JFCC - Jason F.C. Clarke

Wormy fate

Posted under Blog, Games on March 7th, 2007 by JFCC

I downloaded Worms for the Xbox Live Arcade this morning. I’ve been a Worms fan since the very first version of the game back in the early ’90s (though I never tried the 3D versions, as I think that’s just not the right format for the property).

While the game is as good as ever, I do have a couple of beefs. First, the game was designed for HD, and like Dead Rising, a lot of the text (and even some of the graphics) look a little small and blurry on my non-HD TV. Alien Hominid is HD as well, but it looks fine to me, so I don’t know what the deal is. The only difference I can think of is that AH’s graphics are larger, and it doesn’t have any actual “type” text (just big cartoony text), which may make the difference.

My other beef is with the controls. Alien Hominid maps the “shoot” button on X and the “jump” button on A. Worms maps them exactly opposite. This has cost me several wormy lives today; as brave Commander Corndog turned to fire his bazooka upon a foe, he instead found himself leaping to a watery grave.

Worms doesn’t offer the ability to edit the controls, which means I’ve got to teach my brain to distinguish both control sets. Unfortunately, both games make extensive use of those two functions.

But it gave me a thought: why can’t Microsoft offer the ability to remap the controls of any game? You can already add custom soundtracks to any game. As long as all you’re doing is swapping among the same number of buttons, there’s no reason not to make this an option.

Back Inaction

Posted under Blog on March 5th, 2007 by JFCC

So last week, I decided to play at pretending to be a Real Man™ and attempted to replace my nine-year-old car’s battery. You may recall my car’s infamous breakdown last summer. Well, the battery managed to survive that incident (despite one mechanic’s assurances that he would need me to buy an expensive new battery) only to die two weeks ago when I accidentally left the overhead light on during the coldest weekend ever. I’m pretty sure I could have jumped the car back to life, but given how much it had been through recently I thought it best to spend the fifty bucks to replace the battery.

I should add that I had to quite literally chisel my car’s right tires out of the ice that had enclosed them. I used the claw end of a hammer and the process took nearly an hour, at the end of which my hands had started to turn purple from frostbite (true!).
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We got Wii!

Posted under Asides on March 4th, 2007 by JFCC

Thanks to a hot tip from Ed, DottyGale snuck out under cover of early morning to Target today and scored a Wii. That’s right, we are now officially a Wii60 household—for the price of a PS3!

Thanks again to Ed. Now we’re off to play Rayman Raving Rabbids…

Xbox Live Arcade

Posted under Blog, Videogames on March 1st, 2007 by JFCC

I was really excited to get an Xbox 360 back in December. Thinking back, though, I can’t remember exactly why I decided I wanted a new videogame system. I’m not sure which games I was looking forward to, other than, obviously, Halo 3.

Xbox Live Arcade

I found out about Gears of War and that became the reason I was getting a 360. I played GoW for about a month straight, but I don’t think I’ve played it in almost a week. I’ve beaten the campaign on three difficulty levels and played through the entire game as the second player in co-op, so there are really no more worlds to conquer there (and personally, I don’t find either the gameplay or the campaign quite as entertaining as the Halo series—I’m currently replaying Halo for the second time in two months, having played through Halo 2 in the interim). However, Microsoft has a few interesting aces up its sleeve when it comes to keeping me playing between big releases like Gears of War and Halo 3.
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Netflix Shuffle

Posted under Asides on February 28th, 2007 by JFCC

Does anyone else wish Netflix offered the option to shuffle your queue (without breaking up series or DVD sets)? I always get bogged down trying to prioritize my movies, and I think it’d be fun to get some random movie in the mail every few days.

I know there are some software programs out there that can already do this, but you’d think it would be a pretty easy feature for Netflix to implement.

Action!

Posted under Blog, Writing on February 27th, 2007 by JFCC

My life, as of late, has consisted primarily of working, playing videogames, and…well, reading on occasion, though I just had to give up the book I was reading because the writing wasn’t very good. It was the second time I’d tried this writer. The first time it was one of his early novels, so I thought I’d give him another shot, but no joy; again, the awkward, stilted writing confounded me. I won’t name the author in the incredibly unlikely event that I ever make it in the industry, but I doubt I’ll be trying him again anytime soon.

I did recently read a novel that I enjoyed immensely: Armor by John Steakley. It’s loosely based on Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, with the same set-up (humanity is in an intergalactic war with a race of spacefaring giant insects, and the plot battles are fought with soldiers wearing powered armor).
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Top Ten Cartoons of All Time…EVER.

Posted under Blog, TV on February 16th, 2007 by JFCC

Since my Saturday morning cartoons post proved so popular, I decided to go ahead and compile a list of my top ten cartoons of all time. This list is unrestrained by timeslot or, I should mention, relative quality. I make no claim as to this list representing what I think are the best cartoons ever made. That list would be quite different. Today’s list is about the cartoons that have made a significant impact on me or my life at some point.

Anyone who knows me at all no doubt can guess #1 right now, but we’re going to start at number ten.
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The Vending Machines are Coming

Posted under Blog on February 16th, 2007 by JFCC

I work at a small art college. Recently, the college installed what has to be the most complicated vending machine ever made.

Vending machines used to be simple: you pays your money and you gets your chocolate bar. Nowadays you usually just push a button, though there was a time you had to pull a lever or turn a crank or do something that actually requires a little bit of manual labor, much like those poor saps who don’t have power windows in their car.

But no vending machine in compares to the terrifying device now squatting in the student lounge.
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Gaming’s Greatest Guns

Posted under Blog, Videogames on February 13th, 2007 by JFCC

I’ve got to agree with most of the choices in this article, “Gaming’s Greatest Guns”. I’ve played most of those games and the choices are dead-on, especially DOOM II‘s double-barreled shotgun, Duke Nukem 3D‘s shrink-ray, Halo‘s pistol and Perfect Dark‘s laptop gun. (Though, from what I understand, the omission of Half-Life 2‘s Gravity Gun is fairly egregious.)

Some of the commenters on the article suggest the Lancer from Gears of Wars should be included as well. Personally I disagree—there’s nothing particularly innovative or interesting about the weapon, except that it’s a machine gun with a chainsaw on it. We’ve had chainsaws and we’ve had machine guns in FPS games before. The Torque Bow is a bit more interesting, but I don’t really see how it’s significantly different from a missile launcher (except that it takes longer to fire, can’t heat-seek, and has a delay before it explodes).

Ultimately, I don’t think any of Gears of Wars‘s weapons were particularly ground-breaking in any way (or even overpowered), so I wouldn’t have included them on the list.

On a related note, it looks like the much-loved original Halo pistol is back for Halo 3—in looks, at least (the video is a leak and will probably be taken down by the time you click).

Synchronized bartending?

Posted under Asides on February 8th, 2007 by JFCC

How would you play Root Beer Tapper co-op? It’s almost worth buying it on Xbox Live Arcade just to find out.

Almost.

Speaking of XBLA, I seem to be the only member of my XBL friends group who actually makes use of it. Personally, I’m having a blast playing Doom and Geometry Wars Evolved, and am looking forward to the upcoming Worms. I may write a longer entry on this topic later.

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