Today’s Zero Punctuation has led me to realize that I often play games primarily for the story, plot, setting and visual aesthetic of the setting. In fact, if I’m really into a couple of those things, I will tolerate awful cameras, terrible controls and even sub-par gameplay. Case-in-point: Reasons why I play Silent Hill games. I love how dark the game is and the setting is intelligent, twisted and visually stunning, in an opressive, terrifying sort of way. It’s just unfortunate that the camera, controls and combat are awful.

Conversely, I tend to avoid warfare games (Call of Duty, Rainbow 6, Battlefield Whatever) because the story they’re trying to sell and the setting in which they tell it is just boring to me. It doesn’t matter how good the gameplay is, it just isn’t enough to engage my interest.

Our giant bed arrived today.

Laura may have to high-jump up to get on it, but it sure is comfortable.

I thought I’d be helpful this afternoon and wash Laura’s clothes from painting. I also threw in a couple rags with them but it seems the rags were very… ragged and came apart in the wash…

…leaving little green strands of rag-guts all over Laura’s clothes. I tried to convince her that I just extended the life of her clothes by adding fabric to them but she didn’t seem to see it that way =p

I really do like Windows Vista. It’s pretty and feels well-designed under the hood. I do, however, have two main issues with it: System Restore (SR) and the User Account Control (UAC).

In both cases, your only option is to turn them on or off and both “features” are annoying as all hell when turned on.

System Restore has no configurable options (in XP you were able to specify the % of disk space you wanted it to use) and in the past for me, Vista’s SR has decided to steal over 80GB of space. I’ll admit, I spent an entire night in distress, wondering where all the space had gone before eventually realizing SR had gobbled it all up. Turning SR off recovered every missing GB. Ryan’s recently had Vista’s SR waste over 200 GB of room on his PC. Ridiculous.

UAC is just annoying as hell. I’m sure you’ve seen the Mac-PC ad:

It pops up for almost everything and once again, there’s no configuration options. Just off or on.

Now, I recognize it’s purpose and I’d say that it might work well for someone like my mother who very rarely installs programs on her own and doesn’t do anything remotely advanced or behind the scenes on her PC. For my own use though, it’s maddening. I can’t even edit game config files (or anything within the Program Files subdirectories) without having to give permission, usually multiple times. So I turn it off, missing out on any possible security advantage it might have given.

I want to be able to customize and configure both these features so I can leave them on without having them drive me crazy. Isn’t one of the big draws of the PC its highly configurable nature? So enthusiasts who want to get their hands dirty under the hood can tweak things so they run just the way they want them?

Seriously, System Restore should include at least two options: Allow users to specify the number of System Restore Points to save, and/or the volume of disk space SR’s allowed to use. Maybe even set a time limit of how long to keep Restore Points saved?

To improve UAC: A big checklist of the types of occurrences where it pops to ask for confirmation would be pretty damn nice. Allow users to select which things they actually want to have confirmed.

Then I wouldn’t have to click through two confirmation dialogues when I’m just trying to move a screenshot image out of my Team Fortress 2 folder.

This morning was our first morning here at the new place and it took Laura and I forty minutes to figure out how to turn on the shower. We were pulling, pushing and turning everything we could think of…

Turns out, the gold spout of the faucet pulls down. WTF?

Today, Laura and I pushed and got all our stuff here to the new place. We even got set up enough to be able to sleep here tonight. For now, we’re sleeping on the futon from Andrea and Owen until the real bed arrives on the 8th. So now we’re living here. Woo.

I spent all day today painting with my father and sister here to “help” me. Turns out I am the slowest painter in recorded history. Thankfully, the enlisted help was much better and my father managed to do the entire kitchen from beginning to end while my sister did the same for our ensuite and then helped me finish the master bedroom.

In an effort to not be silent all day, we put on 99.9 Sun FM (since it’s just about the only thing to listen to here) all day. While it wasn’t bad, by the end of the day, I was pretty tired of it. I definitely don’t need to have another day of that anytime soon. Funny, when I was in Kitchener, a day where I got to listen to The Edge all day was a pleasant one.

I spent my day today waiting around for Shaw to arrive and hook up all my utilities. While I’m thankful that I can just pay the one bill to them for cable, internet and home phone, the most ideal situation would be for Rogers to buy Shaw so I could incorporate my wireless bill into that, like I had in Ontario.
*le sigh*

Remember that scene in ‘The Cable Guy’ where Matthew Broderick is just waiting all day long? That was my entire day.

While waiting around, I got to thinking and I feel bad for Britney. I mean, we just can’t stop paying attention to everything she does, she keeps doing worse and worse and we know every little detail. There’s her unsafe activities with her kids, the custody battle, just embarrassment after embarrassment. Now a possible suicide attempt and put into rehab? And her ex-boyfriend’s now released Cry Me a River as a single for the second time! Oh, sure it’s a (better) remixed version, but we still all remember that it’s about Britney. Poor girl.

I can’t really talk about the best games of 2007 because I didn’t play every game that came out this year. Even if I had, it’s all subjective anyway. What I can talk about are my favourite games of 2007, and why. I can also give random awards to games that deserve recognition. So let’s begin…

OMG Its Magic Award:
Super Mario Galaxy.

Galaxy is truly one of the most fun gaming experiences I have had in years. Playing through the game gives this great sense of discovery, all the time. Every level, you’re wondering what new thing awaits you, exploring new areas, trying out different things, its simply magical.

If you own a Wii, go buy Galaxy. If you don’t own a Wii, then go out and buy one (I know, its still stupidly difficult) and then buy Galaxy.

Best Deal Ever Award:
The Orange Box.

Even if you’ve already played (or already own) Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One, The Orange Box is a fantastic deal. I would gladly pay $20-30 for each of Team Fortress 2, Portal and Episode Two and my money would be well spent. Instead, you can get all three, plus the original Half-Life 2 and Episode One for a ridiculously great value.

Unfortunately, that isnt enough and I feel I must break down the three new component parts further…

Best Way to Spend 3-4 Hours Award:
Portal.

Portal may only be 3-4 hours but it is 3-4 hours of pure bliss and I can’t think of anything bad to say about it. It has more fun packed into those 3-4 hours than games with 20+ hours of gameplay. There wasn’t a single moment in Portal where I wasn’t completely engrossed in the game and having fun.

It is the first time in as long as I can remember where my brain was introduced to something completely new in a game and I had to think in new ways to figure out how to solve the puzzles. Each puzzle I solved felt like an accomplishment - like I had actually done something that required thought.

Something I completely did not expect was the writing of the game: It is fantastic. It’s darkly humorous throughout and I don’t think anyone expected that. Both the writing and the delivery of the dialog is spot-on and it really adds to the atmosphere of the game.

As an aside, I would also award this game Best New Game Mechanic, Best New Videogame Villain and Best Dialog.

The game is fresh and brilliant and deserves all the praise it gets. It also deserves your attention and you should make an effort to play it.

I was Emotionally Shocked. Twice. Award:
Half-Life 2: Episode Two.

Episode Two was great. Sure, it was more of the same, but it did progress the Half-Life 2 story, which is a damn good story. Those guys at Valve keep adding new tricks to their Source engine and it does look nicer with each new addition. The gameplay was largely the same, though there were a few pretty memorable encounters throughout, in particular that Vortigaunt fight and the somewhat epic end battle.

Now something I have always liked about the Half-Life games is that they tell the story through scripted scenes where you really feel involved. This continues in Episode Two and the emotion put into the voicework at the very end of the episode… it gave me chills. I’ve been scared by games before. I’ve also experienced various forms of happiness because of games. I can’t recall ever being so stunned or emotionally effected by a game before.

Reason to Not Close Down the Internet Award:
Team Fortress 2.

Team Fortress Classic was fantastic back in the day. A great online multiplayer experience with teams and multiple classes to choose from. Team Fortress 2 took that formula and tweaked the shit out of it. Everything is slicker and tighter and it all comes out so polished its hard not to have fun.

I’m impressed with so much about the game. The variety of classes, the near-perfect (and ever-improving) balancing of those classes, the exceptional quality of the maps and the visual style of everything. From across a map, seeing just a character’s silhouette, I can tell what class that character is and what weapon they’re holding. In so many other online games, everyone looks so similar that it’s tough to distinguish different classes from very close up. Everything was extremely well thought out in this game and the proof is in the gameplay.

With nine different classes to play, I’ll be working on mastering this for a long time to come. Definitely the Multiplayer Game of the Year.

OMG What Was that Noise and Where Did It Come From? Award:
Bioshock.

Bioshock is gorgeous. I’m not even talking about the technical achievements the engine can output, although those are impressive. I ran it on my 4-year-old machine and it was still beautiful. The art guys who worked on this game made a completely convincing world with Rapture and I was completely immersed in it.

The game itself was a great shooter that was excellent fun. There were many different ways to kill guys and I loved them all. I loved the story of Rapture and Andrew Ryan. I loved the way the city was falling apart and slowly being reclaimed by the sea. I loved the way I couldn’t play it in the dark with the sound turned up loudly because hearing the characters moving about the city creeped the hell out of me.

I would also give BioShock awards for Best Art Design and Best Story.

I Didn’t Power Off My DS Until I Finished It Award:
The Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass.

I guess this means Phantom Hourglass is the Best DS Game Ever. I’m okay with that. It’s a solid action/adventure game and was lots of fun to play. Zelda games are usually pretty fun and the translation to the DS was a nice, smooth one. Controls were tight and the addition of being able to write things on your maps allowed for more complex puzzles. Big thumbs up.

I Can’t Believe I’m Playing a Game with Unicorns and Rainbows Award:
Peggle Deluxe.

I just as easily could have given it Casual Game of the Year, but Peggle is something special. When I first heard about it, I was skeptical. When I first loaded it up, with its childish, cutesy artwork and a fucking unicorn teaching me how to play the game, I was ready to call bullshit on anyone who said it was any good. The mechanic is simple but it’s pure and damn if it isn’t really fun and addicting. It isn’t something I’m going to sit down and play for 4 hours, but when I’ve got 20 minutes to spare it really hits the spot. Also, those 20 minutes often spread out to 30 or more…

If you haven’t already, I would highly suggest you pick up the demo from Popcap’s site or on Steam (hell, the whole game is only $10 on Steam!).

In conclusion, Super Mario Galaxy, The Orange Box and BioShock are my top games of 2007. I love them all. Hard.

Laura and I took possession of the new place today and it is…. dirty. Not filthy like on How Clean is your House, mind you. It is more that from the middle of every room, it seems clean but when you get close to anything, you realize nothing is actually clean. It’s going to take some work.

Also, the previous tenants had painted the back wall of the master bedroom in this ugly striped pattern:

Worse still, when you got up close, you could feel the edges between the different stripes on the wall. So I spent most of today cleaning some walls and mostly sanding down and filling in holes (in walls).