Archive for the ‘Consumer Products’ Category
Guest Review: Madden 2008 (XBox 360)
Guest Review! Kyle from notthegame.com weighs in on Madden 2008.
Madden 2008 is a bit of an enigma. In the last few years, on the new systems, Madden has been a sub par football game. This is typical for sports games on a new system as it takes game developers a few years to revamp the game engine, as well as improve graphics and features. The third year is typically the year when progress starts to be made. Take the PS2 versions, for example, in 2002 and 2003 the game redefined the way football games look but they didn't play that well, in 2004 the game took on a life of its own, and by year four in 2005, Madden reached its pinnacle. That lines the 360 version up for 2009 as the pinnacle of its success on the new systems.
Madden 2008, however, is a serious step in the right direction. This year, Madden has perfected the game play, improved already stellar animations, and added the features and options we have come to expect from the Madden franchise. If by next year, EA Sports can improve the presentation, get rid of the god awful radio announcer, and add some innovation to franchise mode, the game will reach a level never before seen.
That being said, here is a break down of this years game.
Graphics:
Madden has never really been known for its graphics and animation, but this year that is starting to change. Animations are now much more natural, as players will reach for balls and drag their feet on the sideline. EA Sports uses what it calls a "branching" system. Essentially, this allows the movements to transfer from one to another seamlessly. In 60 frames per second, the game runs beautifully, but since everything is so smooth, the occasional jump in animation between say, standing and falling, seems very out of place. All in all the graphics are very good, next year EA Sports needs to add some more presentation elements.
Sound:
The radio announcer sucks. It sounded like a good idea, but really he is just annoying and makes the game feel outdated (think Joe Montana Sports Talk Football), there is no reason why the biggest selling sports game of all time shouldn't have real announcers. The hits and the players yelling make the on field experience great, but the crowd is just "ok".
Gameplay:
Extremely fun and fast. The game plays with a ferocity that Madden hasn't seen in years. The hits, running, and catches are truly fun to accomplish, and the realism is outstanding. It is one of the few games where neither the defense or the offense dominates. Some games are commanded by defense, while others are controlled by electric offensive players.
The new superstar abilities is well implemented and really gives stars individuality on the field. If you try to tackle Lindell White high, forget about it. For big backs, you need to hit them low utilizing the new Hit-Stick 2.0. It is these little idiosyncrasies that really make the game shine. The gameplay is tight, but it does feel a little tired, as the plays have been the same for years now.
Features:
Franchise mode has some added options, most specifically the ability to relocate your team. Superstar mode has playable camera angles, but during the season there is not much to do other than play games, practice, and bitch to your agent. Its fun, but its not a fulfilling experience as you only get to play the plays with your player, so you don't development an emotional connection to your team.
Overall:
Madden plays great, looks good, and sounds horrible. In all, it is a good game, but there are times where I feel like I'm left wanting more. This years game is shaping up to be the penultimate game, with a little tweaking, next years will reign supreme.
8 K's out of 10. A Brett Myers.
KKKKKKKK
Dan: Uh, 8 "K's" out of 10? A "Brett Myers?" These aren't star ratings! How are we supposed to make sense of this? Let me do some math...
Madden 2008 is a bit of an enigma. In the last few years, on the new systems, Madden has been a sub par football game. This is typical for sports games on a new system as it takes game developers a few years to revamp the game engine, as well as improve graphics and features. The third year is typically the year when progress starts to be made. Take the PS2 versions, for example, in 2002 and 2003 the game redefined the way football games look but they didn't play that well, in 2004 the game took on a life of its own, and by year four in 2005, Madden reached its pinnacle. That lines the 360 version up for 2009 as the pinnacle of its success on the new systems.
Madden 2008, however, is a serious step in the right direction. This year, Madden has perfected the game play, improved already stellar animations, and added the features and options we have come to expect from the Madden franchise. If by next year, EA Sports can improve the presentation, get rid of the god awful radio announcer, and add some innovation to franchise mode, the game will reach a level never before seen.
That being said, here is a break down of this years game.
Graphics:
Madden has never really been known for its graphics and animation, but this year that is starting to change. Animations are now much more natural, as players will reach for balls and drag their feet on the sideline. EA Sports uses what it calls a "branching" system. Essentially, this allows the movements to transfer from one to another seamlessly. In 60 frames per second, the game runs beautifully, but since everything is so smooth, the occasional jump in animation between say, standing and falling, seems very out of place. All in all the graphics are very good, next year EA Sports needs to add some more presentation elements.
Sound:
The radio announcer sucks. It sounded like a good idea, but really he is just annoying and makes the game feel outdated (think Joe Montana Sports Talk Football), there is no reason why the biggest selling sports game of all time shouldn't have real announcers. The hits and the players yelling make the on field experience great, but the crowd is just "ok".
Gameplay:
Extremely fun and fast. The game plays with a ferocity that Madden hasn't seen in years. The hits, running, and catches are truly fun to accomplish, and the realism is outstanding. It is one of the few games where neither the defense or the offense dominates. Some games are commanded by defense, while others are controlled by electric offensive players.
The new superstar abilities is well implemented and really gives stars individuality on the field. If you try to tackle Lindell White high, forget about it. For big backs, you need to hit them low utilizing the new Hit-Stick 2.0. It is these little idiosyncrasies that really make the game shine. The gameplay is tight, but it does feel a little tired, as the plays have been the same for years now.
Features:
Franchise mode has some added options, most specifically the ability to relocate your team. Superstar mode has playable camera angles, but during the season there is not much to do other than play games, practice, and bitch to your agent. Its fun, but its not a fulfilling experience as you only get to play the plays with your player, so you don't development an emotional connection to your team.
Overall:
Madden plays great, looks good, and sounds horrible. In all, it is a good game, but there are times where I feel like I'm left wanting more. This years game is shaping up to be the penultimate game, with a little tweaking, next years will reign supreme.
8 K's out of 10. A Brett Myers.
KKKKKKKK
Dan: Uh, 8 "K's" out of 10? A "Brett Myers?" These aren't star ratings! How are we supposed to make sense of this? Let me do some math...
NES Games: BigNose The Caveman
Ah yes, taking advantage of all 8 bits of excitement. You wonder how the people from "Prehistoric Park" feel about the discovery of the mini-stegosaur.
The best way to make a video game accessible to lots of people is this: make the first few levels pretty simple, and then have them get exponentially harder. Sure, you say, most video games follow this pattern. Mario, Tetris. Sonic the Hedgehog… Ducktales is pretty easy throughout, but that’s mostly because the levels are built more as challenging mazes, and you can choose the order in which you want to play them. Don't get me started on Legacy of the Wizard... I've already written 2000 words about that.
I can’t think of a better example of this than the little-known game, BigNose the caveman, which came as a gold-colored cartridge. The main focus of the game was to walk from left to right on the screen and beat up dinosaurs. I really can’t remember if there was a story or not, mostly because I never got very far. I mean, the first two levels are exceptionally easy, to lure you in. They were actually pretty similar to the Mario model, with bad guys coming at you that you had to hit as you walked on the horizon line and jumped over random cliffs. That was something I always wondered about in the Mario world. How can there be so many cliffs on a piece of developed land that don’t have bridges built over them? The Princess’ father must not have been doing a good job in the public works sector. As far as BigNose, well, they barely had the technology to build a wheel, so I’m going to assume that bridges are way out of their league. ( And for all you cavemen out there, I’m not trying to insult you… the last thing I need are commercials disparaging our fine little rarely-updated enterprise)
Strangely enough, though, most of the dinosaurs BigNose encounters are pygmy dinos, with stegosauruseses and triceratopseses no bigger than the eponymous caveman himself. Sure there are giant dinos that appear at the end of major levels, as bosses, but most of them, from as far as I got, were usually seen as just two legs or something. They were way too big. Someone obviously didn’t consult the AMNH before designing this stuff.
If you think about it even more, you realize that there’s no reason for a stegosaur to attack a caveman anyway, unless he was intruding on its nest. Maybe it’s different with mini-stegosaurs though.
The simple attack was using your club to hit the bad guy, and if you picked up some stones you could use them like the fireflower power in Mario, only lamer, cause the stones don’t bounce, and if you miss, they kinda just magically fell through the ground. The hard part is getting the timing right. If you swing too soon, you miss, and too late, you’re hit by the dinosaur, which is why stones are the best option, especially since there are some dinos that need to be hit twice. Jumping over them is always an option, but you can’t jump very high, so sometimes you’ll miss. There are also potions you can buy at some stores that you can use to regain life or kill everything in the frame, making it easy to beat a boss.
Really though, the biggest challenge to this game was actually getting it to work. Maybe it was my system, or just the cheapness of the people who made the cartridge, but it never worked right. I had to do the blowing on the game, then blowing in the Nintendo thing that every kid my age was quite accomplished at. You’d think we’d all be harmonica players. At some point, even that began to not work, and the game would only work if I used the game genie as a buffer.
The music was actually really catchy, even though I can’t remember any of it now.
Overall, the first few levels are moderately enjoyable. The next few are too frustrating. And there’s no continue or save option, so once you lose, you start all over again. I’d say the same thing about Mario, except there’s plenty of opportunity for extra lives and level-skipping in that game. That, and you had some sort of goal to achieve in Mario. If you really want to play a game about cavemen, I’d settle for a Turbo Graphx-16, or an emulator for its games, and Bonk’s Adventure.
One and a half stars for making me feel like I was good at video games, and then tearing that dream away from me. Relatively good music, but a premise that was pretty much just a terrible rip-off of Bonk's Adventure.
The Current Gas Prices
Lest The Bookshelf® return to its former rant-happy ways, here's one with some general positivity.
What with gas prices getting higher than friend of The Bookshelf® and noted ginger ale enthusiast J Calloway at a ginger ale festival, it looks like we're back to more reasonable numbers on the boards. The $2.399 low price in the good old 19063 is enough for me say, "hey, gas prices aren't awful anymore."
Um, there really isn't much more to it than that. I'm just spreading the positive word. Well, actually, I guess that being that I'm able to remember the days (well, I think it was a couple of months) that gas actually less than $1 when I was 14 or so, but after dealing with it around $3, the current price seems A-ok. Me=Consumer Whore.
The Current Gas Prices receive four stars due to the fact that people are quick to complain about how much it costs when the price is high but forget to appreciate the moments when its back to more sane levels.
unniversary
What with gas prices getting higher than friend of The Bookshelf® and noted ginger ale enthusiast J Calloway at a ginger ale festival, it looks like we're back to more reasonable numbers on the boards. The $2.399 low price in the good old 19063 is enough for me say, "hey, gas prices aren't awful anymore."
Um, there really isn't much more to it than that. I'm just spreading the positive word. Well, actually, I guess that being that I'm able to remember the days (well, I think it was a couple of months) that gas actually less than $1 when I was 14 or so, but after dealing with it around $3, the current price seems A-ok. Me=Consumer Whore.
The Current Gas Prices receive four stars due to the fact that people are quick to complain about how much it costs when the price is high but forget to appreciate the moments when its back to more sane levels.
unniversary
Empty Bookshelf’s First 100 Reviews
So here we are at the first of what may be a few reviews of our first milestone, 100 reviews. Not only is this the first review of this milestone, but of what could be very many milestones. We here at the Bookshelf like the word "milestone", and don't believe in Thesauruses. So here we go, our first hundred in a nutshell.
The first actual review happened way back in October of 2005... remember that time before the Steelers won the superbowl, before "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" movie, before Dick Cheny accidentally shot his friend while hunting, and before Bristol, United Kingdom celebrated the 200th birthday of Isambard Kingdom Brunel (actually April 9) by relighting the Clifton Suspension Bridge?
Dan's first review was aimed at complaining about post-game hype surrounding an extremely long baseball game. Of course our readers probably care about boring Astros-Braves baseball games as much as they seemed to care about my terrible review of the dictionary. Even though that picture was good, it was nowhere near the five star quality of this image. I too tried my hand at reviewing food, but it was an utter failure. On the plus side, my review of the letter to the editor is one of my favorites, and my first review actually got eight comments, including this link. The few following that grilled chese review focused mostly on music, my opinion of "Good Night, and Good Luck", a particular episode of Trading Spouses, and Dan's opinion of My opinion of "Good Night, and Good Luck". Dan also said that the Colbert report wouldn't last, which seems to have been proven false.
October seemed to be us finding our footing.
November saw Dan's Cleveland Trifecta, a diatribe against horses, a road that he liked, an episode of "Coach", and his complaints about how much he aches, now that he's an old man. I started the month strong with the Beth review, but struggled through the rest of it, with lame reviews like Thursday, a type of tooth"paste" that doesn't work for me, and an insightful, yet completely unnecessary complaint about my nosebleeds. My FAO Schwarz review kinda made up for them, but the highlight of the month involved Dan and I sparring about how Christmas is coming earlier every year, and something about me being a time-traveling sheep.
November didn't see much improvement over October, but the Christmas stuff was entertaining.
December got a bit better, even with a few less reviews. I busted out the old NES games, for a few reviews that I swear are not trying to copy off of XE, another personal favorite, Christmas Cards, Adam's first review, Dan throwing the hate down on Pitchfork media, and a suprising amount of people commenting on Roger Ebert's take on video games. The biggest advance in December was the pop-ins, that added added some clarity to our parentheses-obsessed-writing.
December was a highly engaging and entertaining month, even with only nine reviews.
2006 rolled around, and January saw Dan get political, review half of a book, not like warm winters a lot. I only contributed three of ten reviews that month, but all three of them were relatively alright, mostly because "Where In Time is Carmen Sandiego", and "The Simpsons" after season 9 is so easy to complain about.
January's topics fell off a little.
February, while being the shortest month, was also a monster for us, as far as number goes. A whopping twenty-one reviews. To be fair, 17 of them came in our envelope-pushing live superbowl reviews, the biggest stunt pulled in the history of reviewing anything and everything on a five star scale. The only other reviews of any substance were my Gauntlet Review of the Beatles albums, and Dan's digging up of our one-issue underground high-school newspaper.
Despite the big stunt, and two good reviews, February was kinda lacking.
March just plain sucked. Four reviews total. One by me. Three mega-reviews by Dan.
April was slightly better, with another of my top five of my reviews, Legacy of the Wizard. The other four I would give an average of 3 stars to, but since there were only four during the month, that's going to cancel out the Legacy of the Wizard bonus and take it down a half star.
For my money, May was our best month yet. Dan's contribution was the lengthy three-part TV landscape review. I threw out quality stuff with my Songs for Silverman, and Degree Navigator reviews. The shorter American Dreamz and Davinci Code video game reviews were serviceable, but my immense LOST season 2 review tops everything.
June fell off a bit. Four reviews total. Split two and two. Mine were based on a ridiculous news story, and anger at other people for coincidentally coming up with the same ideas as me. Dan tried to put everything into perspective by seeing how well the entire history of human ingenuity and artistry stacked up in the interstellar community, and complained a little about how the national geography of roadways isn't designed to suit his needs.
July was filled with the (I gotta admit my ignorance as to the relevance of this phrase... and wikipedia does nothing to help) Navel Gazing set. I was had for a few minutes by a Jimmy Kimmel hoax, and I thought the critics were a little too harsh on Shayamalan. Despite the mediocre numbers for the month, I'd give it a 3.5
This gives us a per-month average of 3 stars, which isn't too shabby.
In my first ever review, I reviewed the concept of this website. I claimed that we wouldn't be able to keep it fresh, that we'd run out of ideas, and that we wouldn't be able to stay somewhat funny at least. I believe my exact quote was "It has the potential to provide hours of entertainment for readers, and shape their lives for years to come. However, the downside is that it could get old real soon, and provide us with nothing but an excuse not to get real jobs."
Well, I think we've significantly proven wrong every single point that I just brought up. We have 29 categories, 19 subcategories, and even two sub-sub categories. We're still writing about reasonably different things, and while we may have slacked on the funny in recent months, we still bring the 'A' game on occasion. As far as my quote goes, I'd be willing to bet that we've provided maybe a few hours of entertainment for a handful of people, which probably did nothing to shape their lives for even the near fututre. On the upside, it hasn't gotten old, and we have gotten real-ish jobs.
For all of these reasons, I'm willing to up our star rating by half a star, over the average rating of 3. I've also realized that my method of calculating the rating might not be the best, so I'm gonna throw in another half star for a final rating of 4 stars out of five.
And for those of you playing along at home, yes, this technically is the 100th review and so therefore should be included. This review receives 3 stars for not having much to offer in the way of witty musings, and for having a faulty overall rating method, but for packing so many subjects and links into one review.
The Concept of The DaVinci Code The Video Game
I think the picture speaks for itself.
So as I was walking into the movie theatre yesterday, on my way to see what I think will be the summer's biggest-selling movie (despite the terrible reviews), The DaVinci Code, and I was handed a coupon for Best Buy. SWEET! Except that it was only good for a video game... you guessed it, The Davinci Code, for Playstation and X-box.
I couldn't help but laugh at how preposterous this was. I was reminded of the scene in Spaceballs where Mel Brooks was showing off all of the Spaceballs product tie-ins. I had the notion of Star-Wars-like fast food restaurants giving out
But the more I thought about it, I wondered what kind of video game this would be? I mean, video games have to be exciting and engaging, or else the player realizes he's just sitting around doing nothing productive. That's why most of the video games that are based on movies are made from action movies. Seriously, would you want to play a game based on Brokeback Mountain? Think of all of the things you and your player 2 can do together... like herding cattle!
What kind of format could this game take? Would it be like Grand Theft Auto, with Tom Hanks and the french chick driving around, stealing people's cars by boring them to death with lectures about where the swastika came from? Or maybe he could choke people with his long, flowing locks of hair.
Could it be a fighting game where you play as Silas and try to get past the Priory members? You'd then advance to nuns (hint: hit them with stone slabs), and aging, crippled Grail scholars (watch out for the crutches!). Of course after every victory, the bonus round includes self-flagellation.
Personally, I'd love to see a whole line of games. The DaVinciKart, where the characters race around Paris, in small european cars, throwing out things like Silas' spike strip, and the Madonna of the Rocks painting, to make other players swerve. There could be a soccer game, or a baseball game. There could even be a Mario-like game, where Tom Hanks has to save Sophie from the evil "Frogs" by jumping on them.
All joking aside, I really have no idea how they'd make a straightforward game out of this movie. I'm sure it would involve a ton of cut-scene videos of people talking and explaining all sorts of things about the holy grail and the Priory of Sion.
The only thing I can imagine it being, honestly, is in the style of a puzzle-adventure game like the old LucasArts games that were so beloved. Even that though, is a stretch, because anyone who's seen the movie or read the book knows all the answers to the riddles, all the intense "history", where the characters should go next, and ultimately, where the resting place of the Grail "is" anyway. There's no point in going through the entire journey if you already know the answers, because the fun of adventure games is figuring out the solutions.
There is no possible way that this game could both fit into an existing video game model and be interesting. It's interesting as a book and a movie because you're engaged in following the characters along, passively. Once you're actively controlling the characters, there's nothing interesting about what they do, only what happens to them, and video games aren't about being passive.
.5 stars, for allowing me to imagine all of the humorous possibilities.
Outsourcing Phone Support to India
This topic has been beaten to death by the old and curmudgeonly (namely my dad and others social commentators similar to him), so it's under no pretenses of originality that I submit this review...
Today, I learned that my name is Dan Suller. I must've been underneath a rock the last however many years thinking my last name was Fuller. Beyond that, I apparently live at 281 Linden Street.
Because the price was right, I signed up for Vonage phone service. It's a bit less than half as much as comparable traditional phone service with the bonus feature that there's a chance that when you call 911 as you're being brutally murdered or your house is burning down, 911 won't be able to pull your address from their phone system and see it on their screen. A win-win proposition. Oh yeah, also if the power goes out while your being murdered or burning alive inside your house-sized oven, Vonage is of no use.
She may be pretty but her phone service sure isn't.
I had some questions about the phone service, so I decided to call to order instead of placing it online. Actually, the ordering process went fine, it took longer than the online signup would have, but online has the benefit of a keyboard and it being your own darn fault if you mis-enter your billing, etc. information. After going through the whole spelling words out with my own personal phonetic alphabet, "D - as in, uh, ... Dan; A as in, hmm, 'a bird'" and so on (needless to say, the fact that my last name begins with "F-U" makes phonetic spelling quite the undertaking. "F as in, uh....hmm....hold on...[silence on my end]... umm....fox!" Thank god there are no "P's" in my name. Anyway, we (the customer service person and I) plowed through the "data entry" part, and I was good to go.
Well, not so much. Ten days after that order (which was 8 days after it showed up on my credit card statement), the "starter kit" never came. I realized I had specified a Vonage.com user name for checking my account, paying bills, upgrading, etc. so I thought I could dig up the tracking number for the package through there. I had used my Gmail account to set up the Vonage service, so I used "dancfuller" as my user name but it wouldn't go through. There was a default password set, but it naturally didn't work. I tried the "e-mail me my password," and that's when I learned that there was no account with the username "dancfuller," the one that I had definitely signed up with and had been definitely billed for.
I called customer service, was on hold for only a minute or so and talked to a woman who kept asking if I was having "MAC address" issues (a computer network-related problem) to which I kept saying, "No, I have not and still have not received the startup kit from Vonage." She tried pulling up my account, but again, no username "dancfuller" and no user "Dan (Or Daniel) Fuller" but a very real entry on my credit card statement. She realized it was out of her control and passed me on to "level two" tech support, probably some guy hiding behind a curtain. More likely, a guy that you'll end up waiting on hold for 45 minutes then deciding against it and figuring you'll just go through the painful process of exchanging one e-mail a day with their e-mail service department until it's finally taken care of. During these 45 minutes, I was looking online and of course, found lots of people with horror stories about Vonage's support, and going in, I knew it was supposed to be spotty, I just figured that as long as the whole phone over the internet thing got going, I could hopefully troubleshoot anything that'd come up without relying on Vonage's "representatives," but being that the "getting it going" part had been duffed by someone at Vonage, I had had enough of sort of being their customer. 45 minutes was too long, so I hung up the phone. Realizing that probably wasn't going to get any help from their e-mail service (I somehow didn't technically have an account with them and the first step in the customer service process is verifying that they're spending their time on an actual customer, I'd be in a bad position. Of course I couldn't cancel online (and I'm sure that it wouldn't have worked if I could have), but they do make it look like you can (look through the support tree). That number goes to general Vonage technical support (in India) and once you get through the menus in that system trying to find the "cancel service" option, you'll be on hold for a short time (a couple minutes), explain you want to cancel, then they'll say you need to call a different number. That number is 1-800-681-4094. To make sure it shows up well in search results, here it is very obviously. The direct number to cancel Vonage is 1-800-681-4094. You'll be on hold for a while (mine was 20ish minutes), but that's the only way.
I talked to someone decidedly in the United States (not that someone in India couldn't help me....oh wait) and of course he couldn't access my account either, but he could look up my account via my credit card number. Let's all note that this means that Vonage doesn't do any name check against the credit card (I'm not sure this is standard procedure for online orders elsewhere or not). To a computer "Dan Suller" is just as much not equal to the name on my credit card as "Willem Smythe" would be.
So, that's how I found out that my last name was Suller. Which means that the username associated with my account was dancsuller, and the e-mail address associated with it was "dancsuller@gmail.com." (that explains why I never received a confirmation e-mail) So that's three birds with one stone. But wait! There's more! I needed the kit shipped to a different address than the billing address, but of course those were inverted and the billing address was just plain old wrong. There's nothing like a phone company having problems with the audio clarity during the ordering process. Quality product, no doubt.
The person I talked to cancelled my account, and pre-refunded the various equipment return and cancellation fees (hey, Vonage doesn't have contracts, they just charge you a fee if you cancel before an arbitrary amount time has passed....an arbitrary amount of time such as one year) that will show up on my credit card . I'm not sure what the solution is, but Vonage isn't it. I guess it's (finally) time I get my cell phone converted to a local number, as I never considered land line (or sort of land line, such as Vonage) phone service all that necessary. The guy's recommendation was that I just sign up for all of it online to avoid the hearing/clarity/accent issues inherent with having the call center in India.
Outsourcing Phone Support to India receives 1 star due to problems with phone infrastructure, accents, and cheap American companies. Global Economy schlobal economy. I have nothing against people from India, the problems I had weren't related to them "as a people," but with Vonage's reliance on it/them because the labor rate is so low. The accent issue isn't really too bad, but the phone service (ironic in this case) at the call center is awful. I'd guess that someone decided to save money and limit the call bandwidth to a notch below "nominal" for the entire facility. I've had similar issues with Dell's call center audio, and it's like talking to someone in a third world country (hmm...). Dell's was especially bad because the system is all about referencing "service tags" and easily muddled strings of letters and numbers. I'm not sure what the solution is. There are some industries where foreign workers can do just as good a job (or better) work than Americans and save the companies lots of money because of the insanely low labor rates, but being that the phone system (at a phone company) was so shoddy, in general American companies are probably more accurately "cheap" than "thrifty." If the work involved speaking/conversation, I'd hope that companies think twice before committing to inevitable "accent issues." They spent so little on the phone system that when the initial order representative phonetically spelled my name, it sounded fine to me. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that she messed up the "bill to:/ship to:" section of the order. I'm sure that they could've found more technically proficient people in India to staff their support/ordering center. I'd make some sort of comment here about how in any case, Indian people are good at making bathrooms smell like a wolverine that has been dead for three weeks after an acute case of garlic poisoning, but that'd be culturally insensitive and not that funny. Really though, at college I shared a bathroom with a wolverine. It was awful.
Today, I learned that my name is Dan Suller. I must've been underneath a rock the last however many years thinking my last name was Fuller. Beyond that, I apparently live at 281 Linden Street.
Because the price was right, I signed up for Vonage phone service. It's a bit less than half as much as comparable traditional phone service with the bonus feature that there's a chance that when you call 911 as you're being brutally murdered or your house is burning down, 911 won't be able to pull your address from their phone system and see it on their screen. A win-win proposition. Oh yeah, also if the power goes out while your being murdered or burning alive inside your house-sized oven, Vonage is of no use.
She may be pretty but her phone service sure isn't.
I had some questions about the phone service, so I decided to call to order instead of placing it online. Actually, the ordering process went fine, it took longer than the online signup would have, but online has the benefit of a keyboard and it being your own darn fault if you mis-enter your billing, etc. information. After going through the whole spelling words out with my own personal phonetic alphabet, "D - as in, uh, ... Dan; A as in, hmm, 'a bird'" and so on (needless to say, the fact that my last name begins with "F-U" makes phonetic spelling quite the undertaking. "F as in, uh....hmm....hold on...[silence on my end]... umm....fox!" Thank god there are no "P's" in my name. Anyway, we (the customer service person and I) plowed through the "data entry" part, and I was good to go.
Well, not so much. Ten days after that order (which was 8 days after it showed up on my credit card statement), the "starter kit" never came. I realized I had specified a Vonage.com user name for checking my account, paying bills, upgrading, etc. so I thought I could dig up the tracking number for the package through there. I had used my Gmail account to set up the Vonage service, so I used "dancfuller" as my user name but it wouldn't go through. There was a default password set, but it naturally didn't work. I tried the "e-mail me my password," and that's when I learned that there was no account with the username "dancfuller," the one that I had definitely signed up with and had been definitely billed for.
I called customer service, was on hold for only a minute or so and talked to a woman who kept asking if I was having "MAC address" issues (a computer network-related problem) to which I kept saying, "No, I have not and still have not received the startup kit from Vonage." She tried pulling up my account, but again, no username "dancfuller" and no user "Dan (Or Daniel) Fuller" but a very real entry on my credit card statement. She realized it was out of her control and passed me on to "level two" tech support, probably some guy hiding behind a curtain. More likely, a guy that you'll end up waiting on hold for 45 minutes then deciding against it and figuring you'll just go through the painful process of exchanging one e-mail a day with their e-mail service department until it's finally taken care of. During these 45 minutes, I was looking online and of course, found lots of people with horror stories about Vonage's support, and going in, I knew it was supposed to be spotty, I just figured that as long as the whole phone over the internet thing got going, I could hopefully troubleshoot anything that'd come up without relying on Vonage's "representatives," but being that the "getting it going" part had been duffed by someone at Vonage, I had had enough of sort of being their customer. 45 minutes was too long, so I hung up the phone. Realizing that probably wasn't going to get any help from their e-mail service (I somehow didn't technically have an account with them and the first step in the customer service process is verifying that they're spending their time on an actual customer, I'd be in a bad position. Of course I couldn't cancel online (and I'm sure that it wouldn't have worked if I could have), but they do make it look like you can (look through the support tree). That number goes to general Vonage technical support (in India) and once you get through the menus in that system trying to find the "cancel service" option, you'll be on hold for a short time (a couple minutes), explain you want to cancel, then they'll say you need to call a different number. That number is 1-800-681-4094. To make sure it shows up well in search results, here it is very obviously. The direct number to cancel Vonage is 1-800-681-4094. You'll be on hold for a while (mine was 20ish minutes), but that's the only way.
I talked to someone decidedly in the United States (not that someone in India couldn't help me....oh wait) and of course he couldn't access my account either, but he could look up my account via my credit card number. Let's all note that this means that Vonage doesn't do any name check against the credit card (I'm not sure this is standard procedure for online orders elsewhere or not). To a computer "Dan Suller" is just as much not equal to the name on my credit card as "Willem Smythe" would be.
So, that's how I found out that my last name was Suller. Which means that the username associated with my account was dancsuller, and the e-mail address associated with it was "dancsuller@gmail.com." (that explains why I never received a confirmation e-mail) So that's three birds with one stone. But wait! There's more! I needed the kit shipped to a different address than the billing address, but of course those were inverted and the billing address was just plain old wrong. There's nothing like a phone company having problems with the audio clarity during the ordering process. Quality product, no doubt.
The person I talked to cancelled my account, and pre-refunded the various equipment return and cancellation fees (hey, Vonage doesn't have contracts, they just charge you a fee if you cancel before an arbitrary amount time has passed....an arbitrary amount of time such as one year) that will show up on my credit card . I'm not sure what the solution is, but Vonage isn't it. I guess it's (finally) time I get my cell phone converted to a local number, as I never considered land line (or sort of land line, such as Vonage) phone service all that necessary. The guy's recommendation was that I just sign up for all of it online to avoid the hearing/clarity/accent issues inherent with having the call center in India.
Outsourcing Phone Support to India receives 1 star due to problems with phone infrastructure, accents, and cheap American companies. Global Economy schlobal economy. I have nothing against people from India, the problems I had weren't related to them "as a people," but with Vonage's reliance on it/them because the labor rate is so low. The accent issue isn't really too bad, but the phone service (ironic in this case) at the call center is awful. I'd guess that someone decided to save money and limit the call bandwidth to a notch below "nominal" for the entire facility. I've had similar issues with Dell's call center audio, and it's like talking to someone in a third world country (hmm...). Dell's was especially bad because the system is all about referencing "service tags" and easily muddled strings of letters and numbers. I'm not sure what the solution is. There are some industries where foreign workers can do just as good a job (or better) work than Americans and save the companies lots of money because of the insanely low labor rates, but being that the phone system (at a phone company) was so shoddy, in general American companies are probably more accurately "cheap" than "thrifty." If the work involved speaking/conversation, I'd hope that companies think twice before committing to inevitable "accent issues." They spent so little on the phone system that when the initial order representative phonetically spelled my name, it sounded fine to me. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that she messed up the "bill to:/ship to:" section of the order. I'm sure that they could've found more technically proficient people in India to staff their support/ordering center. I'd make some sort of comment here about how in any case, Indian people are good at making bathrooms smell like a wolverine that has been dead for three weeks after an acute case of garlic poisoning, but that'd be culturally insensitive and not that funny. Really though, at college I shared a bathroom with a wolverine. It was awful.
NES GAMES - The Legacy of the Wizard
as a sort've addendum to this review, i'd like to point out that i found a walkthrough, and even knowing where to go, what character to use, and the type of objects needed, won't help you beat this game. It is that difficult. There is no way any kid ever has gotten to the end by himself.
"Hey, look! A Dragon trapped in a bunch of blocks and doric columns. Let's kill it!" "...Uhhh How?" "I don't know... carbon monoxide poisoning?" "That sounds exciting!"
I think the best ending for this game would involve P.E.T.A. storming in and demanding the release of this animal into it's natural habitat.... devistation.
Out of all the games I had for NES, I was very glad that I somehow managed to keep the instruction booklet for this one. Without it, you're basically screwed. I read it recently and realized that the entire reason I could never figure this game out was that you actually had to read it before you played the game. What kind of idiot game-maker would make a kid read something in order to play his game? The whole reason kids play video games is so they don't have to read. That's like making someone go inside a Taco Bell to place an order to pick up at the drive-through window. Or course it goes without saying that I can't seem to find the booklet right now (just my luck), after finding it was the original inspiration for this series of reviews. I didn't write the review of this game just then because I figured I'd work my way up to this.... you know, use it when I ran out of ideas.
Of course, now I can't find it, and wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the game. I searched for it via google but it seems that its biggest contribution to mainstream society has been to fans of techno-remixed video game music.
BREAKTHROUGH! Just as I'm writing this, I found a site, on the fourth page of google results, with links to the sites that not only have maps of the "levels", but the full text of the instruction booklet.
Apparently, according to the booklet, the goal is to destroy the dragon. You pick a character, and kind of wander around a giant maze... if you don't believe me about the giant nature of the game, or it's maze-like qualities, take a look at this map. Just to warn you though, my computer almost crashed attempting to load it. That's how big the image is. It is insane to believe that any child would have any reasonable means of committing this map to memory, just by wandering around aimlessly.... in search of a dragon. And not just any dragon; a dragon that's locked up in a cage deep within a giant underground maze of inescapable proportions. Of course according to the story, that you just have to read for yourself here, they decide to hunt him only after the dog, Poochi, comes back with some dragon skin in its mouth. Now that's what I call a full-SCALE attack! What I don't know is how the dog got to the dragon in the first place and why they didn't just send the dog back with a vile of dragon poison. I guess dragon poison wasn't invented yet.
As in any other multi-character RPG, (a long parenthetical: I didn't know until recently that the game was actually an early RPG, [other than the fact that you didn't have to talk to characters you meet, using them to find stuff out about how to succeed in the game] and I didn't even know what an RPG was until much after I had this game [like all my NES games, it was a gift]. For those of you who don't know what an RPG is, I'll let Wikipedia explain, aside from me saying that it's a completely long-lasting game that involves lots of trial and error. In addition you have to save your game, which in this incarnation was achieved by going back to the surface where your grandmother would give you a code. The next time you played you could enter the code and start off where you ended. Of course, not reading the booklet, I again didn't realize this.) you need to use certain people for certain situations. One member of the family can jump high, the other can move blocks, the dog doesn't get attacked by the numerous mole-men, CHUD, and chupacabras or whatever, that live underground. Only the son can slay the dragon for some reason. The hassle in this is that you can't just switch characters when you need them; you actually have to return to the surface. What a pain.
There's also an overly-complicated system of special items that you take along with you, or can buy at shops which are conveniently located in the underground maze (along with inns where you can regain your health for 10 gold pieces. Not exactly sure how these inns stay in business, as it seems that their clientelle would consist mainly of the goblins and C.H.U.D. that wander around aimlessly underground, and I'm sure that they're probably all broke). These special items are what you can use to beat the bad guys, who, in turn, leave things for you like bread, potion, keys, and gold... and of course, EVIL POISON, which looks exactly like all the other items, considering they're just small blobs of pixels. These monsters really just don't have it going on upstairs. If they all just carried poison on them, instead of bread and money, they'd win every time.
There are enormous amounts of treasure and items and "special items" that are so confusing, you'd need the booklet to tell you what you can do with each when you get them, and would have absolutely no clue how to use without it, or even with it. In the instructions, for example, notice the large section devoted to how to move blocks with the magic gloves.
Mostly, there just is too much to say about how overly-complex this game is on the whole. You have to navigate through this huge maze to find four crowns that will allow you to access the dragon, but you have to get the "Dragon Slayer" sword and then use the son, which means that you have to go back to the top, switch characters and then find the center of the maze to beat him somehow. Afterward, this is what happens... "After you defeat Keia the dragon, she catches on fire and burns and the rest of the family is waiting outside the dungeon and you come up out of the dungeon and you all walk home together then they stop near the door and wave bye bye at you."
Doesn't that sound like it's worth spending at least 40 hours of your time to accomplish? They wave goodbye to you? At least Mario finally finds his princess, Scrooge McDuck finds all the gold in the world, Mario wakes up from his dream, historical landmarks stop getting stolen, Mario finds the Princess again... okay that one was a bit of a "been there" sort've thing, and kinda disappointing, but at least that game was fun, and easy to play. The only consolation here is the irony of a dragon burning to death, and I don't know if irony is a good enough reason to spend that much time on a crappy video game.
This game sucks.
This game gets half a star for being way too complicated and horrendously over-designed. "Make a map" the instruction booklet says. Even with the actual map, I can't figure my way around. You think my scribbles are gonna help me? Kids everywhere were probably so frustrated by this game that they threw it out their windows and hoped a 16-wheeler ran over it... ten times. There's no reason to even be sympathetic towards the main character(s), because it's not like the dragon is doing anything bad, he's kinda just there, playing solitare or reading a book or something.
The half star goes to the designers for putting together something so ambitious, and so detailed that nobody had any clue what they were thinking. I have to give that kind of work something, for their good intentions. Unfortunately you need more than intentions to make a good video game. You need violence; the ability to trick people into thinking your game is easy, when three levels later it becomes really hard; and absolutely no brain power needed to play it.... and some cement.
"Hey, look! A Dragon trapped in a bunch of blocks and doric columns. Let's kill it!" "...Uhhh How?" "I don't know... carbon monoxide poisoning?" "That sounds exciting!"
I think the best ending for this game would involve P.E.T.A. storming in and demanding the release of this animal into it's natural habitat.... devistation.
Out of all the games I had for NES, I was very glad that I somehow managed to keep the instruction booklet for this one. Without it, you're basically screwed. I read it recently and realized that the entire reason I could never figure this game out was that you actually had to read it before you played the game. What kind of idiot game-maker would make a kid read something in order to play his game? The whole reason kids play video games is so they don't have to read. That's like making someone go inside a Taco Bell to place an order to pick up at the drive-through window. Or course it goes without saying that I can't seem to find the booklet right now (just my luck), after finding it was the original inspiration for this series of reviews. I didn't write the review of this game just then because I figured I'd work my way up to this.... you know, use it when I ran out of ideas.
Of course, now I can't find it, and wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the game. I searched for it via google but it seems that its biggest contribution to mainstream society has been to fans of techno-remixed video game music.
BREAKTHROUGH! Just as I'm writing this, I found a site, on the fourth page of google results, with links to the sites that not only have maps of the "levels", but the full text of the instruction booklet.
Apparently, according to the booklet, the goal is to destroy the dragon. You pick a character, and kind of wander around a giant maze... if you don't believe me about the giant nature of the game, or it's maze-like qualities, take a look at this map. Just to warn you though, my computer almost crashed attempting to load it. That's how big the image is. It is insane to believe that any child would have any reasonable means of committing this map to memory, just by wandering around aimlessly.... in search of a dragon. And not just any dragon; a dragon that's locked up in a cage deep within a giant underground maze of inescapable proportions. Of course according to the story, that you just have to read for yourself here, they decide to hunt him only after the dog, Poochi, comes back with some dragon skin in its mouth. Now that's what I call a full-SCALE attack! What I don't know is how the dog got to the dragon in the first place and why they didn't just send the dog back with a vile of dragon poison. I guess dragon poison wasn't invented yet.
As in any other multi-character RPG, (a long parenthetical: I didn't know until recently that the game was actually an early RPG, [other than the fact that you didn't have to talk to characters you meet, using them to find stuff out about how to succeed in the game] and I didn't even know what an RPG was until much after I had this game [like all my NES games, it was a gift]. For those of you who don't know what an RPG is, I'll let Wikipedia explain, aside from me saying that it's a completely long-lasting game that involves lots of trial and error. In addition you have to save your game, which in this incarnation was achieved by going back to the surface where your grandmother would give you a code. The next time you played you could enter the code and start off where you ended. Of course, not reading the booklet, I again didn't realize this.) you need to use certain people for certain situations. One member of the family can jump high, the other can move blocks, the dog doesn't get attacked by the numerous mole-men, CHUD, and chupacabras or whatever, that live underground. Only the son can slay the dragon for some reason. The hassle in this is that you can't just switch characters when you need them; you actually have to return to the surface. What a pain.
There's also an overly-complicated system of special items that you take along with you, or can buy at shops which are conveniently located in the underground maze (along with inns where you can regain your health for 10 gold pieces. Not exactly sure how these inns stay in business, as it seems that their clientelle would consist mainly of the goblins and C.H.U.D. that wander around aimlessly underground, and I'm sure that they're probably all broke). These special items are what you can use to beat the bad guys, who, in turn, leave things for you like bread, potion, keys, and gold... and of course, EVIL POISON, which looks exactly like all the other items, considering they're just small blobs of pixels. These monsters really just don't have it going on upstairs. If they all just carried poison on them, instead of bread and money, they'd win every time.
There are enormous amounts of treasure and items and "special items" that are so confusing, you'd need the booklet to tell you what you can do with each when you get them, and would have absolutely no clue how to use without it, or even with it. In the instructions, for example, notice the large section devoted to how to move blocks with the magic gloves.
Mostly, there just is too much to say about how overly-complex this game is on the whole. You have to navigate through this huge maze to find four crowns that will allow you to access the dragon, but you have to get the "Dragon Slayer" sword and then use the son, which means that you have to go back to the top, switch characters and then find the center of the maze to beat him somehow. Afterward, this is what happens... "After you defeat Keia the dragon, she catches on fire and burns and the rest of the family is waiting outside the dungeon and you come up out of the dungeon and you all walk home together then they stop near the door and wave bye bye at you."
Doesn't that sound like it's worth spending at least 40 hours of your time to accomplish? They wave goodbye to you? At least Mario finally finds his princess, Scrooge McDuck finds all the gold in the world, Mario wakes up from his dream, historical landmarks stop getting stolen, Mario finds the Princess again... okay that one was a bit of a "been there" sort've thing, and kinda disappointing, but at least that game was fun, and easy to play. The only consolation here is the irony of a dragon burning to death, and I don't know if irony is a good enough reason to spend that much time on a crappy video game.
This game sucks.
This game gets half a star for being way too complicated and horrendously over-designed. "Make a map" the instruction booklet says. Even with the actual map, I can't figure my way around. You think my scribbles are gonna help me? Kids everywhere were probably so frustrated by this game that they threw it out their windows and hoped a 16-wheeler ran over it... ten times. There's no reason to even be sympathetic towards the main character(s), because it's not like the dragon is doing anything bad, he's kinda just there, playing solitare or reading a book or something.
The half star goes to the designers for putting together something so ambitious, and so detailed that nobody had any clue what they were thinking. I have to give that kind of work something, for their good intentions. Unfortunately you need more than intentions to make a good video game. You need violence; the ability to trick people into thinking your game is easy, when three levels later it becomes really hard; and absolutely no brain power needed to play it.... and some cement.
The Apple iPod Nano
I'm no Apple fanboy. I appreciate the industrial design that goes into their products and the whole "look and feel" aspect of their physical products. In terms of their software, I've not used their operating system enough to have a complete opinion of it, though I don't lust after it as some people who don't own Apple computers do as Windows works fine for me. I don't appreciate how Apple makes it difficult to download Quicktime without iTunes, and I also don't like how iTunes (like pretty much every other commercial media player) steals my file associations when I install it. I wouldn't agree that Apple is a superior "multimedia platform," having done boatloads of work on my PC for print, photo, audio, and especially DVD and video without having any problems that could be traced back to the fact that I was running Windows (or Windows-specific software). BUT, to be honest, like so many things, it's not really the "product" that bothers me, but the people in love with that "product." Apple is particularly egregious because their TV commercials cater to that market of fanboys (and fangirls) instead of telling them to get a damn haircut. I'd include all of this if only because most people would probably give me a weird look if I were on the record recommending an Apple product.
Whitey's always putting himself first.
In terms of the MP3 player market, Apple's obviously a huge success. For some idea of where I'm "coming from" with all of this, I've had a Rio Karma mp3 player for the last 2+ years and have no intention of getting an Apple player, but only because I wouldn't find a player in the ~1-4GB range a good fit for me being that my Karma's 20GB is all but entirely used. I'd universally recommend the Karma, but unfortunately, Rio went out of business/was bought out and no longer manufactures them. They can still be found online, but it's tough to get warranty support from a company that no longer exists and an "extended warranty" from a Best Buy-type store won't be of much help for a product that's no longer made unless you want to replace it with another company's similarly priced model. Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of the Rio Karma, but that's sort of a moot point in this discussion.
Anyway, for people whose music collections consist of tracks (as opposed to whole albums), the 1-5GB range is a nice size for an MP3 player as it's rare for someone to have more than 5GB of single, random tracks. Most players in this range have a miniature hard drive, but with the introduction of the iPod Nano, Apple replaced the hard drive with flash memory. Normally flash memory was considered too expensive to make an economical MP3 player with that much storage, but Apple has arranged discounts with flash memory makers to all-but price other manufacturers out of the 2+GB market. Flash memory uses less power (meaning longer battery life or equivalent battery life with a smaller, lighter, cheaper battery) and just as importantly has no moving parts. Many people use their MP3 players while running (whether inside or out) and though all reasonable players are engineered to withstand the jarring motion of exercise, it's easy to see how storing data on chips instead of spinning on sensitive metal platters with a magenetic read mechanism resting impossibly close to the platter might be a better idea.
MP3 players usually have two "problem" areas: the hard drive and the rechargeable battery. For example, my Rio Karma's hard drive occasionally "sticks" and needs a good quality whack to "unstick" it, AND the battery life is only about 70% of the 13 hours it had when it was new. Apple's swap of hard drive for "chip memory" erases the hard drive problems (flash memory has a finite number of erase/write cycles...usually somewhere in the thousands, so much less of a concern than premature hard drive failure). The battery life issue will seemingly always be a problem with rechargeable batteries (at leas the kind that Apple uses in the iPods), but unlike companies that no longer exist, Apple offers battery replacement as part of their standard repair/service procedures. Supposedly it's $59 and for any iPod model, so considering Apple's financial solvency, you'll be all set for when the battery goes the way of the buffalo.
Having mentioned Apple's "industrial design" earlier, I'll touch on the player itself. Simply, it's impossibly small in every dimension, with its "thinness" being the most noticeable. It can fit in the pocket of even tight-ish "girl pants" without much of a trace even being seen, while the regular iPods leave the increasingly common "iBulge." There used to be easy to find pictures that compared the thickness of the Karma to the original iPod, but needless to say, the Karma is thick enough to bulge even in "man pants." Worth noting is the easy on the eyes and fingers surface finish of the iPod Nano, though I tracked down a picture that shows what the surface looks like after it's received the inevitable scratches from regular use. Most anything will look like you've used it after you've, well, used it, so that's not too major of a concern unless you fall in love with how it looks when you first get it.
Truth be told, I've never liked the iPod interface and found the Rio interface much more user friendly, but the iPod, like any other electronic device, is quite learnable. The iPod Nano comes with a color screen and the capability to store/view photos, so for those of you who enjoy showing pictures to friends or even looking through them on your own to kill time, that capability is quite useful. The screen is quite small but perfectly functional for close viewing.
Due to the success of the iPod, many companies offer any variety of (usually over-priced) accessories that are simply not available for other brands due to Apple's marketshare.
The Apple iPod Nano receives four stars due to its more-or-less solving of the issues found in the 1-5GB range of MP3 players. There's no hard drive to fail, there's a documented battery replacement method (though that's not an ideal solution), and it's a more convenient size than even some players offering one-tenth the storage capacity. It's not necessarily the cheapest player in its class at $140 for 1GB, $190 for 2GB, and $240 for 4GB, but it offers something most other players in that range don't. Simply, if I were to be looking for a new MP3 player in that class whether due to battery issues, storage life, a solid company behind it, or many other reasons, the iPod Nano would be my first stop even if it might be made by a company who panders to yuppies (or "stuppies").
11x5iHT
Whitey's always putting himself first.
In terms of the MP3 player market, Apple's obviously a huge success. For some idea of where I'm "coming from" with all of this, I've had a Rio Karma mp3 player for the last 2+ years and have no intention of getting an Apple player, but only because I wouldn't find a player in the ~1-4GB range a good fit for me being that my Karma's 20GB is all but entirely used. I'd universally recommend the Karma, but unfortunately, Rio went out of business/was bought out and no longer manufactures them. They can still be found online, but it's tough to get warranty support from a company that no longer exists and an "extended warranty" from a Best Buy-type store won't be of much help for a product that's no longer made unless you want to replace it with another company's similarly priced model. Needless to say, I'm a huge fan of the Rio Karma, but that's sort of a moot point in this discussion.
Anyway, for people whose music collections consist of tracks (as opposed to whole albums), the 1-5GB range is a nice size for an MP3 player as it's rare for someone to have more than 5GB of single, random tracks. Most players in this range have a miniature hard drive, but with the introduction of the iPod Nano, Apple replaced the hard drive with flash memory. Normally flash memory was considered too expensive to make an economical MP3 player with that much storage, but Apple has arranged discounts with flash memory makers to all-but price other manufacturers out of the 2+GB market. Flash memory uses less power (meaning longer battery life or equivalent battery life with a smaller, lighter, cheaper battery) and just as importantly has no moving parts. Many people use their MP3 players while running (whether inside or out) and though all reasonable players are engineered to withstand the jarring motion of exercise, it's easy to see how storing data on chips instead of spinning on sensitive metal platters with a magenetic read mechanism resting impossibly close to the platter might be a better idea.
MP3 players usually have two "problem" areas: the hard drive and the rechargeable battery. For example, my Rio Karma's hard drive occasionally "sticks" and needs a good quality whack to "unstick" it, AND the battery life is only about 70% of the 13 hours it had when it was new. Apple's swap of hard drive for "chip memory" erases the hard drive problems (flash memory has a finite number of erase/write cycles...usually somewhere in the thousands, so much less of a concern than premature hard drive failure). The battery life issue will seemingly always be a problem with rechargeable batteries (at leas the kind that Apple uses in the iPods), but unlike companies that no longer exist, Apple offers battery replacement as part of their standard repair/service procedures. Supposedly it's $59 and for any iPod model, so considering Apple's financial solvency, you'll be all set for when the battery goes the way of the buffalo.
Having mentioned Apple's "industrial design" earlier, I'll touch on the player itself. Simply, it's impossibly small in every dimension, with its "thinness" being the most noticeable. It can fit in the pocket of even tight-ish "girl pants" without much of a trace even being seen, while the regular iPods leave the increasingly common "iBulge." There used to be easy to find pictures that compared the thickness of the Karma to the original iPod, but needless to say, the Karma is thick enough to bulge even in "man pants." Worth noting is the easy on the eyes and fingers surface finish of the iPod Nano, though I tracked down a picture that shows what the surface looks like after it's received the inevitable scratches from regular use. Most anything will look like you've used it after you've, well, used it, so that's not too major of a concern unless you fall in love with how it looks when you first get it.
Truth be told, I've never liked the iPod interface and found the Rio interface much more user friendly, but the iPod, like any other electronic device, is quite learnable. The iPod Nano comes with a color screen and the capability to store/view photos, so for those of you who enjoy showing pictures to friends or even looking through them on your own to kill time, that capability is quite useful. The screen is quite small but perfectly functional for close viewing.
Due to the success of the iPod, many companies offer any variety of (usually over-priced) accessories that are simply not available for other brands due to Apple's marketshare.
The Apple iPod Nano receives four stars due to its more-or-less solving of the issues found in the 1-5GB range of MP3 players. There's no hard drive to fail, there's a documented battery replacement method (though that's not an ideal solution), and it's a more convenient size than even some players offering one-tenth the storage capacity. It's not necessarily the cheapest player in its class at $140 for 1GB, $190 for 2GB, and $240 for 4GB, but it offers something most other players in that range don't. Simply, if I were to be looking for a new MP3 player in that class whether due to battery issues, storage life, a solid company behind it, or many other reasons, the iPod Nano would be my first stop even if it might be made by a company who panders to yuppies (or "stuppies").
11x5iHT
The Superbowl 2006 “Preview Show”
In order to predict the outcome of this year's Superbowl, we used the best tool in our repertoire to predict the outcome: John Madden NFL 98 for Sega Genesis. It was a tense game, filled with back and forth scoring. Nate's Steelers came up short after a risky "going for it" on 4th down situation late in the 4th quarter.
Too bad there isn't a Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes predictor...
In typical Madden 98 form, the final score (in spite of the 5 minute quarter length) was (my) Seattle Seahawks 39 to Nate's Steelers 32. We each had about 300 yards of total offense, though I won the battle of time of possession.
You heard it here first: Seahawks 39, Steelers 32.
The "preview show" (meaning our game of Madden 98) receives four-and-a-half stars due to its close finish that we can only hope the actual game will also have. Go Seahawks!
Too bad there isn't a Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes predictor...
In typical Madden 98 form, the final score (in spite of the 5 minute quarter length) was (my) Seattle Seahawks 39 to Nate's Steelers 32. We each had about 300 yards of total offense, though I won the battle of time of possession.
You heard it here first: Seahawks 39, Steelers 32.
The "preview show" (meaning our game of Madden 98) receives four-and-a-half stars due to its close finish that we can only hope the actual game will also have. Go Seahawks!
NES Games - Where In Time Is Carmen Sandiego
Doesn't this look like as much fun as being forced to listen to Roseanne sing the national anthem?
Like the Waldo craze and the whole Disney Afternoon semi-craze, "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" was a huuuugee fad for a few years. Broderbund came up with this idea in the mid eighties (for a computer game), and of course it spun off into two TV shows in the nineties. Eventually, as the PBS show waned in interest, they decided to do a reformat of it and it became this really crappy third show (now history themed instead of geography themed) with probably the dumbest kids they could find. Luckily it only lasted one year.
I think the video game series could probably boast about being the only video game to come with a desk encyclopedia. That's right; the game comes in a 4 inch thick case with some crappy "encyclopedia" for use in solving the "crimes". Basically the way you play this game is you're racing a clock that arbitrarily counts down the "hours" you have left to solve a theft of a historical artifact. You go to a location in time (time jumping is the biggest use of "hours") and ask people (a text box) about the crime and they give you clues to what the criminal looked like and where he/she was going. Then you look up the clue in your "encyclopedia" and head off there, where you do the whole thing again. Eventually you either run out of time, and do another case, or you solve the crime and do another case; there's no difference between winning or losing, save the fact that in your fictional world, someone with an incredibly clever name like "Ella Vator", "Jim Shorts", or "Stu Pidname" will have managed to get away with a Stradivarius violin from 1730, and that even though you were hot on the trail, the case will never be solved. Each game only takes about 15 minutes, and the only thing that happens when you capture the criminal is you get "promoted". There really isn't any point to playing after the first 15 minutes because it gets really boring looking for 8th century Chinese vases.
I understand that it was made in the early nineties and that the graphics aren't better because of it. I understand that it's supposed to be an educational game about history, but it seems to me that the only thing that this game actually teaches people is how to look up answers in an encyclopedia. It would be more educational if perhaps there was a recap test at the end of the game, where you had a certain amount of time to answer questions based on stuff that you "learned" earlier in the game. I would equate this scenario to the difference between an open notebook test vs. a regular test. An open notebook test only serves to determine how well you take notes, except in the case where there are way more questions than you could ever answer by looking up, or it's an essay test in which you need to take points out of your notes and combine them to form a coherent essay. A regular test should make sure that you have an actual practical understanding of the knowledge, much like the final challenge on the TV game show. For those of you who weren't even allowed to watch PBS when you were a kid, the final stage of the game involved locating 10 or so countries or states (depending on the continent that the map was of) on a large map on the floor, within a certain amount of time. The host would call out the place name and the person would have to put a marker on it, showing that the kid actually understood the geography of the continent and was not just reading it off of a map with labels and then going to place the marker.
Granted, a game that had a quiz at the end of it wouldn't be any fun at all. I can't imagine a kid wanting to play something like that. I mean I played "number munchers" on the computer like all present twenty-somethings once did, before games had more than 3 colors to show, but those computer lab exercises that we'd have to do back in elementary school were just outright boring. I'd much rather have a teacher teaching me.... or be jumping on Goombas, or shooting bad guys, or even, putting puzzle piece-shaped blocks that fall from the sky into lines so they disappear. Video games need to be fun, and repeating the same process five times per game is not fun, especially when each game is so short. If you've played one "case", you've played them all, but maybe the object that's stolen and the thief are different. I'm not a game designer, but it seems to me that the people behind this game wanted to push a game as being "educational" without trying hard enough to actually be educational or interesting to kids. I wouldn't put it out of the reach of the NES's capabilities to be able to have a map with different countries and have the player have to identify them, but I guess no matter where it goes, it's hard to mask the whole "teaching kids things outside of school" thing that the creators were going for.
This game gets one and a half stars for putting forth an effort to create an educational game, and succeed at actually making it really popular. On the other hand, the game actually sucks, is incredibly repetitive, doesn't teach anything that would stick longer than 5 minutes, is without a real goal to acheive, is incredibly repetitive, and is just plain boring. Also, the time usually runs out before you catch the crook (because of the amount of "time jumps" necessary to catch him/her) leaving you frustrated over something that you probably had no interest in playing in the first place, but thought would be cool because the box was so big.