(Last week got surprisingly busy for me so few posts. And don't worry Captain Arcolier will have a post up on Web Serial Tuesday soon enough.) Last week I picked up Brain Age for the DS. It's an interesting title but I realized something. I don't like games that nag at me and Brain Age falls squarely into this camp. I bought it, tried it and thought "that was sort of interesting". Then I didn't play it the next day, and when I turned it own on the third day it complained about "missing me" the previous day. So today I thought "Hmm, maybe I'll play some Brain Age." and immediately followed that up with "Oh, but I didn't play yesterday, so it's gonna nag me." How is this a good feeling for a game to invoke? Pushing past this I turn it on and I want to solve a Sudoku puzzle. Oh no, Professor what's his head wants me to draw a hippopotamus first. There is no button for saying "I don't want to draw a hippo right now." The drawing tools in it are sucky, and even in just a few days I've learned to really dislike the drawing things. But the game in it's high and mighty wisdom decrees when I need to draw. My desires as the mere owner/guy who plunked down $20 are subordinate to whatever logic drives the drawing nonsense. So I just tapped the stylus on the screen and hit continue. And repeated that for the next two mandatory drawings. But it left a bad taste in my mouth. I'm sure when I stop using Brain Age it will be earlier than it would be if it just let me play when and how I wanted. What's weird is that this seems so entirely "un-Nintendo" at one level - but it's not. Animal Crossing (both the Gamecube and the DS version)? Constantly nagging you about spending more time in the game. You're not allowed to play multiplayer until you've finished the first hour or so of tutorial play. This is unfriendly game design and Nintendo needs to stop it. What's especially interesting to me is that this unfriendly "we control the horizontal" attitude seems linked to the games that are seen as reaching out to non-gamers. Is that really the winning strategy? I had less fun today with Brain Age because I felt like I was arguing with a stupid cartridge and I don't see why that wouldn't hold true for a non-gamer as well.

The comments on the last entry are turning into a mishmash of discussion of the show in general while trying to avoid spoilers and some tiptoing around the actual season finale discussion. I sent Weezie an email last night with more discussion but after some thought I want to have it as a blog discussion so others can participate. So I'm going to use a cut here and post my email after the cut. Consider this entire post and comment thread to be spoiler marked if haven't watched all of both seasons of Galactica. (Reminder, this was all originally written as an email to Weezie. It's basically a response to Weezie's second comment - about expecting one of the character changes. I also edited a character name misspelling that I didn't catch in my original email) So I'm guessing you're talking about Callie hooking up with Chief Tyrol as the change you'd been waiting for? I was fine with that, was expecting it to happen for a while as well. Ever since Tyrol hashed things out with Helo it's been time for Callie to make a move. Now, it would have been MUCH more interesting to see Tyrol decide whether take a chance on Callie under military hierarchy - after he got busted for messing with a superior officer he would switch gears to a direct report. So in that sense I'm a little disappointed at a missed opportunity, but no big deal. So as for changes I thought were unsupported the absolute biggest one is Starbuck becoming some sort of Russian tent-wife character. It's out of character for her to muster out and become a civilian, it's out of character for her to just tool around the surface, seeming idle except for trying to take care of her man. Ugh. There was some sort of implied fight between her and Apollo, so perhaps they will later explain that, but I generally won't buy it. She wouldn't have gone groundside until forced to, and even if she pissed Lee off, she should be stationed on Galactica. Having her lead the resistance will be interesting - but they could have gotten the exact same thing by having her visiting the surface on leave, and not had any dissonance on her character. I don't think it's in character for Tyrol to be a union organizer. I don't have a major issue with him being on-planet although I'd contend he should be part of Adama's skeleton staff. He's already escaped punishment once because he was too critical to replace, why wasn't that true now? But perhaps Callie's pregnancy forced him dirtside . . . I'd give them benefit of the doubt on this if he was my worst objection. Much of the same is true of Gaeta turning civilian and working for Baltar (he's what - some sort of Chief of Staff now?) He had seemed to be disillusioned with Baltar over recent episodes, and seemed fiercely loyal to Adama. OTOH, he had expressed some dislike of being in the military, so maybe he'd take the out. I think it's impossible that Baltar wouldn't have taken a more substantial revenge on Rosslyn. In general I think they had built a FASCINATING crisis point up with the Rosslyn rigging the election and being caught by Gaeta & Adama. Rosslyn was in the wrong, but at the same time knew the survival of the Fleet was at stake. Dualla and Tigh were both guilty of complicity and betraying everything they fight for - it was a very charged complex situation. Which they then threw away to jump ahead a year. Dualla seemed to escape any sort of censure. That post I linked to described Season 2 BSG as "a show that constantly walks right up to the line, looks at it, looks at the viewer, and backs away again." I think the election is exactly that. They walked up to the line, looked at it, and backed away from addressing what happened in any meaningful way. Exactly the same way they backed away from the line after setting Cain and Adama at each other's throats. Even if they go back and revisit the aftermath next season it won't be as powerful. I like the resistance idea somewhat (although it seems a lot like a rehash of the Caprica storyline), but I think they rushed through a powerful and unique plot to set up boilerplate Sci-Fi plot trope #38 - human resistance versus alien occupation. Hang on, I think Tom Cruise and the Scientologist are on line one with that story. Oh, and don't forget it's fused with pulp boilerplate #15 - Mars Needs Women!

It's good. Really good. Go see it. It's only the fourth movie I've seen in a theater this year, and it's well worth it. Oh and avoid spoilers. It has a couple of big twists that you won't want to know before you see it. EDIT: I wrote third originally, but I forgot Ep. 3. Fourth movie this year :-)

So I Gameflyed Star Wars Republic Commando and played through the single player campaign. I enjoyed it - the squad command mechanic was pretty cool although I never quite figured out the logic when it cancelled previous commands. Another thing I thought was odd was that the story lays out things like "This guy is a slicer and this guy is a sniper, and the other guy is the heavy weapon guy". As far as I could tell it didn't make any difference - all four squad members (counting myself) could slice a given terminal in the exact same amount of time. I was finishing it and thinking "WTF was Chuji on about? This is going to be a perfectly acceptable ending - we'll destroy this bigass ship and we're done." I'm trying to avoid spoilers, but let's just say they had a PERFECTLY nice ending and then they stuck this ending movie where they introduced two major plot twists and then ended the game. Goofiest ending I've seen in a game for a while. If you're into Star Wars or into FPS's I'd say it's a good game to look at. And the squad thing was cool (I haven't played Band of Brothers so I can't compare them.) I never would have personally bought it, but I enjoyed the Gamefly rental. (Muwahahaha! Watch me destroy the industry. DESTROY it I say!)

So last week I ordered stuff from Amazon. I was mainly ordering the new They Might Be Giants CD & DVD (bonus opinion - meh. I liked No! and even the CD that came with the Bed Bed Bed book, but this alphabet stuff just isn't very interesting. I think TMBG+kids music is cool, but TMBG+Disney+kids is just way over the top). ANYWAY Amazon did one of those "You would probably also like" things and it spit out this Yes that's right, it says "The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal". Now if you think I can resist that . . . well, what can I say? You haven't been paying much attention. When I went for more information it did one of those "buy it with X and save!" with this. Well. I bought them both and pretty much tore through them. Lamb was slow going at first - up until Biff invented sarcasm and taught it to Christ. Then it just got hysterical and stayed that way for the rest of the book. And The Stupidest Angel was a one-day book that I just devoured. Funny and sharp all the way through. Really. My birthday is coming up - buy me more Christopher Moore! :-) If you're local, ask me to borrow these - they rock!