Battlefield: Bad Company First Impressions

First, an anectote: One time I rented Fuzion Frenzy 2 for the 360, long after the initial release.  One achievement was for playing an online match so I picked "Join a quick match" to which the game responded "There are no matches available."  That's what happens to a bad multiplayer game.  It dies online very soon after release.  On the other hand I played Battlefield 2 on the PC, which came out in 2005 and there are still scores of people playing in online battles.  Battlefield has multiplayer down.

So with that in mind I will review my early impressions of Battlefield: Bad Company, the newest Battlefield game, released on the 360 to a fair amount of praise (Metascore 83).  DICE has tried before to include a single player campaign into their games, and they've done so poorly.  Most excuse it because they want the multiplayer fun.  Battlefield: Bad Company is yet another attempt at a single player campaign, and clearly they put more thought into the story, but ultimately they still failed because they incorporate so many elements of their multiplayer success into their single player campaign.

It might seem strange that successful elements in multiplayer can be failures in single player but I'll explain.  In multiplayer, you die, you have to wait through a punishment pause, and then you respawn at some base.  There is no attempt to suspend belief that you are actually one soldier fighting a battle.  If multiplayer had people die and not come back till the end of the round do you realize how slow and careful everyone would be for fear of waiting the next 5-10 minutes without playing?  So all multiplayer games have respawning.  Now what if a single player campaign tried to introduce this?  In Bad Company if you die, you wake up at a respawn point (usually the last marker where you accomplished some task) but all the damage that you did has still been done.  You're now good as new, even freshly full of ammo, and the 3 people on your virtual squad are back by your side, even if they were 2 miles away before you died.  This just doesn't make sense for a single player campaign and it doesn't make you believe in the characters or story.

Next, in multiplayer Battlefield one of the key elements is segregation of duties of characters.  If you choose to be a sniper you will be equipped as a sniper.  You can't have a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher (just in case) and so there is a segregation of responsibilities that encourages everybody to play their part in the battle.  In the single player campaign you are similarly teamed up with 3 characters that would each seem to have their own responsibilities (especially the big guy who always carries a rocket launcher.)  So I'm left wondering why in every situation where a tank is coming at me I have to be the one throwing grenades to kill it when there's a guy with a rocket launcher on my team.  Apparently the only reason to have a team is for funny comments during the cut scenes because they sure don't seem to do much good during the actual missions.

Massive Levels!  They make sense when fighting 12 on 12 because they leave you room to maneuver.  In single player it just means more walking/driving and since they hid gold in far corners of the map it means you should probably explore it all if you want to get an achievement.

My other small complaints are with the controls, which use the bumpers and have an accelerated and twitchy mechanic with the aiming controls (you have to try it to understand how it's not like COD4).  I also think the enemy AI is a little too good at targeting you after your first shot is fired, even if I'm in excellent cover in a patch of trees with a sniper rifle from far away.  Not too realistic.  And enemies in the brush seem unusually hard to target.  Somehow they stood out a little more in COD4 and just blend in with Bad Company.  That's all for the single player.

Multiplayer is fun.  There's no two ways about it, if you like big battles and a good skill progression (very similar to COD4) then you will probably like Bad Company.  They didn't mess with the formula, and it creates more of a teamwork atmosphere than COD4.  In COD4 I felt like every confrontation was a who-saw-who first match because health was similar, damage was similar, so the person shooting first won.  As long as you don't come across someone else really soon you'll heal and be ready for the next confrontation.  In Bad Company you don't heal.  Some characters can take med kits that heal themselves but others like the sniper will just be hurting until they die.  It means even if you survive the first confrontation you can't just hide and recuperate, you may have to fight it out or be more cunning.  I like the overall feel of multiplayer and that's mostly because they didn't mess with the Battlefield formula too much.  My only issue with the Battlefield formula is that vehicles seem too powerful and take some of the fun out of not being in a tank/helicopter.  Maybe I should just suck it up and jump in a tank but I want to be a sniper sometimes!  

Video Game Reviews

Playing a fair share of video games in my free time it seems appropriate that I should post reviews of what I am playing in case others like me are hopelessly behind on the current offerings and just want to play the good stuff.  Unfortunately I even find that some of the good stuff has its bad points that are worth mentioning.

I've decided that my format will be to post a first-impressions post regarding the first few hours spent with the game and later a conclusions post.  This would have been interesting in hindsight for Ninja Gaiden 2, which I was initially frustrated with but by the end couldn't get enough of.

The one unfortunate aspect of being a cost conscious consumer is that I have signed up for Gamefly, the Netflix-for-video-games alternative to buying.  It has afforded me the ability to play many more games than I normally would, their shipping times are pretty good, but not netflix good since they only have 4 shipping locations, but one of them is in LA so it gets to me fast.  The other negative is that unlike Netflix's almost instant availability to all games, new releases are difficult to get, which has me playing a lot of stuff that's a few months old.  But from what I can tell most grown-ups who still play video games are in the same boat of catching up so my late reviews might come in handy.  But if anyone wants to send me review copies of games I'll be sure to make that my #1 priority (like that's ever gonna happen!).

Ebay Success

Well it seems like much longer than 10 days but the auction finally ended on Saturday, and I'm pleasantly surprised with the outcome.  Sure, I would have been happier if it had gone for more but I can't complain since it's all 100% profit and only a little anxiety/work.  Here's the final breakdown:

Winning Bid:          $ 119.75

Shipping:               $10.00

Insurance:           $    4.60 

Total Received:      $134.35

Paypal Fee:            (4.20)

Shipping Cost:         (12.15)

Insurance Cost:        (2.60)

Ebay Fees:                (9.90)

Net Gain:              $105.50

Try this...

Sniff a newly sharpened pencil...

Ethos Water - Bullshit

For a long time I have gone to Starbucks and seen the Ethos water on display.  Never before moving to Pasadena have I seen this be such a big seller.  People here tend to buy their morning coffee and grab a water for later it seems.

I've always had a pretty big problem with this water and their advertising.  They call it Ethos water, they say every bottle helps people who need water, but there's a limit.  They charge $1.80 for a bottle of water that anywhere else would be much cheaper.  If they said that 100% of the profits went to this global initiative to provide water to poor countries then I would say fine, call yourself Ethos, but only $0.05 goes to helping these organizations.  There is a huge amount of profit being kept by a company that is selling under a charitable pretense.

Going to the Ethos water web-site I discovered that they were purchased and now fully owned by Starbucks, and basically have a commitment to provide $10 million to this water initiative and the $0.05 is going into that fund.  Essentially Starbucks has committed to a $10M donation and will get a deduction for it whenever they contribute it to a foundation (they may already have contributed it to take the deduction) and many other companies do similar things with much less back-patting.  I think that it's pretty dishonest and sad.

There was a show on TV of kids selling lemonade, and one team decided to charge $2/cup but said that "profits were going to charity" while the other team just sold under a normal strategy around $1/cup.  The irony here was that everything was going to charity because the show had provided them with all the supplies and the kids only motivation was to make the most, which is why one went with a lower price.  Turns out the kids who advertised for charity made the most profit and sold the most cups.  People were handing them $20 and saying they didn't want any lemonade.  It said a lot about people's intentions, but companies have been abusing this for a long time as well. 

The pink lid Yoplait yogurts that are supposed to help breast cancer are a shining example of this.  Yoplait advertises that $0.10 will be contributed for each lid sent in.  The fine print says that they're already committed to giving $500k (5M lids) and the max is $1.5M donation.  I'm sure they know exactly how many yogurts they sell so this really isn't an effort on their part to do anything but push their product for a slight social benefit (of which they benefit the most).  I wish that companies wouldn't be so self-congratulatory when it is so clear that what they do is designed only for their own benefit.

So let's get real Starbucks... Ethos = Profits.

Nebraska Safe-Haven Law

To save you from reading the article the short version is that Nebraska wrote a safe-haven law for dropping off your child at a hospital without fear of prosecution.  This is one of those things to protect unwanted pregnancy infants from being left in a dumpster.  But the people worded it so poorly that they didn't define an age and said "child" rather than "infant" so a guy left his 9 kids, ranging from 1 to 17 at an emergency room and he has now given up guardianship...

The law is very simply worded "No person shall be prosecuted for any crime based solely upon the act of leaving a child in the custody of an employee on duty at a hospital licensed by the State of Nebraska. The hospital shall promptly contact appropriate authorities to take custody of the child."

I guess that does away with my idea of kidnapping children and dropping them off at the hospital to get off scott-free... Of course since this was an anti-abuse law it also doesn't protect abusive parents who drop off their kids, because they can still be charged with abuse.  And what exactly does happen when your baby sitter or a teacher decides to take a kid to the hospital and drop them off?  Even the fact that you are "leaving a child in the custody of an employee on duty..." leaves it pretty open.  Your infant is at the hospital, you go home for the evening, it's in their custody if they'd like to call the authorities and have it taken away, but I guess that's not too likely, is it?  Nice try Nebraska.  Keep up the good work!

New Co-Op Experience

Team Fortress 2 is a multiplayer online battle royale which features 9 very distinct character types that are all well balanced and have a specific function, from sniper to spy to big heavy gunner.  My twist on the genre is to take these character types and put them in a co-op multiplayer story driven game, so that you aren't picking up weapons allowing yourself to change the type of character you play along the way.  You pick your class and play through with those characteristics and the game play would be different each time because you have different strengths and weaknesses.  Couple that with multiplayer and trying to figure out what the best team would be for certain situations and you really have a winner.

As always, no charge.  Someone make it happen.

Mint.com

After reading about it as the best free money app around, I followed the link to www.mint.com.  

I have to say that they have put together an impressive package that packs style, simplicity, and several useful tools to a free site.  And I have hopes that it will stay free because it's painfully clear where they plan on getting their revenues.  They link at almost every turn to money saving offers that range from savings accounts giving a higher APR to credit cards giving a lower APR or higher rewards.  

The biggest problem is that on several of my accounts it is clear that they are unaware of the details and have overstated my potential savings.  My credit card apparently has no rewards, even though it's one of the best out there, and the same is true of one of my savings accounts.  But despite this, it is an impressive page and worth checking out if you're not afraid to give up your protected online log in info.

Rule #1 of Online Team Multiplayer

This may be tweaked in the future, but the following is a rule I have observed from playing Team Fortress 2 on the 360:

When joining a match in progress, you will inevitably join the losing team.  This is because some people who play online are poor sports and will leave their team as soon as the going gets tough.  I believe that this encompasses the jackass rule of online anonymity, and the fact that most online gamers are in fact little brat kids.

So time and again I would join a match in progress only to see the score either completely one sided, or even the teams pathetically skewed.  In one instance of a 6 on 6 match, there were 6 red team members and just 2 blue team members (myself included) when I joined.  It was pathetic and of course 6 on 2 will be one sided, and what was even worse at the start was that the red team was not actually bothering to capture a section, they were happy with fortifying their position to kill the blue team.  So me and the other person through a silent bond of understanding our situation both became snipers and settled for remaining relatively safe and picking off the red as they wandered around trying to kill blue.  After a minute or two other players started to join and blue actually had a team, so we fought back against the red and actually captured a post.  It was gratifying considering the poor sports that left blue in the first place.

The Bus and the Ford Focus

So feel free to stop me if you've heard this one: 

A bus was driving along down Colorado today and this Ford Focus wanted to get it's attention. So the Focus opens its door as the bus is passing and what do you know, that got the buses attention! Sure, the door on the Focus no longer closes because the bus bent it all the way around, but I'm sure the driver of the Focus expected that, right?

So people, check your mirrors before opening your doors. It could be a bicycle, another car, or a bus. No matter what you'd be better off just taking the time to check. The more you know!

Crosswalk Button

I wonder sometimes what is wrong with the people who go crazy pushing the crosswalk button.  

There are some that you can clearly see are in a rush, but I want to stop them sometimes and ask them if they really think pressing the button 50 times rapidly is going to get them across the street sooner.  Maybe they actually have some belief that built in to the system is a counter and if it thinks that a lot of people want to cross then it should hurry up and let them cross.  Is it actually possible that people have this belief?

Let's say they're not that delusional, and pressing the button is just a sign of their own anxiety and the circumstances that they are dealt.  In that case I would like to tell them that waiting at the signal is exactly the time to chill the eff out and just wait the 20 seconds for the signal to turn.  They could take that time to observe numerous other things, like people acting foolishly, to make them feel better about themselves.

It's exactly these times that make me glad I'm part alien.

Economics: Part 1

I may have an economics degree but I don't put it to any good use and so it has withered away.  

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I've been thinking about economics recently and formulating some observations, which I will build upon over time here on this blog.  My first question was why economics did not have a similar "conservation of mass" philosophy that benefits so many theorems in science.

Starting with a very simple system of 2 people on an island, if we each give them one useful and divisible commodity, they will quickly assign a value to each item and determine a solution to share their resources.

So person A has 10 seeds and $100 and person B has 10 seeds and $100, they could each decide to trade 5 seeds and both diversify their seeds.  That would be one logical solution that would seem to be fair given the circumstances.  Instead, let's say that they decide to plant their seeds without trading, and A's seeds sprout and bear fruit but B's seeds don't do anything.  There's new information in the economic system that B's seeds are worthless, so B will have to provide money or services if they expect to trade with A.  Regardless of the outcome and even as information changes, there is always a set value in an ecosystem, although the value may vary depending on the audience.  (to be continued)

Ebay Virgin

So this is some insight into the thoughts of an ebay virgin, selling their goods on the internet for the first time (how sordid!).

I had an item of questionable collectible value that I was going to give away until I found out that an identical item sold on ebay for $260.  The capitalist in me saw that there was an opportunity here, given that there were no other current listings, that there could still be a reasonable amount of hype for this item, so I got started creating my posting, copying several elements from the prior simple posting as my template.  

I read the ebay rules, pondered my wording, pondered the parameters for the sale (7 days or 10?, starting price, shipping, insurance, etc.) and after about 2 hours I had submitted it.  There was really no doubt at the time that what I had done was logical and I could hope for the best but had very little to lose... 

At this point I even got ambitious.  I found the original postings for the first person who sold it on PS3forums.com and I started making comments, asking questions, and posting that another one had popped up on ebay, all to generate interest, and it worked.  In just a few hours I had 20 visitors and 2 watchers (people who click a button to keep an eye on an auction).  

Then there was a post: "lol..That guy is selling it for $0.99!!  Get it people...."

Now I know that people bid things up on ebay, but I also know that people snatch things sometimes at the last second after watching an item, and I figured only the savviest of computer people would probably be interested in this item, so my 2 watchers and 0 bidders were worrying me that the bids could fly in at the last minutes and I would sell this for $10, which would not be worth my time.  I got so anxious about this result that I edited my listing and set a reserve (details withheld to protect the auction), which is a minimum price I'm willing to sell for.  This made me feel better even if it cuts into my profits a bit.

So I was pretty much was satisfied with my actions until this morning.  The doubts started running through my head.  What if this promotion was the part of something bigger, and what if the person possessing one of these billboards was entitled to something more than just a simple collectors item.  They've numbered them to limit their liability and would probably expect some/many to be thrown out given they were just planted on public property.  It made me wonder all over again if I had done the right thing, but I feel like after 10/21 the wind will all be out of the sails of this promo item.  

Maybe I'm right and maybe I'm wrong.  We will see and I'll post the outcome of this whole ordeal as it unfolds.

Here is the ebay auction of mine.

Design a Table

I was inspired by this, admittedly awesome and creative table for my own design.  

I would like to design a table where the entire surface, save the border, is covered by ball bearings.  I agree that it would be tough to clean if something spilled and someone will inevitably try to pull out a ball, which will cause a myriad of problems, but there's something about the industrial design that I would enjoy whenever I ran my hand across the surface of the table as the tightly packed balls spun yet remained motionless and gave off the faintest whir.

Some things just sound wrong...

"There should be a significant amount of hand railing on that job, right?" 

- guy talking on his blackberry

UPS

I want the local news investigating this.

I was in the UPS in Baldwin Park picking up a package that really should have been delivered (that's worthy of a rant but I'll let it slide for now) and while I was waiting for the guy to get my package 3 other customers came in after me.  

Nothing too strange so far, except that customer 1 went straight through the employee only door and walked out with a package shortly thereafter.  

Customer 2 was noticed while walking in, which prompted the UPS employee to go back and grab a package for them.  After that, customer 2 handed the UPS guy a check and the UPS guy cut the bar code off the package... Getting stranger.

Customer 3 had a binder, making me think he might actually be an employee when the same UPS guy who helped 1 and 2 motioned for him to go through the employee only door.  He was gone for a while and my package finally came, so I went to my car.  While pulling away I saw Customer 3 walking out with maybe 5 boxes stacked up.

None of this seems like normal behavior, and it was one after another at 8:30 on a Tuesday, so Chris Hansen, get on it!

Phonebook

Here's an idea, free to good owner:

I would like my phone/organizer to have a yellowpages and a whitepages in my phonebook.  I want to store business numbers but I don't want to see them cluttering up my personal phone numbers.  Is that so hard?  Unreasonable?  I don't want EB Games hanging out next to Erik, that's just asking for trouble!

It seems perfectly logical to me so I'm hoping someone will get on it, STAT!  And since I haven't seen it yet, just remember that you heard it here first.

Hurricane Preparation

There’s never really an appropriate time to point out when people don’t seem that smart so I’m just going ahead with it.

I was watching the news before Hurricane Ike and they were showing people loading up on water and supplies so they could wait out the storm. My problem is not with people trying to weather the storm (I can understand why that’s a tough decision). My problem is with people stocking up like they don’t know that hurricanes come around between Florida and Texas for a few months in the year, specifically denoted at “Hurricane Season.”

If I knew that something was coming once a year, and thought that having a few cases of water on hand would make it better, I’d have purchased that water a month before “Hurricane Season” and not rushed to the near empty store a few days before the storm to stock up on water and canned goods! It just doesn’t seem that difficult to plan for a recurring weather event. If you don’t need the water by the end of the season, have fun drinking it… it’ll keep.

Hopefully sales of plywood and water will be just a little higher in July next year as a few more people catch on.