Are you aware of the many and varied benefits of pie?  Longevity, increased happiness and sexual potency, halitosis prevention, and beneficial mutations are just a few of the perks that pie has brought us.  For trillions of year, pie has been the leading the way in food technology and innovation.  From the pugilistic fighting pies of yesteryear, to today’s GigaFlav™​ portable micro-pies with over 120 megafillings.  Pies have impacted every part of our lives and society.  Did you know, for example, that a lemon custard pie once served in the United State senate, and helped pass the bill to abolish dinosaurs?  Did you also know that the deep sea blueberry crumbler pie is the reason why English trade with the orient was possible during the middle ages?  Yes, the rich history of pies can be found in anywhere you look, and you can help celebrate today by selecting your favorite pie from the local Crust-Station and Filing Enrichment Center http://www.hubbardavenuediner.com/assets/Uploads/Hubbard/Menus/Current/HUBpieMAYweb.pdf Please help us honor the history and tradition of the majestic pie by selecting one of these little bastards to devour alive. Time is limited, so act now!

 

So, Dragon Age II (DAII) is coming out tomorrow, March 8.  Thanks to Steam, it’s pre-loaded onto my computer to be unlocked the moment it’s available.  This is the sequel (of course) to Dragon Age: Origins and its expansion Dragon Age: Awakenings.  I’ve played through both the original and the expansion (I finished the expansion a couple of weeks ago), and I am very excited about the sequel.  I’m also excited for the sequel because I enjoyed Mass Effect 2 so much.  Bioware has been an amazing company for producing engaging and exciting roleplaying games, and DAII seem to be no different.  I’ve heard a lot of people who are unhappy about how DAII has been, excuse the term, “Mass Effected”.  Let me explain that.

Bioware used to be best known for a game called Baldur’s Gate(BG) and Baldur’s Gate II (BGII), two games based in the realms of Fearun, one of the many Dungeons and Dragons universes.  The games were very popular among a certain crowd of PC gamers because on top of an engaging combat engine, the game had a deep story, engaging characters, excellent storytelling, wonderful dialog, and a sharp sense of humor.  I get the feeling that many people who remember the game fondly remember the stats of their favorite character, remember the best class combos and where to find all the greatest magical items that the game had to offer.  I, myself, remember much of that, but I also very fondly remember some of the more interesting dialog, many of the jokes, and quite a few of the quests.  I imagine that many of the people who complain about the “Mass Effecting” of Dragon Age II get deeply into the gameplay mechanics of Bioware games.  They enjoy finding strong class builds and group combinations that allow them to devastate any enemy in their path.  I’ve spent a lot of time doing that, let me tell you.  However, when we get right down to it, I play Bioware games because they are some of the best story tellers I know.  They have done amazing things with the roleplaying genre, and streamlining combat is one that I count as “improvement”.  Dragon Age: Origins had a massive amount of content that was just me talking to my party members.  I sat around the campfire and learned about the history, backgrounds, hopes, dreams, and fantasies of my party members.  I absolutely adored the fact that at one point I sat down at the game and engaged in conversation with my party for almost two hours.  It was all completely optional too, totally unimportant to the mission.  More or less the same thing is possible in Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2.  The level of character interaction just astounded me.  It really made the game for me.  I had people I trusted, people I disliked and people who remained inscrutable.  I am looking forward to going back a few years from now and replaying it as I still expect to find hours of content that I missed the first time around.  Mass Effect was probably more enjoyable for much the same reason.  Lots of really awesome writing and dialog, and combat was straightforward, I didn’t have to spend hours trying to figure out how to optimize my characters in order to be able to win certain combats (damn you Demi-Lich!)

All that being said, I did end up being disappointed with how the release of Dragon Age II was handled.  I pre-ordered the game about a month ago, or perhaps it was as far back as January, in my excitement to play it.  Recently, however, I have discovered that on day one there will be content that was not included in the game, but available as paid Downloadable Content.  This has been going on for a little while, but it’s really starting to bug me, so I wrote EA/Bioware a letter today.

I am writing because I wish to voice my discontentment with the Dragon Age II product release and companion Downloadable Content (DLC). I do not mind that you wish to break your game up into an ala-carte model, what I am disappointed with is “surprise” model of paid content announcements even prior to the games release. I pre-ordered my Dragon Age II in good faith that I would be receiving a complete game only to find that even before the game has been released you have announced additional content for which you wish to charge an additional fee. I have been a very strong supporter of Bioware games over the years, and I strongly support all decisions to add DLC to the game to increase revenue and support the development of new games. I feel that your actions are punishing me for pre-ordering the game (an interest free loan to you) and do a disservice to your most loyal customers. I expect honesty from Bioware, I expect to be told a price for the game and sold the game at that price rather than releasing most of the game and then charging me for additional parts on day one. If you want to make the game available in pieces, that’s fine, but you must be open, up front, and honest about what will be available and when. I kindly request that in the future you disclaim all game components and their prices before you make them available for purchase so that I can make an informed decision about what I wish to purchase rather than surprising me at the last second. I feel that my trust has been broken and until I see some evidence in the future that you have changed your ways I will have to cease my purchase of your games early in their release cycle and instead wait until you have released your “ultimate” editions. I will be encouraging others to do the same. I do hope that someone will read this and pass it on as a sincere and loyal customer who has been a very strong supporter, will continue to be, but cannot support the current business practices. I would dearly love to know that someone has read this and at least acknowledged my concerns. Because I do not feel confident that the support form I was directed to is the right place to provide feedback I will be posting this on your customer forums as well.

Thank you for your time.

That’s pretty much the jist of it. I don’t disapprove of DLC, what I disapprove of is the shady business tactic of surprising me with it at the last minute. I would like to feel like my purchase was complete, or at least informed. Not such a hard thing I think but I suspect EA is going to continue to make business decisions that make me unhappy. Time will tell. It makes me a little sad to think that I’m going to have to delay my gratification of Mass Effect 3. I really want to play Mass Effect 3. Really badly.

My sweetie picked me up an early birthday present.  I am looking forward to getting some people together to play!

If you were wondering what to get me for Christmas, literally everyone I know could get me one of these and it wouldn’t be enough.

Here is a really good post.  I’ve read a lot about it today, but most of it is second hand information.  Sadly, I’m not happy with what I’ve read so far.  I’ll post more when we have definite information.

To start, I’m very happy with my recent iPhone 4 upgrade.  The iPhone 4 is so much faster than my old 3G, and the battery life is much improved.  Facetime is a really cool feature, but until it stops being WiFi only, it will not be something that get’s a ton of use.  The biggest difference is the screen quality.  The new high density display is really something else and I notice it every time I use it.  All-in-all a worthwhile upgrade.

I was very happy to discover that Audible has released an iPhone application.  This made me happy because I was quite jealous of their android app which as been in beta for a while now.  I downloaded it yesterday and started playing around with it when I ran into some issues.  First off Audible appears to be having a problem with their download service, so I cannot currently download any of my books.  This is something of a bummer as quite a few people are having their first experience with audible through this app (coming from the App Store).  I’m sure Audible will resolve the issue, but they’ve probably lost a bunch of business because of it.  So I can’t use it yet to download books, oh well, we’ll get around to that when it’s fixed.  The other annoyance that I have is that I cannot access Audible’s website/store from the app.  This is the same issue the Kindle has, and it’s not their fault, it’s Apples.   Apple takes a cut of everything sold through apps on the iPhone, so Amazon can’t sell books (audio or text) from their iPhone apps.  Bah.  I would like to be able to browse their selection and purchase audio books without having to go to their website.

And last, but most definitely not least, Valve software release an updated port of a game called Alien Swarm this week.  I think it was around 2005 when a company called Black Cat games put out a UT2k4 mod called Alien Swarm.  We played a bunch of Unreal Tournament back then, and I don’t recall where I found this, but it was pretty intriguing so I picked it up.  It was an absolute blast.  I remember playing an awful lot of it and I’m not really sure why we stopped, although I remember getting to some absolutely death dealing areas and having trouble getting past.  So it may have been that we hit a wall.  The game has 4 classes, so you get to pick your play style.  The original game was top down, the new version is also top down, but at a slight angle so the view is nicer.  It’s 4 player co-op and it’s a total blast to shoot through.  Valve went ahead and set the price point at zero, ensuring that anyone who has ever played a Valve game would pick this up and get addicted.  I can only assume that this is the the first taste and that we’re going to have to pay for the second one.  That’s fine by me, I would have paid for this one.  I got to kick around with Matt last night for a while, and I’m really looking forward to having 4 players to stomp on these maps with.

The second step is Linux:

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=valve_steam_announcement&num=1

http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/05/12/1831208/Steam-Client-for-Mac-Launches-Linux-Client-On-the-Way

So… beautiful… should have sent… a poet.

Everyone, its time to celebrate.

http://store.steampowered.com/freeportal/