Baba Yetu

Soren Johnston wrote recently on the music of Civ 4, which reminded me of Baba Yetu once again. I had found Christopher Tin's blog recently purely because of that song, and the memories of countless hours replaying Civ4 and just sitting at the title screen soaking it in.

Now Soren's done up a back story to Baba Yetu along with numerous youTube performances.

Here's my fave; amazing body in the song from such a small group:



A Fanatic on .. err .. CivFanatics did up the lyrics.

As I was going through the vids I thought that this would be an AWESOME Guitar Hero: World Tour song for the trackmaker. Might see if Christopher has a PS3 ;).

GameLog 61 & 62

Colonization (30h) - Remake of the Sid Meier classic. Plays almost identically, but more emphasis on defeating the old world rather than sucking up the taxhikes and seeing out the turns.

Deus Ex (15h) - After a stint at Fallout 2, I opened up Deus Ex for another step up the ladder of "great" games I didn't get to play 1st time around. Plays more like MGS than Quake. Didn't really get deep enough into the story to really see it shine.

World of Goo (10h) - Nuff said

FM08 (5h) - Gateshead, 2nd BlueSquare Premier - Only a few more games to go in the season. I'm in the FA Trophy finals which I was gunning for, but also managed to get into the Setanta Shield final for a back-to-back win.

Warhammer Online (5h)
Veeyar, 19 Bright Wizard, Lustria
Veeyar, 12 Shaman, Anlec

GH3(4h) - Just mucking around after work.

Trackmania nations (3h) - Real F1 Racing again.

+ Lots of little demos and online Kongregate games. Procrastination mode is keeping me away from doing something substantial and the next big wave of collectibles are on their way.

Gone all Gooey

I was intrigued at one of Andrew's articles. At first I thought it was half-wake half-dream ramble, but enough made sense to keep reading. In the end I didn't really know what to think, but it made me feel better for reading it. I read it again, then again. I got more and more out of it each time, like reruns through hitchhikers.

I took me a while to realise that it was a kudos piece to an indie game World of Goo, which lead me to nab the demo to see what it was about. An hour later the office was dark. Oops! Time to go home. It played like Bridge builder and Gish combined, but with a whole lot of additional style. I checked when I got home who the creator was because it seemed quite likely it was Chronic Logic finally breaking out. Alas no. Bridge builder will still have a special place in my gaming memory, but we're onto a whole new thing here.

The demo had me hooked, but the tower building challenge would have been enough for me apart from knowing I didn't have enough goo to make the tallest. A $30 outlay seemed a fair deal to really see what the game was like. I'm glad I got it too. I had briefly read some other plaudits for the game (10/10's everywhere), but I'd seen enough to warrant it anyway.

You know what this game reminds me of? Portal. Here you are, caught up in some interesting puzzles where each room seems fresh, then all of a sudden you're in the middle of a story. There's a subtle twist where the "Goo" could mean something entirely different as a Corporation; a world corporation; an evil corporation that bled out the internet with personalized advertising. Man, that brought a smile to my face!

I've raved to Sandy about it during tea time and have literally laughed out loud at certain sections that dragged her over to have a look. I'm pretty sure she'll play it once her Colonization game is over.

After tea there was an agonizing choice. I had the 300 max goobers to build my tower, but there was still more to the story. I tried an idea I had for a 3 pronged tower, but it failed miserably so I headed back into the story. Again like portal, the whole storyline finished up pretty quickly and left me feeling comfortably complete. Well, apart from those couple of OCD's I missed ...

This game out-portalled Portal. The puzzles were fresher each level, the OCDs more devious, the music on the whole was better (but it's hard to go past the closing credits & song of portal) and I loved the art style, it all fits for one smooth inhale. Love it. Now I can't stop thinking about it and it has me blogging away at 1am after finishing it off. Maybe it's tower time?

One thing I must have missed was the hype. I had thought that since it was an indie game it stood to reason that this one wouldn't have come up on my radar much sooner, but there have been people pre-ordering since February. If I can stumble on games like this and enjoy it all the more because it's all new, then I'm turning in my boarding pass for future hype trains.

Oh and now Andrew's post makes even more sense. Fan fiction for an indie game. Who'd a thunk it! (Doh! just remembered Boatmurdered)

And another thing I forgot, no DRM! And it closes immediately on Alt-F4! It's just a pleasure to use.

Collector's Edition

I had an idea for a site to help collectors of computer game paraphenealia gather together, but it looks like it's already in the making.

Now I know my ABCs

An odd thought occurred to me while listening to Cameron sing through the Alphabet Song. The last line finishes with "Next time won't you sing with me?". Who is that question directed to? If Cameron is singing it to me, is it an invite to sing along next time purely for accompaniment? It certainly feels as though the words are meant as a direction from adult to child, or mentor to pupil; an encouragement to learn the song by singing along. It also smacks of progression. Once you have learned the song you can then pass it down. The student becoming the teacher.

I don't recall such an overtly learning centred verse existing in other songs, although I'm surprised it has taken 35 years to realise that the words are so purposeful. Maybe it's the Teaching degree kicking in; changing my mind to look for pedagogical principles.

GameLog 59 & 60

Uni is finished for the year and school holidays have come and gone.

Warhammer Online (30h)
Veeyar, 18 Bright Wizard, Lustria
Veeyar, 11 Shaman, Anlec
Finally got some time to build up some toons in Warhammer. Lustria started off pretty good, but it's a deadzone compared to the betas. Finally made up another character on the OpenRvR server and it's a totally different experience with Scenarios popping with less than a 10 minute wait.

GH3(7h) - Sam brought over his guitar for some co-op and battles for the Saturday LAN. Good fun. Looking forward to GH:WT.

Fallout 2 (7h) - Started playing Fallout 2 in preparation of Fallout 3 in a month's time. It probably hasn't aged as well as I remember.

Trackmania nations (5h) - Real F1 Racing have set up 100 famous F1 circuits with a 5 lap, no restart server. Seemed odd to start with and a little anal with the ruleset, but I'm enjoying it a lot now.

FM08 (5h) - Gateshead, 2nd BlueSquare Premier - Read a bit about FM09 and it's new 3D mode. Either this version is going to be the last of the greats or the new one will be the first of an even greater series. Triggered me into at least finishing off the season.

Kongregate (2h) - Played enough to get a couple more cards for Kongai
Kongai (2h) - Started some ranked games because the practice was getting a little antsy with people kicking or dropping more often than not.

New TV

Finally picked up a new TV after our old 68cm chinese CRT finally died after 3 dodgy years. After spending a week looking around online and in the stores I finally decided yesterday that it came down to 2 decisions:

1) Get a decent plasma:
I had read great reviews of the Panasonic TH-42PX8A 106cm HD Digital Plasma, especially its ability to display SD in HD as my DVD-R will only be playing back SD. Getting one for around $1300 looked achievable onine.

2) Get an 80-90cm LCD:
After finally tossing out the need for 1080p (even though I have a PS3), I just needed a decent 80cm HD TV for under $1000, hopefully ~$800.

I went in to Clive Peeters with the plan, get them to drop the price of either one of these to my target and I'd walk out the store a happy man. For all my use of the internet I'd still rather talk with a real person when it comes to deal time. I want them to look me in the eye and say it's a good deal, and assure me that it's going to last a while. That to me is more important than a bit of paper for warranty. If someone wants to stick their reputation on the line with the sale, then I'm happy to trust them.

The plasma price was almost there at $1450, but no 80cm LCDs under $1100. Eventually got the price of the plasma to $1300 and was almost settled on it when I looked a little harder at the screen. It was playing back some NTSC American Football review and was shearing all over the place. I got him to hook up the normal terrestrial signal to see what it was like and it too didn't cope very well. It got better when you went ~3-4m away, but I lie on a matress in front of the TV only ~2m away. It might be a great 106, but useless to me.

So I turned to the LCDs and was again looking at another Panasonic that came in cheapest, a
Panasonic VIERA TX-32LXD80A 80cm knocked down to $970. It looked great, fit with the DVD-R, but just a little expensive. Hunted around some other stores but couldn't get anything near that price, so I picked it up with a moderate smile on my face.

Grabbed the PS3 from Mark's on the way home as well as 2 HDMI cables to complete the setup. Plugged it in and set it up straight from the antannae first to test HD. It's a dream. Sweet crisp picture, no artifacts, good on movement. Oddly enough the difference between SD and HD was mainly noticable through the sound; the picture was great on normal SD.

I then plugged in the DVD-R through HDMI and set up the VIERA link. The signal comes through the same from normal SD channels, but was a little lossy from playback. Might have to set the recording level up a notch now that I have a TV that can handle it. Sound was great too, but VIERA link was a little gimpy. Yes you could control the DVD-R from the TV remote, but not nearly as easily as from its own remote. It will be convenient if you can't be assed getting up to get the other remote, but if they are both within reach it's a waste (much as I thought).

Watched a couple of hours of normal tellie and was really impressed. It was better than I was expecting and the system was working wonderfully together. I had the stereo running off the TV now instead of from the DVD-R, so no matter what I'm watching, be it HDTV, SD thru DVD-R, DVDs, DivX, or PS3, it can all be heard properly. Now I have a real incentive to set up the satellite speakers.

Next I set up the PS3. At first it failed to play any sound, but I'd fiddled with HDMI at Mark's for a comparison and it didn't redetect a new TV on the other end of HDMI. Kinda silly, wasn't that part of the point of HDMI? Anyway, didn't take long to get the PS3 to set up the link again and get it all working sweetly. GH3 in 720p was Ok, but there were some noticable jaggies like there wasn't any anti-aliasing. Might fiddle with 1080p to see if it cleans it up through an upscale and downscale. Since the PS3 had been sitting upstairs for the past 2 months it also hadn't been connected to the net, so of more concern was the 50 minutes lost to automatic updates.

Bottom line: I love it. Thought I'd been forced a downgrade by the plasma, but I definitely made the right choice.

Guitar Hero World Tour Hands-On Preview - AusGamers.com

Digging around a bit today on some AusGamers previews for the coming crunch months and it looks like I messed an excellent Guitar Hero World Tour Hands-On Preview. I'm dead keen for the ability to make your own songs (and that fact alone will make me buy the game over RB, RBII), but I was pleased to hear about the drumkit. Cameron will be pleased.

Free Full Games

Ausgamers has a couple of new free games:
Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War Free Full Game
Area 51 Free Full Game

Take Note

Looks like I'll give EverNote a try for simple document tracking. Hopefully there's something for my phone to link in too...