Quasi-evil

In an effort to mix up my video gaming, I've lately tried a few non-shooter games. This is mainly because the last few shooters I've played have left me with a strong feeling of "meh".

After a successful venture into Ghostbusters,I decided to try another console port to PC, Overlord 2 since I've enjoyed other games that allow you to be the bad guy. I'm not talking about the recent fad in games that give you the "choice" between good and evil, that's just a cop out to get the player to play the game again to get a different story. This way, developers only need to produce a a game with half the content. I'm talking about games like Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2, Stubbs the Zombie, Evil Genius and the like.

Anyway, Overlord 2 left me with the aforementioned feeling of "meh". The basis of the game is that the player controls squads of minions. The minions come in four colors, each with a different ability. The Browns are basic foot soldiers, Reds are the ranged attackers, Greens the stealthy assassins, Blues the medics. The whole idea is that the player lets the minions do the fighting, which entails sending them off to the fight and watching - maybe leaving to get a beer, not real exciting. Sure, there are a few fights that take a little more direct involvement, but not many. It's trying to be an RTS, without letting that pesky strategy get in the way. The sheer number of minions that can be collected effectively voids the need to be careful. If your army is demolished, just run to the nearest Minions-R-Us, pull another out and try again. Truly the hardest part was trying to control them in areas that the Overlord can't reach. Since the minions don't go where you tell them, this is easily the most frustrating part of the game.

To make matters worse, it's yet another third person game. My sincere hope for the video gaming community is that someday there'll be a third person game that doesn't have camera issues. Overlord 2 does OK here, but there were a few moments of losing the camera behind a rock, tree or wall. This, of course, happens only during the most challenging fights. Maybe that's it, the developers of these games can only increase the challenge by forcing the player to play with the blast shield down.

In other games, being the bad guy is undeniably fun. Unfortunately this game jumps on the moral choice bandwagon. You can choose to be the bad guy and dominate everyone, or the worse guy by simply killing everyone. However, while the latter is more appealing (you are a demon after all), there is a definite reward for the former. Plus, these rewards are almost required later in the game. Basically the fun of being the bad guy is cleanly excised here. The occasional humor is the one good thing about this game. There are moments I actually did laugh out loud. The over-the-top effeminate, tree-hugging, hippie elves are a riot. However, these moments are few and far between and really not worth the whole effort.

Ah well, at least I have Monkey Island to fall back on for true laughs. D'oro the Explorer indeed...

Olympic Shame

My wife and I have been watching the Olympics fairly religiously. Mostly we've been interested in the swimming (Phelps is a frelling robot) and gymnastics.

The swimming was spectacular, and the US obviously did really well. I've also come to realize that I will never watch Olympic gymnastics again. Swimming is very definitive, the winner has a better time - pretty cut and dried. Gymnasts, of course, get a subjective score. The judges' bias inevitably shows through, especially this year.

The Chinese kicked ass at gymnastics this year, with a lot of help from the bad judging. How in the hell did the Chinese vaulter win a bronze when she didn't even land her routine? Gods I miss hockey.

Anyway, rant over. Now everyone can start questioning my manhood (Yes I still feel pretty)...

Dropping the Ball

After all the hype of the Rockies going to the World Series, tickets went on sale this morning at 10am.

At least they were supposed to. Tickets were only available online, not at Coors Field, or anywhere else. Myself and a few coworkers decided to try and get tickets. With no luck after an hour or so, we assumed that tickets were sold out. After 2 and a half hours, the Rockies finally announced that their servers had crashed and only a few people actually were able to buy tickets.

I understand that the load on the servers had to be phenomonal (doo-dooo-do-do-do), but how can the Rockies IT department not expect that? The minute they announced this weekend that tickets would only be available online, didn't they do the math?

Colorado's population is about 4.7 million people. Since baseball is "America's favorite sport", let's say that most are Rockies fans (a big assumption, but fair when planning for a big sale like this). Even if half the people want to go, we're still talking over 2 million people. All trying to log onto their site at once. In terms of web traffic, that's nothing (Youtube.com claims to have 100 million videos viewed a day). Does anyone remember the election fiasco in Denver last November? Shouldn't a lesson have been learned there?

After a little further research. It looks like the MLB contracted a company called Paciolan to handle online ticket sales. Paciolan "experienced a system wide outage that is impacting all of their North American customers."

Hopefully Paciolan isn't head quartered in Denver. Sucks to be them right now. I have to wonder how many people took the day off to get tickets today and probably won't get any. I sense a large number of sick people tomorrow...