction television, and I'd like to see a production that maybe goes in for less of an 'adventure romp' atmosphere. The fate of the galaxy doesn't have to be at stake every season.

---

In game news, the 360 demo of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed became available today. It's pretty short, and the controls might take a while to get used to (I kept missing with my Force Levitated blunt objects of death) but it's certainly pretty.

I'm not sure how thrilled I am with this uber-powerful Secret Apprentice, though. All the previews have featured reassurances from the developers about how the Apprentice totally fits into existing lore and how George Lucas provided tons of advice about how to tell the story of the Force Unleashed.

Which doesn't really inspire as much confidence as it used to, actually.

Fourth Genesis

Yeah, I know.

In my defense, there are some really interesting things going on that I'm still not able to talk about just yet, but that are definately coming closer to fruition.

So why the update if I can't talk about the good stuff? Because it's GenCon time, and despite my own fear of being too busy to go I've nonetheless managed to work in a quick two day, "there and  back again" jaunt to Indy.

Just made it into town a few hours ago, so no pictures or floor reports until tomorrow night.

Lost: Via Domus

I got the Lost game for my XBox360 this month, and finished it this weekend. It looks pretty for the most part, although some of the character renderings are a little... off. (Hurley and Sun are the most egregious, for some reason. Locke, Ben and Juliet look really good.) The voice acting is disappointing. Series stars Michael Emerson, Yunjin Kim and Emilie de Raven voice their characters, although Sun and Claire are in the game so briefly it seems a waste to engage the actors for the effort. Voice over actors are tolerable for most of the other characters, except for the guy cast as Locke, who sounds more like Chris Farley than Terry O'Quinn.

The story was okay, although a little trite, and the ending was a classic Lost style 'clunk'. The main character was a bit of a Mary Sue, however. (He gets to poke around all the DHARMA installations, conveniently witnessed the backstories of both Kate and Locke, met Ben and Juliet way before anyone else and has ties in his past to the mysterious Alvar Hanso?)

What about the gameplay? Well, I don't pick up media tie ins expecting to be wowed by the gaming experience.

It did provide some of the easiest XBox Achievements I've ever encountered, however. Via Domus borrows the Dead Rising/BioShock photographer motif and requires you to capture snapshots of interesting stuff around the island to unlock achievables. This isn't executed as well as in Dead Rising or BioShock, but does allow you to hunt around for interesting stuff taken directly from the show.

A Sad Day for Geek Nation

Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, passed away today at the age of 69.

It's difficult to quantify just how big an effect Gygax had on gaming and the industry, not to mention the social lives and imaginations of millions of kids and adults. D&D was the major influence on the first generation of CRPGs like Ultima, Wizardry and even Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy. Without D&D, would there ever have been such a thing as a MUD? And without the MUD, where would the inspiration for things like Neverwinter Nights, Ultima Online or World of Warcfaft have arisen?

In a very real sense, he was the Godfather of the Age of Gaming, and he will be missed.