Best First Ten Minutes Of A Game: Bioshock
Has a game ever drawn you in as quickly? I actually felt like I was experiencing the best work Imagineering has ever done — except I was sitting in front of my television, not at Tokyo DisneySea. From the haunting and perfectly-compressed narration to the soaring and spine-tingling "reveal", no game has set a mood so thoroughly and so quickly.
Worst Last Ten Minutes of a Game: Bioshock
And then you fire, like, two rockets at a cyber-demon escapee from the world's worst 24 Hour Fitness to receive about 27 seconds of pre-rendered confusion. Note to game developers: add "Good Ending" to your Gantt Chart!
Best Desktop Picture You Can't Download: Mac & PC
Hooray to Laika (Portland represent!) for their awesome work on the Apple holiday commercial. But when super-talented character designer Shane Prigmore posted his illustration of "Mac & PC" to his blog, the long-time Apple-understander in me knew it might not last — and it didn't. (The good news? Naturally, I saved it before it was pulled — and you can download it right here — for now.)
Best Movie: Wall-E
I was going to say Children of Men, but I guess that came out last year. This is totally cheating, but as mentioned before on my blog, seeing the early rough cut of Wall-E was a moving-going experience without equal. I'll be the first in line to see how the movie ends up! (As a little postscript, I got a super awesome message from Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E and Finding Nemo, shortly after writing about the screening, if you can believe it. I couldn't. Doesn't that say so much about why Pixar is Pixar, and why the Internet is the best thing of all times, ever?)
Best Thing Ever Of All Times, Ever: The Internet
I'm just sayin'.
Best Worst Name for a Postal Supplies Store: Goin' Postal
I always thought this was a crazy Oregon thing: I had no idea this was a national chain. How.. wow.
Best Thing Learned From Reading Convenience Store News: Tesco's Fresh & Easy
Tesco, popular British market and world's third largest retailer (!), just opened up their first store in America: Fresh & Easy. With 200 locations opening by the end of 2008 (!!), the c-stores are nervous about the impact. But I'm sure excited! I have fond memories of British markets, and actually-good frozen foods, like Trader Joes but without the terrible design. Have you been to one of these stores? Tell me about it! (And thanks to the staff of CSN who, for the purposes of my free trade subscription, think I work for "Panic 'n' Go", America's favorite convenience store. Just don't tell the guys who publish Pizza Today.)
Best "Whatever Happened To..." Website: SpyMac
Remember when SpyMac was famous for posting laughably fake Apple rumors, then they became some kind of weird .Mac-like service? Does anyone understand what the hell is going on over there now?
Best Apple Product for Fast Food Restaurants: Apple Monitor ///
Taken just a few weeks ago!
Best Television: Extras: The Extra Special Serials Finale
I'm almost not sure what to say: I've not seen a more biting, face-meltingly hilarious, pause-buttonly uncomfortable, and supremely well-acted end of a tv series before — let alone one that's a Christmas Special. — this is television that is better than movies.
Best $50 Panic Spends Every Month: MX Logic
Outsourced spam filtering? I love you, 2007. I used to spend a lot of time updating/adjusting SpamAssassin, but I'd still get a ton of spam. With MX Logic, I simply modified our DNS records to tell the world that MX Logic accepts our incoming mail. That's it. MX Logic now receives it all, analyzes it with much magic, then turns around and delivers to our (real) mail server only pre-filtered, 99.99% spam-free messages, piping hot. The best part? They work every day, or at least I like to imagine they do (in a big room like in War Games), to update their spam filtering to tackle the latest garbage — and I don't have to do a thing. Yay!
Best Packaging Redesign: Coca-Cola
Every time I see the new can, I cry. It took Cola-Balls: no extreme, bubbles, gradients. Just pure, clean, disturbingly brilliant.
Best 15-Year Miracle: rm *~
I've been using emacs, The UNIX Text Editor With The Beard™, for about fifteen years. (Addendumplug: less so since Coda came out!). And I can never remember how to turn off the automatic backup feature, which makes copies of your files while adding tildes at the end, leaving~ tilde~ files~ everywhere.html~. That means, for fifteen years now, I've been frequently typing rm *~, in all manner of important directories, to delete all the dumb backup files. Somehow, I've never once left off the ~ on accident, which would leave just rm *, which would delete all of my files. Every time I issue this command it feels like I've just been touched by an angel.
Best (As In Most-Fun) Last-Minute Design Project: Katamari Manual Back Page
If you picked up a copy of Beautiful Katamari for the Xbox 360, did you notice the ad for our Katamari T-Shirts on the back? Probably not! Anyway, we found out we could make this happen exactly one and a half days before the press deadline. That was some very high speed, but extremely enjoyable, Illustrator work! (I even got to employ the patented British "fake sticker" technique!)
Best Subway Sandwich: VegiMax
Hands down delicious and actually made of vegetables. It tastes like a Chinese-food sandwich! +Honey Mustard +Provolone
Best Portland Mercury Cover: September 13th
It was very cool to see a little piece of David Lanham (out of The Iconfactory) all around Portland!
Best Game You Wish You Were Playing Right Now: Peggle
You haven't yet caught extreme fever? To quote Alex Pasco: "Peggle is a sickness." It's available for the Mac. Play. Now.
Bonus Feature: Best Songs
Here are some of the songs that made the year for me. Want to preview a track? Click the little circles to play them! Or, scroll down to listen to all of the music at once, radio-style.
- Our Love Goes Deeper Than This Duke Special
A Neil Hannon guest-appearance lead me to this track, which I now, indeed, love deeply. - All Right Jim Noir
Incredible. Any song with a head-bobbing drums and bass bomb-drop moment is fine by me. - Everybody Wants A Little Something Duke Special
Duke Special led to more Duke Special, and I am profoundly jealous of this melody. - I Only Want You + Happy / Fred Deakin's Triptych Promo 2
I might call Fred Deakin's Triptych mix my album of the year. This track, off a harder-to-find additional disc, is a killer battle between The Eagles of Death Metal and The Carpenters. - It's Coming To Get You Yacht
I heard this "Jona" dude is secretly a 46-year-old Samoan — this "youthful" stuff is a crazy trick. Still, he certainly makes some hot tracks — but rarely with such searing lyrics as this one. - Dancers on a String Garry Schyman
My favorite film score is a game? 2007! This Bioshock track is as moody as the scene it accompanied, the image of two paint-covered splicers silently waltzing now burned into my mind. - Again & Again The Bird and The Bee
Can you tell I like a well-crafted pop-song? - My World The Go! Team
An unusual but excellent song from The Go! Team, teleported from 1967. - That's How You Know Alan Menken
I can't lie to you: I totally, deeply love a good musical number. Shut up. I don't care. (I also loved the movie this came from, "Enchanted". This won't end well, will it?) - Wuthering Heights The Puppini Sisters
Kate Bush + 1940s style close-harmony girl group = musical gold - Red Turned White Architecture in Helsinki
This is for the guys in the office, who suffer the shock of my .99 iTunes ringtone version of the middle break. - Toxic Shawn Lee's Pingpong Orchestra
Sure, I'll say it: Toxic (as made famous by Britney Spears) is one of the greatest songs ever written. Shawn Lee must agree, because he's gone and brought the sitar. - The Salmon Dance The Chemical Brothers
Learn fascinating facts about salmon, and dance a funky dance. It should be the official Oregon State Song! - Mr. Bellamy Paul McCartney
Yes, I love every single song Paul McCartney has ever written. Even the weird Wings ones. This new track is no exception. - Still Alive Jonathan Coulton
If you've played portal, you know. Had this song been even 5% awkward, the party would have been ruined. It wasn't.
That about wraps it up for 2007! Thanks for reading my blog, thanks for being a cool person (unless you're a jerk), and here's to 2008, which I'm 96% certain is going to be fantastic.
posted at 6:30 PM
64 Comments:
I was afraid to continue playing.
Hrm... I want to try this sub you mention.
That it's a really good example of his songcraft - well, that's just even better.
My only possible complaint would be the design of their web interface — it's very Windows-y, small fonts bad icons and engineer-style navigation. But the service works incredibly well. I get a quarantine report every night with all of the "on the fence" e-mails, which I scan quickly, and which has a "Delete All" link in the e-mail itself that I usually click, and that's about it for me and spam.
I contacted Postini two days before they were surprisingly acquired by Google — they never wrote me back, so I simply moved on. (I wonder if Postini will now, someday, be free?)
Let me know if you have other questions!
If you're ever in Salem, go here and say hello to it!
http://www.amazon.com/Coca-Cola-History-American-Icon/dp/B00005M91J
(Also, let the record state that the SHREK MCFLURRY was pretty delicious. Did I just type "Shrek McFlurry"?)
(setq-default make-backup-files nil)
That'll keep the backups from happening.
alias rm~='rm *~'
That way, when (not if) you forget a letter, it won't do anything instead of accidentally deleting every file in your folder. It'd also save some typing every time you use it.
You can also make backups and autosaves go into a single folder.
*statements may be exaggerated slightly.
(hmm, this might be awarded as the lamest commentary on your blog so far...in that case sorry)
Oh, and a happy new year to y´all !
Geir Werner = )
I quite agree that it is one of the happiest commands to type.
Would be safer to use find -exec me thinks:
find /base/path -iname "*~" -exec rm {} \;
leave off the -exec portion to see what you find :)
http://www.spymac.com/tour
(cons "." "~/.backups"))
;; move temporary files
(defvar user-temporary-file-directory
(concat temporary-file-directory user-login-name "/"))
(make-directory user-temporary-file-directory t)
(setq backup-by-copying t)
(setq backup-directory-alist
`(("." . ,user-temporary-file-directory)
(,tramp-file-name-regexp nil)))
(setq auto-save-list-file-prefix
(concat user-temporary-file-directory ".auto-saves-"))
(setq auto-save-file-name-transforms
`((".*" ,user-temporary-file-directory t)))
CoD4's opening almost made me sell the game. Don't make me sit through a 10 minute drive through a city while developer names scroll past.
Oh, and I second the whole "Panic 'n' Go" t-shirt idea!
PS. I resent this "word verification"... according to my dictionary "xczcltcz" ain't a word.
And for Peggle : Many thanks for such a great suggestion :)
Take care.
The narrator is spectacular, too.
Try to get that ending. It's very rewarding.
Now, I don't think it tastes like vegetables or a Chinese food sandwich, but as an unrepentant meat-eater, I'm astonished by how much I like this pure veggie sub. Bonus points for having one of the lowest sodium contents of the "Eat Salty(tm)" Subway subs.
Pepperjack + Chipotle Southwest + Italian Herbs and Cheese (if I'm feeling especially reckless) for the win, btw.
If you ever get tired of software, there's always blogging, video blogging and songwriting Cabel. Here's to 2008!
The stores are about half the size of an average supermarket and the selections is good and eclectic. Self-service check out.
Since we saw them building a few and found out the Tesco connection, the wife and I were excited to see them open. We've tried a number of the house brand items and it's been spotty. Nothing has been bad. Some are really good, others are just... not great.
Hope they make it in the long haul. I'd hate to lose the only place I can find Butter of Parma!
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/extras/stillalive.php
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewGame?id=270226578&s=143441
http://next.yahoo.net/archives/32/easylistener
Joseph
PopCap emailed me and said, "Hey, we've got a sale on all our games! And we've got a new game called Peggle!"
And I thought, "Oh, hey. I've wanted to buy Bookworm for a while. A sale sounds good."
And I got Bookworm, and I was happy.
Then I thought, "What the heck. Peggle looks cute enough to download."
Hours and hours and days and days later....
Peggle. Sigh.
you will pay.
Coincidence? Conspiracy theory!
What makes it all the sadder is that the death of Andrew Ryan is an *amazing* scene, which smoothly brings together all the themes of the game (wow---a game with themes!) with a final ironic twist, and real emotional force as you disappoint Daddy once again. If the game had just ended with killing Ryan, then fleeing Rapture as the splicers overrun it, it would have been absolutely perfect---the final bout of circle-strafing-the-boss was as unneccessary as it was unimpressive.
In general, I thought Fontaine was kind of an underdeveloped character, actually (though it's a sign of how well the other characters are developed that I can have that complaint). I wonder if he was added later in the development process to solve narrative corners they were painted into.
But it's still a great game, with a thematic and narrative coherence you rarely get in a game. I loved learning the gradual process by which Ryan betrayed his ideals---he censored the arts, shut down scientific research, and in the end, commits the ultimate libertarian sin by nationalizing industry---and the nonlinear storytelling, where you often learn information before you know how it fits into the big picture, was terrific.
See you around man!
Boone
Love the Bird and the Bee song, too.
http://www.mollyopoverty.com/2007/06/03/what-im-listening-to-the-not-free-summer-07-edition/
molly o'
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