Over the last month or so I’ve started shopping for a new big screen for the living room. Our 50″ SDTV has served us well, but we find ourselves using the other HDTVs in the house to watch TV, movies and games. I’ve boiled the decision down to three factors:
Price
Size (Want the biggest screen with the smallest footprint)
Technology (LCD, Plasma, or DLP)
The stores have many options, but I’ve quickly found that the three technology options don’t use the same diagonal sizes. This makes comparing prices a bit tricky. So I decided to put my rusty programming skills to work to determine the best way to compare prices with all things being equal. I came up with this tool (pardon the aesthetics):
The number that has been most interesting to me is the price per sq. in. This seems to be a very good metric for price comparisons. It clearly illustrates the contrast between the technology choices, but also depicts how the increase of size exponentially increases the price of the set.
I recognize that this doesn’t account for the all important “How does it look?” component. I know that if history is any indication, I won’t be buying the cheapest or “best” deal. Picture quality plays a big role in the purchase, but that part of me that needs numbers to compare has been satiated My newly created utility will be at the ready on my Blackberry as I browse stores.
Hopefully someone else will find this calculator useful. If you do, please drop a comment.
I recently bought Carcassonne (the game) on XBox Live Arcade and it has proven to be a big hit with the family (including my wife). The game is easy to learn and it did a nice job of teaching basic strategic thinking to the kids. My only complaint is the horribly repetitive background music, but it can be turned off.
Last night we had a blast eating popcorn and playing the game. And at the end, we only had to clean up the popcorn Here’s to hoping that more good board games make it onto XBLA.
On Sunday, I let the kids play Tony Hawk split screen and they started playing tag. This is the laughter that has been coming out of our game room all week long.
(Btw, try out the embedded video comments. Pretty cool)
Stunman Ignition is coming out soon (8/27) and it’s a sequel that I thought would never happen.
The original Stuntman (a stuntman driving game), while one of my all time favorite games on the PS2, was an exercise in the most extreme frustration. We’ve all played games where you felt like throwing the controller or screaming at the TV, but Stuntman is the game that provoked me to physically do all of the above many times (my wife can vouch for that). The game required precise timing, exact controls at all times and the patience for trial and error as you made it further and further into each level. Long load times (up to 3 minutes!) were the hefty fine paid for crashing or missing a checkpoint.
Despite the frustration, the gameplay kept me coming back for more and ultimately finishing the game and feeling very accomplished as a result. I have a couple of other friends who have finished Stuntman share similar opinions of this game.
The key to Stuntman’s success was that its gameplay was able to give the sense of forward progress with each unsuccessful attempt. The levels never felt impossible or unfair. Striking a balance between difficulty and making the player think they can do it is very tricky. I can’t think of many other recent titles that I’ve finished that have dished out that much frustration.
When I heard the news that Stuntman Ignition was coming, I was skeptical. My fear was that the developers would avoid the frustrating gameplay of the first game and make it more accessible to a broader crowd of wussy gamers
I’m happy to report that the demo on the XBox 360 maintains the great balance between frustration and accessibility. Here’s the short list of what I think they’ve done right.
Frustration. The demo has shown that this game is not going to be a cakewalk. It is frustrating but still beckons you on to try it one more time.
Improved load times!! The wait times was where most people had an aneurysm or threw their controllers out the window due to frustration. I’m happy to report that instantaneous level restarts are here.
Driving Physics. The original had great driving physics and those have been preserved.
Gameplay. The developers didn’t decide to revamp the gameplay and add a bunch of new gameplay mechanics. They took a great formula and refined a couple of elements to make it more accessible.
This game is not for everyone, but the demo is free to try. This will be my first XBox 360 game that I will buy on its first day of release.
Last week, Nintendofinally re-released one of their best puzzle series stateside for the Nintendo DS: Picross DS. Nintendo has been making Picross games since the original Game Boy and Super Nintendo days. And, as far as I know, they’ve only released one other picross game to the US market; Mario’s Picross for the original Game Boy. Apparently, the game didn’t do well in the US market and all of the sequels that were released in Japan never made it here.
I’ve been a huge fan of this game since I bought the original Game Boy version. It’s difficult to explain the gameplay, but it is a pure logic game that shares many similarities with Sudoku. The game consists of the same “process of elimination” as a Sudoku puzzle, but there’s a payoff at the end when you see that you’ve drawn a picture. Unfortunately, due to limited screen resolution, the Nintendo DS version only goes up to a 15×15 grid (Some of the Super Nintendo releases in Japan go up to 30×30!).
The game does have some longevity in supporting download-able puzzles via the internet and providing a built-in puzzle editor. The future support remains to be seen as there are no puzzles available for download yet. There is support for trading puzzles created in the editor, so email or post your friend code if you’re interested in trading puzzles. My Friend Code is: 347999172149
If you like Sudoku (or other grid based logic puzzles), give this title a try. The Sudoku collection in Brain Age will be gathering dust while I play the hell out of Picross DS.
Apple’s iPhone Marketing Team is kicking your ass! Until I got my new Blackberry 8300 (Curve) a couple of weeks ago for work, I was lusting after the iPhone like everyone else. Since getting the Curve, my interest in the iPhone has all but disappeared. The Blackberry 8300 (Curve) is, in my opinion, superior to what the iPhone is offering today. Those who would disagree with that statement would have to admit that the Curve is, at a minimum, a competitive product that people should know about before spending $600.
Let’s go down the top 10 marketable features of the Curve as compared to the iPhone:
Cheaper ($399.99 unlocked or free with contract)
Instant Message Support (Something that Blackberries have supported for years)
I just got done reading Michael Crichton’s State of Fear and it is an interesting contrast to Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth. In it, Crichton tells a run of the mill adventure story involving militant environmental groups. The interesting part is the questions he raises about global warming and whether it’s really the crisis that the public tends to believe that it is.
At the end of his book, he presents a bulleted list of facts (with references) that basically say “No one definitively knows if global warming is really an impending crisis. And, if it is, we don’t know what impact man having on it.”
I think fanaticism in either direction tends to lead to an inaccuracy of the facts. The book hasn’t changed my opinion or behaviors on preserving the environment. I still recycle and will continue to reduce my “carbon footprint”, but it’s good to get a reminder to question everything (especially information that may support your beliefs).
September 26th, 2007
deals, gadgets
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My newly created utility will be at the ready on my Blackberry as I browse stores.
