Tea Leaves

Some weeks are made for long and thoughtful articles. And some are just made for top 10 lists.

In the queue: Nintendo Wii, ¡Viva Piñata!, and an assortment of other games. But for tonight, we have monkeys.

22. The dominant monkey (pdinda)

21. The favorite monkey who’s friends with the dominant monkey (pdinda)

20. The monkey who’s right (pdinda)

19. The monkey who makes sure all the other monkeys around them are happy (jch)

18. The monkey with the Stilton (psu)

17. The monkey with the biggest, brightest fluorescent ass (scottd)

16. Monkey at the top of the tower with the sniper rifle (jch)

15. Monkey who has to pretend to know everything (jch)

14. The monkey with the Covenant energy sword (psu)

13. The monkey that stole my lantern (peterb)

12. The nameless monkey (psu)

11. Heartwarming monkey with Down’s Syndrome (jch)

10. Code monkey (peterb)

9. Shit-flinging monkey (jch)

8. Monkey who reads my weblog and finds a comment written by a chick he doesn’t know and then sends her email asking her out. I hate that fucking creepy monkey. (peterb)

7. The monkey whose smile always seems just a little too forced (roc)

6. Naughty monkey (peterb)

5. The giant invisible and omnipotent monkey in the sky who loves you but needs money (pdinda)

4. Peter Nesmith (dlc)

3. Grammar monkey (psu)

2. Free monkey in the box of cereal (jch)

1. The monkey who replies to your email in under a minute, proving he has nothing to do except check email over and over and over again in the hope of receiving tasty pellets (roc)

Wikipedia may have a longer list, but here at Tea Leaves we know that size doesn’t matter. Much.

20. The Salty Lassi (peterb)

19. The Slab Apricot (peterb)

18. Toad in the Hole (jch)

17. Chicken Tikka (rajesh)

16. Bubble and Squeak (jch)

15. Cherry Tart (peterb)

14. Dublin coddle (rlink)

13. Black and Tan (peterb)

12. Apple Turnover (rlink)

11. Pumpkin. (baird)

10. Hot mustard pretzel (mwm)

9. Pigs in a blanket (mwm)

8. Hand Roll (peterb)

7. Over hard / Over easy (rlink)

6. Forcemeat (rlink)

5. Head cheese (mwm)

4. Jelly Roll (peterb)

3. Hot Toddy (rlink)

2. Banana Split Brownie Pizza (mwm)

1. Bangers and Mash (rlink)

I’ve been watching some football in HD on my big TV this year. Since all HD broadcast options at this time in our history are about as appealing as drinking sewage for lunch, I’ve been doing it over the air. Today my antenna would not pick up FOX, so I watched the game on my Tivo instead. As a result, I missed much of the experience of the live broadcast.

1. The 10 minutes of commercials on either side of a score as they cut away after the extra point and after the kickoff.

2. The interminable video reviews due to challenges or “booth” reviews. The replay rules in the NFL are the dumbest thing to be added to a sports rulebook since they made zone defense illegal in the NBA. They fixed the zone rules in the NBA, the NFL should fix this too.

3. The “reporter on the field” segments. Who are these reporters on the field? This has to be the dregs of the dregs as far as a position in sports broadcasting is concerned.

4. Promos for intellectually offensive series TV on Fox (or CBS). The best are the ones that involve decapitated bodies and bloody stumps in the promo during “family” viewing time.

5. The dozens of on-the-field time outs. The recent fashion here is to call a time out milliseconds before the opposing team snaps the ball for a field goal, so they have to set up and run the whole play again. In the future, doing this should result in an automatic 3 points for the team kicking the field goal and they should be able to run the play again.

6. Bud light commercials.

7. Random booth chatter between plays and after the TV timeouts.

8. The two minute warning. What is this for? Are we really saying that 60 grown men can’t figure out that there are two minutes left in the game?

9. The endless animations of the some combination of the NFL logo and the network TV logo.

10. Those touching “get to know” the player segments where we find out that the quarterback’s favorite band are the Dixie Chicks and he hangs out in leather S&M clubs with his wife and mistress in his spare time. I made that up.

All of this probably accounted for an hour out of a 3+ hour broadcast. It’s really too bad that I lost all of this because my antenna didn’t work right. I wonder if it’s working now. I wonder when there will be an HD Tivo solution that doesn’t require a budget the size of the Department of Defense to acquire.

Capitalism has failed me again.

It’s the United Atheist Alliance that has the correct answer to the Great Question. Science damn you!

Clearly the end of the world is upon us. Not only did the New York Times review the new PS3 this week, but in doing so they quoted that bastion of high quality online gaming journalism: Joystiq. The rest of the review went on to skewer the machine. The main complaint? The online service is clunky and hard to use.

I found this odd. Now, I’m as much of a fan of online interactions as anyone. I buy most of my CDs and books online. I sit and chat with my friends online. I spend too much time wanking on this web site. But as far as games are concerned, I just can’t get excited anymore. It’s pretty rare for me to actually take advantage of multiplayer gaming in Xbox Live these days. This was not always the case.

When I got the first Xbox, XBox Live was a great thing. Every couple of nights, eight of us would get on and kill Counterstrike bots for a few hours. The integrated friends list, private servers and the nice invite system made this easy.

After about six months of this, the whole thing died down and has never picked up again. There were two basic reasons for this.

1. People moved. A core group of Counterstrikers now live in the wrong time zone. This makes it hard to pick up a game.

2. People bought different games. Halo 2 and Splinter Cell were the big ones. But not everyone liked to play these games in the multiplayer. Splinter Cell in particular is hard to get into. You die a lot. A lot of people now spend most of their time online playing WoW. I bet this is not an insignificant effect.

As a result, I stopped playing games online. This is because of the Fundamental Theorem of Online Gameplay:

Playing online with people you don’t know sucks.

This cannot be overstated. Sturgeon’s law applies here in triplicate. 99.99% of everyone you meet in a random online game are racist, immature, illiterate assholes. Therefore, it is only worth playing with people that you know or have had previous interactions with to indicate that they are not racist immature illiterate assholes.

The result of all this is that while I appreciate the design and execution of Xbox Live, and the friends list, and the invite system, the truth is I hardly ever use it. Even when there is a great game to try out with my friends (Gears of War), it hasn’t really come together. I did manage to participate in some chainsawing goodness with the people over at GWJ, thus avoiding the fundamental theorem. But even though some in the old Counterstrike crowd have had the game for more than a week, we have not been able to try out the co-op or get into a nice team killing match.

These days, my main use for Xbox Live is downloading game demos so I am sure to never buy another Ubisoft Shooter. All I really need for this is a net connection and a browser interface. No friends list, no online co-op, no developer time wasted on multiplayer modes that are nowhere near as good as Halo anyway, no “gamer points”, no “achievements”. What the hell are achievements anyway? In other words, it seems to me that most of the extras in Xbox Live are just fluff around a core functionality that is hard to care about anymore.

So while there are many reasons to not buy a PS3, a clunky online interface is not one of them. Both Nintendo and Sony will have time to put some polish on their download systems, and that’s all most people will really care about in my opinion. Because ya know, everyone has exactly the same needs as I do.

I’ve written about it before, but every year around Thanksgiving, Susan Stamberg gets on NPR to pimp her family’s disgusting cranberry relish, and so I feel that it is my duty to protect my readers: Mama Stamberg’s cranberry relish was revolting the first time it was made, it was revolting the last time it was made, it is an inherently revolting recipe and if you make it, and claim to enjoy it, you are an overprivileged and self-deluded yuppie wretch.

Make my relish instead. Happy Thanksgiving!

With the Wii and the PS3 sold out, I sat down for a peaceful weekend with games I had already bought. For the 360, I had been itching to play a decent shooter, and with some trepidation I picked up Gears of War. I’m happy to say that it doesn’t suck.

The hype for Gears of War was overwhelming. When the game finally arrived, the press for it made me nervous. While the reviews were overwhelmingly positive, there seemed to be a subtext in each one that was telling you in code that the game was no good, but that the review had to be good because this was the game that would justify the existence of the Xbox 360.

After playing the game for a week, I am ready to say that the game does what a good shooter must set out to do: the shooting is fun. The pacing and combat in the game is well implemented, if a bit repetitive. The core mechanic is pleasingly tactical, especially in the multiplayer. You scoot from place to place, keeping your head down, biding your time until the enemy pops out of cover and lets you shoot it. Then you open up and make things blow up. When you do this right, you get a pleasurable little rush.

When a shooter gets the combat right, you can forgive it a lot of problems, and this is the case with Gears. So now I get to complain.

The AI is not great. There are stupid checkpoints. At times, the combined cover/roll mechanic goes haywire, and you end up stuck to a rock somewhere rather than rolling out of the way of an oncoming missile. This generally leads to your death and a temptation to throw the controller.

There are Boss battles of uninspired and derivative design. In one case, I ended up fighting one guy for an hour because every time I figured out how to not get killed, my stupid robot partner would get himself killed. Note to Cliffy: don’t make me escort your retarded A.I characters through your stupid Boss battles.

The plot and narrative in the game barely exists. You are dropped into a bombed out city and you run from place to place shooting things until the you get to the next checkpoint. Then you rest and do it all again. There isn’t much in the way of character development, but the characters are sort of fun anyway.

There are a few weird production issues. It seems to me that both the environments and the colors used to fill them in are overly bland. The blood effects looks cartoony and stupid. Finally, the sound effects are too loud and annoying. Even if you turn the audio down, every once in a while some grunt will vomit loudly in your face. This is annoying.

The game is on the short side. I’m already into the last chapter after less than a week. That’s very fast for me. The multiplayer and co-op will be good for some replay. But, for a game that is supposed to be Halo until the next Halo comes out, they could have at least implemented a decent matchmaking system. The multiplayer lobby in this game is a crippled mess. Once you get in a game though, the multiplayer is a nice change. The game rewards good team play and good tactics, and there is no respawn. It’s more like Counterstrike than Halo, and that’s a good thing.

Overall, I am happy enough with the game that I’m not sending it to Ebay immediately. But, as a reality check, I do have to say that this game is no console-defining franchise. The flow of the single player game is not as pleasing as Halo 2, and the multiplayer is not nearly as polished.

Still, when was the last time there was a shooter on the Xbox that didn’t suck? And the best part is, between matches I can play Guitar Hero 2.

Guitar Hero 2 is as good as it ever was. I can’t disagree with Pete when he says that it’s a better game with music that is not as good. Still, the big Rock Anthems (Freebird, etc) are a blast to play, and the practice mode is letting me get further into Hard than I could have on Guitar Hero 1. I’m 10 songs into Hard and I may yet learn how to shift my hands around fast enough to get through the rest of the sets. But I doubt it.

The co-op mode is also a blast. Pete and I were rocking out on Freebird last night and I thought our drummer really would explode.

In summary, Gears of War is a great core shooter wrapped up in a shell with some problems. Guitar Hero 2 is more fun than should be allowed to be packaged into a single DVD.

Now that that’s out of the way, I can start on Final Fantasy 12.

Having observed three or four launch days in my short time dabbling with computer games, I will never quite understand the psychology of it. It seems like gamers have a sort of bi-polar passive agressive OCD when it comes to product launches.

On the one hand, in the lead up to the big day you have article after article about how supply is bad, the launch titles are bad, the hardware is overpriced, the bundles are stupidly expensive, the accessories are lame, and the pack-in extras nearly worthless. None of this is surprising, because it’s all true. Launch titles are notoriously bad. For some reason, the hardware manufacturers think it’s a great idea to launch even though they don’t have enough to sell and, you know, make a profit. Retailers have a captive audience to which they can attach arbitrary numbers of useless items while filling their coffers with the extra margins.

The thing is, everyone knows this. We all know it’s a scam. We all know it will be months or years before the hardware is really worth buying. So here is my question: given this, and given that the weeks before the launch are spent whining about exactly these problems, why is it that on the day itself, you find people waiting in line in the snow, in the rain, in the cold, in the mud, 9 months pregnant, and then getting shot just to get this piece of hardware that apparently no rational being on the face of the earth should have any interest in actually purchasing?

Why then can you flip a new PS3 on Ebay for $2500?

Why all the collective suffering over something that according to the news reports two weeks ago, nobody wants?

Can anyone answer this question for me?

Anyway, good luck on Sunday with the Wii.

Pink isn’t a stupid girl

I’m sure J.K. Rowling gets enough acclamation from everyone in the world that she doesn’t need my approval as well. But nonetheless, here’s a tip of the hat to her for writing this short essay on the common obsession of worrying about one’s looks and, specifically, fat.

It’s not simply for the content of her essay, which is typically simply written, personal, direct, and to the point, but because she pointed me towards the artist “Pink” and her song “Stupid Girls” (iTunes link).

The song is good.

The video, however, (YouTube link, iTunes link) moves beyond the realm of “good” into “magically awesome.” (Used in a sentence: “Gabriel Garcia-Marquez’s novel 100 Years of Solitude is an example of the literary style known as magical awesomeness.”)

Winter in Pittsburgh can be a cold and cruel time. The weather turns gray, with a chilly wind and the occasional slushy rain. It has been this way this week in Pittsburgh, but I haven’t let it beat me down because I have made two small but uplifting discoveries.

At work, we have this superautomatic espresso machine. You pour beans and water in one end, and shots of black espresso come out the other. The problem is that the shots are too small and the espresso is not that good. I’m tired of it.

I have also been searching for a solution to the problem of making coffee for groups at home. Normally, I use a single cup filter scheme or a Moka Pot, but neither of these work for 3 or more people. Then, last week in the strip I spied a dusty box sitting on top of one of the shelves. It was an 8 cup carafe and a really huge version of the single cup filter that I have used for years. Perfect!

One problem remained. The thin glass carafe does not keep the coffee hot.

To the web I went, listing insulated containers of all shapes and sizes. The carafe-shaped ones cost ludicrous amounts of money. The thermos shaped ones were not that much cheaper. I stared at amazon.com a crushed and defeated man.

Then, the other day, I was at the Target buying Gears of War, and I saw what I wanted on the shelf. A two-layer stainless steel vacuum insulated bottle. Big enough to hold coffee for 4 and keep it hot for a nearly arbitary amount of time. As a bonus, it was much cheaper than any of the failed products at Amazon. Yay for Target.

The bottle has also solved my coffee-at-work problem. I can make a whole bottle full at home in the morning and bring it to work for the whole day. Since drinking a whole liter of coffee every day would kill me, I can also share it with my co-workers and gain their esteem as a man of culture and taste. “What is this excellent coffee” they will ask me, my ego inflating the whole time.

As a bonus, against all expectations, Gears of War turns out to not suck. It only took a year, but finally the Xbox 360 has a core shooting game to call its own which is not some piece of shit from Ubisoft.

So, as winter approaches and the cold rain falls outside, all I can say to the world is: thanks for small favors.