I am a huge, huge Bookworm fan.  I own like 4 copies of it.  I can play it for hours on my tablet PC, for which the pen interface is perfect.  So I was quite excited to pick up Bookworm Adventures, the sequel, today.  It got some good buzz on QT3.

But I was quite saddened when I actually fired it up.  I need to give it another chance but they fundamentally changed the core mechanic away from finding letter chains to just playing Boggle. Boggle is not Bookworm.  I like all the new stuff they added, and maybe it will redeem itself.  But really, I just wanted a super-cooler Bookworm, not a different word game just using Bookworm's name...

Well, the Warcraft expansion has been delayed long enough that I'm starting to feel the itch to play a different MMO.  A number of my friends have been saying that EQ2 has really turned around and become a quality game in the last year... so a quick trip to Fry's later I've got a copy of all the new expansions.

Which of course, I promptly leave at work.

Fortunately, you can download the whole thing directly once you own it on your account.  Hooray again for digital distribution, which was also how I scored a copy of Medieval Total War 2 this week.  I know it's still quite a while before the retailers stop being the great holders of power in the game industry, but I can finally see that day approaching on the horizon...

Ah, back from a weeklong trip at Walt Disney World.  A very nice vacation with the family, if not all that relaxing... MGM was probably our favorite place to visit, and acquiring action figures from the various stores was the main pursuit of the boys.  In the future maybe I'll get more rollercoaster riding in...

One nice surprise was on Wednesday being called and told that my PS3 preorder was available!  So this morning I zipped over to Gamestop and grabbed it, along with Resistance and Genji.  They were out of HDMI cables, which turned out to be a blessing -- the official Sony HDMI cables are quite a ripoff!  The exact same cable that they charge $60 for can be fairly easily found for $20.  It's digital, so there's no issues with the quality of the signal.  In fact, when I went to Fry's literally the same piece of hardware was $60 in the HDTV aisle and $20 in the computer cables aisle.  Crazy.

I'm saving Resistance for tonight after the boys go to sleep but my initial impressions of the PS3 are generally favorable... it's a huge piece of hardware but very quiet, and physically quite nice (if somewhat large).  Setting it up was pretty easy once I had the right cables, though I couldn't get it to navigate my wireless security at all.  In general it's a less polished experience than the Xbox 360 dashboard or Xbox Live, and it's full of little bugs like having to power down after playing a Blu-ray movie to get sound in a game.

I can't say it's worth the huge tent city feeding frenzy back on launch day though.  Judging from eBay most of those were speculators anyways, who are rapidly finding that their visions of $2500 auctions and easy money are not very realistic.  $1000 sales seem much more the norm, and hey a few hundred bucks of profit is OK I guess but doesn't seem worth days of camping out...

Whew, been a hard couple of weeks of crunch time on our project.  We have a pretty important internal milestone coming up and we decided to put in some extra time to get it stabilized and in shape.  Crunch time at Ensemble is pretty tame compared to other places I've worked... typically no more than a couple of weeks at a time, well spaced throughout the lifetime of the project when we just need a little extra punch to tie things off.  It is amazing what a hard deadline and increased coordination can do to cause some decisions to get made and get stuff actually in the game.

We also bring food in, which is bad for my waistline but very convenient and a nice touch of respect that the company has for our time.  Typically official crunch hours are 10 AM to 10 PM, Monday through Thursday, with Fridays being regular hours and weekends off.  Of course, some individuals work longer hours than that based on what they're doing -- if I'm in the zone I will often just stay until 2 AM, because at that point I've missed my window of opportunity for going home to see my family.

A far cry from the 100 hour week death marches we did at Looking Glass.  It's an interesting philosophical question as to whether or not removal of all crunch time would be desirable (or effective) but the way Ensemble handles it seems like a pretty good mix of practicality and long term health to me.

Sadly, I found out this week that I am not in fact getting a PS3 on launch day, as my preorder receipt from Gamestop would seem to indicate.  The rumors of Gamestop cutting back their preorders are in fact accurate, and being 7th of 8 at my local store, I've been bumped.  I guess that makes me first in line for the second shipment, but who knows when that will be?

Camping doesn't seem much of an option.  It's 40 degrees outside here in Dallas.  I would not want to be any of the people camped out at local Best Buys, Walmarts, etc for a shot at a PS3 on Friday.  But they are undeterred, and even if I wanted to join them in their vigil, it probably wouldn't even be enough to secure me one.

In reality, I'm not nearly as upset about being bumped from my preorder as I might be.  Really, I'm indignant more on principle than anything else, as I didn't expect to get a preorder in the first place.  Gears of War and Final Fantasy XII are keeping me more than busy, so Resistance (the only launch title that seems to be worthwhile) would just be sitting on the shelf in any event...

Playing a shared Viva Pinata garden with my son is certainly proving to add an extra level of difficulty.  I popped into the game this morning to find that the huge pond I'd carved out to attract new and exciting forms of pinatas had been entirely filled back in ... apparently Xavier's favorite groundskeeping activity is planting grass.  So anything that can be filled in and replanted, is.  Well, at least I briefly had my Newtgat... :)

It's not a new feature to the overall genre, but the way that cross-game mail is implemented in VP is pretty interesting as well.  You can ship crates of goods between games, just directly to other Xbox Live users in your friends list.  I was pleased to find a small token gift from a friend, and sent him back some home-grown Blackberries in return.  I don't know if they go to Animal Crossing like lengths where you can only get some key resources via import or not...

So I finally finished Half Life 2: Episode 1 this evening.  Yeah, I know, I'm behind the times.  I really love the Half Life series, but I try not to play them in very long bursts... that way the intensity and novelty of the experience is best every time I play.  At the end of Episode 1, you get a brief trailer about some of what happens in Episode 2. 

I think this is really genius.  In general, in this industry we are too disorganized and irregular, both in creative output and scheduling, to really make this sort of thing happen.  But I think it is very smart.  Cross-promotion between titles, but also really enabling older titles to talk about future ones, is just good long term planning.  The banner ads on the Xbox Live dashboard is a move in that direction, but I don't want to feel marketed to -- I want to be informed and excited.  The fact that you can't just play the coming soon teaser until you finish the main game is very smart (though I'm certain that same content is easily downloaded on the internet).

Of course, I guess HL2: Episode 2 has now been delayed until next year so I guess the plan didn't work as well as originally intended... Oh, and in case it wasn't obvious, HL2: Episode 1 was really a fantastic experience as well.  It starts off a bit weak but the last few levels were very solid.  Like many other similar experiences it's at its strongest when it is juxtaposing the mundane and the extraordinary, like fighting in the urban areas, and weakest when doing bizarre alien stuff with no point of reference.

My two boys have been in love with Viva Pinata since I downloaded two episodes of the TV show to the Xbox 360.  I think they've watched those two episodes 50+ times apiece.  Well, today I received my copy of Viva Pinata (one of the perqs of being owned by Microsoft).  I have to admit, I had kind of low expectations for this game, and mostly was going to just play it for my kids' benefit.

But I have to say, it's pretty addictive, in that Animal Crossing / Harvest Moon kind of way.  Lots of pinata wildlife to observe and figure out, lots of building and buying and gardening to do.  The whole way in which the pinata world brings sex (I mean "romance", where the pinata does the "romance dance" and summons an egg) and death (the pinatas actually hunt one another as part of an ecosystem).  The matter is handled quite tastefully and kid-friendly of course, but it is definitely a little off the usual subject matter in kids' games.

All that said, I'm quite enjoying it and the production quality is pretty decent.  A pleasant surprise from Rare, which has been a bit off their game lately... nice to see them back a bit in form.

Among the many excellent games out this week is Elite Beat Agents, which is the Western re-working of the crazy Japanese game Ossu Tatakae Ouendan, that I've written about before.  It's interesting to see how they are re-envisioning it for the very different audience while seeming to retain a lot of the zaniness about the original.  The new title is certainly much more pronounceable...

It's not likely to get a ton of press, but I highly recommend it if you like any kind of rhythm games or quirky diversions.

Sorry for the short updates this week, they're likely to continue.  We're in crunch at work, blasting away at a pretty important internal milestone.  Which will be very nice to have in the bag, but meanwhile is occupying a lot of my time.

I've still barely gotten into FFXII... but now I also have a copy of Guitar Hero 2 to distract me!  I went with the extra controller, figuring that the life expectancy of my old controllers with a crazed 2 yr old in the house is probably not all that long, and they could be hard to acquire in a few months.

Rock on!  :)