I killed off Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga last night. Those last 100 points (for 100% completion) are easily the most painful I've earned. I was swearing like the proverbial sailor and ready to take the disc out back for target practice. Every time another chapter would start, I prayed it was the last time I would ever see it. But I had committed myself to finishing the game...

I had one last Super Story to play through, Episode 6. A few nights back, about 45 minutes into it, in Chapter 4 (of 6), I hit a glitch which prevented me from advancing. I about lost my mind. It was in the Ewok village where an elevator comes up from the forest floor. The elevator has six buttons on it, one for each character to stand on. Ordinarily the buttons are red, and when you step on one, it turns green, and when they are all green, the elevator goes down. Well, the elevator came up and docked, but the buttons were beige-colored, no red on top, and they did not respond when I stepped on them. Mercifully in the next playthrough last night it worked.

In another masochism department, I borrowed a copy of Bioshock and have been getting smacked around in that. I'm in the Fort Frolic chapter now. Awesome stuff. Way more story than a lot of things I've played lately. Sometime it seems there is more story in one NPC's ravings than there was in all of Halo 3. A few things that bug me: having arms but no legs, the camera being at waist level rather than eye-level for a presumably 6' tall man, and the squeaking sound that the security cameras make (can't I oil them while I hack them?). Cool things include the way the story unfolds (like the explanation of where they get their oxygen), details like bathrooms (something I haven't seen since MDK2 on the Dreamcast; not that I've got a thing for bathrooms, but it's something real that adds to the immersion, especially since the toilets really flush!), the surround sound implementation, and the incredible variety and uniqueness in textures used throughout. Thanks again to James for encouraging me to give it a try.

A longish update with lots of pics; click on them to go to the GameSpot image page where you can see them full-resolution.

If my math is right, "only" 100 days until the release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed... ...for extra geek points I noticed that GameSpot's URL for the game is "starwars2007". D'oh.

Actually the next available game on my wish list is Alone in the Dark, out in just a couple weeks, but if that doesn't review well, I'll probably go with James' suggestion to play Bioshock.

I finished Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness earlier this week. If you tried the demo you know this is some bizarre stuff. Now I'm trying to decide whether to play through it a second time to get the last 50 points; one achievement for playing through without dying, which is easy (when you die you can be resurrected but without the items you used during the fight; the alternative is to quit and reload from your one-and-only save file), and another achievement for defeating the Final Boss without using any health items; he has something like 30X the hit points as your team.

Here is my custom avatar, "Dr. Kowalski", with his trusty leaf rake (his melee weapon) at the beginning of the game.

Here he is later in the game using the Soul Extractor.

At the end of the game you get a preview of Episode 2. A neat touch was that MY avatar is used in the scenes, like this one of some NPC with me and my posse in the background.

I tossed the Burnout Paradise disk in for a little while, and had to download the (May 2008?) update. The only difference I could see is that most of the CompUSA billboards have been replaced with Subway billboards:

There are so many Subway billboards now that in some areas I saw as many as three on-screen at one time. Race Fresh. Eat Hard. Or something.

There were already billboards for Diesel, as well as vans driving around with Diesel advertising, and there is at least one Diesel store in the city, but I have yet to see a Subway store...

Also the price of gas is less than it is here in Austin... ahh, paradise...

I got my GamerScore to a nice even 4,000 last night.

I'm not trying to set any records; it just felt like a good milestone.

I had some spam from EA Games today, a request to fill out a survey. "This survey will reveal details about a new version of a product that is not yet available to the general public".

It turns out they do not care what someone over the age of 34 has to say. When I gave them my actual age, I get hit with a page that says (CAPS LOCK SHOUTING and all):

Please indicate if you have anyone in the household that plays video games on an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, or Nintendo Wii and meets the following age/gender specifications THAT WOULD BE AVAILABLE AND WILLING TO TAKE A SHORT SURVEY AT THIS TIME.

SELECT ALL THAT APPLY

Male aged 13 - 17
Male aged 18 - 24
Male aged 25 - 34
Female aged 13 - 17
Female aged 18 - 24
Female aged 25 - 34
None of the above

When I chose "None of the above" the survey ended with "Thank you for your time!".

For "fun" I tried again and said there was a "Male aged 18-24" in the house, to which they responded I should have him come over to the computer to finish the survey. If I said I had all the latest consoles, gamed a lot, etc., they finally reveal the big secret, a sequel to a music rhythm game. Then they start quoting prices and options (number of controllers included) and ask how likely I am to buy it at the various prices.

Anyway, this cranky old man with disposable income says, screw you, EA.

Besides, hitting 4,000 last night made me think it was a good time to work on another hobby, playing in my own rock band, where the only computing going on is on my Apple G5.

Long time no post, so here's a long update, no (April) foolin':

1. I had a couple windfalls from work, so I made the jump to HDTV: a Sony XBR4 52" LCD. I also bought a second Elite Xbox 360, since my wife was having too much fun with mine. So here is our rec room setup just after the new TV and stands were delivered and most of my rewiring was done; old 34" SDTV on the right:

I almost wish I had not completed Assassin's Creed because its graphics look even more spectacular on it. Mass Effect looks a little better but nowhere near the "cinematic experience" BioWare claims (between the bad shadows and the stuttering). Halo 3 looks great (at least the well-lit exterior levels), as does Burnout Paradise.

2. I'm on my second play-through of Mass Effect, using the same character as before in order to get the Level 60 achievy (I'm at 59 now but I'm wondering if I'll make it), as well as the Hardcore difficulty achievy and some others. I played through the Bring Down The Sky downloadable content over the course of 3 evenings. The view from the asteroid surface was awesome, more involved than any other planet I've seen. The new turrets sure chewed me up. I tried both endings as well (the last fight gets you about 6000 XP for the save-the-hostages ending and about 10000 XP for the other).

Despite there being "20,000 lines of spoken dialogue" in Mass Effect, in combat, the opponents have a vocabulary of 5, and only 5 shouts: "go go go", "enemies everywhere", "I will destroy you", "you will die", and "hold the line". This gets tedious fast, especially since the male voice sounds exactly like your first companion (I thought it was him saying that but it still happens when he is not present). The Batarians in the DL content also say only 3 or 4 things during combat, but at least they are different phrases and a different voice actor (or voice anyway). Ah well. It was worth the price for me.

3. A local friend finally bought his 360 and after playing through the Halo 3 campaign with him over Live, we both bought Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga. I had already rented the first LSW and played about halfway through Episode II, and bought LSW2 and got around 90% complete, so I've seen most of it already.

The coop over Live in LSW:TCS is absolutely the most frustrating experience I've had with a game in quite a while. The synchronization is terrible (e.g. enemies on his screen rarely match up with those on mine). When he and I play Halo 3, we both have a full 5 network bars, so I don't think it's a network problem. Also the camera in all the LSW games is one camera that keeps both players on screen. If we even thought about going in two separate directions, the camera would freak out. If it was an area with platforms, one character would move, the camera would try to track them, and the other player would get pulled/pushed off to his death. We'd end up in a deadlock where we'd just keep falling to our death dozens of times before something snapped us out of it.

The achievements and game saves in LSW:TCS are a disappointing mess too. I "killed" Darth Maul with Qui-Gon so I got the "Who Needs Obi-wan?" achievement, but he did not. And only the host gets the achievements for completing an episode; the guest player does not get them. But wait, it gets worse: after playing through Episode I with my friend, then returning to the cantina to see we were 5% done with the game, I disconnect, and suddenly I am back to 0.5% done -- and my friend tells me that the same happened to him. So apparently there is an online save and and offline save. It's bad enough you have to play each episode multiple times in order to 100% the game -- now you have to play it ANOTHER time to handle this. Bottom line: do NOT buy LSW:TCS for the online coop.

I considered returning it as defective, but I have played it with a neighbor just on the same Xbox, not over Live, and the game works fine (camera can still get wonky), and it still has some funny moments, so I guess I'll keep it.

4. I'm a big fan of Mr. Driller for the Dreamcast, so I'm curious how tomorrow's XBLA release will fare...

The two CompUSA's in Austin just started their liquidation sales.

Good riddance to your bait-and-switch advertising and your unreliable store-brand PC parts.

I stopped in to one of the stores after seeing signs all over declaring 30-50% off everything. Of course once in the store I find the caveats, like a lot of things 20% off and all Apple stuff 10% off. The remaining inventory had been moved from the outer aisles of the store to the innermost part. Shell-shocked employees stood grimly around offering help. I found "deals" like 30% off expired printer ink. Xbox games were 30% off but there wasn't anything I wanted. Finally I see this gem:

...an Xbox that "does not work", and is "missing cord(s)" for $251.99. Such value.

So will the CompUSA legacy live on forever on the billboards in Paradise City? Or did Criterion have the sense to make the billboards updateable to put new advertising on them?

I've been playing Burnout Paradise too much and now have "boost thumb". Kinda like tennis elbow, except it hurts where my thumb attaches to my right hand, from holding down the A button so much. So for therapy I'm getting back to Mass Effect to give the thumb some rest.

But I still have so much to learn about the layout of Paradise City -- like finding the darn on-ramps and exits from the freeway, which I like to use for road rage events. A couple minor gripes: The game hides the street names during some events, but not all, and that during an event (at least during a road rage), which defeats the purpose of having the street signs on the screen in the first place, IMO. Also you can only use a repair shop once, which might be OK, but its icon still shows up on the HUD map, misleading me into thinking it's still usable. Usually during an event you end up all over the map and and old fart like me doesn't always remember which one's I've used and which I haven't. Of course I suppose I need to get good enough to not need a repair shop during an event, but...

I saw the license plate above in a parking lot in downtown Austin yesterday. Generic plates are a combination of 6 letters and numbers with a hiccup in the middle. This isn't a personalized plate because the letters aren't raised on those, and consequently they look fake (and not worth the extra $30).