It was apparently not merely enough for Thunder (ex-Age fan community webmaster, now part of our Live team) to crush me in a game of Halo Wars recently, he had to post about it officially for all to see!  All things considered I'm actually pretty happy that I even was able to go 1-1 with him ... despite many years of working on RTSes I'm still rather mediocre at best at actually playing them.  It certainly was a fun game, and maybe I'll get my revenge on him next time...

Finally had a chance to sit down and play the Transformers game with my boys... and much to my surprise it isn't all that bad!  Traveller's Tales is still a kind of hit or miss developer for me, and Transformers is no Lego Star Wars -- but it is a surprisingly well executed blend of robot-fighting and open world driving.  The key transformation mechanic actually works pretty well, and Xavier and I are having a lot of fun zipping around as a car, then popping out into robot form to smack down some baddie.

One very nice element is the amount of effort they put into destructible buildings.  While it certainly isn't 100% physically accurate, they destroy quite nicely over many stages and have enough localized damage to make your impact feel solid. 

Be warned though, it is surprisingly difficult compared to most of these movie franchise tie-in games (which are typically tuned for smaller kids).  The freaking second mission in the game totally stopped my 6 yr old and took me a number of tries to beat.  It actually gets a good bit easier after that, but relies on a lot of boss fights with gimmicky tricks that are not at all obvious at first...

Alexander, my material-focused 3 yr old, discovered a large cache of Transformer toys from my (and my brothers') childhood.  One of them in particular, a tank Transformer, became his favorite and he'd transform it over and over, carry it with him to bed, etc.  Unfortunately, he lost it and I thought I'd see how replaceable it is.  Much to my amazement, there is at least one awesome website out there dedicated to identifying Transformer toys with categories by color, type of vehicle, etc.  A little eBay action and I have a new "Quake" Transformer on the way. 

It amazes me that such well-maintained website exists, but I am more than happy to benefit from the obsessions of others.  Speaking of my family's obsessions, my older son was counting down the days to the Transformers videogame, which I am looking forward to playing around with myself...

I admit I always loved the old E3 -- the gaudy spectacle of it all combined with a sneak peek at all the games I wouldn't otherwise get to play for months (years?) just tickled the fanboy in me to no end.  So the new slimline E3 is not the same, though it looks like we may see some similar level of big info-filled presentations from the Big 3 console makers.

This year Sony is unveiling Killzone 2 right on top of the MS one, which strikes me as a bit combative even for our industry.  http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=166456 

Maybe that sort of thing always happened in the past and I never noticed... this doesn't really impact those of us watching at home, of course.  I'll be glued to Gamespot for E3 coverage like I was last year, and hopefully they won't disappoint.

I finally squeaked past "Freya" on Expert in Guitar Hero 2.  What a rush!  I thought my fingers were going to fall off by the end of that really long green-orange-(yellow/blue) section, but something finally clicked enough for me to hit just enough notes to survive.  That same session I 5-starred "Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight" on Hard, which had been plaguing me for the longest time -- I now have the first 3 tiers of songs 5-starred on Hard.

The really creepy thing is now that I'm typing, my fingers keep trying to relate this muscle memory to the Guitar Hero muscle memory and play "chords" with the keyboard.  It is really kind of freaking me out...

BTW, I got a sneak peek at the Halo Wars E3 demo on Friday -- the HW team has really been cranking on it and they called the whole company together in the ES theater to check it out.  I was totally blown away by it, easily the best E3 demo we've ever put together here at Ensemble.  That team has really been putting some fine touches on that baby and all the TLC realy shows.  I'm quite looking forward to seeing how the press reacts in a few weeks (or whenever it is that the "new" E3 is...)

More offsite stuff today.  Whew.  Draining.  So short update...

Picked up 2 games for the DS today, and one game for the PSP (Dungeon Maker, a wacky RPG I highly recommend so far).  It was quite notable to me that I'm buying more DS and PSP games just to play "for real", not only for trips...  Portables really are coming into their own this generation, and you certainly don't have to look any further than the NPD charts to see proof of that.

 

Whew.  We went to Six Flags Over Texas today with the family.  Fun stuff, the boys are old enough to be interested in some of the smaller rides (especially the 3 yr old adrenaline junkie).  So not much to post today, I'm just beat.  We did spend 30 minutes wandering around lost but even that was fun -- theme parks do a great job of hiding neat little surprising and interesting things around every corner.  I love that sense of exploration in games, and there aren't a lot of opportunities to see it in real life as well.

I'm getting old though... a few roller coaster rides was enough to do me in!

In a fit of excellent timing, just before my current trip, this item arrived for me via import: a swank leather DS cartridge carrying case.  I have to say it is holding up quite nicely, even if Etrian Odyssey has mostly had an undisputed position in my DS (even with Ouendan 2 sitting unplayed -- thats a sign of how crazy busy this trip has been!).  The magnetic snap is very nice, and while I wish it held a few more games I feel much less worried about them than my old "ziploc bag full of cartridges" storage solution.

Really though the laptop has been the gaming star of this trip, even if I haven't managed much more than a few thousand years of Civilization 4. 

The Marriott here (Redmond Town Center) has a very nice touch that I hope becomes standard in all hotel rooms: a clock-radio with an MP3 input (AUX, really).  Sure, it's no high end sound system but it's a very nice convenience... 

Whew.  No posting last few days and maybe not much next few days either -- been traveling for work stuff.  So this is officially my first remote blog entry, I guess!  Hooray for the new laptop!

This trip has been particularly exhausting but my brief unwinding time in the hotel room has mostly been dominated by Civ 4.  It plays great on the M1210 and it is just a perfect game to get lost in for a little while.  I figure now is a good time to wring a little more gameplay out of Civ 4 + the Warlords expansion, with the new expansion on the way.  The expansion looks amazing, so I'm sure this will be a summer of Civ for me...